God is Unchanging/Unaffected

God is Unchangeable

Doctrine

Divine Simplicity – All attributes are linked together and cannot be separated; that is, God is not the result of building blocks. Therefore, it makes sense that one would follow after the other.

Last time we studied God’s infinity; this has obvious implications for God’s immutability. Herman Bavinck writes, “Every change is foreign to God. In him there is no change in time, for he is eternal, nor in location, for he is omnipresent; nor in essence; for he is a pure being.”

Scriptures often refer to God’s unchangeable nature. ()

Many of these passages refers to God’s ethic immutability, that is, in relation to the covenants God has made. If God would ever change his mind we never be, nor could we ever be, sure of his promises.

Again, Divine Simplicity demands a consistency in God’s nature. His eternality refers to the duration of the state of God’s existence and his immutability refers to the state itself. That is, so long as God is eternal he remains unchangeable. Therefore, not only does God not change, in fact, he cannot.

What comfort does this bring to us? Unchangeable love towards us, unchanging in his holiness, his promises, his blessings…

Again, if all attributes are connected to one another, then, what implications does God’s unchangeable state have for his knowledge. Like last week, we said that he knows all things at once.

Puritan Vincent Thomas characterized God’s immutability in this way.

1. God is unchangeable in nature and essence ()

2. God is unchangeable in counsel and purpose (

3. God is unchangeable in love. (Js. 1:17)

It is indeed a great comfort –

What about those passages that say God repents?

Reformed Theologians make a distinction between God repenting ‘properly’ and ‘relatively.’ If properly then God has committed sin. If relatively it is in accommodation to mankind in showing how much God hates sin. Therefore, we are driven to see our own imperfections and God’s perfections.

Unchangeable Changed

Jesus became mutable (human nature) so we might enter a state of immutability.

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Priesthood is forever: 5:6; 6:20

Unchangeable love.

Application

We enter a type of immutability, how? Like those angels that can no longer fall from a state of grace, we are kept by God’s power for salvation.

When does this state begin? It begins now. . How does it now begin? It is because it is based in God’s immutability. He loved us before we first loved him. God set his affection upon us and thus, faith is not when God begins to love us, but rather Christ removes the obstacles to that love.

God’s love is everlasting –

Bavinck again, “God does not simply call himself ‘the one who is’ and offer no explanation of his aseity, but states expressly what and how he is. Then how and what will he be? That is not something one can say in a word or describe in an additional phrase, but he will be what he will be. That sums up everything. This addition is still general and indefinite, but for that reason also rich and full of deep meaning…He will be everything to and for his people. It is not a new and strange God who comes to them by Moses, but the God of the fathers, the Unchangeable One, the Faithful One, the eternally self-consistent One, who never leaves or forsakes his people. He is unchangeable in his grace, in his love, in his assistance, who will be what he is because he is always himself.”

Impassibility

If we are to understand what it means for God to be impassible, it is best to first grasp what it would mean for God to be passible. Consider three characteristics from theologian Thomas Weinandy: For God to be “passible” then, means that he is capable of being acted upon from without and that such actions bring about emotional changes of state within him. Moreover, for God to be passible means that he is capable of freely changing his inner emotional state in response to and interaction with the changing human condition and world order.

Last, passibility implies that God’s changing emotional states involve “feelings” that are analogous to human feelings. God experiences inner emotional changes of state, either of comfort or discomfort, whether freely from within or by being acted upon from without.

By contrast, what does it mean for God to be impassible? “God is impassible in the sense that he cannot experience emotional changes of state due to his relationship to and interaction with human beings and the created order.” Or think of it this way: “God is impassible in that he does not undergo successive and fluctuating emotional states (explain); nor can the created order alter him in such a way so as to cause him to suffer any modification or loss.”

Does that mean, then, that God is lifeless, stoic, and apathetic? Not at all. God is, as we saw with aseity, the fullness of Being, absolute life in and of himself. He is (actually perfect, not potentially perfect). Like immutability, impassibility is a “negative” concept, meaning that its primary purpose is to describe what God is not.

To attribute impassibility to God is not to attribute something positive to him but to deny something detrimental to God—namely, change and with it suffering. Nor does impassibility mean that God is not loving and compassionate. Rather, it means that such virtues are not true of God as a result of being acted on by someone or something else. Nothing else and no one else caused such virtues to exist in God.

Though it may be counterintuitive, impassibility actually protects other attributes like love, because it guarantees that his love will not change or fluctuate. Impassibility also ensures that his love needs no activation, nor has any potential, as if his perfections need to become something more than they are already. In short, if God is not impassible, then he cannot be as personal, loving, and compassionate as the Bible says he is. Period.

What are we to make of this popular cultural commitment to a suffering God? (Barrett’s analogy of fireman)

Let’s be honest, in that moment we do not want someone who changes emotionally or suffers emotional change. We desperately need someone who is impassible; only he or she is able to save others from that burning house. That fireman need not experience all the suffering by others around him to know exactly what needs to be done.

Similarly, we do not really want a God who suffers, despite what our first instinct might say. Such a God may be like us, but he cannot help us, let alone redeem us from the evil of this world. If God is to act in a “compassionate” way—rescuing lost sinners—we need him to “remain impassible, unconquered by suffering.”

We need the type of God Augustine prayed to: “You, Lord God, lover of souls, show a compassion far purer and freer of mixed motives than ours; for no suffering injures you.”

But doesn’t the Bible use emotional language to refer to God, suggesting change? Yes, it certainly does. And for good reason too. God has accommodated himself to us to such a degree that he has chosen to use our human language to make himself known. As John Calvin liked to say, God lisps to us, like a parent or nurse would, using baby talk to speak to a child. “Such forms of speaking do not so much express clearly what God is like as accommodate the knowledge of him to our slight capacity. To do this he must descend far beneath his loftiness.”

The Puritan James Ussher makes a similar point when he says, “Almighty God speaks in a broken and imperfect language to us again, for our weakness and understanding’s sake.” Ussher then uses an illustration: “If the nurse should speak perfectly to the child, as she could to one of greater capacity, the child would not understand her.” Now imagine if God did just that: “If God should speak unto us as he could, according to his own nature,” then we would never be “able to understand him, nor conceive his meaning.”

But Didn’t Jesus Suffer? If God is impassible, and Jesus is the Son of God, then how can God remain impassible when Jesus suffers and dies on the cross?

This is what humankind is crying out to hear, not that God experiences, in a divine manner, our anguish and suffering in the midst of a sinful and depraved world, but that he actually experienced and knew first hand, as one of us—as a man—human anguish and suffering within a sinful and depraved world.

As counterintuitive as it may seem, if Christ suffers in his deity at the cross—or the Father suffers with him as he looks on—then we have actually excluded the Son from suffering for us. As one author states, “Having locked suffering within God’s divine nature,” we have “locked God out of human suffering.” If the Son of God is going to act on our behalf as our suffering servant, then it is critical that we honor his suffering as truly human.

A passible God would leave us in a state of anxiety, unsure whether he will remain constant in who he is and what he says. His wrath would not be just, because his retribution is potentially uncontrollable. His love would not be steadfast, as the Psalms repeatedly say it is, for a passible love guarantees no certainty of devotion.

At first, it might feel comforting to hear someone say, “You are suffering? God suffers with you.” But any immediate comfort gained quickly vanishes when we realize that such a God needs just as much help as we do. A suffering God is a God we start to feel sorry for, not a God we seek help from or take refuge in. What we need is a God who does not suffer, a God who is our rock and fortress. Only that kind of God is then able to help those who do suffer; only that kind of God is free to relieve the suffering of others.