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In addition, given the fact that prophecies have taken place, then, given the claims of

Scripture, they must necessarily come to pass and thus be true. But, once again, if one denies
that God is able to know future contingents, then how does one explain how God can know that
these prophecies will truly come to pass? Would it not be more consistent to affirm that God
possible has or might err on these matters? But if one were to admit that, then how would one
also affirm that Scripture is an infallible and inerrant revelation on all areas that it touches,
including the prophetic realm? It seems that the openness proposal faces a serious dilemma.
Either reject the inerrancy of Scripture and admit that God can only give us probabilities about
the future, or reject the openness proposal regarding divine omniscience for the traditional view
of God's exhaustive knowledge of the future and retain the doctrine of inerrancy. At least on the
surface, there seems to be no other option.

Of course, many non-evangelical theologians do not have a problem with this conclusion.

But for many open theists who want to maintain both the doctrine of inerrancy and their view of
divine omniscience, this poses a serious dilemma. Indeed, William Hasker admits quite candidly
that one of the major obstacles to the acceptance of their view is that of predictive prophecy. As
Hasker asks, "if God does not know what the future will be like, how can he tell us what it will
be like?"

How then, do open theists respond? There are generally three responses and they all

center around our understanding of biblical prophecy an understanding of which does not
entail divine foreknowledge of future contingents. Let us look at each in turn to discover
whether the attempt to reconcile a high view of Scripture with the openness proposal is
successful or not.

First, there is a kind of conditional prophecy which does not require a detailed

foreknowledge of what will actually happen since the purpose of it is to call God's people back
to covenant faithfulness and repentance.

In fact, conditional prophecy assumes that "what is

If X speaks for God about the future in any possible world, then necessarily in every possible world X is correct
about the future.

In some possible world (Z), X is God and his prediction about the future is incorrect (which is a possible world
for the limited omniscience defender).

Therefore in some possible world God does not speak for God (359).

James Barr is a good example. He thinks the prophetic element in Scripture has been greatly exaggerated. In fact,

one of his main criticisms against the traditional view of Scripture is that it has treated the Bible as only one kind of
literature prophetic literature, or what he calls the "prophetic paradigm." As such, Barr believes that the prophetic
paradigm stands at the very center of the traditional view's doctrine of inspiration: the authors speak not their own
words but those given them by God. Barr believes that there are two results which follow from the prophetic
paradigm: (1) the prophetic paradigm is extended to all of Scripture; (2) the prophetic paradigm conveys
implications of the sort of truth that must reside in Scripture verbal, supernatural, inerrant, and infallible. See his
book, Beyond Fundamentalism (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984), 20-32. For a similar criticism of the traditional
view see John Barton, People of the Book (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1988), 71. For a response to James
Barr's charge, see Kevin Vanhoozer, "God's Mighty Speech Acts," 154-56.

William Hasker, God, Time, and Knowledge, 194.

Ibid. For these same three responses see also Pinnock, "God Limits His Knowledge," 158; Most Moved Mover,