Hellenistic or Hebrew? Open theism and reformed theological method

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Jun 2002 by Horton, Michael S

At the end of the day, Sanders is worried that an analogical approach will leave us with agnosticism (equivocity), citing John Macquarrie's concern that without a "univocal core," theology "lapses into agnosticism."63 Macquarrie and other liberal or existentialist theologians have reason to worry about agnosticism, however, only because they do not accept the authority of Scripture to deliver trustworthy analogies. But if God has authorized these analogies, why should we feel anxious?

Similar to Pannenberg's criticism of analogy above (see note 29), Sanders seems to assume a faulty (autonomous) standard for what counts as real knowledge. He must see the fit between language and reality in order to know with apodictic certainty that it is accurate: "If one suggests that there is an infinite difference between the analogates when speaking of God and humanity, then the doctrine of analogy fails to give us any knowledge of God."64 We must see the fit ourselves in order to judge it (univocity) or else know nothing concretely about God (equivocity) only if God has not spoken (analogy). 65

Here the analogy of Scripture becomes essential. We might even call it, somewhat awkwardly, the analogy of analogy. No single analogy, abstracted from the rest, adequately represents God's character. Only taken together as one multifaceted self-revelation do the analogies effectively render a sufficient knowledge of God. (The analogy of Scripture applied to theology proper, it should be noted, is the corollary of the doctrine of divine simplicity, which open theism also rejects, reducing the diverse divine attributes to one: love.)

To summarize thus far, open theism affirms the Creator-creature distinction at least in principle, distinguishing it from process thought. Furthermore, it tries to affirm the correlative distinctions between God's beingin-himself and his being-for-us, and affirms the role of analogies. But does it succeed in maintaining these in actual practice? This is where Pinnock and Sanders appear to be tentative at best.

Methodologically, theological proposals must do more than offer an alternative to a dominant position that nobody actually holds. For Pinnock, it is either "libertarian freedom" or despotic "omnicausality," not even recognizing that Reformed theology (like other traditions) affirms a fairly welldeveloped and well-known account of double agency. Calvinism, according to Pinnock, envisions God as "the sole performer who cannot make room for significant human agents."66 It may be that Pinnock thinks that this is what Calvinism amounts to, but the official confessions and catechisms of the Reformed and Presbyterian family explicitly affirm double agency and stridently reject any suggestion of the sort alleged by Pinnock.67 Perhaps he thinks that since his position is beyond Arminianism he must render his nemesis something beyond Calvinism.

Related to the biblical confession that "God is in heaven and we are on earth" (again, not a spatial announcement, but an analogical way of stating the Creator-creature distinction) is the insistence of historic Christian theology that we know God "not as he is in himself but by his works," a formula found as early as Chrysostom, among others. 68