Q & R: Open Theism

A reader writes:

I have been reading some book on Open Theism by Clark Pinnock and Gregory Boyd.
I was wondering if the Emergent Church has doctrinal sympathies with Open Theism such as the following:
1. God does not determine the future in detail because He cannot know the future…the future simply cannot be known by anyone
2. Biblical prophecy cannot be interpreted literally but only can be interpreted on what God intends to do and also on a very conditional basis
3. People who are sincere in other major world religions will be saved by Christ because of the attitude of their hearts…not what they believe
4. Hell is not eternal conscious punishment but is either a place of restoration for persons to eventually enter heaven or it is just annihilation
5. God does not elect any persons to heaven nor does God reprobate any persons to hell
6. God does not even know in advance which persons are going to heaven or going to hell
Thank you.

Reply after the jump.

R:
Thanks for your question. First, the emergent conversation is diverse and doesn’t have a single spokesperson or viewpoint, so I can only speak for myself and offer my impressions regarding others ..
Second, to the degree that the emergent conversation is a postmodern phenomenon, it would naturally question the mechanism and determinism that have largely (not exclusively) characterized modernity. I see Open Theism as a parallel questioning of certain modernist and premodern assumptions, so there are affinities and common concerns.
Let me respond also to your specific questions:
1. God does not determine the future in detail because He cannot know the future…the future simply cannot be known by anyone
I would phrase this a bit differently. I would put it in terms of these questions: What kind of relationship does God want with the universe? What kind of universe did God make?
2. Biblical prophecy cannot be interpreted literally but only can be interpreted on what God intends to do and also on a very conditional basis
Many feel as I do that the term “interpreted literally” is an unhelpful category, because “literally” often means “simplistically” or “without reference to historical context or literary form.” Biblical prophecy, it seems to me, is more about warning and ethical confrontation, and less about prognostication. In EMC (link below), I use Jonah as an example.
3. People who are sincere in other major world religions will be saved by Christ because of the attitude of their hearts…not what they believe
This assumes that “saved” means “saved from hell,” and many of us are questioning that the word had that meaning in the original context. The primary narrative in which “saved” takes on meaning in the Bible is the Exodus narrative, where “saved” means liberated from oppression, slavery, etc.
4. Hell is not eternal conscious punishment but is either a place of restoration for persons to eventually enter heaven or it is just annihilation
A lot of us are raising questions about the traditional concept of hell being eternal conscious torment. But it’s important to understand that we’re not simply seeking to take out the old “hell module” from our theological system and plug in a new one. We’re asking questions about the large-scale biblical narrative that we’ve been taught … as I try to describe in my new book.
5. God does not elect any persons to heaven nor does God reprobate any persons to hell
Many of us would follow a more Barthian understanding of election, and most of us, I think, would follow Leslie Newbigin’s critique of the traditional Calvinist understanding of election and reprobation. I would say that election is not for exclusive privilege to the exclusion of others, but is rather for instrumental service and suffering for the benefit of others: we are blessed to be a blessing.
6. God does not even know in advance which persons are going to heaven or going to hell
Again, many of us are questioning whether this heaven-hell dualism is actually the point of God’s creative project.
If you’d like to explore these lines of thought more deeply, I’d recommend the following books I’ve written:
A New Kind of Christianity
The Story We Find Ourselves In
Everything Must Change
I hope that helps a bit!