It’s not a debate in Christiology about whether we should abandon interpreting the texts literally. — Bob Ross

Christian fundamentalism with its empahsis on literalism began in the 19th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_fundamentalism

The idea that there is universal agreeement among the billions of Christians as to what the text means is obvioulsy not true.

If this is true, it has no bearing on whether or not the OT portrays God in a manner that contradicts His nature; and, by extension, whether or not one would be justified in rejecting the Christian faith on those grounds.

I understand your point though: people tend to behave relative to the norms of their day. That is true of everyone. — Bob Ross

This sentence makes a different point, which I had not considered. You are trying to make a correspondence argument, asking if God is accurately portrayed in the Bible. I had not considered that. I was considering the Bible as a work that had certain usages, none of which are consistent with the way the Bible is literally written, as in, no one dashes the heads of babies on rocks.

But to the extent you know what God really is like and to the extent you don't see that as written in the Bible, then I'll defer.

There was a time, particularly in the 19th century, when the "academic" approach to Christianity was very ahistorical. During that time there was a common trend wherein it was forgotten that Jesus was himself a Jew, — Leontiskos

Reminds me of one of Hitler's early portraits. Aryan Jesus.

If one were to take a historical approach to Christianity, it would lead one to the various schools of thought that actually have things in common with Christ's teachings (such as Platonism, various Eastern schools of thought, etc.), rather than to the Old Testament.

There probably were political reasons for why there was an effort to wed Christianity to the Old Testament, but the blatant contradictions remain and that should give any honest thinker reason for pause.

2. God is perfectly good because His essence and esse are absolutely identical; — Bob Ross

We feel evil, it hurts us to the bone sometimes! Where does the evil come from if it is not a part of creation? Evil creatures like evil! So, the God you are arguing is false!

Yes, your summary of my argument is correct. I am curious what your thoughts are on it. — Bob Ross

Okay, good. I was trying to revisit some of Fr. Stephen De Young's work, and I noticed that he did an interview yesterday. He begins talking about the Amalekites at 57:12. I plan to listen to that section when I have time (57:00-1:15:00), but just given the first few minutes it seems like it will bear heavily upon this thread.

I want to at least listen to those 18 minutes to refresh my memory, but I will set out the basic argument after I get around to that.

If you are secular, I would drop the "Christ" and just call him Jesus. Christ is a title meaning Messiah, not a last name. He's a first-century rabbi whom you take a liking to.

This OP isn’t an argument for a problem of evil in the sense that phrase usually refers. I am arguing that God’s nature contradicts the actions attributed to God in the OT; and so that can’t be God doing it. — Bob Ross

Well God's nature conflicts with a flood in Texas killing a bunch of teenage girls. God supposedly has the power to stop it, but he just stands around picking his nose.

2. Stop believing that God is moral, but rather the fountain of universal creativity from which both good and evil take shape.

This completely misunderstands classical theism. The catholic church, the OG church, holds classical theism to be true. — Bob Ross

It wouldn't be a misunderstanding. It would a rejection. Absolute rejection and condemnation of the Catholic Church has been a thing for about 500 years. It's fine. Nobody cares anymore.

Reminds me of one of Hitler's early portraits. Aryan Jesus. — BitconnectCarlos

:up:

Certainly, some parts of Divine Law (revelation) are hard to understand in terms of Natural Law. God's command to the Israelites in the Book of Joshua, that they should destroy all of the Canaanites, is probably the paradigmatic example (Deuteronomy 7 and 20 have the commands, but their execution occurs in Joshua). As noted, there are later instances or this sort of thing.

Here, it is useful to recall that God's purposes in giving commands is not always apparent to us. For example, at first glance Genesis 22:2 appears to be demanding that Abraham sacrifice his son Isaac to God. We later discover that this was not God's true intent. God spares Isaac. The episode is perhaps a test of Abraham's faith, perhaps a way for God to reveal things about God's nature—readings vary quite a bit—yet the goal of the command is certainly not what it first seemed.

Likewise, the Canaanites are not all killed in the Book of Joshua. The prostitute Rahab and her family are spared on account of her righteousness (Hebrews 11:31, James 2:25, Joshua 2). Likewise, the Hivvites fear God and attempt to make peace with Israel, rather than trying to destroy them. In turn, the Hivvite cities are spared (Joshua 9). More to the point, those who are "destroyed" show up later, having obviously not been placed under the ban, else they wouldn't exist. Nor are the Amalekites actually extinguished, even after Israel secures its borders. One, Haman, shows up to play a very important role in the Book or Esther, which takes place much later.

Thus, it is clear both that we do not always know the purpose of revelation and that we are called on to try to uncover these purposes through questioning. For example, consider how Abraham questions God about sparing any righteous souls who live in Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18:16-33). Here, Abraham himself has experienced a seeming disconnect between Natural Law (his own grasp of the Good), and God's revelation of Providence re the destruction of those two cities. In turn, God offers new revelation, assuring Abraham that the righteous will not be punished (thus putting Natural Law and Divine Law back into harmony).

On the question of the command to "utterly destroy," the Canaanites, this is an interesting article: https://www.detroitcatholic.com/voices/did-god-command-joshua-to-utterly-destroy-the-canaanites#::text=In%20fact%2C%20it%20appears%20that,the%20win%20was%20only%20temporary . It talks about the use of hyperbolic writing in the Bible, which can cause problems in interpretation to modern eyes, particularly in a Sola Scriptura context that is alien to how the texts were originally received (e.g. Jewish sources outside Scripture shed light on these events). A similar problem shows up when Malachi 1:3 is taken literally and in isolation, and extrapolated into a sort of unexplained hatred of God for Esau (and so perhaps other individuals). Esau seems to do quite well in Genesis, and his descendent Job is one of the few people directly called righteous in the Old Testament, so there seems to be more going on here.



From the article.

The command to utterly destroy these people seems pretty clear, and Joshua, after taking control of the land, said that he did everything the Lord commanded (Joshua 11:20-23). But a careful reader will notice something strange going on in these texts. The very people who were supposed to have been utterly destroyed are nevertheless still there in the Holy Land (Judges 1:8, 1:21, 2:21-23, etc.).

Even more strange, there is a flip-flop that occurs regarding these peoples’ supposed obliteration — sometimes even in the same verse! For example, Joshua 10:20-21 says, “When Joshua and the men of Israel had finished slaying them with a very great slaughter, until they were wiped out, and when the remnant which remained of them had entered into the fortified cities, all the people returned safe to Joshua in the camp at Makkedah; not a man moved his tongue against any of the sons of Israel” (emphasis mine).

How could these people be “wiped out” and a remnant still survive? Joshua 11:21 likewise says that Joshua wiped out the Anakim in the hill country, Hebron, Debir, Anab and all the hill country of Judah, “utterly destroying” both them and their cities. Yet, Joshua 15:13-15 says that Caleb once again had to drive out the Anakim in Hebron and Debir. How can the Lord command these people to be wiped out (Deuteronomy 7 and 20), Joshua fulfill this command (Joshua 11:20), and the people still be alive and well in the Holy Land? Something is at work behind these passages.

If one compares the language used in Joshua and Judges with the conquest writings of other ancient cultures (i.e., Egyptian, Hittite, Akkadian, Moabite, etc.), you’ll find there are a lot of similarities. The recorded battles and reports of conquest by these nations often give exaggerated hyperbolic accounts about how their enemies were completely wiped out, utterly destroyed, without any survivors, much like in Scripture. In fact, it appears that this was once a popular stylized form of war rhetoric that was used in the ancient near east. When we read it, it sounds like the Israelites were commanded to totally annihilate these people, when it simply was commanded of them to fight and win, even if the win was only temporary.

This raises another question: Why would God allow such rhetoric to be used in Scripture? Here is where things get interesting. First, God was speaking to the original audience in a way that they would understand. No one took these words literalistically, otherwise, Joshua would never have been said to fulfill them. Second, Scripture operates on more than just its literal historical meaning. It has other meanings as well. God not only writes with words, but he also writes with the events that the words describe. Therefore, the Old Testament provides spiritual lessons that apply to us today. In this regard, the war rhetoric used provides a solid allegorical lesson about Christ and our sanctification. As the early father Origen once wrote:

“Would that the Lord might thus cast out and extinguish all former evils from the souls who believe in him — even those he claims for his kingdom — and from my own soul, its own evils; so that nothing of a malicious inclination may continue to breathe in me, nothing of wrath; so that no disposition of desire for any evil may be preserved in me, and no wicked word ‘may remain to escape’ (Joshua 8:22) from my mouth. For thus, purged from all former evils and under the leadership of Jesus, I can be included among the cities of the sons of Israel.”

It's common is modern commentaries to see some sort of choice between allegory and history, as it the two are mutually exclusive. But this is often the result of a rigid understanding of how Providence "must" work. The same sort of thing shows up all the time with causality vis-á-vis free will, e.g. "God hardening Pharaoh's heart," or giving people over to their corrupted desires, etc. The entire dichotomy of natural, i.e., "man does it subsistently himself" and supernatural, i.e., "God magically forces it to happen," is alien to the tradition. More to the point, it treats God as one being among many. (On top of this, the Flood example has the added interpretive difficulty of the Nephilim).

So to the OP, I'd ask, would it absolve God if some false prophet had invented those commands and God simply allowed them to be carried out by omission? Or wouldn't God be just as guilty (by commission) for what God does to Israel and Judah (consider Lamentations) in using foreign peoples to destroy them? Or would God be guilty by omission for any the myriad similar acts that occured across the scope of human history? On this last question Elie Wiesel's "The Trial of God," is quite good, and a short play that can be read in a single sitting (it is allegedly based on a real trial held for God during the Holocaust).

Anyhow, if you treat God as a person, or as something like a very powerful, magical alien, then even the Binding of Isaac will seem very troubling indeed.

Well God's nature conflicts with a flood in Texas killing a bunch of teenage girls. God supposedly has the power to stop it, but he just stands around picking his nose.

Firstly, even if that contradicts God’s nature, it is not a logical contradiction. Secondly, it does not incohere with God’s nature to allow evil to happen, like I noted before, because it is necessary for higher goods.

You are presupposing that what is supremely good is to create a world where privations cannot happen (i.e., evil), and this is not only metaphysically impossible but negates the possibility of the virtues, free will, natural laws, etc.

There is a difference between doing evil and allowing evil.

It wouldn't be a misunderstanding. It would a rejection. Absolute rejection and condemnation of the Catholic Church has been a thing for about 500 years. It's fine. Nobody cares anymore.

To think that God can will badness is metaphysically impossible under classical theism, and for good reasons. God is purely actual and a creator; so He must be fully realized as a creator; and this entails that God must create things in a way that perfectly orders them (otherwise He has the potential to be a better creator and thusly implying He is not fully realized as a creator). A part of perfect ordering is willing the good, relative to its part in creation, of that thing in creating it (and willing its existence); which entails that God cannot will the bad, a privation of the good, of a thing relative to its nature within the hierarchy of things.

Okay, good. I was trying to revisit some of Fr. Stephen De Young's work, and I noticed that he did an interview yesterday. He begins talking about the Amalekites at 57:12. I plan to listen to that section when I have time (57:00-1:15:00), but just given the first few minutes it seems like it will bear heavily upon this thread.

Thank you: I will take a look!

Evil is a privation of good.

The idea that there is universal agreeement among the billions of Christians as to what the text means is obvioulsy not true.

I never suggested that, but historical there is a predominant interpretation that even fundamentalists agree with. The vast majority of Christians agree that the texts should be read literally; the dispute is what did the author mean literally. Taking something literally does not mean that you take it at face value.

This sentence makes a different point, which I had not considered. You are trying to make a correspondence argument, asking if God is accurately portrayed in the Bible. I had not considered that. I was considering the Bible as a work that had certain usages, none of which are consistent with the way the Bible is literally written, as in, no one dashes the heads of babies on rocks.

:up:

Don't you feel pain sometimes? We have two alignments namely, good and evil. Good and evil are also features of our experiences. How could you deny the existence of good and evil in our lives?

Okay. Can you remind me of the view that he takes? 

He explained that there are three main categories of responses:

1. That the text should be read at face value (i.e., literally in the strictest sense) and that there is nothing wrong with it (as God cannot do unjust things and He did those things so they must not be wrong). The example he gave was William Lane Craig and Divine Command Theory.

2. That the text should be read spiritually (symbolically) and ignore the literal sense.

3. That the text should be read in a literal sense but as it relates to the whole Bible.

His take was a modified version of 2: he emphasized that he does not think we should ignore literal sense of the text but that the literal sense when understood contextually is a spiritual lesson (in the case).

He noted that the text is using hyperbole, that the author was not writing to the generation who fought in the war, and that the war was a just war over the evils the Canaanites were doing (like child sacrifice): this author existed way later. He argued that it mostly likely was a spiritual lesson meant to teach the later generation to avoid evil at all costs (similar to how Jesus says to cut off your arm if it causes you to sin hyperbolically).

Like I noted before, it seems somewhat plausible but still has issues.

Jesus explicitly reveals himself as related to the god of the OT as his son: that's the chasm in your argument. Jesus made it clear he is fulfilling the OT.

But how would you respond to the three examples I gave in the OP?

Anyhow, if you treat God as a person, or as something like a very powerful, magical alien, then even the Binding of Isaac will seem very troubling indeed.

The OP doesn't treat God as a 'magical alien': it treats God as God in the classical theistic sense---the neo-platonic sense.

I don't think that's true, but feel free to quote the scripture and change my mind.

Good stuff. As usual, saying what I am trying to say, but more rigorously.

@Bob Ross, I would just add something about method and approach with these questions. I find we can approach questions about God in three ways. We can be biased against him, biased for him, or attempting to be unbiased. And I think one needs a bit of bias for God in order to even recognize the evidence.

Unbiased is the purely philosophical way. But we are talking about a Creator of the universe and miracle worker, so I find that we are constantly using evidence and reasoning that is not really observable or from the natural world.

When Peter told Jesus he was the Son of the living God, Jesus didn’t congratulate Peter for figuring this out himself since Peter had seen all of Jesus’ miracles and because it certainly made sense - Jesus said that the Holy Spirit revealed this in Peter. And if you think about getting to know who any person is, all of our observations are only evidence of something we believe, and that could only be confirmed by the person saying “yes, that is me”, because we are all spirits. The observable is outward sign of the invisible that is thereby revealed. The evidence we seek to evaluate in determining how an all-good God commanded the killing of children, will only be found in spirit. Our natural, unbiased powers will be helpful, but never enough. This is something Count points to.

So that brings us to the approaches that are biased. If we are biased against God, why would we believe or understand his revelations and creative and miraculous powers? So we can not really make progress questioning God if we are able to doubt major premises about God. If we start with the conclusion “therefore God has done evil in the OT” we are biased against the premise “God is all good and would never do evil.”

So this brings us to the right approach to me. I know that God is all-good. I am biased in favor of God. So when I see horrible acts in the OT leading me to conclude “God is doing evil” I immediately think something is wrong with my reasoning and my conclusions and my understanding of the OT, because God can never sin.

So the question you are asking, to me, is not how is God able to do such horrible things, it is simply what am I misunderstanding about these things. So during the time I misunderstand these things, I am not anxious that my reason will ever conclude that “therefore God is sinning”. The temporary situation and question is always my understanding of the OT. I am anxious that I have not understood why God did what he did, not who God is.

So here:

The God of the OT commanded Saul to put the Amalekites under the ban
There were innocent children among the Amalekites
Therefore, the God of the OT commanded the killing of the innocent
The killing of the innocent is unjust
Therefore, the God of the OT is unjust — Leontiskos

That seems sound and the reason we are concerned is because our definition of God (unstated in the argument) is that God would never be unjust.

So the point is, since no one here wants to redefine God or find that God can sometimes be unjust, the argumentation and education will always be about how we define justice and sin and the acts themselves. God has already revealed himself to us as all-good. We aren’t questioning that. We aren’t even questioning what “good” itself is. God is goodness. Nothing we conclude with our reason will ever be settled on “God is unjust.”

So the process Count is pointing to to figure this all out HAS TO call into question your (our) understanding of what God meant to show us by his deeds, not call into question the righteousness of God’s deeds. This is about our understanding, not about judgment of God.

Bottom line, to me, we are asking God to justify his actions and intentions to us, and the only truly humble way of doing this is to start the question knowing absolutely that there is a justification, and that God remains all good and never sinful. We use our reason and gather the evidence retaining faith in the conclusion we already know - God is always good and loves each any every person.

Maybe I didn’t need to say any of this.

And as I said before, seeking to understand God better is what life is all about, so, with a humble approach, your OP is certainly doing a good thing.

(Although because I am admitting my bias, I think I am also confessing this isn’t really doing philosophy - it’s theology, and better than that, it’s prayer and asking God to come to reveal himself to our understanding. And there are some good folks around here who can be vessels of such revelations.)

There is a difference between doing evil and allowing evil. — Bob Ross

So if a child is on fire and I have a fire extinguisher, it's ok for me to withhold help? Just stand there and let her scream? That seems moral to you?

Like I noted before, it seems somewhat plausible but still has issues. — Bob Ross

Great, thank you for the synopsis. :up:
That helps jog my memory. William Lane Craig had proffered a strong version of option (1), which is what ignited a lot of these discussions last year.

I agree with your conclusion regarding Akin's view, "Somewhat plausible but still has issues."

I want to at least listen to those 18 minutes to refresh my memory, but I will set out the basic argument after I get around to that. — Leontiskos

Thank you: I will take a look! — Bob Ross

Okay, so let me try to sketch Fr. Stephen De Young's approach. Note that he gives lengthier treatments elsewhere and especially in his book God Is a Man of War: The Problem of Violence in the Old Testament.

The basic idea is that <The Amalekites were evil; therefore God wanted to wipe them out; and in order to do this he commanded Saul to put them under the ban>. Note that this intersects with your argument by disputing your premise that those who are being killed are innocent.

Why were the Amalekites evil? Because they engaged in human and child sacrifice, rape, cannibalism (and this was all related to their worship of demons, temple prostitution, etc.). There are lots of groups that God did not put under the ban, given that they were not irremediably evil in these ways. We see the contrast in texts like Deuteronomy 20:10-18 and Deuteronomy 21:10-14.

The Amalekite argument always finds its strongest point in the notion that innocent children were killed. But for now I will just leave it at a general level and see what you think. Before thinking about children, how does this argument sound? Do you think it is at least valid?

↪Gregory of the Beard of Ockham

It seems to me that for every level of perfect ordering of the creation, there might be a more perfect possible ordering, so that ordering the creation perfectly (i.e., most perfectly) would be impossible.

Can you elaborate on this? — Bob Ross

Sure, and I guess I had better do it now, before the discussion gets any thicker!

This idea occurred to me as a part of an argument that God cannot be a utilitarian:
Consider something with a small quantity of intrinsic goodness, maybe for the utilitarian the pleasure of smelling a rose, or for those of us with a more metaphysical idea of goodness, a hydrogen atom or a sugar molecule. Whatever it is, call it a "unit" of goodness. If one of these is good, two of them would be better, although not necessarily twice as good. And three would be better than two. This seems to go on without limit: for any N, N+1 units of goodness are better than N units. So there is no maximum amount of goodness that God could create, just as there is no largest integer. But utilitarianism requires us to cause the maximum amount of good possible. Therefore God cannot be a utilitarian.

I would say that there has to be a best ordering to creation because the thing that has a property the best is the one that has it 100% (even if there could be multiple beings with it 100%); goodness then is said to be the most of something when it is 100% good; the ordering of things that is best is relative to how well they and their relations resemble what is 100% good; and what is 100% good is univocal (viz., there can’t be two different ways to be 100% good just like there are not two different ways to be 100% soft, clear, circular, etc.).

I think you would be implying (by saying there are possibly two ‘most best’ orders of things relative to any given quality) that there is a way to be 100% of some property and not be 100% of some property (because there is a different way to be 100% of that very property). — Bob Ross

That is interesting. Now when you talk about a "best ordering to creation" or a best "ordering of things", are you talking about one thing or many things? Because while we might agree that for any one thing there is a way for it to be maximally good, and this conclusion might extend also to a fixed number N of things, I don't think it would extend also to the case where N is variable, and you could have more or fewer things.

But I don't want to get hung up on this, because we agree that God must be just, and that seems to be the main point relevant to this discussion.

The OP doesn't treat God as a 'magical alien': it treats God as God in the classical theistic sense---the neo-platonic sense. — Bob Ross

I wouldn't necessarily equate these things. I would need to read up on Plato, though, but perhaps Plato would perceive God/the divine as unchangeable? The God of the Old Testament is so multi-faceted and presented in so many different ways that I would see some tension here. As @Count Timothy von Icarus mentioned, God can be bargained with.

Firstly, even if that contradicts God’s nature, it is not a logical contradiction. Secondly, it does not incohere with God’s nature to allow evil to happen, like I noted before, because it is necessary for higher goods. — Bob Ross

"Auschwitz cannot be explained nor can it be visualized. The person who lived through it cannot explain it. The person who did not live through it will never understand it... There is no theological answer to Auschwitz, no philosophical answer — there is only the pain of the survivor.”

Elie Wiesel

Do you disagree then that there is no theological answer for Auschwitz? Is the btheological answer just pure abstracted faith, as in, there must be, but it is cloaked in impenetrable mystery? Wouldn't any attempt to describe the higher goodness of Auschwitz be an all new evil unto itself?

I'm not for abandoning God, but I've got to take theodicy problems seriously, and perhaps acknowledge a possibly imperfect world. But this view is covenantal and not Christian, and continues to wrestle with the angel so to speak. But how do you respond to Wiesel's position?

Well, my initial point was merely that reading the Scriptures in English translation, without additional context (from the Jewish or Christian tradition) is going to be problematic. God's intentions are not always obvious, nor are the ways in which texts were meant to be interpreted. Many Jewish, Christian, and Islamic "Neoplatonists" do write about these at length, but it's a quite broad area of commentary.

Just for example, Origen, the first Christian systematic theologian, one of the earlier Church Fathers (although also condemned long after his death, largely due to how others took his speculative theology), writes:

Unless those physical wars bore the figure of spiritual wars, I do not think the books of Jewish history would ever have been handed down by the apostles to the disciples of Christ, who came to teach peace, so that they could be read in the churches. For what good was that description of wars to those to whom Jesus says, “My peace I give to you; my peace I leave to you,” and to whom it is commanded and said through the Apostle, “Not avenging your own selves,” and, “Rather, you receive injury,” and, “You suffer offense”? In short, knowing that we do not have to wage physical wars, but that the struggles of the should have to be exerted against spiritual adversaries, the Apostle, just as a military leader, gives an order to the soldiers of Christ, says, “Put on the armor of God, so that you may be able to stand firm against the cunning devices of the Devil.” And in order for us to have examples of these spiritual wars from deeds of old, he wanted those narratives of exploits to be recited to us in the church, so that, if we are spiritual — hearing that “the Law is spiritual” — “we may compare spiritual things with spiritual” in the things we hear. (Homily 15)

Or consider Saint Maximus in the Hundred Texts on Theology:

53. Saul is the natural law originally established by the Lord to rule over nature. But Saul was disobedient: he spared Agag, king of Amalek [cf. 1 Sam 15.8-16, 13], that is, the body, and slipped downward into the sphere of the passions. He was therefore deposed so that David might take over Israel. David is the law of the Spirit — the law engendering that peace which so excellently builds for God the temple of contemplation.

54. Samuel signifies obedience to God. So long as the principle of obedience exercises its priestlike office within us, even though Saul spares Agag — that is, the earthly will — yet that principle in its zeal will put him to death [cf. 1 Sam 15. 33]: it strikes the sin-incited intellect and puts it to shame for having transgressed the divine ordinances. (from The Philokalia, translated by Palmer, Sherrard and Ware, Vol 2, p. 150)

Note however that these are not denials of the historical conflicts. All of creation is a revelation of God, as is history (although it is also the dramatic stage on which man's freedom and ruin plays out, and the cosmos is a fallen cosmos).

Origen seems to be arguing that given Christ as love and mercy that the Old Testament has to be primarily spiritual lessons and not conveying historical events. However, most of the events we have some reliable historical evidence that they at least happened to some extent.

Also, didn't the Apostles also take the OT to be giving historical facts alongside spiritual facts? It seems like a hard pill to swallow to reject the literality of the OT outright.

Also, how does this address the three examples I gave? Are you saying you would hold that the great flood did not happen but was an analogy for something else?

Do you disagree then that there is no theological answer for Auschwitz?

I am absolutely disagreeing. The quote you gave serves only as a poetic line (even if Elie meant it as more). It's an emotion response, and rightly so, to a horror.

God allowing human evil is necessary in order for us to have free will; and we need that to choose Him. This does allow, then, for humans to commit atrocities against each other.

Do you think it is better to love God because He makes you; or love God because you love God?

perhaps Plato would perceive God/the divine as unchangeable? 

As far as I know, for Plato God is the One which is unchangeable as a Platonic Form.

 As @Count Timothy von Icarus mentioned, God can be bargained with.

CC: @Count Timothy von Icarus

God cannot and is not bargained with in the sense you mean—not even if what Timothy was mentioning. God already knows what someone who ‘persuaded’ Him is going to say: that entails it was a part of His plan to say one thing initially and change His mind later.

I agree with that assessment so far. It's the killing of innocents that my OP is objecting to: I recognize that the Canaanites were doing horrible things and a war against them is justified. However, that doesn't justify purposely attempting to genocide the people in their entirety.