Featured The LORD: "HATES all workers of iniquity"??

Immutable: : not capable of or susceptible to change (Webser's Dictionary)

You don't get to redefine the words in the English language. If God can change at all then He is mutable, by definition. Mutable and immutable are not synonyms, they are opposites.

What part of his nature, Jon?

Is God a Spirit or does He have a physical body?

To deny that He has a physical body is antichrist. To say that He has always had a physical human body is to deny the incarnation. To say that He was always Spirit and then became a man is to say that God's nature changed, which, of course, it did.

Did God die, Jon? Is He dead now? Be careful with your answer here! Don't deny the gospel in defense of a pagan doctrine! If you do, you won't be the first!

No, it flatly does not!

There is nothing at all in scripture about God's nature being immutable. I very much doubt that you will even try to offer a definition of what "God's nature" even means.

God's character is what the bible teaches is immutable. This, however, is only one aspect of His nature and it definitely IS NOT what the doctrine of immutability teaches. It is not what Calvinists believe, it is not what Calvin or Luther or Augustine meant by "immutability" and it directly contradicts the equally unbiblical doctrine of divine simplicity which does not allow one to differentiate God's character or any other attribute or aspect of God from the whole.

So, you, like most every Christian I've ever debated on this topic are speaking out of both sides of your mouth. If you believe that it is only God's righteous character that cannot change then why not just drop the doctrine of divine immutability which definitely goes far far beyond that? That doctrine, along with the omni-doctrines, overstate the biblical truth.


P.S. Simply posting three truth claims doesn't count as having made an argument. I'm beginning to believe that none of you people know how to construct an actual argument where you start with a premise and then build upon it, precept by precept to reach a conclusion that follows logically from what preceded it. It's a skill you'd do well to learn and to practice.

 

You're simply dishonest. I knew you'd say something stupid like this.

There are literally hundreds of things I could quote, even thousands. It's simply idiotic that I'm being forced to quote anything so obviously the case but here goes nothing....

"Aquinas (like Augustine) derived the doctrine of divine immutability (DDI) from the deeper classical-theist doctrine of divine simplicity (ST Ia 9). If God is simple, God has no parts of any sort. Now when a thing changes, it becomes partly different. Were this not so, no change would have occurred. But it cannot become different in every respect. For if it did, it would become different with respect to being identical with this thing. If first we have something identical with this turnip and then we have something not identical with it, the turnip has not changed, but disappeared and been replaced by something else. So whatever changes must stay partly the same (else there was not change in one selfsame surviving thing). Thus whatever can change is divisible in some way into what would stay and what would go if it changed. If so, a simple God cannot change. Moreover, classical theists- as well as such critics as Scotus and Ockham- universally understood God’s simplicity as ruling out possession of accidents. Of course, what has no accidents cannot change in accidents. Further, a simplicity which rules out accidents cannot itself be an accidental property, and must therefore be essential. Thus such simplicity dictates not just no actual accidental change but immutability. DDI’s connection with divine simplicity and the classical theist theory of God’s perfection which centers on divine simplicity is one of the deepest reasons for DDI’s broad historical appeal;...." - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

"Immutability means God does not change in any way. Impassibility, a corollary to immutability, means that God does not experience emotional change in any way; he does not suffer." - The Immutability and Impassibility of God - Matthew Barrett (professor of Christian theology at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, editor-in-chief of Credo, director of the Center for Classical Theology and the author of the award-winning Simply Trinity.)

Immutability is what it means for God to be God. He is eternal, necessary, free from all composition, and devoid of potentiality; he is pure act, pure form, unadulterated essence. “If God were not immutable, he would not be God” (Reformed Dogmatics vol 2 page 154). As the God who is, he cannot change, for any kind of change would diminish his being. “All that changes ceases to be what it was. But true being belongs to him who does not change” (Herman Bavinck Reformed Dogmatics vol 2 page 154).
Furthermore, Bavinck argues that we must not soften immutability by locating it in ethical realm only, or by insisting that God is his own cause (causa sui) of actualization (RD 2:156-57). Every change is foreign to God, whether in time, in location, or in essence. God is pure actuality (pursus actua), a perfect and absolute being without any capability (potentia) for nonbeing or being different than he is (RD 2:157).


"Divine immutability is best summarized by Shedd: “the unchangeableness of [God’s] essence, attributes, purposes, and consciousness” [2]. So this is an absolute immutability. This not only denies that God does change, but also that God has any ability to change. Far from being some sort of real, ontological “inability” in God, we must understand that to change is to either suffer defect, if it is a change for the worse, or else to have previously been defective, if it is a change for the better. Consequently, this defect per se is no power.

This truth also implies that both God’s incommunicable attributes and communicable attributes are unchangeable. And this further means that both God’s natural attributes and what we might terms his personal attributes are also unchangeable. He must have no “new nature, new thoughts, new will, new purpose, or new place” [3]. We will see a consequence to this that puts divine immutability on a collision course with modern theology. Over the past century and a half, theologians have set about to answer popular concerns over God’s relatability to us. The trouble with this is that, even where it is motivated by serious answers to pain and suffering, God will not be better for us by being less of himself. - Divine Immutability - Reformed Calssicalist

2. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 284.
3. Charnock. Discourses, I.317.
​

Notice the almost verbatim argument these men use that Plato recorded Socrates using!
I could literally go on for a week multiplying quote upon quote upon quote from as many varied sources that you care to count. If you deny the truthfully of this definition it will be proof that you are a liar.

No, those are the proof-texts that Calvinists and other Augustinian theologians use to prop up the doctrine of immutability. Those passages teach that God CHARACTER does not change, which IS NOT the doctrine of immutability.

Saying it doesn't make it so!

Saying that particular thing makes you an idiot.

It isn't subjective. Words means things, Jon, and you don't get to just redefine what words mean so that you can keep using them to make yourself feel like you still believe in a particular doctrine. Why would anyone even want to do such a thing, anyway? Where is the pay off? Why cling to a hollowed out version of a doctrine that no one who knows anything at all about what they're talking about would agree with? Why use a term that 99.9% of the others who use it will believe it means something other than what you claim it means? Is it because you desire to lie to them? That doesn't make sense. Are you lying to yourself? Why would you do that?

In short, if you actually do believe that the only aspect of God that cannot change is His moral character then you are in agreement with my side of this debate. I encourage you to simply drop the pretense and acknowledge that what virtually the entire rest of Christianity means by the doctrine of immutability is a gross overstatement of the biblical truth.

 

The quote I offered is totally in keeping with all of the other quotes I offered and I could offer many many more and you know it. You're simply lying at this point.

God does not have a shadow, right? This is a figure of speech. It is said in the context of His moral Character and it means that He is always righteous, always just, always loving and kind and, more specifically, He does not tempt us to do evil!

That is not what it means! That might be true, depending on just what you mean by it, but that isn't what James 1:17 is talking about. That's you reading your doctrine into the text. James said that while refuting the notion that God tempts people to sin (verse 13).

I do not renounce them, I embrace them!

What I do not do is bring extra-biblical doctrines with me to those texts and read that doctrine into them. They mean what they say, not what you desire for them to say.

 

Jon how do you deal with the text he quoted?

seems pretty cut and dry to me?

thanks

 

No, I've never read or even heard anyone ever utter something so stupid in my life.

I've never read, nor would I post it as something to be taken seriously if I had.

Play all the idiotic games that you want. The immutability of Augustine, Luther and Calvin as well as any prominent Calvinist you care to name, is that God is perfectly stagnant and stagnantly perfect; that He does not change in any respect whatsoever.

Stupidity from start to finish. First of all the bible doesn't teach divine immutability and every syllable of this stupidity after the comma contradicts the meaning of the word immutable.

Double talk is stupidity out loud.

No, it doesn't.

No, you say it repeatedly and repeatedly read it into the text.

And therefore the bible does not teach that God does not change.

You are a lunatic.

If this is how you think doctrine is to be done then you have no means by which to combat heresy. No doctrine that any freak-show cult leader comes up with could ever be falsified, if what you are suggesting here was even close to being true.

 

I've studied and debated this precise topic since the early 1990s.

Cite your source, Jon, if you can; if such a source exists. You are the only person I've ever encountered who ever uttered such blatantly self-contradictory nonsense and expected anyone to take it seriously. If immutability means mutable then why call it immutability?

You should know, by the way, that I will be directly quoting your posts when presenting material on this topic. It is, by far, the most laughably egregious extreme that I've ever seen anyone go to in a defense of the indefensible.

MOD NOTE: Changed the word "idiot" to "person". Delete the "stupidity" statement. - SO

 

Psalm 5 says what it says. God hates the sinner.a systematic theological approach to interpretation of this dictates reconcile it with other Scriptures. God hates the non-elect sinner.

 

But...He only sent His son for the elect. Loves His elect. Hates the non-elect sinner.

 

Liar.

You've made this "immutability" means "mutable" argument up, haven't you?

Not in the same sense that the word "immutable" means, He didn't.

Using terms is not citing a source, Jon!

Of course you knew that when you posted this stupidity.

That is one version of immutability but it is NOT what Calvinism teaches nor is it what Augustine based doctrines such a predestination, original sin and all of the other doctrines which Calvin canonized into the Calvinist system.

There is no aspect of God, whether accidental or otherwise, that can be susceptible to any sort of change whatsoever, according to Calvinist doctrine. The logic goes that in whatever way God can change, God is imperfect and therefore not God.

I do no such thing except to acknowledge that impassibility is nothing more that the doctrine of immutability applied to God's state of mind.

It is precisely the scripture that is my primary argument against these doctrines. The extra-biblical history of these doctrines, as I have already said multiple times, is so well established and extremely clear that it is not even in dispute! If you go to a Calvinist seminary, they will teach you the Classics! And they'll do so because ancient Greek philosophy is where these doctrines come from and they not only know it, they're proud of it! They're proud of it just like the Catholics are proud that they base much of their doctrine on the traditions of men over the bible. Calvinists read the bible in the light of Aristotelian philosophy in the same manner that the Catholics read the bible in light of church tradition and Papal edict.

It is precisely the fact that these doctrines originate in Greek philosophy and the fact that the plain reading of scripture provides proof after proof that they are overstatements at best, if not outright falsehoods, that causes me to reject these doctrines in favor of sound reason and the plainly read text of scripture.