The main motivation behind Greg Boyd’s Open View of God seems to be a desire to understand God as relational – one who can sympathize and change with the development of a situation. He starts with Plato’s contribution to early Christian thought, primarily the ideas that God is immutable and impassible – God is not subject to change and not subject to emotion. Plato argues that change is either for the better or for the worse, but a perfect being cannot never change because that being cannot become better or worse.
However, Boyd argues that God is indeed susceptible to the vicissitudes of creation, that change doesn’t necessarily mean progress or regress, but can also represent an expression of who one is. For example, a “perfect” man cannot sympathize with a man/woman in emotional anguish if his perfection is defined by immutability and impassibility. If he were to continue about his day, unaffected by this person’s agony, then what would that tell us about his character. This is the very example used by Boyd to prove that God is indeed passible and mutable – He is indeed moved by us. It is by God’s willingness to be affected and to change that shows us his character as love. If God is perfect, it is not because he is the least apt to change, but the most.
How does this challenge what we have previously believed about God? Is the Platonic definition of the “perfect being” what we have always imagined when we said, “God is the same yesterday, today, and forever?” I think this statement has more to say about the character of God rather than his ontological state.
Check the sermon out yourself – http://www.whchurch.org/content/page_855.htm
