Post
by DanielGracely » Wed Aug 11, 2010 1:34 pm
RE: A FINAL THOUGHT ABOUT OPEN THEISM’S METHOD
Last week, during a number of my posts on this thread, I never did mention imo the major example why the Open Theistic method is inconsistent. In winding down my comments here, I wish to show that now.
The example in short: Open Theism relies on LOGIC to argue that God’s change of mind, or regret, etc., shows a partially open future, yet Open Theism fails to apply this same logic to every crisis in their theology. The result for them is two, not one, hermeneutical approaches. In other words, there is no final consistency in their method.
Now, THE example that comes to mind of an illogicality which Open Theism holds, is the same logical problem that has haunted Christian theologians down the centuries. Namely, Number must be infinite if God has existed in eternity past, yet Number cannot be infinite or else change cannot occur.
For example, Zeno’s paradox shows that, logically, there can be no change, no “before and after,” if Number is infinite as a unit of time. It may be expressed thus: suppose a football player catches a kickoff deep into his own end zone yet runs all the way for a touchdown (at a constant speed for the 100 yards between goal lines). If he covers the first 50 yards in a time of 1/2x, then he will cover the next 25 yards in 1/4x, and so forth. But expressed this way, he never reaches the opponent’s goal line at all. This is because the infinite number series, 1/2x + 1/4x + 1/8x, + 1/16x, etc., never quite adds up to the number 1 (i.e., the opponent’s goal line). Yet obviously in the real world football players, soccer players, sprinters, etc., can run 100 yards. And so despite numbered infinity (implied in God’s eternal past), we realize that number must ALSO be finite, or else we could not say that change in movement can occur. Further, this problem posed by the infinite number series can be taken back to describe just the very first step of the sprint, or half the first step, etc., until arguably no movement theoretically occurs. Here, then, by all appearances is a hopeless predicament in logic. This serves as one example why the German philosopher, Godel, was able to prove that every ideology and philosophy and religion is unable to be logically consistent in all of its points, and that therefore some of its premises must be taken as axiomatic.
Now, no Evangelical Christian theologian has ever solved this problem of God’s infinite past existing alongside change. Yet we must maintain that change is real and has always been possible in the past, and, further, that morality is based upon it. That is, the Three Persons of the Godhead have always had the potential to disagree among themselves, as, indeed, Christ showed in His rhetorical question to Peter, that He (Christ) could call for 12 legions of angels and be granted this request from His Father (despite His Father's wishes), even though His (Christ’s) action would mean the breaking of Scripture. This potential for change—the choices of One of the Three to be selfish or selfless in relation to the Other Two Persons is, I believe, the major proof of time—since choices are made instant by instant, in this case, by each of the Three Persons of the Godhead to remain in unanimous agreement about Intention (Choice).
So again, to review, Christian theologians accept antinomy, i.e. that God has existed in the infinite past, yet has done so amidst choices that have occurred in Time. (Boyd is right about potential Change being biblical, when he describes the Classical Christian view of God’s immutability as one derived from a Helenistic, not biblical, concept of Perfection remaining unchangeable if it is to remain Perfection.) Thus Time imo proceeds as an attribute of God in the same way God's speech (which brought the worlds into existence) is from Him without being part of Him, and happens sequentially instant by instant. Now, Open Theists, too, accept the antinomy mentioned in the preceding paragraph, including Greg Boyd, who in the 13th (and last part) of a youtube series on the sovereignty of God, has to make subtle but concessionary statements about the failure of logic to explain the whole of biblical truth. He does this by stating that God is not subject to “our construct” of time, despite Boyd’s near constant appeal throughout a 2-hour lecture and Q & A session, all of which stresses the LOGIC of sequential Time. For Boyd stresses the “give and take” and a “before and after” in God/ human relationships, as demonstrated in certain statements of or by God in O.T. narratives. The problem, then, for Boyd, like that for all other Evangelical theologians (myself included), is that he must in the end resort to antinomy at some point. But I personally feel Boyd avoids admitting it in with any real frankness that would draw attention to the fact (that he is conceding an antinomy). However the matter lay with Boyd's candor or lack thereof, he IS, in either event, left with inconsistency in his basic hermeneutical approach. For on the one hand Boyd appeals to logic to establish what language should mean according to “sequence,” yet finds (or at least we find) that he cannot apply that principle of logic to the whole of biblical truth of God’s eternality in time.
This is why in the last week, here on this thread, I have ‘harped’ on the claim that the grammatical-historical method of interpretation is the only linguistically consistent and singular approach to the Bible, though admittedly it, too, does not always solve logical problems for at least one of the same reasons Boyd’s does not (e.g., the antinomy we have been observing). But at least with the grammatical-historical method one can be consistent with language, by insisting on the normal meaning of words as they were normally understood by people at the time the Bible was Authored. IMO no other method achieves this consistency.
My guess about what will happen to Open Theistic apologetics in the future is that it will, even more strongly than today, revise certain words and concepts as it develops along in Evangelical thought. That is, even as Calvinism changes the meaning of words based on special pleading via the grammatical subject, or when otherwise that movement’s distinctives are at stake, so, too, should we expect a similar modus operandum from Open Theism, as it (presumably) faces severer criticism in the years ahead. In fact, one can see from his writings how Boyd has already thrown the grammatical-historical hermeneutic onto the rubbish pile, claiming that the word “foreknow” really means “fore-love,” which he does at the expense of (apparently) any sense of obligation to the historical meaning of the word, except for the "fore-" part.
So then, in light of the failure of Calvinist and Open Theist approaches to maintain consistency of method of interpretation, imo the only hermaneutic that can achieve linguistic faithfulness at all times, while showing it can apply to the whole of biblical truth, is the grammatical-historical hermeneutic. And so that is what I think we should insist upon.
Last edited by
DanielGracely on Fri Sep 24, 2010 7:56 am, edited 1 time in total.
