When Strangers Come Knocking---Part 28

 

This is the next installment of my series to be published the first Monday of each month.

There are members of false sects, like Jehovah's Witnesses, that come knocking door-to-door hoping to convert you. Instead of ignoring them, it is we who should try and convert them. In 1 Peter 3:16, our first Pope writes, "But in thy hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks thee to give the reason for the hope that thou hast. But do this with gentleness and respect,..." Before the Great Apostasy, the Church would send missionaries to the ends of the Earth to make as many converts as possible. 

Those in false religions don't always come (literally) knocking at your door. It may be a Hindu at work who wants you to try yoga. It could be a "Christian Scientist" who lives next door and invites you to come to their reading room. Each month, I will present a false sect. Unlike the Vatican II sect, I do not see them as a "means of salvation" or possessing "elements of truth" that lead to salvation. That is heresy. They lead to damnation, and the adherents of the various sects must be converted so they may be saved.

In each month's post, I will present one false sect and give an overview of: 

• The sect's history
• Their theology
• Tips on how to share the True Faith with them

Open Theism

His name is Richard Swinburne and he was born the day after Christmas 1934 in England. The only child of a music teacher and a secretary, Swinburne was a prodigy and received a full scholarship to college. His first love was God. He claims that from his earliest memories at age four, he never remembers a time when he didn't believe in God, the Trinity, and the Divinity of Jesus Christ. His parents were devout Anglicans. However, he did not want to be an Anglican "priest" (Anglican Orders were infallibly declared "absolutely null and utterly void" by Pope Leo XIII in his 1896  decree Apostolicae Curae). 

Instead, young Richard wanted to be a philosopher and defend the existence of God against unbelievers. He became a philosophy professor and published many books on God, most notably The Existence of God in 1979, which was hailed as a major breakthrough in apologetics for the Christian God. Claiming St. Thomas Aquinas as one of his major influences, Prof. Swinburne does not believe that there is any one definitive proof of God, rather his "cumulative approach" says that when all the arguments for and against the existence of the Christian God are examined "it is highly more probable than not that God exists." Since human beings always act on what they believe is more probable than not (e.g., if I don't show up for work repeatedly and without excuse, I'll be fired), people should be (and are justified in) believing the Christian God exists. 

From 1985 until his retirement in 2002 he was Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion at the University of Oxford. He has published no less than nineteen major philosophy books from 1968 to 2019, and has authored hundreds of scholarly articles on philosophy and theology, all published in professional journals. In 1996, the Englishman was so upset at the continuing extreme Modernism in the Anglican sect, he was baptized a member of the Greek Orthodox sect. 

In 2009, I met Prof. Swinburne who was affable, extremely intelligent, and humble. I was about my business near where he was giving a lecture, and I decided to attend. I introduced myself afterwards, and we talked for quite some time. He must have enjoyed our conversation, as he gave me his personal email address (which he said he gives to few people) and we still keep in touch. I have read many of his important works over the years, dating back to my college days. 

At this point you may be wondering why I'm discussing an influential English philosopher. Did he start a sect worthy of mentioning in this "When Strangers Come Knocking" series? No. Rather, Swinburne--despite his seemingly good attempts to defend the existence of God in godless academia--holds a heretical belief about one of the very attributes of God. It is a pernicious error that infects many Eastern Schismatics, Protestants, and members of the Vatican II sect, leading them further into egregious errors. It is called Open Theism, and it denies (be redefining) the omniscience of Almighty God. The name "Open Theism" means a God to Whom the future of at least some actions is "open" or unknowable, exactly as it is to human beings.

This post will explain Open Theism, its disastrous consequences for Christianity, and expound the teaching of the One True Church on the omniscience of the True God of Christianity. 

An All-Knowing Yet Ignorant "God"

(For my information on Open Theism, I culled my data from several sources, most notably Boyd, Gregory A. God of the Possible: A Biblical Introduction to the Open View of God [2000], Sanders, John. The God Who Risks: A Theology of Providence [1998], and my correspondence with Prof. Richard Swinburne---Introibo). 

 Open Theists teach that God can know all true propositions, but future events aren’t knowable—even to an omniscient Being. Open Theist Greg Boyd writes:

In the Christian view God knows all reality—everything there is to know. But, to assume He knows ahead of time how every person is going to freely act assumes that each person’s free activity is already there to know—even before he freely does it! But it’s not. If we have been given freedom, we create the reality of our decisions by making them. And until we make them, they don’t exist. Thus, in my view at least, there simply isn’t anything to know until we make it there to know. So God can’t foreknow the good or bad decisions of the people He creates until He creates these people and they, in turn, create their decisions. 

For Open Theism, God must not know the future free acts of humans and angels. Some, like Boyd (a Protestant theologian), say that until a decision is made, there is nothing to know (if that decision was made as the result of free will it isn't knowable until made). Others, like Swinburne, claim God self-limits His knowledge to make free actions possible. Further, Open Theists claim that if God knows the future, He is responsible for evil and cannot be omnibenevolent.

Here, then, are the arguments advanced by Open Theists to "prove" a God with limited (or self-limited) knowledge:

1. If God knew future free acts and doesn't stop them He is the cause of evil.

Boyd gives the example of God creating Hitler. If God knew Hitler's future free choices and created Him anyway, God is responsible for what He did. As Boyd writes:

The only response I could offer then, and the only response I continue to offer now, is that this was not foreknown as a certainty at the time God created Hitler… If you claim that God foreknew exactly what Hitler would do and created him anyway, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the world must somehow be better with Hitler than without him. Think about it. If God is all good and thus always does what is best, and if God knew exactly what Hitler would do when He created him, we must conclude that God believed that allowing Hitler’s massacre of the Jews (and many others) was preferable to His not allowing it. If you accept the premises that God is all good and that he possesses exhaustively settled foreknowledge, the conclusion is difficult to avoid.

Since the world cannot be better with people like Hitler, God would be complicit in evil if He knew in advance what Hitler would do and created him anyway.

2. God knows some future events but not all.

Boyd writes:

Hence, while Scripture certainly depicts aspects of the future as predestined and foreknown, Open Theists argue that a comprehensive assessment of Scripture suggests that some aspects of the future remain open.

Hence, in Acts 2:23, we read, "This Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death." This was known by God beforehand.

Yet, consider the following:

Genesis 3:9, But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” God didn't know Adam's whereabouts.  

Genesis 6:6, The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. How can God regret something He already knew would happen?

Genesis 22:1, Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied. Why is God "testing" someone whom He already knows what he will do?

Exodus 32:14, Then the Lord relented and did not bring on His people the disaster He had threatened. How can God change His mind, if He already knew all the facts?

Jeremiah 3:7, I thought that after she had done all this she would return to Me but she did not, and her unfaithful sister Judah saw it. God is admitting He did not know what would happen.

3. God's attributes have always been limited to an extent, but still considered to exist in the highest degree.

God is all-powerful (omnipotent). Yet, even the great Aquinas admits that God cannot do evil; He cannot tell a lie--and it's a good inability. God cannot do the logically impossible such as making a "square circle," or a "married bachelor." Finally, God self-limits His omnipotence by making promises He cannot break. He promised never to destroy the world again by a flood, so this is a self-imposed limitation He cannot break. Why can't He do the same with His omniscience? Christ admitted He didn't know the day or hour of His Return. (St. Matthew 24:36). 

Open Theism's Heretical Consequences

Besides being a heresy in and of itself, Open Theism carries with it the following heretical tenets:

• God can't know who will be saved or damned
• We can't be sure the book of the Apocalypse is true or conditional (God's "best guess"), making Bible exegesis impossible; maybe Satan isn't ultimately defeated
• God can't really answer prayer because He can't know if the grace sought after would ultimately work to the salvation of the one who prays
• Unless the Bible or Sacred Tradition state specifically that God knows a future event, are we to assume He doesn't know?

 

The Teaching of the One True Church on God's Omnipotence

(All material from this section is taken from theologian Pohle, Dogmatic Theology, 1:327-391, [1930]---Introibo). 

God's knowledge is both infinite and infallible. The Vatican Council of 1870 decreed:

Everything that God has brought into being he protects and governs by his providence, which reaches from one end of the earth to the other and orders all things well. All things are open and laid bare to his eyes, even those which will be brought about by the free activity of creatures. (Emphasis mine).

It is therefore a dogma that God knows the free future actions of His intelligent creatures. One would deny this dogma should he assert that God's foreknowledge is only morally certain, or purely presumptive. Pope Sixtus IV condemned the proposition of Peter of Rivo that "God does not know for certain free future actions (e.g., Peter denying Christ three times)" Holy Scripture not only ascribes to God a general foreknowledge of future things, but it expressly declares that His prescience extends to the free acts of the future. Psalm 138:1-6:

Lord, thou hast proved me, and known me: Thou hast know my sitting down, and my rising up. Thou hast understood my thoughts afar off: my path and my line thou hast searched out. And thou hast foreseen all my ways: for there is no speech in my tongue.  Behold, O Lord, thou hast known all things, the last and those of old: thou hast formed me, and hast laid thy hand upon me. Thy knowledge is become wonderful to me: it is high, and I cannot reach to it. (Emphasis mine). 

Firmly convinced of this truth, the chaste Susanna, asserting her innocence against the two wicked elders cried out, "O eternal God, Who knowest hidden things, Who knowest all things before they come to pass, Thou knowest that they have borne false witness against me." (Daniel 13:42-43; Emphasis mine). St. John 6:65 reads, "For Jesus knew from the beginning, who they were that did not believe, and who he was, that would betray him." (Emphasis mine).

God's foreknowledge and free will.

That intelligent creatures are endowed with free will is as much a dogma as God's foreknowledge of those free actions. How do we reconcile the two? Future events must occur as God foreknows them, or else it would not be infallible knowledge. Does not God's infallible foreknowledge destroy free will? Not at all. God's foreknowledge no more exercises a compulsory influence on the free acts of the future, than does the contemporaneous knowledge of any observer on an act happening here and now. The future act is not the effect of the foreknowledge, only its object. The foreknowledge of a future act is future to us, but God is outside time and sees all as the present. Hence, God's knowledge of the future does not determine it, any more than human recollection of past acts destroys the freedom of what happened then, or human knowledge of the present is making it happen now. 

Proselytizing Open Theists

If someone tells you God doesn't know the future, or God made Himself ignorant of certain facts--the only way to open their eyes is to present the teaching of the Church while tearing down their arguments.

• God's foreknowledge of future free acts does not make Him the cause of evil

Knowing something is not the same as causing something. If I'm on top of a tall building and witness two cars speeding towards each other at an intersection, I know a couple of seconds beforehand that the cars will crash given their velocity; however, was it me who caused it, or the free will of the drivers who broke the law by speeding? 

Can't God create a world devoid of evil people? Not unless we want to take away free will. There is a reason why things will work out for the best even if we can't see it like the all-knowing God. Boyd assumes that Hitler's murders can't be justified as permitted by God, yet Boyd knows this...how? For My thoughts are not thy thoughts: nor thy ways My ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are exalted above the earth, so are My ways exalted above thy ways, and My thoughts above your thoughts.(Isaiah 55:8-9). More horrible than murder is Hell, and perhaps more souls were saved in ways we don't understand than if those events of WWII had not happened. Boyd thinks he understands better than God. 

Having free will is not bad, but a good attribute that can be misused for evil. When a drunk driver kills a family, who is responsible? Is he responsible for the accident –or is Henry Ford responsible for creating the car? 

• God knows ALL future acts without exception, including free acts and does not destroy free will

According to the Angelic Doctor, God's knowledge is not simply of the actual; He also knows the potential. He knows both what is and what could be, for God can know whatever is real in any way that it can be known. Both the actual and potential are real. Only the logically impossible has no reality. (See Summa Theologica 1a.14.13). God can know all future contingents, that is, things that are dependent on free choice, because the future is a potential that preexists in God. God knows whatever exists in Himself as the cause of those things. (See Summa Theologica 1a.14.4). God is timeless and knows all of time in one eternal present. Certainly a timeless Being can know the necessary end of a state of affairs that is caused by means of a free choice from an intelligent creature. 

• Misuse of Scripture by Private Interpretation

Not just Protestants, but even Eastern Schismatics and members of the Vatican II sect disregard Church teaching and use the Bible as a proof text for their doctrinal aberrations. In response to the passages often cited by Open Theists (above), the answers are simple:

Genesis 3:9-- God asked this question to give Adam and Eve an opportunity to confess. Good lawyers know to ask questions of clients –even if the lawyer knows the answer to the question before they ask it. Jesus asked roughly 150 questions in the Gospels, which shows the same pattern. Moreover, in the very next chapter of Genesis, we see that God asked Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” (Genesis 4:9) However, when Abel lied to Him, God already knew the answer to His own question (v.10). Therefore, the text demonstrates that God was not ignorant; instead, He asked questions to draw out his listeners.

What about the passages where God changes His mind or shows regret? This is a case of anthropomorphic language. Think about it; from our perspective, the sun appears to rise and set. However, this is man-centered language. The sun doesn’t move; we move around it. The same is true with God. From Moses’ perspective, God changed. If the story had been written from the perspective of God’s divine counsel, it would have stated that the people changed. However, because it was written from the perspective of Israel’s history, it states that God changed. The same holds for God speaking to Jeremiah, He was speaking in language a person of his time period would understand. This shouldn’t be taken to conclude that God doesn’t know the future, rather that He had alternate desires and plans for Israel, which they rejected.

• God's attributes have never been taught as limited by the Church

To be omnipotent means God can do all things possible and not contrary to his Divine attributes. Hence, it is not that "God cannot make a square circle" but a "square circle" says nothing about reality because it is self-contradictory. Nothing can be circular and square simultaneously, just as the propositions "it is raining in New York City" and "it is not raining in New York City" cannot be a true state of affairs at the same exact time and conditions--it violates the Law of Non-Contradiction in logic. God cannot do evil because evil is the absence of Goodness and God is omnibenevolent in the highest degree--evil runs contrary to His very Nature; which is why something is evil in the first place. The Ten Commandments aren't good because God gave them to us, rather the Ten Commandments were given by God because they are good--logical extensions of His attributes. 

Finally, God did not limit His omnipotence by promising not to destroy the world again by a flood. God is still omnipotent because He can do it, but voluntarily refrains from doing it. If God chooses to be ignorant, He loses something real; the knowledge He otherwise would have had, and is therefore not omniscient, which means He lacks all perfection--which is impossible. Open Theists attack a strawman when they claim the Church taught a limitation on the attributes of God. When properly understood and explained, it is obvious no such thing happened. 

• God distinguishes Himself from false gods based on His omniscience

Isaiah 42:8–9: “I am the Lord, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another, nor My praise to graven images. “Behold, the former things have come to pass, now I declare new things; before they spring forth I proclaim them to you.” (Emphasis mine). 

• False prophets are determined by their inability to predict the future known infallibly by God

When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him. (Deuteronomy 18:22; Emphasis mine). How does this fit with Open Theism, if God doesn’t know the future?

Conclusion

Is the Open Theist God, the God of Christianity? I argue he is not the True God. Consider that the Open Theist "God:" doesn't know about future free events and learns about it even as we do; he is passible and can have negative feelings based on human actions; he is within time, not atemporal; he changes and gives away power. Does this sound like the True God of Christianity? Don't get taken in!

Prof. Richard Swinburne is an intelligent and humble man. A life-long bachelor, he has led a morally praiseworthy life without the slightest scandal, and dedicated his time on Earth to fight atheism and strengthen faith in Christ Who died for us. He had the intellectual vigor and strength of character to leave Anglicanism when he thought it wrong. Unfortunately, he is still not in the True Faith yet. I sent him an email on the occasion of his 80th birthday seven years ago. He responded, "Thank you, (my first name), for your good birthday wishes. I'm blessed with good health of mind and body. I still write and lecture. However, it can't be that much longer before God calls me out of this world. Please pray that when that time arrives, I may be ready." Indeed, I do Professor, and I ask all my readers to do the same. May you see fit to close the door to Open Theism, and embrace the One True Faith of He Who knows us all perfectly.