The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God

Clark H. Pinnock · Richard Rice · John Sanders · William Hasker · David Basinger

Feb 2010 · InterVarsity Press

About this ebook

Voted one of Christianity Today's 1995 Books of the Year! The Openness of God presents a careful and full-orbed argument that the God known through Christ desires "responsive relationship" with his creatures. While it rejects process theology, the book asserts that such classical doctrines as God's immutability, impassibility and foreknowledge demand reconsideration. The authors insist that our understanding of God will be more consistently biblical and more true to the actual devotional lives of Christians if we profess that "God, in grace, grants humans significant freedom" and enters into relationship with a genuine "give-and-take dynamic." The Openness of God is remarkable in its comprehensiveness, drawing from the disciplines of biblical, historical, systematic and philosophical theology. Evangelical and other orthodox Christian philosophers have promoted the "relational" or "personalist" perspective on God in recent decades. Now here is the first major attempt to bring the discussion into the evangelical theological arena.

About the author

Clark Pinnock was Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology at McMaster Divinity College in Hamilton, Ontario. Widely regarded as one of evangelicalism's most stimulating theologians, he produced several widely discussed books, including The Wideness of God's Mercy and (with four other scholars) The Openness of God. He passed away in August, 2010.

Richard Rice is professor of religion at Loma Linda University in Loma Linda, California. He is the author of several books, including God s Foreknowledge and Man s Free Will and Reason and the Contours of Faith.

John Sanders (Th.D., University of South Africa) is professor of religion at Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas. He has edited and written several books, including No Other Name: An Investigation into the Destiny of the Unevangelized. Three of his previous book projects have received a Christianity Today Book Award.

William Hasker (Ph.D., University of Edinburgh) is professor emeritus of philosophy at Huntington College in Huntington, Indiana. His books include Metaphysics: Constructing a World View; God, Time, and Knowledge; Reason and Religious Belief (with Michael Peterson, David Basinger and Bruce Reichenbach); The Openness of God (with Clark Pinnock, Richard Rice, John Sanders and David Basinger); Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings (edited with Michael Peterson, David Basinger and Bruce Reichenbach); The Emergent Self; Middle Knowledge: Theory and Applications (edited with David Basinger and Eef Dekker) and Providence, Evil and the Openness of God.

David Basinger is professor of philosophy and ethics at Roberts Wesleyan College in Rochester, New York. He is the author of Divine Power in Process Theism (SUNY) and joint author of the books Reason and Religious Belief: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (Oxford) and Religious Diversity: A Philosophical Assessment (Ashgate).