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experience of prayer, in which God has graciously and lovingly decided to take our wishes,
desires, and concerns into account in deciding what he will or will not do. Thus Pinnock argues,
God promises to hear and answer our prayers. . . . Prayer can change things. Because of
prayer things can be different than they would have been without it (James 4:2; Matt 7:7).
This must mean that God summons us into partnership with himself in running the
universe. His plan is open. God actually accepts the influence of our prayers in making
up his mind. Prayer proves that the future is open and not closed. It shows that future
events are not predetermined and fixed. If you believe that prayer changes things, my
actual or potential free choices of human or angelic beings is indeterminate and open. For
example, Richard Rice argues that "to the extent that reality was yet to be determined by
human decisions, it was open or indefinite. . . . In creating beings who were themselves
capable of `creating' and in endowing them with moral freedom, God created an open world.
It was a world whose future was not fixed in advance. The future could follow different
courses, depending on the decisions fo God's creatures. Consequently, the future of this
planet was not definite at the conclusion of Creation Week. . . Henceforth, the course of
history would be determined, not by God alone, but by God and the creatures." (Richard
Rice, God's Foreknowledge and Man's Free Will [Minneapolis: Bethany House Publishers,
1980], 38-39). However, this does not involve all of the future. That portion of the future
that is utterly unrelated to creaturely free decisions is definite and fixed. Thus the primary
thesis of Greg Boyd's book, God of the Possible, is that the future is partially fixed and
partially open (pp. 11-87). Sanders also agrees that the future is partially open and partially
fixed (The God Who Risks, 75). On p. 297, n. 136, Sanders credits this insight to Boyd.