Okay, I haven't blogged for a while – I living in a small town and sometimes there is not much happening!! (Disclaimer – I am exaggerating some and this blog is not strictly tied to what is or what is not happening in Princeton!).

Over the last couple of weeks I have been preparing for the next topic in our Adult Sunday School class, which will be the decrees of God and his sovereignty. I spent some time over several days getting familiar with a view known, among other names, as Open Theism. In someways this was a delightful exercise, but one that also left me with sadness. This is an excellent example of poor theology leading to bad theology. I will not rehash the whole thing but share some brief comments.

This is a teaching that speaks of God's relationship with his creation, claiming that there is much, regarding future events, that God knows only as possibilities. God knows all possibilities, and being infinitely intelligent he has the ability to to be prepared to respond to any and all combinations of possibilities. While God has the broad outline of history fixed there are many 'little' steps along the way that God is willing to take risks as to how his creatures will respond to himself as well as to events in their lives.

From my admitted limited exposure, I suggest the following poor theological points allows for even more glaring positions to be embraced. Many of the proponents are Arminian in their theology, thus they already hold that a spiritually dead person may chose life, that God is doing all that he can do to save everyone, and that God knows future events because he foresees (looks ahead) to see what we will do. Problems exist with these position yet the Open Theism proponents, while recognizing some errors, will use these as platforms to build an even shaker house. Scriptures does not seem to be the number one building tool for this theory, rather the mind is. While I argue that many of us do not love God with enough of our mind, human thinking is full of faulty presuppositions, and therefore, must not be relied upon exclusively, or even chiefly.

The Holy Spirit, and He alone, through the Scriptures, is the teacher of Truth. Yet we do have responsibility to hear, learn and build upon the truth. The following is repeated seven times in Revelation chapters two and three: He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. (Rev 2:7 ESV) If our starting point is something learned because we have not been listening, where will our ending point be?