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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Saturday, November 15, 2003

Evangelicals split on 'open theism'

By Bill Broadway
Washington Post

John Sanders began to wonder about God's intentions after his brother was killed in a motorcycle accident.

Sanders was a high-school student who took photographs for the local newspaper in Hoopeston, Ill., when he was sent to the accident scene not knowing the victim's identity. After seeing the horror before him, he asked God, "Why did you kill my brother?"

Sanders, now a professor of philosophy and religion at Huntington College in Indiana, said his confusion grew when well-intentioned friends said his brother's death was part of God's plan — to help Sanders accept Jesus as his Savior.

"I asked, 'God killed my brother so I would become a Christian?' "

Thirty-two years later, the evangelical Christian still considers such arguments absurd, and has developed a view of God that he believes to be more realistic. He no longer asks whether God does terrible things to people, he said.

Instead, Sanders lays the responsibility on humans, arguing that they have the free will to make choices that determine events. God knows everything past and present, but not the future, Sanders said.

For promoting this view, called "open theism," Sanders and other evangelical scholars have faced increasingly vehement criticism at gatherings of the Evangelical Theological Society, a 54-year-old association whose members must affirm biblical inerrancy and the doctrine of the Trinity.

Critics have railed against open theism in online chat rooms and on numerous Web sites, accusing its proponents of creating "a crisis of unprecedented magnitude."

Trustees of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, flagship school of the 16 million-member Southern Baptist Convention, passed a resolution last month saying: "Open theism's denial of God's exhaustive definitive foreknowledge constitutes an egregious biblical and theological departure from orthodoxy and poses a serious threat to evangelical integrity."

Most attention, though, has focused on the Evangelical Theological Society, which has debated the issue for more than a decade. At its annual meeting two years ago, the society approved a resolution rejecting open theism and supporting the position that "God has complete, accurate and infallible knowledge of all events past, present and future, including all future decisions and actions of free moral agents."

Last year, a majority of the members agreed that Sanders and Clark Pinnock, 66, professor emeritus of theology at McMaster College in Hamilton, Ontario, should be investigated and their membership status reconsidered at this year's meeting this week in Atlanta.

The dispute reflects a growing debate among evangelicals over such issues as the relationship between God and humans, the effectiveness of prayer and the significance of making moral decisions.

According to open theists, there would be no point in praying for a sick child if God already knew what the outcome would be. And how can you love even God if that love is forced on you?

"It's a fundamental incoherence to say 'we're determined, yet I love,' " Sanders said.

Leading the charge against the open theists has been Roger Nicole, 87, an internationally known theologian from Switzerland who advocates the predestination views of Swiss reformer John Calvin. As a "classical theist," Nicole believes God knows everything, past and future, and answers prayers before they are asked.

Yet prayer is effective because the person praying helps bring the result God intends, Nicole said. In the case of the sick child, he said, "God heals with my prayer."

A founding member of the evangelical society and professor emeritus of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Fla., Nicole believes "we are free agents responsible for our decisions."

On the Web

  • Nicole's charges against Sanders and Pinnock, and their rebuttals, are at www.etsjets.org