Audio Transcript

A podcast listener named Scott in Abilene, Texas, writes in to ask, “Pastor John, I’ve heard people use Jeremiah 19:4–5 to refute God’s absolute sovereignty over evil, particularly the line ‘nor did it come into my mind.’ I fully believe in God’s supreme sovereignty, but I must admit this took me aback. How does such a text fit within the doctrine of God’s sovereignty? Can a sovereign God ever be surprised?”

Open Theism

This takes me back fifteen or twenty years to when I was in the thick of the battle over open theism. You have brought up a pretty sophisticated argument from Jeremiah 19. It might be helpful for me to sketch the battle lines here, because you will not be able to feel the force of that argument against the sovereignty of God without some sense of what open theism is. So let me give a little description.

Open theism is the view (I think it is a wrong view) that the future is open-ended — even to God. That is, not only does God not control all details of the future, but he does not even know them, especially the acts of morally free agents like humans. Open theism’s proponents see this view as the only consistent view of Arminian theology.

“God does not say, ‘Oh, it never occurred to me that my sinful people might do such a thing.’”

Historically, Arminianism has taught that God does not decisively control people’s future moral acts, such as whether they will believe in Jesus or not. Arminianism teaches that people really do have ultimate self-determination. But, according to Arminianism, God does exhaustively know the future. He doesn’t control them, but he knows the future moral acts of people.

Now, open theism says that cannot be the case. If God is infallible and knows what we are going to choose before we choose it, then the choice must happen or God would have made a mistake. Thus, God’s foreknowledge of an act makes the act certain or necessary. Open theism solves that problem by saying God does not know our future moral acts. Besides that philosophical argument, open theists find support from the Bible in places like Jeremiah 19:4–5.

What Is ‘It’?

Let me tell you how I responded to those arguments in the past. What does the Jeremiah text say?

Because the people have forsaken me and have profaned this place by making offerings in it to other gods . . . and because they have filled this place with the blood of innocents [that is, they have sacrificed children to false gods], and have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, which I did not command or decree, nor did it come into my mind . . . (Jeremiah 19:4–5)

That is the text. People stumble over the phrase “nor did it come into my mind.” What does that mean? Open theism argues that God did not see it coming, or, as the questioner put it, God was surprised. It did not even come into God’s mind that this would happen. But does it say — let alone mean — that? Is that what Jeremiah (and God) wants us to understand?

I doubt that very seriously. Not only would that contradict Jeremiah’s own view of God’s sovereignty expressed elsewhere in the book (Jeremiah 10:23; 32:40), and not only would it contradict the truth of God’s foreknowledge taught all over the prophets (Isaiah 48), but, more immediately, that is not what the text says. Neither is it a necessary or obvious meaning.

“Beware of surrendering the doctrine of God’s foreknowledge, because in doing so you are surrendering God’s God-ness.”

Look at it more carefully. What precisely did not come into God’s mind? First, God says he did not command or declare this slaughter of children. Then, “nor did it come into my mind.” What is the it? I take the it like this: Nor did it come into my mind to command or declare such a thing. I think that gets at God’s meaning. It seems the natural way to read it. God does not say, “Oh, it never occurred to me that my sinful people might do such a thing.” Rather, he says, “It never came into my mind to command you to do such a thing.”

Such a reading does not contradict God’s sovereignty or foreknowledge at all. I do not think this text poses a problem for a full view of God’s foreknowledge or sovereignty.

No Small Matter

Let me close with a caution. Perhaps, after listening to open theists, you think denying God’s foreknowledge is a small thing. Perhaps you think you can still be an orthodox Christian while denying that God knows people’s future moral acts. If you do, consider John 13:19, where Jesus said something important about Judas’s future act of betrayal. Jesus said, “I am telling you this now, before it takes place, that when it does take place you may believe that I am he.” Now, people usually translate the last phrase “that I am he.” But there is no “he” in the Greek. It just says, “that when it does take place you may believe that I am.”

What does that mean? You know what that means. Jesus takes his “I am” language from God himself, when he said, “I am who I am” (Exodus 3:14). Here, Jesus tells his disciples about Judas’s betrayal in advance so that they may believe that “I am.” He wanted them to believe he was God, divine. Here we have a warning: Beware of surrendering the doctrine of God’s foreknowledge, because in doing so you are surrendering God’s God-ness. You are surrendering God himself.