Part 2: https://universalistheretic.blogspot.com/2022/09/the-bible-and-free-will-two-wills-of.html
In the first two posts of this series, we examined the scriptural evidence for theological determinism and the total sovereignty of God. We saw that, according to the Bible, absolutely everything (including human choice and action) is brought about by God in His providential will (Ps. 33:13-15; Eph. 1:11). We also saw many examples throughout scripture in which God brought about a sin, in apparent contradiction to His commandments or ‘preceptive will.’ Furthermore, we saw how the perfect moral character of God is compatible with the evil that He causes if (and only if) He does it for the greater good of all people, and thus out of the love which forms the basis of His preceptive will (Matt. 22:37-40).
However, despite the vast scriptural evidence for this view that God’s plan and will is all-comprehensive, there are a number of passages that are thought to support the alternative view of open theism [1]. Open theism is the view that God does not have comprehensive control over or knowledge of the future, but instead has chosen to give us free will, out of love for us, limiting His sovereignty and foreknowledge in the process. This is largely based on passages like Exodus 32:14 which appear to demonstrate that God can change His mind, which according to open theists rules out the idea that He has perfect foreknowledge.
The idea that God is not able to know the future with perfect accuracy seems to be refuted by passages like Isaiah 46:10, which states that God is “declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not been done” (cf. Isa. 41:23; 42:9; 44:7; Dan. 2:28; 1 Pet. 1:2). God has demonstrated this knowledge of the future (including the ‘free choices’ of humans) many times; for example, in 1 Sam. 23:10-12, God tells David that Saul and the citizens of Keilah would conspire to hand him over (which requires foreknowledge of the future ‘free choices’ of those people), and in Rom. 8:29 and 1 Pet. 1:2 we are told that God foreknows who will become a believer (likewise). Despite this, a good case can still be made for open theism based on a number of verses which appear to support it. In this post, we will be taking a look at that evidence and seeing why it does not really support open theism.
Does God change His mind?
The case for open theism is largely based on several passages which state that God changed His mind, or relented (Hebrew nacham), regarding certain actions. See the following examples of this:
And Yahweh saw that the wickedness of man in the earth was great, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was altogether evil, all the time. And Yahweh relented [nacham] that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. (Gen. 6:5-6)
And Yahweh said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and indeed, it is a stiff-necked people. Now therefore leave me alone, that My wrath may burn hot against them, and I may consume them. And I will make of you a great nation.” And Moses pleaded with Yahweh his God, and said, “Why, Yahweh, does your wrath burn hot against your people Israel, whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should Egypt speak and say, ‘He brought them out to harm them, to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth?’ Turn from Your fierce wrath, and relent [nacham] from this harm to Your people”... So Yahweh relented [nacham] from the harm which He said He would do to His people. (Exod. 32:10-12, 14)
And the word of Yahweh came to Samuel, saying, “I relent [nacham] that I have established Saul as king, for he has turned back from following Me, and has not performed My commandments.” (1 Sam. 15:11)
And when the angel stretched out his hand over Jerusalem to destroy it, then Yahweh relented [nacham] from the destruction, and said to the angel who was destroying the people, “It is enough! Now restrain your hand.” And the angel of Yahweh was by the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. (2 Sam. 24:16)
“And if that nation turns back from its evil, against whom I have spoken, then I will relent [nacham] of the disaster that I thought to bring upon it... And if it does evil in My sight, so that it does not obey My voice, then I will relent [nacham] concerning the good with which I said I would benefit it.” (Jer. 18:8, 10 cf. 26:3, 13, 42:10, Ezek. 33:13-16)
I said, “Lord Yahweh, forgive, I pray. How can Jacob stand? For he is small.” So Yahweh relented [nacham] concerning this. “It shall not be,” said Yahweh... And I said, “Lord Yahweh, cease, I pray. How can Jacob stand? For he is small.” So Yahweh relented [nacham] concerning this. “It also shall not be,” said the Lord Yahweh. (Amos 7:2-3, 5-6)
And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way, and God relented [nacham] from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it. (Jon. 3:10)
According to these passages, God occasionally relents concerning disasters - and even blessings - which He promised would come upon an individual or nation. Because of this, the prophet Joel urged the people of Israel to repent in light of the fact that “[God] relents from the evil. Who knows if He will turn back and relent?” (Joel 2:13-14) Open theists point to passages like these to support their claim that God does not know the future perfectly. After all, if God is able to change His mind due to the choices that humans make, this shows that (1) He does not know in advance what choice they will make, and (2) He does not know in advance what choice He will make.
Now, if these verses were all that we had to go on, it would be a valid inference that God does not perfectly know the future. However, as it so happens, there are several other verses which indicate that God is in fact unable to change His mind, for with Him there is “no change or shadow of variation” (Jas. 1:17). Consider the following passages:
God is not a man that He should lie, or a son of man that He should relent [nacham]. (Num. 23:19)
And also the Glory of Israel will not lie nor relent [nacham], for He is not a man that He should relent [nacham]. (1 Sam. 15:29)
For I, Yahweh, do not change; therefore you, sons of Jacob, are not consumed. (Mal. 3:6)
Every good giving and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the lights, with whom there is no change or shadow of variation. (Jas. 1:17)
This appears to present a clear contradiction. We are explicitly told that God does not relent (nacham), while being told elsewhere of multiple instances in which God did relent (nacham). How can this possibly be resolved?
Anthropomorphism and anthropopathism in scripture
Open theists suggest that this contradiction should be resolved by applying the principle that “God does not relent” only to these two situations; namely, His covenant with Israel and His having taken the kingdom away from Saul (Num. 23:19-21; 1 Sam. 15:28-29). However, this does not fully explain these two passages - they do not merely say that God will not relent in these two situations, but that He cannot relent because He is fundamentally not a human.
Rather, I believe that these instances in which God is said to relent are examples of the literary devices of anthropomorphism and anthropopathism, in which God is described using human attributes in order to make Him more relatable to human readers. For example, although “God is spirit” (Jn. 4:24) and so does not have a physical body, He is said in the Old Testament to have hands and arms (Exod. 6:6; 7:5; Deut. 4:34; 5:15; Isa. 23:11; etc.), feet (Exod. 24:9-10; Isa. 66:1 cf. Gen. 3:8), a face (Exod. 33:20; Lev. 20:6; Num. 6:25; Ps. 27:8; etc.), eyes, ears (Deut. 11:12; 2 Kings 19:16; Neh. 1:6; Ps. 34:15; etc.), nostrils (Exod. 15:8; Deut. 33:10; Job 4:9), a mouth (Num. 12:8; Josh. 9:14; Job 11:5; Isa. 11:4, etc.), and many other physical human characteristics.
Likewise, scripture also describes God as having human emotions, despite that, seeing as He is outside of time and emotion is a reaction to events in temporal succession, He does not experience emotion in the same way that humans do [2]. For example, He is said to delight or rejoice (Deut. 28:63; 30:9; Ps. 104:31; Jer. 32:41; etc.), be sorrowful and grieve (Judg. 10:16; Ps. 78:40; etc.), remember past events (Gen. 9:15-16; Exod. 2:24; 6:5; 1 Sam. 1:19; etc.), forget past events (Ps. 9:18; 13:1; 42:9; Hos. 4:6; etc.), have anger, vengeance, and hatred (Exod. 15:7; Ps. 5:5; Isa. 1:14; Jer. 9:9; etc.), jealousy (Exod. 20:5; Num. 25:11; Nah. 1:2; Zech. 1:14; etc.), zeal (Isa. 9:7), pity (Joel 2:18), and ignorance (Gen. 3:9; 4:9; Num. 22:9; 1 Kings 19:9, 13). These are all examples of anthropopathism, or the attribution of human emotion to God [3].
When we read that God “relented” of certain actions, we should understand it as another type of anthropopathism. This is especially clear in light of Numbers 23:19 and 1 Samuel 15:29, both of which state that “relenting” (nacham) is an emotion limited solely to humans and is not experienced by God, by virtue of the fact that He is not a human. Therefore, it can only be said that God relents in the sense that it can also be said that He has human physical characteristics and is ignorant or even able to ‘forget’ past events; not that those attributes actually belong to God, but that He describes Himself in that way in order to condescend to our level and make Himself more relatable to us [4]. God’s foreknowledge of the future is, therefore, not jeopardized by these passages which state that He “relented.”
Instances where God ‘didn’t know’ the future
Apart from the passages which state that God changed His mind or relented concerning certain actions, there are a few other instances in scripture where open theists believe that God demonstrated His lack of knowledge about the future. Two of the most commonly cited examples are found in the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah:
“Let me sing now for my well-beloved, a song of my beloved concerning his vineyard. My well-beloved had a vineyard on a fertile hill. He dug it all around, removed its stones, and planted it with the choicest vine. And he built a tower in the middle of it and also hewed out a wine vat in it; then he expected it to produce good grapes, but it produced only worthless ones. And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between Me and My vineyard. What more was there to do for My vineyard that I have not done in it? Why, when I expected it to produce good grapes did it produce worthless ones?”... For the vineyard of Yahweh of hosts is the house of Israel and the men of Judah His delightful plant. Thus He looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed; for righteousness, but behold, a cry of distress. (Isa. 5:1-4, 7)
Then Yahweh said to me in the days of Josiah the king, “Have you seen what faithless Israel did? She went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and she was a harlot there. I thought, ‘After she has done all these things she will return to Me’; but she did not return, and her treacherous sister Judah saw it. And I saw that for all the adulteries of faithless Israel, I had sent her away and given her a writ of divorce, yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear; but she went and was a harlot also.” (Jer. 3:6-8)
In both of these passages, God states that He expected Israel to return and remain faithful to Him, producing “good grapes,” but instead they remained unfaithful and produced “worthless grapes.” If taken at face value, these passages would indicate that God does not have perfect foreknowledge of the future, since He expected one result while getting another. However, if this is the meaning of these passages, it would directly contradict the book of Deuteronomy in which God actually prophesies the coming Israelite apostasy and subsequent exile (29:19-28; 32:25-26). Surely, if God actually prophesied that this apostasy would happen, He could not have expected the opposite to occur.
To properly understand these passages, it is important to note that both of them are part of extended metaphors in which God is presented as a man, and Israel as His vineyard (in Isaiah) or adulterous wife (in Jeremiah). Obviously, poetic metaphors and parables are not meant to be sources of absolute doctrinal truth. Since God is a man in these parables, some amount of anthropopathism - which includes ignorance of present and future events (cf. Gen. 3:8; 4:9; Num. 22:9; 1 Kings 19:9, 13) - is to be expected.
Another possible interpretation of the Isaiah passage is to see it as a reflection of God’s preceptive will rather than His providential will (see my recent post on “The Two Wills of God”). The word which is translated “expected” here, qavah, can also mean “to look for” or “to search eagerly.” If that is the sense in which it is being used, then it might not saying that God actually expected Israel to do good, but rather that He wished them to do good rather than evil.
Another passage, which open theists also argue demonstrates that God does not know the future, is from the book of Jeremiah:
They have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into My mind. (Jer. 7:31 NASB cf. 19:5; 32:35)
Since God, in this passage, says that this particular sin of Israel “did not come into [His] mind,” it is argued that He could not have foreknown its occurrence. Furthermore, this verse is seen as particularly challenging to theological determinism, since if God actually predestined the occurrence of this sin, it would certainly be a lie to say that it never even entered His mind. However, even under open theism, God knows all truths both possible and actual (which is the very definition of omniscience), so if we interpret this verse as saying that God did not even think that this could occur, it would be incompatible with open theism as well. Because of this, there must be another more valid interpretation of this passage.
The key to properly understanding this verse is to look at the original Hebrew text, which states that the sin did not come into God’s leb - a word which more properly means “heart” than “mind.” (In fact, the LXX translates the last word of this verse as kardia, the Greek word meaning “heart.”) As far as I can tell, leb is only ever used to describe God's preceptive will, and not His providential will; this would also better correspond to the previous clause of the sentence, which states that "[God] did not command [it]" (assuming that synonymous parallelism is being employed here). Thus, this verse is only saying that God did not command it in His preceptive will, not necessarily that He could not have providentially ordained it. After all, His preceptive and providential 'wills' do often conflict (again, see my recent post, "The Two Wills of God").
In summary, open theism is a shaky position built on equivocal passages that do not necessarily support it. Open theists fail to consistently apply the literary device of anthropopathism, accepting that it is used elsewhere in the Old Testament but not applying it to the instances in which God is said to "relent." Furthermore, they entirely ignore the fact that God created (and is thus outside of) time, which makes it impossible that He could be completely ignorant of the future, as well as ignoring passages that explicitly describe God's foreknowledge of the future. In the next post of this series, we will take a look at the debate between monergism/Calvinism (the belief that salvation is a unilateral act of God) and synergism/Arminianism (the belief that salvation is a joint act of both God and humans).
Part 4: https://universalistheretic.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-bible-and-free-will-monergism-vs.html
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[1] Although the main opposing view to theological determinism is Arminianism, most of the prooftexts for this view center around God’s love for all people and desire for all to be saved, which (as a universalist) my position has no difficulty with.
[2] Which is not to say that He is limited in any way. Jesus, who is “the image of the invisible God,” certainly experienced emotion, and so God must in some way be an emotive being. However, seeing as He is outside of time, His emotions cannot be comparable to human emotions (cf. Isa. 55:8-9; Rom. 11:33-34).
[3] For even more examples of both anthropomorphism and anthropopathism, see https://www.studylight.org/lexicons/eng/bullinger/a/anthropopatheia-or-condescension.html
[4] This is also how it can be said that God does not know the state of the human heart (Gen. 22:12; Exod. 13:17; 16:4; 2 Chron. 32:31; Judg. 2:21-22; Ps. 26:2; Jer. 17:10). This is not because He is ignorant, but because He is describing Himself in anthropopathic ways when He talks about “searching the hearts” of humans. After all, even open theists believe that God knows everything at the present time, which necessarily includes the thoughts of humans (1 Jn. 3:20), so how could it be that He does not know the state of the human heart?
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