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the incalculably great multitude of entailments flowing causally from whether particular
free choices and actions obtain or not, and from which specific free choices and actions in
fact do obtain.
Think from the beginning of human history: What if Adam, in his anger at Eve shortly
after their sin, killed Eve as Cain later killed Abel? What of the proto-evangel in Gen. 3:15 that
the seed of the woman would crush the serpent's head? No woman, no seed, no human race, no
Savior, no crushing. And, in Genesis 3 could God have known what Adam would or would not
do? Moving ahead a bit, what if Noah, upon being the recipient of the jeering and mocking of
his friends decided he would not endure such ignominy by continuing to build this ridiculous
ark? And, what if Noah ­ the only righteous man, you recall ­ now joined his neighbors in their
wickedness? Implausible, you say? Well, we all know that the implausible can occur in the
open view. But what then of God's already stated purpose to destroy the whole earth and all the
wicked by a flood? And we could go on, and on, and on! Just what specific actions with their
accompanying entailments Adam or Eve, Cain or Abel, Noah or Abraham ­ and on through
history ­ might choose were altogether unknown to God. Imagine the multitude of entailments
that flow into human history from the various choices that free creatures make every moment of
every day. On openness grounds, God can know neither whether particular choices will be
made, nor just what specific choices in fact will be made, nor all of the entailments arising from
whatever choices in fact obtain.

2.
Open theism's denial of exhaustive divine foreknowledge precludes the possibility of
God's knowing from eternity past just what persons would actually be conceived and
born, at any and every point, throughout the history of humankind. That is, exactly who,
how many, and obviously, anything about any of them, would be completely and fully
unknown to God.
Consider your own existence. Could God have known from eternity past that you would
exist? On openness grounds, absolutely not! Consider the contingencies. Your parents decide
to marry ­ yes, that particular man and woman, not another pair. And, they decide whether to
have children, whether to use birth control or not, how many children to have, and in all this the
genetic combinations vary for each possible conception. None of this God can know ahead of
time. What is true of you is, of course, true also for each of your parents, and their parents, and
so on all the way back to the garden. The fact is, God can no more know now who will be born a
year from right now than you or I can.

3.
Open theism's denial of exhaustive divine foreknowledge severely implicates the
complete and perfect belief structure within the knowledge of God (even on openness
standards of omniscience) since God must, at any and every moment, possess
innumerable false beliefs about what will happen in the future.
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For example, John Sanders proposes that God believed that the man and woman in a
perfect garden and apart from sin would continue in obedience, but, alas, that belief was
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Sanders, God Who Risks, 205 writes, "Is it possible for God to have mistaken beliefs about the future? The
traditional theological answer is that God cannot, but there are several biblical texts that seem to affirm that what
God thought would happen did not come about (for example, Jer. 3:7, 19-20)."