quote:

---

John Earp

Mal 3:6 "For I, the LORD, do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed.

The above verse is often quoted as proof that the Open View must be wrong, and that any responsiveness or reaction in God would imply change in God.

However does the context support this contention?


Mal 3:5 ¶ "Then I will draw near to you for judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers and against the adulterers and against those who swear falsely, and against those who oppress the wage earner in his wages, the widow and the orphan, and those who turn aside the alien and do not fear Me," says the LORD of hosts. 6 "For I, the LORD, do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed.
7 ¶ "From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from My statutes and have not kept {them.} Return to Me, and I will return to you," says the LORD of hosts. "But you say, 'How shall we return?'

---

quote:

---

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

---

quote:

---

Only that the oft-cited charge against the Open View, that it renders God mutable (changeable) is simply false. As the Malachi passage above plainly demonstrates, affirming (with Scripture) that God can respond to human activity does not equal God is mutable.

---

quote:

---

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.

---

quote:

---

John,

quote:

---

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.

---

Nicely said, John,

Starkman

---

STARKMAN, I AGREE WITH YOU.

John, we don't disagree about ANYTHING you say. May I explain how this is possible?

God is personal. God's nature neither preceeds nor follows his personal being (which is love). God freely wills to love in a Trinity of Persons. It is a pagan Greek way of thinking (that infects much of Western Christianity--including Aquinas) that says that God's person is determined by some "divine nature" -- thereby that nature preceding God's person, and making God less than free. When we think of God, we should recognize three (3) things: Person, Essence (which is God's case is a verb--communion in love), and action/energies. God IS personal. God's interTrinitarian Love is his "mode of being" within the Trinity. And the God of love, then FREELY (not compelled from the outside, and not inevitably caused from some preceeding force or substance, and not pulled from some inner need to satisfy something external) LOVES US!

The "immutability" of God's character towards us somes from the Father's choice to love the world, despite our rebellion. We do well to think of this "immutability" in personal terms, rather than "substance-orieinted" terms. (Its like: That Dad keeps pitching the wiffle balls well into the deep-dusk and past the little kid's bed time; rather than that the wiffle balls just do that by their nature.) And the immutatility of all else is just better understood DOxOLOGICALLY, as being part of the difference between Creator and Creature. The biggest for-instance of THAT is the incarnation. Nothing about the incarnation required God to change at all to assume our humanity. And the laying aside of the evescence of his deity did not affect his deity at all. Being ignorant and suffering in our humanity did not affect the fellowship of the Trinity. Suffering the hellish abandonment of the "love" of the Father in our fallen humanity and personally experiencing IN HIS OWN PERSON (speaking of the Son now--not the whole Trinity) did not mean a division in the Trinity. Etc.

The key is that God is personal.

In terms that WE can understand: God can change his "mind" without changing his "heart."




PoW/Fred/Al

quote:

---

It is a pagan Greek way of thinking (that infects much of Western Christianity--including Aquinas) that says that God's person is determined by some "divine nature" -- thereby that nature preceding God's person, and making God less than free.

---

quote:

---

Starkman

Could we say, then, that the person (itself) of God (Himself) is by necessity--if He is to be God--part of what we know God to be: omniscient, omnipotent, etc? In other words, it seems strange to segregate what God reveals Himself to be (those attributes) too much from who God is Himself. Could personage mean, when talking about God, that personage would be incomplete for God if it didn't have incorporated within it (or even as part of what defines it) that which gives manifestation to God's actions?

---

quote:

---

What is self-evident with God is that his "mode of being" (His ontological "essence") IS Communional Love within the Trinity.

---

quote:

---

quote:

---

John Earp

Mal 3:6 "For I, the LORD, do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed.

The above verse is often quoted as proof that the Open View must be wrong, and that any responsiveness or reaction in God would imply change in God.

However does the context support this contention?


Mal 3:5 ¶ "Then I will draw near to you for judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers and against the adulterers and against those who swear falsely, and against those who oppress the wage earner in his wages, the widow and the orphan, and those who turn aside the alien and do not fear Me," says the LORD of hosts. 6 "For I, the LORD, do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed.
7 ¶ "From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from My statutes and have not kept {them.} Return to Me, and I will return to you," says the LORD of hosts. "But you say, 'How shall we return?'

---

John says: The above verse is often quoted as proof that the Open View must be wrong...

Fred: Guess they do. That doesn't make it right? Right! Good point there, John.


But it also doesn't mean that those two necessarily are an either/or! They are not necessarily an either/or!

Immutability speaks of God's nature, that the Trinity share equally. But as God is Personal, God can "draw near" to us--as the verse John quoted declares.

God is transcedent in his nature, but "open" in love and in suffering personally. In divine "energies"/acts God is closer to us than our own hearts. But in "essence" God is completely "other." That is...we will never be part of the Trinity (sharing in essence) by nature, but in Christ we can participate in the Divine Love of the Trinity by grace.

(The paragraph above "nails it." If you wish to disagree, please word carefully and specifically! Thanks.)

Fred

Edited by - fred on 07/11/2003 10:33:51 PM

---

In case Starkey wants to continue his interaction with what I'd posted, I think it wise to back up and show where this all came from.

1. John made a post.
2. Starkman agreed with it.
3. "Fred" agreed with it too.

Now, whether Starkman wants to claim that "Fred" or "PoW" can or can't agree with what John is saying, and whether or not Starkey wants to claim anyone else can or can't think one way of another is ONLY The Starkman's business. But what I posted I stand behind. And I KNOW that I expressed it correctly.

Any loose ends in Starkey's experience are real experiences, and predictable given the different axioms involved.

======================================================


BUT NOTICE THAT WHAT JOHN IS SAYING AND WHAT A LOSSKY OR A YANNARAS WOULD SAY ARE NOT IN ANY WAY RELATED IN THE KIND OF ADVERSARIAL RELATIONSHIP OF OPPOSITES THAT THE "ov" AND THE "classical" ARE OFTEN SQUARED OFF. (From where I sit I think that some of the OV is unnecessary: parts of it seem with clarity to be reactions to undesirable aspects of the classical.)





Edited by - PotOnWheel on 07/21/2003 2:52:06 PM

quote:

---

Oration XXIX. The Third Theological Oration. On the Son.
www.ccel.org/fathers2/NPNF2-07/Npnf2-07-44.htm#P4360_1362644

---

quote:

---

II. The three most ancient opinions concerning God are Anarchia, Polyarchia, and Monarchia. The first two are the sport of the children of Hellas, and may they continue to be so. For Anarchy is a thing without order; and the Rule of Many is factious, and thus anarchical, and thus disorderly. For both these tend to the same thing, namely disorder; and this to dissolution, for disorder is the first step to dissolution.

But Monarchy is that which we hold in honour. It is, however, a Monarchy that is not limited to one Person, for it is possible for Unity if at variance with itself to come into a condition of plurality;2 but one which is made of an equality of Nature and a Union of mind. and an identity of motion, and a convergence of its elements to unity-a thing which is impossible to the created nature-so that though numerically distinct there is no severance of Essence. Therefore Unity3 having from all eternity arrived by motion at Duality, found its rest in Trinity. This is what we mean by Father and Son and Holy Ghost. The Father is the Begetter and the Emitter;4 without passion of course, and without reference to time, and not in a corporeal manner. The Son is the Begotten, and the Holy Ghost the Emission; for I know not how this could be expressed in terms altogether excluding visible things. For we shall not venture to speak of "an overflow of goodness," as one of the Greek Philosophers dared to say, as if it were a bowl overflowing, and this in plain words in his Discourse on the First and Second Causes.5 Let us not ever look on this Generation as involuntary, like some natural overflow, hard to be retained, and by no means befitting our conception of Deity. Therefore let us confine ourselves within our limits, and speak of the Unbegotten and the Begotten and That which proceeds from the Father, as somewhere God the Word Himself saith.

III. When did these come into being? They are above all "When." But, if I am to speak with something more of boldness,-when the Father did. And when did the Father come into being. There never was a time when He was not. And the same thing is true of the Son and the Holy Ghost. Ask me again, and again I will answer you, When was the Son begotten? When the Father was not begotten. And when did the Holy Ghost proceed? When the Son was, not proceeding but, begotten-beyond the sphere of time, and above the grasp of reason; although we cannot set forth that which is above time, if we avoid as we desire any expression which conveys the idea of time. For such expressions as "when" and "before" and "after" and "from the beginning" are not timeless, however much we may force them; unless indeed we were to take the Aeon, that interval which is coextensive with the eternal things, and is not divided or measured by any motion, or by the revolution of the sun, as time is measured.

How then are They not alike unoriginate, i f They are coeternal? Because They are from Him, though not after Him. For that which is unoriginate is eternal, but that which is eternal is not necessarily unoriginate, so long as it may be referred to the Father as its origin. Therefore in respect of Cause They are not unoriginate; but it is evident that the Cause is not necessarily prior to its effects, for the sun is not prior to its light. And yet They are in some sense unoriginate, in respect of time, even though you would scare simple minds with your quibbles, for the Sources of Time are not subject to time.

IV. But how can this generation be passionless? In that it is incorporeal. For if corporeal generation involves passion, incorporeal generation excludes it. And I will ask of you in turn, How is He God if He is created? For that which is created is not God. I refrain from reminding you that here too is passion if we take the creation in a bodily sense, as time, desire, imagination, thought, hope, pain, risk, failure, success, all of which and more than all find a place in the creature, as is evident to every one. Nay, I marvel that you do not venture so far as to conceive of marriages and times of pregnancy, and dangers of miscarriage, as if the Father could not have begotten at all if He had not begotten thus; or again, that you did not count up the modes of generation of birds and beasts and fishes, and bring under some one of them the Divine and Ineffable Generation, or even eliminate the Son out of your new hypothesis. And you cannot even see this, that as His Generation according to the flesh differs from all others (for where among men do you know of a Virgin Mother?), so does He differ also in His spiritual Generation; or rather He, Whose Existence is not the same as ours, differs from us also in His Generation.

V. Who then is that Father Who had no beginning? One Whose very Existence had no beginning; for one whose existence had a beginning must also have begun to be a Father. He did not then become a Father after He began to be, for His being had no beginning. And He is Father in the absolute sense, for He is not also Son; just as the Son is Son in the absolute sense, because He is not also Father. These names do not belong to us in the absolute sense, because we are both, and not one more than the other; and we are of both, and not of one only; and so we are divided, and by degrees become men, and perhaps not even men, and such as we did not desire, leaving and being left, so that only the relations remain, without the underlying facts.6

But, the objector says, the very form of the expression "He begat" and "He was begotten," brings in the idea of a beginning of generation. But what if you do not use this expression, but say, "He had been begotten from the beginning" so as readily to evade your far-fetched and time-loving objections? Will you bring Scripture against us, as if we were forging something contrary to Scripture and to the truth? Why, every one knows that in practice we very often find tenses interchanged when time is spoken of; and especially is this the custom of Holy Scripture, not only in respect of the past tense, and of the present; but even of the future, as for instance "Why did the heathen rage?"7 when they had not yet raged and "they shall cross over the river on foot,"8 where the meaning is they did cross over. It would be a long task to reckon up all the expressions of this kind which students have noticed.

VI. So much for this point. What is their next objection, how full of contentiousness and impudence? He, they say, either voluntarily begat the Son, or else involuntarily. Next, as they think, they bind us on both sides with cords; these however are not strong, but very weak. For, they say, if it was involuntarily He was under the sway of some one, and who exercised this sway? And how is He, over whom it is exercised, God? But if voluntarily, the Son is a Son of Will; how then is He of the Father?-and they thus invent a new sort of Mother for him,-the Will,-in place of the Father. There is one good point which they may allege about this argument of theirs; namely, that they desert Passion, and take refuge in Will. For Will is not Passion. Secondly, let us look at the strength of their argument. And it were best to wrestle with them at first at close quarters. You yourself, who so recklessly assert whatever takes your fancy; were you begotten voluntarily or involuntarily by your father? If involuntarily, then he was under some tyrant's sway (O terrible violence!) and who was the tyrant? You will hardly say it was nature,-for nature is tolerant of chastity. If it was voluntarily, then by a few syllables your father is done away with, for you are shewn to be the son of Will, and not of your father. But I pass to the relation between God and the creature, and I put your own question to your own wisdom. Did God create all things voluntarily or under compulsion? If under compulsion, here also is the tyranny, and one who played the tyrant; if voluntarily, the creatures also are deprived of their God, and you before the rest, who invent such arguments and tricks of logic. For a partition is set up between the Creator and the creatures in the shape of Will. And yet I think that the Person who wills is distinct from the Act of willing; He who begets from the Act of begetting; the Speaker from the speech, or else we are all very stupid. On the one side we have the mover, and on the other that which is, so to speak, the motion. Thus the thing willed is not the child of will, for it does not always result therefrom; nor is that which is begotten the child of generation, nor that which is heard the child of speech, but of the Person who willed, or begat, or spoke. But the things of God are beyond all this, for with Him perhaps the Will to beget is generation, and there is no intermediate action (if we may accept this altogether, and not rather consider generation superior to will).

VII. Will you then let me play a little upon this word Father, for your example encourages me to be so bold? The Father is God either willingly or unwillingly; and how will you escape from your own excessive acuteness? If willingly, when did He begin to will? It could not have been before He began to be, for there was nothing prior to Him. Or is one part of Him Will and another the object of Will? If so, He is divisible. So the question arises, as the result of your argument, whether He Himself is not the Child of Will. And if unwillingly, what compelled Him to exist, and how is He God if He was compelled-and that to nothing less than to be God? How then was He begotten, says my opponent. How was He created, if as you say, He was created? For this is a part of the same difficulty. Perhaps you would say, By Will and Word. You have not yet solved the whole difficulty; for it yet remains for you to shew how Will and Word gained the power of action. For man was not created in this way.

VIII. How then was He begotten? This Generation would have been no great thing, if you could have comprehended it who have no real knowledge even of your own generation, or at least who comprehend very little of it, and of that little you are ashamed to speak; and then do you think you know the whole? You will have to undergo much labour before you discover the laws of composition, formation, manifestation, and the bond whereby soul is united to body,-mind to soul, and reason to mind; and movement, increase, assimilation of food, sense, memory, recollection, and all the rest of the parts of which you are compounded; and which of them belongs to the soul and body together, and which to each independently of the other, and which is received from each other. For those parts whose maturity comes later, yet received their laws at the time of conception. Tell me what these laws are? And do not even then venture to speculate on the Generation of God; for that would be unsafe. For even if you knew all about your own, yet you do not by any means know about God's. And if you do not understand your own, how can you know about God's? For in proportion as God is harder to trace out than man, so is the heavenly Generation harder to comprehend than your own. But if you assert that because you cannot comprehend it, therefore He cannot have been begotten, it will be time for you to strike out many existing things which you cannot comprehend; and first of all God Himself. For you cannot say what He is, even if you are very reckless, and excessively proud of your intelligence. First, cast away your notions of flow and divisions and sections, and your conceptions of immaterial as if it were material birth, and then you may perhaps worthily conceive of the Divine Generation. How was He begotten?-I repeat the question in indignation. The Begetting of God must be honoured by silence. It is a great thing for you to learn that He was begotten. But the manner of His generation we will not admit that even Angels can conceive, much less you. Shall I tell you how it was? It was in a manner known to the Father Who begat, and to the Son Who was begotten. Anything more than this is hidden by a cloud, and escapes your dim sight.

IX. Well, but the Father begat a Son who either was or was not in existence.9 What utter nonsense! This is a question which applies to you or me, who on the one hand were in existence, as for instance Levi in the loins of Abraham;10 and on the other hand came into existence; and so in some sense we are partly of what existed, and partly of what was nonexistent; whereas the contrary is the case with the original matter, which was certainly created out of what was non-existent, notwithstanding that some pretend that it is unbegotten. But in this case "to be begotten," even from the beginning, is concurrent with "to be." On what then will you base this captious question? For what is older than that which is from the beginning, if we may place there the previous existence or non-existence of the Son? In either case we destroy its claim to be the Beginning. Or perhaps you will say, if we were to ask you whether the Father was of existent or non-existent substance, that he is twofold, partly pre-existing, partly existing; or that His case is the same with that of the Son; that is, that He was created out of non-existing matter, because of your ridiculous questions and your houses of sand, which cannot stand against the merest ripple.

I do not admit either solution, and I declare that your question contains an absurdity, and not a difficulty to answer. If however you think, in accordance with your dialectic assumptions, that one or other of these alternatives must necessarily be true in every case, let me ask you one little question: Is time in time, or is it not in time? If it is contained in time, then in what time, and what is it but that time, and how does it contain it? But if it is not contained in time, what is that surpassing wisdom which can conceive of a time which is timeless? Now, in regard to this expression, "I am now telling a lie," admit one of these alternatives, either that it is true, or that it is a falsehood, without qualification (for we cannot admit that it is both). But this cannot be. For necessarily he either is lying, and so is telling the truth, or else he is telling the truth, and so is lying. What wonder is it then that, as in this case contraries are true, so in that case they should both be untrue, and so your clever puzzle prove mere foolishness? Solve me one more riddle. Were you present at your own generation, and are you now present to yourself, or is neither the case? If you were and are present, who were you, and with whom are you present? And how did your single self become thus both subject and object? But if neither of the above is the case, how did you get separated from yourself, and what is the cause of this disjoining? But, you will say, it is stupid to make a fuss about the question whether or no a single individual is present to himself; for the expression is not used of oneself but of others. Well, you may be certain that it is even more stupid to discuss the question whether That which was begotten from the beginning existed before its generation or not. For such a question arises only as to matter divisible by time.

http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/NPNF2-07/Npnf2-07-44.htm#P4360_1362644

---

quote:

---

III.

When did these come into being? They are above all "When." But, if I am to speak with something more of boldness,-when the Father did. And when did the Father come into being. There never was a time when He was not. And the same thing is true of the Son and the Holy Ghost. Ask me again, and again I will answer you, When was the Son begotten? When the Father was not begotten. And when did the Holy Ghost proceed? When the Son was, not proceeding but, begotten-beyond the sphere of time, and above the grasp of reason; although we cannot set forth that which is above time, if we avoid as we desire any expression which conveys the idea of time. For such expressions as "when" and "before" and "after" and "from the beginning" are not timeless, however much we may force them; unless indeed we were to take the Aeon, that interval which is coextensive with the eternal things, and is not divided or measured by any motion, or by the revolution of the sun, as time is measured.

---

quote:

---

How then are They not alike unoriginate, if They are coeternal? Because They are from Him, though not after Him. For that which is unoriginate is eternal, but that which is eternal is not necessarily unoriginate, so long as it may be referred to the Father as its origin. Therefore in respect of Cause They are not unoriginate; but it is evident that the Cause is not necessarily prior to its effects, for the sun is not prior to its light. And yet They are in some sense unoriginate, in respect of time, even though you would scare simple minds with your quibbles, for the Sources of Time are not subject to time.

---