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Your Granny Is a Process Theologian! (Does God Change?) – Guest Post From Homebrewed Christianity (Tripp and Bo)

January 9, 2012 in Foreknowledge, Guest Contributors, Open Theism with 29 Comments

This past October I finally got to meet (in person) Bo Sanders and Tripp Fuller of Homebrewed Christianity.  They are great guys and if you do not subscribe to their podcast, well, you are missing out on something amazing.  They’ve interviewed too many names to list them all here, but lets throw down a couple: NT Wright, John Caputo, Peter Rollins, Brian McLaren, and Roger Olson.  By listening to the podcast and having some convos with Bo, I’ve learned that Process Theology is all the rage these days. In fact, it will be a major topic at this year’s Emergent Village Theological Conversation, January 31-February 2, in Claremont, California.  I personally do not hold to process theology at this time, but have been outspoken about my view of Open Theism.  These two views are similar in many ways, but are also different.  I think the two are certainly good conversation partners, which is why I’m excited to have this article from Tripp (with Bo).

© 2010 | Alan Levine | Flickr | "Granny: Queen to my Pawn" | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Your Grandma Is a Process Theologian!

Ok, maybe yours wasn’t but mine was and she didn’t know it.  My Nana was a real deal Saint.  Her life was prayer filled and full.  She strove to live moment to moment in the awareness of God, to listen and respond faithfully to God’s call, to join God in other’s pain and struggle, and be ever ready to give testimony to God’s loving presence – even in the midst of suffering.  She may not have read the philosopher Whitehead or Marjorie Suchocki’s amazing book on prayer but she was a Process Theologian and I imagine the the church’s faithful are full of ‘anonymous Process Theologians.’ Living theological legend John Cobb once said that:

Process theology affirms that at the deepest reality of the world is a vastly complex network interrelated events.  Even God is affected by what happens, just as God participates in the constitution of every creaturely event.

A Process vision of the world sees relationships as primary and it is in these relationships that God’s divine initiative and the world’s creaturely response takes place.  Prayerful people like my Nana intuited this even though many theological greats from Church history would have seen her theological intuitions as naive.

“Prayer Changes Me.”  Continue Reading…

Can You Lose Your Salvation? Greg Boyd and Mark Driscoll in Dialogue

October 13, 2011 in (Series) Video to Ponder, Evangelism, Foreknowledge, Gospel, Greg Boyd, Salvation, Theology with 35 Comments

This is the age old question: Can a person lose their salvation? Of course, two broad schools of thought emerge in theological discourse.

On one end of the spectrum are the 5.5 point Calvinists (not really sure what the .5 is all about). This is representative of Mark Driscoll’s perspective (and basically most of the Gospel Coalition folks). This group of thinkers believe that God not only preordains all things (yep, every last event in world history) but that God ordains some to eternal life and some to eternal torment. They would then contend that all people deserve eternal torment and therefore the fact that God chooses some demonstrates his infinite mercy and wisdom.

And no, lets be fair to this perspective: they don’t believe that evangelism is void (as many on the free will end of the spectrum often accuse). Rather, they believe that the truly elect will hear the message (through evangelistic efforts) and will awaken to their right standing before the Father (upon repentance and a belief in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus). Evangelism matters here still because we are the heralds that God uses to summon sinners into their elect-ness. Those who refuse persistently to believe the message must not be elect. Here is what Mark Driscoll has to say about this issue: Continue Reading…

The Binding of God: Genesis 22 as a Test Case for Open Theism in the O.T. (part 8) [Problem of Evil]

September 2, 2011 in (Series) The Binding of God [Open Theism], C. S. Lewis, Foreknowledge, Open Theism, Theology with 7 Comments

In what follows, you will read an “academic paper” in which I explore some elements of open theism (the link is to a brief introduction to open theism).  This is a view of God’s foreknowledge that is controversial, but still in the evangelical family of belief.  The most well known Christian leader who holds to this view is Greg Boyd.  This will be a nine part series.

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Why This Discussion Matters

Discussions about free will and sovereignty often lead to theological abstraction and argumentation, which rightfully leads one to wonder: What’s the point?  Why talk about what God may or may not know?  Why create more division over forms of Calvinism and Arminianism?  Do we not remember that it is discussions like these that lead to church splits? While these questions represent my initial instincts, I have become convinced that these issues truly matter for the people of God.  “The binding of God” offers a test case for thinking about God’s knowledge of how events will turn out, and his reliance on people who willingly choose to carry forward his mission through their obedience.  This leads to the primary practical application that God’s openness yields.

The Problem of Evil

Suffering in the world is perhaps the greatest mystery that any person, culture, or nation has to face.  No one is exempt from the reality that our world is broken.  Shalom is a distant hope, but certainly not a lived experience.  As we observed earlier, shalom was lost because humans freely chose to rebel against God’s original ordering of the world.  Freedom created a crisis that has not relented.  Through Abraham God began the work of responding to the brokenness in creation and through Christ’s resurrection and eventual return, shalom will be realized once again.  But between now and then, we must deal with the problem of evil in a concrete fashion. C.S. Lewis, in his book The Problem of Pain states the following about evil in the world: Continue Reading…

The Binding of God: Genesis 22 as a Test Case for Open Theism in the O.T. (part 7)

August 24, 2011 in (Series) The Binding of God [Open Theism], Foreknowledge, Open Theism with 0 Comments

'RISK!' photo (c) 2007, hobvias sudoneighm - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

In what follows, you will read an “academic paper” in which I explore some elements of open theism (the link is to a brief introduction to open theism).  This is a view of God’s foreknowledge that is controversial, but still in the evangelical family of belief.  The most well known Christian leader who holds to this view is Greg Boyd.  This will be a nine part series.

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Other Old Testament Considerations

If the story of Abraham and Isaac were the only example of God not knowing something that would come to pass, then “the binding of God” interpretation could be dismissed as inconsistent with the larger witness of the Old Testament.  In reality, there are several instances that demonstrate God’s intimate involvement with humanity, which leads him to facing a partially open future.  Noah, for instance is rooted in a situation where God regretted “that he had made humankind on the earth” (Genesis 6.6).  This suggests that God hoped that things would have turned out a different way, but they did not.  There are several other instances that point to the regretting of God about particular situations such as Saul’s kingship (1 Samuel 15.35).  These indicate that God takes risks (see also our exploration of Genesis 3 above) by working with human free will, even if the possibility of flawed results exists as a natural consequence.[1] As Greg Boyd states: “…the only way to deny that God takes risks is to maintain that everything that occurs in world history is exactly what God wanted to occur.”[2] Continue Reading…

The Binding of God: Genesis 22 as a Test Case for Open Theism in the O.T. (part 6)

August 18, 2011 in (Series) The Binding of God [Open Theism], Foreknowledge, Interpretation, Open Theism, Roman Empire, Theology with 4 Comments

"Twelve Leaves" symbol of Hellenism. Created by Nyo

In what follows, you will read an “academic paper” in which I explore some elements of open theism (the link is to a brief introduction to open theism).  This is a view of God’s foreknowledge that is controversial, but still in the evangelical family of belief.  The most well known Christian leader who holds to this view is Greg Boyd.  This will be a nine part series.

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Analytical Synthesis of Theological Findings

It has been demonstrated that Genesis 22 provides test case for the way in which God makes himself vulnerable to a partially open future.  God finds himself in a bind in so far as he has given humanity libertarian freedom.  But if this is true, why is this not taught in our churches?

The Influence of Hellenism

Many theologians now observe that Hellenistic philosophy may be the reason that God’s foreknowledge has been assumed to be absolute, rather than conditioned by human freedom.  This is because of a view handed down to us by the Greek philosophers of God who exists outside of time, in unchanging transcendent perfection.[1] Theological categories for God such as immutability (unchanging timelessness) and impassibility (unmoved emotionally, unable to suffer) arose in an early church climate which was “shaped in an atmosphere influenced by Greek thought.”[2] In a real sense, Christian doctrine of the early centuries of church history emerged as a fusion between Hellenistic and biblical thought.  Whereas the Bible portrays God as one who responds within history to changing situations, working with humanity as they make free choices to create the future, Greek philosophy renders God as a static detached being.[3] Clark Pinnock observes of one of the early theologians: Continue Reading…

The Binding of God: Genesis 22 as a Test Case for Open Theism in the O.T. (part 5)

August 17, 2011 in (Series) The Binding of God [Open Theism], Foreknowledge, Interpretation, Open Theism, Theology with 2 Comments

Source: בחסות האגודה לידידות אומבריה-ישראל

In what follows, you will read an “academic paper” in which I explore some elements of open theism (the link is to a brief introduction to open theism).  This is a view of God’s foreknowledge that is controversial, but still in the evangelical family of belief.  The most well known Christian leader who holds to this view is Greg Boyd.  This will be a nine part series.

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Relationship to the Rest of the Hebrew Bible

Much could be said about the relationship of this text to the larger scope of the Hebrew Bible.  Certainly, Abraham is the responder to the crisis of the rebellion of humanity.  His family eventually did form a great nation with the potential to bless the world.  Unfortunately, we know that Israel failed in such a vocation and was taken into exile.  The prophets emerged proclaiming that a new day was coming.  Shalom would be earth’s design once again. The early chapters of Genesis demonstrate that shalom is only possible in the context of God’s image bearers choosing to steward the whole of God’s world.  Continue Reading…

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