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simply what others will certainly do, or what will certainly happen. And as we know, often when
these are fulfilled just as God prophesied, the Scripture writer will note that this happened just as
the Lord said e.g., 1 Kings 21:17-24 concerning Jezebel is fulfilled in 2 Kings 9:30-37, and the
author writes, "This is the word of the Lord, which he spoke by His servant Elijah" (9:36). Steve
Roy conducted a comprehensive survey of Scripture on this question, and counted, among other
findings, that there are 1,893 texts that state predictively that God will do something or other in
or through human beings, and 1,474 texts that state predictively what human beings will do,
apart from God directly acting in or through them.

Regarding predictions that are fulfilled through the future actions of free agents, will it do

to account for these predictions by any one of the three categories advanced by openness
proponents? i.e., 1) predictions of God's unilateral determination that require for their
fulfillment no future free human choices, 2) predictions based on probabilities of what most
likely, but not certainly, will occur, or 3) predictions containing explicit or implicit conditions by
which God may in fact act differently than he states in the prediction. The answer is `no', but the
main problem here is not with these three categories, per se, but in what they omit. Open theists
leave out one major category of predictive prophecy, viz., specific and inviolable divine
predictions whose fulfillment involves, in some direct or indirect fashion, future free creaturely
choices and actions. Perhaps no better example can be given than Daniel 11. Consider just the
first four verses:

In the first year of Darius the Mede, I arose to be an encouragement and a protection for

him.

And now I will tell you the truth. Behold, three more kings are going to arise in Persia.

Then a fourth will gain far more riches than all of them; as soon as he becomes strong
through his riches, he will arouse the whole empire against the realm of Greece.

And a mighty king will arise, and he will rule with great authority and do as he pleases.

But as soon as he has arisen, his kingdom will be broken up and parceled out toward the

four points of the compass, though not to his own descendants, nor according to his
authority which he wielded, for his sovereignty will be uprooted and given to others
besides them.

The number of future free choices and actions predicted either explicitly or implicitly from
just these four verses boggles the mind! Now, don't misconstrue the point. My argument is by
no means dependent on Daniel 11; this chapter is merely illustrative of hundreds of such
passages. Give Daniel to the critical scholars! well, don't, but you could and you still have
the rest of your Bible filled with specific, inviolable divine predictions involving future choices
and actions of free creatures.

4.

[Hear me carefully, please.] Open theism's denial of exhaustive divine foreknowledge
makes it impossible to affirm Scripture's inerrancy unequivocally prior to the fulfillment
of any and all of its specific and inviolable divine predictions that involve future free
human decisions and actions; that is, insofar as there are such predictions, whether they
are fulfilled or not depends on future free choices and actions of which God can have no
advance knowledge and over which he has no ultimate control.

See the full tabulation of Roy's findings, as listed in Ware, God's Lesser Glory, 100, f.n. 2.