2
two-way conversation and wants our inputour gratitude, our concurrence, our
questioning, even our protests and our petitions. He enlists our input because he wants it,
not because he needs it. He treats us as responsible agents with whom he has a dynamic
relationship. Prayer validates the open view of God because it is so revealing of the
interactive relationship.
3
The attractiveness of the open model with respect to petitionary prayer can be
seen most clearly, it is argued, when the open model is compared to that of classical theism.
Open theists argue that the view of exhaustive, infallible divine foreknowledge advocated by
various forms of classical theism renders petitionary prayer superfluous and irrelevant. This is
because of the certainty and fixity of the future that exists if God's foreknowledge is exhaustive
and infallible. In his chapter in the seminal 1994 volume, The Openness of God, Clark Pinnock
reflects this core openness belief:
Omniscience does not mean exhaustive foreknowledge of all future events. If that were
its meaning, the future would be fixed and determined, much as is the past. Total
knowledge of the future would imply a fixity of events. Nothing in the future would need
to be decided. It would also imply that human freedom is an illusion, that we make no
difference and are not responsible.
4
Specifically, open theists argue that if God exhaustively and infallibly knows the future, he
knows every prayer that will ever be lifted up to him and exactly how he will respond to that
prayer. It is all part of his eternally foreknown plan and his specific sovereignty.
5
And this will
3
Clark H. Pinnock, Most Moved Mover: A Theology of God's Openness (Grand Rapids:
Baker and Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 2001), 171-172.
4
Clark Pinnock, "Systematic Theology," in The Openness of God, 121.
5
David Basinger defines "specific sovereignty" as the belief that God "has total control