Can God learn?

No, this isn't an attempt at 'gotcha!' or a bash against religious philosophy. Its a serious question.

Can God learn? Can God change His mind?

I propose He did just that when He made himself the mortal Jesus.

God the Almighty and All-knowing, made Himself into a human and experienced life as one of His children, bereft of Omnipotence and perhaps Omnicience. The result was the offer of unconditional forgiveness for all of mankinds wickedness.

Did God learn something? Did he gain a perspective that an unlimited being could never have completely understood? Did this lead Him to alter His relationship with us?

*this question is of course predicated on the assumption ftsoa that God exists. Arguments to the contrary that arent addressing the above questions are better suited to a multitude of other threads. Advertisements for Atheism belong elsewhere. Thx in advance!

 

The OT says he can (at least in a manner of speaking), if people change their ways.

That may not necessarily be what you are referring to.

 

It's a great philosophical question and I don't think we have any solid answers for that.

Near omniscience is fundamentally a very different thing, in some ways, from absolute omniscience.

 

Is that like 'near infinite'?

 

Not sure what you are getting at.

 

It was sortof a joke... sorry.

'Near omniscience' seems a contradiction.

Though it does speak to the topic. Is an individual's perspective considered 'knowledge' that an omniscient being would have? Would a God incapable of fully empathizing with a mortal, due to His nature of being not mortal, thereby be limited in understanding and not omniscent?

Or is an individuals perspective by the nature of belonging to that individual necesarily outside the purvue of understanding of even an omniscient being, sine that being is also an individual?

 

the way that G/god was presented to me was you were fed what you could assimilate nothing more.

that said as your ability to assimilate change so would your understanding of G/god

Hence it is you that learns

asking if G/god can learn is not much more than parlor chatter since you first need to process what is G/god and what does this G/god you are talking about represent.

You up to it?

 

God couldn't have learned anything new because he knows everything past, present and future, and knew everything that was going to happen to him as Jesus. If he did learn something new then it means he was lacking knowledge before, which makes him imperfect.

So an all knowing God can't learn something new. Yet there is nothing an all powerful God can't do including learning something new. So there seems to be a conflict between an all knowing and all powerful God.

The solution to this puzzle is to ask what does it mean to be all powerful? It means being able to do all things. What counts as a thing? Do we count imaginary non-real things as really true things? Are flying pigs really things in real life? Maybe not.

So maybe being able to do all things really means being able to do all things that are real things and not logically impossible. So God can't make 1=2, or make a stone he can't move, or learn new things while all-knowing because these aren't real things and are logically impossible.

 

Does the Bible say what triggered God to "make" Jesus? Time-wise, that is.

 

Time -wise? That’s a bewilderingly niave view of Christian theology and God’s ominscience. We might just as sensibly ask can God make himself willfully ignorant?
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/omniscient

I have to admit however accepting such a notion as possible provides the comforting delusion of not having to deal with the sad-masochist deity as painted by scripture.

 

Naive how? Jesus happened at a certain time, I want to know if the Bible says why. I haven't made any assumptions about God's omniscience or to the best of my knowledge any other part of Christian theology.

 

I don’t mean to be rude in saying this but isn’t it time you dipped your toes into some biblical studies? A forum such as this is not the place to acquire such learning as many of the opinions given tend to be one eyed and somewhat hysterically evangelical.
If you want a fairly unquestioning and standard introduction to the Bible try something like ‘The Lion Handbook to the Bible’. If you want to catch up with some recent biblical studies of a modern and open minded kind a reading of John Shelby Spongs ‘The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible’s Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love’ is a good place to start.
As to the specific question you have concerning Jesus happening at a certain time I suspect you’ve not grasped the standard theological view of God’s omniscience. That is, for God, time does not run from the past to the future as it does for us. The divine experience, if we can call it that, exists within and over all of time, or to put it another way, for God everything the ever happened or will happen is contained within that beings mind. Some theologians however object to the term ‘mind’ as too limited but that’s another metaphysical mess for another thread - if anyone is silly enough to want to pursue it.
As to wanting to know if the Bible says why it’s simple, if twisted. Jesus was crucified by his Father to redeem sins the Almighty knowingly made possible by granting us free will. The fact humanity has gone on sining ever since is another puzzle. Maybe however I’m misinterpreting what you mean by ‘why’. Are you asking ‘Why was Jesus crucified at that specific time’?

 

I've had my fair share of biblical studies.

I am well aware of the idea of God as timeless or outside of time, indeed that is central to why I asked the question. If God is timeless, then how come God chose a specific time to become man? And, more to the point, how come he chose that specific time to become man? In case I was unclear, I'm asking for the reason of the timing, not the reason for the sacrifice altogether.

I agree that answers on the internet are often biased. That's why I asked so specific a question. I didn't actually ask the questions that I alluded to in my last paragraph, I asked what the Bible says on the topic. I wasn't inviting precooked conclusions, I was inviting someone to show me a plausible source, then I can draw my own conclusion without other people's bias in them.

 

OK, let’s for the sake of discussion assume the God of the Bible exists. I can’t imagine there’s such a thing as a ‘plausible source’ unless that source has a direct line of communication with the Almighty. Over the ages many have claimed just that. Could we ever be sure? You may have to leave your question unanswered and simply accept God moves in mysterious ways.
The only other methodology I can suggest is the historic perspective. What if anything about the time of Christ’s appearance facilitated the spread of his message? Like so much else related to scripture we have to first assume the New Testament gives us a fully accurate picture of Christ’s ministry. Many biblical scholars tell us such is a claim too far.

 

I struggle to see where this is going.

I believe the OP is a Christian, and I wanted to, if anything, make an answer that they would agree with. How plausible a source the Bible is is not really a part of my question, and that is intentional (unless modernpaladin agrees that any particular part of it is implausible).

Similarly, I am interested in the reasoning as it is a reliable part of the Christian narrative, not as you or I could reconstruct it using however plausible logic.

 

You say :- "I am interested in the reasoning as it is a reliable part of the Christian narrative”
Sorry, I have no idea what that means so I’d better but out of here before I add more confusion.

 

God didn't turn Himself into Jesus, Jesus has always been there, as has the Holy Spirit.

It's called the Trinity.

Jesus came to Earth in human form to prove His Faith to God, his Father and also because He loved us and wanted to spare us Gods wrath. He knew that because we had sinned that the only way for us to get to Heaven would be through His blood.

His sacrifice to His Father.

 

Would that negate the premise of the thread: whether God gained a new perspective by existing (or part of Him existing) as a mortal?

Why else would God have waited so long (from our perspective) to offer such forgiveness? It seems to me that something changed.

 

Which god?
How do you know it's a male?
Is this god omniscient? The bible god is. If omniscient, that is all knowing. No reason for a change of mind.

 

Can an omniscient being fully understand the perspective of a non omniscient being?

 

well according to the myth, the first time he created man he missed up and had to kill them, why create such flawed humans and why kill them so violently, why not snap his fingers and away they go.... maybe the bible God is like a child, still learning, or maybe he is just playing a game like sim city, we are the entertainment

and God is known to lie, remember when he told the father to kill his son, then later said he was just joking, doesn't seem God like, but he may be still learning

2 Thessalonians 2:11
And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:

 

If the definition of omniscient is true, of course.
And if this being is truly omniscient, of course.

 

It's stories like those, along with the answers to my questions, many being, god works in mysterious ways or man can't understand god, is why I always questioned the religion and eventually left it.
To much mental gymnastics to believe all those stories.
And every single person who believes, contorts those stories in some way, to fit each one's personal narrative of life.
Or just flat out ignores the contradictions or the ever lasting get out of jail free card, goddidit.

 

same here, I was born and raised Christian as well, course I was raised to believe in Santa too, it was actually reading the bible cover to cover twice that did it for me, I kept thinking it was gonna make sense if I just finished it, I wanted to believe, just could not anymore

I like that video where they put the cover of the koran on the bible and read bible verses from it... and that thought how horrible.. shocked when they found it was their bible, they all believe in the same Abrahamic God

if a Christian wants to stay a Christian, don't read the bible

 

Are you suggesting the question is not worth asking or trying to answer?