3. The Unchangeableness of God
Chapter Three
Prayer
You unchangeable one, whom nothing changes! You who are unchangeable in love, who, just for our benefit, do not let yourself change—would that we also might will our own well-being. By your unchangeableness let us be brought up in unconditional obedience to find rest and to rest in your unchangeableness! You are not like a human being. If he were to preserve only some unchangeableness, he must not have too much that can move him and not let himself be moved too much. You, on the other hand, are moved by everything—and in infinite love. Even the sparrow’s need, which we persons call unimportant and pass by unmoved, moves you. A human sigh, which we so often scarcely pay attention to, moves you, Infinite Love. But nothing changes you, you Unchangeable One! O you who in infinite love let yourself be moved, let this our prayer also move you, so that you may bless it. In this way, the prayer changes the one who prays in accordance with your unchanging will, you unchanging one!
James 1:17–21
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. Of his own will, he gave birth to us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures. Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every person be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath: for the wrath of man does not work the righteousness of God. Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.
My listener, you have heard the text read. Now, how natural to think of the opposite: the temporal, the changeableness of earthly things, and the changeableness of human beings! How depressing, how tiring, that everything is corruptibility, that human beings are changeableness—you, my listener, and I! How sad that the change is so often for the worse! What poor human comfort, and yet a comfort that there is still one change among the changeable: it has an end!
However, if we want to talk like this, especially in this gloomy mood—therefore not like when there is earnest talk about corruptibility, about “human inconstancy”—then we not only would not stick to the text. No, we would forsake it—indeed, we would change it. For in the text the opposite is talked about: God’s unchangeableness. The text is sheer delight and joy. As from the peak of the mountain, where silence dwells, so is the apostle’s language lifted up over all the changeableness of earthly life. He talks about God’s unchangeableness, not about something else. About a “Father of lights,” who dwells up there, where no changeableness reaches, not even the shadow of it. About “good and perfect gifts,” which come down from above, from this Father, who, as Father “of lights” or as the light’s Father, infinitely knows how to make sure that what comes from him truly is considered good and perfect as well, and as “Father” wants nothing else, thinks of nothing other, than to send good and perfect gifts without change. And therefore, my beloved brethren, let each person be “swift to hear,” that is, not to listen to loose and fast talk but in accordance with what is above, for nothing but good news is ever heard from there. “Slow to speak,” for the chatter we persons take part in, especially in relation to the here and now, can only most often serve to make the good and perfect gifts less good and less perfect. “Slow to wrath,” that we do not become angry when the gifts do not seem good and perfect to us and, by our own guilt, effect the corruption of the good and perfect things that were provided for our well-being—that is what a person’s anger can do, and “the wrath of man does not work the righteousness of God.” “Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness”—just as one cleans and decorates one’s house and sits dressed up, festively awaiting the visit, so we are to receive the good and perfect gifts in this way. “And receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.” With meekness! In truth, if it were not the apostle who was speaking, and if we did not immediately comply with the command “to be slow to speak, slow to wrath,” we might well say that it was an odd way of talking. Are we, then, so foolish that we need to be admonished to meekness in relation to the one who only wants our well-being?
Indeed, it is almost mocking us to use the word “meekness” in this way. See, if one wanted to hurt me unjustly, and another standing by said admonishingly, “Submit to it with meekness,” this is straight talk. But think of the friendliest being, love itself, who has picked out a gift intended for me, and the gift is good and perfect, yes, like love itself. He comes and wants to bestow this gift upon me—then another is standing by, and he says to me admonishingly: now let me see you submit to it with meekness. And yet, this is how it is with human beings. A pagan, and a mere human being, that simple wise man from antiquity, complains about having often experienced that, when he would deprive a person of one or another folly in order to impart better knowledge to him—therefore in order to do good for him—the other person could then become so angry that he would like to bite him, as the simple one jokingly says in earnest.
Alas, and what has God not had to experience in these 6,000 years, what does he not experience every day from morning till night with every last one of these millions of people. We sometimes become most angry when he wants to do the most good for us. Indeed, if we human beings truly knew our own good and, in the deepest sense, truly willed our own good, no admonition to meekness would be needed in this situation. But we human beings (who has not experienced this personally!) are still like children in relation to God. And therefore the admonition about meekness is needed in relation to receiving what is good and perfect—so convinced is the apostle that only good and perfect gifts come down from him, the eternally unchangeable one.
Such different points of view! The merely human one (what, indeed, paganism shows) talks less about God and has a prevailing tendency to only want to talk sadly about the changeableness of human things; the apostle simply and solely wants to talk about God’s unchangeableness. This is the way it is with the apostle. For him, the thought of God’s unchangeableness is simply and solely sheer consolation, peace, joy, blessedness. And, to be sure, this is also eternally true. But let us not forget: the fact that it is like this for the apostle lies in the fact that the apostle is the apostle—that he already long since abandoned himself to God’s unchangeableness in unconditioned obedience, that he did not stand at the beginning but at the end of the way instead, the narrow but also the good way that he, forsaking everything, had chosen and, unchanged, followed without looking back, hastening toward eternity with stronger and stronger movement. In contrast, we who are still only beginners under instruction, with us God’s unchangeableness must also have another side to be seen, and, if we forget this, we easily run the risk of taking the apostle’s sublimity in vain.
Hence, if possible both in terror and in reassurance, we will talk about you, you unchangeable one, or about your unchangeableness.
God is unchangeable. Almighty, he created this visible world—and made himself invisible. He donned the visible world like a piece of clothing; he changes it like one switches a piece of clothing—himself unchanged. So it is in the sensory world. In the world’s course of events, he is present everywhere in every moment. In a truer sense than the most vigilant human justice is said to be in all places, he is—never seen by any mortal—omnipresent, present everywhere, by the least and by the greatest, by what only figuratively can be called an event and by what is the extraordinary event, when a sparrow dies and when the savior of the human race is born. In his almighty hand, he holds all actuality as possibility at every moment, has everything in preparedness at every moment, changes everything in an instant—the opinions of human beings, judgments, human sovereignty and mediocrity. He changes everything—himself unchanged. When everything is apparent unchangingness (for it is only apparent that the external is unchanged for a certain time; it is always being changed), he remains just as unchanged amid the upheaval of everything; no variableness touches him, not even the shadow of turning. He is, in unchanged brightness, the Father of lights, eternally unchanged. In unchanged brightness—yes, it is just for that reason that he is unchanged, because he is sheer brightness, a brightness that has no darkness in it and that no darkness can come near. It is not so with persons like us. We are not brightness in this fashion, and just for that reason we are changeable: sometimes a thing becomes clearer in us, and sometimes a thing is darkened, and we are changed. Now it alternates around us, and the shadow of turning slides changingly over us. Now a changing light falls over us from the outside world, while, in all of this, we ourselves are changed within ourselves again. But God is unchangeable.
This thought is terrifying, sheer fear and trembling. In general, this is perhaps less emphasized. One complains about the variability of humanity, of everything temporal, but God is unchangeable. “That is the consolation, sheer consolation,” even carelessness says, “Yes, God is certainly unchangeable.”
But first and foremost, are you, too, in agreement with God? Are you considering this with proper earnestness? Are you sincerely striving to understand—and that a person is to strive after this is God’s eternally unchanging will for you, as for every person—are you sincerely striving to understand what God’s will for you can be? Or do you live in such a way that this has not occurred to you? So, how terrible that he is the eternally unchangeable one! For one day, sooner or later, you still have to collide with this unchangeable will, which, because it willed your well-being, willed that you would consider this matter—this unchanging will that must therefore crush you, if you collide with it in any other way.
Next, you who are still in agreement with God, are you also in good agreement with him? Is your will—is it, and unconditionally, his will? Are your wishes, each wish of yours, his command? Are your thoughts, the first and the last, his thoughts? If not, how terrible that God is unchangeable, eternally, eternally unchangeable! How terrible just to be in disagreement with a person! Yet perhaps you are the stronger and say about the other: “Yes, well, he is sure to change.” But, now, what if he is the stronger? Perhaps you still think that you could hold out longer. But, now, what if it is a whole era? Yet perhaps you say: “70 years is surely no eternity.” But the eternally unchangeable one—what if you were in a disagreement with him? Indeed, it is an eternity. How terrible!
Imagine a wanderer. He has come to a stop at the foot of an immense, an insurmountable mountain. It is this he…no, he shall not cross, but it is this he wants to cross, for his wishes, his longings, his demands, his soul—which has an easier kind of passage—is already over on the other side, and what is missing is just that he follow after. Imagine he became 70 years old, but the mountain stands unchanged, insurmountable. Let him remain a period of 70 years more, but the mountain stands unchanged before him in the path, unchanged, insurmountable. So, during all this, he is perhaps changed. He dies to his longings, his wishes, his demands. He scarcely knows himself anymore. Now, in this way, a later generation meets him sitting, changed, at the foot of the mountain, which stands unchanged, insurmountable. Let it be 1,000 years since. He, the changed one, is long since dead. Only a legend is told about him; it is the only thing that remains—yes, and then the mountain, which stands unchanged, insurmountable. And now the eternally unchanged one, for whom 1,000 years is like a day. Alas, and even this has said too much. They are for him like an instant; yes, strictly speaking, they are for him like they were not for him. If you, even in the slightest, want to go another way than he wants you to: terrible!
True enough, if your will, if my will, if the will of these thousands and thousands is not exactly in complete agreement with God’s will, things obviously go on the best they can out there in the bustle of the so-called real world. After all, God really acts as if nothing has happened. If anything, it is likely that if there were a righteous person—if there were such a one!—who considered this world, a world that lies in evil as Scripture says, he would have to become disheartened over the fact that God acts as if nothing has happened. But do you therefore believe that God has changed? Or is the fact that he acts as if nothing has happened less terrible when it is nevertheless certain that he is eternally unchangeable? It does not seem like that to me. Consider this, however, and then tell which is the most terrible. Either this: the infinitely strong one who, tired of letting himself be mocked, rises up in his power and crushes the recalcitrant—it is terrible, and it is even represented in this way, when it is told that God does not let himself be mocked, and there is reference to the times when his punitive judgment devastatingly overran the generation. But is that actually the most terrible? Is this not even more terrible: the infinitely strong one, who—eternally unchangeable!—sits entirely still and watches without a change of expression, almost like he did not exist. But at the same time, as the righteous person is certainly bound to lament, untruth prospers, has power. Violence and injustice prevail and yet in such a way that even a better person can be tempted to consider having to use something of the same measures, if there is to be hope of doing anything for the good. Thus it is as if he is derided—he, the infinitely strong one, the eternally unchangeable one, who really neither lets himself be mocked nor changed. Is this not the most terrible?
For why do you think that he is so quiet? Because he is conscious that he is eternally unchangeable. One who was not eternally sure of oneself—sure that he is the unchangeable—he himself could not keep calm in this way; he would spring up in his power. But only the eternally unchangeable one can sit so still. He takes his time; that he can do as well. He has eternity, and he is eternally unchangeable. He takes his time; that he does on purpose. Then comes eternity’s reckoning, where nothing is forgotten, not a single abusive word that was said, and eternally he is unchangeable. However, it can also be merciful that he thus gives time—time for repentance and improvement. But how terrible if this time is not used in this way, for then the iniquity and the irresponsibility in us would instead wish that he was immediately at hand with punishment, rather than that he give time like this, act like nothing, and yet be eternally unchangeable.
Ask one who educates children (and, after all, we are all more or less children in relation to God!), ask one who has had to do with erring persons (and, after all, each one of us has been in error at least once, for a longer or shorter time, at greater or lesser intervals), and you will hear that he will verify that it is a great help to irresponsibility—or, rather, in order to prevent irresponsibility (and who dares claim to be entirely free of irresponsibility!)—that the hardship of punishment come the very instant after the violation, if possible. Thus the memory of the irresponsible one is habituated to remember the punishment simultaneously with the guilt.
Yes, if it were the case that straying and punishment stood in relation to one another like this—that one pressed on a spring and at the very instant one seized the forbidden pleasure or went astray punishment immediately followed, just as with a double-barreled gun—I believe that irresponsibility would be on guard. But the longer the time between guilt and punishment (which, understood in truth, expresses the measure of the case’s seriousness), the more tempting for irresponsibility, as if the whole thing could perhaps be forgotten or justice itself could perhaps change and at that time acquire entirely different concepts or as if it would, in the end, at least be so long since it happened that it would be impossible to depict the matter unchanged. Then irresponsibility changes and not for the better; then irresponsibility becomes secure. And when such irresponsibility has become secure, then it ventures more, and so it goes year after year—the punishment fails to come, and forgetfulness sets in, and again punishment fails to come, but new sins do not fail to come, and the old sins have now become more vicious. And then it is over; then death closes—and to all this (it was only irresponsibility!) there was an eternally unchangeable witness. Was that also irresponsibility? An eternally unchangeable one, and it is with him that you will have to make an accounting. In the moment when temporality’s hand—the minute hand—indicated 70 years, and the person died, in that time eternity’s hand had scarcely moved a trifle. To that degree is everything present for eternity and for him, the unchangeable one!
And therefore, no matter who you are, remember what I say to myself—that nothing is significant for God and nothing insignificant, that in one sense the significant is insignificant for him, in another sense even the least insignificance is something infinitely significant. If your will, then, is not in keeping with his, consider that you will never slip away from him. Thank him if he—by mildness or by strictness—teaches you to bring your will into agreement with his. How terrible if he acts as if nothing has happened, how terrible if it could come so far with a person that he boasts that God either does not exist or that he has changed or even simply that he is too great to notice what we call trivialities. For he both exists, and he is eternally unchangeable, and his infinite greatness is precisely that he sees even the least thing, remembers even the least thing—yes, and if you do not will as he wills, he remembers it unchanged for an eternity!
For that reason, there is sheer fear and trembling for us irresponsible and inconstant persons in this thought about God’s unchangeableness. Oh, consider it well! Whether or not he acts as if nothing has happened, he is eternally unchangeable. Consider it well: he is eternally unchangeable if, as it is said, you have something outstanding with him. He is unchangeable. Perhaps you have promised him something, have committed yourself by a sacred vow…but in the course of time you have changed. Now you seldom think about God (as an older person, have you perhaps got more important things to think about?) or perhaps you think differently about God—that he does not care about the trivialities of your life, that such faith is childishness. In any case, you have forgotten in this way what you promised him, then after that forgotten that you promised anything, and then finally forgotten, forgotten—yes, forgotten that he forgets nothing, he the eternally unchangeable one. You have forgotten that it is just the upside-down childishness of age to think that something is insignificant for God and that God forgets anything—he the eternally unchangeable one!
In the relationship between one person and another, so often there is complaint about changefulness. The one complains about the other—that he has changed. But, at times, even in the relationship between one person and another, the one’s unchangingness can be like a plague. Perhaps one has talked to another person about himself. Perhaps it was somewhat childish, forgivable talk that he conveyed. But perhaps the matter was also more serious: it tempted the poor, vain heart to talk in high tones about its enthusiasm, its emotional stability, its will in this world. The other then listened calmly. He did not even smile or prevent him from talking. He let him talk. He listened. He was silent. He only promised what was demanded—not to forget the matter. Then time passed, and the first person had long since forgotten all this; however, the other had not forgotten it. Indeed, let us consider something much stranger. He had let himself be moved by the thoughts that the first person had talked about and, alas, almost surrendered in a moody moment. He had, with honest efforts, shaped his life in relation to these thoughts. He who only too clearly demonstrated that he remembered to the last what was said in that moment—what a plague to the unchangingness of his memory!
And now the eternally unchangeable one—and this human heart! Oh, this human heart, what do you not hide in your mysterious enclosure, unbeknownst to others (that would not be so bad) but sometimes almost unbeknownst to the person himself! Indeed, it is almost, as soon as a person has become only some years older, it is almost like a burial plot, this human heart! There they lie buried, buried in oblivion—promises, intentions, resolutions, entire plans and fragments of plans and God knows what. Yes, we human beings talk in this way, for we human beings seldom think about what we are saying. We say: God knows what is there. And we say that half carelessly, half tired of life—and then it is so frightfully true that God knows what. He knows, down to the least thing, what you have forgotten. He knows what has changed for your memory; he knows it unchanged. He does not even remember it as if it were really something past; no, he knows it as if it were today, and he knows if, in relation to some of these wishes, intentions, resolutions, something was said to him, so to speak—and he is eternally unchanged and eternally unchangeable. Oh, another person’s memory can be a burden to a person—now, it is still never entirely reliable, and in any case it surely cannot be eternal. After all, I will become free from this other person and his memory. But an omniscient one, and an eternally unchangeable memory from which you do not then escape, least of all in eternity—frightful! No, everything is for him—eternally unchangeable—eternally present, present in eternal equality. No changing shadow changes him, neither of morning nor of evening, neither of youth nor of old age, neither of forgetfulness nor of excuse. No, for him, there is no shadow. We are, as it is said, shadows; he is eternal brightness in his eternal unchangeableness. We are shadows that hurry away—my soul, do look out, for whether you want to or do not want to, you are hurrying to eternity, to him, and he is eternal brightness! Therefore he does not only hold a reckoning, but he is the reckoning. It is said that we persons are to make a reckoning, as if there were perhaps a long time to it, and so perhaps an overwhelming mass of details in order to get the reckoning brought about. O my soul, it is made every moment, for his unchangeable brightness is the reckoning, completely ready down to the last thing and preserved by him, the eternally unchangeable one, who has forgotten nothing of what I have forgotten. Neither does he remember something other than what was really real, as I do.
Thus there is sheer fear and trembling in this thought about God’s unchangeableness. It is almost as if it were far, far beyond a human being’s powers to have to do with such an unchangeableness. Yes, it is as if this thought must steer a person into anxiety and unrest to the point of despair.
But then it is also the case that there is reassurance and blessedness in this thought. It is really so that when you, tired of all this human, all this temporal and earthly changeableness and vicissitude, tired of your own inconstancy, could wish for a place where you could rest your weary head, your weary thoughts, your weary mind, in order to rest and to have a good rest—oh, in God’s unchangeableness there is rest! Therefore, when you let his unchangeableness serve you—as he wants it to—for your good, for your eternal good, when you let yourself be brought up so that your self-will (and it has come more from your own changeableness than from without) dies away, the sooner the better—it does not help you; you are either with the good or with the bad. Consider the vanity in wanting to be at odds with an eternal unchangeableness. Be like the child when it profoundly senses that, over against itself, it has a will where it only helps one to obey. When you let yourself be brought up by his unchangeableness so that you forsake inconstancy and changeableness and caprice and willfulness, then you rest ever more confidently and more and more blessedly in this unchangeableness of God.
That the thought about God’s unchangeableness is blessed—yes, who doubts that? But just take care that you grow in this way so that, blessedly, you can rest in this unchangeableness! O, such a person speaks like one who has a happy home: “My home has been made eternally secure; I rest in God’s unchangeableness.” No one can disturb this rest but you yourself. If you could become entirely obedient in unchanged obedience, then—with the same necessity as a heavy body sinks into the earth, or with the same necessity as that which is light rises toward the sky—you would freely rest in God in every moment.
And, so, let everything else change, as it does. If you find your activity on a great stage, you will experience the changeableness of everything on a great scale. Yet, on a lesser stage, on the least one, you will really experience the same thing, perhaps just as painfully. You will experience how persons change, how you yourself change. At times it will even seem as if God changes, which is part of the upbringing. About this, about the changeableness of everything, an older person will be better able to talk than I, while what I could say, perhaps, could seem new to the very young. Still, we will not develop this further but let life’s manifoldness unfold for each person as it is determined for him, so that he can come to experience what all others have experienced before him. At times the change will be such that you are reminded of the saying: “Change is pleasing”—yes, indescribably! There will also come times when you yourself invent a saying that language has suppressed, and you say: “Change is not pleasing—how could I even say change is pleasing?” When that happens, you will be particularly led (what in the first case you certainly will not forget either) to seek him, the unchangeable one.
My listener! This hour, and the discourse, are now soon past. If you yourself do not want it otherwise, this hour, and the discourse, soon will be forgotten too. And if you yourself do not want it otherwise, soon the thought about God’s unchangeableness will be forgotten in changeableness too. Still, in this, he is surely not to blame, he the unchangeable one! But if you do not make yourself guilty of forgetting it, you will be supported by this thought for your lifetime, for an eternity.
Imagine a solitary person in the desert. Nearly burnt by the sun’s heat, languishing, he finds a spring. O delicious coolness! “God be praised,” he says, “now I am provided for”—and, after all, he found only a spring. How must the person who found God talk! And yet, he must also say, “God be praised. I found God! God be praised, now am I provided for. Your faithful coolness, O beloved spring, is not conquered by change. In winter’s cold, if it were to reach here, you do not become colder but retain precisely the same coolness. The water of a spring does not freeze! In summer’s midday fire, you retain precisely your unchanged coolness. The water of a spring is not lukewarm!” And there is nothing untrue in what he says (he who, in my opinion, did not choose some thankless subject for a eulogy, a spring, what everyone better understands the better one knows the meaning of desert and solitude); there is no untrue exaggeration in his eulogy. In the meantime, his life took an entirely different turn than he had thought. He once strayed away, then was tugged out into the wide world. Many years later he turned back. His first thought was the spring. It was not there; it was dried up. He stood silent for a moment in sorrow. Then he pulled himself together and said: “No, I still do not take back one word of what I said in your praise; it was all true. And if I praised your delicious coolness while you were there, O beloved spring, then let me also praise it now that you have vanished, so that it may be true that there is unchangingness in a human being’s breast. Nor can I say that you deceived me. No, had I found you, I am convinced your coolness would be unchanged—and more you had not promised.”
But you, O God, you unchangeable one, you are always to be found unchanged and let yourself always be found unchanged. Neither in life nor death does anyone travel so far away that you are not to be found, that you are not there. Indeed, you are everywhere. No springs on earth are like this; springs are only in particular places. And besides—what overwhelming security!—you do not remain in place like a spring. You travel with a person. Ah, and no one goes so far astray that he cannot make it back to you, you who are not only like a spring that lets itself be found—what a poor description of your nature!—you who are like a spring that even seeks the thirsty, the lost—something no one has ever heard about any spring. Thus you are always unchanged and to be found everywhere. And whenever a person comes to you, at whatever age, at whatever time of day, in whatever condition: if he comes sincerely, he always finds (like the spring’s unchanged coolness) your love equally warm, you unchangeable one! Amen.