I’ll be responding to an article by Joe Sabo — along with the podcast discussion he recorded with Chris Fisher — written in response to my article on Open Theism. Joe Sabo is a contributor to the God is Open blog, so my focus will be primarily on the official positions and representative arguments found there. I will begin by addressing the philosophical issues he raises, followed by the biblical arguments. For context, I recommend reading both my original article and Sabo’s response before continuing with this piece.:

http://spirited-tech.com/COG/2018/12/27/why-im-not-an-open-theist/

https://godisopen.com/2019/01/17/re-why-i-am-not-an-open-theist/

For clarity, it’s important to note that Open Theists hold differing views on the nature of God’s knowledge. Joe Sabo has identified his own position as the involuntary nescience view — specifically, the “from below” variant:

• Voluntary Nescience: The future is alethically settled but nevertheless epistemically open for God because he has voluntarily chosen not to know truths about future contingents. It is thought Dallas Willard held this position.
• Involuntary Nescience: The future is alethically settled but nevertheless epistemically open for God because truths about future contingents are in principle unknowable. William Hasker, Peter Van Inwagen,^[45] and Richard Swinburne espouse this position.
• Non-Bivalentist Omniscience: The future is alethically open and therefore epistemically open for God because propositions about future contingents are neither true nor false. J. R. Lucas and Dale Tuggy espouse this position.
• Bivalentist Omniscience: The future is alethically open and therefore epistemically open for God because propositions asserting of future contingents that they ‘will’ obtain or that they ‘will not’ obtain are both false. Instead, what is true is that they ‘might and might not’ obtain. Greg Boyd holds this position.”
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_theism

1. Philosophical issues:

“This movement comes from the idea the propositions directed toward the future have no truth value because the proposition has no grounding and the future is pure contingency (open).”

This sentence would be a better representation of what I think Sire is trying to say if it read: “Because the future does not exist, some events that will obtain have no current truth value.” To say that “the future is pure contingency” is not exactly correct. It is the position of the Open Theist that the “future” is a mix of contingent events and settled events. I have yet to meet an Open Theist yet that would affirm that all future events are contingent, and while that person may exist, I would take issue with that claim.

The problem with Sabo’s alteration of my original statement is that I worded it deliberately to avoid entanglement in time-theory debates. His restatement assumes that Open Theism must affirm an A-theory of time, where the future is unreal. While many Open Theists would likely accept that framework, it’s not inconceivable that some might attempt to make a B-theory compatible with Open Theism. Furthermore, Sabo asserts that many Open Theists hold a mixed view — that the future contains both purely contingent events and settled events. Yet in a recent exchange I had with an Open Theist, they claimed that God can change His mind, making all events contingent. On that basis, it’s hard to see how Sabo can consistently maintain that any events are truly settled if God could, in principle, alter them.

Even within his own framework, a further difficulty emerges: how are “settled” events connected to “open” events? If a settled event depends on contingent events for its realization, the supposed fixity of the former is undermined. Take, for example, the birth of Jesus. Suppose this is considered a settled event. Mary’s parents could have died prematurely, never met, or never existed at all — so how can the birth be settled if the necessary conditions leading to it are contingent? The same problem extends to earlier generations: how do you have Jesus’ opponents without the Maccabean revolt? Moreover, how would God know, as far back as Abraham’s time, that Mary’s parents would meet and have a daughter named Mary, when those outcomes depend on countless contingent, human decisions? Given that each “necessary” event in Sabo’s model ultimately rests on a chain of purely contingent and random actions, his position seems incoherent.

“That leaves humans with the ultimate choice over the future.”

The premise is false. If the future is a mix of contingent and settled events, human influence only extends into the contingent areas insofar as human influence is able to influence them.

At this point, Sabo’s version of Open Theism begins to resemble fatalism. He posits future events that are, in effect, predestined in a manner similar to Calvinism, yet it remains unclear what grounds the truth of these future events. Are they “settled” by God’s direct will? Or are they fixed by some other mechanism? If these events are determined, will they occur regardless of all preceding contingent events?

This raises another serious question: in such determined events, are the agents still morally culpable for their actions? For instance, if Sabo holds that the crucifixion was a determined event, are those who participated in Christ’s death still morally responsible for murdering Him? Without a coherent account of how determination and contingency interact in his framework, these questions remain unanswered.

“They also tend to think Calvinism, Arminianism, and Molinism leaves God with being the sole culpable agent for the evils the world contains. This is because God was able and fully aware that evil would occur and yet didn’t stop or intervene to prevent evil. He was able and yet unwilling to stop evil”

Of the Theologies offered, Calvin Himself made God the author of evil, so to say that in Calvinism God is responsible for evil is not a stretch. It is a feature of the theology. Arminians and Molinists are able to resolve their Theodicy individually without making God responsible for evil. The Free Will Defense offered by Alvin Plantinga for example does this. Also, not all theodicies that are not “Open” state that God is able yet unwilling to stop evil. Furthermore, there are some theodicies that do state God is able to stop evil and are still able to absolve Him of the responsibility of creating it. In all honesty, I am not sure what the point of the quote above is. It does not convey the Open View, nor the opinion of all Open Theists.

Sabo commits a common error in these debates: conflating causal responsibility with moral responsibility. The “author of evil” charge against Calvinism has been addressed extensively elsewhere. Sabo appears to believe that Arminians and Molinists can solve the problem of evil and thereby exonerate God from responsibility for evil. Yet many Open Theists would disagree with him, insisting that if God foreknows the future exhaustively, this would entail determinism — and thus these other systems would face the same problem.

Sabo questions why I raise this point since, in his view, it does not apply to all Open Theists. The answer is simple: many prominent Open Theists do, in fact, hold the position I described. Given the variety of permutations within Open Theism, I focus on the more widely held versions rather than idiosyncratic outliers. While I also find the alternative theodicies of Arminianism and Molinism unconvincing, a full critique of those systems is a conversation for another time.

http://spirited-tech.com/COG/2018/02/04/molinism/

Sabo’s own website makes memes about the views above stating exactly what I’ve stated:

https://godisopen.com/2018/08/06/meme-monday-contingent-events/

“Furthermore, the philosophical Open theist view only has weight if you accept agents have libertarian freedom. To that Calvinist wisely reject and that is a problem for Arminians, Pelagians, and Molinism. The Calvinist can ground the truth value of future tensed propositions in the Will of God.”

To be honest, this statement is completely incoherent to me. I understand that Sire is simply dismissing libertarian free will within it, but there is no argument against libertarian free will, no logical basis given for it’s rejection, and no alternative offered. There is however, a list of theological positions. But again, there is no explanation of their inclusion or their relevance.

Joe Sabo questions why I would even raise this issue. Yet any philosophically minded Open Theist will immediately recognize it as part of the long-standing conundrum of future contingents — a problem that reaches back at least to Aristotle.

Future contingents are contingent statements about the future — such as future events, actions, states etc. To qualify as contingent the predicted event, state, action or whatever is at stake must neither be impossible nor inevitable. Statements such as “My mother shall go to London” or “There will be a sea-battle tomorrow” could serve as standard examples. What could be called the problem of future contingents concerns how to ascribe truth-values to such statements. If there are several possible decisions out of which one is going to be made freely tomorrow, can there be a truth now about which one will be made? If ‘yes’, on what grounds could something which is still open, nevertheless be true already now? If ‘no’, can we in fact hold that all logically exclusive possibilities must be untrue without denying that one of the possible outcomes must turn out to be the chosen one?

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/future-contingents/

First we should notice Aristotle’s solution. Aristotle is in no doubt that not everything that happens, happens of necessity. He accepts indeed (19a23–5) that “What is, necessarily is, when it is; and what is not, necessarily is not, when it is not.” But he goes on to say, “But not everything that is, necessarily is; and not everything that is not, necessarily is not.” So what is his solution? Here it must be said that there is more than one view. (Aristotle, Categories and De Interpretatione, 137–42). On one view he rejects the move from truth to necessity. That may indeed be the right move to make, but in what follows I shall take it that Aristotle actually offers a different solution, which, rightly or wrongly, I shall refer to as “the Aristotelian solution”. On this view his solution is to deny that it is necessary that the affirmation or the negation is true or false when this relates to things that do not happen of necessity. That is to say, his solution is that neither what the first person said in 1900 (“There will be a sea-battle on 1/1/2100.”) nor what the second person said (“There will not be a sea-battle on 1/1/2100.”) was true. What each person said was in fact neither true nor false. So we may represent the Aristotelian solution as one which rejects the law of bivalence:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fatalism/

For proponents of Molinism and Arminianism, the central difficulty lies in explaining what makes future contingents true. By contrast, the Calvinist can give a straightforward answer grounded in divine determinism, thereby avoiding the problem entirely. Arguments for Open Theism, however, hinge on whether human agents possess libertarian freedom. I highlight this contrast to help the reader see the fundamental difference in how our respective perspectives conceive of reality.

“If God doesn’t know everything then he can’t be the source of objective moral norms and obligations.”

It simply does not follow that the source of objective moral norms must “know everything”. Sire then makes some statements based upon this faulty assumption. It would take too much of my time to unpack them here.

In my original article, I provided reasons for thinking this conclusion follows. I wrote:

If God doesn’t know everything, then He cannot be the source of objective moral norms and obligations. He could simply be mistaken about what He thinks is wrong and later change His mind. Furthermore, He is changing, and the grounds of ethics must be an unchanging, omniscient, final authority.

This statement carries two major philosophical problems for Open Theism. First is the problem of moral skepticism: if God can be mistaken in His moral judgments, then human beings could find themselves in a host of ontological moral dilemmas in which even God is unable to determine which norm applies. In such a scenario, we could never reliably distinguish between a morally correct deity and a mistaken deity — leaving us unjustified in assuming His ethical pronouncements are true.

Second is a metaethical concern: moral norms and obligations are necessary, unchanging truths, but the Open Theist’s God is mutable and constantly changing. Such a being cannot provide the necessary, unchanging ontological foundation for ethics.

I also presented an argument from aseity. If God is the ultimate explanation for the universe, He must be a se — self-existent and independent of creation. The Open Theist’s God, however, is not a se; He depends on creation in order to know the future. But if reality is to be ultimately personal and ethical, then God must be independent of creation. This parallels Van Til’s argument for the Trinity from the problem of universals: if God is not self-existent, then He depends on something else for His existence. In Open Theism, that “something else” is chance — which becomes the ultimate explanation of reality, something in which both God and man participate. But if chance is ultimate, how could it generate binding moral norms and obligations at all?

“Furthermore, Open Theism undermines the notion that God is morally perfect or is a moral agent at all. An Open theist wishes to maintain it is logically impossible for God to sin. On the other hand, it wishes to teach that without the ability to choose otherwise(even contrary to desires or characters) an agent is a robot. If a man only does good actions because it is his nature to do good, then he is merely a mechanism. But they wish to maintain that God does only good deeds because of his holy character. This means God doesn’t have the choice to choose not to do evil because it is not a logically possible state of affairs. This means the open theist thinks that God is a mechanism and not an agent or he can possibly do evil. But if it is possible for God to do evil then at any moment he could become the greatest force of evil at any moment. Thus, he isn’t morally perfect being. “

There are two objections here.

If God can sin He isn’t morally perfect
If God can’t sin He isn’t a moral agent
The answer to the first objection is to point out that it is fallacious to say that if a being has the capacity to sin, that being is morally imperfect. If a being has the capacity to sin, yet never does, that being is morally perfect. By definition. To be morally perfect is to never sin, moral perfection speaks nothing of capacity.

Regarding the second objection, there are many Open Theists that affirm God has the capacity to commit moral evil. While this may sound offensive to some, it is consistent with the theology of openness. There are two other ways that are logically consistent with Open Theism that does not affirm God currently has the capacity to commit moral evil yet maintain His moral agency.

It could be said that God at some point in the past had the capacity to sin, but because He has chosen to do good consistently for thousands (hundreds of thousands, millions, billions?) of years, doing good is so much a part of His character that He has grown past the capacity for sin. For clarification, in this view, God has never chosen to do other than what is morally good, and because of this, He never will.
One could believe that all that is necessary for moral agency is for the moral agent in question to believe that they have the capacity to do otherwise. This view requires quite a bit of nuance in order to accurately articulate it and it is beyond my means to do so here.

This functions as a dilemma for the Open Theist. If he affirms that God can sin, then he cannot consistently affirm that God is necessarily morally perfect. If he denies that God can sin, then he undermines the libertarian conception of God’s moral agency. Joe Sabo takes the first horn, claiming that God remains morally perfect because He “hasn’t sinned so far.” But how could he know that God hasn’t sinned? My position is that God cannot sin — not merely that He has chosen not to up to this point. To say it is possible for God to sin is to grant that there is some possible world in which God does sin. This would mean that moral truths are not grounded in God, since such truths would have to be necessary, and yet God’s moral perfection would not be necessary.

The second horn of the dilemma tries to preserve God’s inability to sin while keeping it compatible with the claim that libertarian free will (LFW) is necessary for moral responsibility. One version of this is to say that God’s character has been conditioned over time to act as He does. But if God ever had the capacity for evil and simply chose good later in history, then moral truths collapse into theological subjectivism: whatever God chose — even if evil — would be “good” by definition. This would mean that any conceivable evil could be identical with goodness. If that conclusion is rejected, then the Open Theist must posit an external moral standard that God either follows or violates, in which case God is not the ultimate ground of moral truth. Worse still, under LFW, God could at any moment choose to alter His own character, which makes the notion of unchanging moral truths impossible.

Another possible move is to loosen the requirement that genuine LFW is necessary for moral agency, redefining moral responsibility so that an agent only needs to believe he possesses such freedom. But this view is naive and self-defeating for Open Theism. It is fully compatible with determinism, where agents may have the illusion of LFW while lacking it entirely, yet would still be held morally responsible. Even if LFW were illusory, I could be morally responsible merely because I thought I had it. But if mere belief in LFW suffices, why wouldn’t the same apply to God? Could He be morally responsible for His actions merely because He believes He has LFW, even if He doesn’t?

The absurdity becomes clear when applied to human cases. If LFW is real, but an atheist denies its existence, this view implies that he would not be morally culpable for any action — even rape, murder, or torture — because he does not believe he has LFW. That is highly counterintuitive. Moreover, if our minds are capable of producing such illusions without corresponding reality, why trust them at all? And if God Himself does not actually have LFW but merely thinks He does, why should we trust His moral judgments?

“Since God is ignorant of certain things then truth is above and higher than God.”

Truth is not something that can be higher or lower than something else. Truth is simply facts pertaining to reality.

Joe Sabo’s reply here is puzzling. He objects that “truth” cannot be “higher” or “lower” than something else, as though I were making a literal claim about physical elevation — “truth” as a kind of metaphysical water level. This completely misses the point that I was speaking metaphorically. Philosophers routinely use such metaphors — grounding, foundations, webs, and so on — to illustrate complex ideas. My point was that Sabo’s conception of truth effectively treats it as independent of God, standing apart from and above Him rather than being grounded in His nature and will.

“ A personal God thus isn’t the ultimate explanation of reality. The open theist won’t appeal to another God or to some impersonal force like fate. The sole guide of the reality for an Open Theist is impersonal chance.”

I do not understand how this statement logically follows from the statement about truth being higher than God.

I fail to see how this is not obvious. If God and truth are independent realities, then there must be some further fact that explains the relationship between them — some more basic, ultimate feature of reality. Since one is unlikely to posit another God to account for that relationship, the only remaining options are impersonal explanations, such as chance.

“If Libertarian freedom is the case, then at any moment a creature could’ve corrupted the words of the Old and New Testament. This leaves inerrancy up to chance and not to God’s overarching providence.”

This is at least the second time in his blogpost Sire appeals to something that “could’ve happened” as an argument. It seems as if Sire must invent an alternate universe where his points would be valid. The Open Theist trusts in the power of God, His wisdom, and His goodness to accomplish His purposes.

Given the possibility — and high probability — that human agents have corrupted the biblical text, your position leaves no secure basis for believing that Scripture contains God’s objective self-revelation. You may dismiss this as an “alternate universe” scenario, but you have no way to demonstrate that it is not, in fact, the actual world. The point is that your view ultimately collapses into biblical skepticism, which in turn undermines the very scriptural case for Open Theism itself.

2. Biblical issues:

I think the best place to begin is by acknowledging where I believe the author is correct. The facts of the verse in question may not directly address the issue, may be compatible with his particular form of Open Theism, or may be underdetermined in a way that allows for another form of Open Theism. Even if a verse explicitly stated that Jesus was all-knowing, it would not, by itself, refute Open Theism. Joe Sabo holds that God knows everything it is possible to know — all possibilities, everything that has happened in the past, and everything presently occurring. He also maintains that the future is not entirely open; certain events are settled, and God knows these as well.

I have already raised objections to the idea that an Open Theist can coherently claim any future event is settled, but for now, I will simply note that Sabo’s view does not entail that God knows all true propositions. That is not my immediate point here. Rather, it is useful to refresh our understanding of the perspective being defended before proceeding. I initially misstated my argument against this position, and I will now present it in the form I had originally intended.

“Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD” (Psalm 139:4).

Again, how this is a prooftext for God knowing anything other than what the Psalmist is going to say before he says it, I don’t know. However, I will address the thinking that God knowing what we will say before we say it somehow conflicts with the Open View. God has perfect present knowledge, and this includes chemical levels in the brain, firing of neurons, all past events in the chain of events that led to this present, as well as any number of factors that go into a word before it is said. Given a complete knowledge of an individual’s brain state, and the events leading up to the current brain state, it would not be difficult for God, as powerful and wise as He is, to know what someone will say before they say it.

According to Joe Sabo’s view, God cannot actually know in advance what the psalmist is going to say. God may know every fact leading up to the psalmist’s words, but — in Sabo’s framework — the psalmist himself determines what he will say, independently of those prior facts (so long as there is no coercive force). At most, God can know what the psalmist might say or might not say, but under the form of Open Theism Sabo affirms, there is no way for God to know with certainty what the psalmist will say.

“My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand—when I awake, I am still with you” (Psalm 139:15-16).

Again, at best this teaches God knew the days that were ordained for the Psalmist before the Psalmist was born. The verse does not say God operates this way with all humans, nor does it teach that God knows “all that will be.”

Once again, these statements appear incompatible with a God who does not know the future. How could God have a definite purpose for a person if He cannot know whether that person will be stabbed to death by his own mother, or if the psalmist might turn out to be an unbeliever? How could God truly number the psalmist’s days if his life could be cut short by some unforeseen agent? By contrast, Classical Theism — with its affirmation of God’s exhaustive foreknowledge — fits these statements far more naturally.

Even when unborn (“ when I was made in the secret place,” v. 15) and little more than a physical being (“ my frame”; lit., “my bone”) in the womb (“ when I was woven together in the depths of the earth”), the Lord had a purpose for the undeveloped embryo (“ my unformed body,” v. 16). The idea of purpose comes to expression more clearly in v. 16. The Lord’s writing in the book (cf. 51: 1; 69: 28) refers to God’s knowledge and blessing of his child “all the days” of his life (cf. Eph 2: 10). His life was written in the Book of Life, and each of his days was numbered.

VanGemeren, Willem A.. Psalms (The Expositor’s Bible Commentary) (Kindle Locations 28941-28945). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

In verse 16 the psalmist details the divine superintendence over his formation. He writes: “Your eyes saw my unformed body; all of them were written in your book, the days ordained for me, before one of them came to be.” The verb “saw” in this context has the nuance of “to oversee, superintend.”43 And what was being superintended was the fetus, the unformed body (”?;?;I is a shapeless form, rolled up ball, fetus). The next part of the verse is a little difficult because the suffix on “all of them” is proleptic, referring ahead to “days” in the second half of the verse—the days were written in the book.“ The “book” is a figurative reference to the omniscience of God (an implied comparison) because God does not need to write in a book the record of our lives. The word “days” is also figurative (a metonymy of subject), meaning the things that were done on the days (which would include the number of days as well). And modifying “days” is the verb “ordained” (a pual perfect, 113:); a relative pronoun must be supplied to form the smooth English rendering “which were ordained.”5 In this intensive stem, the psalmist is saying that the LORD planned all the activities of his life before he was even born.

Allen Ross-A Commentary on the Psalms: 90-150 (Kregel Exegetical Library)(Page 828-829).

Returning to Joe Sabo’s critique:

“From heaven the LORD looks down and sees all mankind; from his dwelling place he watches all who live on earth—he who forms the hearts of all, who considers everything they do” (Psalm 33:13-15).

“Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (Hebrews 4:13).

This sounds like God is looking down on Earth and considers all that they do. How this is a prooftext for God knowing “all that ever will be”, again, I do not see. If anything, this shows the opposite.

Does Joe Sabo imagine God as literally above us, looking down with physical eyes? If so, then to observe all of us at once, the earth would have to be flat. Does he therefore hold to an Ancient Near Eastern three-tiered cosmology? And if God has normal, human-like eyes, how exactly could He see through walls and buildings? What exegetical basis does Sabo offer for attributing to God a kind of “x-ray vision”?

The language in such passages is clearly picturesque, expressing the reality that God knows everything we have done and will do — as our eschatological Judge. God does not look at us in order to discover our thoughts and private mental states; He already knows them. Moreover, this sort of overly literal interpretation creates tension within Open Theism itself. If God can see and know everything from His supposed “higher vantage point,” then why would He need to “come down” to investigate the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah?

Gen 18:20-21 20 Then the Lord said, “Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave, 21 I will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me. And if not, I will know.”

This is yet another so-called “Open Theist text” that actually undercuts the Open Theist position. If God is not fully aware of everything presently occurring in creation, then the very passages Joe Sabo appeals to end up disproving his own view. Moreover, I suspect that other Open Theists cite these same verses — and it is quite possible that Sabo himself does so as well:

Genesis 3:8-13, 4:9-10

8 They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 Then the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 He said, “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.” 11 And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” 12 The man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.” 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” And the woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

9 Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” And he said, “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?” 10 He said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to Me from the ground.

“Whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything” (1 John 3:20).

Of all the verses offered, this is the only one that I can understand someone interpreting and saying that God knows “all that will ever be.” However, if we use a little logic and common sense, we will see that it does not. When John says God knows “everything” he does not mean God knows the moon is made of cheese, or that He knows Adam didn’t eat of the fruit, or that all humans can breath underwater. God “knowing everything” is to be understood as God knowing the truth about reality. That is to say that God’s knowledge of reality lines up perfectly with the facts of reality. In the Open View, this is not to say that God knows “all that will ever be” because the future is not comprised of a list of settled events that will obtain, but; a mix of events that will obtain either because God has determined they will or they are causally determined and events that will or will not obtain. In short that future is made up of events that will happen and events that might happen. If this is the truth about reality then God would know it as such. Events that will obtain would be known by God as events that will obtain and events that might or might not obtain will be known by God as events that might or might not obtain. We affirm John 3:20.

This is a verse I agree can be compatible with certain forms of Open Theism. However, if one were to suppose that some Open Theists believe the future is in principle knowable but that God simply does not know it, then such a view would be incompatible with this verse. In any case, that interpretation does not even align with Joe Sabo’s own position. According to the definition of Open Theism given on his website:

God forgets His people’s sin for God’s own sake (Isaiah 43:25).

https://godisopen.com/

In the podcast, Chris Fisher appears to push back against this interpretation by appealing to a parallel text where the same phrase is used without implying omniscience. The passage in question is 1 John 2:20, and his argument hinges on a possible variant reading of the text — one that some scholars accept and others reject.

The result of having the chrisma is that (lit.) “you all know,” a phrase that seems to hang incomplete without a direct object. This lack of an object no doubt motivated the textual variant “all things” (πάντα) found in the majority of manuscripts. However, the sense of the more difficult reading in context is probably close to the English phrase, “you are in the know,” which means that John recognizes his original readers have the knowledge required for them to understand what is going on. Many English translations insert “you all know the truth,” borrowing the object from the next verse. This may imply that those who went out were claiming some special knowledge of Christ and God that conflicted with “what was from the beginning” (1:1 – 4). Dodd argued that the chrisma was the Word of God that is the objective testimony to the truth, for John exhorts his readers to allow the chrisma to remain in them (2:27), just as he spoke of the Word of God remaining in them (2:14).13 It is certainly true that the inscripturated Word of God is the objective standard of truth against which all claims of spiritual knowledge must be measured. However, since the antichrists emerged from the Christian church, it is likely they too used Scripture to support their heretical views, a practice that has persisted throughout the church’s history to this very day.
Furthermore, John seems to be speaking of something internal to his readers that allows them to discern the truth against falsehood. Theologically speaking, both the objective, external Word of God and the inward, effectual call of the Holy Spirit are needed for genuine spiritual rebirth. Theologians have referred to that initial call of the Spirit that brings one to faith as “effectual calling,” and the ongoing work of the Spirit with respect to Scripture as “illumination.” John’s use of chrisma seems to imply both ideas. By contrast, those antichrists who went out, departing not only physically from the congregation but also from the apostolic truth, had not received the inward work of the Holy Spirit that permitted them to discern error from truth. Despite participating in the church, they were still spiritually blind and walking in darkness. As Marshall puts it, “the antidote to false teaching is the inward reception of the Word of God, administered and confirmed by the work of the Spirit.”14

Arnold, Clinton E.; Jobes, Karen H.. 1, 2, and 3 John (Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament) (Kindle Locations 3154-3172). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

Furthermore, even if the text does read “know everything,” the scope of that phrase is clearly limited by its context.

²⁷ The anointing you received from God abides in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you this. Instead, because God’s anointing teaches you about everything and is true and not a lie, abide in him, as he taught you to do.

In context, these statements refer to the various heresies that had arisen and drawn people away from the Christian community. The “everything” they had been taught is not an exhaustive body of all knowledge, but rather the core apostolic teaching — including doctrines such as the physical resurrection. As Kruse notes:

As noted above, the reference to ‘all things’ here needs to be understood in the context, where the subject under discussion is the denial that Jesus is the Christ, God’s Son come in the flesh. Nothing the readers need to know about these matters has to be learned from the secessionists. Everything they need to know is taught them by the anointing they have received.

Kruse, C. G. (2000). The letters of John (p. 108). Grand Rapids, MI; Leicester, England: W.B. Eerdmans Pub.; Apollos.

The statement in 1 John 3:20 is a bit different as it comes in a conversation about how Christians should love one another. God transcends the hearts of people. This is to say that God in his omniscience is to comfort believers and yet to incentivize loving your Christian brothers and sisters. Dr. Tony Costa also gave some comments about this line of argument:

http://spirited-tech.com/2021/10/09/dr-tony-costa-on-1-john-320/

Returning To Sabo’s article:

There is much that can be said about the interpretation offered by Sire here. For the sake of brevity and succinctness, I am going to quote Greg Boyd.

“This text has frequently been used to support the view that all things happen in accordance with God’s counsel and will. But this reads too much into the text. This passage says that all that God accomplishes is “according to his counsel and will,” not that all that takes place is God’s accomplishment in accordance with his counsel and will.

Scripture is clear that much of what takes place in this world is not God’s will. God detests sin and the gratuitous suffering it produces. But in all things — including evil things — God is at work to further his sovereign purpose as much as possible. Whatever God accomplishes is consistent with “his counsel and will” which Paul specifies as centering on acquiring a people for himself who ‘have obtained an inheritance…in Christ.’”

The first point raised in the podcast is that the phrase “all things” does not mean everything that has ever existed, but rather refers only to things that presently exist. This interpretation is presented both in the podcast and on the God is Open website:

God works “all things” after the counsel of His will. To what does “all things” refer? Is this a reference to “everything that ever happens”? If so, why does Paul exhort his readers to “imitate God” (v5:1) or to walk worthy of their calling (v4:1). If God is controlling everything, why does Paul talk as if people have their own volition?

Perhaps “all things” refers to the things God does. When Paul becomes “all things to all men” (1Co 9:22), Paul is not saying he becomes a beach ball or a kitten. Instead he is saying that in all his interactions, he becomes flexible. In the same way, Ephesians 1:11 could be saying “in all things that God does, God gives thought.”

https://godisopen.com/2019/01/11/ephesians-111-commentary-2/

I argued that the best way to interpret the phrase “all things” is to determine its meaning from the immediate context. This section begins in verse 3, where Paul declares that, because of Christ, we have received “every spiritual blessing.” The following verses unpack this statement: our election “in Him” before the foundation of the world (v. 4), our predestination in love to be adopted as God’s children (v. 5) according to His will, and our redemption through His Son. All of this, Paul says, God has lavishly poured out on all those whom He has elected.

Verses 1:9c–10c contains one of the central statements of the opening benediction and of the epistle as a whole.187 The incarnate Son as Messiah is the center of the Trinitarian God’s redemptive work. This is what Paul means when he says that God’s disclosed will and good pleasure (vv. 9a–b) was “to sum up all things in the Messiah” (ἀνακεφαλαιώσασθαι τὰ πάντα ἐν τῷ Χριστῷ, anakephalaiōsasthai ta panta en tō Christō, v. 10b).188 The prophecies of Pss 2; 110 and elsewhere lead us here.189 Christ’s messianic work is a royal, forceful conquest over all “the things in heaven and things on earth in him” (v. 10c), “not only in this age but also in the age to come” (1:21), and thus God has acted definitively in the Messiah to bring world history to a climax in “the fullness of (all) eras” (v. 10a). Paul uses a more philosophical term than ἀνακεφαλαιόω (anakephalaioō) in Col 1:17 for the same idea when he says that all things of the first creation and of the new creation “subsist” in Christ.190 The work of Christ on the cross is the central axis for the history of all creation, whether in heaven or on earth (v. 10c), since he has redeemed his people with his blood (1:7) and silenced all hostile powers (cf. 1:19–23; 3:10; Hodge, 48–55; Hoehner, 219–22). Christ’s work as the central act in all history is also implied in the reference in v. 10 to the “fullness of (all) eras” (καιροί, kairoi), which is tantamount to saying ‘the fulfillment of all time’ (cf. Rom 5:6; Gal 4:4; Hoehner, 218–19, 301–4; Barth, 1:128–30). In some Greek conceptions—most notably that of Plato—time was regarded as a great cycle that kept revolving back on itself. But the Judaeo-Christian view expressed here is that history has an ultimate, cosmic goal, when all things will be consummated into a new creation (cf. on 2:10). Christ’s coming has inaugurated that great event in ways that are still veiled yet irrevocably present.

Steven M. Baugh. Ephesians: Evangelical Exegetical Commentary. Lexham Press. .

The problem with the Open Theist interpretation is that the passage is addressing the overarching purpose of history, not merely present realities. Its focus is eschatological, bringing both ages — the Jewish concept of “this present evil age” and “the age to come” — to their intended culmination. The following verse reinforces this emphasis, with “all things” (ta panta) carrying the same universal, purpose-driven, eschatological scope as in the preceding verse.

προορισθέντες κατὰ πρόθεσιν τοῦ τὰ πάντα ἐνεργοῦντος κατὰ τὴν βουλὴν τοῦ θελήματος αὐτοῦ, “having been predestined in accordance with the plan of him who carries out all things according to the purpose of his will.” With the use of two prepositional phrases beginning with κατά and a genitive construction linking two synonymous nouns, this clause heavily underlines that believers’ appointment in Christ to their destiny is part of God’s sovereign purpose. It repeats the earlier emphasis on predestination and the divine will (cf. v 5 and the comments above on προορίζειν and θέλημα). Here this notion is reinforced with the additional nouns πρόθεσις (cf. προέθετο v 9 and Rom 8:28; 9:11 where πρόθεσις is also used in the context of election) and βουλή (signifying “purpose” in the sense of “decisive resolve”) and with the description of God as the one who carries out or works all things according to his own will (cf. 1 Cor 12:6; Rom 8:28). God’s unconditional freedom is affirmed, for whatever he has purposed is sure to be fulfilled.

Lincoln, Dr. Andrew T.. Ephesians, Volume 42 (Word Biblical Commentary). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

“Having been predestined according to His purpose.” The verb “predestined” also appears in verse 5. The term “purpose” is from the noun, prothesis—from pro (“before”) and tithēmi (“to place or set”). Thus, lexically, “to set or place before, for a particular purpose, predestined purpose” (see also in Rom. 8:28; 9:11; 2 Tim. 1:9). Additionally, the term is used to denote the setting forth of the consecrated bread in the temple before the Lord (Mark 2:26; Heb. 9:2).

“Who works all things after the counsel of His will.” The verb translated, “accomplishes” is energountos—from the verb energeō, which is a compound word from ergon (“work”) and the preposition en (“in, by”), which intensifies the verb. The literal translation of the participle would be, “working, energizing, operating” (see the usage of the same verb at 1 Cor. 12:6; Eph. 2:2; and Phil. 2:13 [twice]). Hence, God is energizing all things after the council of His own will.

“All things.” The Greek reads, ta panta, “the all things.” Note that the article (ta, “the”) and adjective (panta, “all”) are in the neuter gender, thus denoting “the all things” inclusively. The same neuter phrase is used in Colossians 1:16-17: ¹⁶ “For by Him all things [ta panta] were created – all things [ta panta] have been created through Him and for Him. ¹⁷ He is before all things, and in Him all things [ta panta] hold together.” Along with these passages, John 1:3, 10; Hebrews 1:10-12; and 2:10, robustly present, as Paul did, the Son as the agent of creation—namely, the Creator of all things. God is the ultimate cause of all things. There is nothing that exists outside of the category of ta panta, “the all things,” which God causes, ordains, decrees, and energizes after the council of His own will.

“After the counsel of His will.” The term “counsel” is translated from boulē. Here the term expresses the divine plan, purpose, and intention of God—namely, “according” to His sovereign counsel and predetermined purpose. Note Acts 2:23, which contains the same term (boulē), “This Man, delivered over by the predetermined PLAN [boulē] and foreknowledge of God.”

The one article (“the”) before the first noun (“plan”) and not the second (“foreknowledge”) grammatically shows that God’s “foreknowledge” is established in His hōrismenē boulē (“predetermined plan/decree”). In other words, “God’s decrees are not based on Him simply foreknowing what human beings will do; rather, humanity’s actions are based on God’s foreknowledge and predetermined plan” [2] (esp. Rom. 8:29-30). In fact, the same noun (boulē), with the same force, is used in Acts 4:27-28:

²⁷ For truly in this city there were gathered together against Your holy servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, ²⁸ to do whatever Your hand and Your PURPOSE [boulē] predestined to occur.

https://christiandefense.org/general/the-sovereignty-of-god-ephesians-111/

Chris Fisher attempts to turn this verse back against the Calvinist, claiming that it teaches God is not arbitrary in His actions. If Calvinism were true, he argues, then God would be choosing people arbitrarily. However, this is a misrepresentation of the Calvinist position. As Dr. Greg Welty explains:

If election is unconditional, then it must be arbitrary, random, and therefore lacking in wisdom. Not at all, and here it’s clear the critic is involved in a non sequitur of some sort. It does not follow from the fact that God’s reason is not grounded in the creature, that therefore God doesn’t have a reason for his choice. We must not infer from our own ignorance of God’s reasons, that therefore God doesn’t have a reason. The issue here is parallel to that of creation. Why did God create the earth with its particular size, with its particular distribution of chemical elements, with its particular number of fellow planets in the solar system? Why did God create us such that we are capable of seeing the range of colors we do see, and no more or less? To be honest, I have no idea (and neither do you). Presumably, God had lots of options here, on these and an infinite number of other details. But does it follow from our ignorance as to why God created as he did, that therefore God’s act of creation was arbitrary, random, and lacking wisdom? Of course not.
Likewise with respect to the particularities of providence. Why did God choose Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees, rather than Joe Schmoe out of Babylon? Why did God have the disciples catch 153 fish rather than 154 (Jn 21:11)? To these and similar questions, I don’t have the slightest clue. Does it follow from my ignorance that therefore God didn’t have a reason? No. All that follows is that I am ignorant. Likewise with respect to election. Why does God choose this one for salvation, and pass over that one? In general, because of his love and his justice, respectively. But why did his love result in that particular choice, of that particular person? I don’t know. It doesn’t follow from the Calvinistic claim – that God does not elect according to foreseen faith or merit – that therefore God has no reason for choosing to do what he does. For all we know, God does have a reason (perhaps a very, very complex reason, involving a multitude of greater goods) for choosing as he does. All the Calvinist is saying is that, whatever that reason might be, it has nothing to do with the foreseen faith or merit of the sinner who is elected to heaven.
So as a philosopher, the fallacy in this criticism is easy to spot. It illegitimately makes inferences from epistemology to metaphysics, in this case, from our lack of knowledge of reality to a lack in reality itself. In general, it doesn’t follow from the fact that I don’t know what God’s reason is for something (or from the fact that God’s reason isn’t X), that therefore God doesn’t have any reasons. So advocates of unconditional election can continue to affirm that election “is the glorious display of God’s sovereign goodness, and is infinitely wise, holy, and unchangeable” (BF&M, ibid., V).23

Election and Calling: A Biblical/Theological Study(Page 10-11).

The third objection he raises is against my polemical point regarding paganism, in which agents can resist the will of the gods. He appeals to Greek fatalism, noting that no one can resist their fate. While that is true, it misses the point I was making: in paganism, individuals can and do resist the will of the gods, and even the gods themselves are depicted as being subject to the Fates. By contrast, one of the recurring themes throughout the biblical text is that the true God has no competing powers — nothing outside Himself to which He is subject.

[vv11-12] Paul ever so strongly emphasizes that God is not responding to events as they unfold with various countermeasures, but that he has a carefully designed plan that he is revealing and fulfilling, especially as it relates to the choosing and redeeming of his people. Here he uses three different words to express the fact that he has a plan (prothesis, boule, and thelema). It is difficult to find shades of differences between the three words, especially as they appear in this context. It is better to recognize a rhetorical stress on God’s sovereignty.
It is also important for the readers to know that God has the power (energeo) to put his plan into effect. The power of God is a major theme in this letter, and Paul here introduces it by emphatically asserting that God will powerfully unfold his plan as he has willed it and against any conceivable opposition. To ward off any doubt, Paul explains that God works out “everything” (ta panta) according to his purpose. C. Arnold, Ephesians (Zondervan 2010), 79. 90

“Remember the former things, those of long ago; I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me. I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please” (Isaiah 46:9-10).

“Who can fathom the Spirit of the LORD, or instruct the LORD as his counselor? Whom did the LORD consult to enlighten him, and who taught him the right way? Who was it that taught him knowledge, or showed him the path of understanding?” (Isaiah 40:13-14).

Since a correct definition of the Open View tells us that some events that will obtain are contingent and some events that will obtain and settled, it is within the scope of the Open View for God to disseminate to humans, with certainty, settled aspects of the future. It is even possible within the Open View for God to disseminate contingent events, though, because the events in question are contingent there is an opportunity for a prophecy to fail or go unfulfilled, as we do read about in the Bible. What this text does not say, is that God knows for certain all events that will obtain. There is a difference between saying some things about the future and saying all things about the future. Also, God stating that His purpose will stand is not a revelation of His knowledge, but a statement of His power.

I have no idea how this is supposed to be a prooftext for God knowing everything that will ever happen.

The context of Isaiah 40–48 is a sustained polemic against false gods and idols. Much like the Law’s test for discerning a false prophet (Deut. 18:21–22), the Lord sets clear criteria for distinguishing the true God from false ones — namely, asking whether they can declare what will happen in the future and explain why events of the past have occurred. One of the features that sets Yahweh apart from all other so-called gods is precisely that they do not know the future. Isaiah also underscores God’s uniqueness through additional claims, such as His role as the Creator of all things, weaving these into a broader “uniqueness theology” that pervades the section.

Isaiah 41:21-24

21“Present your case,” the Lord says.
“Bring forward your strong arguments,”
The King of Jacob says.
22 Let them bring forth and declare to us what is going to take place;
As for the former events, declare what they were,
That we may consider them and know their outcome.
Or announce to us what is coming;
23 Declare the things that are going to come afterward,
That we may know that you are gods;
Indeed, do good or evil, that we may anxiously look about us and fear together.
24 Behold, you are of no account,
And your work amounts to nothing;
He who chooses you is an abomination.

God affirms not only that He knows the future, but also that He — as the one true God — actively directs the course of history. This claim cannot be reduced to foreknowledge of merely a few isolated events, as Joe Sabo suggests. Such a restriction is both exegetically unwarranted and inconsistent with the sweeping scope of God’s sovereignty portrayed in the text.

Rather than spelling out a long list of specific things God has done (as in 44:24-28), a general principle is explained that covers all his actions. In stark contrast to the idols that cannot even speak, much less tell the future (46:7), God is “the one who declares” (the participle; NIV, “make known”) what has not yet happened, as well as what he will accomplish in the end. This refers to his revelation of future events to people. He is “the one who says” (the participle ) something and it happens (Gen 1 illustrates this point). There should be no doubt about his future plans, for his purposes will be accomplished;656 he does everything that he pleases. This correlation between his plans and what happens proves God’s faithfulness and reliability.
In reality, people and nations are not the ones who determine the course of history; God is the one who plans and directs what will happen. The veracity of these plans is evident in the course of history, for some of the statements that God made in 14:24-27 have already been fulfilled. God stated that his plan and purpose was to crush Assyria, and he did that when his angel destroyed 185,000 Assyrian troops outside the walls of Jerusalem (37:36). His plans involved not just what will happen to the Israelites; he has plans for all the nations of the world, and nothing can stop him from accomplishing his will (10:5-6; 22:11; 30:1-5; 37:26). Although it may sometimes seem like this world is going to self-destruct because of the wars and terrible atrocities people inflict on one another, the world is not drifting aimlessly out of control toward a hopeless end. Kings and presidents may try to strategize and work together to direct the political affairs of the nations, but in reality it is the sovereign power of God’s hand that will bring his plans (not ours) to fruition. Although there is evidence that the end will come with uncontrollable death and destruction (4:1-23; 34:1-15; Dan 7-8), afterward God will transform this world and its people in order to establish his holy kingdom for his people (2:1-5; 4:2-6; 25:1-26:6; 30:18-26; 35:1-10; 45:18-25). What he originally planned will appear; what pleases him will stand forever.

Smith, Gary V.. The New American Commentary – Isaiah 40-66: 15B (Kindle Locations 7226-7242). B&H Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Make known, say and summon (11) are all participles (‘ making known’ etc.), indicating continuity in history, with past, present and future respectively proceeding from the one, unique God. He dictates the purpose within history (end is ‘outcome’). Ancient times is better ‘beforehand’. He dictates what will happen (still to come is ‘things which have not been done’). He is sovereign, his purpose/‘ plan/ counsel’ is inalterable and is the product not of whim but of his pleasurable will (all that I please). In a word, he is a God who is God.

Motyer, J. Alec. The Prophecy of Isaiah: An Introduction & Commentary (Kindle Locations 10607-10611). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.

In response to the second verse I mentioned, Joe Sabo claimed he did not understand how Isaiah 40:13–14 could be taken as evidence that God knows everything — or, more precisely, that God possesses exhaustive foreknowledge. The problem lies in his misunderstanding of the nature of evidence. The text affirms that God does not need to consult anyone in order to possess moral wisdom or knowledge. This fits quite naturally with the view that God’s wisdom and knowledge are self-sufficient and do not depend on any external source — a truth entirely consistent with, and supportive of, exhaustive foreknowledge.

It is commonly understood that what is being conveyed in the verse above is that Yahweh never thought to command Israel to engage in child sacrifice. The NLT gets this right:

“They have built pagan shrines to Baal in the valley of Ben-Hinnom, and there they sacrifice their sons and daughters to Molech. I have never commanded such a horrible deed; it never even crossed my mind to command such a thing. What an incredible evil, causing Judah to sin so greatly!”

Sire is right to correct those that would try to use this verse as a prooftext of “God not knowing the future”, however, his correction is not needed here.

In the podcast, Chris Fisher argued that this passage still poses a problem for Calvinists because they maintain that God has decreed everything — which, on their view, would include decreeing the horrific act of children being burned in pagan worship. The problem is that both Fisher and Sabo equivocate here, conflating God’s causal decrees with His moral decrees. God’s causal decree is descriptive — ordaining all that comes to pass — whereas His moral decrees are prescriptive, expressing what ought to be done.

Interestingly, I agree with their observation that this passage is not about God’s ignorance of the future, and in that respect their interpretive method seems to align with my own reading. However, there is a tension in their approach: a recurring argument in their view is that God’s repentance or anger implies He did not foresee a given event. If they were consistent, they would have to say the same here — that God’s moral outrage at these acts likewise implies He did not foresee them.

For example, in the article they cite Gregory Boyd, who interprets the passage in this way:

As in Jeremiah 19:5, the Lord expresses his dismay over Israel’s paganism by saying they did this “though I did not command them, nor did it enter my mind that they should do this abomination.”

If this abomination was eternally foreknown to God, it’s impossible to attribute any clear meaning to his confession that this abomination did not enter into his mind. Conversely, if the Lord’s confession of dismay is completely sincere in this verse, it seems we should deny that God foreknows all future free decisions.

https://reknew.org/2008/01/what-is-the-significance-of-jeremiah-3235/

While Fisher and Sabo may disagree with Boyd’s interpretation of this specific passage, I do not see how they can do so consistently. They operate from the same basic hermeneutic as Boyd. It is comparable to a biblical geoscientist who affirms a geocentric model on the basis of Scripture while insisting that the Bible does not teach a flat earth — the underlying interpretive method leads to both conclusions, even if one is selectively rejected.

Moreover, rejecting Boyd’s reading here undermines their own view of God’s knowledge. Joe Sabo maintains that God knows all possibilities, yet this passage — interpreted from an Open Theist perspective — implies that God did not even consider this event as a possibility. Fisher adds another difficulty by pointing out that God appears surprised this is happening. But this too creates tension with Sabo’s theology: if God knew this was a possibility, and even foresaw it as likely, why would He be genuinely surprised?

Further weight is added by the biblical evidence from prophecy, as noted by theologians such as Dr. John Frame. Prophecy consistently displays God exercising exhaustive foreknowledge of the future, often with intricate detail. Such knowledge would be impossible on Sabo’s view of God’s limited foreknowledge.

I believe, however, that, besides prophecies of these kinds, there are others that (1) do not merely state divine intentions but depend for their fulfillment on human choices, (2) imply that God’s decision determines those human choices, and (3) are not merely conditional.

Consider, as examples, the early prophecies of the history of God’s people, given by God to Noah (Gen. 9:26-27), Abraham (Gen. 15:13-16), Isaac (Gen. 27:27-29, 39-40), Jacob (Gen. 49:1-28, Balaam (Num. 23-24), and Moses (Deut. 32:1-43, 33:1-29). Here God announces (categorically, not conditionally), many centuries ahead of time, the character and history of the patriarchs and their descendants. These prophecies anticipate countless free decisions of human beings, long before any had the opportunity to form their own character.

In 1 Sam. 10:1-7, the prophet Samuel tells King Saul that after he leaves Samuel he will meet three men, and later a group of prophets. Samuel tells him precisely what the three men will be carrying and the events of the trip. Clearly here God through Samuel anticipates in detail the free decisions of the unnamed men and prophets, as well as the events of the journey. Compare a similarly detailed account of an enemy’s war movements in Jer. 37:6-11.

In 1 Kings 13:1-4, God through a prophet tells the wicked King Jeroboam that God will later raise up a faithful king, Josiah by name. This prophecy occurs three hundred years before the actual birth of King Josiah. Compare references in Isa. 44:28-45:13 to the Persian King Cyrus over a hundred years before Cyrus’s birth.32 Many marriages, many combinations of sperm and egg, many human decisions are necessary in order for these precise individuals to be conceived, born, raised to the throne, and to fulfill these prophecies. These texts assume that God knows how all these contingencies will be fulfilled. The same is true of Jer. 1:5, in which God knows Jeremiah before he is in the womb and appoints him as a prophet. Compare also the conversation between Elisha and the Syrian Hazael in 2 Kings 8:12, and the detailed future chronology in Dan. 9:20-27 of the affairs of empires and the coming of the Messiah.

Scripture is not unclear as to how God gets this extraordinary knowledge. God knows, as I said earlier, because he controls all the events of nature and history by his own wise plan. God has made everything according to his wisdom (Psm. 104:24), and he works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will (Eph. 1:11). Therefore, God knows all about the starry heavens (Gen. 155, Psm. 147:4, Isa. 40:26, Jer. 33:22) and about the tiniest details of the natural world (Psm. 50:10-11, 56:8, Matt. 10:30). “God knows” is an oath-like utterance (2 Cor. 11:11, 12:2-3) that certifies the truth of human words on the presupposition that God’s knowledge is exhaustive, universal, and infallible. God’s knowledge is absolute knowledge, a perfection; so it elicits religious praise (Psm. 139:17-18, Isa. 40:28, Rom. 11:33-36).

So God “knows everything” (1 John 3:20). And,

Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account. (Heb. 4:13).

Does that knowledge include exhaustive knowledge of the future? Given the inadequacy of the open theist arguments, the strong emphasis in Scripture on God’s unique knowledge of the future, and the biblical teaching that God’s plan encompasses all of history, we must say yes.

https://frame-poythress.org/open-theism-and-divine-foreknowledge/

3. Further Thoughts:

It appears they are willing to concede that God has a physical body. This raises serious questions about how such a claim fits with Trinitarian theology. Do they believe the three Persons of the Trinity share a single human body? Has God always possessed a body? They appeal to the incarnation as an example of God having a body, but the case of Christ is unique: He possesses two distinct natures — one divine and one human. To deny that distinction would force them into contradictions, such as claiming that Christ was omnipotent and not omnipotent at the same time and in the same way.

If they truly believe in a physical-bodied God, do they imagine the Father, Son, and Spirit as a three-headed physical being? Or are they conceived as three separate bodies? This raises further questions about whether their view of God is even consistent with Trinitarianism. In fact, based on a passing remark in the podcast, I suspect Joe Sabo may actually be a Unitarian.

I also remain unsure whether they take God’s physical descriptions in Scripture literally or see them as anthropomorphic. If they affirm that God is physical, that would undermine my objection that such descriptions are metaphorical, but it would also open a host of other philosophical questions: Do they hold to some form of materialism? Do they believe God is spatially located?

Another point raised in the discussion is that some Open Theists claim God is still culpable for the evils that have befallen humanity. I suspect Sabo and Fisher do not hold this position, but if they did, it would mean conceding that God has done genuinely evil acts. How, then, would they preserve the holiness of God? This leaves me wondering exactly where Sabo and Fisher stand — perhaps they disagree with each other on this matter.

Finally, Open Theists often argue that God tests individuals to see if they trust Him. They point to Genesis 22, where Abraham is commanded to offer Isaac as a sacrifice. At the climax of the account, Abraham is stopped, and God says:

12 He said, “Do not stretch out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.”

The issue pointed out by Frame and Ware is that if God has knowledge of the present then God could’ve looked at Abraham and knew what was in his heart. As Sabo and Fisher maintain he does in other texts. Fisher interacts with this point on his website:

https://godisopen.com/2014/01/23/apologetics-thursday-now-i-know-god/

1. If God literally needed to test Abraham to find out what was in Abraham’s heart, then His ignorance was not of the future, but of the present.

Setting aside the fact that some Open Theists maintain that God can choose what He wants to know, even in the present, this argument still does not hold.

No, the knowledge God was trying to test was not “present knowledge”. Abraham’s heart was not a computer program that God could look into to see the free will results based on hypothetical criteria. The only way to know what someone would really do is to test them. God was seeing how Abraham would handle a loyalty test. God stops Abraham at the last possible moment (when the knife is raised) because at any second Abraham could have chose to disobey.

The problem with his first point — that some Open Theists may believe God lacks even present knowledge of creation — is that even Chris Fisher affirms such knowledge is biblical. That option is therefore already ruled out. His second point seems to suggest that God cannot simply look at a person’s heart to see if their faith is genuine, but must instead send them a test to determine it. The difficulty here is that Fisher appears to contradict himself. On the one hand, he affirms that God can know the hearts of men and be in such a personal relationship with them that He even knows what they will say before they say it (Psalm 139:1–4). On the other hand, when such knowledge would undermine his interpretation, he denies it. Moreover, Scripture contains a wealth of passages affirming that God knows the hearts of men:

1 Samuel 16:7
But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.

Psalm 44:21
Would not God discover this? For he knows the secrets of the heart.

Psalm 139:23-24
Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!

Acts 15:8
And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us,

Fisher misses the point. John Frame is not claiming that God can deduce Abraham’s future actions merely by presently examining his heart, but rather that God could look into Abraham’s heart and see whether he is presently fearing God. If one holds that a true believer cannot fall away, then God could reasonably infer that Abraham would remain faithful. If this is denied, however, then even after Abraham’s demonstration, Fisher would still have to say that Abraham could walk away from God at any moment. Would God, then, need to require Abraham to sacrifice his son every year to confirm that he remained a God-fearer?

Fisher responds to Frame’s third point:

3. Third, if God is trying to find out whether Abraham will be faithful in the future, he is trying to know Abraham’s libertarian free choices in advance, which, on the openness view, not even God can know.

This last point could only come from the mind of a Calvinist. When students are tested in school, what this is measuring is how likely they will perform on similar material in the future. The long term trends produce reliability (not perfect certainty) of the results. Employers do not “know” the future free actions of these students, but use grades to predict how skilled of a worker those students will be. God does the same.

Frame demonstrates the futility of the Open Theist interpretation. As I pointed out, if God wanted to know whether Abraham was a God-fearer, He could have simply looked into his heart — as Scripture repeatedly affirms He does. The Open Theist reading treats the account as though God were acting irrationally, attempting to know the unknowable. Nothing in that present moment could guarantee Abraham’s continued faithfulness.

Fisher appeals to the “predictive value” of Abraham’s actions, suggesting that God could infer from them a high probability of ongoing faithfulness. But this fails within an Open Theist framework. Under libertarian free will, future choices have no predictive certainty. At any moment, Abraham could choose otherwise. A person could live as a model citizen every day without any hint of being a criminal, yet — all things being equal — choose to commit a heinous act the next day.

Another related issue in Open Theism is the nature of God’s repentance. Many Open Theists cite passages that speak of God repenting, while critics point to other passages affirming that God does not repent. For example, here is Chris Fisher’s handling of 1 Samuel 15:29:

To the Calvinist who believes that 1 Sam 15 is a good prooftext for immutability:

1Sa 15:29 And also the Strength of Israel will not lie nor relent. For He is not a man, that He should relent.”

Is it possible that 1 Sam 15:29 is limited to the context (God is saying He will not repent of repenting of making Saul king) and that 1Sa 15:35 and 1Sa 15:11 better describe God’s thoughts and actions as described in the chapter?

https://godisopen.com/2015/08/28/unanswered-questions-an-alternative-understanding-of-1-samuel-15/

The point is that, in context, this statement could be understood as God declaring that He will never again make Saul king. The reason given for His refusal to repent is that He is not a man.

Both passages use the Hebrew word nå˙am, translated “I regret” and “change his mind.” However, if classical Christian theists wrongly suppress the anthropomorphism of 1 Samuel 15:11 by appealing to 15:29, open theists mishandle the meaning and significance of 15:29 in order to reify the figure of speech in 15:11. Sanders claims that 1 Samuel 15:29 and Numbers 23:19 simply assert “that God will not repent” with reference “to specific situations in which God refuses to reverse a particular decision.”114 It is true that Samuel declares to Saul that the Lord will not change his mind about tearing the kingdom from Saul. However, any fair reading of 1 Samuel 15:29 has to acknowledge that Samuel grounds God’s irrevocable purpose in the character of God in contrast to human character. Otherwise, why characterize God by saying, “He who is the Glory of Israel does not lie or change his mind; for he is not a man, that he should change his mind”?115 This passage no less portrays God anthropomorphically or analogically than does 1 Samuel 15:11. Whether Scripture says that God repents or that God does not repent, both are analogical, for both reference humans. God’s character remains the same. God’s set purpose does not alter. Then, how do the two verses correlate? What changes if God’s character and purpose do not? First, the Lord speaks analogically to Samuel to reveal a change from his earlier revelation to anoint Saul over Israel (1 Sam. 15:1; 9:16; 10:1). God’s revelation concerning Israel’s kingship changed. Second, Samuel clearly recognizes that God has not altered either his character or his eternal purpose when he reminds Saul of the Lord’s character (1 Sam. 15:29). If God had not disclosed to Samuel a change in his revelation concerning Saul, then Samuel would have had reason to doubt the Lord’s unchangeable character. This is so, for Samuel had already announced to Saul the Lord’s intention to end his kingship (1 Sam. 13:13-14). If the Lord had not revealed to Samuel a change toward Saul because of his disobedience (1 Sam. 15:1-10), then Samuel would have had grounds for thinking that the Lord’s character had truly changed. The biblical narrative of 1 Samuel 15 hardly brings into question the Lord’s eternal purpose to raise up Israel’s king from the tribe of Judah and not from the tribe of Benjamin (cf. Gen. 49:8-12). Rather, the narrative analogically discloses how the Lord brought about his prophetic word announced long ago through Jacob that the Messiah would descend from Judah.

John Piper; Beyond the Bounds: Open Theism and the Undermining of Biblical Christianity (pg. 184-185)

Numbers 23:19

“God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent; Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?

Chris Fisher is also nice to provide his commentary once again:

Numbers 23:19 is often quoted as a prooftext for immutability. This quote is said to show that God cannot change in any way, shape, or form. But, contextually, there is likely a better understanding of this verse.

In context, God has intercepted a false prophet, Balaam, from declaring that Yahweh was against Israel. God threatens Balaam into proclaiming blessing, not curses for Israel. Balaam complies, and informs the enemies of Israel that “God is not a man that He should lie or a son of man that He should change His mind.” Contextually, the point is that God has declared blessings for Israel and will not just change His mind. God has spoken, and God will fulfill.

The context is God’s promises towards Israel. God is not fickle in His promises. The context says nothing about God’s essence, being eternally immutable in every respect, or even being impassible. Contextually, at best, this is a prooftext for God never changing His mind. More likely, however, this is a generality (as is common in human communication) and means simply that God is not arbitrary. God does change His blessings into curses throughout the Bible, but it is for reasons such as Israel rebelling against God. No such third party factors are at play in the Numbers verse.

A false prophet is speaking these words, granted under duress from God. Even if the speaker was arguing for pure immutability, the words need to be taken with a grain of salt. Surely, the reoccurring words from God about Himself describing God’s own change of mind have more weight than a false prophet. This text is a poor prooftext for immutability.

https://godisopen.com/2016/11/11/numbers-2319-commentary/

Several problems arise with this interpretation. First, the passage itself states that Balaam received these words directly from God without altering them in any way. Verse 16 makes this explicit:

Then the Lord met Balaam and put a word in his mouth and said, “Return to Balak, and thus you shall speak.”

The following chapter even opens by noting that God was pleased with the sacrifices they presented — hardly the reaction one would expect if Balaam had modified the divine message.

Second, the statement is already theologically sound. We have 1 Samuel 15 affirming the same truth, and it fits seamlessly with the broader biblical theme of God’s uniqueness: “To whom will you liken me and make me equal, and compare me, as though we were alike?” (Isa. 46:5; cf. Isa. 55:8–9; Num. 23:19; 1 Sam. 15:29; Hos. 11:9). In both Numbers 23 and 1 Samuel 15, God’s non-repentance is not merely tied to the specific situation, but is grounded in His very nature: He is not a man, and therefore He does not repent.

A further issue — one not addressed in their discussion — is whether Joe Sabo or Chris Fisher maintain any meaningful transcendence–immanence distinction. In their view, God is entirely temporal, and they may still claim He is omnipresent. They also appear to affirm that God is physical. But if that is so, in what way is God distinct from the world? Does their theology imply pantheism? Is God essentially material? Was He timeless apart from creation but became temporal with it? Do they believe material things came into being at all? These questions expose the wide range of theological options their system would have to confront — and I wonder which one their view inevitably commits them to.