A successful inaugural meeting, I think. Apologies again for my misadventures with Pizza Hut; we could have started on time if not for that. Thanks again to Allison for the brownies and the table.
Look forward to adding three or four more to our starting five.
Next time: Jack Miles's God: A Biography; 7:30 PM on November 8. This is, happily, a Thursday.
Miles will be an interesting counterpoint to Armstrong, I think; while she ranges very broadly, trying to cover 4000 years of history in 400 pages, Miles offers us a very close, literary reading of the Old Testament, and its central character, God. He draws sparingly on sources outside the Bible itself (though he's a PhD in ancient languages, so he's quite capable there). Rather, he looks at how the relationship between Israel and God changes and develops, and how this interaction seems to transform how God is represented in that text.
In short, Miles presents a God with a history - like Armstrong. But for Miles, God's own behavior and actions shape that history in tandem with the humans he grows with.
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3 comments:
I have to say that I think it is the coolest thing in the world that we set up this blog and that we live in a day and age where we can talk about things that would have been considered blasphemy in another age.
I mean in all reality, we just read one book, and are now reading another, that still have one question at tis core, does God change? We started very broadly with a view of three monotheistic religions with Armstrong, and are a bit mroe focused with Miles. And these are two books that are very widely read and they reference books that are widely read. Both of these books and the scriptural texts they cite very much could lend themselves to the idea of an evolving God who learns as they go.
I would think that LDS followers would find it much easier to accept this idea of a changing God and not just that our perception of God changes. I am not sure what I exactly believe on it but it does suprise me that the Bible really can support such a notion but yet the notion is really not even considered by mainstream Christianity, Judaism or Islam (all three Abrahamic religions) much less held as plausible.
So will the idea of a changing God, a God who is learning as they go, become more accepted, talked about or less taboo in 21st Christianity and/or Mormonism?
There's a couple movements in mainline Christianity that reject the impassable God: process and open theology. You have to fairly radically transform your ideas about what God is, though, before you can do that.
Would you have to radically transform your ideas of scripture then to say that God is beyond change and is infallible because it can be drawn from scripture that God learns?
If it is the scripture that is fallible in and of itself because of the fallibility of man, then what do we attribute the lack of change of God to?
I think an interesting note would be that God might learn and remain infallible.
Will have a new post with some thouguhts on the beggining of Miles that I am sure will bore all!
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