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Originally posted by Sisters of Cain

I'll buy that, we can re-interpret something past, just can't change what actually happened.

Ordered sequences of duration move in one direction only------>

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Originally posted by TGB

PoW: And in God, who alone is uncreated, there is no "movement" at all. No change.

Tom: Two responses. First, now why'd ya have to go and say that, PoW? I mean, really--what's the point? How can you or anybody claim there is no movement in God at all? Have you been there? Have you examined him from the inside out? If you have to follow that claim with an adversative "yet" to concede God as 'personal' (which we CAN claim), then what's the point? So what if there is perfect harmonious and triune movement at the very core of God's essence? I'll never understand the Greek obsession with this.

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Originally posted by TGB

Second, I could reply with pointing out that even though I'm created and finite, MY essence is unchanged as well. What I essentially am (human, finite, limited, personal, etc.) can be said to be every bit as unchanging as God is at the same level. So big deal.

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2nd Antiphon

If the Lord were not among us, none of us could have withstood a single battle with the foe. They who are victorious are herefrom exalted.

Let not my soul be caught like a sparrow in their teeth, O Logos. Woe is me! How shall I be delivered from the enemy, enamored with sin as I am?

Glory; both now.

In the Holy Spirit is theosis, good pleasure, understanding, peace and blessing for all men. He has the same energies as the Father and the Logos.

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Originally posted by fred

A little reading bibliography (of websites):

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In the first volume of the Philokalia there is a magnificent text of Saint Anthony which I must read to you here:

God is good, dispassionate, and immutable. Now someone who thinks it reasonable and true to affirm that God does not change, may well ask how, in that case, it is possible to speak of God as rejoicing over those who are good and showing mercy to those who honor Him, and as turning away from the wicked and being angry with sinners. To this it must be answered that God neither rejoices nor grows angry, for to rejoice and to be offended are passions; nor is He won over by the gifts of those who honor Him, for that would mean He is swayed by pleasure. It is not right that the Divinity feel pleasure or displeasure from human conditions.

He is good, and He only bestows blessings and never does harm, remaining always the same. We men, on the other hand, if we remain good through resembling God, are united to Him, but if we become evil through not resembling God, we are separated from Him. By living in holiness we cleave to God; but by becoming wicked we make Him our enemy. It is not that He grows angry with us in an arbitrary way, but it is our own sins that prevent God from shining within us and expose us to demons who torture us. And if through prayer and acts of compassion we gain release from our sins, this does not mean that we have won God over and made Him to change, but that through our actions and our turning to the Divinity, we have cured our wickedness and so once more have enjoyment of God’s goodness. Thus to say that God turns away from the wicked is like saying that the sun hides itself from the blind.23 [Chap. 150]

http://www.philthompson.net/pages/library/riveroffire.html

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Liturgy of St. Basil

"0 Master of all, Lord of heaven and earth, and of all creation both visible and invisible, who sittest upon the throne of glory, and lookest upon the depths, who art without beginning, invisible, incomprehensible, uncircumscript, immutable, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. . ."

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"Divine Impassibility and Our
Suffering God: How an Evangelical "Theology of the Cross" Can and Should Affirm Both"
http://www.alliancenet.org/pub/mr/mr97/1997.04.JulAug/mr9704.pa.impassibility.html

• offer a critique of the contemporary theological trend that seeks to attribute suffering to God's being, or to assert God's passibility.1 This trend affirms that God suffers in himself, and that the suffering of Jesus is the actual suffering of his divine nature. A clearly articulated representation of the general trend, and a viewpoint also being voiced in wider evangelicalism, is Jurgen Moltmann's theology of the cross.



• The conceptual distinction between the immanent and economic Trinity has traditionally been affirmed in obedience to the biblical witness of God's transcendence from his creation, and his freedom in relationship to it, and God's immanence in the creation in terms of his external acts. Briefly stated, the immanent Trinity refers to the being of God insofar as he is transcendent from his creation and focuses on God's internal acts (his acts ad intra). The economic Trinity refers to the God who is immanent in his creation and consists solely of God's actions outside of himself in relation to his creation (his acts ad extra). The immanent Trinity is the intrinsic Trinity or "God in himself," while the economic Trinity is extrinsic or "God for us." In terms of relationship, the concept of the immanent Trinity is primary to that of the economic Trinity and therefore exists necessarily; the latter is dependent and contingent upon the former, and exists only when God acts externally. The priority of the notion of the immanent Trinity is the foundation of the freedom and self-sufficiency of God; God does not need the creation to exist--God exists in himself prior to, and independent from, his act of creation. This makes it possible to affirm that God is free in relation to his creation since he does not have to act ad extra, but can choose to relate to the creation or choose not to. Thus, intrinsically, God is independent and ontologically distinct from his creation even as he freely chooses to exist in relationship to it. It is this point that serves as the basis for the freedom of God. Here, God's "otherness" is always affirmed in both his transcendence and immanence; and here, God is able to be immutable and impassible and creative and in relationship with creation.



• Divine Impassibility and Our Suffering God
  
  I have argued that the modern understanding of love, which is a primary motivation for contemporary theological affirmations of divine passibility, is founded upon the freedom of God; and that the freedom of God is preserved by the traditional conceptual distinction between the immanent Trinity and the economic Trinity. Furthermore, I maintained that the trinitarian distinction must be confused or eliminated when this modern understanding of love is applied to the intrinsic being of God; and that the resulting loss of God's freedom makes divine passibility, based upon this notion of love, problematic. In addition to this, I demonstrated that when this conclusion is properly applied to the incarnation and traditional two-nature Christology, the problem with attributing suffering specifically to the divine nature of Jesus is also clear. Thus, I have shown how affirming divine passibility is problematic for evangelicals who want to remain faithful to the revelation of Scripture as it has been witnessed to historically in the traditional doctrinal formulations of Christology, the Trinity, and the incarnation. I have also shown how evangelicals, by maintaining a proper relationship between these doctrines serving as the context for a theology of the cross, can affirm both divine impassibility and God's identification and solidarity with human suffering in the person of Jesus Christ. I will now conclude with an answer to the concern as to why modern evangelicals should affirm both divine impassibility and the suffering of God with a focus on the trinitarian distinction.
  
  It should be understood that the trinitarian distinction is the conceptual key that locks the door on our attempts to "humanize" God or, in this case, to bring the infinitely qualitatively distinct and incomprehensible God closer to humanity through the application of human suffering to God's intrinsic triune being. In this way, the trinitarian distinction prevents us from re-creating God after our own image. Yet, the trinitarian distinction is also the conceptual key that opens the door for the understanding of God himself as freely relating to humanity in the incarnate person of Jesus. It properly points humanity to Jesus, who is the only mediator through which God and humanity may meet in true solidarity. The more human we try to make God, the less we need the incarnation. But the more we acknowledge the radical otherness and transcendence of God, through the affirmation of traditional doctrines such as the trinitarian distinction and divine impassibility, the more we will cherish, lift up, and worship Jesus Christ who is the incarnation of God, the Immanuel, or "God with and for us."
  
  Rather than following after the contemporary trend of theological thought that seeks to affirm divine passibility in the face of profound human suffering, evangelicals should reaffirm this historical Christian doctrine of the trinitarian distinction with its christological and incarnational implications. Through this doctrine, we understand that God must be impassible to be freely and fully God for humanity. Only through this freedom and fullness may God truly be in loving relationship with humanity. And only in the affirmations of this trinitarian distinction, as they are properly applied to Christology and the incarnation as the context for a theology of the cross, may we affirm both the divine impassibility of God and the loving, voluntary choice of God to suffer in the passion and death of the person of Jesus Christ in true solidarity with suffering humanity.
  

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Originally posted by John Earp

Hi fred,

I affirm God's immutability if we are talking about his natural attributes; such as, He will always be omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient. I likewise affirm the immutability of God's moral attributes (or, character), as in He will always be loving, good, kind, and merciful or judgmental when circumstances warrant, and never arbitrarily.

What I think you and I probably disagree on is that God changes his mind/repents when circumstances warrant. To my mind this "flexibility" in God does not indicate mutability as in my previous paragraph; rather, it is part of his loving character to be kindly disposed to show mercy (for instance) when it is in keeping with his purposes for creation to do so. This is one of the reasons why I view the atonement of Christ as absolutely necessary, loving, good, and kind, and that it was not an angry disposition on the Father's part that needed to be appeased but rather as Jesus said, "I and my Father are one," "I say only the things I hear my Father speak," and "If you have seen me you have seen the Father."

In other words, the Son always acted in perfect harmony with the Father, and in fact revealed the Father to us! This biblical truth has always made the "satisfaction of wrath" or "punishment" theories of the atonement seem just flat wrong to me.

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Originally posted by PotOnWheel

I like John's post here, from the thread he mentions:

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Originally posted by John Earp

Hi fred,

I affirm God's immutability if we are talking about his natural attributes; such as, He will always be omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient. I likewise affirm the immutability of God's moral attributes (or, character), as in He will always be loving, good, kind, and merciful or judgmental when circumstances warrant, and never arbitrarily.

What I think you and I probably disagree on is that God changes his mind/repents when circumstances warrant. To my mind this "flexibility" in God does not indicate mutability as in my previous paragraph; rather, it is part of his loving character to be kindly disposed to show mercy (for instance) when it is in keeping with his purposes for creation to do so. This is one of the reasons why I view the atonement of Christ as absolutely necessary, loving, good, and kind, and that it was not an angry disposition on the Father's part that needed to be appeased but rather as Jesus said, "I and my Father are one," "I say only the things I hear my Father speak," and "If you have seen me you have seen the Father."

In other words, the Son always acted in perfect harmony with the Father, and in fact revealed the Father to us! This biblical truth has always made the "satisfaction of wrath" or "punishment" theories of the atonement seem just flat wrong to me.

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(In the first volume of the Philokalia there is a magnificent text of Saint Anthony)


God is good, dispassionate, and immutable. Now someone who thinks it reasonable and true to affirm that God does not change, may well ask how, in that case, it is possible to speak of God as rejoicing over those who are good and showing mercy to those who honor Him, and as turning away from the wicked and being angry with sinners. To this it must be answered that God neither rejoices nor grows angry, for to rejoice and to be offended are passions; nor is He won over by the gifts of those who honor Him, for that would mean He is swayed by pleasure. It is not right that the Divinity feel pleasure or displeasure from human conditions.

He is good, and He only bestows blessings and never does harm, remaining always the same. We men, on the other hand, if we remain good through resembling God, are united to Him, but if we become evil through not resembling God, we are separated from Him. By living in holiness we cleave to God; but by becoming wicked we make Him our enemy. It is not that He grows angry with us in an arbitrary way, but it is our own sins that prevent God from shining within us and expose us to demons who torture us. And if through prayer and acts of compassion we gain release from our sins, this does not mean that we have won God over and made Him to change, but that through our actions and our turning to the Divinity, we have cured our wickedness and so once more have enjoyment of God’s goodness. Thus to say that God turns away from the wicked is like saying that the sun hides itself from the blind.23 [Chap. 150]

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John Earp: "He will always be loving, good, kind, and merciful or judgmental when circumstances warrant, and never arbitrarily."

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I affirm God's immutability if we are talking about his natural attributes; such as, He will always be omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient. I likewise affirm the immutability of God's moral attributes (or, character), as in He will always be loving, good, kind, and merciful or judgmental when circumstances warrant, and never arbitrarily.

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"flexibility" in God does not indicate mutability as in my previous paragraph; rather, it is part of his loving character to be kindly disposed to show mercy (for instance) when it is in keeping with his purposes for creation to do so.

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Nicely said, John,

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Originally posted by PoW

...what St. Anthony said as he knew it from deep devotion to Christ.

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Originally posted by PoW

For the Christian, the important issue. . .the one that has been the experiment for that 2000 years you mention -- is of, rather: "What is "perfect harmonious and movement" IN US, by the Spirit?

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Originally posted by PoW

2nd Antiphon

• How shall I be delivered from the enemy, enamored with sin as I am?


• none of us could have withstood a single battle with the foe


• In the Holy Spirit is theosis, good pleasure, understanding, peace and blessing for all men. He has the same energies as the Father and the Logos.

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Originally posted by PoW

"What is "perfect harmonious and movement" IN US, by the Spirit?

That is what makes this all inescapable.

I simply stated the Churches confession, its clinical observation based on what it CAN know -- the question of "what we shall be" in that twinkling of an eye that Paul mentions, and what we are now supposed to be becoming (the clinical experiment of both those married and those monasitic). I stated it, as smoothly, and without cause for offence. But state that God is impassible and immutable I must. And remind that for the Christian those do not mean exactly the same as for the pagan I also must; and did.

What "movement" is in us -- striving after that which is not our created destiny -- is countered by what harmony of ever growing perfection that we "shall be." And while God, who has made himself known, is beyond comprehension -- yet we salivate to know Him better. And that knowledge is only found in the seeds of growth in us, in the restoration and transformation in us, in the Spirit's work in us, IN HIS LIKENESS.

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http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/orth_plato.aspx

The Orthodox understanding is that the pagan concept of divine immutability was an allergic reaction to time and contingency that needed to find a time-proof foundation of necessity for religious reassurance. . . .Pagan philosophical theology sought a predestinied necessity in a time-proof order or an anti-time God. Since everything human is temporal, one gets the unknown God because God is what anything temporal-mortal is not.

Using a Biblical base to modify Greek pagan concepts, divine immutability in Orthodoxy is God's loyalty to his promise (his Word, his Church) to his (Church designed) creatures. It is the immutability of his commitment through and outside of time. It is the basis of the fact that economia was the telos, and thus, foundation of the creation. Church is the fulfillment of covenant. Covenant is the inner purpose for creation. Creation is the outer staging for the inner purpose. So, the Church, as Body of Christ, is the fruit from which the tree that bore it, the cosmos, was itself borne and born, as St. Diadochus of Gaza puts it. God's immutability is that he is agape, essentially and contingently, immutably a sharer of Person with Persons, uncreate or create. Time has no nature apart from this agenda, and thus, is nothing in relation to it, and thus, is not an obstacle or issue for or about divine immutability unlike the unregenerate paganism of the insufficiently methologically critical Calvinism.

I especially like where he says: "Covenant is the inner purpose for creation. Creation is the outer staging for the inner purpose." and "Time ... is not an obstacle or issue."
Who can stop God's Love?

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The Immortal Dies

"Thou hast given thyself for redemption:
Soul for soul, Body for body, and Blood for blood,
Man for man, and Death for death.
O strange and unspeakable mystery:
The Judge was judged;
He who loosed the bound was bound;
He who created the world was fixed with nails;
He who measures heaven and earth was measured;
He who gives creatures life died;
He who raises the dead was buried.
What is this new Creation?
The Judge is judged and is silent;
The Invisible is seen on the Cross and is not ashamed;
The Infinite is contained and does not complain;
The Impassible suffers and does not seek vengeance;
The Immortal dies and says nothing;
The King of heaven is buried and endures it.
What is this strange Mystery?"

St. Melito of Sardis

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Originally posted by Bob Hill:
Heb 13:8 the same yesterday and today and forever.

The real unchangeableness of God is shown by Scripture to be that His unchangeableness is His awesome power, His unchangeableness in what He swears or counsels to happen: Isa 46:9-11 Remember the former things of old, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me, 10 Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure,’ 11 Calling a bird of prey from the east, the man who executes My counsel, from a far country. Indeed I have spoken it; I will also bring it to pass. I have purposed it; I will also do it. (NKJV).

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Do not let the men deceive themselves and others with the assertion that the "Man of the Lord," as they call Him, Who is rather our Lord and God, is without human mind. For we do not sever the Man from the Godhead, but we lay down as a dogma the Unity and Identity of Person, Who of old was not Man but God, and the Only Son before all ages, unmingled with body or anything corporeal; but Who in these last days has assumed Manhood also for our salvation; passible in His Flesh, impassible in His Godhead; circumscript in the body, uncircumscript in the Spirit; at once earthly and heavenly, tangible and intangible, comprehensible and incomprehensible; that by One and the Same Person, Who was perfect Man and also God, the entire humanity fallen through sin might be created anew.

www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf207.iv.ii.iii.html

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Thus it was the prosopon of Christ Who suffered, died, and was buried in the tomb, not the impassible Logos in His Own passible manhood. When St. Paul speaks of the Lord of Glory being crucified he means that the body of the Lord of Glory was crucified, not that the Lord of Glory was crucified in the flesh.
(from "Cyril's 'One Physis of hypostasis of God the Logos Incarnate and Calcedon" by John Romanades)

www.romanity.org/htm/rom.08.en.st._cyrils_one_physis_or_hypostasis_of_god_t he_log.htm

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God is good, dispassionate, and immutable. Now someone who thinks it reasonable and true to affirm that God does not change, may well ask how, in that case, it is possible to speak of God as rejoicing over those who are good and showing mercy to those who honor Him, and as turning away from the wicked and being angry with sinners. To this it must be answered that God neither rejoices nor grows angry, for to rejoice and to be offended are passions; nor is He won over by the gifts of those who honor Him, for that would mean He is swayed by pleasure. It is not right that the Divinity feel pleasure or displeasure from human conditions.

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Originally posted by John Earp

As far as I understand the concepts, "immutable" (as in unable to respond) and "dispassionate," (as in without emotion) I find it highly injurious to God's character to ascribe such ideas to God.

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John Earp: "He will always be loving, good, kind, and merciful or judgmental when circumstances warrant, and never arbitrarily."

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divine immutability in Orthodoxy is God's loyalty to his promise (his Word, his Church) to his (Church designed) creatures.

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It is the immutability of his commitment through and outside of time.

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