Rating: 
Summary: Good for Openness Theology, Bad for Evangelical Orthodoxy
Review: Boyd's very simple and easy-to-read introduction to open theism is slickly written for such an often heavy-handed topic. For those who have leanings towards the theology of open theists, this short book will be exclusively supportive of their viewpoints. Although somewhat simplistic and shortsighted in his conclusions, for the typical openness laymen, the evidence will be more than appealing. On the other side of the evangelical spectrum, however, for those who are aware of the direct implications and dangers of open theism, Boyd's book will hopefully be a "call to arms". Even for the layman of limited theological knowledge, it should be obvious that Boyd's thesis and model of biblical interpretation is contrary to orthodox theology and, to use a term that may seem harsh, is essentially well-dressed heresy. If, for the orthodox evangelical, every fiber in one's being cries out in protest against such a diminished god of openness theology, do not be surprised. After reading this book, the reality of the battle for correct understanding of God's sovereign nature should become readily apparent. As is stated above, this book is a good and powerful addition to the body of openness-friendly material that has been published thus far. But, with all due respect to Dr. Greg Boyd, this book is also yet another reason why the evangelical community needs to wake up and address the heresy that is so quickly spreading among us.
Rating: 
Summary: Impossible if you read your Bible as God intends
Review: Very readable and easy to follow. However>>>>Questions: If our free will limits God to nonawareness of our future choices to preserve genuine libertarian latitude, what's to preserve our freedom if God can know our present choices while we are real-time making them? Doesn't His awareness of what we are freely doing inhibit our freedom of action so we cannot now do otherwise than as He sees or foresees? If our futures must be private and secure from divine certitude, why not our presents? Isn't only the past beyond libertarian interference by divine knowledge?
Rating:
Summary: Just plain unbiblical philosophy of misbelief
Review: Have you ever read a book recommended by someone only to be crushingly disappointed? That's what happened to me! I was expecting the philosophy to be closely tied to exactly how the Bible is to be on its own terms understood. But this turned out to be a different, hetero-philosophy than the Bible could allow: God being ignorant about any subject. The subject the author picks is: future free choices. This is a mystery to God's omniscient mind. He cannot know it except as "maybe this and maybe that or maybe not after all". Most of what God supposedly knows about our free futures is a big divine Maybe? After all the casemaking and all the arguments and intellect and Bible quoting, I came away with "Maybe?" in the mind of God. In all my years as a Christian, I never imagined a deity who is limited in awareness of anything at all. If you were to ask me before reading this, "Does anyone claiming to be Christian sincerely believe that anything is a Mystery, an Unknown or Unknowable to God?",I would have said no. I admit I was wrong. Looks like this writer is leading a small minority of renegade, fugitive, wayward seekers into just this system of philosophy. I can only pray for the Holy Spirit's loving intervention to reach these brothers & sisters with what God Himself thinks about free futures, including theirs! Kyrie Eleison!
Rating:
Summary: Heretical Book
Review: People are always trying to find ways to become autonomous, even since our first parents. I recommend "Predestination" by Gordon Clark instead.
Rating:
Summary: Impossible if you read your Bible as God intends
Review: Very readable and easy to follow. However>>>> Questions: If our free will limits God to nonawareness of our future choices to preserve genuine libertarian latitude, what's to preserve our freedom if God can know our present choices while we are real-time making them? Doesn't His awareness of what we are freely doing inhibit our freedom of action so we cannot now do otherwise than as He sees or foresees? If our futures must be private and secure from divine certitude, why not our presents? Isn't only the past beyond libertarian interference by divine knowledge?
Rating:
Summary: The great provocation of rationality!
Review: "God of the Possible" is one of the best written, simple and sincere evaluations of Biblical thought that I have read. In a world dying for uncluttered, honest integrity, this book offers it with clarity and forthrightness. The challenge to accurate thinking is provocative as seemingly basic thoughts about God that are accepted wholesale today are uprooted and "put to task!" I'm sure that this book has made itself a sweet(?) enemy in religion and especially that of Calvinistic persuasion where a god of rationality is not tolerated. On this subject of "open theism" Greg has done an excellent job... concerning his view on dispensationalism... we are all growing.
Rating: 
Summary: Intelligent
Review: This book has been attacked by those who disagree with it, but I found it a clear and intelligent argument. Boyd shows the reader how he worked and how he arrived at his conclusions. This is a good, brief read for someone who wants to see a Protestant theologian at work.
I teach Theology in college and sometimes recommend it on those grounds.
Rating:
Summary: CLOSED VIEW OF GOD OF WHOLE INERRANT BIBLE
Review: The author manifests a staggering failure to understand what the ENTIRE Bible teaches about the Divine Nature/Attributes. Just one Scripture from the Inerrant(unerring)Infallible (incapable of erring)Word of God puts Open Theory Divine Nescience to rest beyond refutation and creative evasion: "I AM TELLING YOU NOW BEFORE IT HAPPENS SO THAT WHEN IT DOES HAPPEN YOU WILL BELIEVE THAT I AM HE." (John 13:19) The author is woefully selective in favoring certain texts to support his 'open view', while being closed to other texts unfavorable to his view. What is Possible for the Real Jesus is not possible for Gregory Boyd. What is possible for Gregory is impossible/unthinkable for the Real Tri-personal God. The author is relying more on his human thought processes than 100% Inerrant-Infallible Biblical revelation in its entirety. (By the way, Infallible is defined as 'incapable of erring in any matter'.) Boyd's own denomination Baptist General Conference has as its Affirmation of Faith, "The Bible is Inerrant", which Boyd in his book "Across the Spectrum" categorically denies in his arguments against inerrancy. Why he remains on BGC Clergy roster or a Professor at its Bethel College is unaccounted for by BGC president Jerry Sheveland or College Board/Leaders. The author needs to humbly research why Socinianism was rejected 400 years ago, and why Luther's, Calvin's, Melanchthon's, Zwingli's, Bucer's, Knox's, Wesley's, Matthew Henry's, J. Edwards', Spurgeon's, Moody's, C.S.Lewis', Carl Henry's, Barth's,F.Schaeffer's, Josh McDowell's, D.James Kennedy's, Bill Bright's, Chuck Colson's, David Jeremiah's, Max Lucado's, Stuart Briscoe's, Billy Graham's, Greg Laurie's, Joe Stowell's, Charles Stanley's, John MacArthur's, Tim LaHaye,Tony Evans', Norm Geisler's, Hank Hanegraaff's, Kay Arthur's,Jerry Bridges', Robert Schuller's, Chuck Swindoll's, Jack Hayford's, Morris Cerullo's, John Hagee's, Franklin Graham's,Calvin Miller's, Eugene Peterson's, Timothy George's, Os Guinness', Luis Palau's, Bill McCartney's, Chuck Smith's, Bill Hybels', Rick Warren's, Barna's, John Maxwell's, et al writings explain GENUINE BIBLICAL THEOLOGY, especially in the areas of Omnipotence, Omniscience,Omni-relationality,Omnipresence,Perfection,Transcendence,Eternality,Uninformable Infiniteness,Immutability/Changelessness (non-Process), Trinity (not modalism); an eternally tormenting conscious hell; the nature and limitations of human freedom/agency; God & Evil; 100% Errorless Scripture, to name a few. The author's unfortunate book (first draft at best) is hereby recommended as a study of what the Historic Christian Faith cannot (and will never) embrace as to Who the Real Jesus is. The author is urged to read and study the ENTIRE BIBLE as if he were attempting to refute the Open Theory, then deal honestly with the findings no matter where they may lead! What would have led Judaism, Apostolic Christianity, Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Protestantism, Evangelicalism, Fundamentalism to millennia of Non-Open Theism???? Boyd's Processistic brand of 'Extensive Indefinite Forecasting' collapses in the face of the Bible's ETERNALLY EXHAUSTIVE DIVINE DEFINITIVE FOREKNOWN FACTUALITY of ALL Free Futures. Can the author imagine continuing in open rejection of his own denomination's Affirmation of Faith regarding Inerrant Bible and God's Exhaustive Definite/Divine Foreknowledge of all free futures without the integrity to retract his published position or resign in good conscience? Hmmm.
Rating:
Summary: Examining Boyd Critically
Review: Boyd's beliefs seem tenable at first glance. Nevertheless, they break down into either ambiguous or contradictory principles. According to Boyd, God does not normally foreordain people's choices, for this would impose on His creatures' freedom (a presumed, but nowhere defensed, virtue; pp. 120ff). Yet this is not invariably true, for in some specific cases, God does foreordain people's actual choices and limit their freedom (vide his treatment of Josiah and Cyrus, p. 34). Boyd does not explain when or why we might expect such cases to occur, or what criteria might identify them. There is another case of God's foreordaining that Boyd postulates, which consists of God ordaining that certain actions occur without specifically ordaining who shall accomplish them. God simply searches for someone who has already, by his/her own 'free will,' become a 'candidate' for doing evil that God foretold (pp. 38, 44). Yet Boyd lacks any coherent explanation for why God, in this way, so emphatically predicts that people (especially Israel!) will carry out heinous evils-in some cases en masse-while at the same time He is so often genuinely 'shocked'/'surprised' by the stubbornness of people when they reject His grace. Whence God's 'surprise' at Israel's stubbornness that Boyd sees in Jer 3, if He predicted momentous, long-lasting, negative human/Israelite activity long before Jeremiah's time? (E.g., Israelite apostasy [Deut 31 and 32], Israelite rejection of Messiah [Isa 53], and Messiah's betrayal by a close companion, at a Spirit-cited price [Ps 41.9 and Zech 11.13; vide Jn 13.18; Matt 26.14-15; 27.3-10].) Moreover, Boyd also fails to resolve another fundamental problem, viz., what if no one freely chooses to become evil enough to carry out the atrocities which God predicted? Regarding free choices that God cannot predict without imposing on creature-freedom, Boyd allows God some capacity for making reasonable predictions based on probabilities. Thus, in Scripture, wherever God predicts a 'good' person freely doing evil, He predicts based on probabilities (vide his treatment of Peter's denials, pp. 35f). For if God knew or ordained that the good person would do evil, then s/he would no longer be free to choose to do good, and surely God cannot thus restrict freedom. Again, however, Boyd doesn't resolve the fundamental problem: what if the good person whom God predicted would do evil, by using his/her free will, should choose not to do the evil that God predicted? Attempting to avoid this difficulty, Boyd grants that God can 'easily orchestrate' events to occur, the outcomes of which He can reasonably predict as good people committing sin. But in what way could God 'orchestrate' events (as Boyd suggests could have been the case with Peter's denials, p. 35) in order to ensure His prediction came true, without in effect doing *exactly* what Boyd claims He does *not* do-viz., cause a 'good' person to sin? Again, Boyd neither ponders nor posits any resolution for this profound inconsistency. Additionally under the realm of free choices that God doesn't foreknow except as 'possibilities,' Boyd insists upon God's uncertainty with respect to His own followers. He must test them to learn whether they will prove 'faithful covenant partners,' for He cannot foresee whether they will freely choose in the future to persevere in fidelity despite tribulation (p. 64). Yet Boyd nevertheless refuses to remain consistent with this framework, as he elsewhere interprets Peter's threefold denial of Christ *merely* as 'lessons' that were 'lovingly' taught to him by God (p. 36). Boyd nowhere indicates that after such lapses in faithfulness, we must understand God to have been experiencing grave doubts about Peter's future. If, as Boyd maintains, God's ability to know that a person is faithful *depends* on whether He sees that person persevere under trial, then why didn't God view Peter as an unfaithful covenant partner after Peter's manifest failures? Additionally, how is it that God cannot foresee whether His own servants will remain faithful to Him, while He conversely *can* discern when 'it is useless to strive with a particular individual or a group of people any longer' (p. 38)? Aren't human salvific choices free, and they thus cannot ever be foreknown with any certainty, lest they should no longer be free? Boyd certainly cannot contend that on the basis of extensive sin and impenitence, God discerns that a person will never repent, for Ezekiel 18 and 33 teach decisively otherwise. Still more importantly, we would never be able to explain a conversion like that of Paul and simultaneously account for why people like Gandhi never repented. Finally, we may add that if God indeed does not foreknow with certainty whether someone ever will repent, then according to Scripture He unjustly gives up on seeking people. He *assumes* someone will never repent, even though He doesn't *know* this for certain, and consequently gives them over to condemnation. How is this reconciled with what Boyd expresses concerning God in pp. 73f? Once more, Boyd does not account for this manifest inconsistency. I take great pains to fully explicate and question Boyd's position, to show that his view is no more viable than the illusory 'classical' theism that he rejects as 'illogical'/'un-Biblical' (and which, quite evidently, he only marginally understands, as D. A. Carson has well shown). His view faces, at the *very* least, just as many difficulties as every traditional theism he rejects. In this book, while trumpeting his own view as eminently reasonable, neat, and lacking the major difficulties that he imputes to other views, Boyd does not concede any of Open theism's marked weaknesses. His work thus constitutes an apology for his views, rather than a thorough and balanced critique of the full range of views on God's foreknowledge. He grants his opponents no strengths (which they decidedly *do* have, pace Boyd's simplistic argumentation). This is poor scholarship and thoroughly disingenuous. Open theism is no 'threat' to Reformed or Arminian theism. Its acceptance turns on Biblical ignorance and inability to pay careful attention to detail. Book not recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Nature of God
Review: God of the Possible is one of the best books I have ever read.Having been a strong Calvinist for most of my life I was challenged to take a fresh look at how God interacts with His creation. Although I am in the minority, Boyd presents a strong case and real life tells us that God is a relational God and not the master puppeteer of Calvin and his so-called followers. Read and think with an open mind and heart!
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