In classical theism, one of the central traits of God, along with omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence and others, is that God is immutable, meaning that God is not subject to change. This is to contrast with creation and all finite beings, which more than apparently do change and endlessly at that. This understanding of God is, to an extent, a Biblical idea, however, it is also heavily influenced by Ancient Greek philosophical thought, in particular, Aristotle’s concept of an unmoved mover to explain the beginnings of the universe, as well as the Neoplatonic idea of the One, an utterly perfect ground of being to reality. Moreover, the idea of a changeless God makes sense since all change in the universe is due to everything being subject to time. With God having created time, it does not seem to follow that God would also be changed by the processes of time. Otherwise, this would, in a sense, make time “above” God. This is somewhat reminiscent of whether God is confined to logic (can God make a square circle?).
On a side note, it is worth noting, and distinguishing God being changeless to human conceptions of divinity, which even the most cursory glance at religious history suggests that it has changed and evolved substantially over time. When humanity’s budding religious consciousness first emerged, divinity was seen in nature – in rivers, trees, animals and the like. Polytheism then likely emerged during the transitional phases between nomadic hunter-gatherer societies and settled agricultural communities. Over time, monotheism and general monistic concepts of divinity developed, most notably in Israelite religion. But this also appears in Hinduism’s idea of Brahman, and many other traditions had their own equivalents of an overarching Great Spirit. This is not to say that any of these understandings of animism, polytheism, monotheism and monism are inherently better than one another, but rather to highlight that our notions of divinity have frequently changed throughout history, depending on circumstances.
Returning to the focus of this post, in Jack Miles’ fascinating “biography” of God as recorded in the Tanakh (the Hebrew scriptures, which differs from the Old Testament in the arrangement of the books contained therein), Miles approaches the numerous books as a single work of literature that has God as its central character. He analyses the Hebrew Bible as the story of God growing as a character and attempting to understand himself through his creation and specifically human beings. It raises the fascinating notions that God’s character develops throughout the narrative of the Tanakh and that he is comprised of multiple personalities. This helps explain why God can be so ruthless and violent, even genocidal in the earlier books such as Joshua, but become a more sympathetic and universal deity that seeks justice as found in the latter prophetical books like Isaiah and Jeremiah. From a historical perspective, this can be explained by the merging of a number of Israelite and Canaanite deities (such as Elohim, Yahweh and Baal) early in the histories of the Israelite people. However, a literary interpretation suggests God is essentially learning to be more like the moral God that is worthy of worship.
Although it isn’t explicitly a work of theology, it does raise this question of a God who changes and evolves and is at least in part subject to time. This perhaps can be explained by the dual nautre of God being both transcendent and immanent. God’s transcendent Being (or non-being) could be considered those aspects that are absolutely beyond the material, created world. The transcendent part of God, the Father in the Christian trinity, may be absolutely unknowable to human minds, at least in normal states of consciousness. This part of God is his pure Being, the ground of reality, its essential is-ness. This may be the timeless, changeless God of classical theism.
One way of thinking of God’s immanence could be of thinking of God as not just Being itself, but Becoming itself as well, taking part in the processes of time, changing and growing into perfection, concepts found in process theology. This is also an idea argued in David Aaron’s The Secret Life of God, a Jewish rabbi who draws extensively on the teachings of Kabbalah. He essentially argues that God would not truly be perfect unless God also experiences the process of becoming perfect through historical and evolutionary processes. Interestingly, this idea is not too far away from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s notion of the universe as a process of evolution that leads towards the manifestation of the Omega Point of God essentially coming into being in the universe. Although these conceptions of God undermine to an extent a number of deeply grounded conceptions of God that are traditionally held in monotheistic religions, such as God’s omnipotence and omniscience, it does help explain the structure of the Bible, and how God – treated as a character – does obviously change in his depiction. At times, God appears ignorant, unable to find Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (“Where are you?” Genesis 3:9). He later becomes a vengeful genocidal warrior, slaughtering Egyptians and Canaanites, but then becomes increasingly a father (and sometimes even like a mother) to the Israelite people. Towards the end, God not only is the God of the Israelites, but controls the affairs of other nations like the Babylonians and Persians. God goes from a very active, albeit seemingly limited being, to one that begins to work through creation.
Of course, it could be argued that the more simplistic and limited understandings of God found earlier in the Tanakh reveal humankind’s own limited faculties in understanding the divine, and the Bible reflects this process of our growth in knowledge of God. Nonetheless, if it can be accepted that God is both the ground of Being and Becoming, it isn’t too far of stretch that God would also participate in this process of becoming, which the Bible seems to depict. It helps explain why God is so much more concerned with issues like fertility in Genesis; exclusively the Israelites and their obedience in the rest of the Torah; and more about universal justice in the latter part of the narrative.
Moreover, the idea of a God that grows into perfection immanently in creation, with humanity as something of a mirror to help him realise himself is fascinating to contemplate. It reminds me of the veil of Maya and lila, the divine play in Hindu thought, where creation is part of a process where the divine slowly grows to know itself.
At the very least, a God that allows himself to change, in its own way demonstrates his omnipotence, and the notion of God as both the ground of Being and Becoming is just simply fascinating, despite possibly raising some issues of divine oneness.
A Perennial Follower 