The concept of God profiled in the ontological argument of Saint Anselm is that of a distant and impassible God: incapable of experimenting surprise, incapable of feeling any kind of emotion she can’t risk anything.Pascal was right in his rejections of this cold philosophical god, choosing instead a more biblical faith.
This philosophical theism is not compatible with practical theism that is lived in Christian religion.
The simple act of prayer seeks to influence God, but trying to influence God is pointless when she is conceived as the Absolute.
It’s no wonder many believers of orthodox piety are trying to make a reformulation of their faith in order to make it more open and existential than metaphysical.
A relational approach to theology drives us to reject the concept of a distant and cold god, locked in his infinitude.
Process Theology
Whitehead and Harshorne were the ones to provide a philosophical frame for a more biblical and practical theism. (Whitehead was co-author with Bertrand Russell of the book Principia Mathematica).
According to these authors, God is not transcending time, as it is understood in classical theism. At least since creation, she is part of the universal becoming. And since future is not determined, she lacks complete knowledge of what is going to happen. God may have knowledge of different possible outcomes, but she can’t be sure of which one of them is going to actualize.
This would not diminish at all the concept of supreme divine knowledge, since it is not reasonable to expect from God a knowledge that is unavailable by principle.
Open Theism
A similar approach, but less philosophical is that of Open Theism, that has been accepted by evangelical authors.
In this conception, God doesn’t have an intrinsic limitation in his inability to know the future, but she has limited her own power in order to have a better relationship with human beings.
Open Theism answer paradoxes of the classical theism as the problem of evil and the coexistence of free will with omniscience. Its principle benefit is that it makes sense of prayer.
Some critics of Process Theology and Open Theism denounce that this conceptions steal glory from God. But I believe that choosing between more humane forms of theism and classical theism is a subject of personal value judgments.
Some people give more value to power as a supreme attribute, and some other people give more value to a more humane and relational approach.
A moving example of the last is the article A Friend's Love: Why Process Theology Matters.
From an evangelical and open theism point of view is remarkable the book Disappointment with God by Philip Yancey. (I recommend this Calvinistic critique of the open theism of Yancey).
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