In this short article, I would like to consider how a more traditional understanding of God’s immutability might be illumined and reinforced by the doctrine of divine simplicity. While setting forth the relationship between immutability and simplicity will not allay the concerns of all critics, it can shed light on why a stronger doctrine of God’s immutability, like that of Augustine, Aquinas, or Calvin, remains important today.

Students of the Bible are accustomed to encountering passages that affirm God’s immutability. “I the LORD do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed” (Mal. 3:6 ESV). “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (Jas. 1:17 ESV). But there are also texts which speak of God changing. In 1 Samuel 15, for example, the author informs us that God “repented” of making Saul king of Israel (v. 11). The author then puzzlingly recounts Samuel’s insistence that God in fact does not repent since he is not like human beings (v. 29). Yet, afterward the author concludes the chapter with the statement that God repented of making Saul king (v. 35).

In light of texts like 1 Samuel 15, recent treatments of God’s attributes sometimes critique older accounts of God’s immutability and stress that God does change in relation to creatures. The nineteenth-century theologian Isaak Dorner, for example, offered a stimulating revision of the doctrine of divine immutability that jettisoned the notion that God is fully and eternally actual. For Dorner, if we are to take seriously the diversity of God’s action in the world and avoid a wooden conception of God’s relationship to it, then we must affirm the presence of unactualized potential in God, a potential whereby he can interact with his creatures and do new things. Contemporary Old Testament scholars like Walter Brueggemann and Terence Fretheim have also, in their own distinct ways, argued adamantly for a more “relational” view of God that is no longer encumbered by traditional understandings of divine immutability.

In this short article, I would like to consider how a more traditional understanding of God’s immutability might be illumined and reinforced by the doctrine of divine simplicity. While setting forth the relationship between immutability and simplicity will not allay the concerns of all critics, it can shed light on why a stronger doctrine of God’s immutability, like that of Augustine, Aquinas, or Calvin, remains important today. We will first consider what the doctrine of divine simplicity actually means and then explicate its relationship to divine immutability. At the end of the article, we will then comment briefly on how our understanding of immutability in relation to simplicity might equip us to honor the biblical teaching on how God acts in the world.

What Is Divine Simplicity?

The doctrine of divine simplicity has often been maligned (and misunderstood!) in modern theology, but its prominent role in the catholic church’s doctrine of God should not be overlooked. It appears in the Westminster Confession of Faith 2.1, for example, where God is said to be “without body, parts or passions.” In its negative aspect, divine simplicity signifies that God is not composed of parts. Positively, God is identical with his own essence, existence and attributes. There is no essence or divine nature beyond God in which he must participate in order to be the God that he is. The only divinity is this one God who created all things and has revealed himself in Jesus Christ. There is no existence or source of life in which God must participate in order to be. The only ultimate existence or absolute source of life is just this one God, the Father, Son, and Spirit. God’s attributes (wisdom, justice, goodness, and so forth) are not qualities added to his essence, but rather are just aspects or descriptions of his rich essence. To be God simply is to be wise, just, good.

This teaching is not at all opposed to the doctrine of the Trinity. Though it rejects the idea that there might be diverse parts or “things” in God, it does not reject all distinctions in God. The persons of the Trinity are not parts that make up a greater divine whole. Instead, the Father, Son, and Spirit are the same “thing” as the one divine essence, and are distinguished from one another only by their relations of origin (the Son eternally coming forth from the Father, the Spirit eternally coming forth from the Father and Son). Such relations are not, strictly speaking, “things” added to God’s essence.

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