The Changes in Jesus’s Plans: How Hybridity Reveals and Revels in a Developmental View of Jesus

The ancient philosopher, Heraclitus, known for the notion that the element of change is central to the workings of the universe, said, “You cannot step into the same river twice.”1 Change can be evaluated both positively and negatively, but what can be said in its favor is that where there is change, there surely is life. Conversely, an entity that does not change can be said to be fossilized or, put more starkly, dead. Still in the same vein, the nineteenth-century English convert to Catholicism, John Henry Newman declared, “To live is to change and to be perfect is to have changed often.”2 He said this, no doubt, reflecting on his own personal life journey in which he changed from being vehemently anti-Catholic to being sympathetic to it and finally embracing the faith he once resisted fiercely.