15
guarantee that other co-workers, for example, will not harass me so much that I will feel I need
to quit. And the list could go on and on. The point is that there are many needs that an open
theist could not pray about with full assurance that God will be able to grant the request, even if
he should decide to do so.
31
This leads to a second and even more significant problem. How is the God of
open theism to decide if he should answer my prayer in the way I prayed it or not? If God
cannot know with infallible certainty future free decisions made by human and angelic beings,
there is a vast amount of the situation into which his possible answer might come that he does
not and indeed cannot know. In addition, a very crucial part of what would make a particular
answer to my prayer wise and loving and good or not depends on my response to his answer. To
the extent that these responses are free, God cannot foreknow them with certainty either. Thus in
the previous example of my prayer for a good job, God cannot know for sure the response of a
potential employer to my application for the job, or how I will respond to the job if I get it, or the
responses of my boss and my co-workers on the job that will be such an important part of
whether the job is a good one or not. So the question remains, on what basis will God know
whether and how to answer my prayer? As Erickson writes,
On openness grounds, God does not know the future in entire detail, insofar as it involves
human wills. On what basis, then, does he decide whether to change his mind? How
does he know whether it would be better to grant our request or not?
32
31
Ibid.
32
Ibid., citing Basinger, "Practical Implications," in The Openness of God, 156-162. It is
clear from God's refusal to grant Jesus' request in Gethsemane to have the Father's cup taken