Of Human Freedom and the Sovereignty of God

How would you evaluate the basic tenets of Open Theism?

Wednesday, Jun. 24, 2009 Posted: 2:50:53PM HKT

These proposals are energetically refuted by a number of evangelical theologians, resulting in an impressive stream of publications. Significant criticisms of open theism include John Frame, No Other God: A Response to Open Theism (2001), Norman Geisler, Wayne House, and Max Herrera (Eds.), The Battle for God: Responding to the Challenge of Neotheism, Douglas Huffman and Eric Johnson (Eds.), God Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents God (2002), John Piper, Justin Taylor and Paul Helseth (Eds.), Beyond the Bounds: Open Theism and the Understanding of Biblical Christianity (2003). These authors defend the traditional concepts of God as sovereign and immutable against the revisionist approaches of the theologians of open theism.

The question raised by open theism is an important one, although the answer that it provides is theologically problematic. Theology must envision divine sovereignty in such a way that accords full integrity to the freedom that God has given to His rational creatures when He created them in His image. The problem with the proposal of the open theists is that while the latter (human freedom) is upheld, the former (divine sovereignty) is somewhat compromised. Of course, much has to do with the way in which we understand divine sovereignty and human free will.

These are important theological topics about which theologians have written voluminously. I will not be able to do justice to them in the limited space allotted for this column. But what can be said in response to open theism, albeit very briefly, is that while we must conceive of divine sovereignty in such a way that it does not negate human freedom, we must do so without denying divine omniscience or that God is in full control of the future.

In addition, while we must accord human freedom with its proper integrity, we must also recognise that human freedom is creaturely freedom. That is to say, while human freedom is real, it is also freedom that is qualified, limited, finite, and governed by many different circumstances. In other words, the profound relationship between divine sovereignty and human freedom cannot be treated as a zero-sum game.

Perhaps the most fundamental problem with open theism is that it treats the mystery of the relationship between God and human beings as a logical puzzle that must be solved. This is the general predilection of theology in the Western tradition. It is here that we can learn from Eastern orthodoxy, which emphasises the importance of human freedom without losing sight of the sovereignty of God and His unchanging purposes for the world.

Eastern orthodox theologians are able to humbly accept these truths without being compelled to offer a logical solution. In this way, Eastern orthodox theology shows itself to be more profound than certain versions of Western theology.

Dr Roland Chia is the Chew Hock Professor of Christian Doctrine at Trinity Theological College. This article was originally published in the June 2009 issue of Methodist Message and is reproduced here with permission.

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Dr Roland Chia
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