The journey - September 10th, 2005

It's been some time since I've written. It's not as if nothing is happening, on the contrary. Tomorrow, I'll be preaching in our local church on Baptism. Tuesday, the vision team will meet for the first time, and Wednesday, I have to teach a class on Robert's Rules of Order. And today I'll be helping a friend to move. Seems there is enough to do!

I'm reading Clark Pinnock's Most Moved Mover, by bits and pieces though. It's a good book, not so much an expository of the view as John Sander's The God Who Risks, but rather an update on the discussion about Open Theism and a reaction to its critics. I have to say I am getting more and more convinced that the Open Theism view does the most justice to the biblical revelation. I especially liked when he wrote that if this view owns to process theology, it is better to lend some ideas from Whitehead, who was a Christian, than to get our ideas about God from Plato, who was a heathen. Though I thoroughly agree on the points where Open Theism disagrees with Process Theology. In Process Theology, God is indeed a god of "Lesser Glory" for in that line of thinking, He can only work through us and is unable to do much Himself. I don't agree with that view, and neither do the Scriptures for all I can tell.

Anyway, we have to make do with the revelation of God as the Bible gives it to us. There may be a lot about Him we don't know since it has not been revealed. But it is better to have out theology shaped by this limited revelation called the Bible, than by pagan speculation.

Probably the best thing about Open Theism is that is makes sense regarding prayer. I never understood how prayer works, I used to feel like I was doing what I was supposed to do, both morally and regarding what God knew I would be doing. But that left me puzzled, to say the least. Pinnock writes about the movie The Truman Show. It describes how a person's life was completely conditioned, and how the main character wanted to break away from it, even though the intentions of the one that ruled his life were good. Need to see that one!
Anyway, it showed that a relation of complete control would not work, and prayer is not just the working out of predetermined plans.