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The Evangelical Theological Society has voted to challenge the membership of theologians Clark Pinnock and John Sanders. The development at the November 20-22 annual meeting in Toronto is the latest in a five-year controversy over open theism.

"I present this motion with a heavy heart," said Roger Nicole, a founding member of the ETS in 1949, who initiated the charges. Nicole, of Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, had surveyed other surviving charter members and found unanimous concern that Pinnock, Sanders, and Minnesota pastor Gregory Boyd were promoting proposals "incompatible with inerrancy." Inerrancy and the Trinity constitute the doctrinal basis of the society.

Open theists emphasize God's self-limitation in dealing with humans.

Because God desires people's free response, openness theologians say, he neither predetermines nor foreknows their moral choices. In the Bible, they say, God changes his mind, or "repents," in response to human actions.

In accordance with the ETS constitution, Nicole's motion referred the matter to the executive committee. It will examine the case and determine whether ETS will vote on the charges next year, according to ETS president Millard J. Erickson.

Members present voted 171 to 137 on the motion against Pinnock, and 166 to 143 against Sanders. (Boyd left Bethel College in May 2002 to devote more time to pastoring Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, and is not currently a society member.)

"I wasn't surprised with the result," Pinnock said. "I'm concerned that it will divide the society, whatever happens to me. I just hope that this process will work, and that next year it won't pass. I'm hopeful."

Pinnock taught systematic theology at McMaster Divinity College in Hamilton, Ontario, until his retirement last spring.

Sanders, of Huntington College in Indiana, said the real issue for critics is not inerrancy, but control. "I don't think it's ever been a theological question," he told CT. "It's a political question, and it goes way back."

At their 2001 annual meeting, ETS members voted 253 to 66 (with 41 abstentions) in favor of a resolution that denied open theism: "We believe the Bible clearly teaches that God has complete, accurate, and infallible knowledge of all events past, present, and future, including all future decisions and actions of free moral agents" (CT, Jan. 7, 2002, p. 21).

The November 2002 debate was largely civil. More members spoke against the motion than in favor. Those backing Pinnock and Sanders expressed concerns about a "narrow-minded" scholastic society that was chasing away members.

"We have already lost too many constituents who are no longer in our society although they are in our camp," said former ETS president Richard Pierard, adjunct professor of history at Gordon College.

Others debated the validity of the inerrancy challenge. They said the society's inerrancy affirmation only requires that members ground their theological conclusions in Scripture. Many said that those on both sides of open theism do that.

"They are not denying that God cannot choose to know in advance what creatures can do, but that he has chosen not to know everything in advance," said Craig Blomberg of Denver Seminary, who distanced himself from the open theism position.

Baylor University's Roger Olson, not an ETS member, told CT that if the society expels Pinnock and Sanders, "It would demonstrate to the world at large and to evangelicalism in particular that the ETS has departed from its historic moderate and irenic posture."

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January 2003, Vol. 47, No. 1