7/22/2008 5:52 AM

The God of the Philosophers

This coming Sunday’s readings are about seeds and growth. God’s word is like rain which causes seed to grow. Jesus tells a parable about a sower whose seeds fall on various types of ground. Paul talks about creation groaning in labor pains.

How can a God who is unchanging be so clearly tied to the idea of growth? Growth is change.

Thomas Aquinas and the medieval Scholastics saw change as imperfect. Their reasoning went like this: to change from one state to another must mean that the first state was not as good as the second. Since God is presumed to be perfect in every way, God cannot be subject to change. Furthermore, if God can be influenced to change, God is in some way vulnerable or dependent on the person or thing that leads him (or her—God is genderless) to change.

This is what is sometimes called The God of the Philosophers. A remote, unchanging, invulnerable, distant God.

That is of course not the God described in the Scriptures. The God described in the book of Genesis is a God who Abraham can talk out of his plans to destroy Sodom. The God described in the prophet Hosea is a God who is hurt by unfaithfulness, and yet takes back an adulterous spouse. The God described by Jesus is like a shepherd who goes looking for a lost sheep. Presumably, God would not have to search if the sheep had not gotten lost. This God is vulnerable.

Perhaps the philosophers have been wrong. Their idea goes back to the Greeks, especially Plato and Aristotle. But what if the Greeks were only half right? Euclid was a Greek mathematician who described the world very well in his time and for many centuries afterward. Isaac Newton developed a whole physics and cosmology on Euclid’s ideas. But then Albert Einstein showed that Euclid’s geometry and Newton’s physics had to be modified if you assumed that we are all part of a universe moving at unbelievable speeds in various directions. We need an Einsteinian revolution in our philosophy of God.

Growth means that something is passing from a less perfect to a more perfect state. Suppose we say that growth is more perfect than unchangeableness. That would mean that God is growing, which would explain the Scriptural focus on seeds and labor pains.

How is God growing? Suppose we say that the most perfect state is to be in a loving relationship with someone. Suppose we define love as passionate, respectful, vulnerable, and faithful involvement. God is the most perfect lover, so God must be involved.

What is the goal or purpose of God’s involvement? Perhaps it is to have the loved one love more fully in return. God loves so that we might love. We are unfinished lovers, not only because we make mistakes, but because God’s love is constantly calling us to become more deeply involved.

We ourselves and the whole created world are groaning in labor pains. Labor pains are a prelude to a quantitative and qualitative leap in the involvement of a child, the child’s parents, and all the other people who will enter the child’s life. The birth of a child is even a leap in God’s involvement with his creation.

For some mysterious reason, our stories often involve pain and suffering and loss. Why is this? Why is birth preceded by labor pains? Why do we so often kill each other before we learn how to live in peace? Why do we destroy so much of the world we have been given to live in?

We cannot answer these questions. The author of the book of Job has God tell Job to quit asking the question. Then God gave Job back double what he had lost. Job’s God was involved.

For a hundred years the western world was captivated by the term “Progress.” We were convinced that the story of the human race was always onward and upward. We have been disappointed. Our greatest scientific and technological achievements have turned on us. Our mastery of the atom terrorizes us. Our befouling of the environment is poisoning and starving us.

The problem is that we conceived of progress as an impersonal and inexorable force. We forgot that our deepest longings revolve around passionate, respectful, vulnerable, and faithful involvement. Involvement with each other and with a God who needs to be involved in order to be God. When we give priority to such involvement, we will move more slowly and we will enjoy the moment more. God’s seed in us will ripen and bear fruit.