Thesis.
SECTION V: ON THE IMMUTABILITY OF GOD
Thesis.
§ 150. God is immutable in Himself and in His nature. The immutability of God is proved: (I) From Scripture, both affirmatively—Exod. 3:[14]: “I am who I am”; Ps. 102:[27]: “You are the same”; Wisdom 7:27, of Wisdom:33 “Remaining in Herself, She renews all things”—and negatively—Mal. 3:6: “I am the Lord, and I do not change”; James 1:17: “In God there is no change nor variation of light and darkness, no turning of shadow.” (God, the supercelestial Sun, is distinguished from the visible and corporeal sun, which as it sets goes over to the opposite hemisphere and leaves the hemisphere that it has abandoned shadowed. Such shadowing, however, has no place in that eternal and unchangeable Light.)
(II) From reason. (1) Pure actuality [actus purus] neither accepts nor can accept any change, for that which is changed in some way must be in potential, because motion is the action of a being in potential to whatever extent it is of this sort. But God is pure actuality, and there is no passive potential in Him. Therefore.
(2) A rational nature can be changed in five ways. First, with respect to existence, such as if at some time it exists, at some time it does not exist. Second, with respect to place, if it is moved from one place to another. Third, with respect to accidents, if it is changed in quality or quantity. Fourth, with respect to understanding by the intellect, such as if one now considers true what he previously judged to be false. Fifth, with respect to the intent of the will, if one now decides to do something that he earlier had determined not to do. But God changes in none of these ways. Not in the first, because He is eternal and neither begins nor ever ceases to exist. Not in the second, because He is present everywhere and does not begin to exist anew in any one place. Not in the third, because no accident belongs to God because of the supreme simplicity of His essence. Not in the fourth, because He is omniscient and cannot be deceived in His knowledge. Not in the fifth, because He does not change His decrees, because He decides all things most wisely. Num. 23:19: “God is not like a man that He should lie, and a son of man that He should repent. He has said, and will He not establish it?” Job 33:14: “Because the Lord speaks in one, and in two He will not consider it.” Luther: “When God once decides something, He does not afterward reconsider it.”34 In the margin he adds: “As a man after doing something ponders, regrets, and plans a change.” Samuel says: “The Triumpher of Israel will not regret anything nor does He change anything” (1 Sam. 15:29).
§ 151. (III) The judgments of the fathers are added. Justin, Dial. cum Tryph., p. 279: “He who cannot be closed up in a place or in the entire world is not moved.” Justin again: “God continues to exist without change in His own perception and righteousness” (QQ. et resp. ad orth., q. 51, p. 328).
Theophilus of Antioch, Orat. 1. ad Autolyc., p. 245: “God is unchangeable.”
Proclus, Serm. de fide ad Armenos, p. 18: “The divinity continues to exist superior to alteration. The changeableness of nature as it occurs is passion, but that timeless and ever-same [nature] has unchangeableness as its property.”
Hilary, De Trinit., bk. 3: “I do not believe that God is subject to change. In the Eternal One there occurs no fault nor cleansing, no gain nor loss. Rather, what He is He always is, for it is specific to God, that what always is will be unable to have [something] in its nature at some time so that it is not.”
Augustine, introduction to De Trinit., bk. 4: “The essence of God has nothing changeable—not in eternity nor in truth nor in will.” De Trinit., bk. 5, c. 2: “That which is changed does not preserve its true being, and that which can be changed, even if it is not changed, can be what it was not. Therefore only that which not only is not changed but also which cannot be changed at all is said most truly to be. But God alone is unchangeable.” Ibid.: “All other substances have accidents by which a great or miniscule change occurs in them, but something like this cannot happen to God. Therefore only the substance or essence that is God is not subject to change.” (See also De civ. Dei, bk. 22, c. 1; bk. 9, c. 22; bk. 11, c. 4.)
The Damascene, De orth. fid., bk. 2, c. 3: “Everything that is created is also subject to change; only that which is not created is not subject to change.” And later: “All that has had a beginning also comes to an end by nature. But God alone is eternal or, rather, is beyond eternal.”
Arnobius, Adv. gentes, bk. 1, p. 22: “God is free from quality and quantity, without position, motion, and condition. About Him nothing can be said or expressed in the meaning of mortals’ words.” (See similar statements in Athanasius, vol. 1, De incar. Verbi, p. 480; De deitate Christi, p. 339; Contra Arianos, disp. 3, p. 193; Epist. ad Serap., p. 365; vol. 2, Dial. de Trinit., p. 155; Ambrose, on Genesis 4; Epist. ad Vercell. eccles., bk. 3, p. 249; De vocat. gentium, bk. 1, c. 3; bk. 2, last c.; De parad., c. 14; Isidore of Pelusium, bk. 1, epistle 241; Euthymius, on Psalm 32.)
In Philo’s works there is a short pamphlet that bears the title 
[That the Divinity Is Not Subject to Change]. In it he attacks viciously “the wickedness of those who are going to be the most cursed” (for that is what he calls them), who imagine that Moses attributes repentance, properly speaking, to God. “For (as he says) the greatest sacrilege occurs in supposing that the unchangeable is changed.”
Ramban (as he is called by abbreviation), that is, Rabbi Moses ben Maimon—in reference to whom there is a common saying among the Jews: “From Moses the son of Amram to Moses Maimonides there was no equal to this Moses”—in his book titled Doctor perplexorum, confirms in detail that neither local movement nor any change nor any accident can correctly be attributed to God.
Antithesis.
§ 152. These things must be set against: (I) Secundus, the pupil of the Manichaean, who said that God was subject to change, for which Augustine refutes him (vol. 6, col. 529).
(II) Vorstius, who overturns the immutability of God in his book De Deo et attrib., p. 65: “Not everything that God wills from eternity does He will unto eternity. In fact, He wills some things in time that previously He did not specifically will.” p. 212: “Five kinds of change (alteration) can take place in God as far as He Himself exercises some immanent actions according to His free will. The will of God is the beginning [principium] of a mutability in God.” And later: “They are not speaking circumspectly who affirm that as God is not at all subject to change in His essence, so also He is immutable in His will.” p. 307: “Those people do not appear to speak quite accurately who teach simply and without limitation that whatever God willed or does will or is going to will, He willed or wills this from all eternity and with one, consistent act perpetually.” p. 451: “Moses is said to have called God back from His intent to destroy the people by arguing that He would have to fear a bad result, namely, that their enemies were going to find fault with God unjustly. For God seems to have been afraid of that result in His own way, as far as this was possible by His nature, and for this reason backed away from His intent.”
We respond. Vorstius is confusing the objects and effects of God’s will with the principle of those objects and effects. (See our De glor. Dei, disp. 5, § 14.) On p. 270, Vorstius denies that “the wisdom of God is the very essence of God,” about which we shall have more to say in its own place.35 When he is charged with this atheism in the Apol. exeg., c. 9, p. 38, he does not hesitate to affirm: “There are many diverse things in God, namely, diverse decrees.” He demonstrates a difference between the essence and the will of God with the argument that “the essence of God is absolutely and simply necessary, while the decrees of the divine will are free and contingent.” In fact, he goes on to the point of claiming that “the decrees of God are true accidents that have not existed in God from eternity but have been brought forth in time.” Against this error we set forth the firmly based statement in Scripture, which the entire Church has accepted: that God’s will is nothing else but God who wills, that is, the very essence of God. For God, who exists unchangeable in Himself and His nature from eternity to eternity, wills with one simple act of will and without any change, and achieves that which He has decreed from eternity.
The decree or counsel of God is understood in three ways: (1) Causally [
], for the principle of decreeing. In this way a decree of God is nothing else but God Himself decreeing or the decretory will of God. (2) Actively [
], for the act of decreeing or the decretory statement, when it is from God properly and in God metaphorically—that is, through anthropopathism—which does not imply a true and real composition of subject and accident. (3) As set against [
] or objectively for the thing decreed. In this way the decree is not in God essentially [
], that is, subjectively, but as set against, that is, objectively. From this one cannot infer that God’s counsels and decrees are accidents because all created things are in God objectively, yet these are not accidents. The source of the error is that Vorstius establishes intervals of times in the eternal God. And because in man there is no freedom of the will without mutability of essence and will, he thinks that also in God freedom of the will implies a mutability of essence and will. But just as nothing falls short of the unity and simplicity of the divine essence from the fact that it exists in three distinct persons, because it is infinite, so the simplicity and immutability of the divine will are not at all undermined by the fact that it is involved with distinct objects, because God wills and decides all things, not with many acts, distinct really, but with one simple act of His will. Just as God knows all things with one simple knowledge and not with many acts, distinct really, of His intellect, so it is with one simple volition that God wills all that He decides and does, rather than with many acts, distinct really, of His will. Just as God, who endures as eternal, creates and governs temporal things, so God, who endures as immutable, wills and does mutable things without any detriment to His eternity and immutability.
Here three points must be observed: (1) His will or decision taken according to itself. (2) The object of His will, that is, the thing that He decides. (3) The respect or relation of the decree to the thing that is decided. The will itself is and continues to be immutable because it is nothing other than the essence of God signified by way of action. Its object can be changed while the will continues to be immutable. On the part of God the respect or relation does not change, just as the relation rising from the work of creation did not cause a change in God but only in creatures.
(III) The Photinians. Because they deny that God has foreknowledge of future contingent events that depend on man’s free will, they are necessarily compelled to claim that God’s knowledge—thus also His essence—are subject to change. They also sometimes make God’s election subject to change. Socinus, Quod evang. se Phot., p. 13: “Those can perish whom God had destined for salvation, and this by their own fault. Conversely, those can be saved whom God had decreed would perish, and this because of their repentance.” We showed the contrary in our commonplace On Election and Reprobation [Commonplace X], § 215.
(IV) The Calvinists, the supporters of the absolute decree. (1) Those who claim that God acts in a different way in time from the way He has decreed to act in eternity claim that God’s will is subject to change. Supporters of an absolute decree do this. Therefore. (See the major premise proved in our De glor. Dei, disp. 6, § 15.) As God justifies and glorifies in time only persevering believers, so He has determined from eternity to justify and glorify only those who would persevere in believing. That is, He has elected them from eternity. As He condemns in time only those who stubbornly are unbelieving and impenitent, so He has decided from eternity to condemn only those who stubbornly are unbelieving and unrepentant. That is, He has reprobated them from eternity. If you imagine that God has elected some absolutely, that is, has determined to glorify them, and has absolutely reprobated some, that is, has determined to condemn them, though in time He saves only in view of faith and condemns only in view of unbelief, you have established a mutable divine will. (2) Those who attribute contrary wills to God undermine the immutability of the divine will. But the supporters of the absolute decree do this by making a distinction between the will of the sign [voluntatem signi] and of good pleasure [beneplaciti], between the revealed and the secret will. Therefore.
Questions.
§ 153. (I) The question arises: Is the immutability of the divine will undermined by making a distinction between the antecedent and consequent will, the absolute and conditional will? The Calvinists affirm this, according to Piscator (Not. ad coll. Vorst., p. 26). We proved the contrary (De glor. Dei, disp. 9, § 8). Here we repeat the statement of Augustine, Ench., c. 100: “The will of God is always fulfilled, either in reference to us or by us.” We also repeat Tertullian’s statement, De resurr. carn.: “God is best about His own and just about ours.”
** Here someone might object with the passage Job 30:21: “You have changed to be cruel toward me.” We respond. Lyra says in his commentary on this passage: “Neither cruelty nor mutability occur with God, but he added the word ‘to me’ so that the cruelty and change are not in the quality of the Judge but in the mind of the sufferer.” **
§ 154. (II) The question arises: Does the work of creation make God subject to change? Justin denies this (QQ. et resp. ad orth., q. 113, p. 361) and responds in this way:
“To be the same” is one thing; “to be of another” is something else. “Being the same” does not admit a relation [habitus]; “being of another” does admit a relation. Because the perfection of God lies in the fact that He is the same, that which is of another does not enlarge Him. And just as that which is the principle of number36 brings nothing to the unity—for even if there is no principle of number, it still would be perfect; and though its principle has been made, it still has not increased—so God, too, was perfect before creation and was not increased after creation. Therefore none of those things that exist through creation enlarge God, for He says, “You are the same,” but it does increase the relation [habitus] that exists toward [God’s] varied creation. He says, “You are exalted far above all gods,” namely, as Father, Judge, and Shepherd, and all that are similar to these. And just as God’s perfection, by which He is exalted above all gods, is not proved to be imperfect because He did not create more worlds, though He also could have done this, so He took no increase from the fact that He created one world. Therefore if God was not diminished because He did not create more worlds, surely also He was not increased because He created one world.
Cyril responds as follows, Thesaur., bk. 11, c. 2:
It is wise and true to say that nothing happens [accidere] to God’s substance because it is perfect in itself. Yet we are still forced at times to say that these are like accidents—even if they do not at all happen to God—and to conceive of accidents with our mind. For what are we saying when we understand that God was Creator before He created this world, though not in actuality? Moreover, when the world was created and became actual, and something in some way seems to have happened to Him when He become Creator in actuality—though without changing Himself but by producing all things from nothing into being—did He then create all things by an eternal and immutable will to create when He willed this eternally? There are many more things of this sort that seem as though they have happened to God …
Augustine, De civ. Dei, bk. 12, c. 17: “For a new work, He can use not a new but an everlasting counsel.” C. 21: “God creates new things without a newness of will.”37
The Scholastics respond that creation is taken in two ways, namely, actively and passively. Taken actively, it is nothing else but the divine action itself, not simply but with relation to creation. Because this relation is not real on God’s part but only conceptual [rationis] (and that externally [ad extra]), it implies no change in God. Taken passively, it is a relation in the creature to the Creator as to the origin [principium] of its being. Because it is an action without motion, it was not necessary for it to be produced by another creation. In creation two things must be considered: (1) the principle for doing something [principium agendi] and (2) the effect produced. [1] The principle for doing something is the very essence of God to which no change occurs through creation, because in creation God did not will something with a new motion of will, which He previously willed from eternity. Instead, He did in time what He had decreed with His immutable will from eternity. [2] In the effect produced there is a change from not being to being, but this does not make God Himself subject to change.
Let the judgment concerning this question be the same: Did the work of incarnation make God subject to change? Socinus affirms this and writes: “If God at that time actually became incarnate and became man when Jesus Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary and was born of her, who will be able to deny that something new and foreign—and of great importance!—had happened to God Himself and to His substance?” (Defens. animadv. Posn., p. 66). Yet the same hypostasis of the Word continued to exist, though the hypostasis began to be [also] of the other nature.
§ 155. (III) The question arises: Does the word “repentance” used about God in Gen. 6:6 and 1 Sam. 15:11 imply a mutability of the will? This we deny because God is said to repent not properly but according to anthropopathism. Augustine, De civ. Dei, bk. 15, c. 25: “Unlike a man, God does not repent of any act of His. In all matters without exception, His decision is as fixed as His foreknowledge is certain. Instead, His consideration and reconsideration are the unchangeable arrangement of changing things.” De civ. Dei, bk. 17, c. 7: “Where we read that God repents, a change of things is indicated while divine foreknowledge continues to be unchangeable.” In his commentary on 2 Samuel 11, Bede repeats this, as well as many other statements from Augustine.
** Augustine again, De civ. Dei, bk. 22, c. 2: “When God is said to change His will—such as, for example, when He becomes angry with those with whom He had been mild—it is they, rather than He, who are changed, and they find Him to be somehow changed in the things they suffer.” **
Repentance is taken either (1) properly or (2) metaphorically. Taken in the first way, it does not belong to God because of: (a) The negation of the definition. Repentance, properly speaking, is grief that comes from one’s own actions done by a mistake of the mind or by a weakness or inconstancy of the will or a changeability of emotions. However, such grief does not belong to God. (b) The removal of causes, because all causes of repentance are denied to God. These are: (α) Ignorance of the mind. Because our mind is finite, it has no foreknowledge of all human events, thus it often does something by mistake for which it is sorry afterward. (β) Inconstancy of the will. The will of man is fickle, inclining now in this direction, now in that. (γ) Weakness of powers. Because of weakness, humans often cannot bring their plans, even most carefully considered, into actuality [or action]. Therefore repentance is attributed to God only in the second way, that is, metaphorically.
There are two things in repentance: (a) Emotion [affectus], namely, an inner grief developing from the fact that the will hates what it has done. (b) Result [effectus], namely, a change of the prior deed. The first has no place in God, but the second does, for He changes His deeds while His will remains unchangeable. Inner grief in us arises because we have erred in our earlier deeds, but we have erred because our intellect cannot foresee all future events, because our will is unsteady and weak. But neither error nor ignorance nor infirmity has a place in God. Therefore repentance, properly speaking, also has no place in Him.
Justin responds in this way, QQ. et resp. ad orthod., q. 36, p. 322:
The Lord God is immutable both by the fact that He exists and by the fact that He does actions suitable for Himself. As He foresees, He considers changing things that are harmful, and using things that He foresees, He changes the things themselves. Consequently, both when He pardons and when He does not pardon, He retains His immutability. In fact, He pardons those who correct their sins in such a way that He is not changed, and He does not pardon those who persevere in their wickedness without correcting themselves in such a way that He is not changed. Therefore the passage “I am moved by repentance” designates His immutability in that He does not pardon; and the passage “the Lord decides otherwise” signifies His immutability in that He does pardon. For God is immutable and always endures in doing those things that befit Him; it never admits mutability for doing what does not befit Him.
Theodoret, QQ. in Genes.: “The repentance of God is nothing else but a change of His arrangement [dispositio]. He says: ‘I am sorry that I set up Saul as king. Because of this, I decided to depose him and to select someone else.’ ‘If I am sorry I created man,’ that is, ‘I have decreed to destroy the human race.’” Lyra: “Repentance, grief, and other sufferings are in God not according to the thing [that is, in reality] but according to manner. Thus He is said to have repented because He behaved in the manner of one who repents and wanted to destroy what He had done earlier.”
§ 156. (IV) The question arises: Does the fact that the prophecies of God do not always come about bring mutability to God (2 Kings 20:1; Jon. 3:4)? We respond. As the promises of God are understood with the condition of perseverance, so the threats of God must be understood with the condition of repentance. Jonah had predicted that Nineveh would be overthrown, but with the condition (tacit or expressed) “unless they would repent.” God Himself reveals this response: “I will suddenly speak against a nation, and against a kingdom, to root out, and to destroy it. If that nation against which I have spoken shall repent of their evil, I also will repent of the evil that I have thought to do to them” (Jer. 18:7–8). Therefore these conditional divine prophecies must be distinguished from absolute ones. The former occur only when the condition has been met; the latter, absolutely and always.
§ 157. (V) The question arises: Does freedom of the will conflict with the immutibility of God? Because the divine attributes are most simply the same with each other and with the divine essence, they cannot conflict with each other. But now immutability and freedom to act are divine attributes. Therefore. Not even in the angels and the blessed who are confirmed in goodness does the immutability of [their] will, which always seeks the good, take away the freedom of will. All the less does this happen in God, whose essence is utterly pure and simple. The formal principle38 and definition of freedom does not conflict with the formal principle and definition of immutability. Freedom consists formally in the fact that God can act freely and decide this or that in accord with His own choice [arbitrium]. Immutability consists formally in the fact that those things that He has decreed absolutely are not changed by a variation of will.
(VI) The question arises: Do emotions belong to God? In Exercit. 16, Scaliger distinguishes between an active and passive emotion [affectus]. Every passive emotion is connected with an alteration that simply is absent from the immutable God; as a result, God’s emotion is not an accident. Anger in humans is a disturbance of the mind because it is a passive emotion. But God’s anger is not a disturbance because it is an active emotion. For it is nothing else but the righteous turning away from sin and the will to avenge His majesty.
Practical use.
§ 158. (1) Comforting. The apostle shows this in Rom. 11:29: “The gifts and calling of God are irrevocable.” The gifts that God, of His free mercy, promises and gives to humans, His free promises, and the free calling of God are such that He is never sorry about them. Therefore, of Himself, He never changes His benevolent affection toward the devout, provided they persevere in the obedience of children. This offers us the most effective consolation by which we can claim with firmness that when God through the Holy Spirit kindles true faith in Christ in our heart and receives us as His sons, He will never deprive us of His grace in the future, provided we ourselves do not depart from His grace. Of His grace He elected us; of His grace He called us; of His grace He justified us. Therefore of His grace He will one day also glorify us because His goodness and grace are not subject to change. He forgets our sins if we repent seriously, but He cannot forget His grace. Jer. 31:3: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have drawn you with My mercy.” Luther’s translation: Ich habe dich je und je geliebet, darum habe ich dich zu mir gezogen aus lauter Güte. [“I have loved you for ever and ever. Therefore I have drawn you to Me due to pure kindness.”]
(2) Exhorting. Our changeable will should cling to the unchangeable will of God so that it may be founded and confirmed in the good. Augustine, De nat. boni adv. Manich., c. 24: “God always remains in one and the same best state so that nothing good can be added to Him nor depart from Him,” in which sense Christ says that God alone is good (Matt. 19:17). Our goodness, our will is unstable and weak. Therefore it is required to cling by love to His unchangeable goodness and will. Let us sigh for the immutable God, that He would change our nature, which sin has corrupted, and renew us daily according to the inner man until we reach the state of immutable good in eternal life.