Is Open Theism Biblical?

What?

Open Theism and the Question of Free Will

Open theism is the idea that God does not know the future, so that we can have free.

Will.

If God knew all the future decisions we would make, then we're bound to what he knows we will do, and we're not truly free. Open theism was coined in 1980 through a book called The Openness of God. The authors argued that if God knew the future, then he knew we would choose sin, and that makes God responsible for creating a world with sin.

God’s Omniscience and the Knowability of the Future

God is still all-knowing, but only in the sense that God knows everything that can be known, and the future is not one of those things that can be known. But if that were true, then how is God's word true?

How can we be sure that any one of his promises will be fulfilled? How could he have known that Jesus would die on a cross as an atoning sacrifice for sins, and that Herod Impotuous Pilate, along with the Jews and Gentiles, would put him there?

God’s Sovereign Plan in Scripture

The book of Acts says God predestined this. David said, Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it all together. And every day of his was written in God's book before one of those days came to be.

Job 14 .5 says a man's days are determined, and God has set his limits which he cannot pass. Isaiah 46 .10 says, He declares the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things not yet done. God does know the future, because he has determined it.

Human Limits and God’s Perfect Knowledge

Do you think that you can surprise God? Did your choices educate the Almighty and endow him with knowledge he did not previously.

Have?

Get over yourself, as 1 John 3 .20 says, God is greater than our heart and knows all things when we understand the text.