God's Evolution

For years, God has had to adapt himself to the condition of people.  He has had to be what was needed and he has been it well.  As mankind came to understand itself and its environment, its knowledge of God was modified so he could be for them what was needed in the newly emerging moment.  This is not the same as saying people made God.  It is rather an indication that God is not bound to our formulations, formulations predicated on the human situation rather than on God's nature.  What was said was determined by need, thought and current philosophy; and by acceptance, rejection, modification or incorporation of what had to date been said or believed about the personality of God.

To speak about you as you were a year, two, ten or fifty years ago is not to talk of who you are today.  In like manner, God as he now is, even though he is the same person, is changed and is better known than by what he was once called.  He cannot be sufficiently understood in relation to an older terminology, even when that terminology (and what it sought to convey) still gives indication of part of what we want to express.  We have developed since these notions and formulations were devised, and so has God.  It does not suffice that he be what he used to be, what he was for people in times past.  He is revealing himself now to a new people in a new way.

As the Jewish nation could move away from the prevailing animism and polytheism to an idea of God as one and unique we are moving from some of what used to be said of him.  They may not be false but neither are they essential.  Like the Hebrews, we realize God is capable of what is required by the life situation of his people at any moment in their history.  So he is no longer warrior, or wanderer, or even king.  The terms no longer fit, and because of changes in what the words now convey some may even be contrary to our image and understanding.

He has as well ceased to be mind, idea or something apart.  While they once served to express an aspect, one that a particular culture required, we have no more need of those expressions, nor does God.  The image is changing, as it should. What was so far said sufficed for those who said it, but while while it can be included it is no longer central.  No words will remain adequate, not even our own.  It would be unfair to the dynamism of God were we to try enclosing him in any formula, no matter how time-honored or time-worn.  The mystery is such that we can approach, circle about, and compare it to things we know or believe in other realms.  Each expression is a phase in our finding of God, our naming of his name.