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Horton
Open theism, in practice if not always in intent, makes ectypal knowledge archetypal;
analogical language univocal; God's being for us is his being in and for himself; the
hidden decree is swallowed up in the history of redemption; eternity is engulfed by
time.
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Pinnock counters what he describes as Calvinism with a dynamic emphasis on
covenant:
History is a drama with profound risks and enormous dynamics. God goes in for partnerships where the
junior partners make a real contribution. It is a covenantal-historical way of understanding based on mutual
vows and obligations. It is not the situation of omnicausalism where even the input of the creature is
already predetermined (36).
Pinnock nowhere (that I have located) allows that there is such a thing as Reformed
covenant theology, in which double agency is a celebrated mystery, even though the likes
of Pannenberg and Moltmann have self-consciously drawn on Reformed "federal" or
covenant theology to emphasize the dynamic element.
65[65]
Like some hyper-Calvinists,
he only sees to options: open theism or "omnicausalism," but Reformed theology--with
the "covenantal-historical way of understanding based on mutual vows and obligations"
at its heart--provides an alternative to both that has yet to be considered by open theists.
"We must take seriously how God is depicted in these stories and resist reducing
important metaphors to mere anthropomorphic or accommodated language," Pinnock
insists, assuming that ("mere") accommodated language equals non-serious language.
But he does not seem to have an alternative method, conceding, "God's revelation is
anthropomorphic through and through. We could not grasp any other kind. We must
take it all seriously, if not always literally" (20). And he even recognizes the danger to
which his criticism of "mere analogy" opens himself:
The open view of God proposes to take biblical metaphors more seriously and thereby recover the dynamic
and relational God of the gospel, but in doing so it runs the risk of being too literal in its interpretation...It
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The result is that God's accommodated self-revelation is no longer treated as such, but is regarded in a
literalistic manner as providing direct access to the being of God, as if God were standing naked, unveiled,
before us. Colin Gunton has addressed the problem of immediacy in modern theology and, if I am not
mistaken, this tendency that has plagued both fundamentalism and liberalism is all too apparent in the
proposal of open theism: A Brief Theology of Revelation (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1995). Whatever their
material differences in this debate, Carl Henry and Clark Pinnock agree that univocity is the only way
forward and that analogy necessarily degenerates into irrational skepticism.
65[65]
Johannes Cocceius (1603-69) was among the first to develop a concentrated focus on the dynamic
history of redemption within the context of Reformed (covenant) theology (see especially his Summa
doctrinae de foedere et testamento Dei, 1648). This perspective has been reawakened in the Dutch/Dutch-
American "biblical theology" movement, which includes Geerhardus Vos, Herman Ridderbos, Meredith
Kline and Richard Gaffin, Jr.. The rise of federal theology in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has
had a tremendous influence beyond its familiar borders and is often cited by contemporary theologians as a
major resource for the recovery of eschatological reflection. Rather than seeing the Bible simply as a
source-book for timeless truths, it was regarded as a covenant between God and God's people, orienting it
to history and dramatic events interpreted by the primary actor in those events. Jurgen Moltmann observes,
"This new historic understanding of revelation had its ground in the rebirth of eschatological
millennarianism in the post-reformation age. It was the start of a new, eschatological way of thinking,
which called to life the feeling for history," Theology of Hope, op.cit., 70. In fact, he specifically refers to
Johannes Cocceius. Wolfhart Pannenberg has recently written, "Only in the federal theology of Johannes
Cocceius does the kingdom of God come into view again as a dominant theme of salvation history and
eschatology...," Systematic Theology, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 530.