1.
On one occasion Jesus said "See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; (E)touch Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have" (Luke 24:39)
2. On another occasion He said, "God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth" (John 4:24).
3. God is often referred to
having hands, eyes and so on--we call those references anthropomorphic, where God is seen as assuming human forms.
4. Since God is spirit and spirit do not have such--hands, eyes and so on--we must understand the language as figurative--what biblical interpreters call anthropomorphic language.
I'm only trying to share what the Scriptures teach, not to score points.
I understand.
But you're using the type of language to nullify the words of the Bible.
At that point, I suppose everything is up for reinterpretation.
If the Bible uses anthropomorphic language to make a point, I would suggest that we pay attention to the point being made.
There are a lot of different types of literature in the Bible.
They need to be interpreted in light of their style e.g. Revelation is largely symbolic.
But they all still convey a message, just in different ways.
No one in this thread denies the use of the literary device of anthropomorphism in the bible and neither do Open Theists.
The challenge is determining/interpreting which passages actually use this literary device.
Classical theists would list more passages than Open Theists.
Whether that is justified or not requires a careful look at the literary context of each passage under question.
1. The hermeneutics of Open theists is different than that of classical theists.
2. While classical theists are willing to harmonize or even call it a day on certain expressions, open theists have gone so far as to redefine the God of the Bible because of these anthropomorphic expressions.
I fall into the camp that recognizes anthropomorphisms in the bible while questioning whether everything we call an anthropomorphism actually is one based on the literary context.
I haven't tried to "harmonize the anthropomorphic".
There are somethings we can stay agnostic about right?
I go to a passage and recognize that my pretext of the omniscience of God suggests certain words in those passages to be anthropomorphic.
I try to see if the use of anthropomorphism is actually something that the context suggests is actually the case.
Usually it is really hard to tell and I don't try to "harmonize" anything but leave it as something the text isn't clear about and tack it on to another mystery of God that I can ask him about in person.
There are lots of those in the bible.
1. Now, I certainly respect this approach to what can be termed difficult.
But this is not what open theists are doing.
2. In their effort to understand the anthropomorpic and operating from a major premise that God has given man libertarian free will, He cannot be omniscient and so on.
In as much as God is HOLY, HOLY, HOLY, all of our major premises are necessarily false due to our libertarian free will which is enslaved to the depravity of our nature.
Man does not want to be like God--he wants to be God.
Satan has the same problem. We have two kinds of people on this globe:
children of God and children of Satan.
Some folk seem not to know how to discern them.
God has allowed the god of this world to control the world systems. We are in the last hour of the last day--using God"s time.
1. Good question, but the open theist would express his understanding of free will differently.
2. His understanding of free will is libertarian free will, which differs from Arminian understanding of free will.
3. For the open theist man must so act that not until he acts, is that act a reality and therefore unknown, unknown even to God until it becomes a reality.
4. In this way, open theists deny the omniscience of God.
The soveriegnty of God can be taken so far to the left that man is given more control of his life than fits reality. And it can be taken so far the other way that some men are veiwed as being created to be damned. Both are extreme and unbiblical.
1. Open theists have set out to rescue the world from the God of traditional Christianity for what they call Greek philosophy "distortions."
2. So for two millennia we have we got God wrong in our writings and confessions.
It took the Open theists to reveal to us the real God.
3. Frankly speaking, open theists reminds me of the Jesus Seminar fellows, who emerged in the mid-1980s to rescue us from the mythical Jesus of two millennia of Christianity.
4. What is the verdict of the Jesus Seminar fellows?
Open theists are on their way to hearing the same.
“The fact that God foreknows or predestines something does not guarantee that it will happen, the fact that God determines part of history does not mean that he determines all of history. . . . Consequently, the actual course of history is not something God alone decides all by himself. God and the creatures both contribute.” (Richard Rice, "Biblical Support fo a New Perspective, in The Openness of God, 37).
2. Are you kiddin' me?
This is what open theists say that those who oppose are missing?