Immutability and the Coherence of Theology Proper
A Study in the Doctrine of God of Stephen Charnock and Petrus van Mastricht
For the Academic Paper form with full citations, see here.
In most of the recent work rediscovering classical theology among the Reformed tradition, much of the focus has been on the Confessional documents themselves, or else confirming that the divine attribute in question was held by this or that thinker. It seems to me that more detailed work needs to be done showing exactly how our Reformed forebearers situated each divine attribute within the structure of their theology proper. Why? For one, this would show how unthinkable it would be for any of these attributes to be missing from our overall conception of God.
Puritans especially ought to be factored into that survey, and it would be helpful to have some point of comparison among the continental Reformed. And that being the case, Stephen Charnock and Petrus van Mastricht make excellent case studies for three reasons. In the first place, they stood at the tail end of the development of Reformed Orthodoxy; in the second, their more holistic method of an exegetical, dogmatic, polemical, and practical order to each section meets all allegations of rationalism head on; and third, Charnock’s classic on the Existence and Attributes of God is being republished and Mastricht’s Theoretical-Practical Theology: Volume 2, in which is his theology proper, has only recently been released in the English itself. Standing in between the historical analysis and the practical benefit that may be drawn, is a greater systematic analysis that must be done.
This essay intends to explore how for both Charnock and Mastricht, certain classical attributes, in particular divine immutability, functioned in a logically central way to other attributes in theology proper, as well as to the rest of Christian doctrine and life. Why would the immutability of God especially form such a lens for theology as a whole? Immutability is the conclusion for which other attributes are premises, and similarly it is the premise demanding other attributes as a consequence. As a point of grammar, my use of the label “classical attributes” will have reference to those attributes of God that classical theology famously defended, but which modern theology has tended to see as static, impersonal, and an intrusion of Greek philosophical speculation. These include simplicity, impassibility, eternality, but even to a certain extent immutability. That is another value of addressing immutability in such historical thinkers. Charnock conceives of immutability as a “center wherein they all unite.” Note that this does not mean that it is ontologically more foundational, as that would overthrow divine simplicity and consequently all the rest would fall afterwards.
However immutability is a “bridge” attribute, or, in other words, one which modern Evangelicals have been conditioned to think they do believe in, but which, in the genuine article, implies many of the same threats to our sense of divine immanence in modern religion. If various entailments of immutability can be persuasive, then there is a chance of our brethren “crossing over” to those less familiar classical attributes as well.
What secondary literature can be found in this area? When it comes to Charnock we get a bit more help, although it is mostly either general to his theology relating to the world, or else an analysis of his method. While Mastricht is finally being read by an English audience, there is not yet much secondary literature on his doctrine of God, Dr. Neele’s work being the exception.
In the interest of showing how divine immutability, functioned for them in that logically central way, this essay will observe the following of Charnock and Mastricht: (1) a comparison of approach; (2) their exegesis, definitions, and premises of immutability; (3) their use of natural theology for informing the doctrine; (4) their use of logical coherence in situating the doctrine; (5) their application of immutability to the divine will; (6) their treatment of anthropomorphisms and other objections to the doctrine; and (7) the practical implications they draw from the doctrine. Along the path, we must take a brief excursus on both divine simplicity and impassibility. The reason for this is that it will be (largely) on the ground of simplicity that both thinkers will demand that the divine will must be as immutable as all that is in God. With divine impassibility, it is because it is the first idea to be jettisoned when one arrives at biblical anthropomorphisms where God seems to repent or change courses.
A COMPARISON OF APPROACH
There is a unity and diversity between these two giants of late seventeenth century Reformed thought. There is no question that their views on these attributes were basically at one. Equally plain is their commitment to articulating these doctrines for the sake of the personal piety of their readers. It is what they have in common that makes the contrast in their finished product all the more worthy of our reflection.
Although both men held to the classical attributes, Mastricht has a separate treatment of divine simplicity; Charnock does not. Muller explains the latter’s omission by “the original homiletical purpose” of his work. Where Charnock does allude to it, it is under his doctrine of the spirituality of God. Muller notes that he understands this “by way of negation.” Why does he place the doctrine here under spirituality? Because the easiest entry point into understanding divine simplicity is in the notion that God is not a body. To understand that he does not have parts is introduced to many minds as that God does not have body parts. From there the mind must draw the link from this to composition as such. At any rate, it was standard for the Reformed Orthodox to not devote a separate chapter or section to divine simplicity.
We move on to their comparative methods. Trueman speaks of the background in rhetoric, and even medicine, that Charnock brought to his work. In his natural theology, his sources, with the exception of a lone reference to Aquinas, are from Reformed theologians from the generation before, as well as contemporaries writing on science and comparative religion. Trueman calls this approach, “Renaissance in both source and character.”
We should also note the historical background to the writing of each theologian. Both the turbulence of the revolutions and the injustice done to the Puritans in the Clarendon Acts of 1662 made immutable things a desperate anchor for life. Charnock originally delivered his Discourses as “lectures to his congregation,” and yet Muller describes its features of “distinctions and definitions” as essentially scholastic and compares it to Mastricht’s work especially with respect to “the fourfold concern for exegetical, doctrinal, polemical, and practical emphases.” Gutiérrez notes the same about “scholastic influence” even given the sermonic purposes.
Trueman reminds us that, “Each discourse is presented as a commentary upon a selected verse of scripture, representing the homiletic context of the original sermon.” Consequently, they are not lectures in the university setting at all. He was “preaching the doctrine of God to his congregation.” They are “practical divinity cast in sermonic form.”
Understanding this will prevent us from the two extremes of seeing either too much antithesis or too many parallels between Charnock and the earlier Scholastic treatments. He would die in 1680 before being able to finish the work. So we do not know if he intended to add more even in the sections that represented already completed lectures.
What about Mastricht’s setting might help us with his approach? The Reformed Church in Holland experienced more stability than their English counterparts in the decades prior. However Mastricht had his own controversies to deal with. One at the center of his attention was Cartesian philosophy. “Descartes’s principle of ‘universal doubt’ was catastrophic for Reformed theology,” the danger being that “reason and philosophy become the source of absolute certainty instead of Scripture.” That strikes us a bit differently than it was meant, given the debates between classicalists and presuppositionalists in our past few generations. Those familiar with seventeenth century rationalism will understand that this peculiar notion of “Reason” is not that function of the mind that discovers truth, but that which determines it.
At any rate, it would be speculative to link this particular controversy to Mastricht’s interest in immutability; yet where Descartes sought some “clear and distinct idea” that was “indubitable” to the foundation of modern thought, the theologian could have all of that and more in some immovable foundation to the whole of life. Note that Mastricht published his celebrated polemic against the Cartesians, the Gangraena (1677), the year before finishing his notes for the doctrine of God. The latter would develop into the second volume of his Theoretical-Practical Theology published nine years later. If nothing else, the two sets of ideas were running parallel in his mind during the same season.
EXEGESIS, DEFINITION, AND PREMISES OF IMMUTABILITY
We do not find a concise “definition” such as we might be expecting in one of our contemporary systematic theologies. Both start instead with an exegetical part, that is, with a text of Scripture. Charnock begins with Psalm 102:26-27—“They shall perish, but thou shalt endure: yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed: But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end.” In his exegesis there is immediate application to this doctrine:
“The design of the penman is to confirm the church in the truth of the divine promises; that though the foundations of the world should be ripped up, and the heavens clatter together, and the whole fabric of them and unpinned and fall to pieces, the firmest parts of it dissolved; yet the church should continue in its stability, because it stands not upon the changeableness of creatures, but is built upon the immutable rock of the truth of God, which is as little subject to change, as his essence.”
He builds off the contrast in the verse itself. Everything in the world exhibits change; and yet the appearance of things stands firm. Yes, “individuals corrupt, but the species and kinds remain.” The “heavens and earth” are highlighted because out of all changeable things, they are the least changeable, existing, relatively speaking, as they always have. There is a kind of lesser to greater logic that the Psalmist calls our attention to through poetry.
Now he comes to the divine attribute in the text—You are the same—“so that the text doth not only assert the eternal duration of God, but his immutability in that duration. His eternity is signified in that expression ‘Thou shalt endure;’ his immutability in this, ‘Thou art the same.’” Both expressions, Charnock says, argue for immutability, but the latter much more so. Note that even of the text, Charnock relies on inference: “He could not be the same if he could be changed into any other thing than what he is.” This point of theologizing by reasoning from one nature to the necessity of another nature will be crucial as we proceed. This insight must include the whole of God: “the same in essence and nature; the same in will and purpose.” Moreover, the Psalmist excludes “everything else from partaking in that perfection,” and implies that, “His essence can receive no alteration, neither by itself, nor by any external cause.” In this brief burst of exegetical theologizing, Charnock has laid the foundation for simplicity, pure actuality, the one immutable decree, and impassibility. He mentions only the immutable will by another name, but all of the rest is unavoidably touched upon.
Now Mastricht begins with James 1:17—“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” The God of Light is the source of all lights. The terminology is borrowed from astronomy. He analyzes the Greek word used here (παραλλαγὴ) which is a nominative feminine singular for “change, variation, or mutation,” and supposes further that the root is ἄλλος so that this is a change of “one thing to another thing,” that may justify the translation. It seems to add a phrase not present: “due to change,” splitting it up as “no variation or shadow” and the something signifying “into the another.” The words for “shifting shadow” (τροπῆς ἀποσκίασμα) only reinforces the same, as the adjective τροπή has the sense of change, mutation, or turning. However exact our Greek is, Mastricht’s point seems to be that there is double emphasis on this change so as to contrast with what God cannot be.
Having mined out a conception from Scripture, we are ready to construct something of their definitions of immutability. This is where their formal sections move from exegesis to doctrine. Charnock said that, “God is unchangeable in his essence, nature, and perfections” and “Immutability and eternity are linked together.” He uses the Boethian language of eternity as boundless life, and yet makes these two sides to the same coin: “immutability is the state itself; eternity is the measure of that state.” Behind this conception is an even more basic presupposition. What is change?
Change of anything is “when it is otherwise now in regard to nature, state, will, or any quality that it was before; when either something is added to it, or taken from it; when it either loses or acquires.” Applied to the immutability of God, he must have no “new nature, new thoughts, new will, new purpose, or new place.”
Three additional premises are set down by Charnock. First, “The immutability of God is a perfection,” whereas immutability, if considered in itself, is not. For instance, fallen angels, unchanging in their wickedness, do not thereby possess a perfection but rather a ghastly defect. So, relatively speaking, we count creatures as more perfect that are more unchanging in their relation to the whole goodness of God: a rock more perfect than the dust, both constant in their natures as far as they are considered, and angels and saints in glory more perfect than having potential to fall to the uttermost. Second, “Immutability is a glory belonging to all the attributes of God.” Every divine attribute is immutable. Clearly God would be less glorious, and not God at all, if any other attribute were a changing attribute. A God whose power or love ebbed and flowed would be neither a comfort nor a marvel to the Christian. Third, “Unchangeableness doth necessarily pertain to the nature of God.” As he is a necessary Being, so this is a necessary immutability. By contrast, “Mutability belongs to contingency.”
As stated, there is no exact definition offered. And yet it is fair to summarize Charnock’s definition of God’s immutability as a divine perfection and glory in which nothing in God’s essence or will could ever change.
Charnock more clearly distinguishes between immutability as being proper to God, and the same being incommunicable to creatures. It is clear that all creatures are mutable; and though it may not be as obvious why, it is also true about the angelic beings. He says, “Some creatures are immutable by his grace and power,” implying that God upholds their being and thus, only in a relative manner of speaking, are they immutable. This will be the case in the eternal state, because of the resurrection; and he cited Philippians 3:21 toward this end. But this is not intrinsic immutability, because even in man there is immaterial change: “every day there is a change from ignorance to knowledge, from one will to another, from passion to passion.” However there is a more fundamental reason why no creature can, in principle, be intrinsically immutable:
“Because every creature rose from nothing. As they rose from nothing, so they tend to nothing, unless they are preserved by God … The being of a creature begins from change, and, therefore, the essence of a creature is subject to change.”
Mastricht does not so much define this attribute as he speaks of ways that God is immutable. He uses a word that he had already used earlier: “omnimodal.” Neele explains this as being “employed to designate a ruling out of all manner of composition.” It is used of simplicity but also aseity. Of those “ways” of God being immutable, Mastricht offers six: (1) in his essence and existence; (2) his accidens; (3) his knowledge; (4) his will and decree; (5) his words, his promises and threats; (6) with respect to place. Then a few other basic implications are drawn by Mastricht. The first is in agreement with Charnock, namely, that God alone is immutable. This is proved by Scripture; and confirmed by reasons. By Scripture, Mastricht argues that God is immutable per se: Jas. 1:17, Mal. 3:6, 1 Tim. 1:17, Rom. 1:23, Ps. 102:26-27, Heb. 1:11-12.
He also uses two verses to show that whatever implies change is excluded: Num. 23:19, 1 Sam. 15:29. And he quotes Proclus toward this end, that, “Deity remains higher than all mutability. Change is a passion of a nature that passes away, but immutability properly belongs to that nature that is everlasting and that lives forever in the same way.” This gives us an early hint at how immutability can hardly be conceived apart from other classical attributes. It is the perfect transition from the exegetical and definition work to the use of reason in theology proper.
CHARNOCK AND MASTRICHT UTILIZING NATURAL THEOLOGY
Where do we draw the line between natural theology and articles of faith? Muller’s assessment about typical late seventeenth century theology proper sections is that, “there is no obvious movement here into metaphysics strictly so called or into natural theology. The rational argument remains within the framework of the biblical language.” On the one hand, for reason to be “at the foundations” of dogmatics is to allow natural theology to grow upward into the structure of those articles of faith. Muller acknowledges that rational arguments are used in the doctrine of God. But they are not to be confused with either metaphysics or natural theology.
When we read these works, however, we have the sense of some overlapping fields. We understand that the books are filled not merely with direct Scripture citations, nor with vague parallel commentary. The theologians are relating the knowledge about God in extra-biblical words in such a way that their substance is taken to be the same as in the words of Scripture.
The Reformed Scholastics really did not differ from the medieval Scholastics in this way of relating the God of general revelation to the God of special revelation, precisely as the same God.
Beeke and Jones trace the same lines in saying, “the attributes of God are closely related to the question of God’s being, for if the attributes are God’s perfections then we are able to deduce from them what sort of being God is.” Now one may argue over which way the lanes of traffic ought to run between nature and Scripture. However, whether we use the language of natural theology arguments, or those deductions within theology proper, one wonders how neat of a barrier may really be placed between these. The Reformed Orthodox could not quite escape speaking of natural theology first.
It should be pointed out that a utilization of natural theological categories in dogmatics does not demand that nature stands authoritatively over Scripture. As Neele remarks, “Mastricht’s doctrine emerges from the biblical text and is the sum of exegesis. The doctrinal section is an exposition of the biblical text, illustrated, and confirmed by Scripture.” It is not nature against Scripture, nor reason against revelation. It is reasoning inside of what is revealed; it is Scripture speaking of natures that are objectively the case. What is more certain about natural theology among the Reformed Orthodox is that they did use it in the standard way of presenting arguments for God’s existence. The natural theology sections in both of our surveyed thinkers are ordinary in some ways, and add their own wrinkles as well. For Charnock that included arguments from universal practice, the soul, prophecy and miracles.
Mastricht utilizes eight arguments for God’s existence: some overlapping evidential (see Argument 5, 6, and 8 from the heavens, man, miracles and predictions) and transcendental methods (see Arguments 7 from preconditions for just law). The first four fit more neatly into the classical varieties of cosmological and teleological, yet with some overlap of theological categories (e.g. creation, preservation, and governance) and Thomistic elements (e.g. impossibility of infinite regress, necessity and contingency). There is even a precursor to Paley’s watch analogy in the fifth argument. While this is genuinely fascinating, their arguments per se do not concern the thesis. What does is the theological substance forming a common field shared between their natural theology and their dogmatics.
As we move to knowledge about the relationship between divine attributes, an observation by Trueman will be critical: “The proofs for God’s existence are, of course, a classic point to examine in order to determine the nature and scope of reason and rationality within a theologian’s scheme.” How is this the case? In order for natural theology to give any clues as to a theologian’s use of reason in his “whole scheme,” it may only mean that he will show the method by which he argues. However it may also set forth some important content that will be retained throughout.
For example, what exactly do we mean by that logical relationship between the attributes? With respect to immutability, Charnock adds that even the “heathens acknowledged God to be so,” and he cites Plato and the Pythagoreans.
We must ask: Is this real knowledge of God? If the heathens’ acknowledgement was not knowledge, then how could they be held liable for what they did with this knowledge, as Paul said they are in Romans 1:20? If on the other hand, if the heathens’ acknowledgment was knowledge, then what exactly is this “so” to which Charnock equates with the substance of divine immutability?
Note that the question is not whether this knowledge is that “false theology” of the pagan categorized by Junius in his Treatise on True Theology. In his TPT, Volume 1, Mastricht draws a sharper line than Junius at that point: natural theology must be carefully distinguished from pagan theology as such, “because the latter is false and the former is true.” Nor, as Turretin pointed out, is the question soteriological. Granting that propositions of natural theology will not tend toward a gracious end in the unregenerate, apart from God’s special grace, the question I would address is different.
What is the object of knowledge held in common between the extra-biblical and biblical formulations? Given proposition x, say: “Eternal being cannot suffer the mutation of sequence.” Is this proposition x, as an object of knowledge, immutably true, whether the unregenerate mind conforms to it or the regenerate mind does the same? If our answer is yes, then we must acknowledge that at least some of our true knowledge of God is a knowledge coming through the nature of created things as Psalm 19:1-3 and Romans 1:19-20 describe. Surely this is not a knowledge of the uncreated essence of God in himself. That would be the very archetypal knowledge the Reformed Scholastics uniformly denied to the creature. So this knowledge of the relation between the attributes must be of the attributes of God that are, as ectypes, “in the things that have been made” (Rom. 1:20).
Is the sum of our knowledge about immutability a knowledge from nature or Scripture, or both? In other words, is this an article of reason, and article of faith, or a mixed article? This is particularly relevant when the premises to any line of reasoning about divine attributes are from nature, issuing forth into consequences for Scripture.
Looking at an example, other than immutability, Charnock appeals to Thomas on divine goodness. It was noted by Trueman that the one citation of Aquinas used by Charnock was in the argument that creaturely goodness “requires a perfect good as its source and cause.” So even the knowledge of this communicable attribute possesses at least some ground in natural theology.
When we read these thinkers moving from one attribute as a ground to another attribute as a consequence, there is a third idea, beyond the premised idea (divine attribute 1) and the concluded idea (divine attribute 2). What is this third idea or truth? Almost every sentence in these sections operates in this way, as they are not merely citing the data of Scripture. We could not understand the meaning of the relevant biblical texts if we were not always in the middle of such an inferential stream.
Now when the human mind beholds a truth about God especially, what the mind conforms to is the form of truth. But a truth about God in itself is an immutable truth. It cannot be true one day and false the next. If all that is in God is immutable, then such truth that corresponds is likewise immutable. It cannot change from one field of a theological system to another: even if one of those fields regards general revelation. Nor can it change from one mind to another: even if one of those minds is an unregenerate mind.
CHARNOCK AND MASTRICHT UTILIZING LOGICAL COHERENCE
It will be helpful to analyze the kind of inferences Charnock and Mastricht make concerning immutability. There are positive and negative kinds of inferences.
By a positive inference all I mean is that the insight concerns how one attribute implies the other. One is a necessary condition for the other. If one is true, then the other must be true as well.
Charnock has a much larger, clearer section showing this about immutability than does Mastricht. In particular he sees divine simplicity as foundational, even though he does not use that word. For example he says, “If any perfection of his nature could be separated from him, he would cease to be God. What did not possess the whole nature of God, could not have the essence of God.” Charnock intertwines this attribute with God’s spirituality. So, “because he is a Spirit, he is not subject to those mutations which are found in corporeal and bodily natures, because he is an absolutely simple Spirit, not having the least particle of composition.” Beeke and Jones also see Charnock moving in this direction: “that is, since God does not consist of many parts, He cannot change and does not change.”
He relates immutability in this same way to eternality and necessary being. “God hath known from all eternity all that which he can know.” Put simply, omniscience must be immutable as well. To know all things in a way that never learns implies that the sum of God’s knowledge never changes. The same can be shown of the necessity of God’s being. “Necessity of being, and therefore, immutability of being, belongs by nature only to God,” or, put another way, “He who hath not being from another, cannot but be always what he is.”
Now, by a negative inference I mean a hypothetical statement whose antecedent is a negation. For example: If God is not immutable, then x attribute could also not be the case.
Charnock argues in this way quite a bit more than he offers positive statements. According to Beeke and Jones: “In Charnock’s view, the way of negation is the best way to understand God; indeed it is the way we commonly understand God.”
Now what attributes does he rest atop immutability, only to pull the ground out from under it as his thought experiment? He does this with necessary being, perfect blessedness, infinity, aseity, perfection, simplicity, eternity, omnipotence, being the “orderer” or governor of the world, and omniscience. For the sake of brevity, we will cite two instances from this list.
First, the infinity of God is made to rest atop immutability. The reasoning proceeds in this way: If God were changeable, he could not be infinite. Why not? Because anything that can be subtracted from or added to could not be infinite, and any such addition or subtraction would of course be a change. Of course infinity more basically implies limitlessness, and yet, “All change implies bounds and limits to that which is changed.”
Secondly, his treatment of immutable omniscience is especially useful because of the way that its undoing, as in a series of falling dominos, knocks down a few other attributes. If God’s knowledge changed, then he is not infinitely wise. That is because if he was “ignorant of, or mistaken in, his apprehension of any one thing,” then the basis of his decisions would be in doubt. Further back, “If God understood a thing at one time which he did not at another, he would be changed from ignorance to knowledge; as if he could not do this day that which he could do tomorrow, he would be changed from impotence to power.” So he shows that omnipotence also requires an immutable omniscience. Moreover, in such a scenario, “He could not always be omniscient.” In this way, God’s eternal transcendence above time would also be undermined.
Contrary to any need of discursive reasoning in God, Charnock suggests that “God knows all things by one intuitive act.” That is to say, omniscience could not depend upon the observation of an effect from its cause, nor an inference from a ground to its consequence. To know all things implies a perfect knowledge of the connection between causes and effects, and between premises and conclusions. This “all at once” totality of knowledge is immediately suggestive of immutability, and (once we think it out) vice versa.
Moving further along into practical considerations, if God’s knowledge changed, and thus if he was not infinitely wise, then he would also be an unfit object of trust.
This is because, “that might be revealed as truth now which might prove false thereafter, and that as false now which hereafter might prove true; and so God would be an unfit object of confidence in regard of his precepts, and unfit object of confidence in regard of his promises.” Similar things are said about the creature not being impressed by his wisdom or afraid of his threats.
Mastricht mixes in both of these kinds of inferences: positive and negative. He does so with respect to six perspectives on being. First Being, since, “whatever is changed is changed by another which is prior to itself.” Simple being, since, “what is added or taken away, is likewise an alternating vicissitude.” Perfect being, since, “there can be no perfection added to him, for thus he would not be most perfect, or taken away from him, for thus he would not remain most perfect.” Infinite being, since, “nothing can be added or taken away by change without his ceasing to be infinite.” Incorruptible being, since, “change in a most perfect being is nothing other than corruption.” Immortal being, since, “a change in a most simple being can be nothing but an annihilation, inasmuch as when a most simple being has been changed, nothing remains of that which existed previously. Thus, a change in God would lead to flagrant atheism.” that last clause by Mastricht is significant. What all such reasoning by both thinkers seems to suggest is that if God was not each and every one of these perfections, he could not be consistently conceived as any one of them.
APPLYING IMMUTABILITY TO THE DIVINE WILL
To speak about the immutability of the divine will is to instantly run into difficulties if one is not prepared to embrace those other thorny classical attributes: simplicity and impassibility. Even the way in which eternality is related to these may prove a stumbling block to much contemporary Evangelical thought. First of all, divine simplicity is a logical ground to the immutable divine will. Therefore, we must begin there. As this is not an essay on divine simplicity, I should only briefly note awareness of the critiques of it in recent decades by Plantinga, Morris, and Mullins, and consider them to have been refuted by Thomists such as Ed Feser. The trouble is a combination of treating divine attributes as “properties,” and neglecting the scholastic category of real and logical distinctions, though they may recognize it in words.
Mullins uses the distinction between Clark Kent and Superman to exemplify his understanding of a logical, as opposed to real, distinction. Since there is no extramental feature in reality that makes them distinct, this belongs to the logical sort. The logical relation of God is still an object of the mind, which is true over and above all finite minds. Mullins’ example is useful, but the inference is unwarranted. That distinction is very much a distinction logical and yet extra-finite-mental.
The distinctions between the divine attributes are objectively meaningful not because there is a division of entities, but because logical distinctions are a real reality in God, with whom mind and essence are one.
I will have to limit this discussion of simplicity here, but it is mentioned in passing only to signal that the mutual backing of simplicity to immutability, and vice versa, is on a solid ground.
We will now get a more integrated single voice of Charnock and Mastricht, as we see how divine simplicity plays a role in the immutable divine will. Note Charnock’s first implication of divine immutability: the will of God is the same with his essence. Now recall that one of Mastricht’s negative inferences for immutability was simple being, since, “what is added or taken away, is likewise an alternating vicissitude.” He expands upon this in his section on divine simplicity: “for when there is a unification of parts by composition, then there can also occur a dissolution of those parts, and thus an alteration.” Thus we must conclude that God is immutable in the sense that none of his being could have ever been added or organized, whether from without or even within.
There are two basic motives to modern Evangelical thinking about God: 1. a desire for God’s practical immanence and 2. the honoring of what appears to be the straightforward biblical narrative. As to practical immanence, here is the real bridge between classical theology proper and the modern Evangelical who would assume that we all believe in the unchanging and unchangeable God. What about God’s decrees, his plans, or his promises? If we do not make exceptions for immutability when it comes to the works of God in creation, we at least tend to so when it comes to his affections, or, loosely defined, his life of relationship to the personal creatures. In addition, it seems to many that one cannot take seriously the straightforward narrative of Scripture without concluding some affectional or relational change in God.
As we analyze what the seventeenth century Reformed outlook was, it will be useful to see if that cannot be contrasted with the modern theological division between an “absolute” (ontological) and “relative” (relational) sets of attributes in God. This latter division has come from what is called theistic personalism. It is a kind of default even in circles that embrace Reformed theology yet reject those aforementioned elements of classical theism.
In short, realism is replaced with voluntarism, such that divine sovereignty is thought to be honored by supposing that God can “will” to take on, in his essence, this or that relationship to the creature.
James Dolezal has drawn this out with respect to several contemporary theologians, in particular Bruce Ware, John Frame, and Rob Lister. Since All That is In God was published in 2017, the raised antennae of young Reformed seminarians have detected the same trend in other thinkers.
There are a few scholastic distinctions to be made: distinctions which seem consistent with everything that Charnock and Mastricht had to say. First, we must remember the distinction between God in se versus his works ad extra. While Mastricht did not necessarily use this phraseology, when we come to two objections he fielded about God’s creation implying “relational change,” we will see the need for what philosophers today call Cambridge changes and properties, so named because those who articulated this idea were working out of that university. All real changes will come to the works of God ad extra, that is, outside of himself.
To focus on the change proper is to be speaking of a “Cambridge change.” For example, if my son becomes taller than my wife, then my wife has become shorter than my son. But did she “become” a different property ontologically, or only as to a logical relationship? Clearly the change was only in the latter relationship. We must recognize, however, that this distinction is not at all what is meant by theistic personalists. For them, the relational change is in fact an ontological change, since something in the life of God is doing the changing for them.
Now applying the correct idea to divine immutability, if God creates a world, he is now said to be “Creator,” and rightly so. However the change in this “addition of an attribute” to God is actually not an ontological addition or change at all to God. It is rather a logical distinction made between God’s essence and the new creature in which all of the change occurs. Such a property acquired is referred to as a “Cambridge property.” However, when speaking of God, the whole notion of “properties” is a misnomer, as that assumes composition in God.
Another important notion articulated by Aquinas was that God was actus purus, which is to say that his whole being is in pure act. This is not simply a Thomistic conception, but to say that God is “pure act” is to acknowledge that there can be no potentiality in the First Cause. The divine will actus purus is opposed to the ideas of sequence, or anything dormant in God, waiting to be activated. These could not be the change agent in God’s own power to make things. And following from simplicity, this reality of God as always in act and never actuated from without, is all that is in the essential life of God. That implies the same of his will.
One other problem posed to simplicity, in particular from Mullins, is temporality and change. Recall that sequence is necessary to change. That is one clear premise. A somewhat hidden premise is that for God to change things (for God to “do anything”) it is necessary that he experience a sequence of will. However, we may correct this with the following syllogism: If (1) all temporality is change, and (2) all change is outside of the divine essence and will, then it follows that all temporality is outside of the divine will. Hence no sequence in the divine act is necessary in order for a change of relation in the creation to occur (e.g. from non-existence to existence). Such a “relational change” would be one of those Cambridge changes.
The first premise may be challenged. Even granting the converse, that all change is temporality, the classical theologians may be charged with presupposing this without warrant. Why may not either temporal sequence or change be in the divine will? To Charnock’s mind, if God were changeable, he could not be eternal. All of these changes require sequence, which implied time. “What is changed doth not remain, and what doth not remain is not eternal.” This circles back to simplicity again: for then part of God would be eternal and part not. For him, there are four basic implications of immutability for God’s will.
First, the will of God is the same with his essence. If his will was distinct from his essence, he would not be simple. Both his intellect and will are God understanding (Deus intelligens) and God willing (Deus volens). Second, there is a concurrence of God’s will and understanding in everything. This may seem redundant, but that foreknowing and foreordination are a unity in God is seldom considered, and is the root of other errors.
God’s knowledge of what will be is not caused by it being. Rather, both the knowing and willing are one, and thus all effects come to exist because he both willed and knew what he willed.
As another line of reasoning to the same: “Whatever is eternal is immutable; as his knowledge is eternal, and therefore immutable, so is his will … if he willed in time that to be that he willed not from eternity, then he would know that in time which he knew not from eternity.”
Third, there can be no reason for change in the will of God. When men change their will, it is because they come to see that which they had not, or else “a natural instability without any just cause.” Or it could be a want of power, and so a change of course due to inability to execute the former. Fourth, God must also be immutable in regard to place. Analogous to eternity’s transcendence of time, is ubiquity (or omnipresence) and its transcendence of place. Jeremiah 23:24; 1 Kings 8:27; Job 11:8, James 4:8 are cited. So “when God is said to come down or descend (Gen. xi. 5; Exod. xxxiv. 5), it is not by a change of place, but a change of outward acts, when he puts forth himself in ways of fresh mercy or new judgments.” He utilizes an effective piece of imagery here, that of the watermen pulling rope to bring the ship to shore, when their vision shows the shore “coming near to them.”
He then calls in both reason and scripture against a “changeable divine will.” The notion of a changeable divine will, Charnock argues, encompasses not only to have a different determination, or none at all, where one did, but also to love or to hate that which one previously did not. He appeals to the Scriptures against this. From Isaiah 55:11 we see that the end course of God’s word never deviated from its original purpose. Numbers 23:19 and Isaiah 46:11 teach that God’s whole purpose stands throughout time. The same is taught metaphorically by “mountains of brass” in Zechariah 6:1. The fact that there are narratives brought forward to show that God changes is granted, and we will come to those. However a privilege should be given in theology proper to those didactic texts speaking more directly toward the divine essence, a point we will explore further when we arrive at Charnock and Mastricht’s treatment of anthropomorphisms.
He then cuts off five other avenues for mutable will. In other words, when a will experiences a change, it is on account of one of these five reasons. But none of these can be true of God. 1. It cannot be for want of foresight (Eph. 1:11; Isa. 46:10; Heb. 6:17); 2. Nor from natural instability of will (Psa. 36:6; Numbers 23:19); 3. Nor for want of strength (Prov. 19:21); 4. Nor that the things (willed) in themselves are immutable; 5. Nor that its immutability makes his will unfree. That fifth reason is manifestly more difficult to understand, and since Mastricht deals with the objection, we will address it below. As to the fourth, that a divine immutable will must only be able to will that which is likewise immutable: our in se versus ad extra distinction reveals this to be a non-sequitur.
For one thing, to suppose that an immutable being can only create things that are immutable is a gross species of the notion that God could make another God. Perhaps the easiest way to show this is to point out that the created thing will have changed from non-existence to existence, which one cannot say of an immutable thing. This should be remembered when it is supposed that either the sufferings of Christ or ordinances of the ceremonial law, two examples Charnock uses, ought to also be immutable.
ANTHROPOMORPHISMS AND ANSWERING OTHER OBJECTIONS
We ought to begin with the background of the texts and their natural reading. We will label these from the perspective of the theistic personalist. For the sake of clarity, we will speak of three main categories of these texts. There are first, 1. texts on God repenting, or experiencing mind-change; then 2. texts on God changing course, or experiencing will-change; and finally 3. a text showing God’s own acknowledgment of counterfactuals (Jeremiah 18:8-10). The first category will be further divided between the mind change of “sorrow” (Genesis 6:6) and the mind change of “regret” (1 Samuel 15:11, 35). The second category will be further divided between direct intercession “affecting” God’s will (Exodus 32:14) and God’s response to tearful repentance (2 Kings 20:1-5; cf. Isa. 38:1-5) and corporate repentance (Jonah 3:9-10).
In all of these, Charnock clarifies that, “The not fulfilling of some predictions in Scripture, which seem to imply a changeableness of the Divine will, do not argue any change in it.” He especially focused on the examples of God’s reprieve on Hezekiah and the relenting of judgment on Nineveh. But in order to get to the real heart of the divide between modern theologies of immanence and the classical view, we have to start in what many would regard as the heart of God, or the divine feelings. The consistent confession of the Reformed was that passions are not properly in God. This is often recognized as a historical matter. Even so, we might still ask: Why must impassibility be defended in order to uphold immutability? This is where beginning from the opposite perspective on these narratives will be so clarifying.
It is especially the impassibility of God that is the first attribute dispensed with by means of such readings. What most obviously changes in God, we reason, in his relation to biblical characters and events, than his own disposition and even feeling?
Now in his analysis of Charnock’s theology proper, Hoek seems to understand impassibility to allow for suffering only if God chooses to suffer. If he has no such experience at all, then he could not personally relate to us. Hoek says, “Scripture provides a clear testimony of a God having passions,” though he himself is unclear whether Charnock is in accord with this understanding. This is certainly a preferred way to allow for impassibility even in some Reformed thinkers in the modern era, including even J. I. Packer and John Frame. In other words, the preferences for theological voluntarism over realism is either reflected in, or perhaps causes, the more recent Calvinism’s appropriation of divine sovereignty over against some classical attributes. But does this square with the great Purtian and Reformed Orthodox divines? To put it another way, did Charnock and Mastricht hold to impassibility? If so, where and how? It was not by distinct chapters on the attribute, as we have already noted.
We receive a crucial answer in the ninth and final objection that Mastricht fields in his chapter on immutability. Did God suffer death? It was not in the divine, but it was “in the assumed human nature,” that Christ suffered and died. This is Mastricht’s direct defense of impassibility, and notice its place in Christian theology. Mastricht must defend the impassible God at the heart of the gospel. For Muller, the Reformed Orthodox tended to view God without passions in terms of an immutability not moved from potency to act “and not in the ancient Stoic notion of an uninvolved or unrelated God.” Is there any strong indication of how Charnock understood it? Muller’s answer is essentially no, except insofar as the phrase of the Confession was upheld— “without ... passions”—and in the sense that it was a corollary of immutability.
Now as to those texts that seem to show God repenting, the first principle we must have in mind is that, “Repentance is not properly in God.” By this term “properly,” he signifies what was meant earlier by God’s essential life in se. That God was “sorry” that he had made man (Gen. 6:6) or that he “regretted” making Saul king (1 Samuel 15:11, 35) does not mean that God’s ultimate plans and preference were frustrated.
To be fair, theistic personalists who hold to the sovereignty of God would agree with that assessment, but then insist that God may still freely choose to feel that feeling. It is not clear either what it would mean for God to feel in proportion to some disappointment and yet not actually be disappointed, nor what would be gained if he could.
It is far better to meet the objection that God repents along the path of Mastricht, who replies, “Yes, speaking in a human way, according to the change in his works, not in him who worked them.” This of course the exact meaning of anthropomorphism, that God often reveals himself as if in the form (morphe) of a man (anthropos). It may then be asked, “But why would God liken himself to the form of a man?” The answer is that “God accommodates himself in the Scripture to our weak capacity.” Anthropomorphism is not a convenient card to play for the apologist or orthodox theologian, to help him get out of an embarrassing jam. It is eminently practical. Who among us could have ever started our journey of faith if every time God revealed himself in Scripture, we had to understand every relation of every attribute to every other relevant concept or state of affairs? Rather he condescends to our level, in the veil of familiar motions. “Therefore,” Charnock says, “repentance in God is only a change of his outward conduct, according to his infallible foresight and immutable will.”
As with anthropomorphisms, so with “alternative outcome” passages that many simply consign to an interpretation of counterfactuals palatable to the Molinist or Open Theist. “The not fulfilling of some predictions in Scripture, which seem to imply a changeableness of the Divine will, do not argue any change in it.” In the examples of God’s reprieve on Hezekiah and the relenting of judgment on Nineveh, we must distinguish between God’s will to punish and his right to do so. The latter is declared so that the former is not changed. Very often God sees fit that his prescriptive will is magnified in the same narrative in which whatever falls out is his decretive will. These two are not in competition with each other. Both possible outcomes—(A) Nineveh repents and is spared or (B) Nineveh is overthrown—would be consequent necessities in the decree of God. Neither is an absolute necessity, as only God himself qualifies for this. God is simply not having us peer into his pure decree in such a narrative, but puts us in the place of the Ninevites, as ones who stand in between like alternative consequences.
As Mastricht put it, “He predicted, or rather promised and threatened, under a future condition, and if this condition was not fulfilled, he did not predict the future.” The same is the case with the intercession of Moses for Israel. Such declarations that appear to us as predictions that are conditional and not absolute, are given to show the connection between the wickedness and its fitting consequence, or conversely a godly act and its reward. But all of the change on the historical plane itself is entirely in the man who repents and not God who (outwardly) ordains the alternative.
There are other objections, equally serious. One is that the act of creation implies change in God’s will. That is because in the act of creating anything, God does something which he did not do (or was not doing) before he did it. Now he is. Thus his will is a new will, the relation a new relation. Did Charnock and Mastricht really handle this in the manner of scholastic metaphysics? Did they especially handle this in the way of those aforementioned “Cambridge” properties and changes? After all, they did not have recourse to such language. Essentially, so I argue, they did handle it the same way, even if they did so in a different lexicon.
Here again, Charnock says, “There was no change in God when he began to create the world in time … The creation was a real change, but the change was not subjectively in God, but in the creature; the creature began to be what it was not before.” In order to tie up any loose ends, Charnock distinguishes between (a) active creation and (b) passive creation. The former is “the will and power of God to creation.” The will to do so did not “begin,” as it is as eternal as all that is in God.
Mastricht fields two more difficult variations on that objection. It objects that God wills and so makes mutable things; and God created the world in time, but not from eternity. Mastricht responds that God “does so immutably, just as from his own eternity, which lacks all succession, he directs successive and mutable things” and God’s power “existed immutable from eternity.” So the world is what underwent all the change, and “nothing has been added to him, except a mere relation.” We can see that all forms of this “creation-as-mutation” objection are handled the same way, roughly, by both thinkers.
We might recall from the doctrine of divine simplicity, that all that is in God is at one with his divine will, and one notion that this excludes is a willing that features either sequence or potentiality. It is “from eternity” and thus there was never “a time” in which he began to determine in his will whether or what to create, and it was pure act and so was never “actualized” by another. So, “there was no new will in him,” “there was no new power in God,” and finally, there was no “new relation acquired by God by the creation of the world.” We will start to note similar lines of reasoning in response to the other difficulties.
So to the Incarnation, “There was no change in the divine nature of the Son, when he assumed human nature;” that is, “by assuming or by acting, not by being acted upon.” The objection that the Incarnation is a change to God the Son, and so the whole Trinity, was Charnock’s second objection fielded and Mastricht’s eighth. On the contrary, “there was an union between the two natures, but no change of the Deity into the humanity, or of the humanity into the Deity.”
As to Paul’s meaning in Philippians 2:7, of the Son’s emptying himself: “The glory of his divinity was not extinguished nor diminished, though it was obscured or darkened, under the veil of our infirmities; but there was no more change in the hiding of it, than there is in the body of the sun when it is shadowed by the interposition of a cloud.”
Another such objection (Charnock’s fifth fielded) is that the wrath of God, whether in being provoked or in being appeased, would constitute a change in God’s disposition. Note the very same logical grounds alleged of God’s nature in se, that we saw with creation and incarnation, will be alleged as a change in God because of wrath. Charnock responds: “God is not changed, when of loving to any creatures he becomes angry with them, or of angry he becomes appeased.” What held about God’s judgment above holds true here with the turning of divine wrath from those objects of his mercy.
The change is ad extra. “Though the same angels were not always loved, yet the same reason that moved him to love them, moved him to hate them.” That phrase “same reason” is crucial to note. It is that divine reason that equates to the immutable will, such that the objects of God’s love and hate in time receive according to their own mode of sequence. Charnock uses the imagery of the sun to great effect: “Is the sun changed when it hardens one thing and softens another … Or when the sun makes a flower more fragrant, and a dead carcass more noisome?” So “the will of God for the punishment of sin, or the reconciliation of the sinner, was no new will: though his wrath in time break out in the effects of it upon sinners, and his love flows out in the effects of it upon penitents.”
Then there is the last objection fielded by Charnock, that being that any change in the divine law implies change in the divine. On the contrary, the “change of laws of God argues no change in God, when God abrogates some laws which he had settled in the church, and enacts others.” This difficulty may not usually be on our radar screen. However, with respect to the ceremonial law, “the abrogation of it was no less an execution of his decree, that the establishment of it for a season was.” In both we must account for the design in both the unity and diversity of the law. Turretin is a profound contemporary source on the rationale for this in the law itself, as he made the distinction between those laws more directly reflecting the immutable character of God (natural) versus those with a changeable, arbitrary (positive) element.
Mastricht still had a few more objections to deal with. Immutability is thought to destroy the liberty of our choice. Certainly that is conceived of the immutability of the divine will. An immutable decree translates into all outcomes being fixed of necessity. He replies: Liberty of choice consists not in indifference or independence, but rational counsel, which is “not destroyed or injured by the immutability of God.” Now what is meant by “indifference” and “independence” is a reference to what would now be called libertarian free will, a notion most famously critiqued by Jonathan Edwards in his Freedom of the Will. At least in this place, Mastricht does not elaborate, which may be considered a pity since it would constitute a powerful reply.
It is then objected that with an immutable divine will, free will would not even belong to God, since he could not change his purpose. That is false, he says, because between any two choices, God can will either. The fact that change cannot occur “once” the choice is made is irrelevant, as both the choice and the immutability of it are forever.
Then finally it is said that what God wills does not always happen. Note that this is not quite the same objection as that of God “changing courses” to Nineveh, but rather that what God loves or desires, what he morally values, does not come to pass in many cases. That may seem to be a more direct challenge to omnipotence, and yet one can see how it has immediate implications for diversity in the divine will. If God hates evil, and if evil exists even for a time, then God wills evil to exist at one time and then not at a future time. Thus God’s moral stance toward evil, or at least his resolve about it underwent change.
Is it truly the case, though, that what God wills in this sense does not get accomplished? Mastricht replies that, whether by commanding or decreeing, all that God wills is accomplished. Psalms 33:11 and 115:3 come to mind. He is content to distinguish between the senses of God’s will in a different place.
A few miscellaneous historical objections are fielded. These are instructive because they are repeated down to the present day among even the unlearned believer. For instance, Mastricht brings up the Patripassions of old, the Lutherans since the Reformation, and Conrad Vorstius. They denied that an immutable God could be united to a human nature, “moving from here to there.” Mastricht responds from verses like Jeremiah 23:24, that nowhere in Scripture does it say that God is in heaven only. Here he makes his answer depend upon God’s manner of being here and there: namely as “an infinite, omnipresent being that fills heaven and earth.” Once again, our concept of immutability undergirds another (omnipresence) and then, coming full circle, that infinity of presence, then clarifies that this seeming “movement” of God is quite literally “neither here nor there,” and thus no change in position at all.
PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS OF DIVINE IMMUTABILITY
The first thing to observe about the practical outworking of the doctrine of divine immutability may be among the easiest things to miss. To speak of the practical worth of the doctrine involves yet more logical deductions. It is a kind of a study of coherence, except here the issue is how the truth coheres with our lives, not only with personal piety, but also with gospel hope. In other words, this is where logical consequents have real life consequences. Let us simply frame what we mean by a doctrine being practical. We say things like this: If God was really dependent upon any outside force or cause in order to act on our behalf, then those external realities would be the bestower of grace. We would depend on them instead of on God. Such a thought is not merely terrifying. It is irreducibly a logical matter as well.
One one side of the logical disjunctive, there is a salvation as immutable as God himself is. On the other is a salvation that depends upon some great unknown that stands above and beyond the God we thought we knew. Life and death hang in the balance constructed of competing “if-then” chains. So it would appear that one cannot have a practical application of a doctrine apart from the logic upon which all of life rests. As was typical among the Puritans, as well as Mastricht, the end of one’s theology in general, and sermons in particular, was in the setting forth of “uses.”
Mastricht offers six uses of the doctrine. Its first use is for God’s glorification. He appeals to these texts: Romans 1:23, Malachi 3:6, Psalm 102:25-27, and 1 Timothy 1:17. Since “this perfection pours itself out into all his other perfections,” it follows that immutability is a glory that expresses how every attribute of God does not change. Again, in the words of James 1:17, there is no shifting shadow in God. A deity who shifted in his essence, or his revealed charter, or his word of promise, would not be a being worthy of adoration. We might also consider speech, found both in Scripture and in our own jargon, about “glorifying God” (cf. Psa. 29:1-2; Isa. 43:7; Mat. 5:16; 1 Cor. 10:31). A distinction is often made between the intrinsic glory which is in God himself, as opposed to the extrinsic glory that is communicated to the creature. The former cannot be added to or subtracted from. That is to say, God’s intrinsic glory cannot change. But it is precisely in the extrinsic glory being alternately increased and diminished that this is such a practical distinction.
Summarizing a bit more on his other uses, the second is for the despising of creatures. This word “despise” is relative to the first point, as all other things are movable and transient compared to God. We naturally desire that earthly kingdoms, riches, and circumstances last. They are shadows of permanence, so that we hold fast to them. If we cannot use these things “with moderation,” then there is a sense in which we should “condemn” them.
The third use is for the detestation of sin. We would be afraid to sin given the thought that God is immutable as avenger of sin. His justice, wrath, and hatred of sin and sinner will last and never diminish.
Then there is, fourth, confidence and comfort in any and all circumstances. That God himself is a Rock and his promises never change: that his goodness, love, grace, and mercy are “fixed in their favor.” So in these the immutable God is either the great hope or great terror, depending on where one stands with him in Christ. But this teaches us that as divine immutability rises in our esteem, so too will there be a direct relationship in the rise of either hoping in or dreading the immutability of the eternal consequences.
The fifth use is for fleeting inconstancy and fickleness; and the final one for “the study of constancy.” These are just opposites, the one to be shunned and the other to be cultivated, and so to become more like God in a way proper to the creature. Even our religious works, most conscious of God and the gospel, are half-hearted. Contrasted to this is the immutability of God and consequent “zeal for imitation.” Immutability is an object of true conformity, but in a way fitting for the creature: the endurance of faith, the keeping of promises, and the perfecting of all spiritual fruit. These are morally admirable ways in which renewed images of God may participate in a relative immutability.
Although Charnock delivered his discourses a few years prior to Mastricht’s publication, I will end with the former’s practical use section for the reason that he did craft them as sermons. There is much similarity between he and Mastricht on the use of the doctrine. Charnock divides into three practical headings: 1. for information; 2. for comfort; and 3. for exhortation.
By the informing of the saints, he reasons that, “If God be unchangeable in his nature, and immutability be a property of God, then Christ hath a Divine nature … Here is ground and encouragement for worship.” His language is that of logic making a step up into worship. We ought to worship God because he is unchanging, and we ought to see the Son of God in this same way. Prayer is upheld as well. The dependence of God in prayer “could have no firm foundation without unchangeableness.” This doctrine “shows how contrary man is to God in regard of his inconstancy.”
In the fall, man changed to inconstancy in truth, will, affections, and in practice. And just where God’s immutability is a foundation to the righteous, “it is sad news to those that are resolved in wickedness, or careless of returning to that duty he requires.”
The second use is for the comfort brought about. Here we come full circle back to thoughts of his opening text in Psalm 102:25-26. All that is most unchanging in this world—the mountains and the sky—and God outlasts them all. He speaks of the comfort brought about by immutability, as the “covenant stands unchangeable … Perseverance is ascertained … [and] By this eternal happiness is insured.” Then the final use is for exhortation. “Let a sense of the changeableness and uncertainty of all other things besides God, be upon us.” If we take that to heart, our thoughts will not dwell on these things, our trust will not be in them, and we will prefer God over such mutable things. It will teach us “patience under such providences as declare his unchangeable will” and call us “to imitate God in this perfection, by striving to be immovable in goodness.”
He concludes in speaking about the reasonableness, glory, and happiness of this truth. Again we see that there are fitting ways for the saints to imitate immutability. We must remain immovable in laboring for Christ (1 Corinthians 15:58), abiding in the true doctrine (2 John 9), and holding fast our profession of faith together (Hebrews 10:23, 25). As in doctrine, so in the practice, the logical traffic runs both ways. Not only does God’s immutability build those spiritual fruits and virtues in us that mirror his other attributes, but as we relate to the others, so we become more or less like him in immutability: “the nearer we come to him, the more stability we shall have in ourselves; the further from him, the more liable to change.”
CONCLUDING REMARKS
The goal of this paper was to show how divine immutability functioned in these two seventeenth century titans of Reformed thought. Specifically, immutability is an ideal divine attribute to demonstrate how the Reformed Orthodox, whether on the continent or among the English Puritans, spent the bulk of their theology proper sections drawing out the logical coherence between divine attributes. Such attributes must be the case if God is truly God. In turn, such a God must be the God of Scripture for the gospel to be good news.
Modern theologies have been typified by dispensing with classical natural theology and with those classical attributes (simplicity, impassibility, eternality, God as pure act, and as possessing an immutable will). As we have seen, however this may have been motivated to give us a more immanent God and more straightforward biblical narrative, in point of fact it only succeeds in pulling down God from the heavens and fracturing that narrative.
The application of the true doctrine as handled by Charnock and Mastricht to our own day is clear to the student of theology. The renewed interest in the classical divine attributes among Reformed seminaries is one obvious point of reference. For the non-seminarian, who nevertheless attends a Reformed church and has had their taste of the Puritan paperbacks, it may be that Puritan theology proper is still a foreign concept. In all of our talk of theological retrieval of the old works, the classical divine attributes handled by the Puritans ought to be high on that list.
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