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The Openness of God
paperback
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- Length: 208 pages
- Dimensions: 6 × 9 in
- Published: September 22, 1994
- Imprint: IVP Academic
- Item Code: 1852
- ISBN: 9780830818525
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Voted one of Christianity Today's 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.
"What nonbelievers reject is often not God, but the caricature of God that theologians have synthesized over the centuries. A faith based on that caricature is poorly suited to the hard facts of the real world. These authors masterfully retrace how that caricature was drawn, show where its distortions lie and offer a sound alternative to it."
"Almost five centuries ago, Christians thrilled at the recovery of the truth of salvation by grace that had benn hijacked from them for a millennium of church history. This book throbs today with the same excitement at the rediscovery of a God infinitely greater and freer than the cold abstractions of medievally minded reductionist theologians make him to be. The Openness of God signals a new openness of his people toward the God who has never ceased being open to them."
"The Openness of God presents a comprehensive case for a relational model of the biblical God. It is written collaboratively by a team of fine thinkers. Whether or not its arguments finally convince all, The Openness of God develops interpretations and explores insight that will enrich every careful reader."
CONTENTS
Preface
1. Biblical Support for a New Perspective - Richard Rice
2. Historical Considerations - John Sanders
3. Systematic Theology - Clark H. Pinnock
4. A Philosophical Perspective - William Hasker
5. Practical Implications - David Basinger
Notes
