The Philosopher’s God
For I, the Lord, do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed. Malachi 3:6 NASB
Do not change – This is going to be long, but I promise it will be worth it.
Christianity is essentially schizophrenic. I don’t mean that “Christians” are in need of psychotropic drugs, although sometimes I suspect their public spokespersons are on them. What I mean is that the essence of Christian theology, its philosophical foundation, rests on a dualism that embraces logical conclusions in contradiction with each other, and this difficulty cannot be resolved under the present Christian view of theology and Scripture. This theological schizophrenia is best demonstrated in discussions of God’s attributes. Let’s take the article on the web site Biblestudytools.com. Here’s the opening statement:
Attributes of God
What are God’s attributes? When we talk about the attributes of God, we are trying to answer questions like, Who is God, What is God like, and What kind of God is he? An attribute of God is something true about him. While fully comprehending who God is is impossible for us as limited beings, God does make himself known in a variety of ways, and through what he reveals about himself in his Word and in his creation, we can begin to wrap our minds around our awesome Creator and God. [1]
Notice the appeal to God’s ultimate incomprehensibility. The assumption is: God is unlimited in being; we are limited in being, therefore it is impossible for us to fully comprehend God. This sounds right, doesn’t it? If God is truly God, then (as we are apt to say), “His ways are higher than our ways.” We don’t expect to know everything about Him.
Pay attention to the next claim: “what he reveals about himself in his Word and in his creation.” In other words, if we’re going to know anything about God, there are only two real sources of information: natural revelation (creation) and special revelation (the Bible). So far so good. Yes, we can discover some things about God from His creation. And yes, we can learn more about Him from the Bible. But notice a hidden assumption here.
Natural revelation depends on a rational correspondence between creation and human beings. What I mean is that the assumption is that the world is logical, that is, capable of being understood through human reasoning. If this were not the case, if the creation were random, accidental, and irrational, then no amount of human reasoning could ever conclude anything at all about God. This is important. Human rationality is embedded in natural revelation. What this means for theology is that we should be able to think our way to some understanding of God independently of Scripture. Of course, we will add to our knowledge of God from the special revelation of Scripture, but fundamentally we can construct a view of God, no matter how ultimately inadequate, from just thinking. This is the first step toward a philosophical theology. It is implied in the next claim in this article:
God is unlike anything or anyone we could ever know or imagine. He is one of a kind, unique and without comparison. Even describing him with mere words truly falls short of capturing who he is – our words simply cannot do justice to describe our holy God.
Still, God possess attributes that we can know (even if just in part) and he’s given us his Word as a means to understand himself.[2]
Do you understand what’s been said here? The author claims that there is no human counterpart (experience or language) that really expresses who God is. This is a statement about the truly transcendent God, the God who is wholly other, the God that is totally and eternally removed from any created thing. Where did this idea come from? Not from the Bible, that’s for sure. The Bible is filled with God’s intimate and personal involvement in history. The Bible assumes that its prophetic words do describe God. In fact, if we derived our theology strictly from the Bible, God would appear much more like a human being than a transcendent deity.
But the Bible isn’t the source of this claim. Human reason and paradigm assumptions are the real source. Heschel remarks:
Such a line of reasoning may be applicable to a God derived from abstraction. A God of abstraction is a high and mighty First Cause, which, dwelling in lonely splendor of eternity, will never submit to human prayer, and it will be beneath its dignity to be affected by anything which it has itself caused to come into being. But it is a dogmatic sort of dignity which insists upon God’s pride rather than love, upon His decorum rather than mercy.[3]
This is the God of Greek philosophy, the First Cause God of Aristotle and Aquinas. And since God is the First Cause of all that exists, no other cause can cause anything in God. That’s just logic. There can only be one First Cause. Christians may be familiar with this idea found in the Cosmological Argument for the existence of God. Unfortunately, the success of this argument actually supports a schizophrenic God, as we shall shortly see.
The true foundation of the idea that God is the high and mighty First Cause, dwelling in timeless eternity, is not His dignity, although that is often the apparent argument. The real source of this idea is the Greek notion of perfection. The argument proceeds like this:
God is the perfect Being. If this were not true, then He would not be God. A perfect Being lacks nothing. Perfection, by definition, means that nothing can be added or subtracted. If a Being could have anything added to His essential existence, then He would not be God since whatever could be added would be lacking from this Being before it was added. Conversely, such a Being could not have anything subtracted from His essential existence since if anything were subtracted He would no longer be perfect and therefore, no longer be God. Conclusion: God, as the perfect Being, can have nothing added or subtracted from His existence.
And we arrive at Heschel’s Greek God, the God of rational abstraction. By the way, this idea begins with Parmenides, as I have shown in my book, God, Time and the Limits of Omniscience.
Perfection demands immutability. Now you can see why. If God is perfect, which He must be in order to be God, then it is logically impossible that He could change. Why? Because anything that changes must be first one thing and then another, and for this to be true, anything that changes cannot be essentially perfect (remember the definition?). So, if God is perfect, then He cannot change—ever, in any way. That is what philosophical theology means when it claims God is immutable.
But that’s not how preachers and naïve theologians talk about immutability.
The Bible is clear that God does not change His mind, His will, or His nature. . .
There are several logical reasons why God must be immutable, that is, why it is impossible for God to change. First, if anything changes, it must do so in some chronological order. There must be a point in time before the change and a point in time after the change. Therefore, for change to take place it must happen within the constraints of time; however, God is eternal and exists outside of the constraints of time.[4]
God never changes. In fact, it is impossible for God to change. The influences that cause change in your life have no effect on God.[5]
God Is Immutable – He Never Changes
“I the Lord do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed.” Malachi 3:6
God does not change. Who he is never changes. His attributes are the same from before the beginning of time into eternity. His character never changes – he never gets “better” or “worse.” His plans do not change. His promises do not change.
This ought to be a source of incredible joy for believers. Sam Storms writes this about the good news of God’s unchanging nature: “What all this means, very simply, is that God is dependable! Our trust in him is therefore a confident trust, for we know that he will not, indeed cannot, change. His purposes are unfailing, his promises unassailable. It is because the God who promised us eternal life is immutable that we may rest assured that nothing, not trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword shall separate us from the love of Christ. It is because Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever that neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, not even powers, height, depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom. 8:35-39)!”[6]
I wonder if the authors actually believe what they write, and if they do, I wonder if that’s the kind of God we really want to worship?
Did you notice the equivocation in the sixth sentence of the last citation? The author moves from a philosophical idea of immutability to a moral idea of immutability. He starts by writing about God’s essential immutability and ends by writing about God’s character, that is, His relational immutability. In fact, the citation from Stan Storms is not about essential immutability at all. It’s about God’s unchanging character, His trustworthiness. This kind of equivocation is typical in Christian thinking. It simply mixes up the two ideas so that the reader will be lulled into accepting a doctrine that would otherwise repulse him. If in fact God is essentially immutable, then God cannot feel, for if anything is changeable in this world, it is emotion. And change is not possible for an essentially perfect Being. Therefore, logic demands that God cannot feel, that He has no emotions, and consequently any attempt to elicit response from Him is foolhardy. The essentially immutable God isn’t susceptible to prayer, pleas, or pathos. The God of abstraction doesn’t care because careis an emotional response (as one of the authors above clearly states). As you can see, this idea is so incompatible with what we desire of God that no one remains logically consistent when it comes to worship and prayer. We equivocate because we could never worship a God who didn’t care.
And, of course, there’s that other problem with essential immutability. It doesn’t describe the God of the Bible.
“The God of the prophets continues to be involved in human history and to be affected by human acts. It is a paradox beyond compare that the Eternal God is concerned with what is happening in time.”[7]
“Authentic Jewish thought evaluates the emotions in a manner diametrically opposed to the Greek view.”[8]
Heschel summarizes the dilemma:
“The principle that mutability cannot be attributed to God is thus an ontological dogma, and as such it has become the common property of religious philosophers. It is easy to see how on the basis of the ontological view of the Eleatics there emerged a static conception of God. According to Greek thinking, impassivity and immobility are characteristic of the divine. Now since in Greek psychology, affects or feelings are described as emotions (movements) of the soul, it is obvious that they cannot be brought into harmony with the idea of God.”[9]
So, you’re stuck. If you continue to embrace the Christian doctrinal view of immutability, you will be logically compelled to accept a First Cause God who has no feelings whatsoever for His creation. If you want a God who feels, you will have to reject the Christian dogma of immutability, and everything that goes with it. If you accept the rational argument of perfection and you believe what the Bible says, you are a clear case of theological schizophrenia. I’d like to prescribe the cure: abandon Christian theology (and everything implied by it)—read the prophets.
By the way, focus on the end of this verse in Malachi, not the convenient theological beginning. Why doesn’t God change? He tells us. So that Israel is not come to an end (kālâ). The biblical idea of immutability is relational, set within God’s will for His people. The unchanging character of God is not described in some transcendental abstraction. It is always for a temporal purpose. God does not change His mind about His commitments. That’s the point of the prophet’s words. We might consider not only the theological implications for a schizophrenic Christian theology; we might also consider what this means for the Jews.
Topical Index: immutability, change, God, theology, perfection, Malachi 3:6
[1] https://www.biblestudytools.com/bible-study/topical-studies/15-amazing-attributes-of-god-what-they-mean-and-why-they-matter.html
[2] Ibid.
[3] Abraham Heschel, Between God and Man: An Interpretation of Judaism (Free Press Paperbacks, 1959), p. 122.
[4] https://www.gotquestions.org/immutability-God.html
[5] https://www.discovergod.com/character13.html
[6] https://www.facebook.com/christchurchexmouth/photos/a.453762801393510/2226194950816944/?type=3&eid=ARBC9w1LAc2GwTLI5W7Y2fJdPDVJyC08LfCT0bmtPLD2Tl2r7dKeXACvjrv3ZAgQ8y6KmRinlh8P9eXD
[7] Abraham Heschel, Between God and Man: An Interpretation of Judaism (Free Press Paperbacks, 1959), p. 122.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid., p. 121.
