Open Theism? What is really being said?

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Blain

The Word Weaver
Aug 28, 2012
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#41
I guess this is basically what I have always believed but i didn't know it had a name. Except I don't think it's that he can't know future events rather either he chooses not to or somehow he knows and yet in some way still the future is not set in stone.
Personally trying to wrap my mind around the idea that God being all knowing and knowing our story from beginning to the end till gives us freedom to choose him or not as if our free will can be the deciding factor and yet even though I fail to understand how that is possible I have always believed he treasures a willing child not a controlled one and that our fate whether heaven or hell is not set in stone before death.

With my logic you would think I would be opposed to such a belief but it's just what God molded in my heart as i grew in him, perhaps there are something that we are unable to fully comprehend as he says Isaiah 55:8 My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts," says the LORD. "And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine
 
B

BeyondET

Guest
#42
A good example of this is the story of Jonah. Jonah was sent to preach to Nineveh a message of destruction, "Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown." Question: Did God destroy Nineveh in forty days? No. Did God lie? No. God simply changed His mind based on Nineveh's response to His word. Remember, Nineveh believed God. Most commentaries and preachers will explain this story away and not take it at face value.

Did God know that Nineveh would repent and in turn He would not destroy them in forty days?
A day is like a thousand years.

Does the bible mention the fall and utter ruins of Nineveh?
 
Dec 3, 2016
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#43
Theism is broadly defined as the belief in the existence of a deity or deities, therefore it is not derived from God's Word and is false and a waste of time to be looking at.

Lots of folks in these end times spend time on rabbit trails that lead away from God's Word into darkness and this one is no different.



The word even says, if they won't hear, then move along
Yeah, it's just their eternal soul at stake... no need to pray for them and continually follow-up with them to talk about it... just blow 'em off.

I guess the attitude here is "I got mine, phooey on everybody else"




Usually there are true points and not so true points in every debate.
Putting God's Word first and foremost is what is right, true, and correct... the rest is a colossal waste of time as it draws people in to imaginations and questions that gender strife against what the Word of the Lord teaches.

WHEN will Christians learn that God's Word is right and is all the we need... and satan is doing any and everything he can to draw you away from it to consider other things???

This is Christianity 101 that Jesus warned us about in Mark 4:13-20
 
Feb 7, 2015
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#44
I believe I am an Atheistic Theist.
 

Blain

The Word Weaver
Aug 28, 2012
19,214
2,550
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#45
Theism is broadly defined as the belief in the existence of a deity or deities, therefore it is not derived from God's Word and is false and a waste of time to be looking at.

Lots of folks in these end times spend time on rabbit trails that lead away from God's Word into darkness and this one is no different.





Yeah, it's just their eternal soul at stake... no need to pray for them and continually follow-up with them to talk about it... just blow 'em off.

I guess the attitude here is "I got mine, phooey on everybody else"






Putting God's Word first and foremost is what is right, true, and correct... the rest is a colossal waste of time as it draws people in to imaginations and questions that gender strife against what the Word of the Lord teaches.

WHEN will Christians learn that God's Word is right and is all the we need... and satan is doing any and everything he can to draw you away from it to consider other things???

This is Christianity 101 that Jesus warned us about in Mark 4:13-20
if one is studying it seeking the truth then it's never a waste of time.
Lots of folks in these end times spend time on rabbit trails that lead away from God's Word into darkness and this one is no different.[/QUOTE]Actually it's completely different as the op was asking about the actual meaning of Theism and had nothing to do with the end times, would you complain and gripe about someone asking for help understanding something? Is this not what we are here for in the bdf?




Yeah, it's just their eternal soul at stake... no need to pray for them and continually follow-up with them to talk about it... just blow 'em off.

I guess the attitude here is "I got mine, phooey on everybody else"
This is not what was being said at all and I think you knew that
 
Dec 3, 2016
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#46
if one is studying it seeking the truth then it's never a waste of time.
Sure it is simply because... God's Word does not teach this and this is just another trick of the devil to get people to pay attention to anything other than God's Word which IS Truth.



the op was asking about the actual meaning of Theism and had nothing to do with the end times
If you knew of God's warnings concerning things that would be happening in the end times... you'd know this is just another confirmation that those warnings are in fact valid.



This is not what was being said at all and I think you knew that
No, I don't know that because some blow off people altogether is they don't get saved the first time they witness to them.

Especially when it comes to family and friends (you you see frequently or occasionally on a regular basis) it may take some long term prayer and witnessing to them again and again.
 
Dec 3, 2016
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#47
I believe I am an Atheistic Theist.
Don't they have penicillin down at the clinic for that?

You should practice safe Christianity from now on!
 

Blain

The Word Weaver
Aug 28, 2012
19,214
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#51
Sure it is simply because... God's Word does not teach this and this is just another trick of the devil to get people to pay attention to anything other than God's Word which IS Truth.





If you knew of God's warnings concerning things that would be happening in the end times... you'd know this is just another confirmation that those warnings are in fact valid.





No, I don't know that because some blow off people altogether is they don't get saved the first time they witness to them.

Especially when it comes to family and friends (you you see frequently or occasionally on a regular basis) it may take some long term prayer and witnessing to them again and again.
Lets say your right and the word of god does not teach it, would it not be profitable to study it to seek the truth for yourself? if one blindly believes it's true for instance and never studied it then they would remain ignorant and believe a lie would they not? never forget the word of God is not just for proofing but also reproofing.[/COLOR]




If you knew of God's warnings concerning things that would be happening in the end times... you'd know this is just another confirmation that those warnings are in fact valid.
Do not assume you know my heart, I am well aware of all the things to happen in the end times I am one who studies bible prophecy to a very great extent and even if I wasn't one who was fascinated by researching bible prophecy I have had many prophetic dreams and visions as well i have seen horrors that don't belong in even horrors movies and I have seen the armies of god and satan seconds away from an epic battle I have seen the rapture happen more times than I can count and I am very much aware of satans deception in this world we are in an era where bad is seen as good and good is seen as bad. I can't even watch t.v. without coming across a commercial selling a product with a attractive person in it.

It's a common psychology selling tactic, if you sell a product with say a hot women holding it or talking about it people are more inclined to buy it.
 

Sac49

Senior Member
Jun 26, 2016
582
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#52
Open Theism

Open Theism is the thesis that, because God loves us and desires that we freely choose to reciprocate His love, He has made His knowledge of, and plans for, the future conditional upon our actions. Though omniscient, God does not know what we will freely do in the future. Though omnipotent, He has chosen to invite us to freely collaborate with Him in governing and developing His creation, thereby also allowing us the freedom to thwart His hopes for us. God desires that each of us freely enter into a loving and dynamic personal relationship with Him, and He has therefore left it open to us to choose for or against His will.

While Open Theists affirm that God knows all the truths that can be known, they claim that there simply are not yet truths about what will occur in the “open,” undetermined future. Alternatively, there are such contingent truths, but these truths cannot be known by anyone, including God.

Even though God is all-powerful, allowing Him to do everything that can be done, He cannot create round squares or make 2 +2 = 5 or do anything that is logically impossible. Omniscience is understood in a similar manner. God is all-knowing and can know all that can be known, but He cannot know the contingent future, since that too, is impossible. God knows all the possible ways the world might go at any point in time, but He does not know the one way the world will go, so long as some part of what will happen in the future is contingent. So, Open Theists oppose the claim of the sixteenth century Jesuit theologian, Luis de Molina, that God has "middle knowledge."

Open Theists believe that Scripture teaches that God wanted to give us the freedom to choose to love or reject Him. In order for each of us to genuinely have a choice for which we are morally responsible, we must have the ability to do otherwise than we do. This is the distinctive necessary condition of what has come to be called libertarian freedom.

God may intervene in the created world at any time, and He may determine that we act in ways of His choosing. But He cannot both respect our libertarian freedom and guarantee that we will do specific things freely. Thus, Open Theists believe that God has created a world in which He takes the risk that many of us will reject Him and act in ways opposed to Him, in order to give us the opportunity to freely choose to love and obey Him.

Open Theism | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy


There are tons more in this article if people are interested - they can check out the link above.
I have never heard this term before either. If this post would be a "definition" of what open theism is then wouldnt this be a removing of the Sovereignty of God? A Sovereign God cannot be both omnipotent and not knowing at the same time. This definition seems to be placing man as sovereign and God under the sovereignty of man. It is taking the creator and having Him controled by His creation.
 
Feb 7, 2015
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#53
Details, plzzzzzzzz! :D
A wise man. I love it.

This is the title of a book a friend of mine wrote.... The Atheistic Theist. It means a person who believes in the one True God, but, DOES NOT believe in other gods.... no matter where we think we find them.

Jeff Turner & Sound of Awakening Ministries
September 19, 2014

My next book, The Atheistic Theist: What You Don't Believe About God is Just as Important As What You Do Believe About God, is nearing completion and should be released in early to late November. It will be a much simpler and shorter book than my last, and will focus on getting us to ask questions of our faith, and will seek to set us on the path of an atheistic theist - that is, one who rejects all Gods but the loving Abba of Jesus.

I wanted to share the introduction to the book with you all, so here it is! Enjoy:

I don’t believe in god.
It’s true.
I don’t.

Now, before you close the cover on this book and list it for sale on amazon, – since throwing it in the trash wouldn’t be all that economical - let me explain.

I believe in God, I just don’t believe in god. That is to say that while I do, in fact, believe in a God, there are many others whose existence I vehemently reject. I guess you could call me an atheistic theist. While there are multitudes of gods whom I have always rejected, there’s another that is fairly new to the list.

The god of Christianity.

Now, I know that’s sort of a shocking opener for a book that you probably found in the “Christian” section of some bookstore or website, but if I’ve gotten your attention, then it did its job.

One of the most prominent and outspoken atheists/anti-theists of our day, Richard Dawkins, has written “Everybody is an atheist, some just go one god further”. And what a true statement that is!

Barring the possibility that you’re an ancient Norse time traveler, there’s a very good chance that you’re an atheist when it comes to Thor. We’ve been atop Mt. Olympus, and have all pretty much concluded that Zeus doesn’t exist either. We’ve dived to the ocean floor, have calculated its depth with sonar technology, and have viewed it from outer space via satellite, and as of this writing, there’s still no sign of Poseidon. We know the precise distance of the sun from the earth, what it’s made of, and approximately when it will burn out, but have yet to capture even a blurry photograph of Ra, the sun god of ancient Egypt.

The world is dominated by atheists as far as most of the gods of antiquity are concerned, some people just keep going one god further.

The Muslim, for instance, is an atheist concerning all gods but Allah, and the Jew concerning all but Yahweh. There’s a very good chance that you’re an atheist concerning all but one god as well. It’s likely that you reject the Hindu pantheon, and I highly doubt that you’re secretly offering sacrifices to the gods of ancient Greece or Rome. I assume that Ba’al and Molech aren’t your religious cup of tea either, and I’m almost entirely certain that you don’t bow before Tamuz, if you even know who he is.

Yet, with all of these gods you disbelieve in, I’m sure that there is at least one whose existence you still cling to, and it’s likely the God who “wrote the Bible” through the willing channels of prophets and apostles, inspired David to pen worship songs about murdering Babylonian babies, created the cosmos in six literal twenty-four hour periods, and still had enough energy to personally oversee founding of the United States of America – that is, the God of modern, Western Christianity. As I’ve already stated, this god is one whom I’ve freshly added to the gods-I-can-no-longer-believe-in list, but I also stated that, while rejecting this god, I do, in fact, retain a belief in God.

So… which God, if not that of Christianity, do I as a Christian believe in?

The God of Jesus.

While some may argue that the god of Christianity and the God of Jesus are one and the same, and couldn’t possibly be separated, I would beg to differ.

The god of Christianity is largely a cultural phenomenon, and one that we Western nations have exported to the rest of the world. He looks peculiarly like us, votes republican, is always very much on our side in whatever war it is we’re fighting (be it
cultural or militaristic), and, last time I checked, His favorite colors were still red, white and blue. He speaks in King James English, goes to church on Sundays, and is more concerned with whose posterior is planted in a swivel chair in the Oval Office than he is with whether or not babies in third world countries go to bed with empty stomachs.

He’s a god that is chained to both Old and New Testaments, and must look like the deity described in both. He must approve of genocide and infanticide, while also promoting non-violence and a strict, turn-the-other-cheek policy. He claims that raping a young woman can be remedied by paying the girl’s father fifty shekels and marrying her, but also insists that there is no male or female, and that women deserve as fair of treatment as men. He is the God who commands us to love our enemies, but who, if we succeed in life as Christians, promises to bring us back with Him - on spirit horses - to help him slay and butcher his enemies.

He’s a God whose actions are often extremely contradictory, and beyond difficult to reconcile.

He’s up one day, and down the next.

Bi-polar doesn’t even begin to describe Him.

Yet, He’s the god that most teach their children about. He’s the ultimate standard of goodness held up as the proverbial “moon” for which we must shoot. Yet, if we ever did hit said moon, we’d be jailed for criminal conduct.

This is the God that has been taught and promoted in Christianity for far too many years and whose existence has gone largely unchallenged by those who claim to worship Jesus. Though His actions are as barbaric and “bronze-aged” as those of bloodthirsty Canaanite deities, most Christians still remain theists as far as he is concerned.

But it’s time for that to change.

For centuries, it has been only those from outside of the institution of Christianity who have dared criticize, ridicule, and attempt to disprove the existence of this god, but that must change as well. Those who claim to follow Jesus must become as staunch of atheists as Nietzche or Dawkins when it comes to this violent deity, and must then come clean, making it clear to a hurting and confused world that this “god” represents neither Christianity nor its Christ!

It is time for the atheistic theists to arise - those who have caught a glimpse of a beautiful, loving, non-violent Father, revealed through His Son Jesus Christ, and who have let go of all vestiges of a bloodthirsty god of wrath and war. This god’s existence may be provable through the use of scripture, and his character qualities may be rooted and grounded in the words of the Bible, but Christianity is required to go further than obscure passages from Joshua or Exodus. We are required to look squarely into the face of Jesus Christ, and define our God by what we see in His countenance. And though our stiff and starchy brand of religion has restrained us from doing so, we must do it anyway.

It is truly time for an atheistic revolution, where a wholesale disbelief in the god who has masqueraded as the Abba of Jesus Christ takes hold, and a kind, loving, self-giving and humanity-loving God is re-revealed!

It’s time for a new breed of Christian; it’s time for the atheistic theist.

Many would say that it's not important to define the god we do not believe in, and that we only need to loudly and proudly proclaim the one we do believe in. They’ll usually follow up with an illustration about counterfeit money or something. However, in a culture that has been wounded, beaten and battered by an angry brand of Christianity, and terrorized by its monster-of-a-god, it is just as important to define who we don’t believe in as it is to define Who we do believe in. We must move beyond being theists, and become atheistic theists who make it clear that we not only believe in a God of love and grace, but also staunchly reject and disbelieve in a god of anger and violence.

Throughout the pages that follow we will seek to dismantle and deconstruct some of the angry portraits of God that have been painted in the past by Christianity, and to then redefine Him in the light of what Jesus has revealed. We’ll see that the identity of one’s god may be wholly rooted in the scripture, and yet that god can still be an idol of the likes of Thor, Ba’al or Molech.

We’ll liberate ourselves to ask questions of our faith, think outside the box and color outside of the lines. We’ll attempt to discover a brand of spirituality that isn’t chained to the idea of denting a pew or lying prostrate in prayer, but that is based on an observation of God in everyday life. We’ll even drill to the center of doctrines like Biblical inerrancy, and see if they truly hold water in light of the revelation of Jesus. And hopefully, at the end of it all, we’ll discover that we can be both atheists and theists at the same time.

I’m not asking you to abandon your belief in God, just in a certain picture of god. I’m not asking you to throw away your faith, only that you direct it away from one god and toward another.

I’m simply asking that you add one more god to the pile you already disbelieve in. Yes, this one may prove to be a bit more difficult for you to discard than the others, but still, I’m asking you to consider going one god further in your atheism.

Yet I’m also inviting you to add one, and only one, to the Gods-I-can-believe-in list, and it is the one revealed in the loving, altruistic, violence-rejecting, humanity-embracing life of Christ.

I’m inviting you, brave reader, to become an atheistic theist.

Are you ready?
 

Blain

The Word Weaver
Aug 28, 2012
19,214
2,550
113
#54
I have never heard this term before either. If this post would be a "definition" of what open theism is then wouldnt this be a removing of the Sovereignty of God? A Sovereign God cannot be both omnipotent and not knowing at the same time. This definition seems to be placing man as sovereign and God under the sovereignty of man. It is taking the creator and having Him controled by His creation.
I suppose I can understand why you would see it in this light, the way i see it though is that while he is sovereign and omnipresent he sometimes (allows) things. For instance when he created adam and eve it said specifically that he made them to be sinless and innocent which is why he said not to eat the fruit in the garden. but think about this he is all knowing yes? so surely he knew man would fall surely he knew eve would eat the fruit and surely he put the tree with that fruit in the garden for a reason right?

Doesn't it seem odd that even though he knew all of this he still gave eve and adam the free will of choice to eat the fruit or not? I don't think it's taking away his sovereignty and it certainly isn't his creation controlling, but there certainly does seem to be a grand design here we in our limited understanding are not seeing
 
Dec 3, 2016
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#56
Lets say your right and the word of god does not teach it, would it not be profitable to study it to seek the truth for yourself?
My point is simple... why not just study God's Word???

Start with Truth and avoid deception altogether...



Do not assume you know my heart, I am well aware of all the things to happen in the end times I am one who studies bible prophecy to a very great extent and even if I wasn't one who was fascinated by researching bible prophecy I have had many prophetic dreams and visions as well i have seen horrors that don't belong in even horrors movies and I have seen the armies of god and satan seconds away from an epic battle I have seen the rapture happen more times than I can count and I am very much aware of satans deception in this world we are in an era where bad is seen as good and good is seen as bad. I can't even watch t.v. without coming across a commercial selling a product with a attractive person in it.

Well, excuse me... I was not aware that I was dealing with the world's foremost authority on end times happenings!
So, whassup wit all dat horn tootin anyway... who are you trying to convince???


That still does not mean one is paying attention to God's warnings as they pertain to our personal relationship with Him.

Big difference between that and studying prophecy.




He relented in the judgement at Nineveh.
ONly because they repented...
 

John146

Senior Member
Jan 13, 2016
16,642
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#57
ONly because they repented...
So the question arises: Did God know beforehand that Nineveh would repent and in turn He would not destroy them?
 

John146

Senior Member
Jan 13, 2016
16,642
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#59
huh did He,

Nahum 2:6-3:19
Jonah 3:10 And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.
 

Magenta

Senior Member
Jul 3, 2015
55,902
26,061
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#60
I suppose I can understand why you would see it in this light, the way i see it though is that while he is sovereign and omnipresent he sometimes (allows) things. For instance when he created adam and eve it said specifically that he made them to be sinless and innocent
Where does Scripture say A&E were made to be sinless and innocent?