Does God Change?: Reconciling the Immutable God with the God of Love
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If God is the immutable God, as interpreted from Classical Christian Tradition, a God who remains unalterable, what is the point of prayer? Does prayer, or any of our actions in the world for that matter, have any effect on God? Can we move God? Is God simply a static Being? Is prayer of use if God is absolutely immutable? Does God respond to prayer or to our actions in the world? Classical Tradition has presented us with a picture of an immutable God, a mono-polar God, who remains unalterable, unchanged, transcendent to our history in the world. Yet scriptural revelation and personal religious experience presents us with a God who, whilst transcendent to the world is also immanent, the God of Love who creates, redeems, a God who is affected by, who responds to, what is happening in the world; a God who listens and relates. William Norris Clarke's neo-Thomistic consideration of the nature of God's immutability rests on the basis of the notion of the Dynamic Being of God and forms the final focus and basis for our seeking a reconciliation of tradition, scripture and personal religious experience with respect to the nature of God's immutability. Discussion of Norris Clarke's work is supplemented by a consideration of the work of Robert A. Connor, and in support, that of David Schindler. Norris Clarke's classical reinterpretation gives credence both to scriptural revelation and personal experience of God's historical relationality and responsiveness to humankind without betraying the Classical Tradition. With independent support by Connor and in dialogue with Schindler, it becomes the favoured viewpoint.
