Open theism

Does God have complete control over everything related to his creation, or are the evils of this world our own doing? When disaster strikes, the easy reaction is to blame God. We ask “Why would God allow this to happen?” or “Why is God doing this to me” What portion of our hardship is God really responsible for? This week’s assignment asks us to determine if the Open Theist view that God neither causes tragedy or allows it is more helpful than the doctrine of election which contends that god is in complete control. For the most part I do not find myself in agreement with Open Theism which contends that “God does not know what we will freely do in the future” (Rissler, n.d.). While I do agree with some thoughts behind the movement, as a whole it diminishes God’s sovereignty all in an attempt to explain that we still have free will in life. Their belief is if God knows what is going to happen, we cannot change it and therefore do not truly have free will. To solve this, they believe that God doesn’t know what choices we will make, but He will eventually be victorious regardless of our choices. The doctrine of Election believes that God knows and controls all that happens…

Molinism and open theism Molinism is the theory regrading God’s knowledge. The details are as follows. Molinisim says that God have middle knowledge, which are the counterfactual conditionals of human beings. These counterfactual conditionals are not within God’s control. Feasible worlds are a subset of possible worlds. Feasible worlds are the worlds that God can actualise and must be consistent with the conditionals. Open theism doesn’t agree that God knows future contingent truths. God does…

the very nature of God. This essay endeavours to look at the two opposing views and outline the main issues that are being debated. I will then look at why the issues being discussed are important for how we approach theology and Christian living. The two sides of the debate that we will be discussing are made up of those supporting ‘classical’ theism and those supporting ‘free will’ or ‘open’ theism. Classical theism, which has been the chief view held by Christians for many years, states that…

no objective morality, its all opinion. This makes us responsible, we as a society make the judgements. His next heading was Atheism: real learning. He went back to all of the things listed above and gave the atheistic point of view. He says that, “I don’t know” is a valid answer to the first cause question. He says that in the design there is no evidence of supernatural of intelligent in the design of the Universe. Lastly, there is no objective morality, morality is fluid. Next he talks about…

Theism, God and the Bible: How It All Fits A quick search on the terms theology and theism show a large number of differing definitions and views. There are many other “isms” found alongside theism. Google found terms such as classical theism, open theism, monotheism, process theism, pantheism, and panentheism, along with several others. It does not take long to discover there are many different theories and beliefs involving God. Theism is the belief of the God of the Bible or “belief in the…

In the reading McCloakey talks about proofs. He believes that three proofs move ordinary theist their theism. The first proof that he speaks about is cosmological, which is the chain that every created thing is being caused right now. There is a slight argument over the creation, who is God, having a cause in the beginning. It is believed that if the proofs fail from an observational perspective; then the proof is proven false. How can something that does not need to be given existence…

died and they buried him in the Land (50:12), the brothers were afraid that Joseph would repay them for their actions (50:15). To this Joseph replied, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive” (50:20 NASB). The Hebrew verb for meant is châshab, and it describes both the brothers and God in this verse (Strong 's Hebrew Dictionary of the Bible, Kindle location 10637). Therefore, Joseph understood…

Deism is the belief that God created the universe but remains apart from it and that He permits His creation to administer itself through natural laws. (dictionary.com) In other words, God created the universe and then just decided to step back. Deist have many strengths and weaknesses to their belief system; first we are going to evaluate the strengths of deism and then discuss deism 's weaknesses; closing with how deism relates to Christian theism. The first strength of Deism is that they…

approaches that can explain faith and how we view evil. Nash asserts there is moral evil and natural evil and both are found in deductive and inductive forms. The deductive form tends to cause from a Christian point of view, Christians are said to believe a set of propositions that are internally self-contradictory. (Nash, 180). Nash explores Mackey claim “Evil is a problem for the theist in that a contradiction is involved in the fact of evil, on the one hand, and the belief in the omnipotence…

Foreman states that when approaching theism one should not look at proofs but at an argument with the best explanation (Foreman). This approach agrees with McCloskey in that proofs should not be a basis for our thesis. Furthermore, it demonstrates that the existence of God cannot be proved completely. Additionally, Foreman states that Christians understand that their opinion is defeasible, showing that it is possible their viewpoint could be wrong. It is almost impossible to definitively say…