God of the Possible
A Biblical Introduction to the Open View of God
By Gregory A. Boyd
Baker Book House

Reviewed by Louis F. DeBoer

Gregory Boyd is an Arminian and a professor at Bethel College of the BGC. His Arminian convictions have compelled him slowly, but inexorably, to adopt Open Theism. Open Theism is the view that God does not know the future, that he is therefore sometimes surprised, that he makes mistakes and miscalculates how things will develop, that he repents of his actions that didn't work out as anticipated, and that he changes his plans in response to unfolding events driven by the free will choices of men or as he is influenced by our prayers. 

He starts of with the classical Arminian view that man's will is totally free, generally referred to as libertarian free will. He then argues that if man's will is free then the future cannot be known because it is contingent on future free will choices that have as yet not been made. God is still considered omniscient in that God knows everything, but cannot know what is  unknowable because it doesn't as yet exist as part of reality. Secondly, he argues that if the future was known then, than it cannot be changed from God knows is going to happen. This is viewed as a sort of determinism that precludes real freedom of choice at the time the decision is being made by the creature. The creature can only do what God knows is going to be done. Therefore real freedom of man's will logically precludes the notion of divine foreknowledge of the future. 

In addition these logical and metaphysical arguments Boyd believes that there is abundant evidence in the Scriptures for an open view of God, the view that the future is open and God is open to change, etc. The passage that first started him on this road is that he sees God as changing his mind in the case of Hezekiah's sickness, and determining not to end his life at that time but to extend it for an additional fifteen years. If God can change his mind and change his plans Boyd argues  then the future is not fixed and cannot therefore be known. He then reviews many Scripture texts that to him speak of God repenting, and being grieved at what has transpired  concluding that God changes his minds as things unfold contrary to his will. Boyd goes on to refer to many passages that to him speak of God being uncertain about the future, leaving the future open to different possibilities, and acknowledging that the future has not always worked out as he planned. From these passages he concludes that God makes mistakes, learns from his experiences, repents of his errors, and is constantly changing his plans as he interacts with a creation that is essentially being driven not by his will, but by the free will choices of his creatures. And amazingly, in all this Boyd sees a greater and more glorious God, who is able to somehow bring to pass  much of his will in spite of having to deal with a creation that is pursuing its own agenda.

On a practical side Boyd also sees advantages. He sees this placing an additional emphasis on the importance of our free will decisions, liberating us the deterministic fatalism of a settled future, and giving new meaning to our prayer life as we see a future in flux and a God who, as he constantly changes his plans to adjust to reality, can really be influenced by our prayers. In other words, for Boyd, if the future is already settled, why struggle to be holy or bother to pray. Boyd waxes eloquent how these perceived practical benefits have greatly improved his spiritual life.

Boyd also sees his revisionist view of God as, if not solving, at least alleviating the problem of evil. Like most Open Theists he sees God's defining characteristic as love, not holiness and righteousness, and wrestles with how a loving God can allow so much evil and suffering in this world. He uses Hitler as a case in point. If God knows the future how could he create a man like Hitler who would exterminate millions of Jews? Seemingly oblivious to God's holiness he rejects without comment any notion that Hitler could be a judgment of a righteous god on a post-Christian Germany that had long been a fountainhead of higher criticism and apostasy. Neither can he accept that God might be judging Jewry for continuing to reject his Son and being in the forefront of every anti-Christian ideology in Europe, from radical socialism, to Marxism, to Freudianism, etc. Rather he sees a God of love who would have stopped Hitler if he could have, but himself was surprised how his creation of Hitler turned out, a God who is as grieved and disappointed at what occurred as we are. He notes how this has helped him counsel people who wrestle with what they perceive as God having brought to pass in their lives. He uses the case of a young lady who felt called to the mission field, went to a Bible College, and married a young man who shared her vision. When later he turned out adulterous, forsook his calling to go to the mission field, and forsook her destroying her life she tended to blame God. How could God have answered her prayers this way? How could God have allowed her to marry someone like that? How could God have guided her into such a destructive path? Pastor Boyd felt he had the answers for this young lady. He counseled her that God probably thought her decision to marry this godly young man was a good decision, as she and everyone else thought at the time. God was probably as surprised as she was when things turned out badly. God probably shares her shock, disappointment and pain. God didn't know that such a promising young man would use his free will to behave so abominably. Pastor Boyd may think that he has got God off the hook for the evil and suffering in this world, but has he counted the cost? His god is as helpless to answer this young lady's prayers and to guide her into a good path as any human counselor would have been. He has belied his own claim that Open Theism is an incentive to prayer. The God of the Bible is the hearer and answerer of prayer, whose arm is not shortened that he cannot save and who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think. Let us continue to place our trust in him and not in the hopeless and helpless caricature of God painted by the Open Theists.

Boyd, in attempting early in the book to put his best foot forward, seems almost to be guilty of bait and switch. Early on he repeatedly emphasizes that that for God only part of the future is unknown. He concedes that God knows much of the future, just not all. As all Open Theists he connects foreknowledge with determinism. He therefore concedes that God has determined much, if not most, of what will come to pass. He is beginning to sound almost as if he is flirting with some kind of partial Calvinism. He simply holds out that God has left at least a few things to be worked out by the free will decisions of his creatures as history unfolds. All of this is designed to blunt the argument that the extensive nature of Biblical prophecy of future events is real and requires God's foreknowledge. Later on he reneges on most of these early suggestions. He states God cannot foreknow anything that involves the free will decisions of his creatures. Thus God can not guarantee the specific way any prophecy will be fulfilled. He takes Judas as a case in point. God prophesied that Christ would be betrayed but could not know for sure that Judas would be the one to fulfill this prophecy. Judas, by his free will actions, became available to enable God to fulfill this prophecy. If Judas had decided, as he could have according to Boyd, to remain loyal to Christ, God would have looked around for someone else who was in a moral state that would make him a likely person to fulfill this prophecy.  Similarly, Boyd deals with the texts that state that god had predestined Jeremiah and Paul to their callings as divine spokesmen. It was according to Boyd still up to their free will if these predestined callings would ever be realized. He states, "Hence, the fact that God intended a course of action for Jeremiah and Paul didn't guarantee that it would come about. Jeremiah and Paul were still free agents, despite God's unique calling on their lives. We know about God's prenatal intentions for these individuals only because they, perhaps unlike others who were called, did not obey this heavenly calling." (p. 40). Now think about this. According to Boyd God's predestination of events, and his prophecies are essentially meaningless. God is incapable of definitively bringing them to pass. He is hostage to the free will of his creatures. He almost accuses God of deception. He says we only hear in the Bible of those predestined callings that were successful. According to Boyd there may have been many unrecorded predestined events and prophecies that remained unfulfilled as God's purpose was frustrated by man's free will. His god is definitely not the god of certainties. His title at least is truthful His god is the god of probabilities and possibilities. His god is the god of the possible. We prefer the God of the Bible. We prefer the God of certainties, whose word is fixed forever in the heavens and who brings to pass all his holy will and his eternal purposes.

Like most people in conservative or evangelical circles who are either flirting with or embracing heresy Boyd is anxious to polish his evangelical/orthodox credentials. He goes at great length to state that differences between believing brethren should be handled graciously and with understanding. He emphasizes that Open Theists are good Christians who are diligently and sincerely attempting to understand what the Bible is really communicating about the nature of God. And he states that since Open Theists are in agreement with all the important doctrines of the Bible they shouldn't be condemned because of disagreement on a peripheral issue. Did you hear that...A PERIPHERAL ISSUE! Boyd thinks that the doctrine of God, the debate about the very nature of God, the issue of what kind of God we worship and serve, and what kind of God we trust in for our salvation, is a peripheral issue! We prefer to maintain that it strikes at the very heart of the faith and that serious error at this juncture definitely rises to the level of heresy. He sums up this viewpoint by saying, "I pray that our Baptist Fellowship, and evangelicalism in general, will come to see more clearly that the love with which believers debate issues is more important to God than the sides we take." Where was he when Christ was dealing with the Pharisees or when Paul was confronting Peter to his face over compromising the gospel? He has succumbed to the current politically correct version of evangelicalism that Christianity is not about the truth as much as it is about being nice. And that really sums up his view of God. God is not so much a holy and a righteous God, of purer eyes than to behold evil, as he is a "nice" God characterized chiefly by a universal love. We pray that God's elect will continue to "receive the love of the truth that they might be saved." As for the Open Theists, one wonders if God has "sent them strong delusion" that should believe such lies.