Immutability

The God who does not change

Because I, the LORD, do not change, you descendants of Jacob have not been destroyed.

Malachi 3:6

Malachi gives God's changelessness as the reason Israel still exists. Immutability is not a cold philosophical idea but a covenant comfort. The heavens and the earth will wear out like a garment, the psalmist sings, "But You remain the same, and Your years will never end" (Psalm 102:27). James speaks of "the Father of the heavenly lights, with whom there is no change or shifting shadow" (James 1:17). Hebrews says God confirmed with an oath "the unchanging nature of His purpose" (Hebrews 6:17), and confesses that "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever" (Hebrews 13:8).

People change because they lack something, learn something new, or waver. God lacks nothing and knows all things, so he has no need to become better and cannot become worse. The Westminster Shorter Catechism confesses him "infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth" Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q. 4. Among the attributes of God, immutability is the guarantee that all the others remain what they are. Even when the eternal Son became man, he did not stop being God. As the Athanasian Creed puts it, Christ is one "not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh; but by assumption of the Manhood by God" Athanasian Creed, 32.

Does God change his mind?

Yet Scripture also says that when Nineveh repented, God "relented from the disaster He had threatened to bring upon them" (Jonah 3:10). The same chapter of 1 Samuel that has God say he regrets making Saul king (1 Samuel 15:11) also says that God "does not lie or change His mind, for He is not a man, that He should change His mind" (1 Samuel 15:29). The writer plainly did not think these contradicted each other.

The answer most widely taught in the church is that God's character and purposes do not change, and that his ‘relenting’ describes, in human terms, his response to people who turn. He announced beforehand that "if that nation I warned turns from its evil, then I will relent" (Jeremiah 18:8). Showing mercy to those who turn is his unchanging nature. Matthew Henry writes: "when in Scripture he is said to repent, it does not mean any change of his mind; but only a change of his way" Matthew Henry.

A continuing discussion

How far immutability reaches is still discussed. The Fathers, Thomas Aquinas and the Reformers taught that God undergoes no change at all in his divine nature, and does not suffer. In the twentieth century theologians in several traditions put more weight on God's real responsiveness to people in time, and on his suffering with them. Late in the century some evangelical theologians proposed ‘open theism’: God never changes in his love and faithfulness, but he does not know future free choices as already settled, and he truly alters his plans in response to people; only so, they argue, are prayer and relationship real. Most churches and theologians have not accepted this view, pointing to the God who says, "I declare the end from the beginning" (Isaiah 46:10), and holding that trust in his promises rests on his changelessness. All sides agree that God's character never changes and that he truly enters into relationship with his people. See Does God change his mind?