Polkinghorne borrows another notion, from process thought. In process thought, change is not regarded with the suspicion that it is in the Platonic thought of Augustine. Change might be for the better — as evolution seems to imply, with its tendency to greater complexity and the emergence of consciousness, and then the moral sensibilities of self-consciousness. Surely, such change is a good thing. What this implies, for Polkinghorne, is that God can’t know the future because the future is not fully determined by the present. There is genuine novelty in the universe.

But where does that leave God?