Bound Only Once: The Failure of Open Theism

Open Theism is a failure of reason, imagination, and nerve.

Look Inside the Book

Contributors to this collection of essays include John MacArthur, John Frame, Peter Leithart, Steve Schlissel, R.C. Sproul, Jr., and Douglas Wilson. The problems with Open theism lie deeper than most critiques suggest. This book interacts not only with the truth claims of Open theism but also its distorted aesthetic and ethical assumptions that do so much work in that program. Open theists characterize the God of classical Christian theism as a distant, despotic, micromanaging, petty, Mr. Burns sovereign, with little time for nonsense or tissues. They depict the god of Open theism as a nineties sort of guy, ready to enter into new experiences, feel our pain, and link pinkies into an unknown future.

Open theists insist that God has knowledge, but not all knowledge, certainly not knowledge of the future acts of free beings and some statues. Such Open theistic inferences reveal a deep-seated devotion to Enlightenment categories and narrow, unpoetic imaginations. Ideas have destinations, and one of the consequences of our trying to read the Scriptures without any poetry in our souls will be the eventual destruction of any possibility of ministering to souls. Just imagine the hymn writer trying to lift up the downcast: "I know not what the future holds, but I know Who also doesn't know much about it either."

From the Book:

"[Bound Only Once] is a useful, original, and helpful entry into this growing debate. It reflects a healthy variety of approaches to the issue, since it is a multiple author work. It includes philosophical, biblical, and theological critique. ... It will make some readers a bit squeamish to wrestle with this book, since many evangelicals are not used to dealing with theology seriously in our time. But this is a needed critique." -From the Foreword by John H. Armstrong, pastor and theologian

"When a biblical vision of the living God is given to us, human imagination staggers, and human reason lies prostrate on the floor. Isaiah is undone, a man of unclean lips, and Moses is hidden in the cleft of the rock so that he will not be dissolved. In the revelation of Himself to us, God describes Himself in countless creaturely ways so that we would never make the mistake of confusing Him with a creature. He is above, beneath, behind, and before, so that we might know that He is all of these, and yet, strictly speaking, none of them. He is a warrior, shepherd, king, builder, husband, and in these images the sanctified imagination is invited to gather them all together, then to transcend them all, in order to worship and adore." -From the book