It would help to know what “para-eternal” is supposed to mean.
Beyond eternity. Above. Around. As in paraphilia. Material reality is eternal. God is bigger than that. There's the transcendent, post-material realm for a start. The afterlife. Heaven. He's bigger than that too.
There are a range of voices in the Bible. Ecclesiastes is the voice of pessimism and the rabbis debated including it in the canon because its theology is so unconventional. But it still has its own place to speak about God and humanity, and matters of life and faith. Perhaps it is a text that has become even more relevant in the questioning post modern age.
An army chaplain serving in the Vietnam War noticed that whenever he had to address the traumatised and cynical young soldiers they would not listen - except when he spoke from Ecclesiastes. They thought that he knew what he was talking about when he said that life was meaningless.
There are times when we all feel disillusioned with life and wonder what it is all about. The psalms are quite candid with God about how let down the speaker feels. But they still include God in the conversation.
The question of whether God changes is not quite the same question as whether God changes his mind.
I don't think God changes his mind in the sense of being fickle. The traditional response to the images of God 'repenting' in the Bible is to describe them as anthropomorphisms, in other words as a human perception of there being a change in his will. I don't like that as a superficial explanation, but I do have some time for the idea mentioned above, that as people persevered in striving with God for some understanding, they came to a different or deeper understanding of his will.
We discussed whether an immutable God could change - specifically as a result of the Incarnation - a while back. So far as I recall, the conversation got bogged down in whether God was inside or outside time and whether the Incarnation was just one local iteration of something happening simultaneously in all places in the universe with intelligent lifeforms.
Leaving that aside, I am reminded of another rather neat Jonathan Edwards quote about God:
It is no argument of the emptiness or deficiency of a fountain, that it is inclined to overflow
I don't think Edwards was thinking about the immutability of God here, but extending that idea, I think the idea of God somehow 'expanding' whilst remaining eternally full, complete, and consistent might have some mileage. God expanding as the universe expands, or perhaps more likely vice versa, or some such.
(Wow. What a thought. God is and always has been all that could possibly be known - but after the Incarnation and still more the Resurrection, think how much the (moral) universe suddenly expanded, and how much more there is to possibly be known since! Little wonder the angels long to look into these things).
There is, however, a lot of God's steadfastness and unchangingness in the Old Testament as well as the New, particularly in the Psalms. "For his steadfast love endureth forever."
Other proof texts:
“For I the Lord do not change" --Malachi 3:6
"God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?" - Numbers 23:19
"The Lord of hosts has sworn: “As I have planned, so shall it be, and as I have purposed, so shall it stand," - Isaiah 14:24
"The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations." --Psalm 33:11
If important characteristics of God are that he abounds in mercy steadfast love, how about considering that his being willing to change his mind in favour of those who call upon him for mercy might be an outworking of his changeless nature?
If (!) you're being ironic Rublev, I wouldn't blame you. Eutychus describes me on the cusp of bone and marrow. Open/closed.
I think you meant what you said. AND you're being ironic : ) One would have to be. Which is very big of you. Friend. Despite my... mocking responses elsewhere. Which I back pedalled on and you graciously accepted.
You're a better man than I Rublev. Which isn't difficult mind!
It would help to know what “para-eternal” is supposed to mean.
Beyond eternity. Above. Around. As in paraphilia. Material reality is eternal.....
Hold on a second - what do you mean "material reality is eternal?" I've always understood material reality to be temporal.
It is. Entropically so. It runs down. But something keeps generating it and always has. And that something is either absolutely nothing at thats compulsion, thats opposite; because there can be absolutely nothing, there can be something (and anything that comes in to existence is purposelessly logical, mathematical, rational), because! Stuff HAS to exist on principle! Or, slightly better, it's the infinite Planck regress of the past. That is not entropic either way. Supra-material, but not supernatural.
God being the something does not seem to be inconsistent with idea of the material universe expanding as he does morally, then. Like Edwards' fountain.
God being the something does not seem to be inconsistent with idea of the material universe expanding as he does morally, then. Like Edwards' fountain.
That's the 2nd decent Edwards quote! But you lost me there on the morally. The universe is expanding as all do. Down hill all the way. Like the ever increasing others from eternity. Wossat got to do with God's morality? And the fact that He can't change in any meaningful way?
That's what the roots mean. Not only that, that's what it means when deconstructed. Each to their own. And of course I know what I'm talking about as the concepts are incredibly simple. Eternity is simple. Terrifyingly simple. The infinite pit. Principles like uniformitarianism are too. Even though they are so recent. We are so incredibly dim. I'm surprised the Greeks didn't come up with it as they thought up atoms and were on the cusp of calculus. For dim they weren't bad. God, including incarnation, has to be seen in the rational yet head spinning light of eternity. An eternity of the material for a start.
Existence is a tad strange.
And God - the exister - is rather transcendent and just a tad immanent.
Not really. “Para” can mean beyond, but it also means near, alongside, beside, related to, resembling, in/at the side, abnormal, altered, contrary to or apart from. From what I have seen, the sense of “beyond” tends to suggest “out of,” as in “paranoia.”
In the case of “paraphilia,” the root is in the sense of beside or contrary to.
Not only that, that's what it means when deconstructed.
Words have meaning. If you want to be understood, then you shouldn’t expect others to somehow know to ignore the actual meaning of words and instead intuit your deconstructed meaning.
If you're an all objecting omniscient God you either create a universe within which you are the master puppeteer or you create an infinite universe within a creation of multiply-infinite universes. Such that free will operates. Basically creating such that you can't be the puppet master. And you allow life to evolve. Not controlling how it happens. And you allow the troubled beings who evolve to interact with you. God's motives for the thing being unknowable really. A tomato might as well marvel at the life of a human.
What I learned from those videos on what is random a while back is that for there to be meaning, there must not be absolute, uniform order (like a blank page), or absolute chaos (like white noise); in other words, entropy must not tend to a maximum.
Meanwhile my (less than rudimentary) knowledge of the second law of thermodynamics tells me that entropy tends to a maximum - in a closed system.
If your working hypothesis is that something keeps pumping material (or energy) into the universe, it's not a closed system, and so while entropy may be increasing it will never reach total chaos. That allows meaning to emerge*, and if that something is, as you speculate, God, then this meaning it is of divine origin. The scope of meaning within the system can thus increase. I agree with @NOprophet_NØprofit that trying to decide whether God changes is well above our pay grade, but if my model makes any sense at all it allows the possibility of moral understanding of God and his character to increase as long as the universe is having something pumped into it, allowing meaning to emerge* at the interface between white noise and uniform blankness.
Theologically, the Christ Event must be consistent with the character of that ever-full, ever-overflowing fountain that is God, but it surely changed our understanding of God by orders of magnitude and perhaps it even changed God's own self-understanding, even as that self-understanding remained complete at all times.
Disclaimer: I don't really know what I'm talking about here.
*By "emerge" I don't necessarily mean "involuntarily" in the sense of "emergent properties".
Where did the material come from for the material. And if you start the multiverse nonsense forget further discussion.
You think you are flying free from the constraints of everyone else and it is only pride.
Where did the material come from for the material. And if you start the multiverse nonsense forget further discussion.
You think you are flying free from the constraints of everyone else and it is only pride.
That's unfair. He's speculating and others are engaging. How is that "only pride" that is flying free from everyone else's constraints.
One might equally say that it is only pride that locks you into your view.
If you're an all objecting omniscient God you either create a universe within which you are the master puppeteer or you create an infinite universe within a creation of multiply-infinite universes. Such that free will operates. Basically creating such that you can't be the puppet master. And you allow life to evolve. Not controlling how it happens. And you allow the troubled beings who evolve to interact with you. God's motives for the thing being unknowable really. A tomato might as well marvel at the life of a human.
If you are God, you will create a universe that corresponds to your nature. Whether that can be fitted into either-or categories human beings might try to impose on you will be irrelevant.
Where did the material come from for the material. And if you start the multiverse nonsense forget further discussion.
You think you are flying free from the constraints of everyone else and it is only pride.
Praise the Lord!!! It isn't just me who thinks this. But be careful here, because if we follow your arguments through, it may just turn out that we find the material universe (as we know it) is not eternal after all. Or something.
If you're an all objecting omniscient God you either create a universe within which you are the master puppeteer or you create an infinite universe within a creation of multiply-infinite universes. Such that free will operates. Basically creating such that you can't be the puppet master. And you allow life to evolve. Not controlling how it happens. And you allow the troubled beings who evolve to interact with you. God's motives for the thing being unknowable really. A tomato might as well marvel at the life of a human.
If you are God, you will create a universe that corresponds to your nature. Whether that can be fitted into either-or categories human beings might try to impose on you will be irrelevant.
Yes, if we try to reduce God to our level, it's little wonder some end up not believing in any sort of "god" at all.
Martin54 I wasn't being ironic at all. I think you show remarkable honesty about yourself. Friend indeed.
I have got lost in the midst of this existential speculation. Would someone like to clarify where we are up to? Or would that be spoiling everyone's fun?
Martin54 I wasn't being ironic at all. I think you show remarkable honesty about yourself. Friend indeed.
I have got lost in the midst of this existential speculation. Would someone like to clarify where we are up to? Or would that be spoiling everyone's fun?
Well we're supposed to be talking about whether God does or can change his mind, but as always the academics have taken over and we ended up talking about the "eternal" nature of matter, going beyond eternity and the principle of Uniformitarianism.
During the debate, the word "paraphilia" cropped up, and I think the idea was to discuss it and break it down without using a dictionary.
If you're an all objecting omniscient God you either create a universe within which you are the master puppeteer or you create an infinite universe within a creation of multiply-infinite universes. Such that free will operates. Basically creating such that you can't be the puppet master. And you allow life to evolve. Not controlling how it happens. And you allow the troubled beings who evolve to interact with you. God's motives for the thing being unknowable really. A tomato might as well marvel at the life of a human.
If you are God, you will create a universe that corresponds to your nature. Whether that can be fitted into either-or categories human beings might try to impose on you will be irrelevant.
Yes, if we try to reduce God to our level, it's little wonder some end up not believing in any sort of "god" at all.
Isn't this the purpose of all religion? to confine God to our level.
If you're an all objecting omniscient God you either create a universe within which you are the master puppeteer or you create an infinite universe within a creation of multiply-infinite universes. Such that free will operates. Basically creating such that you can't be the puppet master. And you allow life to evolve. Not controlling how it happens. And you allow the troubled beings who evolve to interact with you. God's motives for the thing being unknowable really. A tomato might as well marvel at the life of a human.
If you are God, you will create a universe that corresponds to your nature. Whether that can be fitted into either-or categories human beings might try to impose on you will be irrelevant.
Yes, if we try to reduce God to our level, it's little wonder some end up not believing in any sort of "god" at all.
Isn't this the purpose of all religion? to confine God to our level.
To bring REVELATION concerning God is the object of all religion, not to reduce or confine God to our level (which is impossible anyway.)
You think you are flying free from the constraints of everyone else and it is only pride.
This is a personal attack, and it does not belong in Keryg.
Host hat off
Martin 54 and I are old friends but I do apologise.
On topic
The Bible suggests God can change his mind. I think that he does so often but that what is often interpreted as him doing so, is only us thinking that something was his idea in the first place.
From a worship point of view, I think he answers prayer but of course that could br intervention rather than mind change. Jonah has been mentioned but there is also a passage in Torah where Moses requests and gets him to change his mind about wiping out the people and recreating the nation through Moses.
If you're an all objecting omniscient God you either create a universe within which you are the master puppeteer or you create an infinite universe within a creation of multiply-infinite universes. Such that free will operates. Basically creating such that you can't be the puppet master. And you allow life to evolve. Not controlling how it happens. And you allow the troubled beings who evolve to interact with you. God's motives for the thing being unknowable really. A tomato might as well marvel at the life of a human.
If you are God, you will create a universe that corresponds to your nature. Whether that can be fitted into either-or categories human beings might try to impose on you will be irrelevant.
Yes, if we try to reduce God to our level, it's little wonder some end up not believing in any sort of "god" at all.
Isn't this the purpose of all religion? to confine God to our level.
To bring REVELATION concerning God is the object of all religion, not to reduce or confine God to our level (which is impossible anyway.)
If you're an all objecting omniscient God you either create a universe within which you are the master puppeteer or you create an infinite universe within a creation of multiply-infinite universes. Such that free will operates. Basically creating such that you can't be the puppet master. And you allow life to evolve. Not controlling how it happens. And you allow the troubled beings who evolve to interact with you. God's motives for the thing being unknowable really. A tomato might as well marvel at the life of a human.
If you are God, you will create a universe that corresponds to your nature. Whether that can be fitted into either-or categories human beings might try to impose on you will be irrelevant.
Yes, if we try to reduce God to our level, it's little wonder some end up not believing in any sort of "god" at all.
Isn't this the purpose of all religion? to confine God to our level.
Martin54 I wasn't being ironic at all. I think you show remarkable honesty about yourself. Friend indeed.
I have got lost in the midst of this existential speculation. Would someone like to clarify where we are up to? Or would that be spoiling everyone's fun?
Well we're supposed to be talking about whether God does or can change his mind, but as always the academics have taken over and we ended up talking about the "eternal" nature of matter, going beyond eternity and the principle of Uniformitarianism.
During the debate, the word "paraphilia" cropped up, and I think the idea was to discuss it and break it down without using a dictionary.
You think you are flying free from the constraints of everyone else and it is only pride.
This is a personal attack, and it does not belong in Keryg.
Host hat off
Martin 54 and I are old friends but I do apologise.
On topic
The Bible suggests God can change his mind. I think that he does so often but that what is often interpreted as him doing so, is only us thinking that something was his idea in the first place.
From a worship point of view, I think he answers prayer but of course that could br intervention rather than mind change. Jonah has been mentioned but there is also a passage in Torah where Moses requests and gets him to change his mind about wiping out the people and recreating the nation through Moses.
Let's just take this a little bit slower.
If God was always going to act, then (presumably) the performance of being about to behave in a different way was designed to have people want to ask him to change.
Which makes some kind of sense (although does seem to leave open the possibility of the deity lying when he says he is going to do something that he knows he actually has no intention of doing and is only doing it to get people to ask (which itself seems a bit of a manipulative idea)) except that doesn't really explain why he expects people to ask for change but then doesn't change.
That appears to be a deity that can't be trusted. The deity that tells Jonah to go tell the Ninevans to repent but pshh, it doesn't matter if he does or doesn't because God knows he's going to forgive them in the end.
The God who tells the Israelites that he is Really Quite Cross about the golden calf thing and that he is going to do This and That and The Other - when he knows all along that in the end he's going to gather them like a chicken gathers her chicks.
If you're an all objecting omniscient God you either create a universe within which you are the master puppeteer or you create an infinite universe within a creation of multiply-infinite universes. Such that free will operates. Basically creating such that you can't be the puppet master. And you allow life to evolve. Not controlling how it happens. And you allow the troubled beings who evolve to interact with you. God's motives for the thing being unknowable really. A tomato might as well marvel at the life of a human.
But He did not create an infinite universe. The one in which we live had a beginning, has boundaries (of sorts) and will have an end - numerous places in the Bible as well as in lay science talk of this end. Perhaps not in our lifetimes but at some stage. And if our universe were infinite in time, would it not also be so in space, and thus there cannot be multiple universes?
If you're an all objecting omniscient God you either create a universe within which you are the master puppeteer or you create an infinite universe within a creation of multiply-infinite universes. Such that free will operates. Basically creating such that you can't be the puppet master. And you allow life to evolve. Not controlling how it happens. And you allow the troubled beings who evolve to interact with you. God's motives for the thing being unknowable really. A tomato might as well marvel at the life of a human.
If you are God, you will create a universe that corresponds to your nature. Whether that can be fitted into either-or categories human beings might try to impose on you will be irrelevant.
Yes, if we try to reduce God to our level, it's little wonder some end up not believing in any sort of "god" at all.
Isn't this the purpose of all religion? to confine God to our level.
To bring REVELATION concerning God is the object of all religion, not to reduce or confine God to our level (which is impossible anyway.)
If you're an all objecting omniscient God you either create a universe within which you are the master puppeteer or you create an infinite universe within a creation of multiply-infinite universes. Such that free will operates. Basically creating such that you can't be the puppet master. And you allow life to evolve. Not controlling how it happens. And you allow the troubled beings who evolve to interact with you. God's motives for the thing being unknowable really. A tomato might as well marvel at the life of a human.
If you are God, you will create a universe that corresponds to your nature. Whether that can be fitted into either-or categories human beings might try to impose on you will be irrelevant.
Yes, if we try to reduce God to our level, it's little wonder some end up not believing in any sort of "god" at all.
Isn't this the purpose of all religion? to confine God to our level.
To bring REVELATION concerning God is the object of all religion, not to reduce or confine God to our level (which is impossible anyway.)
Quite the reverse.
Really?
Aye. NO... can explain I'm quite sure. Religion binds and blinds the largest of groups, that's it's evolutionary function.
If you're an all objecting omniscient God you either create a universe within which you are the master puppeteer or you create an infinite universe within a creation of multiply-infinite universes. Such that free will operates. Basically creating such that you can't be the puppet master. And you allow life to evolve. Not controlling how it happens. And you allow the troubled beings who evolve to interact with you. God's motives for the thing being unknowable really. A tomato might as well marvel at the life of a human.
If you are God, you will create a universe that corresponds to your nature. Whether that can be fitted into either-or categories human beings might try to impose on you will be irrelevant.
Yes, if we try to reduce God to our level, it's little wonder some end up not believing in any sort of "god" at all.
Isn't this the purpose of all religion? to confine God to our level.
To bring REVELATION concerning God is the object of all religion, not to reduce or confine God to our level (which is impossible anyway.)
Quite the reverse.
Really?
Aye. NO... can explain I'm quite sure. Religion binds and blinds the largest of groups, that's it's evolutionary function.
If you're an all objecting omniscient God you either create a universe within which you are the master puppeteer or you create an infinite universe within a creation of multiply-infinite universes. Such that free will operates. Basically creating such that you can't be the puppet master. And you allow life to evolve. Not controlling how it happens. And you allow the troubled beings who evolve to interact with you. God's motives for the thing being unknowable really. A tomato might as well marvel at the life of a human.
But He did not create an infinite universe. The one in which we live had a beginning, has boundaries (of sorts) and will have an end - numerous places in the Bible as well as in lay science talk of this end. Perhaps not in our lifetimes but at some stage. And if our universe were infinite in time, would it not also be so in space, and thus there cannot be multiple universes?
Universes begin with a bang and end with a whimper. That fades out forever. Or a bit sooner. So NO...'s poetic license is allowed. And why one infinity obviate others?
If you're an all objecting omniscient God you either create a universe within which you are the master puppeteer or you create an infinite universe within a creation of multiply-infinite universes. Such that free will operates. Basically creating such that you can't be the puppet master. And you allow life to evolve. Not controlling how it happens. And you allow the troubled beings who evolve to interact with you. God's motives for the thing being unknowable really. A tomato might as well marvel at the life of a human.
But He did not create an infinite universe. The one in which we live had a beginning, has boundaries (of sorts) and will have an end - numerous places in the Bible as well as in lay science talk of this end. Perhaps not in our lifetimes but at some stage. And if our universe were infinite in time, would it not also be so in space, and thus there cannot be multiple universes?
Universes begin with a bang and end with a whimper. That fades out forever. Or a bit sooner. So NO...'s poetic license is allowed. And why one infinity obviate others?
Bugger. And why would one infinity obviate others?
Where did the material come from for the material. And if you start the multiverse nonsense forget further discussion.
You think you are flying free from the constraints of everyone else and it is only pride.
Praise the Lord!!! It isn't just me who thinks this. But be careful here, because if we follow your arguments through, it may just turn out that we find the material universe (as we know it) is not eternal after all. Or something.
Whatever ultimately exists is eternal and uncaused apart from by itself. God or Godless. That is the first constraint. All others follow.
If you're an all objecting omniscient God you either create a universe within which you are the master puppeteer or you create an infinite universe within a creation of multiply-infinite universes. Such that free will operates. Basically creating such that you can't be the puppet master. And you allow life to evolve. Not controlling how it happens. And you allow the troubled beings who evolve to interact with you. God's motives for the thing being unknowable really. A tomato might as well marvel at the life of a human.
If you are God, you will create a universe that corresponds to your nature. Whether that can be fitted into either-or categories human beings might try to impose on you will be irrelevant.
False Dichotomy Of The Year So Far Award.
Creation has to be what it is. Autonomous. Regardless of - with or without - purpose. The universe reveals nothing about God apart from that He is creative. Beyond that He has no choice at all. And in it either. Choice, 'free will', is an utterly meaningless concept. If God doesn't have it, and obviously doesn't, how can we? What is it? What could it be?
If you're an all objecting omniscient God you either create a universe within which you are the master puppeteer or you create an infinite universe within a creation of multiply-infinite universes. Such that free will operates. Basically creating such that you can't be the puppet master. And you allow life to evolve. Not controlling how it happens. And you allow the troubled beings who evolve to interact with you. God's motives for the thing being unknowable really. A tomato might as well marvel at the life of a human.
If you are God, you will create a universe that corresponds to your nature. Whether that can be fitted into either-or categories human beings might try to impose on you will be irrelevant.
False Dichotomy Of The Year So Far Award.
Creation has to be what it is. Autonomous. Regardless of - with or without - purpose. The universe reveals nothing about God apart from that He is creative. Beyond that He has no choice at all. And in it either. Choice, 'free will', is an utterly meaningless concept. If God doesn't have it, and obviously doesn't, how can we? What is it? What could it be?
If you're right, that means what we call creation can't really be called "creation" at all, doesn't it?
What I learned from those videos on what is random a while back is that for there to be meaning, there must not be absolute, uniform order (like a blank page), or absolute chaos (like white noise); in other words, entropy must not tend to a maximum.
Meanwhile my (less than rudimentary) knowledge of the second law of thermodynamics tells me that entropy tends to a maximum - in a closed system.
If your working hypothesis is that something keeps pumping material (or energy) into the universe, it's not a closed system, and so while entropy may be increasing it will never reach total chaos. That allows meaning to emerge*, and if that something is, as you speculate, God, then this meaning it is of divine origin. The scope of meaning within the system can thus increase. I agree with @NOprophet_NØprofit that trying to decide whether God changes is well above our pay grade, but if my model makes any sense at all it allows the possibility of moral understanding of God and his character to increase as long as the universe is having something pumped into it, allowing meaning to emerge* at the interface between white noise and uniform blankness.
Theologically, the Christ Event must be consistent with the character of that ever-full, ever-overflowing fountain that is God, but it surely changed our understanding of God by orders of magnitude and perhaps it even changed God's own self-understanding, even as that self-understanding remained complete at all times.
Disclaimer: I don't really know what I'm talking about here.
*By "emerge" I don't necessarily mean "involuntarily" in the sense of "emergent properties".
@Eutychus - the universe is a closed system. A Planck tick or so after it began. Something with at least as much negative entropy as the eternal infinity of universes created them. That may have purpose. Give meaning. Nowt else could. And if it does, it doesn't change in any qualitative, experiential, moral way. Never has, will, could. God doesn't even have to compute. That's well within our pay grade. Even I can think it.
I like your 1st para attempt, brave but doomed in the face of eternity as it is. Unless you've gone all Lacan on me in which case I'll get me coat.
Now the 2nd para is more like it. Apart from change in God's self-understanding of course.
This isn't an entirely unpacked idea in my head - but I'm wondering if there is some discernable difference between the OT and NT.
I'm thinking quite a lot of prayers in the OT can be said to be appeals for God to change his mind - or at least to start acting to change things that at present are not changing.
Whereas prayer in the gospels seems to be more about acceptance of the reality of life.
Even the ideas of love for enemies and forgiving wrong appears to start from a position of acceptance of the reality of the situation and ask instead for a personal changed perspective rather that trying to change the deity's mind about (I don't know) turning them to dust, making them pay or even making them quiver in fear and stop being so horrid.
I dunno... I think you have prayers for healing, etc in the NT that are not at all “accepting the realities of life”. In fact, other than the notable exception of Gesthemsne, can’t think of many that do
Comments
Beyond eternity. Above. Around. As in paraphilia. Material reality is eternal. God is bigger than that. There's the transcendent, post-material realm for a start. The afterlife. Heaven. He's bigger than that too.
Me too.
I don't think God changes his mind in the sense of being fickle. The traditional response to the images of God 'repenting' in the Bible is to describe them as anthropomorphisms, in other words as a human perception of there being a change in his will. I don't like that as a superficial explanation, but I do have some time for the idea mentioned above, that as people persevered in striving with God for some understanding, they came to a different or deeper understanding of his will.
We discussed whether an immutable God could change - specifically as a result of the Incarnation - a while back. So far as I recall, the conversation got bogged down in whether God was inside or outside time and whether the Incarnation was just one local iteration of something happening simultaneously in all places in the universe with intelligent lifeforms.
Leaving that aside, I am reminded of another rather neat Jonathan Edwards quote about God:
I don't think Edwards was thinking about the immutability of God here, but extending that idea, I think the idea of God somehow 'expanding' whilst remaining eternally full, complete, and consistent might have some mileage. God expanding as the universe expands, or perhaps more likely vice versa, or some such.
(Wow. What a thought. God is and always has been all that could possibly be known - but after the Incarnation and still more the Resurrection, think how much the (moral) universe suddenly expanded, and how much more there is to possibly be known since! Little wonder the angels long to look into these things).
If (!) you're being ironic Rublev, I wouldn't blame you. Eutychus describes me on the cusp of bone and marrow. Open/closed.
I think you meant what you said. AND you're being ironic : ) One would have to be. Which is very big of you. Friend. Despite my... mocking responses elsewhere. Which I back pedalled on and you graciously accepted.
You're a better man than I Rublev. Which isn't difficult mind!
It is. Entropically so. It runs down. But something keeps generating it and always has. And that something is either absolutely nothing at thats compulsion, thats opposite; because there can be absolutely nothing, there can be something (and anything that comes in to existence is purposelessly logical, mathematical, rational), because! Stuff HAS to exist on principle! Or, slightly better, it's the infinite Planck regress of the past. That is not entropic either way. Supra-material, but not supernatural.
Or God. Is the something.
Beyond love. I'm demonstrating the use of the prefix.
I just looked it up in the dictionary - I wish I hadn't!
That's the 2nd decent Edwards quote! But you lost me there on the morally. The universe is expanding as all do. Down hill all the way. Like the ever increasing others from eternity. Wossat got to do with God's morality? And the fact that He can't change in any meaningful way?
(a) see that you chose a very poor way to demonstrate the use of the prefix;
(b) see why some of us get frustrated at your expectation that we all know what you mean when you just throw words together; and
(c) see why I question whether you really understand what you’re talking about.
Existence is a tad strange.
And God - the exister - is rather transcendent and just a tad immanent.
In the case of “paraphilia,” the root is in the sense of beside or contrary to.
Words have meaning. If you want to be understood, then you shouldn’t expect others to somehow know to ignore the actual meaning of words and instead intuit your deconstructed meaning.
What I learned from those videos on what is random a while back is that for there to be meaning, there must not be absolute, uniform order (like a blank page), or absolute chaos (like white noise); in other words, entropy must not tend to a maximum.
Meanwhile my (less than rudimentary) knowledge of the second law of thermodynamics tells me that entropy tends to a maximum - in a closed system.
If your working hypothesis is that something keeps pumping material (or energy) into the universe, it's not a closed system, and so while entropy may be increasing it will never reach total chaos. That allows meaning to emerge*, and if that something is, as you speculate, God, then this meaning it is of divine origin. The scope of meaning within the system can thus increase. I agree with @NOprophet_NØprofit that trying to decide whether God changes is well above our pay grade, but if my model makes any sense at all it allows the possibility of moral understanding of God and his character to increase as long as the universe is having something pumped into it, allowing meaning to emerge* at the interface between white noise and uniform blankness.
Theologically, the Christ Event must be consistent with the character of that ever-full, ever-overflowing fountain that is God, but it surely changed our understanding of God by orders of magnitude and perhaps it even changed God's own self-understanding, even as that self-understanding remained complete at all times.
Disclaimer: I don't really know what I'm talking about here.
*By "emerge" I don't necessarily mean "involuntarily" in the sense of "emergent properties".
You think you are flying free from the constraints of everyone else and it is only pride.
That's unfair. He's speculating and others are engaging. How is that "only pride" that is flying free from everyone else's constraints.
One might equally say that it is only pride that locks you into your view.
Praise the Lord!!! It isn't just me who thinks this. But be careful here, because if we follow your arguments through, it may just turn out that we find the material universe (as we know it) is not eternal after all. Or something.
This is a personal attack, and it does not belong in Keryg.
Host hat off
Yes, if we try to reduce God to our level, it's little wonder some end up not believing in any sort of "god" at all.
I have got lost in the midst of this existential speculation. Would someone like to clarify where we are up to? Or would that be spoiling everyone's fun?
Well we're supposed to be talking about whether God does or can change his mind, but as always the academics have taken over and we ended up talking about the "eternal" nature of matter, going beyond eternity and the principle of Uniformitarianism.
During the debate, the word "paraphilia" cropped up, and I think the idea was to discuss it and break it down without using a dictionary.
So there you go.
Isn't this the purpose of all religion? to confine God to our level.
To bring REVELATION concerning God is the object of all religion, not to reduce or confine God to our level (which is impossible anyway.)
On topic
The Bible suggests God can change his mind. I think that he does so often but that what is often interpreted as him doing so, is only us thinking that something was his idea in the first place.
From a worship point of view, I think he answers prayer but of course that could br intervention rather than mind change. Jonah has been mentioned but there is also a passage in Torah where Moses requests and gets him to change his mind about wiping out the people and recreating the nation through Moses.
Quite the reverse.
Absolutely.
Indeed.
Let's just take this a little bit slower.
If God was always going to act, then (presumably) the performance of being about to behave in a different way was designed to have people want to ask him to change.
Which makes some kind of sense (although does seem to leave open the possibility of the deity lying when he says he is going to do something that he knows he actually has no intention of doing and is only doing it to get people to ask (which itself seems a bit of a manipulative idea)) except that doesn't really explain why he expects people to ask for change but then doesn't change.
That appears to be a deity that can't be trusted. The deity that tells Jonah to go tell the Ninevans to repent but pshh, it doesn't matter if he does or doesn't because God knows he's going to forgive them in the end.
The God who tells the Israelites that he is Really Quite Cross about the golden calf thing and that he is going to do This and That and The Other - when he knows all along that in the end he's going to gather them like a chicken gathers her chicks.
For example he might once have been interested in mankind but how he isn't.
It's not that God is Dead, he's just really bored of the whole thing.
But He did not create an infinite universe. The one in which we live had a beginning, has boundaries (of sorts) and will have an end - numerous places in the Bible as well as in lay science talk of this end. Perhaps not in our lifetimes but at some stage. And if our universe were infinite in time, would it not also be so in space, and thus there cannot be multiple universes?
Really?
Aye. NO... can explain I'm quite sure. Religion binds and blinds the largest of groups, that's it's evolutionary function.
I'm sure we can agree to differ on that one.
Universes begin with a bang and end with a whimper. That fades out forever. Or a bit sooner. So NO...'s poetic license is allowed. And why one infinity obviate others?
Bugger. And why would one infinity obviate others?
Indeed we are MPaul. And doff our hats to our host too.
Whatever ultimately exists is eternal and uncaused apart from by itself. God or Godless. That is the first constraint. All others follow.
False Dichotomy Of The Year So Far Award.
Creation has to be what it is. Autonomous. Regardless of - with or without - purpose. The universe reveals nothing about God apart from that He is creative. Beyond that He has no choice at all. And in it either. Choice, 'free will', is an utterly meaningless concept. If God doesn't have it, and obviously doesn't, how can we? What is it? What could it be?
If you're right, that means what we call creation can't really be called "creation" at all, doesn't it?
@Eutychus - the universe is a closed system. A Planck tick or so after it began. Something with at least as much negative entropy as the eternal infinity of universes created them. That may have purpose. Give meaning. Nowt else could. And if it does, it doesn't change in any qualitative, experiential, moral way. Never has, will, could. God doesn't even have to compute. That's well within our pay grade. Even I can think it.
I like your 1st para attempt, brave but doomed in the face of eternity as it is. Unless you've gone all Lacan on me in which case I'll get me coat.
Now the 2nd para is more like it. Apart from change in God's self-understanding of course.
Does this not answer your questions to me?
I dunno... I think you have prayers for healing, etc in the NT that are not at all “accepting the realities of life”. In fact, other than the notable exception of Gesthemsne, can’t think of many that do