Josheb
Well-known member
I say there are two relevant ways to look at the term "classic," and one can reasonably persist with some modifications and the other cannot. In the sense of "classic" meaning well-studied and tested and having established a significant degree of orthodoxy, veracity, efficacy and authority then the terms is still viable. In the sense "classic," simply means old ways of viewing things it needs to be discarded.
Let me provide an example before I dive into more op-relevant and specific content.
In 1543 a mathematician and astronomer named Nicolaus Copernicus published research titled, “On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres,” in which it was demonstrated the earth is not the center of the universe, the sun is at the center of our universe. This, along with the work of Galileo about a half-century later, caused a great deal of consternation within the Church, its governing institutions, and its religious leaders. Heliocentrism was thought to be untrue, but it wasn't the math alone that was the problem. There was philosophical, or theological, resistance because the idea the earth - and by extension humanity - was not at the center of creation was imagined untenable. Of course, we all now know the math was basically correct, the earth is not at the center of the universe, not creation.
As a consequence of this discovery and the ensuing debate our understanding of scripture improved, and our theology developed further.
Now, as far as the matter expressed in this op goes, the question of immutability and its relationship to time and space and cause and effect, the "old," the "classic" views are antiquated and in need of either being updated or discarded. Because of discoveries in relativity and quantum mechanics we now know things that were completely unknown thousands of years ago. Just as modern virology and the knowledge of microscopic bacteria radically changed the old views of the four humors, so modern physics requires us to update our understanding of scripture. For example, because of the theories of relativity (there are more than one) we now understand mass and energy are simply variations on a common condition, that of gravity, or what we now call "singularity" (a word completely unknown in the first century AD). If a God exists (and everyone here believes He does
), then He is the creator of the singularity and the mutability of matter and energy. Similar adjustments need to be made in our understanding of the universe, as a creation having ten or eleven dimensions, not merely four (length, width, depth, and time). Our current knowledge of atomic structures was completely unknown in ancient times.Scripture says God is invisible (Col. 1:15). That does not mean He cannot or does not have mass. It simply means we can't see Him with an unaided eye (Gk. aoratos = unseen, invisible). This could be because God exists external to creation and we can't see past the horizon on a clear day, much less past the ends of the universe. So...... we update our understanding. We now know that what is "visible" and "invisible" is simply a matter of an objects ability to reflect light waves with the range observable by the human eye. With certain adaptations we can "see" things within the infrared spectrum, for example, that are otherwise invisible to us. The scripture informing us no one can see God and live (Ex. 33:20) necessarily implies God can be seen and therefore God does have mass (or energy) sufficient to reflect light waves.
Of course, in another century or ten everything I have just written will be seen as rudimentary and woefully inadequate because our knowledge and understanding of time and space and matter and energy, subatomic nature and quantum mechanics will have progressed much, much further and we'll again need to update our understanding of what God's word has been telling us all along.
As far as God coming in the flesh goes, the old way of thinking was that "flesh" is spatio-temporal, fixed and finite, but on the quantum level we now understand it is possible for something to be two places at once or for two objects to share the same space simultaneously. We understand the possibility. We do not understand how that happens, and we are completely ignorant of it experientially. What we do know is that Jesus, although living, breathing, pumping blood, in the seemingly fixed limitations of a human body could still retain all his memories of his entire history prior to his incarnation, and he could see what was happening far, far away in a completely different locale (Jn. 1:48), he communed with God constantly and transcended what we call the physical and spiritual realms (the "heavens and the earth"), and he transcended the otherwise unattainable obstacle one human has regarding his/her knowledge of other's thoughts (despite many a poster imagining they can read others' minds
). See Mt. 9:4, 12:25; Lk. 6:8.Change is a constant.
?Creation is not fixed. Why should we think the Creator is fixed? Again, our "classic" understanding is not wrong; it is simply in need of updating given the knowledge we now possess but did not have when these doctrines were first established. I will unequivocally say any doctrine is wrong should readily be discarded and replaced, but that's not necessary in the vast majority of cases. Certainly not in the case of immutability.
I will say, "timelessness" is a misnomer, a red herring, an irrelevancy. We have to radically change our views here because time is a created aspect of creation, not something applicable to the Creator who created it. We humans are gonna have a tough time with this one. The closest we can get to it is the idea of direction when in outer space. An astronaut floating in what we used to wrongly previously imagine was empty space has no idea what is "up," "down," "right," "left," north," "south," "east," or "west". These are absolutely meaningless terms in the absence of an objective fixed reference point. Another useful analogy is what the compass reads when standing on magnetic north. There is no reading. If a digital tool were being used it would read zero!
God is the fix reference point. He is the reference point for all of time and space unto Himself. We haven't a clue what that is like. It is timelessness; the complete absence of time. We think of eternity as endlessness before and endlessness after but all of that is completely misguided for any entity existing outside of time.
And that is going to have a lot to do with correctly understanding change, and divine immutability.
This is one of the reasons why I think Open Theism ultimately fails. It seeks to address divine conditions outside of time/space/singularity/ or cause/effect, etc. from within those structures. It's still stuck in the common dialectic of thesis/antithesis/synthesis that simply may not apply to the Creator of the dialectic.
All of this helps us understand the incarnation can be immutable. We do not know how that occurs and we lack experiential knowledge and testability of it, but our current filed theories (and the corresponding math) get us quite a way further in understanding what the sovereignty, majesty, authority, power, etc., etc. of God is like.
At least as much as the microbe on the flea of an elephant understands the Creator of the savanna on which the elephant walks.
