The Openness of God:

Can the future actions of free moral agents be known before such free decisions are made?

By Pastor Marcia Sietstra

Oct. 9, 2005

Exod. 32:1-14

Matt. 22:1-14

Shortly after returning from sabbatical in early September, I read Jean’s article on the cover of the Chimes, and in it she wrote: "Pretty soon Marcia will be pulling back into town, filled with ideas and energy…and ready to whip us into a theological frenzy!" Well she was right, and today’s the day! I am completely recovered from my mold allergies, I have energy, and this morning I’m going to tell you about a challenging new theological idea! So you may want to sit up straight, take some deep breaths and get ready to pay close attention this morning!

I am going to talk to you about quite a debate that is going on in the theological world, and believe it or not, it’s taking place in America’s evangelical churches, churches known for being very traditional and religiously conservative, not usually thought of as being open to new ways of thinking about God. It started in evangelical circles in 1994, with the publication of 5 essays by 5 prominent scholars under the title The Openness of God. Their idea became known as Open Theism. Open theism says that the future is open even in God’s mind, it is not pre-determined, it is not already pre-planned by God. Open theists contend that God cannot know the future completely, because God created us with free will. God cannot know the future of free moral agents not because God lacks the power or cognitive ability, but because the future of such free agents does not exist yet as an object to be known.

Now don’t feel bad if you’re not sure you followed all that. It’s a lot to chew on in one paragraph! Let me give you a couple of illustrations that will help. Let’s say there is an evil dictator who inflicts terrible suffering on his people. Some people would say, "That’s all part of God’s plan; God causes everything, including evil dictators who inflict terrible suffering." But the open theist would say that God gave this dictator free will to choose how he would act. And precisely because God gave the dictator free will, there are some things God did not know the dictator would do. Here’s an important piece of this: God does not know what the dictator will do, not because God’s power to know is impoverished, but simply because what such a free agent will do in the future is open, and therefore it does not exist to be known. The future is blank and filled in only after choices are made.

Here is another illustration. This story is told by Leslie Weatherhead in his little book The Will of God. He describes an experience he had many years earlier in India:

I was standing on the veranda of an Indian home darkened by bereavement. My Indian friend had lost his little son, the light of his eyes, in a cholera epidemic. At the far end of the veranda his little daughter, the only remaining child, slept in a cot covered over with a mosquito net. We paced up and down, and I tried in my clumsy way to comfort and console him. But he said, "Well, padre, it is the will of God. That’s all there is to it. It is the will of God."

Fortunately I knew him well enough to be able to reply without being misunderstaood, and I said something like this: "Supposing someone crept up the steps onto the veranda tonight, while you all slept, and deliberately put a wad of cotton soaked in cholera germ culture over your little girl’s mouth as she lay in that cot there on the veranda, what would you think about that?"

"My God," he said, "what would I think about that? Nobody would do such a damnable thing. If he attempted it and I caught him, I would kill him with as little compunction as I would a snake, and throw him over the verand. What do you mean by suggesting such a thing?"

"But, John," I said quietly, "isn’t that just what you have accused God of doing when you said it was his will? Call your little boy’s death the result of mass ignorance, call it mass folly, call it mass sin, if you like, call it bad drains or communal carelessness, but don’t call it the will of God." Surely we cannot identify as the will of God something for which a man would be locked up in jail, or put in a criminal lunatic asylum.

Weatherhead’s story always proves useful to me when I think about whether or not God has pre-destined or caused every little thing that happens in life. There are Christians who believe not a single action can occur that is not part of God’s pre-determined, divine plan. There are other Christians who cannot believe that God would cause such horrific things as rape, murder, starvation, and the like. I thought about this more than once since Hurricane Katrina. Natural disasters are often referred to as "acts of God." Are they? I’m not at all sure they are.

Open theists suggest a different possibility. What if God doesn’t have a detailed plan? What if God has left the future open to various possibilities? What if God set the world up with certain laws of nature and then set them in motion and allowed them to function? What if God created humanity with the capacity to make choices that affect the future? I was thinking about open theism when I read our Hebrew text for today, and I had to chuckle. The text suggests that for God, the future is wide open, and subject to a change in the immediate plan at any point. It says that the Lord was furious when the people worshipped a golden calf and was about to destroy them, when Moses reminded God that this ragged band of dessert dwellers were his chosen people, and how would it look to the rest of the world if God destroyed his chosen people! The Exodus storyteller says Moses was so convincing that God changed his mind about the disaster which he, just a moment sooner, had planned to send down upon their heads! Perhaps it is simple anthropomorphism, but it’s clear that the ancient writer of Exodus didn’t think God had a plan that was set in stone, but rather, that God’s ongoing decisions were subject to change. If God can change God’s mind, then there is surely more than one possibility of what might happen in the future, suggesting that the future is open.

Indeed, scripture is full of conditional statements that suggest that what God does depends on what we creatures do. The prophet Jeremiah put these words into God’s mouth: At one moment I may declare concerning a nation that I will destroy it, but if that nation turns from its evil I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it. And at another moment I may declare concerning a nation that I will build and plant it, but if it does evil in my sight, then I will change my mind about the good that I had intended to do to it. (Jer. 18:7-10)

As a young adult I struggled hard with these concepts, because the Bible is full of contradictory teachings. ON the one hand, there are Biblical writers who imply that God has a plan for the world that is being worked out, detail by detail, including a plan for every detail of my life. On the other hand, there are other Biblical writers who suggest that the most important choice any of us will ever make is whether to reject God or accept God by doing what is right, and good, and further, that if we chose wrongly, well that would make us sinners who will be cast outside of relationship with God. And that sort of text implies that we are free agents whose future is necessarily open to more than one possibility.

Our gospel text is one such text. The symbolism is pretty clear: The king sending wedding invitations represents God who invites us into relationship. The guests who refused the wedding invitation represent us, people too busy with their daily activities to really be attentive to God’s invitation. They were cast aside as a result. Can the reader help but think, I’m responsible for a big choice here, to accept or reject God’s invitation.

Herein lies the problem. If everything in life happens according to God’s plan, then God has pre-determined what choice I will make. I’m just acting out what God already decided I would do. It may feel real to me, but it’s not, if God has pre-planned and pre-destined it.

Logically, we can’t have it both ways: Either we are free to choose goodness or evil, in which case the future is open…or if the future is happening only according to a pre-destined plan, then we are acting it out and do not truly have free will. And if I don’t really have free will, then why am I being held responsible for my actions?

Jesus consistently teaches that we have a choice and we are responsible. He teaches that God, whose essence is love, created us for relationship, to love God back. Love that is not freely given is not really love, is it. Perhaps God chose to be a risk-taker so that we might authentically love God back. Perhaps God, in infinite wisdom, chose to leave the future open.

I have to admit I am "open" to open theism and find it a helpful concept. I leave you with no certainties, only the possibility that we determine our own future to a great extent. What happens to you may not be God’s design; it may be the result of the free choices of innumerable other human beings. Although I am open to open theism, there are biblical and philosophical arguments on both sides of this debate. As Augustine once explained to his parishioners: "We are talking about God: so why are you surprised if you cannot grasp it? I mean, if you can grasp it, it isn’t God. Let us rather make a devout confession of ignorance, instead of a brash profession of knowledge." And to that I would add: let us continue to be far-reaching, questioning people for that is part of what it means to seek God, and to seek God is surely a good thing. Amen.