Is God Evolving?

"The world is moving so fast these days that the [one] who says it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it."

Elbert Hubbard

Imagio Dei vs Imagio Creationis
1. We are in the image of God
  - a bit of God is in us
  - we are a reflection of God
2. Can we discern God from Creation?
  - a bit of God is in us -- but which bit?
  - what is a reflection of God? what is profane?
3. Beware of inventing God from Creation: imagio creationis
  - creation is evolving
  - is God also evolvling?
  - is thi a bit of God?

Concepts of God -- Utterly Other

Absolute	Relative
God is in control of every detail all knowing all powerful Unchanging and passionless; absolute unmoved and unmoveable uneffected by creation creation dependent on God; God independent of creation unchangeable character divine designer and engineer predestined creation our knowledge of God may be evolving, but God is unchangeable Cosmic Moralist: lawyer and judge male	self-limiited for the sake of free will perfect in knowlege perfect in love affected by our (creation's) response; can be successfully angued with feels divine plan under construction God doesn't know ehere its headed -- only knows wht the divine wants our knowledge of God is evolving, but God's knowldge of us is also evolving does having feelings => evolving? can the Uncreated evolve?

Biblical References

Ask for biblical images to offset risk of imagio creationis
1. Continuing creation
  - Gen 1.1
  - Is 55:11 God's Word
2. God changes God's mind
  - Mt Sinai Ex 32:7-14
  - Sodom & Gommarah Gen 18:22ff
    God as creative-responsive love
  - Flood Gen 6:6 -- God is sorry
  - Saul 1 Sam 15:11,35
  - God moved to pity: Ex 3:7-8; Judges 2:18
  - God relents in punishing David furhter for a censis: 2 Sam 24: 15-16
  - Jer 18:8-10; 26:3,13,19
  - Jonah 3:10
3. Free will (self-determination)
  - Adam
  - Mary
4. Incarnation
  - God active in history
  - God in Jesus; Emmanuel
5. God as ground of novelty
  - Isaiah 55:11
  - the prophetic experience
6. Humans in convenaantal community enduring beyond death (self-expression)
  - Israel
  - The Church
7. Essential relatedness
  - Paul: we are members of each other
8. God's lure
  - divine love, justice, ...
  - writing on our hearts
Process: Whitehead
1. Process Philosophers: Alfred North Whitehead & Charles Hartshorne
2. Process
  - not everything is process; e.g., principles of process and abstract forms
  - to be actual is to be process
    - creation is in process, growing, becoming, decaying
    - if the actual or fully real is beyond change, then creation is devalued
    - therefore, if to be real is to be in process, then to be in creation is divine
  - time -- one kind of process
    - temporal process is a "transition" from one actual entity to another
    - entities are instantaneous/infinitesimal: Perishing immediately upon coming into being
    - time is not smooth, but succeeding events, like a motion picture (hence, the possible notion of chronons:
      - my notion
      - wave and particle
      - quantum of time)
    - "actual occasion" or "occasions of experience"
    - enduring "individuals" are actually societies of these true individuals
    - time is a vector
  - Concrescence -- second kind of process
    - becoming - perishing
    - the eternal now
    - actual individual is atomic
3. Enjoyment (p. 16)
  - upon concrescence an actuality "enjoys" "subjective immediacy"
  - "enjoyment" is not necessarily pleasure or conscious
    - to be, to actualized, to act on others is to enjoy being an experiencing subject
    - every actuality "enjoys" its existence
    - all actualities "enjoy"
    - to experience is to enjoy
    - consciousness is not required to experience: therefore rocks enjoy
    - consciousness illumes only a selective set of factors of experience
  - All actualities have an inner and outer reality and are akin to all other actualities
4. Essential Relatedness
  - actualities are occasions of experience and do not endure
  - the soul -- stream of experience -- is composed of distinct occasions of experience (p 19)
  - relations are primary
    - an actuality becomes individual out of the multiplicity of relations
    - present occasions is process of unifying its prehension
    - "prehension" and "feeling":
      - the present occasion "prehends" or "feels" the previous occasions
      - present occasion receives as inputs:
        
        previous occasions (efficient causation): a_i
        self-creation (free will): feedback loop weighted w_bj
        God's lure (initial aim):
        God as potentialities or novelty: freewill j
  - essential interdependent -- ontological
    - that an actuality is independent ontologically derives from our belief that God is independent and from our striving to be really real: our rebellion
5. Incarnation (p.22)
  - to prehend a past experience is to include it
  - an occasion incarnates partially the past occasion it prehends as having been experienced
  - memory, e.g.
  - part of past's objectiveness and subjective reaction to it
  - past lure is incarnated in the present: objectively immortal
  - we influence each other by entering into each other (ecological view), not as billiard balls bouncing off each other
  - the cause is incarnated in the effect
6. Creative Self-Determination -- self creation
  - what about autonomy or independence? final causation
  - process is partially self-creation
  - each present actuality determines how it will "immortalize" the past
  - free will and determination in equal parts
    - freedom constrained by the world
  - our enjoyment is a function of our environment and our free will
    - the boundary between individual and environment is fluid -- perishing and becoming
    - optimal environment is not a guarantee of high quality -- given free will
  - God relates to us to optimize our enjoyment, but does not guarantee it
7. Creative Self-Expression
  - the aim of an actuality is to enhance its enjoyment
  - half of creative aim: our self-creation -- private enjoyment
  - half of creative aim: pervade its environment -- self-expression -- sharing
  - therefore
    1. absolute egoism is ruled out
    2. concern for the future can be enhanced: function of morality
    3. anticipates its self-expression will be well received
8. Novelty
  - God: primordial envisagement of pure possibility
  - an actuality can actualize an unactuated or new possibility
  - divine reality: ground of novelty and changing and developing order
9. God-Relatedness
  - God: attractive possibility, lure, "initial aim", urging to new height of joy
  - God: ground of novelty
  - p. 29: God lures or persuades -- does not control
  - p. 27: "And, far from sanctioning the status quo, recognition of essential relatedness to this God implies a continual creative transformation of that which is received from the past in the light of the divinely received call forward, to actualize novel possibilities ..." [CHECK THIS]
Challenge of Free Will
1. It begins with free will and involvement -- God immanent
  1. God self-limits the divine self in favor of our free will
  2. God is perfect in knowledge (knows only truth), but does not know everything
  3. learns as we act )and learn)
  4. God's lure frames our response persuading us up the evolutionary ladder
  5. God's response to us changes as we change -- hence evolving => God is involved with us.
2. God as utterly other: transcendent beyond space-time
  1. actuality vs potentiality
    - creation is ontologically incomplete: Gödel, Heisenburg
  2. God is the ground of all potentialities
    - God is perfect in love embracing all space-time at once
    - yet respects our free will and provides potentiality from which we choose
    - God lures us to beneficial potential
  3. God as utterly other
    - perfect in truth
    - perfect in knowledge
    - exists independent of creation; though effected by it
    - process, not a "thing"
      - Hebrew for God is a verb
      - the process out of which all process emerges

References

Cobb, John B. and David Ray Griffin; Process Theology: an Introductory Exposition; The Westminster Press. Philadelphia ©1976.
Hartshorne, Charles; The Divine Relativity: A Social Conception of God; Yale University Press. New Haven and London ©1948.