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Gregory Boyd is the preaching pastor at Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minn., and the author of God of the Possible and Across the Spectrum, among several books. Satan and the Problem of Evil is the second volume of a multi-volume attempt—God at War (IVP, 1997) was the first—to construct an openness theodicy. Boyd seeks coherent answers to the questions all theodicies face: Where does evil come from? If God is the sovereign Creator, is he not ultimately responsible for evil? Do God's sovereignty and control extend to every act of evil and suffering? What of Satan and the demonic realm? In what way does the reality of the demonic relate to sin, evil, and suffering?

Boyd develops a number of key theses in his attempt to make coherent philosophical sense of the "warfare worldview" of the Bible. For instance, why would God choose to create personal beings, both angelic and human, knowing they would be capable of producing evil on such a massive scale? Boyd's answer is that love must be freely chosen and entails the risk of rejection: "God could not have created a world in which creatures possess a measure of self-determining freedom without risking some loss."

God could have chosen to create a universe where self-determining freedom did not exist, but for the sake of love and love's requirements, he has instead elected to create an environment in which love can flourish.

One does not need to accept the openness model to be thankful to Boyd for deepening our awareness of the broader supernatural context of life lived between the times. The contemporary church lives in a war zone, and much of the suffering and evil that human beings experience becomes more coherent when viewed against the dark backdrop of Satan's continuing attempt to disrupt God's redemptive purposes.

Openness theology is naturally controversial, as it challenges evangelicals to reconsider the definition of God's sovereignty. Adding to that controversy, though, is the hermeneutic that these theologians bring to biblical texts.

For instance, think of God's response to the repentance of the Ninevites in the Book of Jonah. "When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it" (3:10, NRSV). Openness theologians such as Boyd insist that we read such texts "straightforwardly"—assuming that God did not know how the Ninevites were going to respond to Jonah's preaching. If God had known "with certainty that Nineveh was going to repent," Boyd writes, "then his prophecy that the city would be destroyed in forty days seems disingenuous—it does not express a real intention."

But if we consistently take biblical texts at "face value," where will we end up? For instance, Pinnock draws our attention to the many Old Testament texts that portray God as having a body. Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and 70 elders of Israel see God on Mount Sinai. Under God's "feet" they see "something like a pavement of sapphire stone." Despite seeing God, these men do not perish. Other texts describe Moses speaking "face to face" with God, "as one speaks to a friend" (Ex. 33:11). Later in the same chapter (v. 23), Moses is described as allowed to see God's "back" but not his face.

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February 2003, Vol. 47, No. 2