Transcript

Hi, folks.

Welcome back to The Original Church.

Does God suffer or change over time?

Did The Original Church have anything like process theology?

Well, this is really two topics in one.

First, let's talk about the attributes of God.

And before we can do that, we have to bust another myth, the myth of the so-called Hellenization of Christianity, right?

Hellenization means This myth proposes that there was some original, more Jewish version of Christianity before it became corrupted by the influence of Greek philosophy and Greek thought.

But this is a myth.

It's just not true, and it's been thoroughly debunked.

And so, right now, I'll just say this.

Original Christianity was not more Jewish than it is now.

There was a faction that wanted that.

We refer to them as the Judaizers.

We see them in the New Testament.

These are the so-called false teachers that St. Paul is opposing, like in the letter to the Galatians.

And he refers to their teaching as another gospel, that is, a false one.

And so there's no sense that Christianity was more Jewish at the beginning.

In fact, that was rejected.

The point is that the early Christians did incorporate Greek philosophy, but they didn't just accept everything from Greek thought.

They accepted exactly those things from Greek philosophy that were consistent with Hebrew wisdom.

They used Greek philosophy to invite people from Greco-Roman culture into Christianity, but they never tolerated anything from pagan Greek thought.

A perfect example of this is a concept called immutability.

One of the things that the church accepted from Greek philosophy is the concept of divine immutability.

This means that divinity is unchanging.

God does not change.

And by the way, not all pagan deities were considered immutable.

Some of them were thought to go through change.

Some of the pagan deities were thought to be born of two previous pagan deities, etc. But in any case, the original church accepted the idea that God is unchanging.

But they accepted it precisely because that's what Jews believed.

It is consistent with Hebrew wisdom.

For the Hebrews, God is unchanging, and there are a bunch of Old Testament passages we could look to, but the point is that the fact that God doesn't change is good news, because it means that God is trustworthy.

You see, for many of the Greco-Roman deities, the gods were fickle, they were tricksters, and they couldn't be trusted.

In fact, they engage in immoral behavior, sometimes changing form to seduce a human, etc. But the God of the Jews and the Christians is not like that, obviously.

This God, the real God, is just and trustworthy and keeps his promises.

And it comes through in the Hebrew text with concepts like God's loving kindness, or God's mercy, or God's faithfulness.

So the point is that our God can be trusted because he is unchanging.

God is immutable and therefore God is trustworthy.

Now, this also means that God does not suffer, not in the way we think of suffering, primarily because suffering is a form of change.

And if God doesn't change, then God doesn't suffer.

I mean, to suffer, you have to change from not suffering to suffering or whatever.

And so suffering is always a form of change.

But there's an even deeper reason, which is that suffering means that there is a victim who is acted on by an outside force.

To suffer is to go through these changes from better to worse or to be limited in freedom in some ways.

And so this is just not possible for our God.

Our God can't be a victim who is acted on against His will by some outside force.

And this brings out an important point about God's immutability.

Since God is eternal, God cannot be thought to be limited God is outside of time because time is a created thing.

It's a part of creation.

God is outside of creation.

God is separate and distinct from creation.

And so God is outside of time.

And so God does not go through time like we do.

And so therefore, it's impossible for the eternal God to be said to change because change is a function of time.

Change only happens as someone goes through time.

In fact, time and change are interdependent, because one can only be measured by the other.

Time can only be measured by observing change, and change can only be measured by tracking time.

And so for change to even exist, the thing that changes must be within the stream of time, limited by time, and dependent on time.

But since God is eternal, God is outside of time, God rules over time, and therefore God cannot change.

And since God doesn't change over time, God also cannot suffer.

And so the word we use for that is God is impassible.

Impassible means God doesn't suffer.

Now it's also because suffering implies a lack of something.

To suffer is to need something.

To be lacking something.

And God cannot be said to lack or need anything because God is perfect.

And so if God needed anything or lacked anything, or if God could be acted upon by some outside force, then God wouldn't be perfect anymore or omnipotent anymore, right?

And so these are some of the very attributes of divinity that define what we mean by God.

They tell us who God is.

Now to be fair, we can't really go very far in describing what God is.

In fact, these are attributes that kind of begin by describing what God is not.

God is not subject to time, or to change, or to suffering, a lack, or a need.

God does not need to learn or grow, and so there is no potential in God To get better or to grow in any way.

There's no potential for more in God because God is already at the maximum.

And God cannot be surprised.

God is never forced To learn anything, or have to respond to anything, or to have to come up with plan B for anything.

And so, when we say these things, by saying what God is not, we begin to understand what God is.

Okay, now for the second topic, process theology.

We've got to back up a minute here.

Atheists have always used the problem of evil to argue against our God.

The argument goes something like this.

If God is great and God is good, why is there evil in the world?

In other words, if God truly is omnipotent and God truly is omnibenevolent, why doesn't God prevent evil?

Now, I'm not going to go too deep into actually answering that question right now.

That's another topic, and it's been done to death.

But the answer has everything to do with free will, or the misuse of free will.

Because although God has a perfect will for us, God gives us free will.

God gives humanity free will because God is love, Love is always voluntary, and if we're going to love God, God wants it to be by free will.

But in order for human will to truly be free, we have to be free also to choose not to love God, to reject God, to reject God's will, and even to sin.

So the answer to the question is that because humans misuse their free will, that's what brings evil into the world.

Eventually, though, in the modern world, I think, for whatever reason, this answer of free will started to fail to satisfy people.

And to be fair, it's a complicated problem, because there are things in the world that seem like evil that we don't want to blame on God, but that can't simply be attributed to human sin, like natural disasters, diseases, things like that.

So in the modern era, some people started to reject the old answers to the problem, but they struggled to find better answers.

And some people started saying, well, maybe the answer to the question is that God isn't really as great as we thought.

Maybe God isn't really omnipotent or even immutable.

Maybe the reason why there's evil in the world is because God can't help it.

Maybe God doesn't prevent evil because he can't. Back in the day, there was a very famous book written.

I think it was written by a rabbi.

It was called Why Bad Things Happen to Good People.

And you get to the end of the book, and that's basically his thesis.

There's evil in the world because, well, God is doing his best, but he can't help it.

I don't find that answer satisfying, and I find that that answer goes directly against all of what we have traditionally believed about who God is.

Well, enter process theology, because at this time, a whole new kind of theology emerged.

And, you know, I always tell my students, there's nothing new under the sun, and all of the heresies that exist today are just repackaged versions of the old heresies from the early church and, you know, everything that's wrong now has been tried and found wanting.

But this is the one exception to that rule.

There was nothing like process theology in the time of the early church, with one possible exception, which I'll mention in a minute.

But process theology, as I understand it, proposes that God is also in process, just like we are, that God is sort of evolving over time.

In a way, it's a bit like some of the old Gnosticism that proposed that the God of the Old Testament was a different God from the God of the New Testament.

The Docetics, the Marcionites, and some of the Gnostics said that the Creator of the Old Testament was a mean God, out to get humanity, and probably incompetent.

But the Father of Jesus Christ, that was a different God, or a better God.

Now, process theology doesn't quite go that far, but it does kind of suggest that the mean God of the Old Testament is in the process of becoming the better God of the New Testament.

Now, you know, this move was partly to solve the problem of evil.

You know, God couldn't help creating a flawed universe, but don't worry, He's getting better.

He's working on it.

But, you know, it's also meant to try to emphasize how God is in solidarity with humanity.

So in process theology, God is not only within the stream of time and in process of developing, but God can also suffer along with us too.

If you suffer, God suffers too.

Well, that's supposed to be comforting to people.

In fact, the very definition of the word compassion is also reduced to this kind of simplistic suffers with.

God has compassion on you because he suffers with you.

But the problem with that is if you're sick, you need a doctor, not a fellow patient.

You need a God who can do something about your problems precisely because he does not suffer from the same problems like needing to improve or grow.

So process theology, by proposing that God changes over time and suffers, process theology puts God into the stream of time.

God is assumed to be inside of time and therefore limited by time, not above time.

So, process theology tries to make God seem more compassionate by rejecting the very attributes of divinity by which we know who God is and by ascribing attributes of creation to God.

So, process theology rejects the immutability of God and the impassibility of God and replaces that with a God who is, at the end of the day, not eternal because he's not outside of time.

He's inside of time.

Which means he is inside of creation, not above it.

And this concept of a God who is within creation, this is called panentheism.

Panentheism is a completely different religion that suggests that God is within creation as opposed to distinct from it.

And it's pagan.

It's not Christian.

Like I said, the original church did not really have anything like process theology unless you consider process theology a version of some form of paganism that existed back then outside of the church, which I guess is what I would say that it is.

Because a God who changes is not the God of Judeo-Christian faith.

But the God who has revealed himself in the scriptures and primarily in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, this God is trustworthy precisely because he is unchanging.

He's faithful because he's unchanging.

And he can be our great physician precisely because he does not suffer from the same problems that we do.

But just to be clear, the fact that God is immutable and impassable Does not mean that God is uncaring or lacking in compassion or detached from us.

God is not aloof from us.

In fact, it's just the opposite.

God could not be more loving toward us because God is immutably loving.

God is eternally and immutably at the maximum level of loving activity and compassion.

There is no room for more ever because God is already at the maximum.

There is no room for improvement in God because God has eternally been at maximum compassion for humanity.

And to say that God could develop or be in process is to assume that God hasn't always been perfect.

God is not powerless over suffering, which is good news, right?

Because we need a God who is not powerless over our suffering.

God is impassable, which means that God is not a victim.

And when we suffer, we need a God who can do something about our suffering.

A God who could change or who could suffer would be limited by those things.

And the real God is not limited.

The real God is unlimited and eternal.

Now there are those in the world of process theology who would say, A God who can't suffer is a God who can't love, because they associate suffering with compassion.

But the original Christians, if I can speak for them, would reply, no, that's not true.

In fact, they would say that a God who is not immutable is a God who is not trustworthy.

Thanks for watching this video.

If you're interested in more on this topic or in general on the development of doctrine in the early church, do check out my book, Reading the Church Fathers, A History of the Early Church and the Development of Doctrine.

That's from Sophia Institute Press.

I hope you'll check that out, and I look forward to seeing you in the next video.

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