Open theism is the view that God does not have comprehensive knowledge of the future. In particular, and most especially, God does not have knowledge of future contingent facts (true future contingent statements, where a future contingent statement is a contingent statement about the future such as, e.g., "There will be a sea battle tomorrow"), especially those concerning the future free actions of creatures. Prominent proponents of this view include William Hasker, Dean Zimmerman, Richard Swinburne, Peter van Inwagen, and Gregory Boyd. The primary philosophical motivation for open theism is the affirmation of human freedom along with the alleged incompatibility between comprehensive divine foreknowledge and human freedom. A common criticism of open theism is that it is incompatible with divine omniscience since it seems to straightforwardly deny that God knows all truths, particularly all the truths about the future.
In response to this criticism, open theists fall into two general camps. In the first camp are open theists who hold that there are true future contingents, and God does not know them. From here, such open theists either argue that God is nevertheless omniscient according to a proper account of omniscience or accept the implication that God is not omniscient. In the second camp are open theists who hold that there are no true future contingents in the first place and that thus God's omniscience is not even apparently challenged by the fact that He does not know future contingents.
