The Fusion Theism Blog -- The Bible CAB Transporting you to the Truth

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Selective Open Theism

There are many different views on God's foreknowledge, predestination, prophecies, and free will.

I have recently embraced "Open Theism," but my view is a customized version of Open Theism which harmonizes with the Scriptures even better (in my humble opinion).

I refer to my view as "Selective Theism" or "Selective Open Theism." In general, it is the same as Open Theism, with one major difference

Open Theism says God cannot know certain things about the future because they haven't happened yet, and God can't know in advance what a person with free will would choose to do.

Selective Open Theism says God has the ability to know the future, but He chooses only to selectively know certain things, related to His purposes and prophecies, but blocks out the rest in order to allow free will to play out.

Selective Open Theism does a better job of explaining and harmonizing the fact that God, in the Bible, centuries in advance, predestined that evil men would murder His Son, Jesus, and also predestined that one of Jesus' close friends would betray Him. (Acts 4:27-28) Otherwise, the alternative option is, that God had to cause the evil men to commit evil and murder Jesus, which would be a violation of James 1:13.

Jesus Himself exercised Selective Foreknowledge at Mark 13:32.

In the Old Testament, God seems to have exercised Selective Foreknowledge many times (Genesis 22:1, 12; Exodus 16:4; Exodus 20:20; many other passages too) where He blocks out future knowledge of free will choices, and has to watch them unfold as they happen.

However, by the same token, there are certain prophecies where God knows the minute, exact details, sometimes centuries in advance! (Daniel 9:24-26; Isaiah 45; 1 Samuel 10:2-16)

This also explains why God changes His mind at times. He discovers things that people are doing (or failing to do), and reacts accordingly. (Jonah 3:9-10; Exodus 32:14; Genesis 6:6-7)

The Bible makes it clear that God CAN change His mind unless He has sworn an oath or made a promise! (Jeremiah 18:6-10; Hebrews 6:17-18)

Now, the question may arise: How can God selectively choose what He wants to know about the future, unless He already knows ALL of the future?

This seems to be a mystery that the Bible simply doesn't clearly explain. However, it possibly gives hints, if we examine how and when Jesus saw the future when He was on earth.

Each time Jesus saw the future, or spoke about the future of a thing or a person, He was right there with the thing or person. For example, Jesus was looking at the Temple when He foretold the future destruction of that Temple. Jesus was sitting next to Peter when He foretold that Peter would deny Him three times. Jesus was eating bread with Judas when Jesus saw that Judas was about to betray Him.

So, perhaps it is similar with God in heaven. Maybe God's foreknowledge is triggered when He thinks about certain people or things, and then He can choose to zoom in or zoom out, regarding their future.

(The only other theory I can think of, is that God sees ALL of the future, but then He selects to forget most of it, in order to allow true free will.)

The Old Testament Law of Moses

The Bible makes it very clear that God only gave the Mosaic Law to the Jews for a limited time period, and that these laws included special rules for the culture and circumstances of that time, as well as concessions made for sinful, stubborn people, which did not represent God's ideal commandments. (Matthew 19:8; Galatians 3:23-29)

The Law of Moses expired and became obsolete after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. (Galatians 5:1-4; Hebrews 8:7-13; Romans 10:4)

This, as well as the fact that God tolerated less-than-ideal practices in the Mosaic Law, such as polygamy, incest, slavery, women being treated as property, shows God to be flexible and open to change in His dealings with imperfect, evolving human beings.

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