Could Yahweh Be God If He Could Learn
from Suffering?
The kenotic Christology assumed in Mormon scripture poses a
problem not faced by conventional thought because it asserts that Yahweh, that
God of the Old Testament who became flesh as Jesus of Nazareth, did not know
all that it was possible to know. For example, Yahweh did not know what it was
to suffer bodily pain prior to his mortality. And yet he was recognized as very
God. Yahweh did not know what it was like to be alienated and abandoned. Yet
humans did know these things even while Yahweh was God. Can Yahweh truly be
all-knowing if he lacks such knowledge?
The problem can be addressed only if we adopt an adequate
view of divine omniscience. We can define omniscience in a way analogous to
omnipotence: person R is all-knowing at a time t if and only if R
knows all things that it is possible or a person having R’s attributes
to know at t. If this definition of omniscience is acceptable, then
Yahweh need not possess experiential knowledge if such knowledge is contrary to
the attributes he possesses. In other words, Yahweh possessed all of the kind-essential
properties of divinity, but some of these properties were not fully realized.
If this understanding is correct, then at least some of the divine properties
are susceptible to increases in magnitude or degree. The notion is not that
divinity is imperfect but that perfection in some properties is relative,
rather than absolute in the sense urged by Hartshorne. Perfection in some
properties consists of dynamic growth rather than static being. Rather than
constituting an upper limit on possibilities, perfection in some properties
consist of a dynamic relation to the actual world as if unfolds from present to
future. I have argued that God grows in power, dominion and knowledge because
they are essentially internally related properties which must change as the
world changes.
There are also certain things that God can know only by giving
up the fullness of his divine glory and taking upon himself human limitations.
In particular, Hebrews and Mormon scriptures suggest that the premortal Jesus
Christ, though the divine Word, could yet learn form the things he suffered.
But what could a being whose experience is maximally inclusive by virtue of
experiencing all reality immediately yet have to learn from experience?
From (P1), the notion that any divine being experiences
all realty immediately, it follows that God’s experience is maximally
inclusive. God is present to all things and experiences them from every possible
perspective. Yet there is an aspect of human experience not available to the
individual divine persons in their divine status or qua Godhead. God’s
experience is maximally inclusive. God is, in virtue of his divine spirit,
which proceeds from his corporeal presence to fill the immensity of space, intimately
involved and related to all things. It follows that God cannot know those human
experiences which arise from human limitations such as isolation, alienation and
abandonment. These experiences, by their very nature, require that humans be cast
out of God’s presence and have less than total intimacy with all realities. Of
course, the Father ad the Son may experience immediately as their own experience
our experiences of isolation, loneliness and abandonment; but the essential
qualities of such experiences cannot be part of God’s experience. God cannot be
fully and intimately related to all realities and at the same time be isolated
or wholly unrelated. The Son cannot experience alienation while at the same
time sharing a relationship of oneness in unity with the Father and Holy Ghost.
God’s experience is, by its very modality, an intimate sharing of experience in
total compassion and love. Alienation and abandonment cannot, by definition, be
shared in this sense. It is thus impossible for God, while yet a divine being
in the sense of experiencing all reality immediately, to experience the isolation
and loneliness which are essential aspects of alienation and abandonment. Yet
alienation and isolation from others are at the very core of the human condition.
Thus I suggest this fundamental principle:
(P2)
It is impossible that alienation, abandonment and isolation are experienced genuinely
by the Son as part of the Son’s immediate experience of all realities.
As a necessary prerequisite to full participation in the
human condition, the Son had to become mortal himself and experience the
effects of alienation from the Father. There was no other way for God to fully
participate in the human experience. As a necessary condition to experiencing separation
and abandonment, the Son divested himself of those relational properties constitutive
of a fullness of divinity and became fully mortal. Only by participating fully
in the rejection and suffering that characterizes human loneliness and alienation
could God accomplish his purpose to become one with us in love. Only by experiencing
the limitations of experience inherent in the human condition could the Son experience
what it means to be isolated and abandoned. Paradoxically, God is love in the
sense that he relates perfectly to every reality as his own experience, but
only by giving up his perfect relatedness could God gain a fullness of experience.
His love is therefore perfected and completed because he perfectly experiences all
realities immediately and also has experienced alienation and abandonment.
Blake T. Ostler, Exploring Mormon Thought: The Attributes
of God (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2001), 480-83
