Knowledge of God: Attributes of God, Part 3-Immutability and Impassibility

(the picture in the video is from Tim Challies)

C. Immutability and Impassibility

                        1. Definition

a. The quality of being unchanging (Floyd H. Barackman, Practical Christian Theology, pg. 50)

b. The Immutability of God is a necessary concomitant of His aseity. It is that perfection of God by which He is devoid of all change, not only in His Being, but also in His perfections, and in His purposes and promises. (Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology, pg. 58)

                        2. Scriptural Data

                                    a. being and perfections (essence or nature and character or attributes)

i. Psalm 102:25-27: Of old you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you will remain; they will all wear out like a garment. You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away, but you are the same, and your years have no end.

ii. Malachi 3:6: For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.

iii. James 1:17: Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

                                    b. purposes and promises

i. Psalm 33:11: The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations.

ii. Hebrews 6:17-18: So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us.

                        3. Consideration and Reflection

                                    a. God doesn’t change in His being, perfections, purposes, promises

                                                i. there is no intrinsic change; no becoming

-The doctrine of God’s immutability is of the highest significance for religion. The contrast between being and becoming marks the difference between the Creator and the creature. Every creature is continually becoming. It is changeable, constantly striving, seeks rest and satisfaction, and finds this rest in God, in him alone, for only he is pure being and no becoming. Hence, in Scripture God is often called the Rock… (Herman Bavinck, The Doctrine of God, pg. 149 in Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, pg. 164)

                                                ii. Being and becoming

                                                            -becoming: the actualization of potentialities

                                                            -problem: infinite regress

                                                            -answer: unmoved mover or unchanged changer

                                                            -being: existence or actuality

-God exists as pure being/actuality, no becoming/potentiality

                                                iii. there is extrinsic change

                                                            -example: law and grace

                                                            -God always deals with people and their faith (intrinsic)

                                                            -Faith in the law and faith in Christ are different (extrinsic)

                                    b. God wouldn’t be God if He changed

i. If self-existence should change, it would become dependent existence; eternity would become time; perfection imperfection; and therefore God would become not-God. (Gordon H. Clark, Baker’s Dictionary of Theology, pg. 78-79 in Charles Caldwell Ryrie, Basic Theology, pg. 43)

                                    c. Impassibility

                                                i. not subject to passions, doesn’t have emotions

                                                ii. God has emotions, but they are not bound to sin like ours

                                                iii. God’s emotions are tied to His goodness/holiness

                                                            -example: anger in man vs. God

                                    d. Change to God in the Bible

                                                i. anthropopathisms: assigning human emotion to God

                                                ii. various methods of God’s redeeming activity

                                                iii. eternal willing and temporal acting

                        4. Practical Application (J. I. Packer, Knowing God)

                                    a. God’s life does not change

                                                i. neither matures nor regresses

                                                ii. neither gets better or worse

                                    b. God’s character does not change

i. he deals with us consistent with His perfect, unchanging moral character

                                    c. God’s truth doesn’t change

                                                i. it can be relied upon for guidance

                                                ii. it isn’t susceptible to reinterpretation

                                    d. God’s ways do not change

                                                i. punishes sin consistently

                                                ii. dispenses grace freely

                                    e. God’s purposes do not change

                                                i. His plans are eternal with full foreknowledge of the future

                                    f. God’s Son does not change

i. Hebrews 13:8: Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

Knowledge of God: Attributes of God, Part 2-Aseity

(the picture in the video is from Tim Challies)

B. Aseity

                       1. Definition

                                    a. a se means by itself; self-existent or self-sufficient

b. When we say that God is self-existent we mean that he derives his being from no outside source. He exists in and of himself. He did not will himself into existence. His existence is grounded rather in his nature. He necessarily exists by reason of what he is in himself. (Edgar Young Mullins, The Christian Religion in Its Doctrinal Expression, pg. 223)

                        2. Scriptural Data

a. John 1:1-3​: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.

b. Isaiah 40:17-23: All the nations are as nothing before him, they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness. To whom then will you liken God, or what likeness compare with him? An idol! A craftsman casts it, and a goldsmith overlays it with gold and casts for it silver chains. He who is too impoverished for an offering chooses wood that will not rot; he seeks out a skillful craftsman to set up an idol that will not move. Do you not know? Do you not hear? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to dwell in; who brings princes to nothing, and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness.

c. Romans 11:36: For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.

d. Psalm 90:2: Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

                        3. Consideration and Reflection

                                    a. God doesn’t merely not need anything; He couldn’t need anything.

i. The creation, conservation, and future-being of the universe rely on God. No God, no universe. But, no universe, God still exists.

b. God’s self-existence doesn’t imply monotony and nothingness.

i. And here emerges the central and most glorious application of the term all-sufficiency. The Infinite Being is not the vast and unrelieved monotony of existence that Pantheistic mysticism defined as the abstract Nothing. It has in it infinite life, and, if such language be lawful, infinite variety of life, in the mutual knowledge, love, and communion of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. (William Burt Pope, A Compendium of Christian Theology, 1:301)

                                    c. Who made God?

                                                i. This objection fails when God’s aseity is properly understood.

ii. If God was contingent, he was dependent on something else for His existence, He wouldn’t be God. The being that caused God to exist would be God.

                                    d. Abstract objects

i. If abstract objects are real (such as numbers, sets, etc.), then it seems as if they are eternal, necessary, and uncreated which is contrary to the biblical witness. What to think?

ii. arealism: meaningless question

            -not widely held anymore (verificationism)

iii. realism: they are either concrete or abstract objects

-concrete: physical (formalism) or mental (divine conceptualism)

-formalism: scratch marks on paper (What about speech?)

-divine conceptualism: ideas in God’s mind (think of the number 2; it’s in your mind not God’s)

-abstract: created (absolute creationism) or uncreated (Platonism)

-absolute creationism: bootstrapping objection (for God to create the property of being powerful, He already has to be powerful)

-Platonism: eternal, necessary, uncreated like God (no world where God exists alone or creates independently)

                                                iv. antirealism: do not exist

                                                            -many views

                        4. Practical Application

a. God should be our ultimate concern in life because He is the sole ultimate reality

            i. Whatever is your object of ultimate concern is god for you

ii. “Among all created beings, not one dare trust in itself. God alone trusts in himself; all other beings must trust in him. Unbelief is actually perverted faith, for it puts its trust not in the living God but in dying men.” (A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy, pg. 42 in James Montgomery Boice, Foundations of the Christian Faith, pg. 105)

                                    b. God’s self-existence ought to exclude our selfishness (independence)

                                                i. Rebellion is an attempt at gaining independence from God

                                                ii. This takes us right back to the garden

iii. The freedom offered in Christ is not independence, but radical dependence on the only perfect being ever to exist