God’s Emotional Regret (niham): Foreknowledge of Possibilities or Certainties?

Seminary Commons

This poster addresses the conflict of interpretation of God’s emotional regret (niham) between the view of foreknowledge in Open Theism and the generally accepted traditional view of foreknowledge. According to Open Theism, sometimes God expresses deep emotional displeasure with how things have gone, and He regrets, repents, or changes His mind (niham). This leads the open theists to replace the traditional interpretation of omniscience (that God can know everything of the future including the free choices of humans) with the claim that God can know everything there is to know. This means that, on one hand, the future does not yet exist, so God does not know it. On the other hand, the future which God knows is partly composed of possibilities and partly determined by God. In response to the open theists’ view, I reflect on the following questions: What does God’s emotional regret (niham) imply and how should it be interpreted? Should divine regret (niham) be understood in terms of future possibilities or future certainties or both? How does the open theists’ view of God’s emotional regret (niham) impact their view of predictive prophecy in relation to God’s foreknowledge of future free choices? Is there any alternative approach to God’s emotional regret (niham) to clarify the issues of divine emotions, prophecy, and free choices and provide a way beyond the impasse between the open theists’ view and the traditional view? Timothy