[Avodah] Changing God's Mind

Micha Berger micha at aishdas.org
Sun Feb 3 06:22:55 PST 2008


On Sun, Jan 27, 2008 at 09:02:14PM +0000, kennethgmiller at juno.com wrote:
: RRW is correct; we cannot change G-d's mind. For a given situation,
: If G-d feels that "A" is His response, there is nothing we can do change
: His mind to prefer the "B" response.

Let's define change.

Change is what we call it when the state of something at one point in
time is different than it was at an earlier one.

The Borei created time, He is not within it. Thus, no two points of time
in which to change His state. It's not simply that He's unchanging, it's
that there is no way to even define change WRT the A-lmighty.

Similarly, Hashem seeing "now" what will happen, or His choosing not to,
is meaningless. Hashem -- now?

The subject of Hashem and time is a difficult one, since our thought
is so fundamentally tied to time and Hashem is so fundamentally not. I
tried once on my blog:
<http://www.aishdas.org/asp/2005/01/divine-timelessness.shtml>

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "I hear, then I forget; I see, then I remember;
micha at aishdas.org        I do, then I understand." - Confucius
http://www.aishdas.org   "Hearing doesn't compare to seeing." - Mechilta
Fax: (270) 514-1507      "We will do and we will listen." - Israelites



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