An objection that has been raised against the doctrine of divine immutability pertains to the Incarnation.[1] It seems that the Second Person of the Trinity taking on human flesh represents a change in God. But does it? This is an age-old question, which the fathers of the Church noted and addressed. Taking on humanity does not denote a change in the being of God; rather, in the Incarnation, divinity takes on—not converts to—a human nature (a real being) becoming the person of Jesus Christ. According to Chalcedonian Christology,
The precise language of the incarnation protects the divine essence from corruption but also the human nature from deification.[3] If God’s nature changed with the mixture of humanity, then God would no longer be God. The eternal nature of God cannot become an immortal substance, which a mixing of humanity with divinity would produce (a mutation) and is a violation of scriptural teaching. To use Thomistic language, the Incarnation must be a supposit,[4] a substantial union in the one Person. It cannot be an accidental union, where the human nature of Christ is something superadded to the Logos. “It must really be God who is man and man that God is.”[5] The Word enfleshed, as Oliver Crisp carefully articulates, is “an essentially incorporeal being that has assumed [assumptio carnis] a human nature that includes a corporeal body. . . . [The Word] is the one entity in whom humanity and divinity are united personally as parts of one composite whole that comprises Christ.”[6]
While there is a stream in contemporary theology that places a strong emphasis on God as relational with humanity (in a manner where the being of God can undergo change),[7] assuming it must be an ontological relation would be disastrous. While those who challenge this doctrine claim it on exegetical grounds, as Richard Muller notes, the issue is actually metaphysical. Contemporary theology has ontological options to choose from.[8] Classical hermeneutics favors the practice of interpreting difficult texts in light of simpler ones. John 1:14, then, does not stand on its own; rather, the verbs of 1 Timothy 3:16, “manifested” and 1 John 4:2, “has come,” provide a more nuanced, rather, a fuller, interpretation of the act of the incarnation. Pinnock, and contemporary mutabilists, have chosen, arbitrarily, a Hegelian ontology, from which the grounding principle of becoming is then assumed when “the Word became flesh” (John 1:14, emphasis added). Therefore, the ontological “swap,” rather than a misstep in exegesis, produces the contradiction.[9]
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[1] For example, Clark Pinnock raised this objection forty years ago, as his chief example of God’s ability to change. See, “The Need for a Scriptural, and Therefore a Neo-Classical Theism,” in Kenneth Kantzer and Stanley Gundry, Perspectives on Evangelical Theology: Papers from the Thirtieth Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society, (Baker, 1979), 40. The force of this objection has clout due to Barth’s critique of the language of immutability being primarily philosophical instead of theological or scriptural. However, as Richard Muller points out, Barth’s preference for the language of “constancy” rather than immutability does not “propose a changing God.” Richard A. Muller, “Incarnation, Immutability, and the Case for Classical Theism,” The Westminster Theological Journal 45, no. 1 (1983): 26. Muller goes on to note that Barth’s (and thus Pinnock’s) challenge to the doctrine of immutability that it ascribes immobility in God is a mistaken implication. Immobility in scholastic thought denotes a being that has not been brought into existence by another being; it has no bearing on the stasis of the Divine Essence. Muller, “Incarnation,” 27.
[2] Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, with a History and Critical Notes: The Greek and Latin Creeds, with Translations, vol. 2 (Harper & Brothers, 1890), 62. The 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, Art. VIII, Sec. 8.2, on the person of Christ, states, “Two whole, perfect, and distinct natures were inseparably joined together in one person, without converting one into the other or mixing them together to produce a different or blended nature.” Stan Reeves, The 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith in Modern English (Founders Press, 2017).
[3] I am not referring to the doctrine of theosis; rather, I am talking about the human nature becoming ontologically consumed by deity.
[4] A supposit is the subsistence of a complete nature that exists and really acts. It is an individual subsisting of that nature. See, Joseph Owens, An Elementary Christian Metaphysics, Reprint edition (Houston, TX: Center for Thomistic Studies, 1985) 151–54.
[5] Thomas Weinandy, Does God Change?, First edition. (Still River, MA: St. Bede’s Press, 2002), 83.
[6] Oliver D. Crisp, The Word Enfleshed: Exploring the Person and Work of Christ (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016), 165. Assumptio carnis, the assumption of the flesh, is the traditional term used to articulate the Word became flesh, rather than the contemporary articulation of divine becoming, where the Logos needs the incarnation as a step forward toward completeness, his self-realization.
[7] Those who place a greater emphasis on the relational element of God denote that the change in God is moral not ontological; however, the classical position on the being and essence of God is that his morality is inextricably connected to his divine essence (i.e., God is his attributes), thus any change would in fact be an ontological change.
[8] Muller, “Incarnation,” 34.
[9] Ibid., 34–5.
[10] John Calvin, Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960), 2.13.10.
[11] See Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology, 1st ed. (Baker Book House, 2006), 152–3.
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