Faith Filled Friday: Does God Change His Mind?

This is a question I have had for the longest time.  Do our prayers change God’s mind over His intended actions?  If God does change His mind based on our importuning, then how do His plans all fit together?  It would seem there would be a lot of random events that get altered because we were persuasive and others weren’t.  We came across this on this first reading of this past Sunday’s lectionary.

The LORD said to Moses,

"Go down at once to your people,

whom you brought out of the land of Egypt,

for they have become depraved.

They have soon turned aside from the way I pointed out to them,

making for themselves a molten calf and worshiping it,

sacrificing to it and crying out,

'This is your God, O Israel,

who brought you out of the land of Egypt!'

"I see how stiff-necked this people is, " continued the LORD to Moses.

Let me alone, then,

that my wrath may blaze up against them to consume them.

Then I will make of you a great nation."

 

But Moses implored the LORD, his God, saying,

"Why, O LORD, should your wrath blaze up against your own people,

whom you brought out of the land of Egypt

with such great power and with so strong a hand?

Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Israel,

and how you swore to them by your own self, saying,

'I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky;

and all this land that I promised,

I will give your descendants as their perpetual heritage.'"

So the LORD relented in the punishment

he had threatened to inflict on his people.

            -Ex:32:7-11, 13-14

So did Moses convince God to alter His plans?  If so, how could God be omniscient?  Wouldn’t He have known Moses was going to come along to present a convincing argument?

I came across this very similar situation in Genesis chapter 18.  Now we know that God ultimately destroys Sodom and Gomorrah, but initially in chapter 18, He is “talked out of it” by Abraham.

20 So the LORD said: The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great, and their sin so grave,

21 that I must go down to see whether or not their actions are as bad as the cry against them that comes to me. I mean to find out.

22 As the men turned and walked on toward Sodom, Abraham remained standing before the LORD.

23 Then Abraham drew near and said: “Will you really sweep away the righteous with the wicked?

24 Suppose there were fifty righteous people in the city; would you really sweep away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people within it?

25 Far be it from you to do such a thing, to kill the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous and the wicked are treated alike! Far be it from you! Should not the judge of all the world do what is just?”

26 The LORD replied: If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.

27 Abraham spoke up again: “See how I am presuming to speak to my Lord, though I am only dust and ashes!

28 What if there are five less than fifty righteous people? Will you destroy the whole city because of those five?” I will not destroy it, he answered, if I find forty-five there.

29 But Abraham persisted, saying, “What if only forty are found there?” He replied: I will refrain from doing it for the sake of the forty.

30 Then he said, “Do not let my Lord be angry if I go on. What if only thirty are found there?” He replied: I will refrain from doing it if I can find thirty there.

31 Abraham went on, “Since I have thus presumed to speak to my Lord, what if there are no more than twenty?” I will not destroy it, he answered, for the sake of the twenty.

32 But he persisted: “Please, do not let my Lord be angry if I speak up this last time. What if ten are found there?” For the sake of the ten, he replied, I will not destroy it.i

33 The LORD departed as soon as he had finished speaking with Abraham, and Abraham returned home.

            -Gen 18:20-33

How does one explain this changing of God’s mind?  I have always explained it in my mind that God’s mind wasn’t changed but that He was letting His interlocutor present His case so that God could do what He truly intended all along.  God knew the interlocutor was going to appeal, and for some reason He wanted him to do so.  Why?  Because God wanted the interlocutor to pray, and prayer is pleasing to God and beneficial for the soul of the one praying.  That’s how I explained it to myself.

Fr. Samuel Keyes takes this very subject up in a homily he published in Catholic Answers magazine, “Did Moses Change God’s Mind?”  Now Fr. Keyes’s homily addresses and integrates the second reading (1 Tm 1:12-17) and the Gospel reading (Lk 15:1-32) of the 24^th Sunday of Year C.  I gave an explanation of the Gospel reading on the most recent “Sunday Meditation.”  I’m going to hold the focus of this post strictly to what Fr. Keyes says about the first reading on God changing His mind.  You can read the excellent homily on your own. 

Now it seems that my understanding of this theological issue is not wrong, but not complete.  First, Fr. Keyes points out that we have to understand God in a Judeo-Christian sense, and not a Greek pagan sense.

 

If we have a primitive understanding of deity and think of God like the ancient Greeks thought of Zeus or the Canaanites thought about their Baals, there’s no problem, because gods are gods due to their immortality or their power, not due to their intrinsic metaphysical distinction from creation. Yet the Jewish scriptures give us a rather different picture of divinity. And so, the statement in Exodus 32 has to be paired with a statement like that of Numbers 23:19, where “God is not a man that he should repent.” On the surface, both verses cannot be true. Either we must interpret the one in the light of the other, or we must declare one to be incorrect—something that as loyal disciples we cannot do.

What makes the Judeo-Christian God different from the Greco pagan gods is that the Greco gods are superhuman versions of man and not transcendent.  They are of this world.  The Jewish God is not anthropomorphic and therefore does not have emotions or compunctions and therefore the need to repent.  Fr. Keyes continues:

 

The second statement, on God’s non-repentance, reflects a growing understanding of God’s nature that we see unfolding not just in ancient Israel but among pagan philosophers like Socrates and Plato. For divinity to mean anything, the divine nature must be something transcendent. Otherwise, he is simply the biggest piece of creation. But Genesis shows God not just as the first thing but as the source of everything that exists, which means that his own existence is categorically different from the existence of all created things. More and more, as time goes on, the prophetic and wisdom literature of the Old Testament reflect this understanding.

So God is both transcendent and not anthropomorphic.  So far Fr. Keyes has put theological language around the same thought I had.  Then he gets to the part I had not realized.

 

God’s self-revelation, in other words, happens in stages. As Moses learns in Exodus, a full view of his glory would destroy us. We can only see him from the back, from a distance, in passing. But, as Paul speaks about it in the New Testament, the law was a kind of tutor, training humanity towards a greater capacity not just for virtue but for vision. It is only in Christ, and in the New Testament revelation of the Trinity, that we see revelation in its fullness.

God’s full revelation happens in stages!  Man in the early parts of the Old Testament has not come to theological maturity to understand the fullness of His being, and so God speaks in a manner in which we can understand.  He appears to change His mind to reach down to our level of understanding.  Fr. Keyes then sums up.

 

What does all this mean for God’s “repentance” in Exodus 32? Presumably Moses and the people of Israel do not yet have this full metaphysical understanding of the divine nature. So, the tradition suggests, God allows himself to be known in an adapted anthropomorphic way. God doesn’t change. But God’s will does take into account human will and response.

 

This gets at the heart of the mystery of prayer. God doesn’t change. But part of God’s unchanging will is that his creatures participate and cooperate in his work. He does not change, but we do. And surely part of how we change is just in this learning more and more about the God who reveals himself to us.

So God doesn’t change, but He wants you to keep praying because prayer and relationship with Him is grace.  Just like a father assembling a bicycle with his son wants the son to feel he helped or a mother baking a cake with a daughter wants the daughter to feel she helped, so God wants us to cooperate with Him.  Neither Moses nor Abraham changed God’s mind. This also explains why the nature of God in the Old Testament appears different than that of the New Testament.  

So should you pray to change God’s mind?  Yes, not only does He factor those prayers ahead of time, but He will love the relationship you build with Him.

Praise God.