In the late twentieth century, philosophers including Clark Pinnock and Richard Swinburne held that God is a person, changeable, not impassible, not really simple, having beliefs and desires, and so on. But the traditional view, as of Anselm and Aquinas, was that God was immutable (not changeable), impassible (not subject to passions or suffering), and simple. But can something with the latter qualities change its mind or suffer from a broken relationship? I for one seem to agree with the newer philosophers that God is a person. Of course, that brings up the huge question what is a person?

That’s what I’m working on now for my course. The “person” view of God that I am entertaining is midway between classic theism and process philosophy: according to the latter, God needs the world as much as the world needs him; to me, that is going a bit too far, so I am treating process philosophy as a radical view. Clark Pinnock, with a personalist view, also thinks God is in time, like us; we could say, broadly like Kant, that time is the form of inner intuition of both humans and God.

Who would think that a fellow named Pinnock would have some unorthodox views about God? But he does.

Meanwhile piano is to the wayside, but I’ll do some tomorrow with my cohorts at the college. One of the violinists plays Mussorgsky’s The Old Castle with me.

Saw Bela Fleck and enjoyed his work on Rhapsody in Blue as well as his encore piece which was a fantasy on the Ballad of Jed Clampett. Very nice, and banjo appeals to me more than ever. Take care and enjoy the summer, all!