I‘ve briefly mentioned a Templeton-funded seminar, “Open Theology & Science,” held at Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy, Massachusetts from June 18 to July 6. My wife Wendy and I were there for the first week of this event, which brought together for three weeks figures widely identified with open theology—such as Clark Pinnock, John Sanders, Greg Boyd, William Hasker, Richard Rice, and David Basinger—and other scholars sympathetic to the open view, in conversation with visiting scientists such as Ken Miller and Jeff Schloss and leading participants in the science-religion dialogue such as Philip Clayton and John Polkinghorne—and in public debate with opponents of the open view. Bravo to Tom Oord of Northwest Nazarene University for planning this splendid gathering.
Over the years, a number of Christian pastors and scholars whom I greatly respect but with whom I deeply disagree have sought to exclude open theology tout court from the evangelical table. I will not rehearse this history, which has been extensively covered from a news standpoint in Christianity Today magazine, among other places, and which can tracked in many books. Here I simply want to report my conclusion that, whatever skirmishes may continue to play out in various institutional contexts, the issues raised by Pinnock, Sanders, and others are being pursued by an ever-growing number of evangelical scholars. Some are largely in agreement with open views of divine self-limitation and human freedom, God’s relation to time, and other such matters. (We should remember that there are many differences among “open” thinkers on how we are to understand God and time, for instance.) Others are largely critical. But pro and con alike, they are debating these questions in classic evangelical fashion, with the assumption that their arguments MUST be grounded in Scripture. In short, the debate has been normalized.
Please note that I am speaking here of self-consciously evangelical participants in the ongoing open theology conversation. Not all who share some key points of emphasis with Pinnock, Sanders, et al. would define themselves thus. But contrary to the charges of some of the critics of open views, these distinctions are typically transparent. And one of the heartening features of the seminar at Eastern Nazarene was the spirit of collegiality in which the various participants engaged one another without apologizing for their distinctive commitments.
Hence when the Catholic philosopher Tom Flint debated Bill Hasker on the question “Does God Know the Future?”, Flint made his own position clear without suggesting that simply by raising the question Hasker and his colleagues had moved outside the pale of Christian orthodoxy. Indeed, Flint went on to suggest that some rhetoric from the open party needs to be toned down as well. (Is there any place for caricatures of the God of “classical theism” as a heartless monster?)
In conversations of this kind, open theology—like all other lines of theological inquiry accountable to Scripture and reason and the wisdom of the church—must remain open to correction. That spirit was strongly articulated by Pinnock in his public lecture, “Open Theology: A Project of Love.” May it continue to be so.
John Wilson is the editor of Books & Culture.
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