Good afternoon, everyone. I'm not Andy Anderson, as I'm sure you've already realized, but then again, neither are you, so we're in the same boat. Who I am is Jim Harrison, and I'm the pastor of Red Mills Baptist Church in Mayapac Falls, New York. That's at 531 Route 6N in Mayapac Falls, to be exact. We're about an hour north of the city, just over the Westchester border into Putnam County. So if you find yourself up far away, we'd love to have you come and join us for worship. In the early part of the 20th century, Protestant Christianity was rocked by battles within denominations concerning issues which earlier members of those groups would never have thought possible. The infallibility of scripture, the virgin birth, the resurrection, even the deity of Christ were all called into question. And these issues, which prior to the Enlightenment had been considered settled within the Christian church, were now being questioned, but not by outsiders. That had always been the case. What made this different was the fact that Christendom's own professors were now the ones who were attacking its very foundations. And as has always been the case, what begins in the seminary classroom eventually filters down into the pew. And folks, it's happening again. Once more, an issue for which the previous two millennia have been considered settled doctrinal truth by every branch of Orthodox Christianity is under attack. And once more, the attack comes not from without, but from within. And it comes not even from the ranks of self-proclaimed liberalism, but rather from within the ranks of those who would call themselves evangelicals. What does God know, and when does He know it? For the vast majority of Christian believers, that would seem to be a silly question with an obvious answer. God knows everything, would be the first response of many. Indeed, that has been the answer of Orthodox Christian theologians throughout the 2,000-year history of the Christian Church. When we speak about the omniscience of God, we speak of His all-knowingness. and indeed scripture certainly seems to support this idea. Isaiah chapter 46 verses 9 to 11 state this, Remember the former things long past, for I am God, and there is no other. I am God, and there is no one like me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not been done, saying my purpose will be established. and I will accomplish all my good pleasure. King David as well in Psalm 139 verses 1-4 wrote this, O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up. You understand my thought from afar. You scrutinize my path and my lying down and are intimately acquainted with all my ways. even before there is a word on my tongue. Behold, O Lord, you know it all." And of course, Ephesians chapter 1 and verse 11, "...in him also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to his purpose, who works all things after the counsel of his will." Now these scriptures, as well as many others, do seem to tell us that God knows all things. even before they happen. And furthermore, according to Isaiah and Paul, he knows them because he has decreed them. But is that really what the Scriptures teach? Some today would answer no to that question. These are the proponents of what has come to be known as the openness of God theology. Clark Pinnock, professor of theology at McMaster Divinity School, and certainly the leading academic proponent of this view, has said this, quote, It is obvious that a future-free decision cannot be known ahead of time by God or anyone else. Unquote. He's also said, quote, God is omniscient in the sense that he knows everything which can be known. God can surmise what you will do next Friday, but he cannot know it for certain, because you have not done it yet." And, lest you think this is an issue that is confined to the ivory towers of academia, let me assure you that this is not the case. There has been, in the last several years, great turmoil within the traditionally evangelical denomination of the General Baptist Conference. Greg Boyd is the pastor of the 3,000-member Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is also a professor of theology at Bethel College and Seminary, also in St. Paul, the flagship schools of the General Baptist Conference. Pastor Boyd has written several books and articles that address this issue, and we'll find out what he has to say about it when we get back from this break. If you'd like to join in today's discussion, call 1-800-345-WMCA. This is Andy Anderson live on New York's Christian Talk, WMCA. This is Dan Botafuco of Botafuco & Associates. Most of you know me as a personal injury attorney. Family Night with the Mets, Saturday, September 30th. Good afternoon once again. We're back with the Andy Anderson show. My name is Jim Harrison. I'm the pastor of Red Mills Baptist Church. We're talking this afternoon about something called the openness of God theology. Pastor Greg Boyd, a pastor in Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, has written several books and articles that address this issue. And he has said, for instance, God can't foreknow the good or bad decisions of the people he creates until he creates these people, and they in turn create their decisions. This has caused quite a ruckus in the General Baptist Conference. John Piper, another prominent pastor and author from that denomination, has gone against Mr. Boyd and that kind of teaching. He and two hundred other pastors of that denomination have replied that that teaching about foreknowledge undermines the doctrine of God's omniscience and is a very real danger to the health of the Church. They went so far as to draft an amendment to the General Baptist Conference Statement of Faith that would have inserted this statement about God the Father, we believe that he foreknows infallibly all that shall come to pass. That amendment was defeated by a vote of 270 to 251. This is going on throughout evangelicalism. We have this morning with us, as our first guest, Dr. Albert Mohler. This afternoon, Dr. Albert Muller, the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He's the author of numerous scholarly articles, as well as commentaries appearing in periodicals such as World Magazine. He's a leading spokesman for the evangelical movement, having appeared on Larry King Live, The Today Show, and Dateline NBC, among others. He has debated Patricia Ireland of the National Organization for Women, former Clinton Administration Press Secretary D.D. Myers, as well as the Reverend Robert Shuler. For our purposes today, Dr. Moeller is eminently qualified to address the issue of the theology of the openness of God, having addressed this subject in both scholarly articles in the Southern Baptist Journal of Theology, as well as on a more popular level in World Magazine. Dr. Moeller, thank you for joining us. I'm glad to be with you. Dr. Mohler, we've been talking a bit about the openness of God theology, but perhaps you can share with us, from your perspective, not only what the primary components of openness theology are, but also where it came from. Surely it didn't just pop out of thin air. No, that's a good question, and I think it requires a two-pronged answer. First, it comes from popular culture. There is a desire in America for a user-friendly deity, a God who is cut down to size. when you look at the god that is uh... the the uh... deity most uh... americans believe in this is not the god of abraham and isaac and jacob this is not the god of the bible this is a god uh... who basically want all the creatures to get along and uh... has some power but uh... is obviously powerless to affect as well the second of course behind this is the uh... trajectory of armenian theology and uh... Yes, you know, Arminius, who probably would not agree with most of what is called Arminianism, tried to refine and to reform the reformed doctrine, that is the reformation doctrine of the 16th century, by changing the way that human beings were understood to relate to God and God to human beings. that if he redefined the sovereignty of god so that human beings and uh... our own will have more influence uh... in the theological equation you may say in our relationship well you have a figure such as greg boyd and clark pinnock who are doing the consistent armenianism requires the denial of god's absolute omniscience because if without our freedom is so categorical that god cannot know what we have not yet decided So what then is the attraction of this? Why would people want to believe in a God who seems to be limited in his knowledge? Well, you know, I think the first motive is not to believe in a God with reduced powers, so to speak, but to elevate the human being. I think in our core, we really want to believe that we are the masters of our own fate, that we are the deciders of our own lives, and that we have personal responsibility and absolute freedom. And we define that absolute freedom in such a way that we're not free even if God knows in the future what our decisions will be. The philosophers for a long time have argued that the claim of divine omniscience is absolutely tied to divine sovereignty. In other words, if God knows what you're going to do tomorrow, you're not really free to do something else tomorrow because God's knowledge fixes what your choice is going to be. Well, that seems to be very clear in Scripture as the pattern. David said that the Lord knew his words before he ever spoke them. Now, that did not mean that David did not have the experience of freedom in framing his words, that David was not responsible for his words, but it did mean that God was not surprised when he heard David speak. Dr. Moeller, this might seem to some to be a new teaching. Is this new? Is this something that has never been taught in the history of the Christian church before, or has it arisen in other times? Well, it would be an exaggeration to say that something like this has never been taught, but insofar as there really is something new under the sun, this is a fairly new development. And as evidence of that, let me just kind of rewind, see, you know, church history for a couple of hundred years. You could not have found anyone who would have denied the absolute foreknowledge of God. This is something very new. Okay, very good. Dr. Muller, we take a phone call. I heard your topic today on the openness of God. I'm a Roman Catholic and in Roman Catholicism we have another phrase for it. It's called Liberation Theology. Have you ever heard of that phrase? So yes. In the other Protestant denominations I'm very active in the pro-life movement. Now in the individual churches I see a lot of excellent pro-life people. I'm talking about superintendents, bishops, ex-priests, and so on and so on, who are given high prestigious jobs in teaching or in academia. As a matter of fact, even in the College of Cardinal sometimes, in other churches, where they teach abortion is tolerable, that God is open to it. I think that's a terrible, terrible thing. twisting of the scripture i've heard this a few times where i i'm not going to mention any denominations uh... with people say yes but abortion is allowable within my church i'm saying allowable how can you read the bible and come back with that allowable yes dr moore what is the practical ramification of this kind of theology well it really cuts god down to size it really cuts god down to size and the big issue is What is the God revealed in Scripture? Who is that God? Because if we're simply going to create a God of our own imagination, we can start and end wherever we choose. I was in a debate not long ago on national television with a New Age prophet who told me that her God is all love and no judgment. But that's just not the God of the Bible. And the God of Scripture has absolute power. That's where we use the phrase omnipotence. As Nebuchadnezzar testified in Daniel chapter 4, there is no one that can stop his hand. He can do all things just by his word. And at the same time, the Bible also speaks of God's knowledge as absolutely unconditional. You find it in the Psalms, you find it throughout the warp and woof of Scripture. Now, what these proponents of the openness theism want is a picture of God that is more relational. That is, He changes His mind and He responds to us in a way that we can have more of an initiative. Now, you ask, what's the gain? The gain is a more humanistic theology. The expense is biblical truth. Marlene in Queens, you have a question for Dr. Mohler. Hi. Actually, I have a comment. Sure. Because I really believe in the absolute knowledge of God and that God knows everything because an experience I had last year while I was home. Home to my country that is. I have a friend who is a very close friend and I was seeking to find out about God's love for me and if he really acknowledges me and all the kind of things I was going to say. And a lot of just have this friend of mine say things as I was about to speak. A lot of just having this friend say things that were on my mind I was about to say and things before I did he just had to tell me what I was going to do next and this kind of thing just to prove to me that you know he has me in his thoughts and he knows every step before I even take them. He does. And one more comment I believe predestination that it's predestination to God because God knows everything but to us it's a choice but he already knows the choice we are going to make before we even make them so to him it's already predestinated because he already knows. Very good. Well, her reasoning is very sound. She started with her experience. I would simply start with scripture to say that is the way God has revealed himself to be and this is the power God has revealed himself to have and this is how he relates to us. He does not relate to us as one struggling with us to see how this story is going to end. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. And as you know from reading the scripture, history is going to end just as he chooses for it to end. Correct. Correct. George in Queens. George, how are you? Yeah. Hello, Dr. Marley. Thank you. Hello. Yeah. Yeah. I want to comment that, you know, it's true what you're saying. Some of the ideas that Christians have today, they're not even Christian. I don't know where they're taken from. One of them is, for example, the immortality of the soul. You know, Martin Luther and Wycliffe, they did not believe in immortality of the soul, but soul is i'm not today some christian believe that you know that the ideas come from that even from the father of the paper they are not there are no idea george when you hold that and we'll get right back to you after these messages this is andy anderson live on wmca new york's christian talk call in and let your opinion be heard 1-800-345-WMCA And we're back once again with Dr. Albert Mohler, President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. Dr. Mohler, I don't know if we'd agree with all of the examples that George was giving, but his point that some Christians are getting ideas that aren't in scripture, I think is a valid one. That's right. In too many cases, the church is taking its cue from the culture. And you know, in this case, that's particularly evident. Americans believe in this myth of autonomous individualism. We've so bought into it that no one takes moral responsibility anymore. The main thing we demand as a culture is to be left alone. But you know, that's simply not what we find in Scripture, where we are told that our rising up and our sitting down, our very words are known by God. and we aren't free in the sense that we are free from his knowledge, free from his sight and free from his judgment. Steve in New Jersey, do you have a question for Dr. Mohler? Yes I do and thanks for taking my call and thank you for having this show. It's very educational and I always appreciate learning about theology and so on. My first, I wanted to comment that Dr. Mulder, I really appreciate the Southern Baptist as a denomination. I watch political things and current events and so on, and the Southern Baptists are taking a lot of heat for just being what all we Christians should be doing, taking a stand on the inerrancy of scripture and so on, and people act like it's so abnormal to believe the Bible nowadays. I thank you and all the rest of the leadership in the Southern Baptist denomination for doing that. Well, thank you. My two questions are this. We know that God knows the future. Does he know the future by experience in it? In other words, a lot of pastors will talk about that God is outside of time and time is basically a temporary thing or a created thing and God isn't confined by time. Secondly, we know that God is sovereign. Could you give a definition of God's sovereignty and does he influence the events in order to create an outcome or does he just know that it's going to happen? I have a lot of ideas about that but I'm just asking for the sake of the audience listening because I know a lot of people don't think about these things and I think we could use this opportunity for you to teach us. Well, you have certainly raised an entire catalog of issues there, and each one of them important, if not urgent. So I do appreciate that. And let me say, I appreciate your words about the Southern Baptist Convention, but we're just trying to struggle along, learning what it means to stand for the inerrancy of Scripture and to let the world know that really means something. So I appreciate that word very much. What is raised here is the question of how God relates to us. And according to the scripture, God is the sovereign and he is outside of time. He created time. He is an eternal being, so there's no clock ticking in God. So when you ask if God experiences time, the answer is no, not in the sense that he is a creature within it. As a matter of fact, that's a part of what it means to understand the incarnation, that when the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, he entered time. He experienced aging in his human flesh. And so even though Jesus Christ was fully God and fully man, in his humility of associating with us in human flesh, he experienced time. But God, according to the scripture, from eternity, decrees or permits all that will take place in human history. Now the interesting question you raise is whether God does always decree, that is, or will that this should be, or does he merely permit some things? Well, that's what theologians have argued about for nearly 2,000 years, and I am glad to say that I am a reformed theologian. Some people would use the phrase Calvinism there, but I believe that's the majority position of the Church throughout the ages, that God sovereignly decrees what will take place. But that's not fatalism or determinism, because we are morally responsible and we are given as human beings the responsibility to make decisions to choose our way just as the Lord said through his prophet to the people of the Old Testament, choose ye this day which way you will go. And so we affirm both human responsibility and divine sovereignty. There are some other theologians who would say that God merely permits but he does know. And what's interesting is, and this is very important, if you take the old argument between the Calvinists and the Arminians, the one thing they agreed on was God's exhaustive foreknowledge. And so these new theologians that are denying that, taking Arminianism one step further, really are a departure from the Christian tradition. Thanks, Steve, for that call. Dr. Moeller, I read Pinnock and Boyd and others who hold to this theology, and they use the same kind of terminology. They speak of omniscience and they speak of sovereignty. How can they do that, holding to the views that they do? Well, I can remember my very first class in philosophy, in high school of all places. I had a non-Christian teacher and he talked about sovereignty. He talked about the philosophical categoricals. In other words, they are words that can't be redefined. You take the word sovereignty and forget what we know about God. Let's just think politics for a minute. If the nation of Grenada claims to be sovereign, it can make the claim, but it really isn't sovereign. To be sovereign you have to be absolutely beyond the reach of any power that can make you choose one way or impend something. A little nation like that really isn't sovereign. So when they go to the United Nations and declare themselves the sovereign state of Grenada, they're sovereign only by redefining the term. Well, when some of these theologians say that God is sovereign, they redefine the term. But you can't be a little bit sovereign. You're either sovereign or not. The same thing with omniscience. Greg Boyd defines omniscience as God knowing all the things that can properly be known. Well, that's pretty slippery. Because it certainly implies there are some things that can't be known. And he says explicitly that the future decisions of God's free creatures cannot yet be known because they have not yet been made. It's certainly not the historical view of those terms that we're using. And I honestly just don't believe it's the biblical view. I don't think David could have written the psalm, especially like Psalm 139, without the confidence that God knew what he was going to say and write and do before he ever did them. How are you doing, Pastor? Hello, Dr. Mohler. I've heard you in the Ligonier Conference in Florida. I really enjoyed what you had to say. Thank you. I'm glad you were there. Yes. Two questions, real quickly. I've met up with some friends in Minnesota who recently started to attend Dr. Boyd's church. They mentioned a book called Letters to a Skeptic, I think. Now, it seems ironic. It was sort of apologetic work. If he denies the sovereignty of God, that in and of itself, doesn't that undermine who God is by nature, that he's sovereign? Could you kind of explain a little bit about his teaching and what makes it so, what makes it kind of a point of concern and maybe even dangerous in relationship to Universalism and Collegianism and maybe what's very similar to what Clark Pinnock would teach? And Dr. Mohler, we're going to have you do that as soon as we get back from these messages. A mind is a terrible thing to waste, so keep it informed. This is Andy Anderson live on New York's Christian Talk, WMCA, 1-800-345-WMCA. And we're back with Dr. Albert Mohler from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, speaking about the openness of God theology. Johnny, thank you for that question. Dr. Mohler, is this along the same lines as Pinnock's universalism? Are there things that are in common between Boyd and Pinnock? who remains to be seen uh... how all these issues will come together what we have a president is uh... the work of two different theologians that share a common view of the openness of god and and i fear they will soon share uh... critics universalism as well uh... the the caller johnny raise a very good point about greg boyd he is obviously a very uh... popular teacher he started the church there in minneapolis uh... in the area and it has grown uh... to uh... a very large size uh... even if it doesn't take all visible and uh... the book you wrote letters to a skeptic has been very popular and actually however this idea of uh... an open god is in there it's in the it's a book written to his father and that gets to it and that interesting issue here's father was an unbeliever he wrote these letters seeking to lead his father to christ certainly a laudable thing And many of the arguments in the book are very, very helpful. But he believes that the God of the Christian theology of the last 2,000 years is a difficult God to accept, because this God is a monarch. He is sovereign. And, well, quite frankly, things don't always turn out the way we like it, and God is going to bear the blame. And so he wrote this book, or sections of it, in order to say that God really shouldn't be held responsible, because he did the best he could under the circumstances. In the new book, there's an even more tragic illustration. In this book, he says that there was a young woman who felt called to be a missionary in Japan, and she felt led to marry a young man of the same calling. Later on, this young man turned out to be a wife abuser and a sexual adulterer, and the marriage was ruined, and so was this young woman's ministry in Japan. She went to her pastor, who we presume to be Greg Boyd, in the book, and asked, how could God allow this? Why would God lead me to marry this young man and then it turned out so awful? And the pastor responds by saying that God was as surprised as she was by this outcome. That he was as horrified and disappointed in the young man and surprised that he had turned out this way. Well, this is a bizarre theological understanding of a pastoral situation. The obvious issue from Christian orthodoxy would be to say to this young woman, you know that she had made a mistake in believing that god had uh... had led her to uh... to marry this young man not that god had made a mistake in uh... having her marry someone that didn't turn out to be worthy but the more or we look to the scripture though and there are some passages it seems to support those ideas They talk about God repenting and seem to change his mind. If you humor me for a moment, I'd like to take you through an exercise in biblical interpretation. For instance, how do you deal with the fact that God says in 1 Samuel 15, 11, I repent that I have made Saul king, when later in that very same chapter, Samuel says that the glory of Israel, meaning God, will not lie or repent, for he is not a man that he should repent. How do we deal with passages like that? Well, that is a key question, and mature and responsible Christians need to look at these issues honestly and very straightforwardly. In interpreting Scripture, we're going to follow some method of interpretation, or of hermeneutics, as we call it in the theological jargon. And from the Reformation and from the early Church, there's a very critical principle, and that's the analogy of Scripture, which means we interpret Scripture by Scripture. We believe that Scripture is inerrant. It is the infallible Word of God. It is a whole witness from beginning to end. There's no inconsistency in it. So where there is a problem in interpretation, we know it's not resolved by one of the texts being wrong or even one of the texts being more inspired than another. All of Scripture is inspired, every jot and piddle. So it has to be a problem in our interpretation and in our understanding. So we should seek to interpret Scripture by Scripture. And there's another very important rule here. And that is that the propositional statements of Scripture have priority over the metaphors. That may sound very technical, but this is the way most of us reason every day anyway. When we actually see in Scripture the propositional statements, the declaration that there is one God and there is no other, and you look at the clear statements where God Himself said, I know all things and I'm all powerful, you can look through all the Scripture and see this, just read the testimony that God gave to Job at the end of the book of Job. Those are clear propositional statements. And then when you see a narrative text such as the one you mentioned, from Samuel, about God repenting, then we understand that to be a metaphor. That God, we know that God has accommodated Himself to human knowledge through revealing Himself in His Word. He uses pictures. Sometimes the Bible says God did this with His hand. Well, we don't believe God actually has a hand. We understand that as a metaphor. Now, I'll have to admit, in honesty, that the phrases, the passages about God repenting, just standing by themselves, would be quite problematic, but not when, when you look at the other passage you mentioned, for instance, from Samuel, you have a very clear reference there to the fact that God doesn't repent. So when it says He does, it's a way of trying for us to understand how disappointed God was in Saul. numbers not twenty three nineteen as well this is very clear not a son of man that he should repent that's right but i'm learning your time with us is limited and i want to thank you for staying with us before you leave us allow me to ask you one last question sure you wrote an article in the southern baptist journal theology entitled the eclipse of god at centuries and evangelicals attempt theology without theism i was tremendously intrigued by that title could you explain what you meant by that and whether or not it has any bearing on what we're discussing today well i think it has direct bearing uh... again i think there are two problems here one of them at the popular level in the other in the academic world but what they share in common is the desire of a god who is more made in our image cut down the size and more manageable a god who basically leaves us alone uh... this explains why so many people are interested in spirituality and so few are interested in biblical christianity because the god of the bible of the jealous god He's a God that makes demands upon us, even as He has provided His own Son as our Savior. What you have in America is a smorgasbord of spiritualities. Americans are out shopping for whatever God they want. Just as they're out shopping for whatever car reflects their desires. The academic world is full of folks who will give them exactly what they're asking for, filled with all the background academic jargon. Well, Dr. Mohler, I appreciate you joining us today. It's been a pleasure speaking with you. Dr. Mohler, ladies and gentlemen, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Good to be with you. Thank you very much. Richard in Rockland County. I'm sorry Dr. Mohler had to leave, but we can still chat. How are you today? Yes, I'm fine. Yourself? Very well. That's good to hear. Yes, I've been reading a book that says When God guides us we need to give God all the time he needs as if God has needs. And it also says in the same book that God cannot use certain people who have been unfaithful in the past, not will not. And the book that I'm mentioning is Experiencing God by Henry Blackaby. And is Blackaby's view the same as Boyd or are they a little different? It sounds an awful lot alike. They're a little different, but they're going in the same direction. God's saying that he will not or cannot. There are instances throughout the scriptures where he did use people who weren't desirous of following his will. So this is just another example of having to read things very critically. I know Experiencing God was a very popular book for a while, but there are some problems in it in dealing with the sovereignty of God and his foreknowledge and these other kinds of things. Thank you, Richard, for that. We need to go to a break now. We'll be back in just a minute. hello again and we're back discussing the idea that god does not know what the future holds and we're going to go to dario in queensbury how are you are you going to have to know my just wanted to uh... really quickly just uh... a comment and that uh... but the state that god doesn't know the future of a doesn't know everything is really robbing him of one of his attributes which is a mission agreed uh... the bible clearly states that the lord god knows everything from beginning to end he is the alpha and the omega that in and of itself just explains that god has no time he is beyond time and he knows everything that's about to take place he knows when it's going to take place i think this is just the basic you know age old fight between armenianism and calvinism i myself being a moderate calvinist believe that God is omniscient, and he is completely sovereign over all things, but that we also have a free will. The Lord Jesus said, you know, Jerusalem, Jerusalem that killed the prophets, you know, how often I would have gathered you together, mother hen gathers the chicks, but you would not. So that clearly states that the Bible, that Jesus Christ said that we do have a free will, but that God is sovereign. And I think when we start playing around and start questioning God's attributes, the sovereignty of God, you begin to, what I would like to say, opening up a can of worms. Because I believe that every cult, every major false religion begins with the misconception of the nature of God. You have a very famous man, other than this gentleman that you were talking about, Greg Voigt, his name is T.D. Jakes. And this man, he's very popular and a lot of people are really riding his bandwagon. But this man has made some clear statements that he denies the Trinity. That's a major problem. And I believe, just to end this quickly, we do have a free will, but at the same time, God is sovereign. And God's attributes, God is essential. His essence is he's all powerful. He knows everything. And we cannot question his essence. We have to just look into the Bible, see what the Bible teaches about that. Dario, thank you for the call. You're right. The foundation of the issue comes down to this idea of free will. And Clark Pinnock himself says that what drove him to this point of view was being unable to reconcile a free will with God's knowledge of the future. Because if God knows what's going to happen in the future, then that event, still to happen in the future, is certain. And Pinnock couldn't deal with that. And so rather than adjusting his view of free will, he jettisoned the sovereignty of God and the foreknowledge of God and said that God doesn't know. When we talk about free will, we have to define our terms. One cannot say, I believe, in an absolute free will. God is the only one with an absolute free will. We are fallen human beings, and our free will is dependent. We are free in accordance with our nature. And this was Jonathan Edwards' idea, and what he fleshed out in his theology, and eminently biblical as far as I'm concerned, that we are free to act in correspondence with our nature. But what does the scripture say about human nature before we come to Christ? We are fallen. No one does good. No not one. No one seeks God. We are all as filthy rags. So how free then can we be? We are free to respond to our nature, but our nature is not completely and independently free. And so that's something that we have to deal with. We're coming to the end of our hour. If you'd like to understand these issues of God's foreknowledge a little bit better, I'd like to offer you free of charge a small booklet written by yours truly. entitled, For Knowledge, It's More Than Meets God's Eye. And if you'd like a copy of this booklet, simply write to Red Mills Baptist Church, P.O. Box 93, Mayapak Falls, New York, 10542. That's Red Mills Baptist Church, P.O. Box 93, Mayapac Falls, New York, 10542. Or call 845-628-4230. 845-628-4230. Whether you write or call, simply ask for the Foreign Knowledge Booklet and we'll get that right out to you. Beginning with the top of our next hour, we're going to be visited by Don Kistler, and he is the president and founder of Soli Deo Gloria Ministries, a publishing house specializing in Puritan works.