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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 Gods 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
Spirit
9
) ; 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, Descle, 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, Brentanos Evolving God, The New Scholasticism, 55 (1981), pp. 438-449. Burgess writes
that Brentanos 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 Brentanos metaphysics is his concept of a necessarily existing but
2
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 finished
11
; 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 becoming
12
) ; 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 GodThe thesis that God evolves is deeply rooted in the thought of Brentanos 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, ber den Gegenstnden 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 Gbe es keine Dinge mehr oder nur einem zeitlosen Gott, so wre auch nichts gewesen
(February 4, 1915), in ibid., p. 115). The second consideration has to do with Gods knowledge. An omniscient God
knows all truths; but since what is true changes, unless Gods 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 Brentanos 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 Gods
nature evolves through time, so that God has at each moment the knowledge appropriate to that moment. In
Brentanos day of horse and buggy, let us say, God knew such carriages in the present mode and todays auto as
something for the future; but now God knows buggies to be outmoded and this years models as a present reality.
Thus Gods 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, Brentanos 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, Descle, Tournai, 1956, p. 989).
12
Explaining how Whiteheads 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 Gods 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 Gods
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.
4
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.
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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 Gods understanding embraces all truth changelessly and
eternally; and Gods 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 Gods 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 Gods 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
Gods 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.
Peters 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.
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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 Creators power to produce them before they existed in
themselves, so likewise it is in the Creators 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.

Varvellos Replies to Various Objections to Gods 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.
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19
F. VARVELLO, Metaphysics, University of San Francisco Press, San Francisco, 1933, pp. 297-298.