Featured Is It Nothing to You?

Well Ken... It looks like you won't make friend!... Oh well!... Brother Glen

 

Yeah I see your all torn up about it... Just roll with the punches... Brother Glen

 

I have told you the truth.

The Word is twice referred to as being with the God. And yes, the Word was God. He was always both someone other than God and God too. In His incarnation per John 1:14, He made it per John 1:3. His deity never changed. But how He was with the God did change per John 1:14. 2 John 1:9.

 

This is NOT what immutable means!

In fact, a major aspect of the doctrine of immutability is what is referred to as God's simplicity. According to this Greek philosophical idea that Augustine imported into the Catholic church and Luther perpetuated into the protestant era, God has no parts. To speak of any portion of God is to speak of the whole and as such there is no actual distinction between God and His attribute, including His deity.

Incidentally, the logic behind this actually does follow from the premise of God being immutable just as it also follows from that premise that God does not have emotions. He is simple and so there is no actual distinction between God's state of mind and God Himself. Thus, His state of mind does not change because He does not change. See how the logic works. Not that you'd let logic convince you of anything that you didn't already agree with.

And thus, by your own statement, He is NOT immutable - by definition!

So, now we have two proofs that God is not immutable...

• Scripture tells us that God does have emotion (see the passage quoted in the opening post of this thread) as does plain reason for we, his creation could not have emotion if He did not for the creature cannot be greater that the Creator, the effect is not greater than the cause.

• The incarnation itself, not to mention the death of God the Son and His subsequent resurrection and acquisition of a brand new glorified body which He never had before but now has forever more. Think of that! The God who has existed as spirit for an infinity has been permanently changed into a human being with a physical body.

The second of these, you just stated in your own words, will you then deny that God has emotion and that God gets angry but that He is not always angry; that God is sometimes pleased but is not always so, or will you agree with C.S. Lewis who stated in his book, "Miracles"...

“We correctly deny that God has passions… He cannot be affected by love…” (Miracles, 1960, pp. 92 93)​

How, oh how is it even possible for such a statement to reside for even a moment in the mind of a Christian without it being instantly rejected as a fiery dart shot at their heart by the wicked one?! (Eph. 6:16)

 

1 Timothy 2:5, "For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;"

He has always been both with the God and God too. How He was with God did change when He became a man.

 

And thus, by your own statement, He is NOT immutable!

 

The psalms are almost exclusively prophetic. The people of God who are the subject of the prophesies in these psalms are not the elect as you as a Calvinist would define the elect. They are the people of God with whom he has a covenant relationship through which he has made unconditional promises. Everything that happens with God is in view of his faithfulness to his covenant people, Israel. The promises he has made to Abraham and his physical seed is in no way dependent upon their faithfulness to him. It would have been so much better for this people if they would have been faithful to him.

Psa 81:1010 I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt: open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it.

11 But my people would not hearken to my voice; and Israel would none of me.
12 So I gave them up unto their own hearts' lust: and they walked in their own counsels.

God thought his people had a will and could choose their own actions

13 Oh that my people had hearkened unto me, and Israel had walked in my ways!
14 I should soon have subdued their enemies, and turned my hand against their adversaries.

Ken, I think there is not a Calvinist alive today who believes verse 13 and 14.That is my opinion.

15 The haters (he is speaking of the haters in Israel) of the Lord should have submitted themselves unto him: but their time should have endured for ever.
16 He should have fed them also with the finest of the wheat: and with honey out of the rock should I have satisfied thee.

In Psalm 110, his people, Israel, will be made willing in the day of his (God's) power, which is the same and equal with the "Day of the Lord.," a set time when he will purge all rebels and unbelievers out of Israel and purify them as a nation and a family with the fire of what he calls "great tribulation." This is what is meant by John the Baptist when he said to Israel at the Jordan River when he was baptizing the nation in water, " And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance. but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire: Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire." Matt 33:10-12

Israel was baptized with the Holy Ghost in Acts 2, fifty days after Jesus Christ rose from the dead, being ascended back to heaven. They have not yet experienced the baptism of fire, but they soon will.

The election of us gentiles now is not according to any promise to us that he is bound by an oath to keep, as it was with every covenant with Israel, but we are included in his salvation according to his mercy and grace. Our election is not predetermined individually before the foundation of the earth to be saved from our sins from the penalty of the second death, which is eternal separation from God in the lake of fire, but God chooses all those who hears about his Son, Jesus Christ, and believes and trusts that God will save us on the merits of his person and work like he says he will. He therefore chooses us "in Christ," that is he chooses every person whom the Spirit baptizes into the body of Christ when they believe the gospel of Christ. Romans 3:16 - The gospel is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believes, to the Jew first and also to the gentile.Jesus Christ is the elect.

I bring this up because you Calvinists miss the message of the scriptures and therefore blaspheme (speak evil of) the scriptures by misapplying them.

Note: all scriptures have a spiritual context and are profitable for a spiritual application but that context does not negate the literal truths of the word.

Re-read Psalm 110 as if the day of his power, V 3, is the time when God will purify Israel in the day of his wrath, V 5, and this has nothing to do with you in any kind of literal way.

 

As being with the God He is not immutable. As God He has always been immutable. You not believing this is on you.

 

Why not interpret the term "immutable" in the context in which it is found, and go from there? The context is in Heb 6 and is in the context of the Abrahamic covenant and the faithfulness of God

God's transition from the Mosaic Covenant to the New Covenant as the operative principle of divine dealing with the Hebrews does not change any of the promises of the Abrahamic Covenant, else he would be a liar since he has sworn to it.

This letter is to the Hebrews and God has graciously allowed the rest of us to read it and be enlightened by it.

This is the only context I see in scriptures for immutability.

 

You don't believe it! BY YOUR OWN WORDS!!!!

 

Excellent point! That's precisely what I do and what everyone aught to do.

The only time the term is used is Hebrews 6 and it isn't saying that God is immutable, in the sense that Plato taught and that Calvinists believe, but rather that its those two things that it lists that are immutable, both of which pertain to God's righteous character!

No one has suggested otherwise. Have they? I certainly have not.

Precisely! The idea that God cannot change whatsoever is the Calvinists holy of hollies (doctrinally speaking) because the entire Calvinist system is predicated logically on that single premise. If God is not immutable (and by that they do, in fact, mean that God cannot change IN ANY WAY WHATSOEVER) then their entire system grumbles to dust.

The logic Calvinists use was learned from Augustine who directly imported the thinking from Plato. It goes as follows.

The perfect, if it changes, does so for the worse.
God is perfect is every aspect.
God is unwilling and cannot be compelled to change for the worse.
Therefore, God cannot change in any aspect.

There is not one single Calvinist on this website or anywhere else on planet Earth that would deny the validity of that logic for to do so is death to their entire doctrinal system.

This flawed logic stands in the mind's of many as some of the greatest thinking that any human mind has produced and, next the the bible, this stuff is just stupidity.

The flaw has to do with a false dichotomy that is presumed in the primary premise. It assumes that any change in a thing must necessarily be for the better or for the worse (this is stated outright in Plato's writings). There is a third option, which is a change that neither improves nor degrades, is ignored, if it ever comes to mind at all.

There is also a fourth option that is likewise ignored and that has to do with the ability to change being part of what makes a thing perfect. Things like a perfect mountain lake or a perfect clock or any other thing that is dynamic by its very nature must change (i.e. per the definition of the term "dynamic") or else it isn't perfect at all. The inability to change would itself be a flaw. Any living thing is dynamic, by definition. That which is static and unchanging is dead. Thus, all living things change because change is part of what it means to be alive.

 

God is immutable. His character, His attributes, His holiness, His virtues, what makes Him Eternal God, never changes.

Malachi 3:6 (KJV)
For I [am] the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.

 

This is not what the Calvinists mean by immutable. They mean what Plato, Aristotle and Augustine meant which is that God cannot change IN ANY WAY WHATSOEVER!!!

This is THE reason they are forced to come up with weirdly convoluted doctrines such as the "hypostatic union" of Christ's two natures, which the bible does not teach and which no one at all would believe if not for the Augustinian doctrine of absolute divine immutability. It's nothing at all but a rescue device for a doctrine that has it's genesis in the pagan philosophy of the Greeks.

Also, even your statement goes beyond what scripture will support. For example, one of God's attributes is communicated in the following passage....

Revelation 1:18 I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen.

God was not always a human, but now is one. God was not always dead and did not remain dead. Prior to about 2000 years ago, "previously dead" is not an attribute that could have been accurately attributed to God but now is perhaps one of His most glorious attributes!

That sounds like a change to me!

 

God is immutable. The Son is both the Son of God and God.

 

@CJP69,
In order for God to be a cause He has to be mutable. In order to be God, God has to be immutable. That's why the Father uses the Lord Jesus Christ, per Ephesians 3:9, ". . . God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: . . ."

 

As the Word in John 1:3, "All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made." Means Him to be the sole agent of cause.

 

God cannot die. God became man but did not cease being God. That’s why Mary is not the Mother of God. She gave birth to Jesus the Man, not Jesus (God). God is eternal.

The Lord Jesus, as a man, could and did die and resurrect. Call it “hypostatic union” or not; me, I like simple words.

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, as of the only begotten of the Father. God the Son indwelt human flesh, and gave up His Spirit to the Father and the flesh became dead, as James states, “… the body without the spirit is dead.”

 

John 10:17 Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again.

18 No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father.

Brother Glen