Page 11

The Gospel of Salvation its Design and Truthfulness

Open theism's denial of exhaustive divine foreknowledge precludes the possibility of
God's knowing from eternity past whether sin would enter his created world.

Pinnock says that when God created free creatures, he "accepted a degree of risk with the

possibility, not certainty, of sin and evil occurring."

For Sanders, sin was not only not

foreknown, its occurrence in the garden was, to God, "implausible."

However, if God did not

know that sin would occur, he could not predetermine to save, prior to the creation of humans
and the actual sinful action they commit. At best, God could have a contingency plan in the event
that sin occurred. But consider 1 Pet 1:19-20: we were redeemed "with precious blood, as of a
lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ. For He was foreknown before the foundation
of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you." And however Rev. 13:8 is
translated, (either the saints' names are written from the foundation of the world, or Christ was
slain from the foundation of the world), God's eternal purpose has been to save sinners. Surely
the gospel is not God's ad hoc plan B, but if sin is a mere possibility, perhaps even an
implausibility before Gen. 3, then no set plan would already be in place. The gospel, however,
announces God's eternal and set purpose to save, which means he knows the sin that will occur
and he has already planned for our rescue before he even creates.

Open theism's denial of exhaustive divine foreknowledge renders it impossible for God
to have foreknown and chosen those who would be saved in Christ in either the
Calvinist or Arminian understandings of these doctrines before the foundation of the
world.

This is so, in part, because God could not have known then even who would exist. The

specific individuals who will populate human history along with any and all of their future
choices and actions cannot be known by God in advance of their very lives. He cannot have
known "you" until you come into existence. But notice in Romans 8:29 that Paul uses a relative
pronoun "whom" to indicate what God foreknew: "whom he foreknew, these he predestined . . .,
and whom he predestined, he called, etc." And Eph. 1:4 says that God chose us in Christ before
the foundation of the world. Whether this is corporate or individual, it refers to a specific group
comprised of those who will be saved. God knows who we will be before he creates, and he
knows whether we will be among those saved.

3.

Open theism's denial of exhaustive divine foreknowledge jeopardizes the substitutionary
nature of Christ's death for our sin.

Because God cannot know in advance just who will be living at any and every point of

human history, therefore, when Christ died on the cross, he simply could not, in any real sense,
have substituted in his death and payment of sin for "you" or for "me". While his death could
have been quite literally in the place of, or as a substitute for, those living up to the point of his
death, this could not be the case with those to be conceived and born yet future. While advocates

Ibid., 42.

Sanders, God Who Risks, 45-46.