Calvinism
Open Theism
and the Love of God

The Closed Theism of Calvinism/Islam postulates a fully closed future where all that will happen has been fully pre-ordained by God from before creation. The God of Closed Theism is now fully static as is the future. God fully knows what will take place because it already exists, having been already created or ordained. In Closed Theism God sits outside of time and space and surveys creation as a fully completed and finished system from beginning to end. Calvinism postulates God has a revealed will He has made known, and also a secret will that exhaustively determines and causes all things whether good or evil.

Open Theism postulates a future that does not yet fully exit. The past exits because it has happened, the present is what is happening, and the future is what will happen and can be partially known by what God has determined to do and is partially unknown because God is not the only actor and only will and He and His creatures act and interact. The word of God cannot be broken, but God has not exhaustively spoken. My open theism believes God's revealed will and any 'hidden will' is fully consistent with His character and He does not ordain nor cause sin. In creating humanity and angels with a free will God created the possibility of sin but did not create sin. However, the future is open only in the details, the Final Judgment, the New Heavens and the New Earth, and the Lake of Fire close out the current creation. All who are in Christ will be fully conformed unto Him and we will see Him as He is and be with Him forever. All those not written in the Lamb's Book of Life will be cast into the Lake of Fire.

I ask, is Open Theism's vision of God interacting and wrestling with humanity, or the Calvinist/Islamic model of a fully deterministic universe, with God as the sole cause and actor (who no longer acts) more consistent with "For God so loved the world that He gave His only Begotten Son"?

Indeed, if all that happens or can happen has been predetermined and pre-ordained by God, why was the Cross necessary? According to Augustine/Calvin/Mohammed, God predestined each person to heaven or hell before the creation of the world. Salvation and damnation is solely by the arbitrary choice of God and has nothing to do with the "apparent" choices we make. Not only are we saved by grace (God's unmerited favor) but we are damned by God's unmerited wrath!

John MacArthur somehow thinks Open Theism is an attack on the atonement.

"Open theism arose in evangelicalism over a decade ago when evangelicals posited a God to whom one can easily relate and who is manageable in place of a God who punishes sinners for their sin. This they did by proposing a model of Christ's atonement that was not substitutionary. To do so they adopted the model of the 16th-century Socinian heresy, which taught that God could forgive without the payment of a ransom. The biblical doctrine, however, is that Christ's atonement was substitutionary, a teaching that was not immediately defined in the early church, but which Anselm stated clearly during the 16th century. Open theists on the other hand tend to vacillate between the inadequate positions of Abelard and Grotius in their views of the atonement. Because of their distorted views of the atonement, open theists do not belong in the ranks of evangelicalism.Open theism arose in evangelicalism over a decade ago when evangelicals posited a God to whom one can easily relate and who is manageable in place of a God who punishes sinners for their sin. This they did by proposing a model of Christ's atonement that was not substitutionary. To do so they adopted the model of the 16th-century Socinian heresy, which taught that God could forgive without the payment of a ransom. The biblical doctrine, however, is that Christ's atonement was substitutionary, a teaching that was not immediately defined in the early church, but which Anselm stated clearly during the 16th century. Open theists on the other hand tend to vacillate between the inadequate positions of Abelard and Grotius in their views of the atonement. Because of their distorted views of the atonement, open theists do not belong in the ranks of evangelicalism..."

How does Open Theism (the idea that God is not the only will in the universe) distort the atonement of Christ? How is the idea that a living and loving and holy God wrestles with humanity and sent His Son to reconcile us with Himself a distortion of the atonement? If some of its supporters do not hold to the doctrine of substitutionary atonement, that has nothing to do with Open Theism. In MacArthur's book Faith Works, the Gospel according to the Apostles, he tries to distinguish the core of dispensationalism from the baggage associated with it by some of its supporters. I suggest he do the same with Open Theism. Holding Open Theism no more make one an Emergent Christian than refusing the Pledge of Allegiance makes one a Jehovah's Witness. I would further suggest that the Closed Theism of Calvin (MacArthur is a moderate [inconsistent] Calvinist) is a much greater threat to the doctrine of the atonement than Open Theism. In consistent Calvinism, i.e. Calvinism according to Calvin, every sin, every evil, every murder and rape is just as much the will of God and foreordained by God as every good thing (directly contradicting the Scriptures). In this it is akin to pantheism and panentheism. In their zeal to uphold the absolute omniscience and omnipotence of God in their particular concept of the future and present as a closed and static reality, they succeed in destroying the nature of God as a God of love and justice, and also destroy His omnipotence by denying He has the power to create beings in His own image with any real (though limited) freedom of independent choice and action.

In Calvinism God is necessarily the author of and the immediate cause of sin. God is also a liar, for though his revealed will says 'though shalt not kill', His hidden and comprehensive will ordains every murder! Calvin, Luther, and Mohammed root salvation in the sovereignty of God and His [supposed] predestination of all things. But Jesus roots it in the love of God (John 3:16). For Luther and Calvin assurance of salvation rests on election. But according to them God elects both to heaven and to hell. How is one to know with certainty where God has predestined him to go? Perhaps Luther and Calvin were both predestined to hell and they were both self deceived. God's so-called hidden counsel (His fore-ordination of all things) is after all hidden. I prefer to trust in the character of the God who gave His only begotten Son and a loving God's active striving on my behalf. I find the manifestation of God's love displayed on the cross much more assuring than a subjective belief that somehow I am arbitrarily one of the chosen for heaven rather than chosen arbitrarily for hell. When I was 'saved', The Holy Spirit did not come to me testifying of my election but rather revealing Christ crucified for my sins. Paul declares Christ in us is the hope of glory (Col 1:27), that is, His living and abiding presence in us.

Arminians, aghast at the blasphemy of God's character inherent in Calvinism sought to deny that God was the cause of evil, and establish human responsibility for our actions while upholding His absolute foreknowledge of all the future, that is of all that will happen. The problem is, how can God have absolute foreknowledge of all that will occur without the future already existing or being totally predestined (closed)? And if the whole future already exists (as a closed reality) then no creature has any real freedom of will or action. Also, if the whole future already exists, then not only every thought and action of creatures predetermined (nullifying any freedom or responsibility in creatures) but every thought and action of God must already exist nullifying God's freedom to think or act! Not only have the Calvinists (and Arminians unintentionally) destroyed the image of God in humanity, but have destroyed God Himself as the living God. God Himself is not free to change the future! God Himself is not free to act! God is in effect dead! Why then did Jesus teach us to pray, "Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven"? Does not this mean that God's will is not automatically done? Does not the Lord's Prayer prove God can and does continue to act and interact with us? Or was Jesus mistaken or a liar?

How different a portrait God paints of Himself in the Scriptures! We serve a living God, a living Savior. A God who truly interacts with us, who truly loves us. We were created in the image of God for true fellowship with God. The Cross is not a charade! Sin is not the will of God! We are not preprogrammed deterministic machines. We bear true responsibility for our actions. We were deeply marred by sin, dead in trespasses and sins, cut off from the life and fellowship of God. Yet through Christ and in Christ we (believers) are restored to life and fellowship. We as His children now have a true and living relationship with the living God. We truly interact with Him. We have life and life more abundant. The Gospel is real and the need to proclaim the Gospel is real. The Gospel is the power of God unto salvation, not the Calvinist's doctrine of election. Many are called, but few are chosen. The call is real, but few choose Christ. All those and only those who are in Christ are the chosen, chosen because we are in Christ, the Chosen One. God is willing for all to be saved, but most are not willing to be saved. God calls and we stick our fingers in our ears!

I refuse to impugn my Father as being the author of my sin. I refuse to blame Him for the evil of men and devils. When I speak with Him He truly listens and truly speaks. Our relationship is real, not a simulation. I am secure in His love for I have a living Savior who intercedes on my behalf. My Father is fully able to keep me and keep all His promises. I fully reject the dead god of Calvinism, for the god of Calvin is Satan, the author of sin.