By Blair R.
Classical theism, the dominant doctrine of God in Christendom, asserts that God is devoid of body, parts, passions—even compassion—wholly simple, immutable, independent, immaterial, the supreme cause and never the effect. What creatures possess, God lacks. I challenge this view on five grounds, finding it unbiblical, epistemologically flawed, devoid of meaning, imbalanced in transcendence, and prejudiced in its monopolar logic.
I find classical theism unbiblical. The Bible isn’t a metaphysical treatise—God’s salvific revelation unfolds in history, not nature—but it implies a metaphysic at odds with this doctrine. Yes, many passages depict God as immutable (e.g., Malachi 3:5-7: “I, the Lord, change not”). Yet others show God changing: Hosea 11:8, Amos 7:3, Jeremiah 18:8, and Exodus 32:14 suggest divine responsiveness. Prophets exist to sway YHWH’s will.
In Malachi, “I change not” precedes “Return to me, that I might return to you.” To me, this signals a fixity of purpose, not a denial of change. If we shift, God adjusts accordingly. Biblical metaphors—anthropomorphic to the core—attribute to God will, memory, emotion, anger, and disappointment. Dismiss them as concessions to human weakness if you like, but they imply God experiences shifting states akin to our pleasure and displeasure.
If these don’t reflect God’s reality, they’re useless and should be discarded. The Incarnation, if revelatory, shows God’s modus operandi: incarnate throughout a universe that serves as His body. Biblical predications—creator, king, father, lover—are relational, requiring a creation, subjects, children, or beloved. A static, unrelatable God contradicts this vivid portrait.
Knowledge demands two things: generalizing from the familiar to the unfamiliar and empathy—a knowing from within. My most familiar “within” is human experience, marked by constant change and evolution. The static “self” is a myth; we’re a society of perishing occasions, different moment to moment. No thinker thinks twice.
Unless a genuine analogy exists between us and all reality—from atoms to God—we’re clueless about what’s happening. I see God as supremely changeable, the ultimate effect and cause. Yes, there’s consistency—God always seeks beauty, omniscience, empathy, love—but in the concrete, God evolves. Focusing only on continuity (e.g., maximizing beauty) ignores context; what’s beautiful now may not be later. Omniscience grows as potential becomes fact. As social, relational beings, we arise from connections—like a spider’s web, tweak it here, it giggles there. God creates the universe, and the universe shapes God.
If God is wholly immutable, as classical theism claims, saint or sinner, it’s all the same—He’s blissfully indifferent. If nothing affects God, His love and wisdom don’t shape His decisions. Who can trust such a cold, dehumanizing deity? If God is complete without a universe, why create it? How are we significant to Him, or He loving? Love means deriving part of your being from the beloved.
The evil of fading past—satisfactions gained and lost—haunts us. Why bother if it vanishes? An immutable God can’t preserve it. But if God is the supreme effect, absorbing our experiences, everything matters, eternally held in His memory.
Classical theism seeks transcendence at immanence’s expense. In Thomism, God exists outside creation, unrelated to it—leaving a world that never enters His life and a God who never enters the world, lest He be conditioned. Meaning becomes negative: a holding tank to escape for ultimate value. Christianity turns static and world-negating.
Is this transcendence? Two separate circles—time/change/materiality vs. immaterial/changeless simplicity—suggest God is just one part of a larger reality, a “Meta-God.” Classical theism, aiming to avoid rivals to God, ironically sets the material world as an anti-God antithesis. Better to see God as the chief exemplification of all metaphysical principles: what holds for creatures holds for Him, amplified infinitely. The universe is His body, internal to Him, enabling an unmatched empathic response to all feeling—a sensitivity we can’t fathom.
Classical theism’s “monopolar prejudice” is lopsided. Church fathers and many Christians list divine attributes—being vs. becoming, cause vs. effect—then assign only one side to God, favoring Hellenic ideals of simplicity, immateriality, and passionlessness. Reality demands both poles; each is a virtue. Independence is good, but so is being moved by others.
Creation is God’s eternal evolution from unconsciousness to self-consciousness and self-actualization. We should rejoice in our significance to His life—a God who changes, feels, and grows with us, not a static abstraction.
March 20, 2006
Acknowledgment: Written by Blair R., hosted and formatted by Lewis Loflin, with thanks to Grok (xAI) for assistance in refining this page.
