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THE IMMUTABILITY OF GOD

Paul Gerard Horrigan, Ph.D., 2002.

God is absolutely immutable. Concerning affirmations of the divine immutability in

Sacred Scripture, we read in the following texts: “I am the Lord and I change not.”1 “God is not a

man, that He should lie; nor as the son of man, that He should be changed.”2 The heavens shall

perish, but Thou remainest; and all of them shall grow old like a garment. And as a vesture Thou

shalt change them, and they shall be changed, but Thou art always the self-same, and Thy years

shall not fail.”3 “Every best gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the

Father of lights, with whom there is no change, nor shadow of alteration.”4 “And they changed

the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of a corruptible man.”5

The Council of Nicea (325 A.D.) anathematized the Arian heresy that the Son of God is

variabilis aut mutabilis. Then, in 1215, at the Fourth Lateran Council, and later in 1870 at

Vatican I, the dogma of divine immutability was expressly defined as of faith.6 From the Fourth

Lateran Council, we have the following words: “We firmly believe and absolutely confess that

the one and only God is eternal, immense, and unchangeable.”7 The First Vatican Council

declares: “God, as being one, sole, absolutely simple and immutable spiritual substance, is to be

declared as really, and essentially distinct from the world.”8

Those Advocating the Error of God’s Mutability

Among the many influential thinkers who have taught the error of the mutability of God,

we include 1. the absolute idealist and pantheistic monist Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (who

believed that God evolved with the progress of history towards self-consciousness of Absolute

Spirit9) ; 2. The anti-Kantian Austrian ex-priest Franz Brentano,

10 who exerted a strong influence

1 Mal. 3:6.

2 Num. 23:19. 3 Ps. 101:27.

4 James 1:17. 5 Rom. 1:23. See also : Eccles. 42:16; Prov. 19:21.

6 Cf. J. POHLE, God: His Knowability, Essence and Attributes, B. Herder, St. Louis, 1911, p. 299 ; A.

TANQUEREY, A Manual of Dogmatic Theology, Desclée, Tournai, 1959, p. 271 ; L. OTT, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, Tan Books, Rockford, IL, 1974, p. 35. 7 Denz., no. 428. 8 Ibid., no. 1782.

9 Leo Elders writes: “Hegel reformulated Kenosis as a stage in a process of evolutionistic monism. God is negated

and becomes (or yields place to) the Spirit, conscious of itself, in the mind of the philosopher. Hegel admits, indeed,

an evolution in the Absolute Idea which unfolds itself in time to return again to itself. All constituent parts of reality

are intrinsically connected with one another and relative to this dialectical process. God is the entire totality”(L.

ELDERS, The Philosophical Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, Brill, Leiden, 1990, p. 174). 10

Cf. A. J. BURGESS, Brentano’s Evolving God, “The New Scholasticism,” 55 (1981), pp. 438-449. Burgess writes

that Brentano’s divergence from the Aristotelian and Thomistic metaphysical tradition “was encouraged by his

break with the Roman Catholic Church in 1874. Following the rationalist tradition, he comes in his late period to

reject any religious teachings that are not self-evident or derivable from self-evident principles. Moreover, he rejects

flatly the doctrine of analogical predication of divine attributes (Cf. F. BRENTANO, Vom Dasein Gottes, Hamburg,

1929, pp. 179-180). (…) The centerpiece of Brentano’s metaphysics is his concept of a necessarily existing but

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on the phenomenologist Edmund Husserl ; 3. Henri Bergson, with his philosophy of “creative

evolution,” who maintained God to be a “duration in movement,” with nothing finished11

; 4. the

panentheist process philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (who advocated a bipolar God with

three natures – primordial, consequent, and superjective – a God demiurge in constant process

and becoming12

) ; 5. the proponents of process philosophy and process theology in the United

States during the second half of the 20th century (which includes the foremost proponent of

process theology, Charles Hartshorne,13

who was a vocal follower of Whitehead and influential

evolving God…The thesis that God evolves is deeply rooted in the thought of Brentano’s late period. Part of the

reason Brentano comes to hold that God evolves, indeed, may be that he finds that that thesis fits in with a general

change of viewpoint during his last years, since he does reflect at that time on the temporal modes of our judgments

(Cf. F. BRENTANO, Über den Gegenständen des Denkens, February 22, 1915, in Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, II, Leipzig, 1925, pp. 220-221). When he comes in the ‘Gedankengang’ to defend the notion of God

evolving, however, he does not argue the general case but instead introduces two considerations that apply

specifically to an immediately necessary being. The first of these comes from the great Aristotelian scholar

Trendelenburg, who said that it is conceivable that motion should lead to rest but not that rest should lead to motion.

A changeless God would therefore not be able to give rise to a changing world (Cf. F. BRENTANO, Gedankengang

(1915), section 17, in Vom Dasein Gottes, pp. 457-458. Cf. Vom Kontinuierlichen (1914), in Raum, Zeit und Kontinuum, p. 27, and Gäbe es keine Dinge mehr oder nur einem zeitlosen Gott, so wäre auch nichts gewesen (February 4, 1915), in ibid., p. 115). The second consideration has to do with God’s knowledge. An omniscient God

knows all truths; but since what is true changes, unless God’s knowledge also changes God will sometimes be

mistaken. An unchanging God could know unchanging principles, but such a God would still be ignorant of the

particular situation at any moment (Cf. F. BRENTANO, Gedankengang (1915), section 18, in Vom Dasein Gottes,

pp. 458-459)…In Brentano’s proposal the divine understanding is viewed in terms of a steady change of temporal

mode (Cf. F. BRENTANO, Vom Dasein Gottes, p. 468. Cf. ibid., p. 461 and various passages from this period

printed in Raum, Zeit und Kontinuum, pp. 27, 94, 106, and 144). By this Brentano presumably means that God’s

nature evolves through time, so that God has at each moment the knowledge appropriate to that moment. In

Brentano’s day of horse and buggy, let us say, God knew such carriages in the present mode and today’s auto as

something for the future; but now God knows buggies to be outmoded and this year’s models as a present reality.

Thus God’s understanding never comes into conflict with itself, since the knowledge that God has in the past agrees

fully with what God knows now, given the change in time frame within which the two divine judgments are

made”(A. J. BURGESS, Brentano’s Evolving God, “The New Scholasticism,” 55 (1981), pp. 440, 442, 443-445). 11

Cf. H. BERGSON, Creative Evolution, 270. Thonnard observes: “In theodicy, despite the clear statements of

Bergson, the basic principle which he maintained to the end did not keep him from evolutionistic pantheism. If pure

becoming is the unique reality and if its evolution constitutes various universes, God being but the center of this

emanation, it is impossible, without adding to his system, to uphold a substantialistic and personal distinction

between God and the world. That is why all the forms of his philosophy are compatible with pantheism”(F. J.

THONNARD, A Short History of Philosophy, Desclée, Tournai, 1956, p. 989). 12 Explaining how Whitehead’s bipolar God progresses and becomes, Collins observes: “Physical feelings and

consciousness come to God only through the operations of the consequent nature, or physical pole. In this respect

God is finite and in process. Through his physical prehensions, God is continually receiving new objective data from

the temporal actualities, which now react upon Him. God constantly comes to be in his consequent nature, along

with the becoming of other actualities in process. From them He selects and transmutes materials for physical

feelings in accord with his own eternal envisagement of a harmonious order of the universe, in which his esthetic

satisfaction lies”(J. D. COLLINS, God in Modern Philosophy, Regnery Gateway, Chicago, 1967, p. 320). 13

Hartshorne defends the mutability of God in his works such as: The Divine Relativity, Yale University Press, New

Haven, 1948 ; A Natural Theology for Our Time, Open Court, La Salle, IL, 1967 ; Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes, SUNY Press, Albany, 1984. An existential Thomist defense of God’s immutability against

the Whiteheadian and Hartshornian process philosophy and process theology advocacy of Lewis Ford has been

made by John F. X. Knasas (see: J. F. X. KNASAS, Aquinas: Prayer to An Immutable God, “The New

Scholasticism,” 57 (1983), pp. 196-221).

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advocate for panentheism in liberal theology circles, and also John B. Cobb, Jr.14

and Forrest

Wood, Jr.15

).

Divine Immutability

God is absolutely immutable. He is unchangeable. Changeability presupposes some sort

of potentiality, and the Stagirite defines motion as “the actualization of what exists in potency

insofar as it is in potency.” But the prima via ex parte motus a posteriori demonstration of God’s

existence concludes to God who is Pure Act, without potentiality whatsoever, the Unmoved

Mover of all finite, contingent beings, who is in no way moved. Therefore, God is immutable.

Immutability is an entitative, negative, absolute, and incommunicable attribute of God.

The immutability of God follows from His being Pure Actuality, absolute Simplicity, and

infinite Perfection. Mutability includes potentiality, composition, and imperfection, and therefore

cannot be reconciled with God as Pure Act, the Absolute Divine Simplicity, and the infinitely

Perfect Being.

For mutability or changeability some potency is presupposed. Whatever moves in any

way possesses some sort of potency for that movement. But God is Pure Act and so there is in

His Being no admixture of potency. Therefore it is impossible that He be moved or changed in

any way whatsoever.

In any thing that is moved, there must be something that remains the same and something

that changes. For example, what is moved from an unripe green mango to a ripe yellow mango

remains the same in substance (the substance mango), but changes in quality (a qualitative

change or motion – called alteration – has occurred. The other two types of motion are local motion or change of place and quantitative motion or augmentation or growth and diminution or

decrease). Hence, intrinsic composition of some sort is necessary in any change. In any thing that

is moved, there is present some composition. But as we see in Summa Theologiae, I, q. 3. aa 1-8

(in particular, in article 7), God is the Absolute Divine Simplicity (there is in God no

composition of matter and form, no compounding of a nature with the individual subject which

has that nature, no composition of essence and act of being, no composition of substance and

accidents, nor is there logical composition or compounding of genus and specific difference).

Therefore, God is immutable; He cannot be changed in any way.

In every change, something new is acquired. Any thing that is moved acquires by this

movement something it did not have before. Now, God is infinite in his Being (cf. Summa Theologiae, I, q. 7, aa. 1, 2), comprehending in Himself the fullness of perfection (cf. Summa Theologiae, I, q. 4, a. 1). But being infinitely perfect, God cannot acquire new perfection; God

can neither acquire anything nor extend His Being to anything that He does not already possess.

Therefore God is immutable; He is entirely unchangeable.

14 Cf. J. C. COBB, A Christian Natural Theology Based on the Thought of Alfred North Whitehead, Westminster

Press, Philadelphia, 1965. 15 Cf. F. WOOD, Whiteheadian Thought as a Basis for a Philosophy of Religion, University Press of America,

Lanham, MD, 1986.

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St. Thomas explains the divine immutability in Summa Theologiae, I, q. 9, a. 1, c. as

follows: “God is altogether immutable. First, because it was shown above that there is some first

being, whom we call God; and that this first being must be pure act, without the admixture of any

potentiality, for the reason that, absolutely, potentiality is posterior to act. Now everything which

is in any way changed, is in some way in potentiality. Hence it is evident that it is impossible for

God to be in any way changeable. Secondly, because everything which is moved, remains as it

was in part, and passes away in part; as what is moved from whiteness to blackness, remains the

same as to substance; thus in everything which is moved, there is some kind of composition to be

found. But it has been shown above (q. 3, a. 7) that in God there is no composition, for He is

altogether simple. Hence it is manifest that God cannot be moved. Thirdly, because everything

which is moved acquires something by its movement, and attains to what it had not attained

previously. But since God is infinite, comprehending in Himself all the plenitude of perfection of

all being, He cannot acquire anything new, nor extend Himself to anything whereto He was not

extended previously. Hence movement in no way belongs to Him. So, some of the ancients,

constrained, as it were, by the truth, decided that the first principle was immovable.”16

God is entirely immutable: “When we say that God is immutable, we mean that He is

entirely so. He is immutable in substance, for He is the Infinite Spirit and a spirit is not

substantially changeable but is incorruptible; besides, God is the Necessary Being, and cannot

conceivably fade, diminish, fall away, corrupt. God is immutable in nature, that is, specifically,

in understanding and in will. For God’s understanding embraces all truth changelessly and

eternally; and God’s will is changeless, since a change of will is always consequent upon a

change of substance or of knowledge, and we have just seen that neither substance nor

understanding is changeable in God.

“Now it is here that a difficulty may arise in our imperfect minds. We are apt to think that

if God’s will does not and cannot change, we are all the helpless victims of an iron destiny and

free-will is an illusion. Or, even if we brush aside this basic difficulty, we are likely to think that

our prayers of petition to God are valueless, since nothing can lead to a change in the Divine

Will. Of course, these difficulties are mere seeming. They occur to us because, unconsciously,

we attribute to God our own human limitations, and misunderstand His eternal immutability,

making of it a mere fixity. We must remember that God is eternal and infinite. All things

knowable are present to God’s knowledge, in fullest detail, from eternity. Hence, every

circumstance that comes to our knowledge and bears upon our free choice is fully known to God

from eternity, and from eternity He decrees to concur with our free-will and, indeed, from

eternity He moves it to its free choice. Therefore free-will is not thwarted nor made illusory by

God’s changelessness. Further, God from eternity knows every possible petition that can ever be

offered to Him, and, for those that are actually made, He has, from eternity, prepared the answer.

Hence our petitions can and do have their effect. And the petitions must be made, since the

answer to them is prepared from eternity as contingent upon our making them. When God grants

our requests there is not change in God. From eternity He decrees the answer that comes to us in

time. Thus our prayers make all the difference in the world. But they make no change in God.

We must avoid the mistake of attributing to God a manner of dealing with us that resembles our

dealing with others. For we must take things one after another; we must live and act in a

succession of moments, hours, days, years. It is not so with God. All things, past, present, and to

16

Summa Theologiae, I, q. 9, a. 1, c.

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come, are perfectly present to God from eternity. Hence, an event that looks to us like an

exceptional thing – such as the answer to a special prayer, or the intervention of God in a

miraculous happening – is just as much a matter of eternal and changeless decree as that which

appears to us as the fixed course of nature continuously sustained. The raising of Lazarus was as

much a matter of eternal Will as the universal law that all men must die. The healing of St.

Peter’s mother-in-law was just as much a matter of eternal Will as the constant ‘law’ of nature

which requires the cooperation of much time in the curing of a fever, and produces no

instantaneous cures.”17

God Alone is Entirely Immutable

Only God is entirely immutable, whereas every creature created by God is mutable.

Maurice Holloway writes “In every creature there exists a potency for change, either according

to their substantial being, as in the case of corruptible bodies, or according to their order to their

end and the application of their power to different places, as in the case of the angels. And this is

due to a potency within the nature of these things. Secondly, all creatures are mutable because of

an active potency or power that is in God, in whose power is their being and their non-being.

And since the Being of God is not changeable in any of these ways, it is proper only to Him to be

entirely unchangeable.”18

The Angelic Doctor, in Summa Theologiae, I, q. 9, a. 2, c. states: “God

alone is altogether immutable; whereas every creature is in some way mutable. Be it known

therefore that a mutable thing can be called so in two ways: by a power in itself; and by a power

possessed by another. For all creatures before they existed, were possible, not by any created

power, since no creature is eternal, but by the divine power alone, inasmuch as God could

produce them into existence. Thus, as the production of a thing into existence depends on the

will of God, so likewise it depends on His will that things should be preserved; for He does not

preserve them otherwise than by ever giving them existence; hence if He took away His action

from them, all things would be reduced to nothing, as appears from Augustine (Gen. ad lit. iv,

12). Therefore as it was in the Creator’s power to produce them before they existed in

themselves, so likewise it is in the Creator’s power when they exist in themselves to bring them

to nothing. In this way therefore, by the power of another – namely, of God – they are mutable,

inasmuch as they are producible from nothing by Him, and are by Him reducible from existence

to non-existence.

“If, however, a thing is called mutable by a power in itself, thus also in some manner

every creature is mutable. For every creature has a twofold power, active and passive; and I call

that power passive which enables anything to attain its perfection either in being, or in attaining

to its end. Now if the mutability of a thing be considered according to its power for being, in that

way all creatures are not mutable, but those only in which what is potential in them is consistent

with non-being. Hence, in the inferior bodies there is mutability both as regards substantial

being, inasmuch as their matter can exist with privation of their substantial form, and also as

regards their accidental being, supposing the subject to coexist with privation of accident; as, for

example, this subject ‘man’ can exist with ‘not-whiteness’ and can therefore be changed from

white to not-white. But supposing the accident to be such as to follow on the essential principles

of the subject, then the privation of such an accident cannot coexist with the subject. Hence the

17 P. J. GLENN, Theodicy, B. Herder, St. Louis, 1949, pp. 169-171. 18

M. HOLLOWAY, op. cit., p. 268.

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subject cannot be changed as regards that kind of accident; as, for example, snow cannot be

made black. Now in the celestial bodies matter is not consistent with privation of form, because

the form perfects the whole potentiality of the matter; therefore these bodies are not mutable as

to substantial being, but only as to locality, because the subject is consistent with privation of this

or that place. On the other hand incorporeal substances, being subsistent forms which, although

with respect to their own existence are as potentiality to act, are not consistent with the privation

of this act; forasmuch as existence is consequent upon form, and nothing corrupts except it lose

its form. Hence in the form itself there is no power to non-existence; and so these kinds of

substances are immutable and invariable as regards their existence. Wherefore Dionysius says

(Div. Nom. iv) that ‘intellectual created substances are pure from generation and from every

variation, as also are incorporeal and immaterial substances.’ Still, there remains in them a

twofold mutability: one as regards their potentiality to their end; and in that way there is in them

a mutability according to choice from good to evil, as Damascene says (De Fide ii, 3,4); the

other as regards place, inasmuch as by their finite power they attain to certain fresh places –

which cannot be said of God, who by His infinity fills all places, as was shown above (q. 8, a. 2).

“Thus in every creature there is a potentiality to change either as regards substantial being

as in the case of things corruptible; or as regards locality only, as in the case of the celestial

bodies; or as regards the order to their end, and the application of their powers to divers objects,

as in the case with the angels; and universally all creatures generally are mutable by the power of

the Creator, in Whose power is their existence and non-existence. Hence since God is in none of

these ways mutable, it belongs to Him alone to be altogether immutable.”

Varvello’s Replies to Various Objections to God’s Immutability

In the Theodicy part of his book Metaphysics, the Salesian professor of philosophy

Francis Varvello replies to a number of objections to the absolute immutability of God:

“Objection 1. Every action is performed locally. Therefore God, either does not act, or is moved

locally, and therefore is changed.

“Response. Every corporeal action is performed locally, I grant; every action even

spiritual or divine, I deny, and I deny also the consequent. The adversary used the word motion

in the stricter sense to signify mechanical motion, which surely is performed only in space and

time. But philosophers, and generally all men, receive the word motion also; 1) in a wide sense

for signifying the motion of mind, i.e., intellections and volitions which surely are extraspatial

and extratemporal actions, even in the opinion of experimental psychologists; 2) in the widest

sense for signifying the most perfect action of God, which excludes not only changes of space

and time (proper to bodies) and other changes from possibility to actuality, from potency to act

(proper also to created spirits), but also all changes of any kind, without, however, being moved,

i.e., without any intrinsic change, without passing from potency to act, because it is the most

pure, most absolute act.

“Objection 2. God, by performing miracles, derogated the natural laws, which He

Himself had decreed from eternity. But God cannot repeal laws which He Himself has enacted

except by changing His will. Therefore…

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“Response. I grant the major, but deny the minor and consequent. For God, by the very

act of will by which from eternity He enacted the natural laws, from eternity also decreed the

derogations of the same laws; and so when miracles are performed, not only is the divine will not

changed, but it is accurately fulfilled.

“Objection 3. If God is absolutely immutable, prayers, whereby men strive to change His

dispositions towards them, become useless.

“Response. Men pray, not in order to change the dispositions of God toward them, but in

order to merit what God from eternity has arranged shall be given them on account of their

prayers. ‘From the divine providence, not only is it arranged what effects shall happen, but also

from which causes, and by what order they shall come. But among other causes are also the

causes of a human act. And so it is fitting that men should act not in order to change the divine

arrangement through their actions, but in order to fulfill through their actions certain effects

according to the order arranged by God. For we do not pray to change the divine disposition, but

to accomplish that which God has arranged should be fulfilled through prayers; in order that men

by asking, might be worthy of receiving what almighty God has arranged to give them before the

centuries, as D. Gregory says’(Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 83, a. 2).

“Objection 4. Truly he is changed who repents of his deed. But, according to Scripture

(Gen. 6:6), ‘God repented that he had made man. Therefore…

“Response. I distinguish the major. He is truly changed who repents properly, I grant;

metaphorically I deny. Likewise I distinguish the minor. According to Scripture, God repented

properly, I deny; metaphorically, I grant, and I deny the consequent.”19

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F. VARVELLO, Metaphysics, University of San Francisco Press, San Francisco, 1933, pp. 297-298.