‘Behold, the Lamb of God’s
ide o amnos tou
theou
College Study
30th teaching
3.25.2013
The ‘Negative’ Doctrines:
“God’s Immutability”
We remember that our previous topic was God’s immortality.
I began last week by saying how much mankind has been fascinated with the
concept of immortality. We discovered that immortality simply litters human
fiction, human science and infests human thought. Immortality is an obsession
to many people. And that’s why we have the booming cosmetic industry.
But just like immortality, mankind is also fascinated by
the concept of Change. Among other things, this slogan got our current
president elected. Change fascinates. When something is bad we crave change
like nothing else. Every people subject to a tyrannical government has hoped
for change. Every poverty stricken man or woman has lusted after change. And
yet when something is good, we wish change will never come.
I realized today that I think the reason why these concepts
are so fascinating to mankind, is because they’re not really mere concepts at
all, rather they are words which relate to the way in which God functions. Man
craves for immortality because God His Maker and Sustainer is alone Immortal.
Man desires unchanging-ness when good comes because the good God is
unchangingly good. Man’s obsessions betray his real need for His own Maker.
Turn to Psalm102.
The psalmist compares the transience and the shifting
changeability of his own human life and even the works of Creation, the heavens
and the earth, to the great unchangeable and enduring God. We know that our
lives are short and brief, but to think that in the light of God’s enduring
existence, His pure existence, that even those things which to us seem so
unchangeable: like the stars and the sky and the earth, are still in fact
changeable.
In a similar strain, listen to the words of the Prince of
preachers: Spurgeon says this so much more eloquently than I could: “The
substance of mortal things is ever changing. The mountains with their
snow-white crowns, doff their old diadems in summer, in rivers trickling down
their sides, while the storm cloud gives them another coronation; the ocean,
with its mighty floods, loses its water when the sunbeams kiss the waves, and
snatch them in mists to heaven; even the sun himself requires fresh fuel from
the hand of the Infinite Almighty, to replenish his ever burning furnace. All
creatures change. Man, especially as to his body is always undergoing
revolution… The fabric of which this world is made is ever passing away; like a
stream of water, drops are running away and others are following after, keeping
the river still full, but always changing in its elements. But God is
perpetually the same. He is not composed of any substance of material, but is
spirit—pure, essential, and ethereal spirit—and therefore He is immutable. He
remains everlastingly the same. There are no furrows on His eternal brow. No
age hath palsied Him; no years have marked Him with the mementoes of their
flight; He sees ages pass, but with Him it is ever now. He is the great I AM—the Great Unchangeable.”
How unique! How altogether different than anyone else is
the God which Spurgeon called the Great Unchangeable. It is utterly fascinating
to me that the same God which told Moses “I AM WHO I AM” thousands of years ago
speaks to another Moses (myself) all this time later, after so many generations
have come and gone, so many empires have risen and fallen, so many flowers have
faded, wars fought, climates and cultures changed… yet God remains.
Another great teacher of the Bible, A.W. Tozer wrote on
this great contrast: “The Immutability of God appears in its most perfect
beauty when viewed against the mutability of men. In God no change is possible;
in men change is impossible to escape. Neither the man is fixed nor his world,
and he and it are in constant flux.”
Remember that happy day you had as a child, when you wished
summer vacation would never end, yet it did? God never experienced that sadness
of change. The constant flux which so derails our lives and ages our bodies has
no hold upon the Great Unchangeable God.
There are so many attributes which make God deserving of
our worship, none the more so than God’s Immutability. That is the subject at
hand tonight and the title of our study: “God’s Immutability”.
God’s Immutability is an attribute which, as we’ve seen,
inspired the psalmist to write the 102nd, which moved Spurgeon to
preach so eloquently, which drove the hymn-writer Isaac Watts to pen the words
to his song: God is the Name My Soul
Adores.
Thy
voice produced the sea and spheres,
Bade
the waves roar, the planets shine;
But
nothing like Thyself appears
Through
all these spacious works of Thine.
Still
restless nature dies and grows;
From
change to change the creatures run:
Thy
being no succession knows,
And
all Thy vast designs are one.
Let us tackle our topic in FIVE points:
1. The Definition of Immutability
2. The Extent of Immutability
3. The Biblical Basis of
Immutability
4. Objections against Immutability
5. Our Imperfect Immutability
1.
The Definition of Immutability
In plain terms, Immutable means Unchangeable, incapable of
change. Like so many of these fancy, theological terms, the word Immutability
descends to our English language from Latin. The original Latin word was immutabilis, im- meaning “not” and mutabilis
meaning “changeable”.
We get our modern words mutant
and mutation from the Latin mutabilis.
But what I was shocked to discover, as a side note, is that
mutabilis or mutare in Latin are not themselves originally Latin words. Latin
borrowed these words from far older languages. The Hittites were a group of
people that Joshua and the children of Israel fought during the conquest of the
Promised Land almost 4000 years ago. The Hittite word for change? Mutai. Very similar to the Latin and the
subsequent English. Mutation is a
word which has been around for a hecka-long time.
*To help classify the God’s attribute of immutability, we
need to know two things:
a. Immutability is metaphysical
b. Immutability is non-communicable
That immutability is metaphysical and not an attribute that
has to do with morality is obvious. God immutability describes the nature of
His essence. God is in His very being unchangeable.
Also, even more obviously and as we’ve already heard,
immutability is a non-communicable attribute: meaning, it is not an attribute
which God currently shares with humanity. God has communicable attributes: He
loves, we can love. He is merciful, we can be merciful. He is Life, we are
given life. He is holy, we can be holy. But like perfection, immutability is an
attribute which God alone has. God alone is perfect. God alone is immutable.
Augustine proves that only God is immutable, because “no
created nature can be immutable. Every such nature is made, indeed, by God, the
supreme and immutable Good who made all things.”
He is saying that the fact that something was created
proves that that created thing is changeable: it was made to exist; it went
from non-existence to existence; it had a beginning and that is a type of
change, certainly. But God who had no beginning remains immutable. Of
necessity, created things are mutable. Eternal God is immutable.
Another thinker of the Christian church, Thomas Aquinas,
was one of the most influential theologians in history. He offered several
arguments for God’s immutability. Let’s take a look at two of them.
Aquinas argued from God’s Pure Actuality to Immutability.
Remember that Pure Actuality means that God’s existence is actual without
potential, that is, there is no potential in God to be anything other than
Himself: He cannot become non-God, He cannot die, He cannot become less or
more. He is the “I AM”. He simply is. God is pure Is-ness, actuality, without
any could be’s or might be’s. He is pure Existence, and
what is pure Existence does not change. Pure Actuality implies Immutability.
Another of Aquinas’ arguments went from God’s Perfection to
Immutability. If God is perfect, then He is complete. And what is complete
lacks nothing. Neither can anything be added to it. Perfect is the most there
can be and there can be nothing less, otherwise there is no more perfection. So
if God is perfect, then He must remain always perfect, and He therefore does
not change. God can never be better than He always is. He is perfect and
therefore perfectly immutable.
This is something not that Aquinas made up, but a truth
which he discovered to be true. Aquinas’ arguments echo the disciple of
Socrates, the Greek philosopher Plato. Plato believed that there was a perfect
form of Good, perfect goodness. Plato stated specifically that God (under the assumption
that God is perfect) cannot improve or deteriorate: if God is already perfect,
God cannot change for the better, and being perfect includes being immune to
change for the worse.
*One more note before our next point:
Immutability means unchangeability. But it does not mean
that God does nothing. There are many who misapply the immutability of God,
thinking that God does nothing in respect to judgment of sin. They confuse His
longsuffering for His immutability. They are not the same.
Consider II Peter
3:3-7, “…scoffers will come in the
last days, walking according to their own lusts, and saying, ‘Where is the
promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue
as they were from the beginning of creation.’ For this they willfully forget:
that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of
water and in the water, by which the world that then existed perished, being
flooded with water. But the heavens and the earth which are now preserved by
the same word, are reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of
ungodly men.”
Do not mistake the immutability of God for a kind of
weakness in God to judge. No, God will judge.
II Peter 3:9, “The Lord is not slack concerning His
promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing
that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.”
God will someday rise up in judgment. That is guaranteed.
God is immutable and God is longsuffering, but neither of these mean that God
winks at sin and lets it slide. There will come a day of vengeance. Herein is
terror for the wicked, not comfort. God will judge. He has done it many times
before.
Ezekiel 8:17-18,
“Have you seen this, O son of man? Is it
a trivial thing to the house of Judah to commit the abominations which they
commit here? For they have filled the land with violence; then they have
returned to provoke Me to anger… Therefore I also will act in fury. My eye will
not spare nor will I have pity; and though they cry in My ears with a loud
voice, I will not hear them.”
2.
The Extent of Immutability
We look again to the words of Spurgeon: “He changes not in
his attributes. Whatever the attributes of God were of old, that they are now…
Was He powerful? We He the mighty God when He spake the world out of the womb
of non-existence? Was He the Omnipotent when He piled the mountains and scooped
out the hollow places for the rolling deep? Yes, He was powerful then, and His
arm is unpalsied now, He is the same giant in His might; the sap of His
nourishment is undried, and the strength of His soul stands the same for ever…
He loves as much now as He did then, and when suns shall cease to shine, and
moons to show their feeble light, He still shall love on for ever and ever.
Take any one attribute of God, and I will writer semper idem on it (always the same). Take any one thing you can say
of God now, and it may be said not only in the dark past, but in the bright
future it shall always remain the same: “I am Jehovah, I change not”.
Remember that song: “Everlasting! Your light will shine
when all else fades.”
The extent of God’s immutability is such that it touches
each of His attributes.
Wikipedia bears these words: “God’s immutability defines
all his other attributes: He is immutably wise, He cannot but be merciful,
good, and gracious. The same may be said about His knowledge: God does not need
to gain knowledge; He knows all things, eternally and immutably so.”
God is metaphysically unchanging in His being, in His
essence and in His attributes. Remember impassibility? God is also immutable in
His emotions. His own immutable nature reigns over His emotions, so that He
unchangeably loves and unchangeably hates. He loves righteousness and hates
sin. He likes good and dislikes bad. God doesn’t have mood swings, thank
goodness: “I am the LORD, I change not,
therefore you are not consumed, O sons of Jacob” (Mal 3:6). If God did not have immutable emotions, we’d be dead. We
would be consumed.
The extent of immutability is total. Theologians have
called this intrinsic immutability. God is unchangeable within Himself. Nothing
changes Him, not even Himself. Only God’s actions and God’s relations with His
creatures change, for these are outside of Himself although they stem from
Himself.
For example, the fact that God has changing actions is
easily seen when you consider that God once created the universe. Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” He did
that once. He doesn’t constantly create the universe over and over and over
again perpetually. So too, God incarnated His Son in the flesh. That happened
once. Jesus Christ does not take on flesh every moment of every day. He acted
out incarnation once.
Similarly, God’s relationship to His creatures can change.
Before you were saved, the only thing God wanted to hear from you was
repentance. Now that you are saved, your relationship to Him is not just
creature to Maker, but child to Father. He loves you now as He loves His own
Son.
These things do not infringe on His immutability. His
immutability is internal and intrinsic, whereas His actions and relations to
His creatures change.
3.
The Biblical Basis for
Immutability
And now comes the time to share your Project Scriptura
verses: one verse on the topic of God’s immutability.
4.
Objections Against Immutability
While there are more than a few objections to God’s
immutability, we have time (hopefully) for three. These seem to me to be the
most obvious objections, and ones which you may run into during conversations
with others.
The first objection is:
A. Immutability was borrowed from
Greek philosophy
This is the kind of objection you might hear only from
people of “higher learning”. Atheists claim that Christianity borrowed its
central ideas from older “mystery religions” of the pagans. There are some who
claim that Immutability is no more than a borrowed concept from Greek
philosophy, and they therefore try to discredit it as well.
But as we’ve already seen, there is substantial
foundational evidence in the Holy Scripture to identify the truth of
Immutability. It doesn’t matter if the Greeks “discovered” the truth of God’s
immutability. What matters is if immutability is something which God Himself
says He Himself possesses. Truth is discovered, not invented.
And just because immutability was believed by the Greeks
does not discredit it. The demons, Scripture says, believe in God and tremble:
does that beg the question that God does not exist simply because demons
believe He does?
What’s more, the Greek philosophers got a lot of things
terribly wrong, but Aristotle’s methods of logic are the basis for modern
Western thought. Turns out they got a few things right. Even the Greek concept
of the Logos makes its way into Scripture in John 1, albeit as a perfectly true and redeemed concept.
B. Immutability is false according
to the Bible
Now we’ve just looked at biblical verses, wherein does the
Bible show immutability to be false?
While there are clear claims in Scripture of the
unchangeability of God, some have identified other passages to say otherwise.
For example: Genesis
6:6 says that God repented, that He was sorry, that He had created human
beings. I Samuel 15:11 says that God
regretted He ever made Saul king over Israel. Jonah 3:10 also says (KJV) “And God saw their works, that they
turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil that He had said that
He would do unto them; and He did it not.”
The Bible then seems to show that God had acted or said He
would act in a certain way, only later He regretted and “repented” of it,
meaning He changed His mind about it.
What we need to understand here is that these statements
about God are being made in human terms. These are a kind of metaphor called an
anthropomorphism: describing God in human terms.
Norman Geisler clarifies by saying: “To be sure, the Bible
often speaks of God in temporal terms, but this is from a human point of view.
It is said that God foreknew, as
though He is standing at one moment of time and looking forward to the future.
However, these expressions are anthropomorphisms (speaking of God in human
terms) that are no more to be taken literally than… when the biblical text says
that God has wings, arms, or eyes. Likewise, God’s repenting or being sorry is
no more to be taken literally than God’s forgetting [of our sins]… One would
expect that a book written by humans and for humans would often speak to humans
from a human perspective.”
C. Immutability is false because
of prayer
Simply put, if God cannot change, then why pray? After all,
Moses prayed for Israel to be spared in Exodus
32, and God seemingly changed His mind. But if God really cannot change,
then why pray? Why try to move the immovable? Why attempt to steer the hand of
God whose hand will not steer?
This objection shows a great misunderstanding of what
prayer is. Prayer, it has been said, does not change God. It changes us. God
knows exactly what you are going to pray, and He has known it since the
beginning of time. God ordered and ordained our prayers as a way of
accomplishing His purpose in the world. Prayer is not a means of our overcoming
God’s reluctance or laziness. Prayer is rather a means of submitting and
aligning ourselves to His will.
Look at the ultimate example of prayer, the Son of God
praying to His Father. There in the Garden, Jesus prayed “Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless
not My will, but Yours, be done” (Luke
22:42).
Prayer does not make God out to be a genie. He is not a dog
that performs tricks. Rather, He willingly receives our supplications, knowing
already what we will ask for, and grants to us if we pray according to His
will. It is His will that prayer accomplishes, not our own. And therefore,
prayer does not change God.
In fact, if it did. Prayer would be worthless.
Stephen Charnock, a Puritan clergyman, wrote: “What comfort
would it be to pray to a god that, like the chameleon, changed color every
moment? Who would put up a petition to an earthly prince that was so mutable as
to grant a petition one day, and deny it another?”
If God changed
constantly, then prayer would be a colossal waste of time: for He might fulfill
any request or none at all, for no reason at all, and there would be no basis,
no immutable attributes, upon which to plea and to pray for His will to be
done.
5.
Our Imperfect Immutability
That’s a double negative. We have imperfect
immutability, or rather in other terms: perfect mutability. We are always
changing.
The great irony of Christian experience is that we have
been made to change by an unchanging God. In fact, we are told to change, to
repent, by a God who does not change.
But if God is immutable and immutability is
non-communicable, then how can we apply this attribute personally to our lives?
May I suggest to you that while we are certainly mutable in many aspects of our
human lives, there are areas of our Christian lives in which we must stand
absolute and unchanging?
Turn lastly to II
Kings 18:13-16.
Hezekiah was one of the few righteous kings that Judah had,
during these years of their decline. But Hezekiah buckled under pressure. The
world made demands of him and he gave in.
Does that describe you and I? Are we doctrinal flakes? Do
you and I buckle under pressure?
What pressure? Oh sure the world demands things of us. Our
society proclaims that Jesus Christ is not God and some even say that He never
existed. No. This is not acceptable. Our society demands that we accept
homosexuality as a lifestyle. This is not acceptable. Our society demands
tolerance and proclaims that all roads lead to God, all roads lead to some kind
of heaven or another. This is not acceptable. Our world calls evil good and
good evil and more often than not, our world demands that we say the same. This
is not acceptable.
We must stand firm for what is right and stand against what
is wrong in the sight of God. If you and I, if our generation does not, if we
are not the effectors of our own culture and our own generation, then others
will effect it for the worse. If we do not rise to the calling God has placed
upon our lives: to be the next preachers, the next teachers, the next
missionaries and authors and writers and moviemakers and poets and politicians
and fathers and mothers, whatever it is God has for you, if we do not step up
to the plate, then we will have failed our generation and the next, and
ultimately we will have failed God.
Our children will grow up in an America which is further
splintered than our own, in which homosexuality is not only accepted but
preached, in which biblical marriage is a thing for the history museums, in
which film and television are worse and more debaucherous than they have ever
been, in which the Bible will have become in America nothing more than the
careless words of a by-gone generation which did not care to uphold its truth.
Oh? Does all that depend on you and I? Do I have to change
the world? Yes. With Christ in me, I do.
Leo Tolstoy, the Russian author and writer of War and Peace, once said “Everyone
thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” Wise
words to consider.
How often do you complain about American politics, American
culture, American entertainment? How often do you complain about the habits of
your neighbors, about the attitudes of the lost and about the sad direction our
world is taking? Everyone talks about changing the world. Nobody talks about
changing yourself.
Again, does this depend on you and me? Do I have to change
the world. Maybe so. Maybe not. Will you risk it for the sake of not trying? Or
will you choose to stand for what God says? Will you choose to say to the world
that they are on a path to damnation, or will you let them strip the house of
God of its gold, as Hezekiah did?
God in you wants to change the world.
If there is one thing that God has brought recurringly back
to my mind through our studies, it is this: that God has a unique will and
place for each of us in this unique group, and if you and I do not fulfill the
place that we are ordained for, then no one will. There is no other Moses
Norton other than myself.
I alone can do what Christ uniquely desires to do through
Moses Norton at this point in human history. And I cannot submit to the demands
of society and this world. I must stand in the battle. I must, for the sake of
the next generation, and for the sake of the glory of the Lord.
Will I? Will
cowardly, timid, stupid little I? I can only say that I must.
No comments:
Post a Comment