The Homeostatic God

In biology, homeostasis is essentially how organisms change -- or deal with change -- in order to stay the same. It is "the state of steady internal physical and chemical conditions maintained by living systems," involving the monitoring and regulation of a host of subsystems, from temperature to blood pressure to glucose and many more -- not to mention their mutual interaction. 

It is at once resistance to change while monitoring an unbelievable number of activities, processes, and changes in the body. 

Now, to be open to information is to be changed by it. To put it conversely, if one doesn't act on information, it's as if the information doesn't exist. Some people actively repel information and cannot adjust to reality, but this post is not about the left.  

Let's take me, for example. I have type I diabetes. For a normal person, if blood sugar rises, the pancreas responds to this information by releasing insulin in order to maintain a stable level of glucose. In my case, the body essentially ignores this vital information, or at least cannot respond to it. 

In the long run, this failure to respond causes damage to every organ in the body. You might say that instead of changing in order to stay the same, the body stays the same -- ignores the information -- only to result in a host of damaging changes.

In order to manage my blood sugar, I have to consciously override what my body is ignoring. The whole key to controlling diabetes is to monitor blood sugar, which is to say, be open to this vital information and make adjustments based upon it. It's the same with blood pressure: I monitor that as well in order to keep it in the same range.  

Now, the question before the house is, is this the way God operates? Or is this just a strained and implausible analogy based on the fact that the caffeine hasn't yet kicked in? 

In the orthodox view, God doesn't change because he cannot change. Which means that he essentially ignores the inconceivable number of changes going on herebelow in his own creation. These changes constitute "information," but if God were to actually respond to this information and "make adjustments," would this not thereby imply change? 

Again, in the orthodox view, God has total knowledge of all of these changes, past, present, and future, so they aren't even really changes. He doesn't have to "respond" to them, because from the perspective of eternity, it is as if they've already happened. There is no distinction between knower and known, because the knowledge is eternal and unchanging.

I get the argument, but it makes no sense to me. Analogously, it's as if God has very poorly controlled diabetes, because all sorts of horrible things are going on in the body of creation, but he makes no adjustments to them. 

In this context it makes no sense to pray for change, because the future has already been determined. But if God does respond to prayer, this is as if he is acting on the information, so to speak. In other words, he is a dynamic, open system.

Moreover, if this is the case, then God is indeed changing in order to remain the same. In other words, supposing God is good, then in order to maintain his goodness, he must be capable of responding and adjusting to all the badness, so to speak. 

Or, let's say God is loving. Analogously, can I love my wife by totally ignoring everything that's going on with her? Is this even love? No, in order to "maintain the marriage," I had better be open to what's going on in it. In short, one must be open to information and "make adjustments" in order to be a "good husband" and to have a stable marriage. Here we see another example of homeostasis in a dynamic system.

There are people who are cut off from interpersonal relationships. We call them "schizoid" or "autistic," but we don't consider this normal. But an unchanging God might as well be autistic, which is to say, oblivious to what's going on in other persons. 

Indeed, if God is a person, doesn't this imply some analogies with our personhood? If we are created in his image and likeness, does this mean we should aspire to being totally autistic and enclosed in our own private Idaho? Why should we attribute traits to God that would be grave defects in any other person? Does God lack the capacity to change, and if so, why isn't this a privation?

The key is again to change in order to remain the same, so God must, as it were, change in order to remain the same loving and caring God he always is. Or, let's just say we would prefer to maintain an image of God's goodness at the cost of a little immutability and omniscience. One might say that God is mutable in order to maintain his immutability.

This is in contrast to process philosophy, in which God is pure mutability and therefore ceaselessly evolving. Here the first principle is a creativity to which even God is subordinate. But I say God is creativity, and what is creativity but change? One might say that he "must" create in order to be the unchanging Creator, which is again another way of saying that he changes in order to remain the same.

Besides, c'mon: isn't this the whole point of a trinitarian Godhead, which is, in the words of Bishop Barron, A gyroscope of energy and activity and at the same time a stable rock? In short, a dynamic process structure.

Like you, I'm frankly getting a little bored with this subject, but I recently read a couple of books that belaborate on all the details and implications, one called The Suffering of God, the other Satan and the Problem of Evil. Perhaps we'll get into them tomorrow, because there are a while lotta ind & outs involved in open theology, but this post is winding down.

There's a story about a Zen master who walks past a house in which he hears crying going on inside because someone has died. He enters the house, sits down, and joins in the crying. Someone asks, "Master, how can you cry? Aren't you above such things?" He answers It is this which puts me beyond such things.

In another version, he says something like, How often to I get to cry? Perhaps Jesus could have said the same thing if someone had asked him why he was crying in response to Lazarus's death.

So why does God respond to his creation? Well, for starters, how often does he get to cry? And it is this that puts him beyond such things, in that his transcendence implies immanence, and vice versa: he is always in and beyond, or changing in order to remain who he always is.