Christian love and academic dialogue: A reply to Bruce Ware

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Jun 2002 by Boyd, Gregory A

3. The infinite wisdom of God. A final preliminary word is more fundamental to Ware's essay. The core of Ware's criticism is that a God who lacks exhaustively definite foreknowledge loses something significant in terms of divine control which a God who possesses exhaustively definite foreknowledge possesses. "A God lacking exhaustive foreknowledge," he writes, "is intrinsically fallible and faulty in making his future plans."

As startling as it may sound, I submit that Ware's entire line of reasoning is rooted in a denial of God's infinite intelligence. It is, indeed, rooted in a thoroughly anthropomorphic view of God.

Ask yourself. Why are we humans less confident considering possibilities than we are certainties? It is only because our intelligence is finite. If I have two possibilities I have to anticipate rather than one certainty, I have to divide my intelligence in half to cover both possibilities. If I have four possibilities to consider, my intelligence has to be divided into fourths, and so on. This is what makes us humans "intrinsically fallible and faulty in making . . . future plans" which involve various possibilities.

But now consider the implications of our shared faith that God possesses infinite wisdom. God's intelligence is not limited. This means that God does not have to "spread out" his intelligence over possibilities. God can consider and anticipate each of trillion billion possibilities as though each one was the only possibility he had to consider. Since his intelligence does not have to be-cannot be!-"divided up" among items, we could say that all of God's intelligence is focused on each and every possibility, and each series of possibilities, as though there were no alternative possibilities. In other words, for a God of infinite intelligence, there is virtually no distinction between knowing a certainty and knowing a possibility. God thus gains no providential advantage by knowing future events as certain as opposed to knowing them as possible. He anticipates both with equal perfection.

What is crucial for us to note is that we would only assume that being certain of a future event gives God an advantage if we did not really believe he possessed infinite intelligence! Only if God is limited like us is knowing a certain future an advantage over knowing a possible future. Only if God is intrinsically limited in intelligence is he "intrinsically fallible and faulty in making his future plans," because he does not possesses exhaustively definite foreknowledge. And only if we assume that God is severely limited in intelligence can we share Ware's concern that God may not even come through on his eschatological promises-unless, of course, he foresees that he "wins" in the end.

Ware writes, "Open theism's denial of exhaustive divine foreknowledge calls into question the Church's ultimate eschatological hope that God will surely accomplish all his plans and purposes ... not even God knows. . . what unexpected turns lay ahead and how severely these may thwart his purposes or cause him to change his plans."