God Who Risks: A Theology of Providence, The

The God Who Risks: A Theology of Providence. By John Sanders. Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1998, 367 pp., $21.99 paper.

In this provocative volume, John Sanders, associate professor of philosophy and religion at Huntington College, opts for a "risk model" of divine providence over its "no-risk" alternative. In the latter, objects Sanders, no event ever happens without God's specifically selecting it to happen" (p. 10). While upholding God's absolute sovereignty, the no-risk view has, for Sanders, at least two implications he finds unacceptable: (1) it can lead to anger and even hatred of God due to his control over and selection of horrible evils; and (2) it precludes real, rigorous, and interactive relationship with God. While there are variations of the risk model (which Sanders also calls "relational theism"), Sanders defends one particular version he labels "presentism" (p. 12). As the name would indicate, it holds that God's knowledge and experience are a function of all past and present happenings. God, like us, experiences history as it unfolds. He learns what free creatures do when they choose and act. And because of this, God is genuinely interactive in his relationship with us, urging us to follow his leading but not knowing if we will, taking into account our desires and prayers before he makes up his mind about what is best to do, responding to what occurs as free creatures act in ways that God could not have known in advance, and in all this, joining the unfolding of history as a fellow-traveler with us in discovering what the future holds.

If other open theist colleagues can be criticized for scant attention to Biblical teaching in developing their position, Sanders certainly cannot. Of the book's 274 pages of text, a full 101 pages expound OT and NT materials offered to make his case that presentism has "greater fidelity to the biblical story" (p. 19) than the no-risk perspective. More than that, Sanders proposes that his model makes the best cumulative case when one considers all the relevant data from Scripture and experience, applied particularly to issues such as evil, prayer, guidance, and a personal relationship with God.

Due to space constraints, I will focus on a select few of Sanders's positions, representative of the broader contours of his presentist proposal. First, in defense of the notion that God learns what free creatures choose and do at the points in time when they make those decisions and actions, Sanders appeals to Gen 22:10-12. Here, God halts Abraham at the last moment with knife in hand ready to be raised above Isaac's tethered body and says, "Do not stretch out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me." Commenting on this text, Sanders first quotes approvingly Walter Brueggemann, who writes, "God genuinely does not know. . . . The flow of the narrative accomplishes something in the awareness of God. He did not know. Now he knows" (p. 52). Then, Sanders himself explains further:

If the test is genuine for both God and Abraham, then what is the reason for it? The answer is to be found in God's desire to bless all the nations of the earth (Gen. 12:3). God needs to know if Abraham is the sort of person on whom God can count for collaboration toward the fulfillment of the divine project. Will he be faithful? Or must God find someone else through whom to achieve his purpose? God has been faithful; will Abraham be faithful? Will God have to modify his plans with Abraham? In [Gen.] 15:8 Abraham asked God for assurance. Now it is God seeking assurance from Abraham. (pp. 52-53)

For Sanders, clearly this account is illustrative of the fact that God does not know what free creatures will do until they act. Will Abraham obey God? God does not know, but he learns here and now that Abraham will do so. We rob the passage of its natural meaning when we strip from it its simple message contained in God's own words, "For now I know."

What should we think of this argument? One consideration certainly is whether other similar Biblical passages can rightly be interpreted with such a straightforward reading as Sanders insists on for Gen 22:12. Consider, for example, another relevant passage Sanders omits in his lengthy discussion of OT materials. In Genesis 18, three men visit and dine with Abraham. Following their meal and just before leaving for Sodom, "the LORD" speaks to Abraham. Genesis 18:30-21 reads, "And the LORD said, `The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is indeed great, and their sin is exceedingly grave. I will go down now, and see if they have done entirely according to its outcry, which has come to me; and if not, I will know."' Only a moment's reflection on this text reveals the severe doctrinal implications that would follow were one to employ here Sanders's hermeneutic of Gen 22:12. By God's own admission, first, he does not presently know whether the sin of Sodom is as great as its outcry. Second, he does not know the past sin of Sodom fully, since he must see if they have done according to its outcry. Third, he is not omnipresent, since he needs to travel there, and only then will he be able to see what the status of their sin is; when he arrives and looks, then (and only then) he will "know." Hermeneutical consistency, it would seem, requires that this text and Gen 22:12 be treated alike. So which should it be? Shall we follow Sanders's approach consistently and deny even more of God's attributes than have already been trimmed away? Or, shall we, with great caution and care, consider whether Scripture elsewhere teaches, with sufficient clarity and fullness, that God in fact knows the past, present, and future and is everywhere present, in order then to reconsider the narrative and personal dialogue form of these Genesis texts (and others) to discern in them their proper and intended meanings?