Beyond the Bounds

Open Theism and the Undermining of Biblical Christianity

John Piper, Justin Taylor, Paul Kjoss Helseth, John Piper, Justin Taylor, Paul Kjoss Helseth

• Publisher: Crossway
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781433516252
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Teologia cristiana

"Everyone who believes in God at all believes that He knows what you and I are going to do tomorrow."
–C. S. Lewis

This understanding of God's foreknowledge has united the church for twenty centuries. But advocates of "open theism" are presenting a different vision of God and a different view of the future.

The rise of open theism within evangelicalism has raised a host of questions. Was classical theism decisively tainted by Greek philosophy? How should we understand passages that tell us that God repents? Are essentials of biblical Christianity–like the inerrancy of Scripture, the trustworthiness of God, and the Gospel of Christ–at stake in this debate? Where, when, and why should we draw new boundaries–and is open theism beyond them? Beyond the Bounds brings together a respected team of scholars to examine the latest literature, address these questions, and give guidance to the church in this time of controversy.

Contributors include:

• John Piper
• Wayne Grudem
• Michael S. Horton
• Bruce A. Ware
• Mark R. Talbot
• A. B. Caneday
• Stephen J. Wellum
• Justin Taylor
• Paul Kjoss Helseth
• Chad Brand
• William C. Davis
• Russell Fuller

"We have prepared this book to address the issue of boundaries and, we pray, bring some remedy to the present and impending pain of embracing open theism as a legitimate Christian vision of God.... As a pastor, who longs to be biblical and God-centered and Christ-exalting and eternally helpful to my people, I see open theism as theologically ruinous, dishonoring to God, belittling to Christ, and pastorally hurtful. My prayer is that Christian leaders will come to see it this way, and thus love the church by counting open theism beyond the bounds of orthodox Christian teaching."
–From the Foreword by John Piper

PART ONE

Historical Influences

1

THE RABBIS AND THE CLAIMS OF
OPENNESS ADVOCATES

Russell Fuller

I. INTRODUCTION

The Old Testament is the battleground in the theological struggle between the advocates of the openness view of God and the advocates of the traditional view of God. The openness view, a recent and rare position,¹ challenges important, vital, and cherished teachings about the character and nature of God. It represents a seismic shift not only in theology but also in history and in exegesis. Because its teachings and implications are so thoroughgoing and so far-reaching,² Christians must weigh its claims carefully and test its doctrines meticulously. Both sides of the dispute, to be sure, lay claim to the Bible—especially the Old Testament—to substantiate their position. To validate the claims of the openness view, then, one may appeal to a disinterested third party, like a referee, an umpire, or a judge to evaluate impartially the evidence. Because the Old Testament is the common possession of Christians and Jews, and because the Old Testament is in the front lines of this conflict, the early Rabbis of the Talmud and the Midrash, like a referee or a judge, can test the historical, exegetical, and theological claims and teachings of the openness view. Under Rabbinic scrutiny and examination, however, the openness view fails, its lethal errors exposed, its inaccurate claims concerning history, theology, and exegesis repudiated.

II. HISTORICAL CLAIMS OF THE OPENNESS VIEW

Advocates of the openness view, of course, will immediately object, challenging the impartiality of the Rabbis. Indeed, John Sanders, an advocate for the openness view, claims that Greek philosophy influenced both Christian and Jewish thinking about God. Sanders, who insists that “Hellenistic rational theology . . . had a profound impact on Jewish and Christian thinking about the divine nature,” writes:

Where does this “theologically correct” view of God come from? The answer, in part, is found in the way Christian thinkers have used certain Greek philosophical ideas. Greek thought has played an extensive role in the development of the traditional doctrine of God. But the classical view of God worked out in the Western tradition is at odds at several key points with a reading of the biblical text. . . . ³

Furthermore, Sanders claims that Philo, the first-century Jewish Hellenist, bridged the gap between Greek philosophy and the Old Testament, profoundly affecting Jewish and Christian theology. “Philo of Alexandria,” says Sanders, “was a Jewish thinker who sought to reconcile biblical teaching with Greek philosophy. To him goes the distinction of being the leading figure in forging the biblical-classical synthesis. Both the method and the content of this synthesis were closely followed by later Jewish, Christian and Muslim thinkers.”⁴ Hence, Sanders’s historical claims—of Greek philosophical influence and of Philo’s role in transmitting Greek thought to Judaism—allegedly disqualify the Rabbis as impartial judges.

Modern Rabbinic authorities, however, deny that Greek philosophy influenced the Rabbis. They were not philosophers, nor students of phi losophy, having only limited or casual interest in the subject,⁵ as the Reformed (liberal) C. G. Montefiore asserts:

Another point to remember in regard to Rabbinic literature is that it comes from men whose outlook was extraordinarily limited. They had no interests outside Religion and the Law. They had lost all historic sense. They had no interest in art, in drama, in belles lettres, in poetry, or in science (except, perhaps, in medicine). They had no training in philosophy. How enormously they might have benefited if, under competent teachers, they had been put through a course of Greek philosophy and literature. . . . The Old Testament was practically the only book they possessed . . . Yet this Bible, with all that it implied, is their world, their one overmastering interest. They picked up, it is true, many current ideas, opinions, superstitions, in a fluid, unsystematic form. But all that was by the way and incidental. . . . The Rabbis, for good or for evil, knew no philosophy.⁶

From the other side of the theological aisle, the Orthodox H. Loewe concurs: “The dialectics which Halakah involved made up, to no small extent, for the lack of philosophy. The Rabbis were no philosophers . . . and, as Mr Montefiore says, their outlook was limited. . . . They had but a casual acquaintance with Greek thought.”⁷

This casual acquaintance, of course, had no discernable influence on the Rabbis. Abraham Cohen speculates that although some Rabbis may have been aware of Greek philosophy, “the interest in metaphysical speculation which characterized the thinkers of Greece and Rome was not shared by the teachers of Israel to any great extent.”⁸ G. F. Moore cannot find Greek philosophy in Rabbinic thought: “The idea of God in Judaism is developed from the Scriptures. The influence of contemporary philosophy which is seen in some Hellenistic Jewish writings—the Wisdom of Solomon, 4 Maccabees, and above all in Philo—is not recognizable in normative Judaism, nor is the influence of other religions. . . .”⁹ Similarly, Adin Steinsaltz declares: “Some of the mishnaic and talmudic sages were acquainted with Greek and classical literature, but this knowledge had almost no impact on their way of thinking where talmudic scholarship was concerned. In this they differed greatly from Egyptian Jewry which tried to combine Greek culture with Judaism.”¹⁰ Saul Lieberman, arguably the greatest Rabbinic authority of the last century and a leading expert on Hellenistic influence in Judaism, admits that some purely Greek ideas penetrated into Rabbinic circles, but these were limited to ethical principles and Greek legal thought.¹¹ Rabbinic literature, for example, abounds with Greek and Roman legal terms, and quotes verbatim from Gentile law books.¹² Nevertheless, Lieberman emphatically rejects the influence of Greek philosophy on Rabbinic thought. The Rabbis never quote a Greek philosopher, never use Greek philosophic terms,¹³ and they mention only one prominent Greek philosopher: Epicurus, the embodiment of infidelity and “symbol of heresy,” whose views the Rabbis regarded as worse than atheism, and whose advocates the Rabbis excluded from the world to come.¹⁴ Lieberman concludes: “They [the Rabbis] probably did not read Plato and certainly not the pre-Socratic philosophers. Their main interest was centered in Gentile legal studies and their methods of rhetoric.”¹⁵

In fact, the Rabbis distrust, resist, and even despise Greek philosophy. The Talmud, for instance, indicates the proper time to study Greek philosophy:

Ben Damah the son of Rabbi Ishmael’s sister once asked Rabbi Ishmael, May one such as I who have studied the whole of the Torah learn Greek wisdom? He thereupon read to him the following verse, This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night. (Josh 1:8) Go then and find a time that is neither day nor night and learn then Greek wisdom.¹⁶

Other Rabbis were more to the point, equating the breeding of swine to the learning of Greek philosophy: “Cursed be the man who would breed swine and cursed be the man who would teach his son Greek wisdom.”¹⁷ The Rabbis distrusted Greek philosophy, with its naturalism and rationalism, because it threatened religious faith and eroded traditional Rabbinic training. One Rabbi reported: “There were a thousand pupils in my father’s school, of whom five hundred studied Torah and five hundred studied Greek philosophy; and from them none were left but myself and my nephew.”¹⁸ The Rabbis even exclude the Epicureans, who deny providence, from the world to come.¹⁹ Cohen well summarizes the Rabbinic attitude toward Greek philosophy: “So far as Greek thought [philosophy] is concerned, there is almost unanimity against it.”²⁰

This hostility, of course, arises from their differences. Greek philosophers trusted in reason and the senses; the Rabbis trusted in God and the Prophets. Greek philosophers believed in a pagan god subject to law, nature, and fate; the Rabbis, in the God who transcended all these. Greek philosophers connected God to the world pantheistically or semi-pantheistically; the Rabbis separated God from his creation. Greek philosophers rejected supernaturalism, providence, and creation ex nihilo; the Rabbis heartily embraced them all. The occasional similarity—the notion of divine perfections or of certain monotheistic ideas—is coincidence or, more likely, the result of general revelation (Rom. 1:18ff). In the end, Greek philosophy and Rabbinic thought are like oil and water, like iron and clay: they cannot mix, they cannot adhere.

Historians are just as emphatic as the Rabbis and modern Rabbinic authorities in rejecting Sanders’s claim. Solomon Grayzel, for instance, writes:

For the Jews of Judea did not come in touch with the highest Greek civilization, not even with as high a Greek culture as surrounded the Jews of Alexandria. Even if they had met the real Greek culture, that of the famous Greek philosophers and poets, the Jews would still have rejected it as inferior to the culture of Judaism, though they might have had some respect for it.²¹

Likewise, G. F. Moore, also a historian of religion, states:

The Jewish conception of God is derived from the Bible, and from the purest and most exalted teachings of the Bible, such as are found in Exod 33ff, Hosea, Deuteronomy, Jeremiah, Isaiah 40-5, and the Psalms. Monotheism was reached, as has been already observed, not from reflections on the unity of nature or of being, but from the side of God’s moral rule in history, and it has therefore a more consistently personal character than where ...