3. The immutability of God. (Immutabilitas Dei.)
While all creatures pass away, being changed like a garment (Ps. 102:27-28), it is said in the same place and in sharp contrast with regard to God: "But you remain as you are." And as unchangeableness is ascribed to God in His essence, so also in His attributes. Is. 54:10: "Mountains shall depart and hills shall fall, but my grace shall not depart from thee" and Jn. 3:36: "The wrath of God abideth upon him." Also of God's will it is said Prov. 19:21: "There are many counsels in a man's heart, but the counsel of the Lord standeth still." The immutability of God is used by Scripture both to warn the wicked (Mark 9:44: the fire that does not go out) and to comfort the pious, Is. 54:10: "My grace shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace fall away."
When Scripture ascribes a change of mind to God (God repented that He created mankind and made Saul king, Gen. 6:6; 1 Sam. 15:11), and also states a change of place of God (Gen. 11:5: "God came down"), this is done in order to accommodate our human ideas. That this change is not to be transferred to God's nature is taught by Scripture itself in such passages where God and man are contrasted, such as 1 Sam. 15:29: "God is not a man, that He should repent"; Jer. 23:24: "Do you think that someone can hide himself so secretly that I do not see him? Is it not I who fill heaven and earth?" "God enters into time, and space, without becoming temporal or spatial in His being."
From this it follows: Scripture speaks of God in two ways: a. of God in His majesty, as exalted above time and space (besides 1 Sam. 15:29 and Jer. 23:24 still Ps. 90:4: a thousand years before God as one day); d. of God as limited to human
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conception of time and space, like 1 Sam. 15:11; 1 Mos. 11:5. Only after the latter way God is comprehensible for us men. We have to imagine God in such a way that the unchanging God is merciful or wrathful depending on the different objects. God is a gracious God to the humble, to poor sinners or broken hearts, whereas a wrathful God to the arrogant and self-righteous, 1 Petr. 5:5: "God resists the arrogant (υπερηφάνοις), but to the humble (ταπεινοϊς) He gives grace"; Luke 18:9-14: Pharisees and tax collectors; Luke 1:52-53: "He pushes the powerful off their chairs and lifts up the humble; he fills the hungry with goods and leaves the rich empty."
If against the immutability of God the creation of the world and the incarnation of the Son of God is asserted, then it is to be said: By the creation of the world and by the incarnation of the Son of God no change is set in God, but in relation to the creature. If one thinks the creation of the world not according to the recipe of the pantheistic theosophists, but according to the Scriptures, the world is not an emanation from God or a part of God, but brought into existence by God's omnipotence from nothing. And if one thinks of the incarnation not according to the thoughts of modern kenotics, but according to the revelation in God's Word, the incarnation consists in the fact that the Son of God, without any change in His divinity, took into His person a human nature from the Virgin Mary. 1371)
1371) Gerhard answers (Locus De Nat. Dei, § 154) to the question whether by the creation of the world and by the incarnation of the Son of God a change was set in God, so: An creationis opus Deum fecerit mutabilem? Negatur. ... In creatione duo consideranda: 1. agendi principium, 2. effectum productum. Agendi principium est ipsa Dei essentia, cui per creationem nulla accessit mutatio, quia non novo voluntatis moto Deus in creatione aliquid voluit, quod prius ab aeterno voluit, sed in tempore id fecit, quod ab aeterno immutabili sua voluntate decreverat. In effecto producto est mutatio a non esse ad esse, sed hoc Deum ipsum non fecit mutabilem. — Idem est iudicium de quaestione: An incarnationis opus Deum statuit mutabilem? Affirmat Socinus in Defens. 'animadv. Posn., p. 66: "Quis negare poterit, si Deus tunc revera incarnatus est et homo factus, cum Christus Iesus de Spiritu Sancto in Mariae virginis utero conceptus est exque ea natus, ipsi Deo eiusque substantiae adventitium aliquid et novum, idque maximi momenti, accidisse?" Atqui mansit eadem Verbi νπόστασις, licet alterius naturae coeperit esse ΰπόστασις. [Google]
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