My friend Mike Morrell asked the question last week, ‘Is God a Recovering Practitioner of Violence?‘ and on top of being a very heretical edgy post he brought up the whole Open Theism debate. At that very same scroll through the blog reader I saw the first posts from Tom Oord who decided to lay down the core themes of Open Theism, so Mike here you go. For all you Deacons I have a question for you….how open is God?
God’s primary characteristic is love.
Theology involves humble speculation about who God truly is and what God really does.
Creatures – at least humans – are genuinely free to make choices pertaining to their salvation.
God experiences others in some way analogous to how creatures experience others.
Both creatures and God are relational beings, which means that both God and creatures are affected by others in give-and-take relationships.
God’s experience changes, yet God’s nature or essence is unchanging.
God created all nondivine things.
God takes calculated risks, because God is not all-controlling.
Creatures are called to act in loving ways that please God and make the world a better place.
The future is open; it is not predetermined or fully known by God.
God’s expectations about the future are often partly dependent upon creaturely actions.
Although everlasting, God experiences time in a way analogous to how creatures experience time.
I am feeling very open. Oords blog is sweet.
Oord makes statements that I agree with.
Hmmm….a lesser god of sorts…sort of a “kinder, gentler” demiurge maybe? A wanna-be goody two shoes god who eternally proceeds from an emination of Ayn Sof once removed? A deity in training or in purgatory? Well, If he’s talking about the incarnate second person of the Trinity, I’m with him. If he’s talking about THE TRINITY, I’m not.
This business about whether God’s nature or essence changes over time or our perception of God’s revelation in history changes is a live question for me. If we maintain that God’s primary characteristic is love — and not a bunch of other characteristics bequeathed to us by Greek metaphysics — then I suppose there is room for God’s nature to be unchangeable but God’s experience always changing and in process.
I don’t know though. That’s still a puzzle to me.