"Please provide an exegesis of John 6:37-44 in light of how you believe (i.e. Arminianism, open theism).  This passage is no problem for the determinist.  Jesus plainly says ALL that The Father GIVES Him WILL come to Him...ONLY those so drawn CAN come to Christ, and ALL of those who come by this drawing ARE SAVED!  No man CAN come to me,
except the Father which hath sent me DRAW him: and I WILL raise him (the one drawn) up at the last day."

(My initial, and very 'rough', draft response below...I anticipate some updates later on).

Here are some thoughts on the John 6:37-44 passage in the larger context of the 'Bread of Life' discourse (6:25-59) and the Gospel of John as a whole.  The reason why many are unwilling to see 'double predestination' in John is because we view such theology as failing to incorporate:

• The many passages teaching about the need for human 'belief' (the word appears 98 times apparently and always in verbal form to stress faith as a dynamic act)
• The strong universalistic strain in the salvific invitation of God (1:7-9, 3:16, 12:32, etc.)
• Christ's warnings to abide in Him (15:1-10, 16:1-4, etc.)
• Christ's severe indictments against the Jews for their unbelief and His exhortations for them to believe (5:37-47, 10:34-42, etc.)

Therefore, in exegeting the passages which may suggest the Calvinist understanding of predestination, we need to bear in mind those other verses which highlight the need for human faith-decision, God's desire that everyone be saved, His warnings, etc.  We must not theologise and feel secured in our salvation at the cost of forfeiting the integrity of such texts.  Arminians feel there are far better ways to hold together divine sovereignity and human responsibility in the process of salvation than what Calvinists have given us (which is to deny the latter idea altogether).

So, does John 6:37-44 teach 'double predestination'?  Hardly.

For starters, John 6:27 already has Jesus telling His audience to "not work for the food that spoils, but for food that ensures to eternal life...".  Note that people are told to 'WORK' for food which God will 'GIVE' - God's sovereignity and human freedom are twin factors at play, although certainly the former is primary.  The way forward is to acknowledge that without God salvation is impossible and it is only by His power that anyone is kept.  Yet human decision is something that God does not coerce, and the ability to grieve/refuse God is always possible (at least in our present 'unglorified' state!).

(Also, this is the same audience whom He just fed with five barley loaves and two fishes (6:5-13) - are we to suggest that after feeding them He then teaches that there will be some among them who have been 'elected unto damnation' and can NEVER come to Him?)

And in John 6:28-29, Jesus teaches that God REQUIRES them to do His work, which is to believe in the one He has sent.  How can God require of them something they can never do?

Likewise, with passages like John 10:26-27 ("...you do not believe because you are not my sheep.  My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.").  Marshall footnotes Hoskyns & Davey, and explains: "...the thought of an unalterable exclusion from salvation is excluded by the fact that the same Jews are exhorted to believe in verses 37f."

Jesus asks the very same 'not-His-sheep' people to believe in Him ("...believe the miracles that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father.", 10:38b), which should make us pause and rethink any notion of groups of people hopelessly un-elected to salvation.  Is Jesus holding out to them a gift that He has made impossible for them to accept?  And does not 1:11 ("He came to that which was His own, but his own did not receive Him") suggest that not all of Jesus' own actually receive Him?

(Moving on to the key passage, 6:35 onwards...)

John 6:35 sees a repeat of His invitation, "He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty".  (Are we to add the clause, "But only some of you can really come - the rest of you will always be thirsty no matter what you do"?)

John 6:36 ("You have seen me and still you do not believe...")should be understood as a rebuke cum challenge to repent.  Jesus wants His hearers to believe in Him (John 5:34, 6:27).  In fact, immediately following John 5:34, we have Jesus rebuking the Jews or refusing to believe what Moses wrote about Himself, even saying that if they had believed Moses they would believe Jesus(!) (5:46).  The target of Jesus' scoldings is an unrepentant and evil heart (5:42) which veils from itself the truth of God in the Scriptures, which denies truth even when it's staring them in the face.  This is a VERY COMMON theme in the OT: the people sin continually and deny the activity of God in their lives, persecuting the prophets, etc.  We need not postulate that God has determined their evil and their salvific destinies even before Day 1.

John 6:37-40 ("All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.  For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me.  And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day.  For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day...") subsequentlycan be seen as (re)emphasizing the sovereign initiative, faithfulness and unity of Jesus and the Father in the salvific process.

Jesus will never drive away anyone as all who come to Him have been given by the Father.  And the Father's will is that none be lost and that everyone who looks to the Son and believes will have eternal life and resurrection.  (To say that God's will here cannot be resisted would be incredible, as not only is it not mentioned in the text but later on Jesus quotes from Isaiah, a book which leaves no doubt of the fact that God's will in the people's lives CAN be frustrated - Isa 65:2-7, 30:1, etc.).

The emphasis here is on God's love to everyone and His plans and reliability in protecting those who believe, not on the limited-ness of the atonement (more so in light of the previous passages we looked at).  God has a loving plan for everyone if only they believe, and Jesus is right now inviting all to reach out and accept His gift of life, asking them to believe that they can trust Him and He will never drive them away.

John 6:44 ("No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day...") is another affirmation of the divine initiative in salvation from beginning to end. The 'drawing' here, it must be stressed, should not be understood as irresistible election, or else we would have universalism in John 12:32.

John 6:45 ("It is written in the Prophets: 'They will all be taught by God'.  Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me..."), again, tells us of God having already revealed Himself to all in Israel.  Remember that Isaiah 54:13 was to be read by the whole of Israel, everyone of whom were recipients of the covenant of peace (54:10).  It simply isn't the case that only those 'predestined unto salvation' are the ones to whom this verse applies.

The next couple of verses in this discourse tell us - yet again - that he who BELIEVES has everlasting life (6:47), ANYONE can eat of the bread of life (6:51) which was given for the life of the WORLD (6:52).  These themes are repeated again from vs.53 to 58.
 

In conclusion, the Bread of Life discourse tells us that the protection and providence of God for the believer is something he can rely on, as is the love of God for all mankind.  Jesus also wanted to make clear His unique relationship with the Father, and challenge people to believe in Him (not least. the unrepentant Jews).

So, I.Howard Marshall in his classic study on apostasy, "Kept By the Power of God":

"...the purpose of the predestinarian language in John is not to express the exclusion of certain men from salvation because they were not chosen by the Father...but to emphasize that from start to finish eternal life is the gift of God and does not lie under the control of men."

We must feed on the Bread of Life always.
 

AL
p.s.:  I simply cannot see ANYWHERE in John 6:37-44 which contradicts the open theist's theology.  Nothing in the chapter demands that God knows ALL the future.  John 6:64 might have something that open theism should respond substantially to, but that's another story for another day (smile).