Deadbeat Deities and Divine Chess Masters

Yesterday's post suggested that once the Creator creates, he thereby creates a sort of obligation in himself toward what he has created. Seems only fair.

It reminds me of Oppenheimer, who agonized over what he had unleashed with the creation of the atomic bomb, even recalling a line from the Bhagavad Gita, Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. 

D'oh!

If Oppenheimer felt that way, imagine how God must feel. In watching man's crimes and follies, the Old Testament at times frankly depicts him as feeling a little like Colonel Nicholson:

But of course, God doesn't just sit back helplessly wondering what to do about the manmade trainwreck herebelow. Rather, he intervenes time and again to try to remedy the situation and put man back on the right track, starting with Abraham and culminating in the Incarnation and Resurrection.  

I think the whole point of the Judeo-Christian God is that he is not one of those irresponsible -- or tyrannical, arbitrary, or sadistic -- deadbeat deities who let their children go to hell. Which is also Fretheim's point in The Suffering of God:

As in any relationship of integrity, God will have to give up some things for the sake of the relationship. Thus, God will have to give up some freedom. Any commitment or promise within a relationship entails a limitation on freedom.  

"In having freely made such promises" -- for example, the covenant with Israel -- "thereafter God's freedom is truly limited by those promises. God will do what God says God will do; God will be faithful to God's own promises, and that is a limitation of freedom." Bottom line:

God's freedom is now most supremely a freedom for the world, not a freedom from the world.

Conversely, freedom from the world would make God one of those deadbeat deities who take no responsibility for their children. 

Call it a two-way power-sharing arrangement, with obligations on both sides, whereby

Each party to the relationship must give up any monopoly on power for the sake of the relationship. 

It's obviously a give-and-take proposition, as seen most vividly in Abraham's going to bat for Sodom and Gomorrah, or Moses persuading God to lighten up on the Israelites, politely reminding him of his promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The stories may be allegorical, but like all allegories, they have a point, the point being that the covenant limits God's freedom. A promise is a promise. Besides, don't be an anti-Semite!

God could be completely indifferent to the creation. It's his prerogative. But he has chosen to wholly immerse himself in the world, again, culminating in the Incarnation. It doesn't get more immersive than that. 

God has a plan. As does everyone, until, in the words of the prophet Tyson, they get punched in the face. And the Old Testament repeatedly depicts God being punched in the face by the recalcitrant Israelites. The OT frankly gains credibility by depicting God's children as such a stiff-necked and rebellious bunch. What's a father to do? Just wipe them out and start over? 

"Don't tempt me" (Yahweh). 

But why is God surprised at the antics of the Israelites if he knows ahead of time what they will do with their freedom? God may be timeless, but here again, he chooses to involve himself in temporality, for better or worse:

God is the eternal, uncreated member of the community, but God, too, will cry out from time to time: How long?" (e,g., Jer, 4:14; 13:27; Hos. 8:5).

Christ, of course, says My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? But God could equally say to man: you started it: why have you forsaken me? Indeed, the cross can be interpreted as the ultimate abandonment of God by man. 

The best chapter of the book is called God and World: Foreknowledge. Or at least it has the most highlights, for example, regarding the implied use of the "perhaps" in divine speech. How could there be a "perhaps" in God if God is omniscient? 

It seems clear from such passages that God is quite uncertain how the people will respond to the prophetic word.

Prophecies often predict what will happen given certain trends: in other words, there's still a chance to change your ways and avoid catastrophe. 

There will be no surprises for God in the sense of not anticipating what might happen. Yet, in God's own words, God does not finally know.... God in essence is hoping that an unpredictable event might, in fact, occur. 

Much like my own father, who made many dire predictions of how Bob would turn out if he failed to change his ways. It is safe to say that no one was more surprised than he was when I somehow weaseled my way into grad school. Except maybe me. Somehow I fooled them all, but it was a near-run thing. Have I ever related the whole story? Probably, but it never gets old.

Save it for another post.

Understood. We have too much to cover in this post without indulging in nostalgia. The point is, does God mean what he says in the OT, or not? For it clearly implies 

that Israel's future is genuinely open and not predetermined. The future for Israel does not only not exist, it has never even finally been decided on. Hence, it is not something that exists to be known, even if the knower is God.

Any more than my father could have known all along that I would end up a respectable clinical psychologist instead of a goldbricking underachiever. Things could have ended up either way depending on the unforeseeable outcomes of genuinely free choices mingled with holy happenstance.

Again, this doesn't mean that God doesn't have a plan. But the reason why plans exist is in order to cope with uncertainty. This is something Hayek discusses a great deal, analogizing it to strategy in sports. A coach or manager doesn't need a strategy if the outcome is foreknown. Rather, the purpose of a strategy is to cope with uncertainty.

Fretheim compares God's plan to playing chess with a child. Like God, we have a pretty good idea that we'll win in the end, but this doesn't mean the child's moves are predetermined, or that we can simply ignore them. We still have to respond to them in order to prevail. 

The Resurrection is God's checkmate?

Perhaps, but that's getting ahead of the game. We're still back in the OT, where the Jews are moving the chess pieces here and there: God knows his "ultimate salvific goals for the people and world will be achieved one way or the another." After all, he's playing 5D chess.

But there are innumerable paths for the people to take along the way; these are known to God as probabilities and possibilities....

Thus, Israel's responses will contribute in a genuine way to the shaping not only of its own future, but to the future of God.

But since we've all lost an hour of playtime, I move for an early suspension of this particular game.