READ THE BOOK OF JONAH! It’s four chapters, it’s interesting, and you’ll be able to say you finished a whole book of the Bible in 10 minutes.
This KISS Bible Study explores how Jonah 3 breaks from our philosophical notions of God’s omniscience in order to teach us a profound lesson.
I like what you have to say in “When God Changes God’s Mind.” All my life I have heard “God never changes; He is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.” Your examples are some I use to satisfy myself but never argue with anyone about the changing; add when the Israelites get a king, when God repents making Saul king. Isn’t saving human beings the result of God changing God’s mind? Humans get a reprieve because Jesus is crucified….
Those are great examples, Dr. McDade! And when we look at them for what they show, we can get a lot of deep lessons that we don’t get when we try to fit everything within the confines of a philosophical paradigm that we set up to understand God. In the two cases that you mentioned, I think one of the main things to get out of those texts is a snapshot of how emotionally invested God is in creation. It can be difficult (or even impossible) for us to really grasp God’s emotional investment in humanity when we dwell exclusively on God’s omniscience.