A Message for Bob Enyart on "Open Theism"

Greetings from Evergreen, Colorado, the high country about 7 ,300 feet above sea level here. It's my July pilgrimage over the past few years I've been coming up here and doing some tremendous bike rides during the summer up here at high altitude.

And so I'm up here during the day's training. A couple days ago I rode from here up Mount Evans, which is the highest paved road in the continent of the United States. And that was an incredible experience, especially given I have a fear of heights.

Debate Preview and Travel Update

But anyway, training during the day and then speaking during a lot of the evenings. Specifically, tomorrow evening I'll be debating Bob Enyart at the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver. And then Wednesday evening I'll be speaking at Flatirons Baptist Church in Boulder.

And I wanted to do a ScreenFlow video basically to talk to Bob and to lay a few things out ahead of time that hopefully will be helpful to him and maybe helpful to the people who will be watching the debate, see the debate later on.

I expect a very sharp debate. I expect a sharply contested debate. I grew up doing radio. I've been doing the dividing line for I don't know how many years, how many decades now. So you're going to have two people who can speak quickly, can multitask, have done lots of debates.

This will be about my 137th moderated public debate, something like that. I think I have much more extensive debate experience in a wider variety of contexts. Mosques in South Africa or Canada. A week after the Benghazi attacks I was debating a Muslim inside the East London Mosque, which is the largest mosque in Europe, on whether Muhammad is prophesied in the Bible.

So you have two folks that are very comfortable with debating and are very passionate about what they believe. Bob is very passionate about this subject of open theism. And as a result, I'm sure it's going to be, as I said, a pretty sharp debate.

I've had the opportunity of teaching the original languages in seminary. I've written a number of books on these subjects. Many of the issues that will be brought up are issues that I've been dealing with for many decades as well.

In fact, the finite godism, the idea of God growing in knowledge, that's something I've been dealing with with Mormonism from the very beginning. And there are strong parallels on the epistemological level between Bob Enyart's doctrine of God and that of Mormonism.

There really is. And I was listening to a question that was asked of Bob in a seminar that he did on the subject of Mormonism. And it was very interesting because Bob, as you know, you struggled to answer that question.

And the reality was the guy, I believe it was Zach, who asked the question of you, asked you how you would differentiate your perspective from that of Mormonism on these issues. And you really did not answer that question.

And the reason is the first people who've raised most the arguments you raised to me were Mormons. We're not Orthodox Christians by any stretch of the imagination. And so these are subjects that I've been dealing with for many years.

My book, The Forgotten Trinity, deals with a lot of the issues because I think there are serious Christological issues that are raised by your position, a very unorthodox position. Yes, a heretical position in regards to defending the deity of Christ, issues that I deal with with Muslims all around the world all the time.

So it's going to be a sharp debate. There's no question about that. As brief as it will be, it'll go by very quickly. But as I said, there are certain things that we will be able to spend more time on the important stuff if you just stop the mantras.

But I don't think you can. From your perspective, I am the slave of Aristotle and Augustine and Calvin. And I just don't think you can see past that. I think you've repeated it so many times. You can't even begin to see past it.

You can't see how you yourself have been deeply influenced by Greek philosophy. You talk about you reason using law of non-contradiction, excluded middle, all sorts of basic things like that, that almost every Greek philosopher mentioned.

But you don't you seem to be dependent totally upon a very specific, very specialized genetic fallacy in saying, well, these early church writers, they were defending these people and so on and so forth.

And so that means you're just bowing at the altar of the stone-cold god of Zeus or something like that. I'm going to make my arguments directly from the original languages of the Bible. I'm never going to be quoting any of those individuals.

I recognize that to answer particular questions they raised, we have to address those things just as you do. But you better be consistent, Bob, because if you start using anything that has been touched by Greek philosophy, I'm going to point it out, and you do it all the time.

You just don't recognize it or aren't willing to admit it, one of the two. This is not the Greek philosophers versus the Bible. I know you think it is. It isn't. That's a bogus argument. You'll notice.

I'm sure you've now watched my debate with John Sanders. Even he didn't raise that, and you said Sanders is one of the best. So I hope it will be a little bit more like Sanders, though I'm not sure that's going to happen.

The Long History of Debating Calvinism, Islam, and Other Views

The next thing, Bob, honestly, over the past—my first debate was in August of 1990 as far as a moderated public debate. I had been doing ministry with Mormons up in Salt Lake and Mason and things like that for years before that.

But as far as a moderated public debate, the first debate was in August of 1990. So what are we looking at? Almost 25 years now I've been engaged in doing moderated public debates, and I've addressed a wide variety of issues, Roman Catholicism, Islam, Oneness Pentecostalism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormonism, Atheism, John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg, Bart Ehrman, a wide variety of topics.

And I believe as a Christian that I need to accurately represent, to the best of my ability, the position of those that I am disagreeing with. You'll notice that Dr. Sanders never raised any questions of misrepresentation in our debate on the subject of open theism.

In fact, you may recall I was the one more often quoting from his book than he was. So in light of that, I simply say to you, Bob, I have never heard you even come close to a semi-accurate, let alone semi-honest representation of Reformed theology.

Not once. I don't think you're capable of doing it. You have such a visceral detestation of what you think Calvinism is, I've never heard you accurately represent it once. Not once. You take a tiny, little, partial statement and make it stand for the whole, and say, do you agree or do you not agree?

It's just amazing to me. I don't have a debt to open theism. I don't have a debt to Islam or anything else. But, I mean, I can take the best that the other side has to offer and respond to that. You've never done that.

In everything I've listened to over the past couple of weeks from you now, your debate with Lamerson, your multi-DVD presentation that you did, what was that, in 2006, 2007, something along those lines, every single time you address the subject of Calvinism, gross caricatures.

If all you ever say is Calvinists believe that God has ordained every evil act that's ever happened, then why bother? Seriously, why bother? Because no Calvinist has ever put it that way, have they? No.

What does a Calvinist say? A Calvinist pretty much quotes Ephesians 1 .11, doesn't limit it like you do, because there's nothing to context that does, as we will see. But a Calvinist will say that God has ordained all that takes place to his, that is to the triune God's, honor and glory, which includes, which I've never heard you even begin to mention, I'm not even sure you're aware of it, the restraining action of God in time.

Now one of the things that I'm going to have to explain over and over again in the debate, I have a feeling, is that while God is eternal and is not limited by time, his decree includes his involvement in time, that's his providence, with his people.

You say it has to be one or the other, your God is a lot smaller than my God is, Bob, by a long shot. Long shot. I don't have to take certain attributes of God and put them over other attributes of God, I accept everything that the Bible says, they all have to stand together, and when you allow them to stand together you have an eternal God who has decreed his own interaction with his people, very personally, in the incarnation, in time especially.

I especially use that in dealing with Islam. The incarnation, the clearest indication of God's love for his creatures is that he enters into his own creation, which by the way, again, your understanding of immutability is completely wrong as well, that does not involve an essential change in the being of God.

Action and change are not the same thing, but I'm sure we'll get into that, because that's one of the many philosophical and theological errors that your system is completely dependent upon. Even if you accepted that, you wouldn't be able to get rid of it without completely abandoning your position.

So, anyway, so the point is that God has decreed his interaction with his creatures in time, and that includes his extension of mercy and grace to undeserving sinners who only deserve his wrath, that's the entirety of everyone who is in Adam, by the way.

So there are no innocent persons, no innocent children, no innocent old ladies, all are under his wrath and all could be destroyed at any point in time. And it also includes, which you've never mentioned, the constant, regular, restraining action of God, restraining the evil of men.

Now, maybe you don't believe in that, because open theism is fundamentally, it's fundamental origin historically, and I think you know this, I mean, you say it's all about God's freedom. Actually, open theism comes from humanistic scholars who are reacting against God's freedom and seeking to affirm the libertarian free will of man.

By the way, free will is not a redundancy. There's all sorts of kinds of will. There's creaturely will, there's will of a person under sin. It's not a redundancy. But anyway, those people were reacting against the absolute freedom of God that they see in biblical theology, and that resulted in a diminishment of man's libertarian freedom, and therefore they developed the concepts that lead to process theology and to openness and all the other various isms that are unorthodox and outside the pale of orthodox Christian belief and always have been and always will be.

Be that as it may, the point is that God is restraining the evil of men and should be thanked and glorified for that. You never talk about that. It's part and parcel of reformed belief. It's part and parcel that what God has ordained, when there is evil, is merely the lifting of his hand of restraint to show what the true nature of the heart of man really is.

You never mention that. And a partial truth, when it's presented as the whole truth, becomes an untruth. And that's the only way to describe your description of Calvinism, is a gross caricature. A gross caricature.

The fundamental assertion of reformed theology is that the triune God in eternity past has chosen to glorify himself through the redemption of a particular people in Christ Jesus, and that it is a certainty that he is going to succeed because that particular people are foreknown to him because of his decree.

It's personal. It's not impersonal. The predestination is not of an unknown group. It is of a specific people. Now, during the course of the... I did want to read a quote from you here that I think is rather interesting.

This was in response to Mr. Religion. You wrote the following. The only regret I have in such debates is that a hardened Calvinist is far more of an insult to God than is a casual Calvinist. A studied Calvinist often disdains non-Calvinists, I believe, because they bring to his mind the severity of the charge that the Calvinist falsely attributes all vulgar wickedness to the mind of God.

To teach that from before the foundation of the world, God decreed all of mankind sexual assault, cruelty, filth, and rebellion is, of course, blasphemy. Thankfully, God is rich in mercy even towards such Christians who insult his holiness.

Well, I mean, you've been pretty straightforward. That's why it's going to be a pretty sharp debate. Your statements are clear. There's no middle ground here. I believe you're promoting heresy. You just said there's strong terminology on your part too.

That's important. But I wanted to play a portion of the exchange you had with Gene Cook. And I'm going to comment on some of it as we go through this particular section because, again, if you really want to actually address Reformed theology, then you need to address Reformed theology.

And this isn't how to do it. This isn't how to do it. So let's listen to what she had to say here.

The Child Abuse Objection and Pastoral Response

So, Pastor, the child porn video, Calvinism asserts that God has decreed I've got something much worse than child porn. Well, could you answer that first? I've got something much worse than child porn.

Something much worse than child porn is nailing the Son of God to a cross. Let's get there later. Of course, let's get there later. Calvinism asserts that God has decreed that a 5-year-old boy would be sodomized for how many minutes on what video sold to who, right?

That that was God's plan.

Now, since you repeat this constantly, since it is just a mantra with you, let me respond to a number of ways. First of all, this is a clear attempt on your part to fog thought through the use of the worst possible scenario you can possibly bring up.

It would be like me starting off the debate saying, Well, tonight we have a man presenting to us a stupid God who created this entire universe with all the possibilities of evil in it, including child rape, but he was so dumb that he didn't know it was going to happen.

And so now he's responsible for all of it. And if I started the debate like that, if that's all I ever said about open theism, if I didn't deal with the biblical texts, then I'd be doing exactly what you're doing.

You'd be doing exactly what you're doing. That's a problem, isn't it? I think it's a problem. Now, let me answer this directly. I do not believe that there is any purposeless evil in God's creation. None.

Do I know what the purpose is in each and every instance? Of course not. I'm not omniscient. God is, thankfully. And will we learn what the purpose was in the future? I think for the vast majority of things, maybe that's one of the things we're going to be doing in eternity.

I don't know. But I do not believe there is anything that takes place in this creation where God says, I do all my will, I do whatever pleases me in heaven and earth, that in this creation that God is king and ruler over, and he is glorifying himself, it's all the praise of his glorious grace, that there is anything that happens that does not have purpose and meaning.

And you say, there is. Let's talk about the worst case scenario. Let's say you're pastorally talking with someone who has experienced sexual abuse. Someone who was put into, a child was put into such a horrific situation.

What do you say to them? Your pastoral response is, God had nothing to do. When God created, oh, he had no earthly idea. Well, actually he had no earthly idea you would ever exist, now that I think about it.

But not only did he not know you would never exist, but he didn't know what was going to happen. And even when he started seeing things come together and saw the possibilities, he didn't stop it. And what happened to you has no purpose.

You just got to move on. You just got to trust God's going to make something good come out of it, even though I don't really know that he can because, you know, he's dependent upon the free will actions of his creatures.

And so, how is this a pastoral response? You say, oh, but there's lots of people who blame God. Yeah, because they think they can actually second guess God. This reminds me a whole lot of one of the first debates I had with a real sharp, young atheist guy back in the, I'm going to date myself here, but early 1980s.

And we were doing a radio program, and he raised the question, look, if you're God's so good and loving, then why didn't he cause Adolf Hitler to have a heart attack and die before he could put the Nazi regime together and do the horrible things?

Or, I mean, Hitler's sort of an amateur in comparison to Stalin and a few others that we could mention, but he seems to be the one everybody likes to point to. So why couldn't he just avert all this evil by having Hitler have a heart attack?

I said, well, let me ask you a scenario. Let's say there is a, well, sorry, then he said, let me give you another example. The next example he gave me is if there is a guy and he's walking past a house at dusk and he sees smoke coming from the house, and he runs to the window and he looks in, and the window's open, he can get in if he needs to, and in this room there is a little child.

And the flames are already licking at the door. There's already some smoke, and he has a choice to make. He could get in there and save that child, but he doesn't. Would you call that man a good person?

His argument, of course, being if God could do something and he doesn't, then we wouldn't call him good. So those are the two scenarios that were presented. Okay. I looked at him, and I said to him, how do you know the baby in the crib isn't the next Hitler?

Yeah. You see, we finite creatures cannot second guess the infinite and eternal God. I have an infinite and eternal God. You may not have to answer these questions because God doesn't know. You have a God who's learning and growing, and if you follow Sanders, Sanders said God was shocked that Adam fell.

Didn't know. Had no idea. Didn't know when God created Adam and Eve. Had no idea you or I would exist. Had no idea that this debate would ever be taking place. Didn't know all the evil that was going to happen.

He made it all possible, but, you know, he's just doing the best he can. So I realize some of these aren't relevant to you, but it is interesting that it illustrates very clearly the foolishness of trying to second guess an eternal God.

So if I'm talking with someone who's gone through a horrible thing like this, and as a hospital chaplain I have, as a pastor I have, I can look at that person, and I can specifically say to them that they can trust God in the future because God has said, he has promised, in fact, that he will cause all things to work to the good for those who love God, for those who are called according to his purpose.

Now you don't have an elect people. You don't have an eternal predestined God. I don't know how you understand Romans 8, 28, but biblically it is a promise to God's people that he will work all things to their good.

And then we have that really interesting text that Paul says to the Corinthians that they can then comfort others with the comfort that they themselves receive from God. And how many times have I seen people who went through horrific situations being the very ones who, because of the mercy and grace of God, that they could trust his goodness even when they couldn't see what all the purposes were.

They knew he had a purpose. Those are the ones who could then minister to others. I don't know how you can. I don't know what you're supposed to say to someone like that. God's sorry he made the world the way he did?

Sorry I didn't see this coming? What do you say? You say, but I know people that are mad against... You know what? I do too. Unless the Holy Spirit of God removes that heart of stone, every heart of stone is going to blame God for everything.

You don't change God's truth because of how hearts of stone respond to God's truth, which is what you've been doing. So, if you're going to try to make a representation of what Reformed theology believes, please, please, at least try to be accurate.

At least, it may be difficult for you to do, but try. Try to recognize that Reformed theologians don't sit there with a picture of Aristotle over the desk praying for guidance as we do our exegesis. Please recognize that.

And hopefully that will make us, that will allow us to really focus upon the real issue. Does the Bible specifically teach that God has exhaustive knowledge of future events? I believe it does. I will demonstrate that from Scripture.

Is this relevant, especially to the incarnation, the person of Jesus Christ? Most certainly is. And I'll demonstrate that from Scripture. Is this a gospel issue? It is. And I'll demonstrate that from Scripture.

That's where I'm going. And hopefully that will be very useful to everyone, including yourself. So I'm looking forward to it, Bob. And I hope that this brief discussion, I was going to play a whole lot more of it, but it just went on and on, the same thing over and over again.

And I've said everything I need to say on that. This has gotten a lot longer than I wanted it to be anyways. So hopefully this will help in making for a very good debate coming up tomorrow evening. It'll be interesting, actually, to look back at it once the debate actually takes place because I'm a finite creature.

I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow night, but thankfully my God does. Thanks for watching.