Immutability, Incarnation, and Interpretation.
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· 1 viewDoes the eternal Second Person of the Trinity change at the incarnation
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This morning we are going to look at the immutability of God in light of the incarnation, along with some principles for Christological interpretation.
God does not change. This is for the most part in tact in reformed circles( though it’s coming under attack in some). In evangelical circles probably still the majority would hold to this view.
Immutability.
In past SS’s we’ve discussed how God is spirit and does not have a body like men. We’ve also discussed that He is simple, having no composition in Him whatsoever. His attributes are not combined to make God God. He is the totality of His being. All that is in God is God. God is who He is. The perfection of being. We’ve discussed God’s independence. He depends on no one for His existence.
And because of God’s Simplicity, nothing can be added or subtracted from Him. Any addition or subtraction implies change, hence God’s unchangeability. Because of who God is as the only simple, independant God, He is also the unchangeable God. It is not possible for Him to change. To change would be in essence, not to be God.
Change implies either that you have gone from a lesser state to a more perfect state, or somehow gone from a greater state to a lesser state.
Change also implies dependence. You would depend on whatever caused the change(whether from within or without).
To change is to be creature. Change exists because creatures exist. But God, who’s essence is to exist -and that from eternity to eternity-cannot change.
Gill on God’s Immutability in light of Spirituality and Simplicity:
“Gold and silver, being the purest, and freest of all metals from composition, are not so alterable as others; spirits, being uncompounded, and not consisting of parts, are not so changeable as bodies; and God, being an infinite and uncreated Spirit, and free from composition in every sense, is entirely and perfectly immutable:”
John Gill, A Complete Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity: Or A System of Evangelical Truths, Deduced from the Sacred Scriptures, New Edition., vol. 1 (Tegg & Company, 1839), 53.
Moreover God cannot will himself to change. Nor does he need to. Creation doesn’t change God, His relation to His creatures doesn’t change Him. God cannot be anything other than himself.
“He is the same yesterday today and forever.”
“infinite in being and perfection” ~2LCF
Consider a house and a builder and architect.
Testimony of the Scriptures
Compared to Israel
Mal 3:6.
Israel is anything but unchanging. And there deepest need is a God who is not like them. They need the unchangeable God. That is their only hope and comfort.
Compared to the heavens
Ps 102:25.
Relative statements
1 Sam 15:10,11 . (Gen 6:6 )
What’s going on here? Relative regretting and repenting. Read Jones on this.
Ontological Statements
1 Sam 15:29.
Num 23:19.
In our trials
James 1:17 .
In Salvation
Romans 11:29
God speaks to us like He is a man, even though He is not a man. This is God graciously accommodating Himself to our capacity. We don’t draw our understanding of God’s nature from passages on His dealings and relation to creatures. This is why systematic theology is an important discipline along side BT. God is displeased with Saul’s disobedience and Saul is going to reap the consequences of that.
It is all for our assurance and comfort
but this will be owing, not to themselves, but to the unchangeable grace and power of God: God only is in and of himself immutable; and he is unchangeable in his nature, perfections, and purposes, and in his love and affections to his people, and in his covenant, and the blessings and promises of it; and even in his threatenings.
John Gill, A Complete Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity: Or A System of Evangelical Truths, Deduced from the Sacred Scriptures, New Edition., vol. 1 (Tegg & Company, 1839), 53.
Incarnation
Now as we come to the incarnation, we know theologically that the incarnation cannot bring about any change to the eternal Son of God. Nothing is subtracted from the divine nature and nothing is added to it.
But we still have to deal with specific texts that might imply on a surface level reading that there is a change that takes place in the deity.
No Subtraction
Philippians 2:6-8
6 who, although existing in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped,
7 but emptied Himself, by taking the form of a slave, by being made in the likeness of men.
8 Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Kenoticism teaches that the Son of God sets aside is, divested of, or gives up certain attributes at the incarnation. The go to text is the one before us. And the key word the grab onto to support this view is “emptied himself.”
But does the text imply that He divested himself of any divinity? I don’t believe so and neither has the church throughout the Great Tradition.
A few reasons:
being in the form of God is in the present tense and corresponds to taking the form of a slave. “while existing in the form of God…… emptied himself, by taking the form of a slave…..being found in appearance as man.” Being in the form of God is an ongoing reality in relation to taking on the form of a servant.
Emptied is explained by the following two clauses which do not imply any form of divestment. v.7
Being divested of any of His attributes would take away from the entire point of the example of Humility.
The gospel accounts are far from any idea that He divested himself of divinity. Jesus is aware of His divinity and exercises divine prerogatives throughout.
This implies that God would cease to be God at the incarnation which is an absurd thought.
Reeks havoc on the doctrine of the Trinity. Every external operation of the trinity is an undivided act. “Upholds the world by the Word of His power.”
Kenotic theorists are altogether unfriendly to the classical doctrine of God. Many already have embraced the idea that God can change.
No addition. What happens?
Many good theologians speak of addition instead of subtraction. But this is also an improper way of speaking about the incarnation.
“As we’ve discussed, nothing can be added to the Son of God because any addition implies that something is lacking. It would bring the divine nature to a status it didn’t have before, implying imperfection. But the divine nature is unchanged perfection from all eternity and gives “life, breath and all things from His own fulness.””
Several quotes:
“but what is Divine is united to man;
hence, not God but man is perfected.”53 ~Cyril of Alex
Dolezal
“John Owen is also abundantly clear on this point. Though Christ took our nature to be his own, “it was no addition unto him.”59 This is due to God’s aseity and plentitude of being: “God alone wants nothing, stands in need of nothing; nothing can be added unto him, seeing he ‘giveth unto all life, and breath, and all things,’ Acts xvii.25.”
What happens then. There is a change, but that change takes place in Christ according to the Human nature.
The human nature is perfected and elevated.
Dolezal
“ It receives its completion in being from the divine person to whom it is united. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange states this succinctly: “Assumption is properly an action by which the human nature is drawn into the subsistence of the Son, so that it may subsist by his subsistence. Hence this action not only produces in the human nature of Christ a relation of dependence on the Word, but communicates to it the personality of the Word.”82
This is what enables us to say it was none other than God himself, in the person of the Word, who was born of Mary; that a man is Creator and is God. As Aquinas remarks, “A man is called Creator and is God because of the union, inasmuch as it is terminated in the Divine hypostasis.”83 While all of this is of inestimable benefit and gain to the assumed nature, it is neither loss nor gain to the assuming agent and term, that is, the Word himself.” ~Dolezal
Interpretive principles
The communication of properties and partitive exegesis
First, what we do not say is that the human nature does this, and the divine nature does that. It is always the one Christ acting according to the capacity's of each nature.
2LCF 8.7
Acts 20:28
It is not proper for God to bleed. But, because of the unity of the person of Christ-He is both truly God and truly man-we can say that God bled, that God died. We say this even though those things are not proper to the divine nature. It’s actually a repugnant thought.
John 3:13.
The Son of Man descended from heaven?
John 17:1 .
Christ was with the Father before time. Before His human nature was created. Do you see how important this is? It’s not just having fun with big philosophical and theological terms. This is a big deal! Augustine goes over this in something I read recently.
Jesus knows their thoughts. Jesus doesn’t know the day or the hour. These are not contradictions.
Conclusion.
Here is the thought for us to take with us this Christmas season; The one who is unchangeable in and of Himself, took on a changeable human nature for us, all so that we might dwell for ever in an unchangeably blessed state. Better than the garden.
And not only this. “He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” Yes this is speaking of His being, but also, Him as our eternal High Priest, His current ministry to us here on earth. In His purposes for us as our Savior He is the same and in His love for us He is the same!