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Can God change his mind?

Amadeus said:
Humans don't have omniscience. You're conflating God and his actions with the rest of us.
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Not at all. Knowing the future is not controlling the future. Free will and God's knowledge of everything do not conflict. This has been established for 2000 years. Let's not pretend you found something missed by hundreds of generations. Be real.
 
ecofarm said:
Not at all. Knowing the future is not controlling the future. Free will and God's knowledge of everything do not conflict. This has been established for 2000 years. Let's not pretend you found something missed by hundreds of generations. Be real.
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Humans have free will from their perspective, but not from God's perspective. It's a logical impossibility that runs contrary to God's nature and abilities. Whether he intervenes in destiny or not, he knows the outcome. Thus the freedom that humans have is an illusion.
 
Amadeus said:
Humans have free will from their perspective, but not from God's perspective. It's a logical impossibility that runs contrary to God's nature and abilities. Whether he intervenes in destiny or not, he knows the outcome. Thus the freedom that humans have is an illusion.
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Nonsense. God knowing the future in no way imposes on man's free will.
 
Amadeus said:
Humans have free will from their perspective, but not from God's perspective. It's a logical impossibility that runs contrary to God's nature and abilities. Whether he intervenes in destiny or not, he knows the outcome. Thus the freedom that humans have is an illusion.
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If you can see the future and you see me eating pizza tomorrow, that doesn't mean you made me eat the pizza. It just means you know how I'm going to exercise my free will.
 
ThePlayDrive said:
If you can see the future and you see me eating pizza tomorrow, that doesn't mean you made me eat the pizza. It just means you know how I'm going to exercise my free will.
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Again, there is a disconnect between God's abilities and Joe Blow who is ordering a pizza. Joe Blow thinks he's exercising free will and writing his own future. Meanwhile, God knew everything Joe is going to do at the moment of creation. To God, it's written in stone. There is no free will in the sense that Joe can alter his destiny.
 
Amadeus said:
I said mind, not brain. A mind is prerequisite of consciousness, intellect, and will. God cannot be loving without a mind, and he cannot pass judgement without a mind.
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False, the idea of the Judaeo-Christian God is that he is so awesome and beyond belief that nothing constrains him. Therefore, he wouldn't need a mind to do this. We wouldn't be able to comprehend that, but that's the point, God is awesome in Judaeo-Christian terms.

Just look at his name, YAHWEH, or "I am."
 
Amadeus said:
Again, there is a disconnect between God's abilities and Joe Blow who is ordering a pizza. Joe Blow thinks he's exercising free will and writing his own future. Meanwhile, God knew everything Joe is going to do at the moment of creation. To God, it's written in stone. There is no free will in the sense that Joe can alter his destiny.
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That's also false. Just because an entity knows what you're going to do, that doesn't mean you lack free will.

I know you're going to eat a meal within the next 7 days, do you now have no free will?
 
Luftwaffe said:
That's also false. Just because an entity knows what you're going to do, that doesn't mean you lack free will.

I know you're going to eat a meal within the next 7 days, do you now have no free will?
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I can only explain it correctly to you in so many ways. You are conflating God's viewpoint with the viewpoint of a mortal without the ability to see the future.
 
Amadeus said:
Again, there is a disconnect between God's abilities and Joe Blow who is ordering a pizza. Joe Blow thinks he's exercising free will and writing his own future. Meanwhile, God knew everything Joe is going to do at the moment of creation. To God, it's written in stone. There is no free will in the sense that Joe can alter his destiny.
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The implication of your argument is that, in order for free will to exist, nobody can know the future. This just isn't true. Knowing the future could simply mean that you know how people will exercise their free will in the future. You're conflating knowledge with limitations - you're making the mistake of thinking that since God sees Joe's future behavior, Joe could not have chosen any other behaviors. That's not necessarily true.
 
Amadeus said:
I can only explain it correctly to you in so many ways. You are conflating God's viewpoint with the viewpoint of a mortal without the ability to see the future.
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"Correctly"?

You have no way of knowing what God understands, what His perspective is, or what is "logical" to Him.
 
nota bene said:
"Correctly"?

You have no way of knowing what God understands, what His perspective is, or what is "logical" to Him.
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Apropos of nothing...

I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.
-Oscar Wilde-
 
Riveroaks said:
W
Of course that did not sit will with the Philistines who are the ancestors of the modern Palestinians.
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No they're not. Palestinians and Jews are the same people, they are separated by culture and religion, not genetics.
 
Amadeus said:
I'm not too worried about hostile responses, with my history of being antagonistic towards religion. However, I don't mean any disrespect in this instance, I'm just trying to provoke thought and discussion. I would also like to understand better how people square the Old Testament with the New Testament, which I personally find to be stark in their contradictions. The OT God has characteristics that are not present in Jesus.
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I think you are conflating two unrelated things here.

No theology I've ever heard of claims that the differences between the OT and NT are the result of God changing his mind.

So, you have two separate questions here:
1. Can God change his mind?
2. Why is there such a difference between God's commands in the Old Testament and the New Testament?

I'm going to leave question 1 alone because that leads into a number of rabbit holes I don't care to jump into in an environment like this one.

Question 2 has a more straight forward answer that is more fitting for this kind of forum. Basically, God chose to reveal himself within history and to play out his rescue plan within history. His plan has several phases. Some of those phases are over. The phase we are in now is different from the phase people were in prior to the arrival, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The laws of the Old Testament were necessary for that stage in the journey, that phase of the rescue plan. After Jesus' death and resurrection tore the veil and made the holy spirit available to everyone, a new stage in God's redemptive plan began which made many of the Old Testament laws unnecessary.

Imagine you were on a journey (I'm stealing this metaphor from N.T. Wright). The first part of your journey was by boat, but you have now left the boat and are on the last leg of the journey, which is by land. There are many rules and traditions that made sense while you were traveling by boat. Perhaps when traveling by boat you needed to keep certain hours in order to take best advantage of the wind. Perhaps while on a boat it was best not to have any pets since getting rid of their waste was a problem. Maybe while on the boat half the people had to be awake while the other half slept because the limited space on the boat meant everyone shares the bed (hot racking). But now your journey is by land and the rules are different. Perhaps now the hours you should keep are different; maybe it's ok to have pets now, maybe it's ok if everyone sleeps at the same time, etc. It's not that the rules and traditions that were in place while you were on the boat were wrong all along and you should never have done things that way. It's that they were right for that period of time, but we have moved on to a different stage in the journey and those rules no longer make sense for this stage.

Therein lies the difference between the rules we see God giving people in the Old Testament and what we see him giving people in the New Testament. Jesus' life, death, and resurrection ended the previous phase of God's redemptive plan and ushered in a new age. It's not that everything that came before was wrong, it's that it is no longer necessary. Jesus has arrived and the holy spirit has been made available to everyone. No longer is the holy spirit a presence only one person gets to experience on a single day of every year; it is now something that is available to every person at all times. That changed everything.
 
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I can't believe people try to say God cannot change his mind.

How the hell could any of you know one way or the other ? Just have faith ...
 
ThePlayDrive said:
The implication of your argument is that, in order for free will to exist, nobody can know the future. This just isn't true. Knowing the future could simply mean that you know how people will exercise their free will in the future. You're conflating knowledge with limitations - you're making the mistake of thinking that since God sees Joe's future behavior, Joe could not have chosen any other behaviors. That's not necessarily true.
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Free will is the ability to write your own destiny. If that destiny is already written, from God's perspective, then you simply following a pre-established course. Like a toy car on a racing track.
 
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Amadeus said:
Unfortunately it does. God cannot react in anger to something he knew was going to happen from the onset of creation.



You can say that God is so far beyond comprehension that such definitions do not apply to him, but if this is the case then there is no point in worshiping him. His will cannot be understood, even by studying his own scripture.
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Except that obviously he has reacted out of anger and rage at people who disobey him. his entire argument is a might makes right and being the all mighty he can do no wrong in any capacity what so ever.

For example, the plagues of Egypt. Let my people go or i punish yours until you obey me.
 
Well, there is one huge conundrum.

If he is truly all knowing and all seeing, then he knows every single outcome there is to know.

how can he change his mind when every single outcome is already there?
 
Ancient Herald said:
Well, there is one huge conundrum.

If he is truly all knowing and all seeing, then he knows every single outcome there is to know.

how can he change his mind when every single outcome is already there?
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It would make much more sense if God obeyed the laws of linear time, and was subject to them himself (as the Bible seems to indicate). However, that would imply that God is not supreme.

The Sabbath is a holy day because it took God a week to create the Earth. He rested on the final day. These are the actions of a forward-linear being.
 
Amadeus said:
It would make much more sense if God obeyed the laws of linear time, and was subject to them himself (as the Bible seems to indicate). However, that would imply that God is not supreme.

The Sabbath is a holy day because it took God a week to create the Earth. He rested on the final day. These are the actions of a forward-linear being.
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If God had to obey those laws of linear time, then he would not be all powerful nor all seeing now, would he?

Even more since the religion claims he created those very same laws when he created the universe.
 
Ancient Herald said:
If God had to obey those laws of linear time, then he would not be all powerful nor all seeing now, would he?

Even more since the religion claims he created those very same laws when he created the universe.
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Without linear time, the whole definition of 'change' is meaningless. Change itself is predicated on a before and an after. A being not bound by linear time doesn't have a before and after, and thus is changeless.
 
In Judaism this is traditionally explained as mans ability to move between the God that sits on the 'Throne of Justice' and the 'Throne of Mercy'. The is simply that it isn't God that changes, but us, through our prayer, repentance, and other actions and thereby change how God views us, consequently we merit a different judgment from God. Thus in the traditional view when Moses pleads before God for mercy for the Jewish people he isn't changing the mind of God, he's changing himself and by his merit he is allowing God to be grant his mercy. Though this is also co-mingled with a mystical view of Gods relationship with the Jewish people, and that particular passage is considered to be one of the more extraordinary in the Torah. Generally though the above explanation is what usually suffices.

There is also a vein of thought which views God as being inextricably linked with his creations, that the beauty of creation is that he allows himself to be molded by his creations and thus our intercessions and deeds can genuinely change his mind as opposed to change ourselves which allow his will to be realized. But this gets Kabbalistic very quickly and isn't worth delving into on here.
 
Nilly said:
Without linear time, the whole definition of 'change' is meaningless. Change itself is predicated on a before and an after. A being not bound by linear time doesn't have a before and after, and thus is changeless.
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I don't agree, but i don't know how to explain it to you.

For instance, there was nothing before the big bang. That means there was no time. So something must have changed to cause the big bang.
 
Ancient Herald said:
I don't agree, but i don't know how to explain it to you.

For instance, there was nothing before the big bang. That means there was no time. So something must have changed to cause the big bang.
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I disagree with your example. There was no 'before' the big bang for anything to change (counting out the possibility of a 'previous' universe before the current one). The timeline of the universe didn't go from 'before' the big bang, to the big bang happening, to the universe existing. The universe simply was/is. The universe had a beginning but it has always existed. It has never not existed. Something can be infinite/eternal and have a beginning (e.g. pi).
 
RAMOSS said:
Except for one big thing. God is also the creator. Free will and an omniscient creator is mutually exclusive
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That is something you have to prove.

And there is no such thing as free will since we are all expected to blindly obey god without any question of any sort or we get sent to hell to burn for all eternity.

why would people think that is a kind and loving god?
 
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