Does God change?

Question

Historically, one of the attributes of God that provided the most comfort to many people was his unchanging nature - God is "the same, yesterday, today, and tomorrow." (Hebrews 13:8) Additionally, Malachi 3:3 says, "I am the Lord, I do not change." and Numbers 23:19 reminds us that God is not a man, and thus does not "repent". This doctrine of God's immutability gave solace to those, frankly, frightened of a changing world.

On the other hand, there are places where God "changes his mind" (Exodus 32 / Numbers 16) and even "regrets" making humanity (Genesis 6:6 - translated repents in the KJV!) but fundamentally the question is this:

Does the God of the Bible change and grow, as say, a progressive theologian (or is that process theologian I forget!) would maintain, or is God's constancy his defining characteristic?

Answer 1

Historical Christian teaching says that God is perfect. If he were to change, that would make him not perfect. Or else it would mean that he wasn't yet perfect, and had to change to become perfect. Therefore, if God changes, he is not perfect; if he is perfect, he does not change. It also implies time -- there was a time that he was something different than he is now.

References to God changing his mind have appeared to me to be a literary device, or a way of explaining things that we can understand. Change implies time, as Sam notes, and since we are in time, we can really only understand things within time. By describing God as changing his mind, it is describing him within time, but also in a way that we can understand. That is not because he does change, but because there is no way for us to understand what is really happening outside of time.

For another example of time based words for something outside of time, consider the concept of the Son proceeding from the Father, or the Father begatting the Son. Those words imply time, and yet are used to describe something eternal and outside of time.

Answer 2

I think that the question of God's immutability must be considered as two distinct questions:

• Is the shared concept of God which is acknowledged by religious people of a Christian tradition (or a Muslim, Jewish, or Samaritan tradition), at least those that tend to agree that they are talking about the same thing, one of an immutable thing?
• Is God, as described in the Bible, the figure of Yahweh, an immutable character in His descriptions?

The two questions are not the same, since the Bible is only a finite collection of symbols, and it is impossible to capture an infinitely complex notion with a finite character string. I think the answer to the first question is "yes", because the notion of God is outside of space and time, as an abstract figure in an external realm.

An analogy might be made with the notion of "integer", or of "shape". Both of these are outside of space and time, they live in the world of mathematical objects. They are described in Euclid's elements, and in modern mathematical textbooks in different ways. Does this mean that the concept of "17" changed between ancient times and today? Not really. It simply reflects that the notion of integer is infinite and infinitely rich, and we discover new aspects of this notion with time, so that we describe them in a different way today. It does not invalidate Euclid to say that we now can conceive of a larger world of shape and integers than Euclid could.

Similarly, the notion of God has evolved. Within the Catholic tradition, people say the same thing by saying that revelation is gradual, that new aspects of God are revealed in time (see Gregory of Nazianzu's position on the gradual revelation of the Trinity, from revealing the Father in the old testament, to the Son in the Gospels, to the Holy Spirit active in individuals, which has the capacity to inform those in the Church of Divine opinion regarding new developments), so that the conception of God is gradually enriched. This means that things that were once considered the word of God, like the rules governing slaves and multiple wives, are replaced with different rules in context, like the rules of not permitting slavery and polygamy.

It is not clear to me that the concept of God in the old and new testaments, with its authoritarian tone of submission to state authority and its disrespect for pagan belief systems and their complex artwork, is optimal for the ethical concerns which are most pressing in our day. For example, when the Taliban wrecked those Buddhas of Baminyan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamiyan), they claimed to be acting in God's service. But it's one thing to break an idol used for human sacrifice and another to shatter an image that reflects a deep meditative tradition.

Answer 3

Open Theism says, "yes," as do a few other belief systems I can't recall.

I say, "no." If God were to change, then there would be some timeline (not necessarily the one we age through) that He was subject to and there would be some governing set of rules that governed God's mutability.

To view this problem from another angle, if God changes, then there is some element of creation that He either does not control or is unaware of. A knowledge that is beyond Him. He ceases to be all and is subject to either entirely to this other source of knowledge or the concept of God is now distributed between God and the other holder of knowledge.

I hope that's helpful. It's a bit more philosophy than exegesis. :)

As for that particular passages you're referring to, they are typically interpreted as God acting in human terms. When Moses or Abraham contend with God and He relents, it should be taken as the author intends it, to show God's condescension to His creation.

Answer 4

God does not change. He is perfect, as stated in thursdaysgeek's answer. We can understand this within the context of our mortal experience.

As an example of how God might appear to change His mind and yet be unchanging, consider the operation of a simple computer program:

while (not person.has_faith()):
     wait()
giveWitness()

In plain language, the computer program waits until the "person" has faith, and then gives a witness. If the person does not have faith, a witness will never be given. This extremely simple piece of code shows that it is possible to exhibit different behaviors depending on the circumstance, and yet the piece of code doesn't change at all. I am not saying that God is a computer program (He isn't), but He shares the attribute of exactness and repeatability with computer programs.

The notion that God cannot be unchanging merely because His responses to different circumstances vary grossly oversimplifies earthly concepts that are easy to understand. This was an important lesson in revelation to Peter and the Jews, when God revealed that the Gospel was to be preached to the Gentiles. God regularly changes His policies and instructions in response to timing and changing circumstances, but His laws and character never change.

I call this the "Bathtub principle" of revelation.

It is illustrated as a parent tells his child to go and start filling a bathtub. The child does so. Later, the parent tells him to turn the water off. If we collapse this sequence into a single point in time or lack situational awareness, the parent's instructions will appear to contradict each other--but if we are aware of the circumstance and the progression of needs, it will make perfect sense. God does not change, but timing and circumstances do. God's instructions and responses to different circumstances allow us to learn line upon line how God really feels and how He uses each circumstance to express love and help us to grow.

God's knowledge and situational awareness are complete. That is what the word "perfect" implies. The notions of God's character or nature being mutable and also being perfect are mutually exclusive.

Answer 5

Necessity is the mother of invention. Does God invent new things?

Man has now found out that the Universe is "expanding. Is God similarly becoming bigger, and is He growing in Wisdom?

Bible says that "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." That statement begs a question "In the beginning of what?" . But it clearly says that God did create something. which means it did not exist before. God created something because he felt a need for it, which means that he was not satisfied with the situation before the creation, which is why he decided to create something.

So there must have been a change in God before and after creation, because after each creation, he remarked " that it was good".

And later, God was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and said He was grieved in His heart. "I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them" (Gen. 6:6-7).

I [the Lord] regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following Me and has not carried out My commands (1 Sam. 15:11).

So God's plans sometimes backfires, and he has to change his plans to correct them. But we believe that He will succeed in the end.

So God changing his character must be like how an actor can play double role in a movie, and maintain his true charachter outside the sets.

But then is God playing roles in this world?

Many people believe that this world is just a make-believe, and does not actually exist. It is just a toy God has made for his children to teach them values and truths.

Is the Bible that says "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." also a fairy story written by God for his children to teach them values and truths?