School of Theology

This week an interesting, and for many, controversial, conference comes to Azusa Pacific University.  The APU Center for Faith Integration hosts the Open Theism and Science conference funded by The Templeton Foundation.

The fun begins on Thursday evening with a kenote address from Dr. Francis Collins, widely regarded as one of the foremost Christian apologists writing today.  Dr. Collins, Director of the Human Genome Project at the National Institutes of Health, is the author of The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief.  Other well-known speakers and authors include Dr. Greg Boyd, Dr. T. Scott Daniels, and Dr. Clark Pinnock.

The conference provides a forum for an interesting discussion about the way a particular view of God shapes the dialog between science and Christian belief. 

The controversy comes from the fact that this view of God, known as Open Theism, includes ideas that many conservative Christians find foreign, if not downright heretical.

This is a bit simplistic, but here's my "cliffs notes" version of the central questions around which the discussion turns.

One, does God foreordain the events of history? 

In other words, has God laid out ahead of time all the events that will happen in history?  John Polkinghorn puts this question like this.  "Ask yourself what the history of the world looks like.  Is it a performance of a fixed (musical) score, or more like an unfolding improvisation?"  (quoted by Lane Lambert, The Patriot Ledger, July 5, 2007)

Two, if God does grant free-will to individuals in history, and thus in some sense allows individuals to cause history to unfold in certain ways through their choices, does God know about those choices ahead of time or does God learn about them as they unfold? 

This is a question about God's foreknowledge, and the relationship between that foreknowledge, and human choice.  If God knows about our choices ahead of time, are they really "free?"  If he doesn't, what does it mean for us to say that he is sovereign and all-knowing? 

Three, if God chooses to create and sustain a world in which he "learns about" history as it unfolds through the choices of his creatures, what does this say to us about the nature of God and the nature of God's interaction with history?

Just putting the question like this is an affront to many because it seems to diminish God.  And it would be an insult to think of God in this way, unless God really has chosen to have THIS kind of relationship with his creation.  And if he has, why would he do so?  How does God REALLY work in a history that he allows his creatures to create through their choices?

Clearly, depending on the way one answers these questions, it is possible to move rather far away from the doctrines that many conservative, evangelical Christians have always held to be true.  After all, many do not even believe that there is such a thing as human free-will.  For them, this whole conversation teeters on the precipice of heresy.

But, for those Christians who do believe that God grants free-will to humanity, and that human choices do somehow shape the unfolding of history (at least in some way), these questions are not really optional.  We need to understand what we mean by these ideas, and what they imply about the God who made us and sustains the world he made in this way.

On a personal note, I know that as with any thorough and rigorous theological debate, things will be said this week with which I will disagree.  Having heard the arguments before, I remain unconvinced about some of them.  Others don't seem controversial to me at all.   

But I'll also enjoy the opportunity to hear some fascinating thinkers and ideas.  That's the nature of academic discourse.  My sentiments are expressed well by something else John Polkinhorn said recently about this debate.

"These are deep questions of belief . . . so there will be controversies.  I only hope the arguments will be respectful."  (quoted by Lane Lambert, The Patriot Ledger, July 5, 2007)