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Monday, April 07, 2014

Olson's evolving God


I'll comment on a few statements by Roger Olson:
I don’t remember when it happened, but I remember the shock I felt when I first encountered the idea that God cannot change—as an idea I was supposed to believe as an evangelical Christian…I was shocked and dismayed to learn that evangelical theologians, by and large, rejected that simple biblical view of God and replaced it with what I have learned to call the “logic of perfection”—that a perfect being cannot change in any way or even be affected by anything that happens in his creation.

Well, if God changes, then he either changes for the better or for the worse. Even if he changes for the better, he wasn't originally as good as he could be. His goodness is evolving. 

Unless he's changing for the worse–which is not something you can rule out if God changes in reaction to new experiences. 

...but he is affected by what happens in our world and by our prayers.

God can answer prayer without being affected by prayer. 

What I “saw” early on in my theological training, however, was that those evangelical theologians who strongly touted God’s “immutability” were not very consistent about it. At least that’s what I thought I noticed in their writings. On the one hand, I was told, a good evangelical believes God is impervious to any change including having new experiences. On the other hand, I was told, it was the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, equal with the Father and Holy Spirit, who experienced the incarnation including hunger, thirst, temptation, sorrow, pain and even death. The explanation? That he experienced these things only “through the human nature he took on” through Mary.

Does Olson think God is hungry and thirsty? Does Olson think God dies? 

Clearly, those statements need to be carefully qualified. It has reference to the humanity of Christ, in union with the Son. Mysterious, no doubt, but God qua God isn't mortal, hungry, thirsty, or tempted.  

How do I know this? Well, all one has to do is not ignore or explain away the entire book of Hosea (just one example). The whole story of Hosea requires that God have emotions that require experiences God would not have without rebellious, sinful creatures. The story has no point once you extract that from it. The whole point is the pain Israel’s unfaithfulness caused God.

So Olson thinks God actually experiences the emotional swings of a cuckold husband? A God in that emotional state is hazardous to be around. Remember, we are the cheating wife in that scenario. What's to restrain God from annihilating the whole human race in the heat of the moment? Believe me, you don't want to be within striking range of an omnipotent cuckold husband in a fit of rage. Think of all those ingenious tortures the Greek gods contrive to punish hapless humans. 

11 comments:

  1. "Well, if God changes, then he either changes for the better or for the worse."

    This is the same non sequitur that Plato made; bad philosophy dies hard. Obviously, some changes are neither for the better nor for the worse.

    Also, if you think it is right to gauge God's goodness by his *essential* attributes, well, those by definition never change. So then, any change God undergoes will not make him greater or lesser. In the view of many Christian philosophers nowadays, belief that God is "in time" (given that he's created time) sits happily together with belief in divine perfection.

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    1. So, what kind of change (if God changes) is this if God changes neither for the better nor for the worse?

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    2. @francisco The change given: the fact that God is in time. He changes from knowing, "Now it is 5:10:22" to knowing "Now it is 5:10:23". But this change is neutral as regards any perfections. This is WLC's view, and you may not like WLC but why is this view incorrect?

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    3. The point is that This isn't what Olson is defending. He claims clearly that God is affected by what happens in our world and by our prayers. What is to be affected in this sense? That you pointed out doesn't respond the problem.

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    4. Yes, pro log gives a good example. I suppose Olsen as this sort of change in mind. You sin at time 1 (which is unpleasant to God to behold - not that it ruins his day of course), and then you repent at time 2 (which God enjoys). It must be understood, I think, that God needs nothing - that he is blessed / well off / happy in himself. Still, he can be affected in those ways, arguably. The Bible seems to assume this throughout. BUT divine simplicity, what that comes into the tradition, makes this impossible, as it implies that God can't have contingent/accidental/non-essential properties! Well, this is just one of many reasons to deny simplicity, classically understood.

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    5. pro log -- your example misunderstands the nature of time. Just picking up Einstein's "Relativity" you'll quickly see there's no such thing as a universal "now" and physical experiments have only solidified it further since his day. At best, all you can get to is "Within this particular relativistic framework, person A believes now is 5:10:22" and "Within this other particular relativistic framework, person A believes now is 5:10:23", etc.

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    6. Dale



      "This is the same non sequitur that Plato made; bad philosophy dies hard. Obviously, some changes are neither for the better nor for the worse."

      Sorry you have difficulty following the argument. Olson clearly thinks a God who changes by having new experiences is better than a God who does not or cannot. He thinks a God who is affected by our prayers is better than a God who is not. Thinks a God who has emotions "provoked by creatures" is better than a God who does not. Thinks a God who undergoes the gamut of feelings depicted in Hosea is better than a God who does not. God is better for those experiences than he was before, or better than if he never had them.

      "Also, if you think it is right to gauge God's goodness by his *essential* attributes, well, those by definition never change."

      Applied to Olson's contention, that would mean the new experiences which change God for the better (see above) are inessential to God in himself.

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    7. pro log

      "@francisco The change given: the fact that God is in time. He changes from knowing, 'Now it is 5:10:22' to knowing 'Now it is 5:10:23'. But this change is neutral as regards any perfections. This is WLC's view, and you may not like WLC but why is this view incorrect?"

      i) If you think God must have temporal indexical knowledge to be omniscient, and if you think omniscience is a divine perfection, then that change is hardly neutral to his perfections. Rather, by your logic, that's indispensable to his omniscience.

      ii) If God is timeless, then it's not true for him that "Now it is 5:10:22." To deny that God knows that is not a denial of divine omniscience, for a timeless God would be in error if he thought "Now it is 5:10:22" in relation to himself. That would be a mistaken belief. Believing a false proposition about himself.

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  2. Dale

    "Yes, pro log gives a good example. I suppose Olsen as this sort of change in mind. You sin at time 1 (which is unpleasant to God to behold - not that it ruins his day of course), and then you repent at time 2 (which God enjoys). It must be understood, I think, that God needs nothing - that he is blessed / well off / happy in himself."

    i) At most, this only follows on the assumption that God doesn't know the future. If he knows ahead of time that you sin at time 1 and repent at time 2, then there'd be no shift in his perspective.

    ii) In addition, it's simplistic to say that sin is "unpleasant for God to behold." For instance, sin serves a purpose in the plan of God (e.g. Rom 7:13; 11:32). Although God disapproves of sin qua sin, God approves of second-order goods (e.g. gratitude for forgiveness) which are contingent on sin.

    "BUT divine simplicity, what that comes into the tradition, makes this impossible, as it implies that God can't have contingent/accidental/non-essential properties! Well, this is just one of many reasons to deny simplicity, classically understood."

    My argument doesn't require divine simplicity, classically understood.

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  3. "Olson clearly thinks a God who changes by having new experiences is better than a God who does not or cannot. He thinks a God who is affected by our prayers is better than a God who is not. Thinks a God who has emotions "provoked by creatures" is better than a God who does not. Thinks a God who undergoes the gamut of feelings depicted in Hosea is better than a God who does not. God is better for those experiences than he was before, or better than if he never had them. "

    That last sentence doesn't follow. What's better is being able to exist in genuine, interactive personal relationships. That's Olson's point. He needn't think that God is getting better, e.g. as each second passes, 'cause now he's had one more second of experience.

    I think you're being uncharitable to Olson.

    Wouldn't be the first time! :-)

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    1. i) First of all, I don't grant that you enjoy special insight into Olson's true meaning.

      ii) You seem to be suggesting that what's better is merely that God has a capacity to change by having new experiences, and not the the actual content of those experiences. But what's the value of God merely having that capacity apart from what he actually derives from that capacity?

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