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Gregory A. Boyd. God of the Possible: A Biblical Introduction to the Open View of God. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000.175 pp. $12.99.
In the growing line of other "openness" advocates such as John Sanders (The God Who Risks, 1999), David Basinger (The Case for Free Will Theism, 1996), and Richard Rice (God's Foreknowledge and Man's Free Will, 1985), Gregory Boyd makes his way to the front with this new monograph in which he attempts to make the openness proposal more widely accessible. In contrast to his more lengthy and heavily endnoted God at War (1997), Boyd, professor of theology at Bethel College, here writes with a different audience in mind. He intends to target "as many laypeople as possible," and move the discussion out of strictly academic circles where its practical significance has been limited. Yet his reasons for writing are twofold. He is also concerned because some critics are beginning to toss around the alarmist label "heresy"-an accusation Boyd finds both unwarranted and unfair. Most published criticisms, Boyd asserts, "have largely ignored the biblical grounds on which open theists base their position" (p. 12). A more sustained treatment of the biblical evidence is needed so that opponents of the openness view will realize how a "Bible-believing Christian could come to believe, on the authority of God's Word, that the future is not exhaustively settled" (p. 8). Enter Boyd's study.
The "openness of God" proposal, most acknowledge, is as controversial as it is innovative (published critics include Robert McGregor Wright, Millard Erickson, Bruce Ware, and Robert Picirilli, among others). It is no secret that Boyd himself has been witness to, as well as active participant in, much of this controversy-and this in his own denomination's backyard. The proposal itself, however, initially gained its notoriety under the everprovocative Clark Pinnock who, along with several others, jarred the philosophical-theological foundations of the evangelical community with his 1994 publication of The Openness of God. What exactly is the "openness of God" proposal? In this collected work of essays ranging from the biblical to the historical, from the systematic to the practical, proponents argue that the classical conception of God is more deeply entrenched in Greek philosophy than it is in Scripture. They challenge that some rethinking of the...