A Vulnerable God Apart from Christ?

Several provocatively titled books published by evangelical houses in recent years advance the position frequently called "open theism." Huntington College professor John Sanders has written The God Who Risks: A Theology of Providence (InterVarsity Press, 1998), Baptist pastor and Bethel College professor Gregory Boyd has written a book titled God of the Possible: A Biblical Introduction to the Open View of God (Baker Books, 2000), and Clark Pinnock has edited the collection titled The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God (InterVarsity Press, 1994). Veteran theologian Clark Pinnock has been a pioneer of this new trend in evangelical theology.

So what's all the fuss about?

Advocates of open theism charge the traditional understanding of God (i.e., classical theism) with being so heavily funded by Greek philosophy that it ran roughshod over key biblical passages. This, they argue, explains at least in part why Christian theology has tended toward a view of God as absolutely transcendent, "wholly other," separate from the world. Part of that nonbiblical inheritance includes cherished dogmas, such as belief in God's omnipotence (all-mighty-ness), omniscience (all-knowing-ness), aseity (independence and self-existence), and simplicity (God's unity of essence and attributes and thus the view that one attribute cannot be placed over all others). Open theism "expresses two basic convictions: love is the most important quality we attribute to God, and love is more than care and commitment; it involves being sensitive and responsive as well." (1) Once the Greek ideas are abandoned, open theism suggests, we can read the Bible with fresh eyes and behold a dynamic relationship between God and creation, a relationship in which God is in a certain sense dependent on human beings for his happiness and a successful conclusion of world history.

Reformed and Arminian Views on Classical Theism

Open theists acknowledge, "Both Calvinist and Arminian supporters of traditional theism appeal to prophecy to refute the notion that the future is open [i.e., largely unknown] for God." (2) How can God be God while allowing humans their own autonomy or space for freedom? Reformed theology had a different conception of freedom itself: creaturely freedom does not require autonomy or limitation of God's freedom in order to make space for the creature's. "In him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28), so divine freedom is precisely that space in which creaturely freedom is possible. In Reformed understandings, God's freedom is not a threat to human freedom, but its prerequisite.

Arminianism's solution has traditionally been to turn at that point to the doctrine of God's omniscience: because God knows everything that will happen, he can order history responsively. Open theists, however, argue that this traditional Arminian answer doesn't work-for the same reason, ironically, that Calvinists have never thought it worked: If God knows the future exhaustively, and God's knowledge can never be wrong, then it follows that the items of that future knowledge are just as certainly determined as in the traditional account. (3) Open theism, therefore, concludes that God can make educated guesses about the future free actions of creatures, and can know what he will do (often in response to human action), but he cannot exhaustively know the future free decisions and actions of creatures. To state it plainly, "This also means that not even God knows the future in all its details." (4) Advocates of this position routinely insist that they affirm divine omniscience in their own way. But since the word, both in terms of etymology and usage, means "knowing everything," it is hard to imagine an omniscience that is ignorant of most of the things that actually happen until they are performed.

Open theists complain that traditional Christian theology fails to recognize the heavy biblical emphasis on the interdependence of God and the world. We are repeatedly directed in Scripture to incontrovertible examples of divine repentance, change, surprise, and other evidences of a "dynamic relationship." Why would traditional theology insist on turning this warm, ever-moving, risk-taking God of the Scriptures into the passionless, static, and transcendent God of Hellenized Christianity? In this article I will briefly address this question: Is the traditional Christian view of God the product of Greek (Hellenistic) philosophy or of the close scrutiny of Scripture?

A New Criticism?

John Sanders writes, "In what follows I will document the manner in which I believe the Greek metaphysical system 'boxed up' the God described in the Bible and the tremendous impact this had in shaping the Christian understandings of the nature of God, prayer, salvation and the incarnation." (5) There is some irony in charging the classical Christian doctrine of God with philosophical speculation and then complaining that, for instance, Reformed theology doesn't go far enough in this direction: "Regarding the topic of providence, such thinkers sometimes dismiss attempts to elucidate the relationship between divine sovereignty and human responsibility, claiming that it is simply a 'mystery beyond human understanding.' The subject simply transcends human reason. (Thus books such as this one [The God Who Risks] are considered a waste of time.)" (6)

Open theism cannot be reduced to liberalism, but its adherents do buy a lot of radical assumptions that fueled liberal criticisms of nearly every significant Christian formulation. Leading liberal theologian Adolph Harnack argued, "Dogma in its conception and development is a work of the Greek spirit on the soil of the Gospel." (7) Although one cannot simply dismiss open theists as liberals, there are many affinities with modern liberalism: love as the divine attribute that trumps all others, a weak doctrine of sin, and the seriousness of the human predicament-and, therefore, a corresponding weakness in its understanding of redemption and the future judgment.

The Hellenism-versus-Hebrew paradigm has allowed modern theology to avoid all sorts of classical theological formulations. Harnack's well-worn development of this thesis has dominated old liberalism and, to a large extent, even neo-orthodoxy. Over the last few decades, evangelical pietism has fostered this antidoctrinal approach within both liberal and conservative theological circles. There is only one problem with it: There is no historical basis for this ingenious account. Among others, James Barr (not exactly a friend of orthodoxy) has exploded this thesis. (8) Still, it offers a simple way of challenging ancient formulations in the name of the Bible. While self-consciously evangelical, advocates of open theism risk applying the same misguided scorched-earth policy toward the history of Christian reflection. It is our contention, in fact, that open theism is itself tightly governed by dogmatic criteria that are far more determined by post-Kantian metaphysics than by Scripture. The fingerprints of modern thought (Pinnock himself cites the emphasis on autonomy, historical change, a therapeutic orientation) pervade the defenses of open theism.

The Reformed Method and Scripture

Having now provided a general summary of the methodological challenge, let us turn briefly to the dominant Reformed method with respect to this whole question of God's character. Francis Turretin speaks for the tradition when he plainly states,

But when God is set forth as the object of theology, he is not to be regarded simply as God in himself…, but as revealed…. Nor is he to be considered exclusively under the relation of deity (according to the opinion of Thomas Aquinas and many Scholastics after him, for in this manner the knowledge of him could not be saving but deadly to sinners), but as he is our God (i.e., covenanted in Christ as he has revealed himself to us in his word. (9)

For the Reformed, talk about God is restricted to Scripture and that which "by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture." (10)

Francis Turretin observes that philosophy can tell us when we're presenting a bad argument, but it cannot provide the content of that which is to be believed. It serves a ministerial rather than a magisterial function and must not be allowed a position alongside Scripture in providing normative direction for Christian faith and practice. Scripture alone is the basis for all Christian reflection and action. But this, of course, does not say everything that needs to be said. In fact, it is merely the beginning.

With the ecclesiastical consensus, Reformed scholasticism accepted the view that talk about God was analogical, even in Scripture, where it is not only talk about God, but talk from God. In every analogy (warrior, king, father, good, angry, etc.), God is more unlike than like the human analogue. Does that leave us drowning in relativism? How can we know that God really is good if not even Scripture gives us access to God's inner being? The answer given by the Reformed has been that these analogies (hence, the "analogical" mode of God's self-revelation) are selected by God himself as sufficient approximations for weak creatures to understand for their salvation and godliness.

Calvin's well-known description of Scripture as an example of divine accommodation to human weakness and as, therefore, similar to a nanny who speaks "baby-talk" to an infant, challenges all attempts to make even of Scripture itself an exact mirror of the being of God. Only Jesus Christ is "the exact representation of [God's] being," and this univocal core was and remains himself veiled in our humanity. We know what we need to know for salvation and worship, not everything that we wish to know or might be led by our curiosity to inquire. In common with Lutheran theology, Reformed theology emphasizes that God reveals himself by hiding himself. As apologist Cornelius Van Til put it,

It is an adaptation by God to the limitations of the human creature. Man's systematic interpretation of the revelation of God is never more than an approximation of the system of truth revealed in Scripture, and this system of truth as revealed in Scripture is itself anthropomorphic. But being anthropomorphic does not make it untrue. The Confessions of the Church pretend to be nothing more than frankly approximated statements of the inherently anthropomorphic revelation of God. (11)

It was Socinianism and the Remonstrant or Arminian schools that stood over against Reformed dogmaticians in raising reason and speculative deductions above clear statements of Scripture. The antispeculative and antirationalistic impulse of Reformed theology can be seen more recently in theologian Herman Bavinck's assertion that "God's being in the abstract is nowhere discussed" in Scripture. (12) Only by staying with Scripture has orthodoxy in the modern period been able to resist somewhat the pendulum of modern thought as it swings between hyper-transcendence (God as practically uninvolved in the world) and hyper-immanence (God as practically identical with the world).

Contrary to the claims of classical theology presented by open theists, the great tradition derives its biblical view of God from Scripture.

Divine Eternity

According to traditional Christian teaching, God is not only without a beginning and end; there is no "before," "during" and "after" for him, as there is for us. When ascribing eternity to God, we do not pretend to know what that really is. God's hidden being (to which we do not have access) and God's covenantal involvement in temporal history (to which we do, because of Scripture) are two mysterious realities that must be affirmed even when we don't have all the answers. Against open theism, we argue that God does not experience time as human beings do and that time is a creation of God, not something to which even God himself is subject.

In Genesis 21:33 Abraham "called on the name of the Lord, the Everlasting God" (El Olam). In Isaiah 57:15, God identifies himself as "the High and Lofty One who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place." It is precisely because God dwells in eternity-that is, transcends time-that he can indwell time freely, so that the psalmist can praise God as "our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God" (Ps. 90:1-2). Again we see God's transcendence as the presupposition of his immanence rather than its antithesis: "You turn man to destruction, and say, 'Return, O children of men.' For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past, and like a watch in the night" (vv. 3-4). Even if this text did not support God's timelessness, it prohibits open theism's view that God experiences time just as we do: nobody I know experiences a thousand years as if yesterday.

Just as God revealed himself as the Everlasting God in Genesis, so he closes Revelation-this time as the incarnate and risen Son, with the announcement, "'I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End,' says the Lord, 'who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty'" (Rev. 1:8). This "I am" statement recorded here by John is unmistakably related to the "I Am" statements in John's Gospel, as both are anchored in the original revelation of God's Name: "I Am Who I Am" (Ex. 3:14). It would therefore be difficult to see how "Alpha and Omega, First and Last" could be less than the one revealed in the burning bush, the one who causes the burning but is not himself consumed. It is only in the false dilemma of, oddly enough, pagan Greek thought, that one is faced with the choice between hyper-transcendence and hyper-immanence. But in Scripture, the God who transcends time and space is nevertheless omnipresent in both. God is, in fact, more involved in time and space than his creatures, more infinitely present in all times and places just as he transcends them.

Divine Independence

If God is affected by creatures, the ultimate or first cause of God's love and grace would be in the creature. It would not be a free act, but one in which God is overcome. At stake is the independence and freedom of God, which would leave salvation ultimately in the hands of creatures. But is this just a deduction based on theological prejudices? How does one handle, then, the texts in Scripture that represent God as being affected by his creation? Is there exegetical support for divine independence?

We have already seen from the revelation of the Divine Name to Moses that God represents himself as self-existent. To confirm this definition, God attends its revelation with his presence in the burning bush. Here is a bush that burns but is not consumed, gives off heat and light, but is not itself affected by heat and light. This becomes even clearer in the Gospels, where we have to deal not with a burning bush but God incarnate: "For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself." (John 5:26). No creature has life in himself, but God does. God's existence is not merely quantitatively different from ours, but qualitatively different.

God changes creaturely reality as one changes one's clothes, but does not himself change (Ps. 102:26). Only in this light can God be seen as a Rock for his people, a stable, reliable defense (Ps. 31:3). God alone is "the fountain [source] of life." Everything exists for God, although God exists only for himself: "The LORD has made all for himself, yes, even the wicked for the day of doom" (Prov. 16:4). God is the potter, and we are the clay (Isa. 64:8), underscoring God's agency as the one who acts but is not acted upon, and this metaphor is drawn also in Jeremiah 18:5 and Romans 9.

God acts according to his own counsel, we read throughout the prophets, and Jesus rejoices that God has revealed the truth to the simple rather than to the wise simply because "it seemed good in your sight" (Matt. 11:26). No clearer testimony could be found than in Paul's speech on Mars Hill, where he encountered Epicureans and Stoics and, anticipating the better church fathers in their use of philosophy against the philosophers, explained the identity of the unknown God from a working knowledge of their own systems: "God, who made the world and everything in it, since he is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. Nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he gives to all life, breath, and all things . . . for in him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, 'For we are also his offspring'" (Acts 17:24-28). It is this God who, needing nothing from us, "has determined [our] preappointed times and the boundaries of [our] dwellings" (v. 26).

On the basis of such texts, it is the doctrine of historic Christianity, defended in Reformed orthodoxy, that God sustains the world, just as he created it, out of superabundance rather than lack. It is precisely because God is independent, self-existent, and undetermined in any way by his creatures that his creation of and interaction with them is so marvelous. God's relationship to the world is always that of a Creator who freely condescends, not that of a cocreator who is dependent on the creature for his own happiness.

Divine Immutability (Changelessness)

Calvin basically followed Luther's distinction between the hidden and revealed God. "His discussion of the being of God, exactly as in Luther, is conditioned by a fundamental rejection of speculation about 'God in himself' (Deus apud se). In his revelation, God is 'God toward us' (Deus erga nos)." (13) It is not as if the charge of Stoicism is new: the Reformed scholastics met it in their debate with the Socinians (forerunners of the Unitarians). Turretin writes, "The necessity of the immutability we ascribe to God does not infer Stoic fate. It is only an extrinsic necessity and from the hypothesis of the divine will, without interference with the liberty and contingency of things, as will be proved hereafter when we come to the decrees." (14) Orthodoxy maintains that God not only does not change but that he cannot change, and this pertains to both essence and will. In dispute is not whether God changes his revealed plans in relation to creation, nor whether he issues conditional threats and promises in certain cases, executed in response to human agency. The point at issue is whether God changes either his eternal being or hidden decree.

One cannot prove that God changes his mind from texts that present God as responding to creatures, since no one doubts that God has issued conditional threats and promises. One should not confuse these, however, with God's fixed counsel, which remains a mystery to creatures. The current challenge is more serious than Socinianism's and Arminianism's denial of an immutable will, as open theism attributes change also to God's essence. Some of the texts that could be cited for classical position are the following.

Psalm 33 emphasizes not only the dependence of creation on God, but God's unchanging counsel: "The LORD brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; he makes the plans of the people of no effect. The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations" (vv. 10-11). Numerous references from the psalter could be cited along similar lines.

And then there is the familiar Malachi 3:6: "For I am the LORD, I do not change." Surely we cannot dismiss God's own explicit self-description as "metaphysical speculation" that derives from Stoicism and neoplatonism. Again we see that what is at stake here is not the mere accuracy of our dogmatic formulations, but the certainty of God's promise and the reliability of his plan. This verse reads in full: "For I am the Lord, I do not change; therefore you are not consumed, O sons of Jacob" [italics added].

God's unchanging decree is not a burden for Israel, but it is reassurance that God is the one who is doing the heavy lifting in the relationship. God's unchangeable counsel is clearly indicated in Hebrews 6, where we are told that God had no one higher than himself by whom to swear in his promise of the covenant of grace to Abraham. "Thus God, determining to show more abundantly to the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath, that by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us" (Heb. 6:17-18). James 1:17 offers similar consolation by grounding immutability in God's very nature: "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of change."

A further point merits our brief attention and that is the relation between immutability and incarnation. If ever there were an instance of God changing, it would seem that the Incarnation of the Word is just such an event.

Open theism's appeal to the Incarnation to support openness makes a lot of metaphysical assumptions that we don't have space to discuss here. Furthermore, the agenda proposed by "post-conservative" evangelicals, according to Roger Olson, includes an openness to non-Chalcedonian formulations. (15) This is not surprising, given the way in which Chalcedon relates divine immutability and christology. That ecumenical creed declares that Christians apprehend the Son in two natures (duo physesin) "without confusing the two natures," pointing out that by assuming a human nature God the Son is not thereby changed in his deity. (16) The Reformed have embraced the terminology of Athanasius and the ecumenical councils in arguing that the eternal Son assumed a human nature without in any way being transformed from deity to humanity. The two natures of Christ cannot be separated, but they must be distinguished.

The classical doctrine of God and christology that orthodoxy inherited from the Church fathers is surprising not for its accommodation to pagan philosophy but for its ingenious use of philosophical vocabularies for exploding pagan thought. At its best, then, this tradition takes its cue from John's prologue. Any Stoic would have recognized John's logos language and any Stoic would have been offended by the purpose put to it by the evangelist, just as he or she would have been at Paul's exploitation of Stoicism on Mars Hill. According to Scripture, Jesus Christ has been the mediator-redeemer ever since he was entrusted with a people. "He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you, who through him believe in God" (1 Pet. 1:20). God's eternal, unchangeable counsel was being carried out through the one who was simultaneously immutable God and mutable man. If this is granted, then the incarnation did not even change God's purposes, since he had purposed the redemption of the elect from before the foundation of the world. To suggest that the Incarnation represents a change in the being of the Son is to deny the historic Christian doctrine that the Son assumed a human nature rather than changing in any way his divine nature.

Christians maintain that God is immutable, says theologian Charles Hodge:

[B]ut nevertheless that He is not a stagnant ocean, but an ever living, ever thinking, ever acting, and ever suiting his action to the exigencies of his creatures, and to the accomplishment of his infinitely wise designs. Whether we can harmonize these facts or not, is a matter of minor importance. We are constantly called upon to believe that things are, without being able to tell how they are, or even how they can be. Theologians, in their attempts to state, in philosophical language, the doctrine of the Bible on the unchangeableness of God, are apt to confound immutability with immobility. In denying that God can change, they seem to deny that He can act. (17)

We are tempted to say more but must restrain our curiosity. "We must abide by the teachings of Scripture, and refuse to subordinate their authority and the intuitive convictions of our moral and religious nature to the arbitrary definitions of any philosophical system." (18) In fact, Reformed theology-emphasizing as it does the history of redemption as the covenant unfolds, underscores the truth that God is actus purus-pure act, always on the move, creating, upholding, and acting. Divine immutability is essential for genuine confidence in the Gospel, as we have seen from the texts cited.

Divine Omniscience

Taking human autonomy as its starting point, open theism must give up even Arminian belief in divine foreknowledge, as we have seen. In terms of method, there is scarcely a better example of imposing on Scripture a theological system, itself constrained by a central thesis (viz., human autonomy).

In Scripture it is simply taken for granted that YHWH is "perfect in knowledge" (Job 37:16). David taught Solomon to trust and follow God; "for the LORD searches all hearts and understands all the intent of the thoughts" (1 Chron. 28:9). The psalmist acknowledges, "You understand my thought afar off. You comprehend my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word on my tongue, but behold, O LORD, you know it altogether" (Ps. 139:1-6). God knows what human beings will say before they say it and, in fact, foreknows their secret intentions. When David discovered Saul's plot, he asked God, "'Will Saul come down, as your servant has heard? O LORD God of Israel, I pray, tell your servant.' And the LORD said, 'He will come down.' Then David said, 'Will the men of Keilah deliver me and my men into the hand of Saul?' And the LORD said, 'They will deliver you'" (1 Sam. 23:9-12).

Indeed, all of predictive prophecy is challenged by open theism, a corollary that its advocates ask us simply to accept. But we must realize what is at stake here in terms of the doctrine of salvation. As with the other attributes, divine omniscience appears predominantly in the context of God's redemptive acts. "Declaring the end from the beginning" (Isa. 46:10) is the presupposition of predictive prophecy, but how can one declare the end from the beginning apart from foreknowledge of the creature's intentions, decisions and actions?

Open theism argues that predictive prophecy is something akin to a hunch, an educated guess, about how things will go. But Scripture speaks of God's purpose and eternal counsel being fixed forever according to his own pleasure. When Jesus said to the Twelve, "Assuredly, I say to you, one of you will betray me" (Matt. 26:21), was he offering a hypothesis? John's Gospel reports, more specifically, "He spoke of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, for it was he who would betray him, being one of the twelve" (John 6:70). If Jesus in his humiliation foreknew Judas' apostasy and Peter's betrayal, how is it possible to assert that God in himself does not possess such foreknowledge? And if these are exceptions, how can God hold Judas and Peter responsible, given the philosophical premises for denying divine foreknowledge in the first place? Scripture does not simply say that God works all of his intentions after the counsel of his own will, but that he works "all things after the counsel of his own will" (Eph. 1:11). Can God be said to work "all things after the counsel of his own will" and yet lack foreknowledge of all things? Once more, divine omniscience reminds us of the grandeur of God, but its greatest contribution is to the weakness of our faith. "For if our heart condemns us," says John, "God is greater than our heart, and knows all things" (1 John 3:20).

As with God's omnipresence, there is nowhere to hide from God's knowledge, no realm of autonomous human existence. "Known to God from eternity are all his works" (Acts 15:18). Yes, but what about all of our works, the actions of free creatures? Peter's Pentecost sermon recorded in Acts 2 provides an answer: "Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs which God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves also know-him, being delivered by the predetermined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death" (vv. 22-24). Two things are affirmed here: the culpability of those who did what they freely determined, and the prior determination of God that it would occur.

Where Scripture points us to Christ and his redemption at this point, open theism points us to rationalistic speculations about "two poles" in God. Otto Weber summarizes Reformed thinking on this essential methodological issue:

It is not upon the basis of some construction that we know God as he himself, that is, that in his freedom and aseity he is our God, that he is the One who loves in his sovereignty. We know this solely in the encounter with Jesus Christ…. Aside from Christ, we would end up with Pantheism, in which we made out of "God-for-us" a "God" which was in natural continuity with every existing thing and thus was ultimately the being of all being. Or we would have dualism in that we understood God's freedom, his being-in-himself as being apart from us, and thus ultimately we would arrive at a world which in essence was godless. (19)

In Christ, both love and freedom exist together, without separation or confusion. This is how we know God. This is the Reformation's most significant philosophical break with late medieval theology.

Divine Impassibility-Does God Suffer?

Among the classical attributes, the doctrine of divine impassibility appears to be the least supportable. In fact, it is not even a topic, much less a locus, in representative Reformed systems, but it has become the Rubicon separating classical theism and its rivals. After all, if God's happiness depends in any sense on creatures, each of the preceding attributes falls like dominoes. While the arguments of open theists are largely determined by the false antitheses of classical and modern pagan thought (pagan transcendence/pagan immanence), perhaps there is a reason to revise and clarify our own position. Part of the confusion even in our own circles, I would argue, has to do with the term "impassibility." Literally, it means "without suffering," not-as it appears to English speakers, "without passions." The Westminster Confession perhaps muddies the waters on this fine point by listing among God's attributes "without parts or passions." Reformed theology has never taken its stand on the view that God is not passionate, but that God does not suffer. In the latter case, he would be a victim of the creaturely world. The same texts to which one would turn for support of God's independence would be appropriate for our defense of God's immunity to being negatively altered in his being by the creation.

It is this immunity that separates him from the idols of the nations, as we have seen particularly in the prophetic writings. Guided by therapeutic language, open theism revels in God's "vulnerability," which is another word for "weakness." But is that really good news? God feels my pain but can't really do anything for it? "'To whom then will you liken me, or to whom shall I be equal?' says the Holy One…Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel: 'My way is hidden from the LORD, and my just claim is passed over by my God'? Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, neither faints nor is weary. His understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the weak, and those who have no might he increases strength" (Isa. 40:27-29). It is precisely because he is not subject to creaturely weakness that God can give power to the weak. It is he who upholds even the Messiah in his earthly ministry of weakness. Because God is in no sense a victim or a cosufferer, he is the only agent capable of actually rescuing those who do suffer and even those who, in fact, inflict suffering on others. Only then does it become significant that the God who transcends suffering actually did become a cosufferer without setting aside his immutable and unaffected nature or absorbing it into his humanity. What is the significance of the Incarnation if God was already a cosufferer with creation and this cosuffering in itself had salvific effect? It is significant that the writer to the Hebrews defends God's compassion and sympathy for human beings not by denying God's inner satisfaction and Shalom, but by singling out the God-Man: "He can have compassion on those who are ignorant and going astray, since he himself is also subject to weakness" (Heb. 5:2). The everlasting rest awaiting us is God's own rest-not a rest from activity, but from the battle with evil, sin and suffering. What is left is not a lack of passion, but the fullness of passionate joy.

In summary, open theism operates with a flawed method. Like the anthropomorphites who attributed (and some still do attribute) arms, legs, and even feathers to God because of the language used in Scripture, the literalistic approach of open theism is not content to accept accommodated analogies but must have direct access to God's inner being. To accomplish this, speculation about that inner being of God tends to push God's fullest revelation of himself in Jesus Christ to the side. It confuses God's hidden nature and will with his revealed nature and will, as if changes in God's covenantal dealings with creatures are equivalent to changes in God's eternal plan or being. This debate, as all challenges to orthodoxy, is a tremendous opportunity for us once more to rediscover for ourselves the richness of scriptural teaching. At the same time, it commits us to the studied rejection of any error, especially one inspired by the modern quest for autonomy, that would obscure the glory of God or the certainty of the promises which are "'yes' and 'amen' in Christ."