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Fireworks was the metaphor du jour Wednesday as I greeted old friends on the opening morning of this year's Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) meeting: "Have you come for the fireworks?" "Have you come to watch our fireworks?" "Are you here for the fireworks?"

One after another, theologians and biblical scholars expressed their expectation of the pyrotechnic politics at the special business meeting scheduled for 8:30 Wednesday night. The extraordinary meeting was called for members to vote whether to expel two high-profile proponents of Open Theism from the society.

Open Theism claims that God created human beings with complete free will, that in doing so he took on genuine risks, that because of human freedom the future is indeterminate, and that God cannot know the future precisely, but only with varying degrees of probability. Most members of the ETS believe such teaching not only departs from the overwhelming testimony of Christian thinkers through the ages, but also calls into question God's own accuracy in biblical prophecy. And if God can't be counted on to be accurate as he speaks through his prophets, how can such beliefs be reconciled with the ETS's commitment to biblical inerrancy?

In the event, the membership voted not to expel retired McMaster Divinity School theologian Clark Pinnock and Huntington College theologian John Sanders. The proposal to expel Pinnock received 212 yes votes and 432 no votes, thus failing to reach the necessary two-thirds majority by a wide margin. Sanders squeaked by. The proposal to expel him received 388 yes votes and 231 no votes, barely missing the required 66 2/3 percent by less than four percentage points.

Painful memories
There were good reasons to expect an explosion. Painful memories of the 1983 ETS meeting, which voted to expel New Testament scholar Robert Gundry, are still fresh for many members. Also fresh are the debates of the 2001 and 2002 annual meetings in Colorado Springs and in Toronto. In 2001, opponents of Open Theism worked to pass a resolution affirming God's exhaustive foreknowledge, thus officially rejecting Open Theism's keystone. In 2002, founding ETS member Roger Nicole brought formal charges against Pinnock and Sanders, setting in motion a process of inquiry that would culminate in this year's vote. Discussion at both the Colorado Springs and Toronto meetings took on an adversarial tone, with Nicole calling Open Theism "a cancer on the soul of the ETS."

But while many scholars came expecting fireworks, Wednesday morning's events created radically different expectations: Nicole began his paper with a profession of love for the two Openness theologians, saying that his "greatest desire" was that they should remain members who would be in harmony with ETS's doctrinal basis.

Nicole's paper proceeded to outline his critique of the Openness position, remarking about this minority view that "the score is 1 billion 970 million to one." Openness theology emphasizes "libertarian human freedom" to the degree that it impinges on God's freedom and God's knowledge. It credits undue adequacy to "finite human logic." It treats Scripture selectively. It acknowledges that God sometimes sets aside libertarian human freedom so that he can make and fulfill certain prophecies, but Openness gives no reason why that should not be true of all genuine prophecy. Indeed, the Openness position tends to put God in the position of the false prophets condemned in Deuteronomy. This inconsistency regarding prophecy, Nicole said, was "a leak that threatens to empty the complete reservoir."

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November (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47