An Open Orthodoxy: Open Theism and Eastern Orthodoxy

     "An Open Orthodoxy" is a new blog by two Evangelical theologians who embrace Open Theism and who are also attracted to Eastern Orthodoxy: 
     "An Open Orthodoxy is a conversation in pursuit of the ancient and the new, the traditional and the novel, the orthodox and the open. We are friends, Tom Belt and Dwayne Polk, exploring the relationship between open theism and Eastern Orthodox theology. We wonder what would come of a conversation between the two. So we aim to clarify open theism’s theological values, define its core claims and convictions, establish its diversities, and situate it relative to the values, experience and vision of the ancient Eastern Fathers. It’s our conviction that both can learn something from the other."
     From their "Defining Claim and Core Convictions:" page:
      "To summarize, then. God is love, and he creates for benevolent purposes which include creation’s coming to participate in and reflect the love that he is. This glorifies God, and this glory is the end for which all things are created. To fulfill this end, God endowed us with a certain freedom, and this freedom in turn entails certain risks. Open theists reason from these three core convictions — divine love and a free and risky creation — to the conclusion that God knows the open future as a branching of possible ways or paths the world might and might not take. But from the open theist’s point of view, these core convictions are the heart and soul of the view. The conclusion that God doesn’t eternally foreknow in every conceivable detail precisely how the world’s possibilities will unfold (which claim has received all the attention) is — to put it surprisingly but perhaps more accurately — the most uninteresting thing about the view. For us it’s not particularly about foreknowledge; it’s about freely becoming what God purposed us to be. It’s about theosis. The foreknowledge piece turns out to be just the most consistent way we know to express it."