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Introduction | John Sanders 1 | Chris Hall 1 | Sanders 2 | Hall 2

In our correspondence, you've asked me, "What do you do with all the Old Testament references to God's grieving, changing, delighting, and repenting? Does not God say to Abraham, 'Now I know you fear God' in response to Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac? Does this not indicate that God's knowledge of Abraham has grown in response to Abraham's act of great faith?" Good question. You're right in seeing that we both will need to make sense of God's words in Gen. 22:12. "Do not stretch out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me" (Gen. 22:12).

Walter Brueggemann, whom you have quoted, writes that "God genuinely does not know. … The flow of the narrative accomplishes something in the awareness of God. He did not know. Now he knows." What did God need to know that he did not yet understand? Why the test to elicit the needed information?

You have written, "The answer is to be found in God's desire to bless all the nations of the earth (Gen. 12:3). God needs to know if Abraham is the sort of person on whom God can count for collaboration toward the fulfillment of the divine project. Will he be faithful? Or must God find someone else through whom to achieve his purpose? God has been faithful; will Abraham be faithful? Will God have to modify his plans with Abraham?" The straightforward, literal meaning of Genesis 22 is that God "now" learned that Abraham would be faithful.

Even an opponent of openness theology such as Bruce Ware admits that unless compelling reasons can be found for not accepting the straightforward meaning of the text, this meaning should be accepted. Ware, though, lists at least three fundamental problems with accepting the "literal" meaning, objections that appear quite reasonable to me.

If God must test Abraham to find out what is in his heart, this surely calls into question God's "present knowledge of Abraham's inner spiritual, psychological, mental, and emotional state." Yet other biblical texts teach that God does know the inner thoughts of human beings. Indeed, one of the characteristics that sets God apart from humans, a trait that demonstrates the glory of God, is God's ability to do this very thing. The Chronicler writes that "the Lord searches all hearts, and understands every intent of the thoughts." In 1 Samuel 16:7 we read, "the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart." David writes, "O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue, you know it completely, O Lord" (Ps. 139:1-2).

It escapes me how God could possibly know David's thoughts before he expresses them, if God cannot know fully his unexpressed inner life. In fact, it is God's wondrous ability to far surpass humans in his knowledge that elicits David's praise: "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain" (v. 6). Of course it is. David is not God.

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May 21 2001, Vol. 45, No. 7