The Immutability of God
The idea of immutability is very hard for us to understand, perhaps more so than the idea of eternity or infinity. How can ever-changing creatures such as us who live in an ever-changing reality grasp the idea of “changelessness”? The fact that everything changes has always been a truism. “Change is here to stay,” business analysts proclaim. “We live in times of change,” lazy journalists write, as if there ever were a time in history that was not a “time of change.” None of this is particularly new. After all, 2,600 years ago, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus famously proclaimed, “Everything flows!” But God does not change. At least, this is the teaching of Scripture, according to the unanimous tradition of the Christian church. However, this attribute of immutability has been increasingly challenged in recent years. Many today would question whether the idea of God’s immutability is sustainable, biblical, or even helpful. As we saw in previous articles, seventeenth-century Reformed th...