“Evangelicals in the Dock”
In “Evangelicals in the Dock,” published in the March 2004 issue of First Things, Peter Leithart examines the way the recent meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society handled the case of Clark Pinnock and John Sanders.
Both men hold to “open theism.” Both deny that God knows the future: His statements about the future are probable, not certain. But the charges against them focused instead on whether the two men really hold to the inerrancy of Scripture. After all, the ETS’s doctrinal statement has only the two items: inerrancy and the Trinity.
In the end, the men were allowed to retain their membership in the Society because they were able to convince the majority of the members that they affirmed some sort of inerrancy. Isn’t that good enough? Leithart doesn’t think so and he challenges the ETS’s whole approach.