Synopsis for A New Look at the Immutability of God

In the essay A New Look at the Immutability of God by Clarke Norris found in God-Person-Being, Norris attempts to consolidate the Thomistic position with the exigencies of a Relational (or Personal) God. He depicts God as having an intentional consciousness in which he can relate to us in a significant fashion while still retaining the immutability predicted by his perfection. He carries this argument by building from the Thomistic position and its arguments, and then shows us in a new light the foundation of these ideas. He shows us that God’s needed mutability must be rooted in an intentional relation, and then explains the contingent aspect of this relational consciousness. The last remaining topics needed to understand the relation are the mechanics of our temporal relationship and how we can affect God in order to have a significant relationship.

The Thomistic Position

The traditional natural theology depicts God as unconditionally immutable. He would have no relation to the world as it pertains to his own real being (i.e. his reality). The only possible relation with God and our reality is a "relation of reason". This idea clearly conflicts with the exigencies of the God of personal relation in which he would affect the world in real fashion. The Thomistic position being rejected, people turned toward process philosophy and the existential religious consciousness to try and develop on the belief that true relations would make a difference to him.

Arguments against the Thomistic Position

There are two main arguments against the Thomistic position concerning the immutability of God and the absence of any real relation on God's part toward the world: Process Philosophy and the Existential Religious Consciousness.

Process philosophy explores the possible necessities of a reality in which God is immutable. The author portrays God has having two natures. There is the Primordial Nature which is immutable and infinite and there is the Consequent Nature, which is a relation of knowledge and intent. This changing and growing nature is mutable, finite and truly related.

The second argument tries to come with an intellectual system to explain our own being, as existential religious consciousness. It tries to understand how it is that I am here and aware, and how God is affecting this system. it is the consequent nature of God, as mutable and related, that God affects our reality. This nature will be looked into more deeply during the rest of the essay.

Mutability

The concept of the restriction of mutability in God for him to develop real relations has been long debated. The central notion of absolute or infinite perfection is that immutability is necessarily involved in perfection. St-Thomas resolves this issue by going back to real change. For real change to exist it would need a passage from potency to act and it would require an extrinsic cause. Any acquisitions of new modes of being would entail an increase of its ontological perfection. Real relation must be founded in something in the intrinsic real or absolute being of that which is related. It is not clear if it is even needed that he should increase the number of “perfection attributes” he possesses in order to do have this real relation.

The author finds the mutability in the expression of his intent. It is constantly growing and responds to our own expressions with him. Of course, the field of his consciousness would be contingently other because of his personal relations with us.

"This determinate differentiation is in the order of intentional being or object focus, the being of the other as held within consciousness." (189)

God, as a real being, does not pass from potency to act. What is seen here is that of efficient causality, located in the effect and not in the causal agent, in this case God. Change is the opposite, it is enriching oneself. This tells us three things: There is nothing new in the recipient, the first is the cause of the second and that the former, in itself, needs intent on the latter. The last corollary is too seldom omitted and fails to realize that a real relation with God is then defined by an intrinsic change in the real being of God. We see no such thing in the intentional consciousness model. There is then no reason for affirming that there is any real mutability in God. We still need to explore the specific consequences of an "intentional relationship".

Process in the Divine Consciousness and Relation with Reality

According to St-Thomas, there are two modes of being. There is the self-existence of a being and there is the mode of being as a knowledge-object inside an intentional being's consciousness. The second mode requires that the knowledge object be of a real other, even as present in the knower's mind as an intentional representation. In the case of God, he would have knowledge of a real world that is other than himself. As such, an object of knowledge is not real in itself; it exists entirely inside the consciousness of the knower. We then see a multiplicity of these objects of knowledge, but they do not introduce change in the real being of the knower. The author realizes the immaterialism of God by saying, "A spiritual knower can know a material object, without its own real being or its real act of knowing being material." (193)

If we turn to the intentional being, we can see that there would be two possible sources of knowledge of any object. Either the real object, as other, acts on the knower or the knower forms the object within his own consciousness. The object knowledge of God would then be formed in the latter fashion. Although, this raises the fear that our free actions would then be totally determined by God, we need to remember that God's intentional consciousness necessarily contains the whole multiplicity of all creatures in their unique individuality and distinctness. God could also have decided to make the world in some other way.

The relationship of God would be true, in the sense that it is a significant change in our world. The term 'real' excludes this basis of change because of the terminology pushed by classical theories in the past and setting up a system that did not fit the currently proposed framework. In this relation, we have yet to figure out how he comes about these changes, the order of the relationship with us as beings in time.

Temporal Succession in God

We have come to the understanding that God's real expression and his response to us take place in time, but it must be pointed out that a change in time does not necessarily put change in his being. The author shows us qualities he imparts on the divine consciousness: Every knowable object is represented in God's intentional consciousness and part of their intelligibility is their sequence in time, and for God to be truly in time, there would need some real change in the "Cognitive Sequence" in God (or its objective content).

There is no real succession in God, only the relative times between objects in God’s consciousness in the order of intentional being. A sequence itself cannot be called a temporal succession of states since no real change underlies it. The fear rises again that there is a predetermined eternity in which God pre-knows all, restraining our free will. The author asserts that God learns of our free actions at the same time we do in his eternal being.

There are two possible models for the intentional consciousness of God. The classical model in which there is a durationless eternity where "Single simultaneous vision where all points of the temporal process are equally simultaneous to God" (202) and the durational model, where God’s intentional consciousness meets time’s constant evolution as it develops. In this latter model, there is no real change in the Aristotlean sense and therefore would keep his perfection. This model has been popularly rebuked since Einstein's Relativity Theory renders meaningless the idea of a time frame for God. It might be that this intentional conscious is so far from our perspective that we must keep both theories as viable until we can say more about it. One puzzle any model must solve is the mechanisms for God to receive knowledge from us.

How Can God Receive from Us in the Order of Knowledge?

From the Judeo-Christian point of view, a person must be the cause of his own actions. There are two ways to realize this: The object known affects the passive knower or a superior agent shares a part of his powers with a lower agent. The author shows that our actions come from a combination of our free will with the causative power of God by giving ourselves the ability to abscond the act from potency, letting the only positive intent left for God's causative power to bring into action. God then knows the intent of our free actions and impresses on our own will to bring it to reality. It is an exclusion of all other actions that renders this one active. This receptivity opposes an imperfect passivity and reflects pure perfection on the highest level of personal being.

Conclusion

The author explains how God is able to have a personal relationship with our own world by pushing his intentional consciousness toward our willing actions. He shows us that this intentional consciousness is mutable, but does not change his real immutable being, thus presenting his intended theory that God can have perfection and can still hold personal relationships. What still needs to be looked at is how the premise of an intentional consciousness can be held.

A revised look

It would seem at first glance that the author of the article has given a fair statement as to the possibility of an intentional consciousness in God’s real being. He bases his idea on the fact that God’s mutable aspect is contained in a way in which it stops being “real”, where any change in the mutable aspect of God requires no change in his real being. He then uses this mutable aspect, contained in the intentional consciousness, to affect the world in which we live, which is also indisputably real. It is clear that the author wants to coalesce a personal relation with perfection in a single being (namely, God). In order to do this, he proposes the intentional consciousness as a mutable system inside the immutable system of God. He tries to get away without explaining the basis for such a system by likening it to our own mind, where we could think about objects that we have knowledge of, but carry no change inside our own beings. It is not clear whether it does indeed carry no change inside our being, as the psychosomatic link is anything but clear. Even in the event where we could qualify our conscious knowledge-object inside our minds as an unreal object, it is not clear how a knowledge-object located in a consciousness could carry a change in the real world. If I represent in my mind a raging fire located in front of me, how does my intent of subduing the knowledge-object of fire actually carry out any change in the fire located in front of me? There are many unresolved questions still hanging in the premises of the article.

The author also raises the question of terminology by redefining the term “real“ as something that is significant (For example, a significant relation, even if not defined by the classical philosophers as “real” would definitely be considered “real” by the author.) If the intentional consciousness were to carry real change in our world, how can we say that it is anything but existing? According to the article To Be Is to Be Substance-in-Relation by the same author in the same book, a substance is both what it is in itself and the relation it carries with other substances. If the intentional consciousness is said to have relations with our own world, then it must be an integral part of what the being is in fact.

In which case we are faced with two choices: Either the intentional consciousness is God and therefore God is mutable, or the intentional consciousness is a being different than God and therefore God keeps his perfection, but loses the personal relation the Judeo-Christian doctrine imposes on him.