The Battle for God: Responding to the Challenge of Neotheism

by Norman L. Geisler and H. Wayne House

An authoritative response to neotheism or openness theology--the widely debated recent theological phenomenon that questions the orthodox view of God's omniscience and omnipotence. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0825427355
• ISBN13: 9780825427350
• Release Date: November 2001
• Publisher: Kregel Academic & Professional
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.6" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Responding to neotheism

What God knows and when he knows it has become a very hot topic in Christian circles today. It seems to be a common question regarding how much God knows about the future. Does He make things happen? Does He merely know about future events? Or does God, as neotheism so states, limit Himself by not knowing the future, meaning that the future really is up in the air and is contigent on the decisions made by humans?As it can be obviously seen, this is a pretty big issue because how we view God is vital. In fact, the Bible very clearly says it can be very dangerous to have a wrong view of God. Geisler, House, and Herrera show how neotheism is the "new kid" on the block as neotheist theologians have combined aspects of panentheism, or process theology, with traditional theism. It has implications on the way we worship as well as how we view and interpret the scripture. The book takes a look at certain key qualities about God, including His omniscience, eternality, immutability, and sovereignty, and compares the traditional Christian view with the neoorthodox view. Actually, The Battle for God serves as an overview of the attributes of God, so a study in who God is can't be all bad! I like the way that the authors treat this issue with as much simplicity as possible, attempting to show through biblical evidence and historical Christian quotes that neotheism is problematic for the evangelical Christian. It should be pointed out that, in the limited number of pages of a paperback text, the quotes from church fathers are pieced together, so the danger of the context being destroyed is certainly possible, especially since the average reader won't look them up. However, I saw nothing that appeared to be unusual with the people being quoted. The end of each section delves into the neotheists' objections to the texts and their own interpretations. This might be the most valuable part of the book, as Geisler and company show why neotheism is not bibical or hisotrical. Overall I recommend The Battle for God to those who want an evangelical response to what I feel is the problem of neotheism. I'm thinking the debate is far from over. May truth prevail!

NEO-THEISM'S "DIVINE NESCIENCE" PROCESSISM EXPOSED!

This is a powerful book demonstrating the farce of sympathizing with any semblance of what is called "Open View Theory" of Who the Real Jesus is, His Divine Attributes, His God-Nature, and what He can know/when He can know it.The case is made conclusively that Open Theory postulates another Jesus which should be rejected out of hand by those holding to what the Bible has always taught about Jesus and His Father as possessing 'understanding that is INFINITE'.It is both preposterous and presumptuous for Neotheism to advocate such foreign gods among us and claim that a significant portion of the future is subject to 'Divine Nescience',i.e.unawareness in advance of how free agents will certainly decide.This is profoundly contrary to Scripture and finds itself welloutside the pale of Orthodox Christianity.For further enlightenment regarding the aberration of Open Theory contrasted with the Biblical teaching of the Lord's 100%without exception exhaustive definite Omniscience of macro/microPast/Present/Future of ALL AGENTS' decisions from eternity, seeHank Hanegraaff's forthcoming "Little Black Book". It will help get the Church and those chasing after the newest doctrines/speculations back on track with the Fundamentals of the HistoricChristian Faith once for all delivered to the saints.

DEFINITIVE EXPOSE OF NEO-SOCINIAN/PROCESS OPENISM

Five stars for exposing cogently,Scripturally,historically and categorically the Heterodoxy of Open Theory of Bible Interpretation.The authors make it clear that this is not merely an in-house,intra-mural,peripheral debate between differing evangelical views about minor theological points, but a battle over Who the Real Jesus is, His Divine Nature/Attributes, Mono-Polar versusNeo-Bi-Polar Theism, Evangelical Truth vs. Neo-Socinian speculation/rationalism.Scripture declares "God is Spirit." The authors point out thatone of the main fabricators of Open Theory, Clark Pinnock, begs to differ, claiming the Lord is not necessarily pure spirit being,but may in fact be in some way embodied,corporeal, self-emptying, activating a temporal pole in the divine nature,i.e. a quasi-LDS view of God the Father and God the Son.The authors' well-researched documentation shows the clear linkage between Open Theory and Process Theory, sharing many keyco-presuppositions that color how Open sympathizers interpret their Bible (literalizing man-likeness anthropomorphic texts that suit their 'God-repenting' motif, making them artificially'theomorphic' instead,evacuating clear 'God-not-repenting' textsof their plain,natural,literal,properly interpreted meanings)The Openness deity is exposed as one who has a redefined sort ofOmniscience than Historically,Classically,Evangelically understood: Open Christ has an element of NESCIENCE (i.e.ignorance) regarding foreknowledge of free futures. Thus, their Omni-science is reduced to Multi-science: knowing much, but not ALL.Geisler does an outstanding job of exposing Open Theory's failure on all levels. Why he calls his book BATTLE FOR GOD is that it literally is a battle for Who the Real Jesus is. The Neo-Socinian/Process/Bi-Polar Theism claims that Classical,Historical/Mono-Polar Theism is the inheritor of a conception ofJesus Christ that is more man-made than biblically revealed,more philosophically fabricated than exegetically determined,misinterprets anthropomorphism as non-literal analogous languageto humanly describe the Lord, guilty of hermeneutical malpracticemisrepresents Christ -all of these serious charges leveled by Open Theorists such as John Sanders,Greg Boyd and Pinnock against the position of Athanasius,Augustine,Hus,Wycliff,Luther,Erasmus,Melanchthon,Calvin,Knox,Arminius,Wesley,Spurgeon,C.S.Lewis,etc. cut both ways.Someone's claims are invalid. Someone's premises and postulationsand pontifications are not viable. Someone's not reading theirBible right.This book is definitely NOT recommended for sympathizers of the Open Theory who are not 'open' to have their heterodox positionchallenged and categorically refuted by the weight of Biblical,Historical,Philosophical,Metaphysical,Logical and common senseTRUTH. The Open Theory christ is exposed as another christ, a pseudo-christ;one of lesser glory; not the Right Christ, but one from the left.This book lovingly yet truthfully admonishes Neo-theism in the words of the Tr

Simple Corrections to an Attempt at Redefining God

Geisler and House have 'put together' a simple but effective response to the neotheist views of Pinnock, Boyd, Sanders, et al. When I say 'put together' this merely means that the book "Battle for God" is, more or less, a series of quotes from historical figures from the Medieval and Reformation periods. Quotes from each period are used in an attempt to correct certain errors which seem to have arisen in the Neotheist's (or openness view) theology.Battle for God is a very basic text which is formatted in a systematic fashion. In other words, the book systematically covers several attributes of God (i.e. Omniscience, eternality, immutability, simplicity, etc.) and provides a series of remarks and quotes about these attributes and how a Biblical and sound theological examination of such attributes helps to correct certain erroneous thinking from the Neotheist. The traditional attributes of God discussed in these pages are those which have been either rejected, altered, or disagreed upon in some sense by the Neotheist in an attempt to redefine God. One would be in error to deny that the Neotheist is in fact attempting to redefine God (or provide an 'alternative' view as many of the blurbs on the covers of the Neotheist books have indicated).Geisler actually beat most other theologians to the punch in responding to the neotheists with his book titled "Creating God in the Image of Man." "Battle for God" is not much different from Geisler's former book in that the contents are basically the same (e.g. Geisler takes the traditional attributes of God and lines them up with the changes made by the neotheist and discusses the apparent problems). "Battle for God" as apposed to Geisler's Former book "Creating God . . ." adds a few new things to the discussion - such as the timelessness of God, God's impassibility, etc.While "Battle for God" is a good basic text it suffers from some problems. One problem, which seems to be the most obvious problem, is taking a series of quotes from certain thinkers and simply stringing them together. While this can serve a certain purpose to provide a very small cursory understanding of certain thinkers, it lacks depth. In other words, a person can read the various quotes which Geisler and House have chosen to provide, but there is a danger in thinking that this exhausts that particular thinker's philosophy or theology for that particular subject. What is more, the limitations in running a series of small quotes together to formulate a certain point of view actually runs the risk of taking certain things out of context. This taking out of context, or misunderstanding a certain view due to less than thorough investigation and citation is seen on pages 57-58. On these pages a discussion of Edwards' view of human free acts is delineated rather rapidly (esp. in footnote 23). Here, the authors have misunderstood Edwards' position and attributed to it things which Edwards, as is clear from his own writings, does not do. For instanc