Inerrancy and Open Theism: Are They Incompatible?

(Note: This essay was written in 2002 just before the Evangelical Theological Society [ETS] was going to vote on whether to expel John Sanders and Clark Pinnock from their society on the grounds that their open theology precluded them from genuinely affirming biblical inerrancy).

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My name is Greg Boyd. I am an open theist and I proudly affirm the inerrancy of Scripture!

Like Pinnock and Sanders, I have held that the future is partially open for almost 20 years. Never once during this time – including this last year – has it ever occurred to me that my view was inconsistent with the inerrancy of Scripture. Similarly, multitudes of others prior to the modern openness movement have held to the open view while embracing the inerrancy of Scripture. Indeed, all of us have embraced the partial openness of the future precisely because we affirm the inerrancy of Scripture.

Yet, despite our explicit affirmations, the ETS is soon going to vote on the charge that Pinnock and Sanders — and by implication, all open theists — don’t really believe in inerrancy. They are either so confused they don’t realize an obvious inconsistency in their thinking, or they realize it but, for bizarre and undisclosed reasons, disingenuously sign the ETS statement of faith anyway. Though I have thoroughly studied the explicit charges raised against Pinnock and Sanders by Roger Nicole, and though I have concerned myself with all published critiques along these lines, I confessed to being utterly mystified by this state of affairs.

In this paper I shall briefly consider the two main arguments that purport to demonstrate that openness and inerrancy are incompatible. I shall offer four responses to each of these arguments which demonstrate that these objections are irrelevant to the issue of inerrancy, on the one hand, and without foundation even if they were relevant, on the other.

God’s Inability to Guarantee Inerrancy
Several critics have argued that the God of open theism cannot guarantee that the authors of Scripture could remain inerrant when writing Scripture. If God can’t control and foreknow with exhaustive definiteness how humans shall exercise their free will, the argument goes, he can’t guarantee that the authors of Scripture avoid errors in their inspired writings.

Four points may be made in response to this argument.

First, the question that must be settled is this: Is the ETS founded on the belief in the inerrancy of Scripture, or is it founded on a theory of how the Bible is inerrantly inspired? Since there are a multitude of theories of inspiration within the ETS itself, and since the ETS statement of faith is centered on the inerrancy of Scripture, not on a theory about how the Bible is inerrant, I assume it is the former. If so, then whether or not someone has an adequate theory of how the Bible is inerrant is completely irrelevant to their being a member of the ETS.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the open view of the future has difficulty specifying how God guaranteed the inerrancy of Scripture. Suppose openness theologians had to admit that this is a mystery in their view. Doing so would not in the least affect their affirmation that Scripture is inerrant. Don’t we all admit mystery at points in our theology? Even if openness theologians were reduced to saying that God “just got lucky” in this matter –it just so happens that these canonical books avoid error – this still would not be inconsistent with the ETS Statement. For the statement is about the Bible as a finished product, not a statement about how this product came into being. And somehow, someway, openness theologians affirm that the finished product is inerrant.

Second, if the view that God doesn’t generally control humans entails that openness theologians can’t consistently affirm the inerrancy of Scripture, it also entails that Arminians can’t consistently affirm the inerrancy of Scripture, for both views affirm libertarian free will. The only difference between openness theology and Arminianism is that Arminianism holds that God is certain of all that shall come to pass whereas openness theology holds that to some extent God anticipates possibilities. But how could this distinction possibly make a difference in terms of their understanding of how God can guarantee an inerrant Scripture? In neither view can God guarantee that he will always get his way, for humans have free will. And, according to the charge, if God can’t generally get his way because of free will, he allegedly can’t guarantee that he’ll get his way in the recording of Scripture. The fact that in Arminianism God would know whether or not he got his way ahead of time with regards to Scripture doesn’t in the least improve this position vis-a-vis the stated objection. God would just know that “he got lucky.” And what difference could it possibility make vis-a-vis the objection whether God knew “he got lucky” in eternity past or in the middle of the first century?

One might suppose that a Molinist has an advantage in this regard, for in the Molinist account God doesn’t discover what he foreknows about the actual world; he chooses what he foreknows based on his Middle Knowledge. In point of fact, however, if the existence of free will is indeed grounds for arguing that God can’t guarantee an inerrant Scripture, the Molinist is in no better position than the advocate of simple foreknowledge or the openness theologian. For while in Molinism God doesn’t have to find out what he foreknows from the actual world, he does have to find out what he knows in all feasible worlds. He can’t just decide the content of feasible worlds insofar as these feasible worlds include acts of libertarian free agents. Hence God can’t unilaterally determine that there shall exist at least one feasible world that includes a body of inerrant texts. And, therefore, God can’t guarantee that the actual world shall include a body of inerrant texts.

Hence, if open theism is inconsistent with inerrancy because of its understanding of libertarian free will, so are all form of Arminianism. And if openness theologians are to be forced out of the ETS because they allegedly can’t account for God’s guarantee of an inerrant Word, all Arminians have justified cause for concern.

Third, if a person’s ability to account for God’s guarantee that Scripture is inerrant in a logically rigorous fashion is to be a prerequisite for membership in the ETS, it’s not entirely clear that even compatibilists should be admitted! For compatibilists argue that all human acts are ultimately controlled by God, just as the scriptural authors are. But this demonstrates that God’s determination of an agent does not itself guarantee inerrancy, for humans controlled by God obviously commit many errors. If divine determination doesn’t itself ensure the absence of errors outside the Bible, it can’t itself ensure the absence of errors inside the Bible.

Of course the compatibilist may respond by saying that God tells us in Scripture that he kept the authors from errors. Well and good. But this does nothing to logically guarantee that the Bible is in fact inerrant, for it is the divinely determined authors of Scripture who are telling us this, and as we’ve argued, divinely determined people are often mistaken. The compatibilist is forced to simply have faith that in this special instance, as opposed to every other instance, God’s determination was such that it prevented error. This is an appropriate confession of faith, but it lands the compatibilist in the exact same boat as the Arminian and open theist. We have faith that Scripture is inerrant even though we can’t rigorously demonstrate how this inerrancy is guaranteed. And this strongly suggests that, unless we aim at emptying the ETS of all members, we should not make one’s ability to logically account for God’s guarantee that Scripture is inerrant a litmus test for membership.

Finally, though it’s completely irrelevant to the issue, it should be noted that in point of fact neither Arminians nor open theists have any difficulty explaining how God could guarantee that Scripture is inerrant. They are not process theologians who believe God is metaphysically bound by the freedom of his creation. To the contrary, both Arminians and open theists maintain that God himself set the parameters of human freedom and that he reserves the right to supervene on freedom whenever and however he chooses. Open theists in particular hold that the future is partly open and partly settled. Humans have some freedom, but not absolute or unconditional freedom. Hence, to whatever extent it was necessary to do so, open theists affirm that God supervened on the freedom of biblical authors to ensure an inerrant Scripture.

As a matter of fact, there is no theory of inspiration that has ever been proposed in the history of the Church that an openness theologian could not affirm with logical consistency if she wanted to. An openness theologian could with perfect consistency even affirm the dictation theory of inspiration if she felt so inclined. In this case the openness theologian would simply be affirming that in the special case of the writings of Scripture God completely supervened on the free will of the authors. Of course, few openness advocates embrace this position (though some do). But it demonstrates the point that the God of open theism is empowered to give as much, or as little, freedom to agents as he chooses in any particular instance.

Hence I conclude that the charge that the openness model of God’s relationship to the world undermines inerrancy is as baseless as it is irrelevant to the issue of who should and should not be allowed to be members of the ETS.

God’s Inability to Guarantee the Fulfillment of Prophecies
The second major argument in support of the alleged inconsistency of openness theology with the affirmation of inerrancy is that open theists cannot with logical consistency specify how God can ensure the fulfillment of biblical prophecy. If God doesn’t foreknow or predetermine all that free agents will do in the future, the argument goes, he can’t guarantee that his pronouncements about the future will come to pass.

Four things may be said in response to this argument.

First, as with the first objection, this objection seems to be irrelevant to the issue of whether or not openness theologians can with integrity and consistency affirm inerrancy. Suppose an open theist had to admit that her view left it a complete mystery as to how God could ensure the fulfillment of prophecy. How would this violate her confession of faith in the inerrancy of Scripture? Whose theology is totally devoid of mystery? The point is that one’s affirmation of inerrancy is one thing; one’s explanation for how God can guarantee the fulfillment of prophecy is quite another.

The objection can also be shown to be irrelevant on the grounds that everyone grants that many if not most prophecies in Scripture are conditional – even many that appear on the surface to be unconditional. It cannot be denied that many times the Lord simply states without qualification his intention to do something, but subsequently embarks on a different course of action. Indeed, in Jeremiah 18 the Lord explicitly tells us that, as a potter has the right to revise his intentions while fashioning pottery, so God always reserves the right to revise his intentions toward nations, even after he’s prophetically declared these intentions (Jere. 18:1-10). The point is that, just because God said something was going to happen, and said so without qualification, doesn’t mean it’s necessarily going to happen.

This observation renders this objection irrelevant to the issue of inerrancy, for it means that the only prophetic announcements we can be absolutely certain are unconditional are those about which the Lord himself explicitly tells us are so (as when he tells us “I will not change my mind” e.g. Ezek 24:14). And this means that, with these few exceptions (and frankly, even these are open to interpretation), one cannot argue that another person is denying inerrancy simply because they conclude that a certain prophecy may not have come to pass or may have come to pass differently than it was originally stated. The issue revolves around exegesis and history, not the principle of inerrancy.

Third, not that it’s relevant to the issue of inerrancy, but I submit that, as a matter of fact, open theists have no difficulty explaining how God can ensure that unconditional prophecies are fulfilled, even if one insists that the fulfillment intrinsically involves the actions of free agents. In the open view, God settles as much of the future as he sovereignly wants to settle. If he gives a prophecy that we for whatever reasons deem to be unconditional, this obviously pertains to an aspect of the future that is settled. However much (if at all) the Lord needed to delimit the range of the freedom exercised by certain agents to ensure this outcome, we may assume that he did so.

Some of course deny that God can ensure that any of the future is settled if God knows what agents will possibly do, as the open view holds, rather than what agents will certainly do, as the classical view holds. Now, let it again be said that even if an openness theologian had to plead mystery at this point, or even if they felt forced to concede on this basis that all prophecies were conditional, this still would have no bearing on their affirmation of the inerrancy of Scripture. But as a matter of fact there is simply no need for open theists to respond in these ways.

The assumption that God can’t control or foreknow with certainty anything unless he controls or foreknows everything is simply unwarranted. Indeed, I strongly suspect that it is anthropomorphic, bringing God down to the level of humans.

We humans have difficulty ensuring anything about the future unless we control and/or foreknow everything leading up to this certain aspect of the future simply because we are finite in our intelligence and power. We can’t anticipate possibilities as effectively as we do certainties, for we have to spread our limited intelligence thin to cover each of the possibilities. Not only this, but we don’t control and can’t anticipate all the variables that affect what comes to pass. Hence we grow insecure about our ability to ensure something about the future in proportion to the number of possibilities we have to attend to at any given moment.

If we are not careful, we might be inclined to bring God down to our finite level. If we rather think through God’s supremacy over us in terms of his intelligence and power with logical consistency, we will see that God would have no difficulty ensuring something about the future without controlling or foreknowing with certainty everything about the future.

Being infinitely intelligent, God does not have to divide up his intelligence to cover various possibilities the way we do. He can anticipate from all eternity each and every one of any number of possibilities as though it was the only possibility – indeed, as though it absolutely had to occur! All the worry that the God of open theism can only hope for the best and thus can’t be trusted amounts to nothing more than an anthropomorphic denial of God’s infinite intelligence. Not only this, but unlike us, God controls the parameters of all possibilities and perfectly knows all the variables that affect all these possibilities.

For such a God, I submit, there is no difficulty announcing that something in the future is certainly going to come to pass while not reducing the number of possible future scenarios down to one. We humans may not be able to see how God could ensure such a thing – but that is precisely the kind of bafflement we should expect when beings with limited intelligence contemplate a being with infinite intelligence.

To illustrate, a world class chess master may announce that she shall checkmate you in not more than 13 moves, though she isn’t certain what your moves are going to be. It’s just that because of her superior ability to think through possibilities, she sees that, whatever you choose, this much about the game is settled. In not more than 13 moves, you’re done. This is something like the situation we face with God, but infinitely intensified.

God is the infinitely wise chess master. On top of this, God created the rules that govern the chess game we are playing. He may therefore announce a checkmate ages before we are capable of ever imagining how such a prediction could be ensured. Because we with our limited ability to anticipate possibilities cannot see how he makes such a prediction, we might be inclined to suspect that he must somehow foreknow or must have predetermined our future moves in order to make it come to pass. Indeed, we may even suspect that those who believe God doesn’t foreknow or didn’t predetermine our future moves can’t really believe he made this prediction inerrantly! If believing the infinitely wise chess master makes predictions inerrantly is a requirement for belonging to our chess club, we may even lobby to have them removed! But, I submit, all such suspicions are rooted in an anthropomorphic conception of deity. We who have finite intelligence would need to foreknow or predetermine everything about a game of chess to ensure a checkmate this far in advance, but an infinitely intelligent chess player would not.

If I’m correct, Sanders and Pinnock are being put on trial simply because their God is too smart for people with an anthropomorphic conception of God to imagine!

Fourth, some argue that even the way open theists handle conditional prophecies denies inerrancy, for in the open theists’ view, God genuinely changes his mind. If God changes his mind, it is argued, he is conceding that he earlier made a mistake.

Now, the sheer fact that openness theologians believe that “God changes his mind” can hardly count against their affirmation of the inerrancy of Scripture, for Scripture explicitly teaches this very thing! God inerrantly states he’s intending to do one thing and then, in response to changing circumstances, decides to follow a different course of action. There are 39 times where this is explicitly stated in Scripture, and several hundred times where, on my reckoning, it is implied. So explicit and prominent is this scriptural motif that one might have thought that charges of denying inerrancy would have been raised against Roger Nicole and others who deny this! I for one am thankful that none have, however, for while it’s something of a mystery to me as to how Nicole and others can affirm inerrancy while denying that God genuinely changes his mind, they do in fact sign the ETS statement of faith. And I for one would consider it misguided to question their integrity or their intelligence by alleging that their disagreement with my interpretation of this concept is tantamount to disagreeing with Scripture itself.

Be that as it may, the fact of the matter is that all who believe in the inerrancy of Scripture have to deal with the inerrant teaching that God changes his plans. We may do so by questioning the translation of nasham, by arguing that Scripture is speaking anthropomorphically in these passages, and/or by maintaining that God does genuinely alter his plans while working to reconcile this with the rest of Scripture’s teaching on God. But in all these matters we are again debating the proper exegesis of inerrant Scripture, not the inerrancy of Scripture itself!

Finally, it should at least be mentioned that there is no need to suppose that if God genuinely changes his mind, as openness advocates claim, he is conceding that he made an earlier mistake. Now, even if a misguided open theist was to concede this odd argument, it still would say nothing about whether God made mistakes or allowed for mistakes in inspiring Scripture. In other words, it still would not be grounds for their being barred from ETS membership. For their error would be in their doctrine of God, not in their doctrine of Scripture.

But, as a matter of fact, there is absolutely no reason for openness theologians to concede this point. It is no mistake to have one plan in response to one set of circumstances and another plan in response to another set of circumstances. Hence, it is no mistake to change plans if the first set of circumstances changes to the second set of circumstances. One could just as easily argue that God would be mistaken if he failed to change plans in response to changing circumstances.

Conclusion
Several years ago the ETS voted to bar all non-trinitarians from membership. They did so by voting to add a confession of faith in the Trinity to the statement of faith all members of the ETS must sign. The ETS membership saw that, as clear as the Trinity is in Scripture to most of us, an explicit statement about it was necessary if the ETS was going to with integrity be exclusively trinitarian. Showing laudable integrity and insight, the ETS membership did not equate a trinitarian interpretation of Scripture with a belief in inerrancy itself. They added a statement of faith.

Unfortunately, the present move to rule out open theology on the grounds that openness advocates can’t affirm the inerrancy of Scripture with consistency or integrity lacks this wisdom. The charges against Pinnock and Sanders are predicated on the assumption that the view that reality is exhaustively settled and that God therefore knows it as such is more clearly taught in Scripture than the Trinity. It assumes that while we needed an added statement for the latter, we don’t need one for the former. Indeed, the charges assume that the view that reality excludes open possibilities and that God knows it as such is so clear that it is virtually identical to a belief in inerrancy itself. To deny the one is to deny the other. This despite the fact that Scripture frequently portrays God as regretting outcomes, experiencing disappointments, frustration and even surprise, testing people to know what is in the hearts, speaking and thinking of the future in terms of what might or might not happen and changing his mind.

If it is really so obvious that inerrancy and openness theology are incompatible that a statement to this effect doesn’t need to be officially made to rule out this theology, why have the explicit arguments to this effect been so weak, as I’ve argued in this paper? But my more fundamental and concluding question is this: Does the ETS really want to stake its academic reputation on this claim?

Consider that the approach Nicole’s charge takes requires ETS members to accept that Pinnock and Sanders, as well as every other open theist who affirms inerrancy, are either remarkably dull or remarkably disingenuous. If they do not see the obvious inconsistency of their view of the future and their belief in inerrancy, they are dull. And if they do see it, but for reasons one has trouble fathoming, decide to sign the ETS statement anyway, they are disingenuous.

The most troubling aspects of these charges is that, if they are allowed to go through, they must either stick to the parties charged, or fall back on the party that charges them. I, for one, am absolutely convinced that to the broader academic community, they will not stick to the charged party. For it simply is not that clear, to say the least, that open theism and inerrancy are incompatible. If either Sanders or Pinnock are barred from membership on the grounds that it is in fact this clear, the assumptions that open theists who were members of the ETS were dull or disingenuous will come back to bite the ETS.

I have no difficult appreciating how badly some ETS members want openness theology to be barred from the ETS. I understand their desire to publicly “take a stand” against this view and their concern to send a message to all segments of Christendom who look up to the ETS. But doing so on the basis of the charges before us is most assuredly not the way to do it. For the sake of the ETS and for Evangelical scholarship as a whole, I would urgently advice such parties to instead exemplify the wisdom and integrity previous members exemplified in ruling out non-trinitarians. Lobby to add a statement about God’s foreknowledge encompassing all that shall definitely come to pass to the ETS statement of faith.

But to pretend that this is an issue over inerrancy is to risk, if not ensure, that the ETS will embarrass itself as an academic community if the charges are made to stick.