Hello y'all,
When we think of immutability and impassibility, we don’t find it in the Bible. Instead, we have to look to The Westminster Confession, made in 1646, which took the ideas of Augustine and Calvin and put them in a doctrinal statement. It’s the ideas in this statement that have influenced all of us in our attitudes and our beliefs.
Here is one part of it: “There is but one only living and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions, immutable . . . so as nothing is to him contingent or uncertain.
Because of this unbiblical creed, a theologian wrote this about God’s love: “Love, of course, is not bound up with sensitive passion and emotion in God, as it is in us. . . . Passions, since they necessarily entail a sensitive and therefore bodily nature, are per se imperfect and limited, and consequently they cannot be predicated except metaphorically of God. . . . we must deny these accompanying passions when we attribute love and joy to God.” [Benignus, Nature, Knowledge, and God, pp. 551,552.]
Bob Hill