The Incredible Shrinking God
TCF Sermon
September 22, 2002
The Tulsa State Fair begins next week. If you walk along the midway, you’ll hear what are known as carnival barkers. They don’t literally bark, but they do shout out the attractions they want you come and pay for...
You’ll have some weird things, some funny things ....most carnivals have some strange two-headed animals...some have some people with strange attributes.
Some are just inviting you to come and sample their food: “cotton candy, peanuts, corn dogs, funnel cakes, get ‘em right here!”
As I was preparing this message, the idea of a carnival barker came to mind. This one would have quite an attraction. He’d be shouting, “Come one! Come all! Come see the incredible shrinking God! He used to be all-powerful! He used to know everything! But now, He’s shrinking.... come and see the incredible shrinking God!
That’s the title of this morning’s message: The Incredible Shrinking God.
It’ll hopefully make sense to you as we go along. But we’ll open with a passage of scripture which describes just the opposite. A truer picture of God’s nature and not what we tend to do to Him...
Romans 11:33-36 Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!
34"Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?" 35"Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?" 36For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.
For the past several weeks, since before the last time I was in this pulpit, I feel like a man who has been climbing a majestic mountain. Many times when you climb mountains, you climb what are called switchbacks... what that means is that you don’t climb straight up, but you climb around and up, and then you might change directions because of the terrain, and climb around and up some more, before you do it all over again.
My reason for this climb is to see what’s at the top. As I climb, I see more and more below me. But I also realize there’s much that I can’t see clearly, either beyond my vision, or just around the switchback. Now, it’s all there – the One who made it all can see it, but for me, some of it is too far away to be fully attainable.
I can make some of it clearer with binoculars, bringing it closer. But the vastness of this mountain and all that surrounds it, is more than I can fully take in. As I approach the top of the mountain, I struggle still more. This is not an easy climb by any means. Finally I reach the top, and there’s initially a feeling of exhilaration, as I see this magnificent vista all around me.
But as I look down, I see that there’s more depth that I haven’t explored. As I look around, I see there are additional heights I haven’t reached. Now, there are two possible responses to this. I could try to make sense of it, based on my puny ability to see it all, based on using my binoculars, based on what I can only partly make out from a vast distance, and I could try to imagine the rest, based on my own understanding and experience.
But there’s way too much for me to imagine. I couldn’t begin to grasp all the nuances of the landscape, let alone see what’s around the bend - those things which I, right now, at the top of this mountain, cannot see at all...
The other potential response is to fall down on my knees in worship of the One who created this magnificent mountain and all the surrounding landscape, and marvel at the hint of His glory, which is revealed in a small way by His creation, even though I can’t see it all, and even especially because I can’t see it all.
Two of the last three weeks, we’ve looked at pieces of this theme of God’s vastness...
- a few weeks ago when Jim Grinnell preached about grasping the greatness of God, especially through His creation.
- and last week, as Hal Reed challenged us with his excellent message to consider how Christians can worship the creator, and also be good stewards of His creation without worshipping His creation.
So, this morning, we’re going to take that thread in a slightly different direction, hinted at in the passage of scripture from Romans we just read. Just as God’s magnificent creation reveals His vastness, His power, and His authority over the universe, His plans, His ways, and His judgments, also reveal much about what a great and mighty God we serve.
And even as we’ve just begun to scratch the surface of the intricacy of God’s creation...
just as we barely understand how the many things God has created work, we can only touch a portion of how God’s plans for humanity, His understanding of His human creatures, works our in time, in our lives, and in our hearts.
That’s what Paul was referring to in this passage in Romans 11. He was feeling like I’ve felt in these past two weeks....like someone who’d climbed to the top of a mountain with great effort, only to see that when he got to the top of that mountain, how much more there was to see....what depth spread out below him, what heights spread out around him.
The context of Paul’s doxology here is the end of three chapters of Paul trying to fathom God’s plans for salvation. Paul knows that God is not only unlimited as revealed in His creation which we can see, but He’s unlimited in His creation as far as what He knows.
We call this part of God’s nature His omniscience. He’s the original know-it-all. But He’s the only one about which that statement is absolutely and completely true.
In Romans chapters 9 through 11, we find Paul dealing with some of the most difficult and hard-to-grasp themes in scripture. One preacher put it this way:
“In these chapters Paul struggles with the question of whether the nation of Israel’s rejection of Jesus as their Messiah implies a failure of God to keep his promises. Paul struggles with the role of Israel in God’s plan, and how Israel’s failure to trust Jesus opened the door to non-Jewish people to trust Jesus. Throughout these chapters Paul grapples with the mystery of God’s election, and this mystery is so complex and controversial, some people would just as soon avoid these chapters altogether.”
But after wrestling with these mysteries, we see how Paul concludes his discussion:
with Romans 11:33—Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! (NIV).
Paul had stretched his thinking to the limit. But like the mountain climbing illustration from a moment ago, he had two choices. He had already shared what he knew,
and he could have continued by speculating based on what he didn’t really grasp.
Or he could have done what he did. He breaks into spontaneous praise about God’s infinite knowledge and wisdom.
He chose to praise this specific attribute of God’s nature: His omniscience.
Here’s how one preacher explains: “The phrase "the depth of the riches" pictures God’s wisdom and knowledge as being like a gold or silver mine with no bottom, riches with no bottom. God’s wisdom is God’s ability to weave our free decisions into His plan in such a way as to fulfill His will (Godet). For instance, even though Israel freely rejected Jesus as their Messiah, God used their rejection as a way to reach non-Jewish people with the good news of Christ, which fulfilled God’s plan. Only an infinitely wise intelligence could do that. God’s knowledge is his inexhaustible understanding. The infinite depth of God’s wisdom and knowledge make it impossible for limited, finite creatures like us to figure God out.”
Now, obviously that was something Paul could rest in. Indeed, he could do more than rest in it. He could bring praise to God in recognition that God’s wisdom is so much greater than ours. But recently, there are some people who haven’t been able to rest in God’s omniscience, let alone praise Him for it, in light of our own finite understanding.
Let me read a statement that you might think rather unremarkable in first hearing it.
It’s a statement that the Evangelical Theological Society voted on and approved about a year ago: "We believe the Bible clearly teaches that God has complete, accurate, and infallible knowledge of all events past, present, and future, including all future decisions and actions of free moral agents."
The resolution passed with 253 yes votes, 66 no votes, and 41 abstaining. The fact that more than a hundred out of 350 theologians, who would classify themselves as evangelical, and generally conservative, could vote no or abstain from approving such a seemingly simple creed affirming what the church has believed about God’s omniscience for 2000 years, might cause you to scratch your head and say, “hey, what’s going on here?” Why would anyone even need a vote to affirm this?
Until recently, this recent challenge to 2,000 years of orthodox Christian understanding of God’s omniscience has been a sort of behind-the-scenes debate. It’s been a debate between theologians. Because of that, it hasn’t much filtered out into the general populace among Christians. But that’s going to change, and is changing.
In fact, the book that started it all, called The Openness of God was published eight years ago. It started a debate among theologians, but not so much among the rest of us. At least until more recently, when these ideas are picking up steam in some arenas.
There are churches that have split over this issue, there’s at least one denomination that’s debating this issue. And there is a lot of dialogue going on between those who espouse this view of God’s nature, and those who would defend a more traditional understanding of God’s omniscience.
Let me summarize the issues at hand here. The movement likes to call itself Open Theism...but, let’s start by defining a few key views of classical theism. I owe much of this discussion and many of these explanations to Norman Geisler’s excellent book on what he calls “Neotheism” – The Dangers of Making God in Man’s Image.
Classical theism has always affirmed God’s nature as including: Omnipotence: He’s all powerful - Omnipresence: He’s everywhere - Omniscience: He’s all-knowing.
Among other things, God’s also unchanging, or immutable. Included in the classical understanding of omniscience is the idea that God knows the past, the present and the future perfectly. A part of this understanding is that because God is the creator of time,
He is able to step into time and exercise his authority in time, while transcending time and living in eternity.
Eternity is different from time. It’s not just more time or endless time, but eternity stands separate from time, and it’s where God has always lived – in eternity. Because He lives in eternity, and He created time, He doesn’t see time as we do. He sees time, as one writer put it, as “one eternal now.”
Whereas we see time in linear understanding, that is, past, present and future, God sees it all at once. So when we say He knows the future, that’s true, even though for us the future hasn’t happened yet. But God sees the future differently. He sees it as present, just as He sees the past. It’s all now for God. That’s the classical theist understanding of how God sees the future, and it’s what I believe.
Without taking the time to review all these verses, I’ve prepared a sheet with some key passages describing God’s omniscience. You can review these on your own if you wish – it’s in your bulletin.
Numbers 23:19
Deut. 32:4
1 Samuel 2:3
1 Samuel 15:29
Job 36:26
Job 37:16
Psalm 139:1-2
Psalm 139:4
Psalm 139:16
Psalm 145:3
Psalm 147:5
Isaiah 40:14
Isaiah 41:21-24
Isaiah 42:9
Isaiah 55:8-13
Jeremiah 17:10
Ezekiel 11:5
Malachi 3:6
Matthew 10:30
Romans 11:33-36
Hebrews 1:8-12
Hebrews 13:8
James 1:17
1 John 3:20
Now, is this understanding of God’s omniscience something we can fully grasp in our finite minds? Clearly, no. If there’s someone here who thinks they can explain that to me in a way I can fully understand, talk to me sometime. However, I believe it’s part of the depths of the wisdom and knowledge of God, that caused Paul to break into worship.
Open Theism sees this differently, and that’s why the Evangelical Theological Society felt the need to take a vote on this issue. Christianity Today wrote: “Open Theism has emphasized God’s self-limitation in dealing with his free human creatures. Because he desires their free response, Openness theologians have said, he neither predetermines nor foreknows their moral choices.”
The magazine also points out that “the vast majority of theologians have found ways to affirm human freedom and responsibility without compromising divine omniscience.”
Key Christian thinkers, from second-century theologians Irenaeus and Tertullian, to the 20th-century apologist C. S. Lewis, believed that God is free of the constraints of time,
and therefore knows everything, past, present and future.
However, Open Theists now teach that God doesn’t know the future precisely, because the future does not yet exist. Again quoting Christianity Today: “Thus, while God is very good at calculating the odds, he still takes risks—especially in dealing with his free creatures.”
One Open Theologian, named John Sanders, wrote this: “we believe that God’s knowledge of the future is partly fixed and partly left open ...we believe that complete foreknowledge of our future decisions implies the loss of our free will....the "future" does not yet exist so there is nothing "there" to be known. Hence, you incorrectly state our view when you say we believe that "God’s knowledge of the future is limited." We believe that God knows all that can be known...”
In some ways, it’s easy to see why this kind of understanding of God would be popular.
Openness theology’s popular appeal is rooted in a Biblical picture of a God who is
1. passionately loving
2. bent on rescuing the lost creatures he loves.
The people who’ve read and liked this book no doubt are drawn to that picture of God.
Of course, I believe most people who would disagree with Open Theism, like me,
would also affirm God’s passionate love for people, and would affirm that God is one who pursues us into a relationship with Him.
But, how God does this is the real debate. Again, quoting Christianity Today: “Such a God, this theology argues, does not exist in changeless perfection outside of time, but must rather take risks by engaging his lost creatures in truly mutual relationships that have no guaranteed outcomes. Thus God does not genuinely know the future, and he actually changes his mind when shifting situations demand it.”
But that begs the question: what does the Word of God mean when it says that God changes His mind? This is where classical theism and open theism diverge significantly.
The classic understanding is that God sometimes speaks of himself in analogical ways,
in an effort to help us understand Him better. I don’t think anyone really thinks God has literal arms or wings, but there are scriptures that speak of God’s arms, or God’s wings.
So, when scripture speaks of God changing His mind, that’s something that’s written from our perspective, for our understanding. When it says in Genesis 6 that God was sorry He had made man, did that mean He had changed His mind? If so, how do we square that with 1 Samuel 15:29 He who is the Glory of Israel does not lie or change his mind; for he is not a man, that he should change his mind."
or Numbers 23:19 God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?
One commentary explains it this way: “God was expressing sorrow for what the people had done to themselves, as a parent might express sorrow over a rebellious child. God was sorry that the people chose sin and death instead of a relationship with him.”
What about when God said in 1 Samuel 15:11 that He was grieved that He had made Saul king? God’s comment here again was an expression of sorrow... it was not an admission of error. If God is omniscient, he can’t make mistakes.
So God did not change His mind, at least as we understand it. Let me quote from another article I read on this topic:
“At the heart of this idea is that though we speak of God by means of human analogy, we do not have access to the inner workings of his mind. Thus the classical approach makes no attempt to psychologize God in human terms. The openness theologians, on the other hand, seem to take this language as a clue to the working of God’s mind, and they try to fit all that is said about his immutability, his plan for history from beginning to end, and his sovereign control over all that comes to pass, into the frame of a mind-changing God. Thus they psychologize God. They treat what is said of God as having only one layer of meaning, rather than analogical. God is thus pictured as like us in a way that merits Voltaire’s observation that God made man in his own image and ever since, man has been seeking to return the compliment.”
So, while it is true that there are a handful of passages that speak of God repenting, or changing His mind, the reference in each case is a reversal of God’s prior treatment of particular men, men who had known His blessing, but responded in sin.
As a consequence, Scripture says that God is grieved, or angry. But there is no suggestion that this reaction was not foreseen, or that it took God by surprise, or was not provided for in his eternal plan.
No change in his eternal purpose is implied when he begins to deal with a person in a new way. What these openness theologians have done is to separate the very significant differences between created (finite) beings and the infinite, or uncreated, God.
If a word must mean for God the exact same thing it does for a human, we shrink God.
If we impose on God our understanding of “before and after”, we shrink Him, we impose on His nature the same limitations we do for we creatures.
Now, I recognize in many ways, we can’t possibly deal with this topic adequately. So I hope you don’t go away this morning thinking, gee, Bill, you really didn’t do these questions justice. You’re right.!!!
But if I preached ten sermons on these things, I couldn’t do it justice...the thoughts are so profound, the ideas are so full of complications, we cannot do them justice in a 30-40 minute sermon.
So let’s be content this morning to just scratch the surface, to spur our thinking,
and to spur our study of Scripture. If that’s all we come away with today – a desire to delve into these things of God more fully, it will have been time well spent.
One thing we must discuss to begin to scratch the surface is this question: What are the practical implications of this Open Theism? Why are we even talking about it this morning?
First of all, I must note that most of what I read about this theology, though it was for the most part quite seriously critical of its implications, which we’ll get to here in a moment, most critical views of Open Theism don’t label this view heresy.
What it does say about Open Theism, however, and the reason we’re even discussing it this morning, is that it’s like a sweater that has a thread hanging. If you begin to pull on that, you don’t really know how much sweater you’ll have left, because you don’t know how much of it will unravel. That’s why it’s generally best to cut the thread to start with.
So, while it may not be heresy, it has slippery-slope implications for our view of God, and how we approach several things.
If we say God doesn’t fully know the future, what other doctrines about God will require significant revision? It raises many more questions than we can answer, and more than we can even pose this morning. But how about these questions for starters:
1. If God doesn’t know the future, and depends on our response to circumstances, does He also re-assess His own past actions? Does that mean He makes mistakes?
2. How can God help but make mistakes, however unintentional, if He acts on the basis of what He thinks we might do in certain situations, but isn’t entirely sure?
3. Does this mean God learns? He must if He’s taken by surprise by what we do and how we respond? But if he learns, how can He be truly omniscient?
4. Can’t God be infinite and personal at the same time? I believe He can.
5. What about Biblical prophecy? How can any of it be true, or how can any of it have come true in the past, if God doesn’t know how free creatures will respond in given circumstances? And how can we argue the truth of Jesus’ messianic claims if prophecy is subject to the whims of human choice? Did God just make lucky guesses? How could God have known Mary would say “yes” to the birth announcement of Jesus?
6. What about the authority of the Word of God? Since the Bible was written by free creatures about whom God can learn, and be surprised, can it be in error?
Timothy George wrote this:
“Open theists deny that God’s knowledge of future contingents can be squared with freely chosen acts. But divine foreknowledge need not negate human responsibility; On the view presented here, God cannot really know anything at all that will come to pass in the future; his knowledge is limited to the present and the past. This reduces biblical prophecy to wishful thinking, albeit divine wishful thinking. It also forces the authors to opt for the "oops theory" of salvation history. If Plan A fails, go to Plan B. And it leaves them little to say about eschatology, except for the vague hope that somehow good will triumph over evil. But the "open God" cannot guarantee that it will. He can only struggle with us against the chaos and keep on trying harder. One might feel sorry for such a God, even sympathize with him in his cosmic battle against the power of darkness. But one would hardly be moved to fall down and worship such an attenuated, transcendence-starved deity. The "open God" is a long way from the awesome, holy, unsurprisable (yet ever-surprising) God of the Bible, the God who "is a consuming fire." In their desire to defend "God’s reputation," and to construct "plausible models" and "convincing conceptions" that would make it easier "to invite people to find fulfillment," they have devised a user-friendly God who bears an uncanny resemblance to a late-twentieth-century seeker. They need not be so concerned about "God’s reputation." They only need to let God be God.”
And I might add, this idea tends to shrink God to more manageable proportions. Let’s turn it around, and ask this? If God does know everything, what impact does that have in our lives?
Since He has no limits in His knowledge, we can fully trust Him and the wisdom of His plan.
Have you ever seen a tapestry before? On one side it’s usually a beautiful picture or complex design, but from the back all you can see are a bunch of threads, knots, and material scraps that seem to make no sense. From the back, a tapestry looks ugly, but from the front, seeing the entire picture, it’s beautiful. Think of your life as being like that tapestry, and God sees the finished product—the design on the front—but because we’re limited in our knowledge all we see is the back, the knotted thread and material scraps.
From the back, we don’t understand how it all fits together. The fact that God has all knowledge—that he sees the completed tapestry from the front—gives us the ability to trust his plan when it doesn’t make sense from our perspective.
You know the cereal 40% Bran Flakes....it begs the question – what’s the other 60 percent?
I don’t know about you, but I’d have a hard time fully trusting a God who was less than 100% omnipotent, 100% omniscient...
There was a popular song by a group called the Newsboys...
Starting with the verse leading to the chorus, let me read some of the lyrics:
there’s no use explaining what can’t be contained
I’m not following a God I can lead around
I can’t tame this Deity
That’s why Jesus is the final answer
To who I want my God to be
He’s who (I want my God to be)
And there’s no use explaining what can’t be contained
How we gonna work this out?
To fabricate a God like this no doubt
We’d end up worshipping a Christ of our own design
But Jesus doesn’t fit that profile
His ways aren’t mine
I’m not following a God that’s imagined
Can’t invent His deity
That’s why Jesus is the final answer
To who I want my God to be
He’s who I want my God to be
Lyrics by Steve Taylor & Peter Furler
So, we end where we began, with Romans 11:33-36 Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! 34"Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?" 35"Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?" 36For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.
