Can God Change his Mind?

by peacefulpete 56 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  peacefulpete

  Is 31:Yet He also is wise and will bring disaster and does not retract His words.
  

  1 Sam 15: Furthermore, the Eternal One of Israel does not lie or change His mind, for He is not man who changes his mind.
  

  Numbers 23: God is not a man who lies, or a son of man who changes His mind. Does He speak and not act, or promise and not fulfill?

  When the god you worship pronounces judgement, is he, really just issuing a warning or has the matter been determined through all the godly powers of insight, foresight and perfect judgement?

  The prophets of course do the actual pronouncements, purportedly speaking for a god. What happens when the pronouncements of judgement do not happen? This was an issue for prophets. Were they to be denounced as "false" prophets? Was the prophetic pronouncement of judgement open to reinterpretation? Or perhaps the pronouncement's failure was not a prophet's failure but due to God's changing his mind?

  Is that how you think of God? Someone who pronounces judgement without all the evidence and so he is given to changing his mind later?

  Despite absolute statements like the opening quotations, the Bible is filled with examples of pronounced judgements that did not happen. In some particularly anthropomorphic cases this is because God is flattered and manipulated into changing his judgement. In other cases, the explanation is offered that the person or nation repented and therefore God changed his mind, taking back his words of judgement.

  Doesn't this strike you as a very human thing to do? We have a system of justice that usually works adequately but is limited by our inability to "read hearts", know all things accurately and foresee the future. Judgements are overturned when it is learned that a sentence was pronounced based upon incomplete evidence. Is God similarly limited?

  Jeremiah 18 famously reads:

  6 “O Israel, can I not do to you as this potter has done to his clay? As the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand. 7 If I announce that a certain nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down, and destroyed, 8 but then that nation renounces its evil ways, I will not destroy it as I had planned. 9 And if I announce that I will plant and build up a certain nation or kingdom, 10 but then that nation turns to evil and refuses to obey me, I will not bless it as I said I would.

  Clearly here the author tried to walk a fine line, his and earlier prophets' pronouncements of judgment and blessing were intended to be understood as possibilities, pending future, more complete, evidence.

  IOW "God's judgements are certain to happen, but.........."

  So then, 2000 years or so have passed since the pronouncement of imminent destruction of the nations of the world.

  Might not someone conclude that God "changed his mind" and not do as he "had planned"?

  Could this be a solution for sects like the WT? Simply emphasize passages like Jeremiah 18 and suggest God was impressed by the progress humans have made enough to postpone his plans to destroy them.
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  Sea Breeze

  I think there is a difference between conditional declarations of God and unconditional determinations of God.

  For instance, when God said, “I will destroy Nineveh in forty days,” He was speaking conditionally upon the Assyrians’ response. His message to Nineveh was a warning meant to provoke repentance, and His warning was successful.

  An example of an unconditional declaration of God is the Lord’s promise to David, “Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever” (2 Samuel 7:16). No conditions were stated or implied. No matter what David did or did not do, the word of the Lord would come to pass.
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  Diogenesister

  Sea Breeze But how can you say it was conditional? Because it didn't come to pass? Surely "I will destroy Nineveh in 40 days " is just as definitive a statement as "your house and kingdom will endure forever"??

  Perhaps things happen and humans, seeing agency in everything as an evolutionary survival adaptation, see "the hand of god" in the unexplainable (such as the tragic death of king David's baby). Or perhaps use Gods anger as a convenient excuse for, say, loosing a war, or a volcano destroying a city (or not as the case may be).
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  Balaamsass2

  He changed his mind after creating Dinosaurs because he allowed a meteor to destroy them. :)

  Anyway, if a matter requires two witnesses, who witnessed the promises to David or Abraham???
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  careful

  This sounds very much like Open Theism:

  https://iep.utm.edu/o-theism/#:~:text=Open%20Theism%20is%20the%20thesis,freely%20do%20in%20the%20future.
  
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  Sea Breeze

  
  

  Open Theism

  Open Theism is the thesis that, because God loves us and desires that we freely choose to reciprocate His love, He has made His knowledge of, and plans for, the future conditional upon our actions. Though omniscient, God does not know what we will freely do in the future. Though omnipotent, He has chosen to invite us to freely collaborate with Him in governing and developing His creation, thereby also allowing us the freedom to thwart His hopes for us. God desires that each of us freely enter into a loving and dynamic personal relationship with Him, and He has therefore left it open to us to choose for or against His will.

  While Open Theists affirm that God knows all the truths that can be known, they claim that there simply are not yet truths about what will occur in the “open,” undetermined future. Alternatively, there are such contingent truths, but these truths cannot be known by anyone, including God.

  Even though God is all-powerful, allowing Him to do everything that can be done, He cannot create round squares or make 2 +2 = 5 or do anything that is logically impossible. Omniscience is understood in a similar manner. God is all-knowing and can know all that can be known, but He cannot know the contingent future, since that too, is impossible. God knows all the possible ways the world might go at any point in time, but He does not know the one way the world will go, so long as some part of what will happen in the future is contingent. So, Open Theists oppose the claim of the sixteenth century Jesuit theologian, Luis de Molina, that God has “middle knowledge.”

  Open Theists believe that Scripture teaches that God wanted to give us the freedom to choose to love or reject Him. In order for each of us to genuinely have a choice for which we are morally responsible, we must have the ability to do otherwise than we do. This is the distinctive necessary condition of what has come to be called libertarian freedom. God may intervene in the created world at any time, and He may determine that we act in ways of His choosing. But He cannot both respect our libertarian freedom and guarantee that we will do specific things freely. Thus, Open Theists believe that God has created a world in which He takes the risk that many of us will reject Him and act in ways opposed to Him, in order to give us the opportunity to freely choose to love and obey Him.

  A lot of good solid Christians believe in Open Theism.
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  Beth Sarim

  God doesn't change His mind.

  But an organization can.
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  Sea Breeze

  Even though God is all-powerful, allowing Him to do everything that can be done, He cannot create round squares or make 2 +2 = 5 or do anything that is logically impossible.

  2 Tim. 2: 13 says God cannot deny himself.
  

  Logic and physical rules are descriptions of how God's mind works. That is why he "cannot" do certain things.... because he cannot deny himself. Many things we experience are simply descriptions of God's mind.
  
  
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  peacefulpete

  The Jonah story naturally comes to mind. The message of the obvious satire is that if only Jonah had not been successful in converting Ninevah, the Assyrians would never have conquered Israel. For God was determined to destroy Ninevah, the later capital of the Assyrian empire and birthplace of Sennacherib. The Persian period author was a master humorist. He likely intended to frame the story around the probably historical prophet Jonah of Israel who according to 2 Kings advised the Baal worshipping King Jeroboam II to pursue an expanded kingdom when Assyria was occupied with rebellions elsewhere. The very actions that triggered a retaking of Israel by Sennacherib. It's all an obvious parody with giant fish, brooding prophets, miraculous shade plants, caricatures of piety (including fasting cattle) and Yahweh worshiping Ninevites.

  I my opinion, this piece may have served the theological purpose of mocking the notion of national uniqueness and divine justice. The Persian period when this was written saw many of the Jewish literati struggling with these concepts.
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  peacefulpete

  Sea breeze....An example of an unconditional declaration of God is the Lord’s promise to David, “Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever” (2 Samuel 7:16). No conditions were stated or implied. No matter what David did or did not do, the word of the Lord would come to pass.

  That is actually a classic example of later redaction changing what appears in some texts as unconditional into a conditional statement after the Exile.

  Psalm 132:

  The Lord swore an oath to David,
  a sure oath he will not revoke:
  “One of your own descendants
  I will place on your throne."

  Then we see the promise modified in the next verse:

  If your sons keep my covenant
  and the statutes I teach them,
  then their sons will sit
  on your throne for ever and ever.

  Similarly, 1 Kings 2, in contrast to 2 Samuel, makes clear the author understood the promise to be conditional:

  When David’s time to die was near, he told his son Solomon, 2 “I am going the way of all the earth. So be strong. Show yourself to be a man. 3 Do what the Lord your God tells you. Walk in His ways. Keep all His Laws and His Word, by what is written in the Law of Moses. Then you will do well in all that you do and in every place you go. 4 Then the Lord will keep His promise to me. He has said to me, ‘Your sons must be careful of their way, to walk before Me in truth with all their heart and soul. If they do, you will never be without a man on the throne of Israel.’

  It is a fine example of how when the exile occurred many of the previous national traditions were reinterpreted or modified.