Musings on Openness Theology, Part 3: Models of Sovereignty at Church

John Sanders takes a slightly different approach to openness theology in his book A God Who Risks: A Theology of Providence. Sanders tries to de-emphasize the focus on foreknowledge and the future. He focuses rather on issues of sovereignty and the kind of world God has chosen to create.

Specifically, Sanders contrasts two views. First, there is Specific Sovereignty (SS). In SS God is micro-managing the world. God is willing, guiding, and directing "the specifics" of life. Every little event is the will of God. Sanders calls this the "no risk" view of God. With SS the universe evolves exactly as God has planned. With there being no wiggle-room in the world--no deviation, no surprises for God--God risks nothing in creating this world.

Although the SS (no risk) world preserves a view of God's transcendent perfection and power the no risk view has some problems. Theodicy comes to mind. If every event is decreed by God then, well, some events don't seem to fit. God willed the Holocaust? Children with cancer? School shootings? Rape?

Further, the no risk world sucks the relationality out of the cosmos. Do we have any real choice in this world? Would prayer mean anything in this world?

The no risk world also complicates issues of salvation. If only some people are going to heaven and all things are being willed/directed by God why isn't God willing for the salvation of all? Why is he arbitrarily picking an elect few?

In contrast to the SS model, Sanders sets out the General Sovereignty (GS) model where God is macro-managing the world. That is, God's activity is the world is at a larger scale. God is working out his purposes in a world where he has turned over much of the control to humanity. God has, to a a degree, withdrawn from the world to allow humans scope. God does this to create spontaneous relationships.

In this GS world God is taking risks. With humans driving the car much of the time God is responding to the consequences of our individual and collective choices. Obviously, God's biggest risk in creating this world is allowing human sin, the rejection of God, to become possible.

The GS world where God takes risks seems to do a better job than SS with the issues we noted above. God didn't cause the Holocaust. Humans did. God hated that the Holocaust happened. Further, God didn't abandon us to those choices. He was there, in the Holocaust, working out his purposes while preserving the relational aspects of the world he created. Also, in the GS model God truly does seek the salvation of all humanity. He's not picking out the elect. Salvation is reciprocal with humanity left with the choice to respond to God.

In my next post I want to start picking apart the openness theology position. Not to reject it but to try to reconfigure it. But before turning to that task I want to pause and reflect on how people react to the SS and GS models.

Curiously, the SS and GS models have very different effects on believers. And I'm fascinated by this.

Let's start with SS, where every event has been decreed by God. Personally, I'm appalled by this view. Again, the theodicy issues just seem too problematic for me. And yet, I've seen some very good people, friends of mine, grab onto this view as a theodicy.

For instance, a family at our church, friends of ours, have a child who is afflicted by cancer. In a SS world God willed for this child to have cancer. Again, I can't go there. But this family, the people living daily in the face of this situation, are very strong SS people. They hold onto the view that God must have a reason, a purpose for this illness. God has a plan for all this.

And this perspective gives them hope and courage. It has allowed them to get up every morning and care for their child and sit through hours upon hours of doctor consultations and surgeries. That God has a plan is what gives them strength and hope.

Theologically, I have some doubts about all this. But I keep my mouth shut. Their faith and courage humbles me. And my academic quibbles about models of God's sovereignty are obscene in their presence.

By contrast, there are parents in similar circumstances who simply must reject the SS model in the face of their child's illness. If God willed for this to happen then God is a monster.

The point is, in my experience, in the midst of horrific suffering different kinds of people are either attracted to or repelled by specific sovereignty. People tend to take one of two roads in the face of suffering and it manifests in diametrically opposed ways. Which is both curious and communally difficult. Two families in pain. One claiming it was God's plan and the other horrified at that same claim. Both in the same communal space. Which is bound to create confusion and pastoral challenges.

It really is quite a pickle. In any given church, emotionally raw people are deploying diametrically opposed models of God that each finds theologically and psychologically repulsive.