Creator of creators

Author Udo Middelmann on his view of the nature of God | Marvin Olasky

Sylvester Jacobs

Udo Middelmann is president of the Francis A. Schaeffer Foundation and the author of books including Pro-Existence and The Market-Driven Church. His newest work is The Innocence of God (Paternoster, 2007). Here's an edited transcript discussing that work. (Another piece of the conversation can be found at World On the Web.)

WORLD: You oppose both "extreme Calvinism" and openness theology, saying that hyper-Calvinism abolishes personal significance and openness theology makes God ignorant. Did you consciously set out to establish a middle course?

MIDDELMANN: Neither of the two propositions does justice to the God revealed in the Scriptures and through human experience. The extreme, hyper-Calvinism ultimately leads me to a fatalistic, "I observe what takes place and bow to that." The reaction to that hyper-Calvinism in the openness theologian gives up too much on the side of a God who knows the end from the beginning.