Is God A Bayesian?
The Biblical Roots of Process Theology
Greek (natural) theology states that a perfect God doesn’t change. God is complete, without beginning and end.
Biblical theology states that God is differentiated by virtue of God’s relationship to people, history, everyday life. In this paradigm, God changes.
One subset of changing is learning.
The philosopher’s God has nothing to learn; the Biblical God is more of a Bayesian; history is the process by which God “updates God’s priors.”
Many theological systems seek to square the circle of Greek and Biblical theology. If God is just Greek, there’s no covenant. If God is just Biblical, God seems embarrassingly human, limited. Thus, in Kabbalah, God is both Ein Sof, infinite, and, the ten sefirot (dynamic, changing).
Within Greek philosophy itself, you can find a version of this debate. For Parmenides, Being is a tautology. For Heraclitus, every moment is new. For Parmenides, there is nothing for Being to discover. For Heraclitus, Being is all discovery, with no rest.
These debates find expression as a quarrel between ancients and moderns, too. For Plato, knowledge is recollection, i.e., there is no new knowledge. For Locke, knowledge is something “out there” I have to find. In Kant, knowledge is something I construct. In Heidegger and Gadamer, knowledge is something I must constantly revise through an interpretive process. History, you might say, is God’s process of interpretation, the “hermeneutic circle” in which God must clarify God’s “situation.”
The medieval model that says God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent is super-imposed on a Near Eastern tradition that portrays God as complex and vulnerable.
But the upside of a God who can change is a God who can grow. The static God is basically boring.
To the extent that moderns reject the medieval scholastic framework and move closer to “process theology,” they are unlearning their Greek heritage and returning to their Biblical origins.
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