Marvin asks: “Is God subject to time or not?”

I’m not sure if this is right, but I take this as a stand-in for the cluster of issues grouped around the question of whether God can be affected by finite, temporal being, or whether we should continue to think of God–with the classic tradition–in terms of apatheia.

In the classical tradition, derived in part from Plato and Aristotle, God is thought of as actus purus–pure act–with no unrealized potentiality. If this is the case, then God cannot change, much less be changed by anything “external” to God, simply because there is no un-actualized potential in God to be realized. God is perfection and any change (per impossible) would be for the worse anyway. It’s generally thought that the Fathers and the Scholastics followed classical philosophy on this score (though, I understand there’s some debate about this point, as you’d expect, since the Fathers were grappling with the paradox of the God-Man).

The 20th century saw a re-thinking of this classic conception of God, driven by a few different sources. One was the widespread sense that classical metaphysics was no longer tenable, and that we needed a new ontology that was more “relational” and less “static.” This is where process thought–stemming from the work of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne and developed by an entire school of thought–comes in. Process thought tends to re-configure the idea of God as exerting a persuasive influence on creation and being affected in turn by what happens in creation.

Another impetus for reconsidering the traditional concept of God came from post-Holocaust theologizing about the problem of evil, which led in some quarters to a renewed emphasis on the Incarnation, and particularly the Passion, of Christ as a revelation of the divine nature. Like process theology, this sometimes involved a re-evaluation of the notion of divine omnipotence; God was no longer seen as the controller and determiner of events that occurred in the world, but as the “fellow sufferer who understands,” to use Whitehead’s term. Feminist and other liberationist theologies often concur with this revision of the God-concept, as they often argue that the God of classical theism exhibits stereotypical “male” qualities of control and domination.

Given that there’s no way to do justice to this issue in a blog post (even were I competent to do so!), I will cop to having been influenced by at least some of these streams of thought. The most compelling arguments to me are those that take the Incarnation as their point of departure: if the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus are the best representation, or revelation, we have of what God is like, then we may need to re-think our concepts of power and divinity quite radically. Additionally, if God genuinely enters into relationship with creatures, then it’s hard to see how God can avoid being “affected by finite, temporal reality in some way.”

That said, I think some of the revisionist theologians go too far and aren’t sufficiently attuned to the biblical promises of God’s ultimate victory over evil, suffering, and death. Divinity isn’t just expressed in weakness and solidarity with suffering–though I take it that’s part of the truth of the Incarnation–it’s also expressed in the triumph of the Resurrection and in the final victory over the forces that mar God’s good creation. In other words, God isn’t captive to the forces of evil nor will God be prevented by the recalcitrance of creation from realizing God’s purposes (a possibility suggested by some of the more radical forms of process theology). I think this means that God’s power is more than the persuasive and attractive power of love. Or maybe it would be better to say that God’s love has a power that is sufficient to overcome that which opposes it (which is part of what makes it different from creaturely love).

I’m attracted to the view of Keith Ward, who’s accepted some of the insights of 20th century revisionist theology but still has one foot solidly in the camp of classical metaphysics. Ward suggests that God’s eternal nature is pure bliss and perfection, and yet, because God chose to create a world that was other than God, there is an aspect of God’s being that is affected by what happens in the world. Further, in the Incarnation, God enters into the world’s travail in a uniquely intimate way. Nevertheless, God is affected by the world only because God freely chooses to enter into realtionship with finite being, and the ultimate triumph of God’s purposes isn’t in doubt. This view seeks to uphold both God’s involvement with the world and his transcendence.

Like I said, this just scratches the surface and probably raises thorny metaphysical issues. I’m just jealous that Marvin gets to take a whole seminar on this stuff. Hopefully we’ll get regular blog reports.