Rejoinder to replies by Clarke H Pinnock, John Sanders, and Gregory A Boyd

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Jun 2002 by Ware, Bruce A

I wish to express my appreciation to the editor of the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society for his willingness to publish my ETS paper along with these replies and rejoinder. Furthermore, I am grateful for the thoughtful and rigorous responses from Greg Boyd, Clark Pinnock, and John Sanders. In this limited space, I will offer general comments in three areas followed by several brief specific points of engagement.

I. GENERAL COMMENTS

1. Legitimacy of this criticism. I am grateful to Pinnock and nonplused by Boyd at their respective statements on the legitimacy of the criticism undertaken in my ETS presentation. Pinnock notes his opinion that the focus on implications of the distinctive openness view of divine foreknowledge and the resultant place open theism should have within or outside of evangelicalism is "legitimate," since this distinctive position is, as he writes, "a novel aspect of our view which attracts attention." Boyd, on the other hand, asserts that "it seems misguided and unchristian to move to brand a position as `non-evangelical' because some cannot understand how they avoid certain negative implications they think their theology implies." This is a matter of critical importance, so permit me a few responses.

First, apparently Pinnock senses what Boyd misses, and that is the gravity of the openness proposal that would deny of God what has been affirmed and cherished by Christians for many centuries. For countless generations and millions of Christian believers, great strength and hope has been founded on the truth that God knows every detail of what will happen in the future. Even though we are blind to just what tomorrow or next year or the distant future might bring, we may hold the hand of the One who sees that future perfectly and truthfully, in all of its vast and exhaustive (and, yes, definite) detail, and follow him unquestioningly as he directs us and charts the course of our lives. Christian theology has said that this view is essential to our understanding of God, and Christian faith has leaned on it during dark and stormy days. The openness denial of God's exhaustive knowledge of all that will occur in the future presents a modification to Christian doctrine and faith that is enormously weighty and sobering.

Care must be taken to see just what comes with this denial. If we fail to probe as accurately and fully as possible just what implications this doctrinal innovation brings, and we pass this view on to our churches and children only later to realize attending problems, we may be responsible for hurting the very ones we are charged to nurture in the faith, and we surely will be accountable before God for this negligence and this failure. Furthermore, if the Evangelical Theological Society cannot be a place where perceived serious negative implications of enormous proportion for the life and faith of the church can be evaluated, how well can this organization rightly claim to serve the church?

Second, do not many groups "brand" other positions as unacceptable owing, in part, to implications they see that follow from other's views, even when advocates of those other views offer their explanations? As Boyd himself mentions, Calvinism is rejected by many Arminians in part because of implications they think follow, even though Calvinists offer (unsatisfying, to Arminians) explanations. Or, to cite a vivid current example, in Sanders's reply, he clearly rejects classic Arminianism's view of simple foreknowledge in part because of the implication that it does not, in his judgment, provide God any providential benefit, despite the fact that David Hunt (whom Sanders cites) has offered a recent explanation of how simple foreknowledge does give God providential advantage. The point is this: We commonly do "brand a position" as misguided and unacceptable because we "cannot understand how they avoid certain negative implications" that we argue (and insist) that they have, despite the fact that they may offer (unsatisfactory, in our judgment) explanations. What this paper seeks to do, then, is not different in kind from much other common and acceptable criticism. The only difference with this paper is in its judgment as to the weightiness of the implications noted and the severity of this doctrinal departure for the health and life of the evangelical church-which raises my last comment on the legitimacy of this critique.

Third, please recall that this paper was delivered by the request and invitation of the executive board and program chairman of ETS, and that the title and purpose of the paper were already formulated when I was asked to prepare and read it. I did not select either the title or the mandate of the paper, nor did John Sanders, who read a paper with an identical title. So, when given the assignment to answer the question, "Is open theism evangelical?" I searched my soul, and probed the open view as carefully and prayerfully as I could, and then answered this question in the manner you can see in the paper's last pages. Having said that I did not select either the title or mandate of this paper, please understand, however, that I accepted this assignment soberly yet gladly, because it afforded the opportunity to put on display implications of the open view that I believe must be considered seriously by all of us who think theology ought to be for the life, health, and well-being of the church, to the glory of God alone. Please understand: I did not arrive quickly or lightly at my negative answer to the question, "Is open theism evangelical?" Nor do I believe that this negative judgment should rightly apply to a host of other theological differences among us in the ETS. But the issues here are so grave, the departure from the historic understanding of Scripture's teaching so central, and the implications so many and serious, that before God and in good conscience, I have given the answer to this question I believe is both right and necessary.