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Only a God who remains eternally and essentially the same can have a counsel that stands for ever (Isa 46:10) and a covenant that is everlasting (Isa 55:3, Jer 32:40, Heb 13:20). The Protestant orthodox state three implications of this immutability: first God is changeless in essence, not liable to any conversion into another essence, to any alteration, to any change of place, not been “moved” or brought into being by another, i.e., God is unmoved means precisely that he is the first mover who imparts motion, which is to say existence to all that is; second, he is immutable in his attributes: his goodness cannot cease to be good, his holiness cannot cease to be holy, his omniscience cannot cease to know all things; and third, he is immutable in his decree, his purpose, his promises (Num 23:19; Mal 3:6–7). It is clear that divine immutability does not mean stasis or inactivity.
Whereas all change is an activity, not all activity is a change. God is eternally active, eternally and without alteration begetting and proceeding in the divine essence itself. Since the divine activity is constant and continuous it implies no change in God: it is an immutable activity.
Open theists assume that classical theism has simply chosen, on the basis of a preconceived and unbiblical doctrine, to read texts in which God is said to change or repent as “figurative.” The charge might hold if there were no texts in which God is said to be constant and changeless. But such is not the case. There is even Num 23:19, in which God is said (didactically so) not to repent.
Hence, the issue thus concerns the logical and theological priority of one set of statements over another: Do we read statements concerning divine repentance as dependent for their meaning upon logically prior statements concerning the absence of change in God, or ought we to read statements concerning the divine constancy as meaningful only when qualified by a doctrine of actual divine repentance?
The question appears quite radically in the light of Mal 3:6–7, which declares that God does not change and that God “will return” to his people when they return to him. Clearly, the return of God to his people is a sign of the changelessness or constancy of God toward those who keep his covenant: Israel, in breaking covenant, has experienced a loss of communion with God and will experience that communion again when she returns to covenant obedience. The text does not refer to a God whose presence is in fact everywhere somehow becoming absent and then subsequently returning. The “absence of God” is one of the ways in which Scripture refers to human alienation, without any hint of a doctrine that God changes location. Nor does the text refer to an ethical change in God: God’s “return” or repentance is predicated upon his changelessness.
Israel is not consumed and she is promised the experience of renewed communion on the basis of God’s ethical changelessness—“I the Lord do not change; therefore…” Indeed, the very nature of divine repentance of which the Scriptures speak is predicated upon God’s changeless purpose and promise, “I am God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless. And I will make my covenant between me and you.” There is a logical priority of ethical and intentional changelessness over the divine repentance. If this were not so, the divine repentance would be ethically meaningless and without relation to the divine purpose for Israel.
This logical priority of ethical immutability over references to divine repentance not only forcefully presses the conclusion that the change to which the repentance texts refer is in the creature—an interpretation that is not at all the result of a philosophical presupposition or a figurative reading, contra the open theist charge—it also raises the issue of the ground in God of this inalterable purpose. Ethical, intentional constancy, as noted above, must have an ontological basis. The constancy of the divine purpose, the consistency of the God who is what he is and will be what he will be, must also indicate a consistency, an immutability of the divine being. The continuity of purpose denoted by the divine repentance cannot be guaranteed by a God who becomes something that he was not. The issue is not so much whether Scripture declares ontological immutability, but that this concept is strongly implied.
Even if we set aside, briefly, the question of an ontological immutability, there remains the issue of the logical relationship of divine repentance to those statements of Scripture which imply a kind of immutability in divine knowledge: the knowledge of God is not a matter of “discovery.” When God is said to “know” it is not a matter of God discovering something which he did not already know; or, in a more technical theological way of stating the case, God’s knowledge is never in potency. Unless we admit this view of the divine knowledge, we will be left with Marcion’s incompetent God of the OT who, in Gen 3:9, really did not know where Adam was; who, in Gen 18:21, really had to “go down” to Sodom to find out for himself what went on there; and who—if we extrapolate such views to the entirety of Scripture—invented the incarnation as a hasty response to a fall that he did not foresee.
But if we take seriously the teaching that God knows our words even before they are on our tongues (Ps 139:4) and has ordained the incarnation itself, before the foundation of the world, then we must assume that he foreknows human actions. Divine repentance, then, cannot mean that God changes his mind contingent upon a human act of which he had no prior knowledge. In effect, divine repentance indicates a consistency of divine willing (and knowing) viewed as a change of relationship by a repentant creature. Divine repentance rests upon the consistency—the immutability—of the divine promises. That is precisely the result of the classical exegesis of the “repentance” passages, not on the basis of arbitrary dogmatic decision but rather on the ground of logically prior scriptural passages didactically indicating divine constancy. A God who repents as human beings repent not only falls short of immutability, he also falls short of omniscience.
But, in spite of the above, we still have not solved the exegetical problem. What remains is the question of incarnation as divine change, a question of an entirely different order than the simple issue of repentance. Here, we do not have or want to have any contrary texts: “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Open theism argues, literally, on the basis of this text, that “changing is something God can do.” In fact, Pinnock, using John 1:14, argued the underlying meaning of the incarnation to be “God can become something.” The question now is, can this text be read literally or does the literal reading of the text indicate a change in God?
The fathers of the church saw the problem and addressed it and so did the medieval scholastics. When the question was raised again in the seventeenth century by the Socinian opponents of traditional orthodoxy, the Protestant scholastics looked to the earlier literature and repeated the ancient answer: God did not “become” flesh in such a way as to cease to be anything other than God. The incarnation means no alteration of God’s purpose (it was ordained before the foundation of the world) and no alteration of the being of God. God remains God and yet, according to his eternal will, joins himself irrevocably to our humanity. But, the open theist will ask, is not this joining of natures, divine and human, indicative of a change in both? The church responded “No!” Jerome Zanchi (1516-1590) argued as follows:
Indeed, the church responded (in 451 AD at Chalcedon) to numerous errors regarding the Person of Our Lord, all said errors traceable to the confusing, mixing, dividing, or separating the two natures of the Person.
Open theists that challenge this view (i.e., God does not change)—which cannot be the result of an exegetical word-study of John 1:14—are relying upon post-Kantian metaphysics, specifically from Hegelian ontology of God becoming. Notice now, that whereas the issue is not exegetical in relation to the verb “became” in John 1:14, it is indeed exegetical in relation to the larger context of Scripture, where God is the one “with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17). It is only on the basis of an arbitrary philosophical decision in favor of a Hegelian ontology that the language of John 1:14 can be referred to a change in God; and, conversely, there is no necessary contradiction between the text of John 1:14 and the doctrine of an ontologically immutable God working a redemptive change in humanity by the assumption of (not the becoming of) flesh, in accordance with his eternal, immutable purpose. The incarnation was not a reaction on God’s part, not a bandage placed as an afterthought on the wounded creation, but the purpose of God in the very act of creation itself. Nor is the incarnation a sudden injection of redemptive power into a world otherwise left to its own devices—as it would indeed be if it implied a change in God.
AMR
Whereas all change is an activity, not all activity is a change. God is eternally active, eternally and without alteration begetting and proceeding in the divine essence itself. Since the divine activity is constant and continuous it implies no change in God: it is an immutable activity.
Open theists assume that classical theism has simply chosen, on the basis of a preconceived and unbiblical doctrine, to read texts in which God is said to change or repent as “figurative.” The charge might hold if there were no texts in which God is said to be constant and changeless. But such is not the case. There is even Num 23:19, in which God is said (didactically so) not to repent.
Hence, the issue thus concerns the logical and theological priority of one set of statements over another: Do we read statements concerning divine repentance as dependent for their meaning upon logically prior statements concerning the absence of change in God, or ought we to read statements concerning the divine constancy as meaningful only when qualified by a doctrine of actual divine repentance?
The question appears quite radically in the light of Mal 3:6–7, which declares that God does not change and that God “will return” to his people when they return to him. Clearly, the return of God to his people is a sign of the changelessness or constancy of God toward those who keep his covenant: Israel, in breaking covenant, has experienced a loss of communion with God and will experience that communion again when she returns to covenant obedience. The text does not refer to a God whose presence is in fact everywhere somehow becoming absent and then subsequently returning. The “absence of God” is one of the ways in which Scripture refers to human alienation, without any hint of a doctrine that God changes location. Nor does the text refer to an ethical change in God: God’s “return” or repentance is predicated upon his changelessness.
Israel is not consumed and she is promised the experience of renewed communion on the basis of God’s ethical changelessness—“I the Lord do not change; therefore…” Indeed, the very nature of divine repentance of which the Scriptures speak is predicated upon God’s changeless purpose and promise, “I am God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless. And I will make my covenant between me and you.” There is a logical priority of ethical and intentional changelessness over the divine repentance. If this were not so, the divine repentance would be ethically meaningless and without relation to the divine purpose for Israel.
This logical priority of ethical immutability over references to divine repentance not only forcefully presses the conclusion that the change to which the repentance texts refer is in the creature—an interpretation that is not at all the result of a philosophical presupposition or a figurative reading, contra the open theist charge—it also raises the issue of the ground in God of this inalterable purpose. Ethical, intentional constancy, as noted above, must have an ontological basis. The constancy of the divine purpose, the consistency of the God who is what he is and will be what he will be, must also indicate a consistency, an immutability of the divine being. The continuity of purpose denoted by the divine repentance cannot be guaranteed by a God who becomes something that he was not. The issue is not so much whether Scripture declares ontological immutability, but that this concept is strongly implied.
Even if we set aside, briefly, the question of an ontological immutability, there remains the issue of the logical relationship of divine repentance to those statements of Scripture which imply a kind of immutability in divine knowledge: the knowledge of God is not a matter of “discovery.” When God is said to “know” it is not a matter of God discovering something which he did not already know; or, in a more technical theological way of stating the case, God’s knowledge is never in potency. Unless we admit this view of the divine knowledge, we will be left with Marcion’s incompetent God of the OT who, in Gen 3:9, really did not know where Adam was; who, in Gen 18:21, really had to “go down” to Sodom to find out for himself what went on there; and who—if we extrapolate such views to the entirety of Scripture—invented the incarnation as a hasty response to a fall that he did not foresee.
But if we take seriously the teaching that God knows our words even before they are on our tongues (Ps 139:4) and has ordained the incarnation itself, before the foundation of the world, then we must assume that he foreknows human actions. Divine repentance, then, cannot mean that God changes his mind contingent upon a human act of which he had no prior knowledge. In effect, divine repentance indicates a consistency of divine willing (and knowing) viewed as a change of relationship by a repentant creature. Divine repentance rests upon the consistency—the immutability—of the divine promises. That is precisely the result of the classical exegesis of the “repentance” passages, not on the basis of arbitrary dogmatic decision but rather on the ground of logically prior scriptural passages didactically indicating divine constancy. A God who repents as human beings repent not only falls short of immutability, he also falls short of omniscience.
But, in spite of the above, we still have not solved the exegetical problem. What remains is the question of incarnation as divine change, a question of an entirely different order than the simple issue of repentance. Here, we do not have or want to have any contrary texts: “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Open theism argues, literally, on the basis of this text, that “changing is something God can do.” In fact, Pinnock, using John 1:14, argued the underlying meaning of the incarnation to be “God can become something.” The question now is, can this text be read literally or does the literal reading of the text indicate a change in God?
The fathers of the church saw the problem and addressed it and so did the medieval scholastics. When the question was raised again in the seventeenth century by the Socinian opponents of traditional orthodoxy, the Protestant scholastics looked to the earlier literature and repeated the ancient answer: God did not “become” flesh in such a way as to cease to be anything other than God. The incarnation means no alteration of God’s purpose (it was ordained before the foundation of the world) and no alteration of the being of God. God remains God and yet, according to his eternal will, joins himself irrevocably to our humanity. But, the open theist will ask, is not this joining of natures, divine and human, indicative of a change in both? The church responded “No!” Jerome Zanchi (1516-1590) argued as follows:
We believe moreover that the Son of God became man, not by any change of him into flesh or by a change in the flesh or by a confusion of the divine nature with the human, but by the sole assumption of the human nature into the unity of the said person; and, as Athanasius says, not by conversion of the divinity into flesh but by the assumption of the humanity into God; so that in no way did it dismiss that which it was, but assumed that which it was not.
Indeed, the church responded (in 451 AD at Chalcedon) to numerous errors regarding the Person of Our Lord, all said errors traceable to the confusing, mixing, dividing, or separating the two natures of the Person.
Open theists that challenge this view (i.e., God does not change)—which cannot be the result of an exegetical word-study of John 1:14—are relying upon post-Kantian metaphysics, specifically from Hegelian ontology of God becoming. Notice now, that whereas the issue is not exegetical in relation to the verb “became” in John 1:14, it is indeed exegetical in relation to the larger context of Scripture, where God is the one “with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17). It is only on the basis of an arbitrary philosophical decision in favor of a Hegelian ontology that the language of John 1:14 can be referred to a change in God; and, conversely, there is no necessary contradiction between the text of John 1:14 and the doctrine of an ontologically immutable God working a redemptive change in humanity by the assumption of (not the becoming of) flesh, in accordance with his eternal, immutable purpose. The incarnation was not a reaction on God’s part, not a bandage placed as an afterthought on the wounded creation, but the purpose of God in the very act of creation itself. Nor is the incarnation a sudden injection of redemptive power into a world otherwise left to its own devices—as it would indeed be if it implied a change in God.
AMR