This is a paper I put together for a philosophy class I took over the summer. A few people expressed interest in reading it.
In a recent article published in the New York Times, Yoram Hazony, president of the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, and author of The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture, argues against the omnipotence, omnibenevolence, and immutability of the God of the Hebrew Bible, using internal evidence from the Hebrew Scriptures and external evidence from reason. For Hazony, God being perfectly powerful and perfectly good would be an absurdity. The purpose of this essay is to show that Hazony's conclusion is erroneous, relying on special pleading and an equivocation fallacy. What this essay further seeks to demonstrate is that a transcendent being who is perfectly good and perfectly powerful is in fact reasonable enough to believe, even if unprovable. See the following excerpts from his article:
"You often hear philosophers describe “theism” as the belief in a perfect being — a being whose attributes are said to include being all-powerful, all-knowing, immutable, perfectly good, perfectly simple, and necessarily existent (among others)."
"It seems unlikely that God can be both perfectly powerful and perfectly good if the world is filled (as it obviously is) with instances of terrible injustice. Similarly, it’s hard to see how God can wield his infinite power to instigate alteration and change in all things if he is flat-out immutable. And there are more such contradictions where these came from."
"...it’s hard to find any evidence that the prophets and scholars who wrote the Hebrew Bible (or “Old Testament”) thought of God in this way at all. The God of Hebrew Scripture is not depicted as immutable, but repeatedly changes his mind about things (for example, he regrets having made man).... He is not perfectly powerful either, in that he famously cannot control Israel and get its people to do what he wants."
"...God responds to Moses’ request to know his name (that is, his nature) by telling him “ehi’eh asher ehi’eh” —“I will be what I will be.” In most English-language Bibles this is translated “I am that I am,” following the Septuagint, which sought to bring the biblical text into line with the Greek tradition of identifying God with perfect being. But in the Hebrew original, the text says almost exactly the opposite of this: The Hebrew “I will be what I will be” is in the imperfect tense, suggesting to us a God who is incomplete and changing."
Is it really necessary to say that God is a “perfect being,” or perfect at all, for that matter? As far as I can tell, the biblical authors avoid asserting any such thing. And with good reason. Normally, when we say that something is “perfect,” we mean it has attained the best possible balance among the principles involved in making it the kind of thing it is. For example, if we say that a bottle is perfect, we mean it can contain a significant quantity of liquid in its body; that its neck is long enough to be grasped comfortably and firmly; that the bore is wide enough to permit a rapid flow of liquid; and so on. Of course, you can always manufacture a bottle that will hold more liquid, but only by making the body too broad (so the bottle doesn’t handle well) or the neck too short (so it’s hard to hold). There’s an inevitable trade-off among the principles, and perfection lies in the balance among them.
Hazony's argument hinges on two primary elements: the classic problem of evil, (i.e., how can a good God and evil co-exist?) and what he sees as the absurdity of ultimate perfection, (i.e., how can you maximize every attribute of anything and not have a resulting absurdity?). He begins his argument by defining theism as “the belief in a perfect being.” In reality, Hazony is not engaging theism as a whole, but only the type of theism that is in fact the belief in a perfect being. This does not necessarily represent the basic definition of theism, however, which is simply the belief in a transcendent being of some kind.
Being careful not to speak in absolutes or to take a hard stance, Hazony gives the first element of his argument: the classic problem of evil. However, rather than simply restating the age-old argument against an omnipotent and good God coexisting with evil, Hazony says that it is the supposed immutability of God that would prohibit him from exerting power for good in the world. In other words, if God is immutable, then his omnipotence is rendered useless, which means his goodness is moot.
The premises would be more reasonable if they employed a more well-established definition of immutability. On this point Hazony avoids providing a definition and instead gives examples from the Old Testament of what he means by immutability, which seems to change back and forth between two definitions: God's unchanging nature, and His inability to enact change. Hazony's claim is that the concepts of divine immutability and divine impassibility were derived from Greek philosophy and became part of biblical theology only due to Hellenization, and that without Greek thought laid over the Old Testament, the Hebrew God is seen to change constantly. This argument, and the evidence Hazony provides for it, will be considered further in the argument engagement section.
The second element of Hazony's argument is the apparent absurdity of absolute perfection. With this argument Hazony commits an equivocation fallacy, the substitution of a word's definition in mid-argument in order to turn the conclusion. He begins by saying that God's perfection is not biblically supported, and then gives justification for that claim based on an obscure and uncommon definition of perfection. If perfection does indeed mean what he says it does then his argument is valid and compelling, but since it rests on a fallacy it should be considered in more depth, and the reasonableness of God's perfection should be considered apart from this argument since invalid arguments do not necessitate false conclusions.
In his treatment of the problem of evil, while Hazony uses the existence of evil as an argument against the existence of a good God (this argument largely hinges on whether or not evil is an existing thing or merely the absence of good), his focus is on God's immutability. One problem many people have with this doctrine is the confusion of immutability with immobility. As theologian Charles Hodges stated it, “In denying that God can change, they seem to deny that He can act.” (391) As stated previously, the premises of the argument would be more reasonable if the definition of immutability was more well-established, and by that I mean if the definition reflected what most theists mean when they say “immutable.” As the maxim goes, a text without a context is a pretext, and since words have no meaning outside a context, what theists mean when they say “immutable” (since it is not properly a biblical word) should be the definition used in the premise.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines immutability as the doctrine that asserts that “God cannot undergo real or intrinsic change of any sort.” (Leftow) In other words, nothing can so affect God that he changes, and that his essential nature or essence cannot change. As Hodge, and many others, has pointed out, immutability does not imply immobility. The fact that God's nature or essence does not change does not mean he is unable to act in real time and space and interact with his creation. It also does not preclude him from having emotions consistent with personhood; it does not further preclude him from having emotional responses to events within time and space. As with people, we should not infer a change of essential nature or character in a person should he or she respond emotionally to an event.
The predominant problem with Hazony's line of reasoning on this point is his meshing of two arguments together that should remain separate. The first is that the God of the Old Testament changes, and the second is that the type of immutability that comes down from Greek philosophy is incompatible with a perfectly good God. But the way he phrases the argument, the Greek philosophy point is seemingly irrelevant, and placing it as he does in the middle of this argument makes the point function as a red herring. Whether or not people hold to the doctrine of divine immutability in the Greek sense is irrelevant to whether or not the God of the Hebrew Bible changes. This line of reasoning looks like this.
A. The God of the Old Testament seems to change
B. The original Greek understanding of immutability is incompatible with a perfectly good God
C. Therefore God is not immutable.
The second way Hazony's argument against immutability disappoints is his use of special pleading. When Hazony says “it’s hard to find any evidence that the prophets and scholars who wrote the Hebrew Bible... thought of God in this way at all,” he is clearly ignoring evidence that does exist in the Hebrew Bible. This is not an essay on theology or biblical exegesis, but the fact remains that, irrespective of his conclusion, he is ignoring key passages such as Malachi 3:6, “I the LORD do not change.” Just because evidence is rare or hard to find has no bearing on whether or not something is true. Murderers have been convicted based on evidence that was difficult to find or otherwise seemingly miniscule, because the rarity or seeming miniscule nature of a piece of evidence is not proportional to the weight it might hold in an investigation. For some cases a single hair may mean the difference between freedom or lethal injection. That direct statements may be rare does not diminish the weight those statements might have. If two statements seem at first glance to provide conflicting information, both must be dealt with together rather than automatically dismissing it as a true contradiction and choosing a side to ignore.
Lastly, as for his argument against immutability, Hazony provides a few general biblical examples, and one specific example, of God being imperfect, incomplete and constantly changing. One example he uses to show that God's immutability negates his omnipotence is that God is unable to control Israel and get them to do what he wants. This is, of course, assuming God's desire was to control them. Logically this also does not follow:
A. If God were all-powerful Israel would be controlled by God
B. Israel is not controlled by God
C. Therefore God is not omnipotent
This employs the same reasoning as the following argument:
A. Police officers issue traffic tickets
B. Officer Johnson never issued traffic tickets
C. Therefore Officer Johnson is not a police officer
This false dilemma erroneously appeals to the law of the excluded middle, giving only two options when at least a third is possible. In this case Hazony lists as the only options either God's perfect control of Israel, or God's being impotent to control them. He does not allow for the possibility that, in his omnipotence and sovereignty over all that he created, God chose to give people free will. It is reasonable to imagine the possibility that the free actions of Israel, however unpleasing they may be to God, are allowed within his all-powerful sovereignty. If omnipotence and sovereignty precluded his allowance of free will, then God would not truly be omnipotent and sovereign.
The assumption that if God were all-powerful that everything would always go according to his will is made out of arrogance; the person who assumes it first makes the assumption that they know the mind of God. But if a transcendent being does exist, and did in fact create things such as galaxies and DNA, neither of which we fully understand, we must allow for the possibility that he knows a thing or two we do not and that he cannot be conformed to our own conception of God. It is extreme arrogance to argue against the existence of God on the basis that he is not as we would have him be.
The specific biblical example Hazony uses to argue against God's immutability is Moses' encounter with God in the burning bush in Exodus 3. Hazony's argument (see above) does not make sense grammatically or logically. God saying “I will be who I will be” does not refer to a changing nature, but to something that is not finished being what it is. If a man says “I will be a man,” he is referring to the unchanging nature of his status as a male. If a woman is asked the question “Who are you?” and she responds with “I will be who I will be,” we don't assume that her nature or essence or character will change. It does not follow, for example, that if Linda says she is going to be what she is going to be, that her friend Bill would assume that Linda's essential nature, essence or character will change.
Assuming God's statement should be translated “I will be what I will be,” (the translation is debatable), if God is referring to his divine nature (as Hazony even admits that he is), then it is equally likely, if not more likely, that God's statement is referring to precisely the opposite of what Hazony claims. It is then likely referring to God's unchanging, complete nature, rather than his changing, incomplete nature.
As to his grammatical comments, Hazony is drawing conclusions from grammar without actually thinking in grammatical categories. The imperfect tense only refers grammatically to action that is incomplete. Grammatical categories and syntactical relationships between words shed no light on the subjects or objects they refer to. One example is grammatical gender, which is “primarily a matter of syntax,” and carries no reference as to the essence or nature of the nouns they represent.(O'Connor 99)
Furthermore, Hazony claims that “I will be what I will be,” in the imperfect tense, is “almost the exact opposite” of the common translation “I am that I am,” which reflects a perfect tense (completed action), which does not appear in the text. Should we conclude then that this statement means God's nature is incomplete because the words that describe it are grammatically incomplete? Imperfect tense, however, is not the opposite of perfect tense. It only refers to an action that is yet incomplete. One only needs an elementary understanding of classical Hebrew to know that the distinction between perfect and imperfect can often be uncertain anyway. Hazony is certainly drawing a conclusion from grammar without thinking in grammatical categories.
Could it be, then, that when God says “I will be who I will be” he is referring to an eternally unchanging nature, hence the Septuagint's rendering of the Hebrew as Ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ὤν, “I am [the one who] I am being?” If that is the case then the translators of the Septuagint were not attempting to bring Old Testament theology in line with Greek thought, as Hazony assumes, but were rather trying to faithfully encapsulate all that was intended in that statement in Exodus.
Hazony's second major element of his argument, the argument against divine perfection, is more problematic. As previously stated, an equivocation fallacy drives Hazony's conclusion. He says, “Normally, when we say that something is 'perfect,' we mean it has attained the best possible balance among the principles involved in making it the kind of thing it is.” “Normally,” and “we mean,” are opinions at best, and a far cry from anything definitive. Here Hazony is making the error of semantic anachronism, the reading of a late meaning of a word back into earlier literature. It is irrelevant what we mean when we say “perfect;” what matters is what it meant when the Bible was written.
Here again he is ignoring a body of evidence; specifically he is ignoring five times in the Old Testament (according to the New American Standard version of the Bible) the word “perfect” (the Hebrew תָּמִים, tammim, meaning blameless, complete or sound) is used to describe attributes or works of God. Again, this is not a theology or exegesis paper, but in any case Hazony is clearly avoiding a body of evidence. His insistence that the biblical authors did not assert that God is perfect is based on the fact that the biblical authors did not describe God in terms of the type of perfection he is looking for, which is “maximizing all [an object's] constituent principles simultaneously.” According to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (11th Edition) there are eight definitions of “perfect,” and fourteen secondary definitions, and Hazony's definition is represented by one secondary definition. Clearly this is not the common conception of “perfect.”
One of Thomas Aquinas' five proofs of the existence of God is the argument from gradation of perfection. In his thinking, the idea of perfection is one of comparison rather than one of definition. For Thomas, perfection is something only seen in the comparison of things, and ultimately is grounded in the absolute. Writing of this “proof”, R.C. Sproul explains that “we cannot have a relative of anything unless the relative is measured against an absolute.” (73) For example, one diamond may be demonstrated to be more perfect than another diamond because it is understood, perhaps a priori, what a truly perfect diamond would look like, even if such a truly perfect diamond does not really exist. This explains why the market value of a diamond increases exponentially with its particular degree of perfection.
Hazony's concept of perfection in terms of maximizing attributes, if applied to diamonds, would say that a “perfect” diamond would be one that has the best possible balance of its principles; a perfect diamond would be shaped so as to fit tightly in a setting, would be large enough to catch enough light to sparkle, but not so big that it could not be worn comfortably. This would fail to take into account the fact that a smaller diamond can be worthy many times more than a larger diamond because of its superior degree of perfection.
In conclusion, Hazony's understanding of perfection also fails to take into account that God is not separate from his attributes. An attribute of God is something we use to explain God's identity. All the divine attributes together is a summation of who God is. God does not have an omniscient quality; God's identity is omniscient. God does not have an omnipotent quality; God's identity is omnipotent. God does not have love; God's identity is love. God is not separate from his attributes. Saying that certain attributes of God would be opposed to other attributes would be appealing to the classic argument of an immovable object versus an unstoppable force, which cannot co-exist. In examining God's attributes we're not looking at separate attributes in a vacuum which would seem to conflict with another; we're looking at one God who's identity is expressed in omniscience, omnipotence, omnibenevolence, omnipresence, love, etc.
The existence of a transcendent being that is, at the same time, good, all-powerful and all-knowing is reasonable, even if unprovable. For such a being to exist is not as unlikely as Hazony's straw-man makes it appear. None of his ideas are new, and few of them are logical. The danger of this kind of article is that few people take the time to check the facts and trace the logic, and therefore can be swayed by a weak argument that sounds reasonable enough. Yoram Hazony should be challenged to rewrite his article without redefining the terms, and without using unverified, highly (and often) debated, facts as premises.
Works Cited
Hazony, Yoram. "An Imperfect God." Opinionator An Imperfect God Comments. New York Times, n.d. Web. 5 Dec. 2012.
Hodge, Charles. Systematic Theology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1952. Print.
Leftow, Brian, "Immutability", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). Web.
Sproul, R. C. The Consequences of Ideas: Understanding the Concepts That Shaped Our World. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2000. Print.
Waltke, Bruce K., and Michael Patrick. O'Connor. An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990. Print.
