God's openness and the gospel In the past few years, evangelical theologians have been talking about something called the "openness of God". A handful of prominent scholars have -- to the cry of "Heresy!" from many conservatives -- proposed it as an alternative to the traditional concept of God. Basically, the open view of God denies that he knows every detail of the future, or more accurately, that the future is even there to know: In creating us, God gave us freedom to choose, and so voluntarily shut himself off from the possibility of knowing exactly what would happen in the future.
Such is the nature of a relationship. When we decide to love someone, we open ourselves up to a great risk. We voluntarily step out into the unknown, giving a part of our freedom to someone else. We open ourselves to the possibility of pain and rejection, and that is what I think is the greatest insight of the open view: God is "the God who risks", as John Sanders says.
I don't know why Christians have always been so reluctant to acknowledge God's vulnerability. Traditionally, God was seen as "impassible", without emotions, and certainly beyond ever being affected by anything we can do as humans. In a human being, we would see that as a tragedy, and we couldn't envisage a genuine love-relationship ever taking place on such a basis. Yet, we've never seen a problem with a God who refuses to be moved by anything we can do.
Taking away God's openness to pain, his vulnerability, is to miss out on the good news of the gospel. God is the Ultimate Gambler, giving everything of himself, laying everything on the line for us. How can we read Hosea's prophetic words to Israel and not detect the heartbeat of a God who enters into the deepest kind of relationship possible with his creation, one that costs everything?
When Israel was a child, I loved him,
and out of Egypt I called my son.
But the more I called Israel,
the further they went from me.
... It was I who taught Ephraim to walk,
taking them by the arms,
but they did not realize
it was I who healed them.
... How can I give you up, Ephraim?
How can I hand you over, Israel?
... My heart is changed within me;
all my compassion is aroused.
How can we listen to the words of Jesus at the temple, and not see a God totally open to the pain of rejection, a God who risks everything to have a love-relationship with us?
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.
That's what I meant in the previous entry when I said that God's openness to pain was at the heart of the gospel. He searches us out, giving endlessly of himself in our pursuit, knowing that rejection is a possibility. Out of his limitless love, he takes a chance on us. In showing us how truly to love, he reveals himself as the Ultimate Risk-Taker.
That risk-taking, open kind of love is demonstrated, finally and gloriously fulfilled, in the act of atonement on the cross, God's voluntary taking-into-himself of all the pain, sin and suffering of the world.
Gambler, Risk-Taker -- I know those are provocative words, but I think such provocation is needed to describe a love so radical.
Dave
8:19:37 PM 
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