Concept

Open Theism

Intro

Does God know exactly what you will choose tomorrow? Most Christians have always said yes. God's omniscience covers everything, past, present, and future, including every future free choice.

A small but vocal group of late-20th-century evangelical theologians said no. The position is called Open Theism, and its leading voices are Clark Pinnock, Greg Boyd, John Sanders, William Hasker, David Basinger, and Richard Rice.

The Open Theist claim is not that God's mind is limited. They are not saying God's brain is too small to hold the future. Their claim is more careful: future free choices are not yet determinate things. They do not yet exist as facts. And if they are not yet facts, there is nothing there for God to know, even in principle. God knows the future as a branching tree of possibilities (with probabilities) rather than as a fixed timeline.

The motivation for the view is two-fold. First, the Open Theist wants a strong account of human libertarian freedom. If God already knows in detail what I will choose tomorrow, in what sense am I really free to choose otherwise? Second, the Open Theist wants to take seriously the biblical passages where God appears to change His mind, react to human prayer, or grieve over outcomes. On the Open Theist reading, these passages mean what they say, not the metaphor traditional theology has often heard.

The cost is steep. Open Theism is broadly rejected by Calvinists, classical Arminians, and Molinists alike. The critics charge that it surrenders historic Christian doctrine to make a philosophical move, and that the supposed biblical support is better read in line with God's ordinary use of accommodation language.

This page lays out the core claim, the texts both sides cite, the philosophical motivations, and the standard objections.

In full

The position, developed primarily by 20th-century evangelical philosophers and theologians (Clark Pinnock, Greg Boyd, John Sanders, William Hasker, David Basinger, Richard Rice), that God's omniscience does not include exhaustive foreknowledge of future contingent free choices, not because God's cognitive capacity is limited, but because such choices are not yet determinate and therefore not knowable even in principle. The future, on this view, is genuinely open in the libertarian-free portions; God knows it as a branching tree of possibilities (with their probabilities) rather than as a single fixed sequence. Open Theism is the most controversial position in the Free Will / Sovereignty cluster, broadly rejected by Calvinists, classical Arminians, and Molinists alike, but defended by its proponents as a more biblically faithful and philosophically coherent doctrine of divine love and creaturely freedom.

Core claim

Two interlocking theses:

Libertarian freedom is real, when an agent freely chooses A over B, neither A nor B was settled in advance; the future was genuinely branched.
The truth value of "S will freely do A at t" was not determinate before S's choice, and therefore, by the principle that omniscience is knowledge of all truths, God did not "know" what S would do (because there was no truth to be known yet). When S chooses A, God comes to know that S chose A; before that, God knew the possibility of S's choosing A (with its probability) but not its actuality.

Open Theism therefore redefines the scope of omniscience: God knows everything that is logically knowable; future free choices are not in that set until they happen. Past, present, and necessary truths are exhaustively known. Future free choices are anticipated, prepared for, and providentially shaped, but not foreknown as actualities.

Distinguish from heresies and rivals

Open Theism is not:

Process theology, Open Theists affirm classical theism's aseity, omnipotence, and creation ex nihilo. They hold a modified classical theism, not the panentheist God of Whitehead and Hartshorne.
Denial of omniscience, Open Theists insist God knows all that is knowable; the issue is the metaphysics of the future, not the breadth of God's mind.
Denial of providence, Open Theists affirm robust providence, but it is general and responsive rather than meticulous and blueprint. God works with the world's openness, not despite it.
Identical to Arminianism, Arminianism affirms exhaustive divine foreknowledge of future free choices and only bases election on it. Open Theism denies that foreknowledge. Arminians have been among Open Theism's sharpest critics (Roger Olson, ris3n Walls).

Biblical foundation (as Open Theists read it)

Open Theists argue that Scripture's narrative portrayal of God taking risks, changing His mind, being grieved, responding to human action, and testing people is not anthropomorphic accommodation but accurate revelation:

God grieves and regrets, Gen 6:6 (the Lord was sorry He had made man); 1 Sam 15:11, 1 Sam 15:35 (regret over Saul).
God relents, Exod 32:14 (after Moses' intercession); Jonah 3:10 (Nineveh's repentance); Jer 18:7-10 (the potter and the clay, God's plan responds to the nation's response).
God tests to discover, Gen 22:12 ("Now I know that you fear God"), Boyd reads this as genuine epistemic discovery on God's part.
God deliberates and asks, Hos 11:8 ("How can I give you up, Ephraim?"), a divine struggle, not a script.
Conditional prophecies, Jer 18:7-10; the prophetic structure of "if you do X, then Y; if you do Z, then W."

Open Theists argue these texts are not metaphor or accommodation; they are God's self-revelation as a God who genuinely engages a partly open future. The settled foreknowledge texts (Isa 46:10; Acts 2:23) are read as covering what God has decided to do and what He determines to bring about, not as covering all future free choices.

Historical development

Antecedents. L. D. McCabe, Divine Nescience of Future Contingencies a Necessity (1882). Adam Clarke (Wesleyan, 19th c.) made similar moves regarding peripheral foreknowledge. Lorenzo McCabe and several 19th-c. Wesleyans developed proto-open theist positions.
Modern recovery. Richard Rice, The Openness of God (1980 / rev. 1985), the first sustained 20th-c. defense.
The watershed volume. Clark Pinnock, Richard Rice, John Sanders, William Hasker, David Basinger, The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God (1994). The book that precipitated the controversy.
Greg Boyd, God of the Possible: A Biblical Introduction to the Open View of God (2000), the most accessible defense; Satan and the Problem of Evil (2001).
John Sanders, The God Who Risks: A Theology of Providence (1998 / rev. 2007).
William Hasker, God, Time, and Knowledge (1989); the rigorous philosophical defense.
The evangelical controversy (late 1990s-early 2000s). The Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) considered expelling Pinnock and Sanders for views allegedly inconsistent with biblical inerrancy; the votes failed (2003), though the controversy left Open Theism widely censured in conservative evangelicalism.
Calvinist critiques. Bruce Ware, God's Lesser Glory: The Diminished God of Open Theism (2000); John Piper et al., Beyond the Bounds: Open Theism and the Undermining of Biblical Christianity (2003).
Arminian critiques. Roger Olson, repeatedly in Arminian Theology and elsewhere, distinguishes classical Arminianism from Open Theism and rejects the latter while acknowledging the philosophical pressure that motivates it.

Spread of positions (where Open Theism stands)

vs. Calvinism, flat opposition. Calvinism affirms meticulous sovereignty grounded in an effectual decree; Open Theism affirms responsive providence grounded in libertarian freedom and an open future. The Bruce Ware critique is the canonical Calvinist response.
vs. Arminianism, agrees on libertarian freedom and conditional election but rejects the classical Arminian retention of exhaustive foreknowledge. Olson and Walls (Arminian) are critics; Open Theists view themselves as the consistent extension of the libertarian intuition Arminianism only half-applies.
vs. Molinism, sharp opposition. Molinism's scientia media posits God knowing not only the actual future but all counterfactual free choices; Open Theism denies that there are determinate truths to know about future libertarian-free choices, let alone counterfactual ones. Hasker's grounding objection against Molinism is part of Open Theism's positive case.
on freedom: requires libertarian freedom; rejects Compatibilism.
on omniscience: redefines it as knowledge of all truths, where future free-choice propositions lack truth value until the choice is made (a presentist or growing-block metaphysics of time).

Standard objections (steel-manned)

The omniscience objection. Doesn't Scripture portray God as knowing the future exhaustively? Isa 46:10 ("declaring the end from the beginning"); the prophetic foretellings (Cyrus by name, Isa 44:28; the crucifixion); Christ's foreknowledge of Peter's denial and Judas's betrayal. Open theist replies: God exhaustively knows what He has decreed and what causal forces necessitate; specific prophecies are God's revealed intentions, not exhaustive future-mapping.
The prophecy objection (sharper form of the above). How can specific predictions of free human acts (Peter's denial, Judas's betrayal, Cyrus by name centuries in advance) be made if those acts are libertarianly free and hence unknowable in advance? Open theist replies: God knows the agents' settled characters with sufficient probability to make confident predictions; or God ensures certain outcomes by structuring circumstances; or some prophecies are conditional / corporate.
The providence objection. If God doesn't know the future free choices, how can He guarantee any of His saving purposes? Open theist replies: God is wise, powerful, and persistent enough to bring His ultimate purposes to pass without controlling every detail; His sovereignty is quality of response, not exhaustive prescription.
The orthodoxy objection. No major Christian tradition before the 19th century held this view. Open theist replies: doctrinal recovery, not innovation; the patristic and biblical portrayal of a God who genuinely engages history was overlaid by Hellenistic immutability and timelessness assumptions that need correction.

Tensions

Christological prophecy is the sharpest pressure point: Christ's specific foreknowledge of Peter (Matt 26:34) and Judas, and the apostolic insistence that the cross was foreordained (Acts 2:23; Acts 4:27-28; 1 Pet 1:20).
Pastoral consequences, does Open Theism genuinely diminish God (Ware) or genuinely magnify Him as a relational being (Boyd)?
Within Open Theism, internal disputes: how much of the future is open? Some Open Theists hold that anything contingent on libertarian freedom is open; others restrict openness more narrowly.
The position is widely condemned by conservative evangelical confessions and academic societies but defended with significant philosophical and exegetical seriousness by its leading proponents.