I was an open-theist before I ever heard of the term. The reason for this was both my personal experience, and the way I always understood and interpreted scriptures. I was confused by the teachings of Calvinism and Arminianism, since Calvinism seemed unrealistic but consistent, and Arminianism seemed realistic but inconsistent(I can go into a lengthy discussion about why I believe this is so, but it is suffice to say that this is what I believe about these two positions – at that stage I was not yet introduced to any other school of thought)

I agree that the reason for open-theism is not theodicy, but rather that it seems to best fit biblical text. The reason I say best fit is because there are texts that seem to contradict open theism. This does not mean that open theism crumbles, as any ‘theism’ have a difficult time to explain every single biblical text verse. I do believe however that the problem of evil is a very relevant question in today’s atheist/christian debate (I have not heard one debate where the problem of evil was not heavily focused on).

I do not presume that open theists have every single doctrine pinned down, but I believe it is an important step in the right direction to have livable theology. A hard question to answer for an open theist is whether people will have free will to sin in heaven. Some open theists might argue that we will have no desire to sin, but that would bring into question why that desire was there at the fall (both Satan’s fall and the fall). Judging a position by future possibilities and unknowns is a bit unfair.

All in all, I enjoyed this article, and thought to give a comment or two. Thank you for providing interesting reading.

Hans Jansen

I’ll discuss that more before I’m done responding to Dembski’s article which touches on all these points much more closely elsewhere than in the one paragraph I was responding to here.

I must add that while I’m not comfortable with the combination of foreknowledge and free will, many very intelligent people are (William Lane Craig being one), so I’m not trying to put anyone down on this. If you haven’t worked through WLC on time travel, you haven’t live. His article God, Time, and Eternity touches on it. But it’s a whole chapter in one of his books, and I’m drawing a blank on which one. Lousy memory. I’m going to google a bit.

OK, actual on Amazon.com. It may have been Time and Eternity: Exploring God’s Relationship to Time, but I wasn’t thinking of a whole book, but of a chapter in a broader work on apologetics. Probably pressing the “Add Comment” button will bring it back!

Thus, there is no contradiction between free will and God’s foreknowledge of the damned and elect; nor does it follow that God has damned anyone because He know who will reject the rescue He has offered through Jesus.