Program / Course 8: God, Trinity, and Creation / Lesson 2.2
What you will learn
- Define divine immutability and separate it from the claims that God is inactive or unfeeling.
- Explain how the tradition reads biblical texts in which God seems to repent or change course.
- State the main arguments for immutability and the main objections.
- Describe the question of divine passibility, the suffering of God, and how the traditions answer it.
The big idea
Divine immutability is the teaching that God does not change in nature, character, purposes or perfection. God does not grow, decline or learn. This is not the same as saying that God is inactive or cold; the tradition holds that God acts and loves fully, and that the changes the Bible describes are changes in creatures or in God’s relation to them. Modern critics ask whether such a God can truly be involved with a changing world. Defenders reply that only an unchanging God can be a reliable refuge.
Key terms
- Immutability
- The attribute of not changing. The Latin root means unchangeable.
- Impassibility
- The teaching that God is not acted upon by outside forces and does not suffer change in the way creatures do. From a Latin word for incapable of suffering.
- Passibility
- The opposite view, that God can be affected by creatures and can suffer.
- Actus purus
- A Latin phrase meaning pure act. Aquinas’s description of God as fully actual with no unrealized potential.
- Anthropopathism
- Describing God as having human emotions, such as anger or regret, in order to express something true in human language.
- Relation
- A way in which one thing stands toward another. A change in relation can happen without change in the thing itself.
- Theopaschite
- From Greek for God suffering. Describes the phrase one of the Trinity suffered in the flesh, discussed in the sixth century.
- Kenosis
- A Greek word meaning emptying, from Philippians 2:7. Used for the Son’s self-giving in the Incarnation.
Background
Scripture says that God does not change. Malachi 3:6 has the Lord declare that he is the Lord and does not change. James 1:17 speaks of the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. Psalm 102:27 says of the Lord, thou art the same. At the same time, Scripture says God repented that he made man (Genesis 6:6), relented from the evil he had said he would do to Nineveh (Jonah 3:10) and grieved over Saul (1 Samuel 15:11). It also says God is not a man that he should repent (1 Samuel 15:29). All of these have to be read together.
The early church read the negative texts as central. The fathers argued against pagan myths of gods who change with passion and against the idea that the Son might be a changeable, lesser being. Arius taught that the Son was changeable, and Athanasius answered that a changeable Son could not be truly God (see the Arian lessons later in this course). So immutability was tied to the defense of Christ’s full divinity. Augustine and Aquinas then gave philosophical grounds: a perfect being has nothing to gain or lose.
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries many theologians challenged the doctrine. Writers such as Jurgen Moltmann, a German Reformed theologian, argued that the cross shows a God who suffers. Others, writing after the horrors of the twentieth century, found it hard to speak of a God who does not suffer with victims. Classical writers answered that the cross shows God’s love precisely because the one who suffers is the eternal Son in his human nature. The debate is active in all the major traditions.
Step-by-step explanation
Step 1: What the doctrine says
Immutability can be stated in several ways. In the broadest sense it means that God’s nature, character and promises do not change. In a stronger sense, found in Aquinas, it means that God has no change at all, not even a change of mind or of mood, because change requires going from not having something to having it, and God lacks nothing.
This stronger sense does not mean God is a statue. Aquinas calls God pure act, the opposite of inertness. God is not changeless because nothing happens in God but because everything God is, God is completely and always. A comparison sometimes used is that a perfectly steady flame does not need to grow brighter or dimmer to be fully alive.
Step 2: Why the tradition holds it
There are three main reasons. First, perfection: if God is perfect, any change would be to something better or worse, and neither is possible for a being already without defect. Second, reliability: the promises of God rest on God being the same yesterday and today. Hebrews 6:17 speaks of the immutability of his counsel, which is why believers have strong consolation. Third, the defense of Christ: the Nicene faith holds that the Son is of one substance with the Father and therefore shares this attribute.
A fourth reason is philosophical. If God changed in response to creatures, then creatures would cause something in God, and God would depend on them. That conflicts with God as the source of all. This reason draws on the argument for aseity and depends on the larger classical picture, which not all theologians accept.
Step 3: The texts that seem to say otherwise
The tradition has a standard way of reading the texts where God relents. Augustine, Aquinas and Calvin all hold that Scripture speaks in human terms because it is addressed to humans. When it says God repented, it describes how an event looks from the human side: the situation changed, and God acted differently toward it, though God’s eternal purpose, which included that response, did not change. Calvin said that God lisps to humans as a nurse does to a child (Institutes I.13.1).
Critics find this unconvincing. They argue that if the texts are all figurative, there is little left to show that God responds to prayer, and that the Old Testament’s picture of a God who is moved is a central feature of its revelation. Some open theists and process theologians take the texts at face value. Others, such as Terence Fretheim, a Lutheran scholar, argue that God is truly open to the future in relation to the world while still faithful in character. These readings are serious alternatives.
Step 4: Suffering and the cross
The hardest test is the cross. Orthodox, Catholic and most Protestant creeds say that the Son suffered in the flesh. The council of Chalcedon explained that the Son suffered in his human nature, not in his divine nature. In the sixth century the Second Council of Constantinople confirmed that one of the Trinity was crucified in the flesh. These statements try to say that God truly suffered on the cross without making the divine nature itself subject to change.
The traditions then divide. Most classical writers keep impassibility, saying that God’s love is complete and that God shares the suffering of creatures by the Incarnation. Others, including Moltmann and some Catholic and Orthodox thinkers, say that God’s love involves a real vulnerability. The subject is not settled, and the disagreement appears within each tradition as well as between them.
- Which biblical texts about God’s constancy matter most to me, and why?
- How do I read the texts where God relents? Literally, figuratively, or something between?
- Would a God who could be changed by me be more trustworthy or less?
- What do I need from God in suffering: someone who shares it, or someone who is steady above it?
- Can both be true, and if so how?
- Where do I confuse changelessness with lack of life?
Examples
A change in relation
A man walks past a tree. Before he walked, the tree was to his left. After, it is to his right. The tree did not change, but its relation to him did. The tradition says that when a person prays, God’s relation to that person can be different without any change in God’s nature.
Nineveh
God tells Nineveh through Jonah that the city will be overthrown, and the city repents. God spares it. Immutability readers say the warning was a conditional message meant to bring repentance, and that God’s constant character, merciful to those who turn, is what the story shows. Critics think the text describes a real change of plan.
The cross
At the crucifixion the Son of God dies as a man. The classical view holds that he suffers in his human nature and that this is the deepest expression of God’s love. A passibilist would add that the suffering also touches God as God.
Different perspectives
Catholic
Catholic teaching has held that God is immutable, and Vatican I lists this among the divine attributes. Catholic theologians today often distinguish God’s immutability from inertness, and some, like Hans Urs von Balthasar, speak of the drama of the cross within the life of the Trinity, while keeping that God does not change in nature.
Orthodox
Orthodox writers hold that God is unchanging and impassible in nature, but deny that this makes God indifferent. They stress that the Son truly suffered in the flesh, and the Eastern liturgy proclaims that the impassible one suffered for human beings. Some Orthodox theologians are warier than others of Western ways of stating the doctrine.
Protestant
The Reformed and Lutheran confessions teach divine immutability. Westminster speaks of God as immutable. In modern times Protestants are divided: many evangelicals defend the classical view, while others, following Moltmann, Karl Barth in a different form, or open theists, argue for God’s real involvement in time and suffering.
Process and open thought
Process theologians and open theists argue that the classical doctrine owes more to Greek philosophy than to the Bible. They hold that God is faithful in character but really responsive. Classical theists reply that they have mistaken the biblical language of relationship for a claim about God’s nature.
Jewish and secular scholars
Jewish thinkers such as Abraham Heschel wrote of the divine pathos, a God who is deeply moved by human affairs. Maimonides, by contrast, held strongly to divine immutability. Secular scholars note that the Bible itself contains both emphases and that interpreters have long disagreed about how to join them.
Why it matters
Whether God changes touches the most personal part of faith. People pray, grieve and hope on the basis of some view about whether God hears, cares and stays the same. A student who knows the classical doctrine, its reasons and its critics can hold their view with understanding. It also prepares the way for the doctrine of the Incarnation, where the question of how God can suffer is faced most directly.
Common misunderstandings
Misunderstanding: Immutability means God is static and uninvolved.
Correction: The classical tradition denies this. God is called pure act and living God. Immutability is meant to mean that God’s life is complete and steady, not that nothing happens.
Misunderstanding: The Bible never says God repents.
Correction: It does, in Genesis 6:6, Jonah 3:10 and elsewhere. The question is how to read these texts alongside others, such as Numbers 23:19 and 1 Samuel 15:29, which say God does not repent. Every tradition has to deal with both.
Misunderstanding: Impassibility means God does not care about suffering.
Correction: Classical theologians teach the opposite. They hold that God’s love is perfect, that the Son shares human suffering in the Incarnation, and that God is not indifferent. Whether the language of impassibility says this well is debated.
Misunderstanding: All modern theologians have given up immutability.
Correction: Many have not. There is a considerable revival of classical theism in Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant scholarship, alongside strong critics of it.
Knowledge check
What does divine immutability claim?
It claims that God does not change in nature, character, purposes or perfection. God does not grow, decline or learn. In its strongest form it says that God has no change of any kind because God lacks nothing. It is not meant to say that God is inactive or without love.
How does the classical tradition read texts in which God relents?
It reads them as Scripture speaking in human terms. The situation or the creature changed, and God responded to it, but God’s eternal purpose, which included that response, did not change. Calvin said God speaks as a nurse lisps to a child. Critics say this explains away real responsiveness.
Why was immutability tied to the defense of Christ’s divinity?
Arius taught that the Son was changeable and therefore a creature. Athanasius and the Nicene fathers argued that a changeable being could not be truly God, so the Son must share the Father’s unchanging nature. Immutability thus became part of the case for Nicene doctrine.
What is the dispute between impassibility and passibility?
Impassibility holds that God cannot be acted upon or suffer change in the divine nature, although the Son suffers in his human nature. Passibility holds that God’s love involves a real vulnerability and that God can suffer. Each view has defenders in all major traditions.
Think it through
- Which would be a greater comfort to you in grief, a God who is unchanging or a God who suffers with you? Can you have both?
- How would your reading of the story of Nineveh change under each approach?
- What does the creed’s statement that Christ suffered under Pontius Pilate tell you about God?
Independent assignment
Two sets of texts
In your own notebook, write about 450 words. List three biblical texts that say God does not change and three that say God relents or grieves. Then write two paragraphs: one explaining how a classical theist would read all six, and one explaining how an open theist would read them. End by noting where you find each reading strongest. Do not send this to anyone.
Further study
- Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae Read Part I, Question 9, on the immutability of God.
- Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation of the Word Notice how the Son’s divine nature and his suffering in the flesh are held together.
- John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion Read Book I, chapter 13, on how Scripture speaks of God in human terms.
- Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ Read selectively for a modern account of the cross and the question of God’s suffering.
- Leo I (Pope Leo the Great), Letter 28, the Tome of Leo See how the two natures of Christ are described, with suffering assigned to the humanity.
- Malachi 3:6 The Lord does not change.
- Genesis 6:6 The Lord repented.
- Jonah 3:10 God repented of the evil he had said he would do.
- Numbers 23:19 God is not a man that he should lie, or repent.