Does God change his mind?

Professor Richard Hays’ book, The Moral Vision of the New Testament, has long been highly regarded as an extremely valuable introduction to New Testament ethics.

One of the chapters in his book uses the issues of homosexuality as a test case for reading and applying the New Testament in relation to a particular ethical issue. In this chapter he writes that:

‘….the New Testament offers no loophole or exception clauses that might allow for the acceptance of homosexual practice under some circumstances. Despite the efforts of recent interpreters to explain away the evidence, the New Testament remains unambiguous and unequivocal in its condemnation of homosexual conduct.’

This being the case, he goes on to write that:

‘It is no more appropriate for homosexual Christians to persist in homosexual activity than it would be for heterosexual Christians to persist in fornication or adultery … Unless they are able to change their orientation and enter a heterosexual relationship, homosexual Christians should seek to live lives of disciplined sexual abstinence.’

However, since The Moral Vision of the New Testament was published back in 1996, Hays has altered his position. He has co-authored with his son Christopher a book called The Widening of God’s Mercy, which has just been published by Yale University Press and which argues for ‘the full inclusion of LGBT+ people in Christian communities.’

The argument put forward in this book is not that the New Testament accepts or approves of same-sex sexual activity. Richard Hays still holds that those biblical texts that mention homosexual activity are unequivocal in their condemnation of it. The argument in this book is rather that ‘God repeatedly changes his mind in ways that expand the sphere of his love’ and this principle can be used to argue that God now approves of homosexual conduct, even though the Bible says he does not. God has supposedly changed his mind on the matter.

In this article I am not going to explore the details of the argument put forward by Richard and Christopher Hays in their book. Instead, I shall look at the big issue that the book raises, namely ‘Does God change his mind?’

I want to suggest that there are three reasons why we should say that the answer to this question is ‘No.’

The first reason is that there is a whole series of Biblical passages which explicitly state that God does not change his mind. The following six quotations illustrate this point:

‘God is not man, that he should lie,
or a son of man, that he should repent.
Has he said, and will he not do it?
Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfil it?’ (Numbers 23:19)

‘And also the Glory of Israel will not lie or repent; for he is not a man,

that he should repent’ (1 Samuel 15:29).

‘I the Lord have spoken; it shall come to pass, I will do it; I will not go back, I will not spare, I will not repent; according to your ways and your doings I will judge you, says the Lord God (Ezekiel 24:14).

‘For I the Lord do not change; therefore you O Sons of Jacob are not consumed’ (Malachi 3:6).

‘Those who formerly became priests took their office without an oath, but this one was addressed with an oath, “The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, “Thou art a priest for ever”‘ (Hebrews 7:21, citing Psalm 110:4).

‘Every good endowment 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’ (James 1:17).

What we learn from these passages, and from other similar passages in the Bible, is that God does not change or repent, and this is something to be both celebrated, because it means that God will keep his promises to his people and to be feared, because it means that God will enact the judgements that he has pronounced.

The second reason is that for God to change or repent would be to go against his very nature. This is a point that is made very clearly by the seventeenth century English Puritan theologian Stephen Charnock in his 1682 work The Existence and Attributes of God.

According to Charnock: ‘There can be no reason for any change in the will of God.’ Human beings change their minds either because of a need to adapt to unforeseen circumstances or because of ‘a natural instability without any good cause.’ Neither of these reasons, argues Charnock, can be true of God.

First, lack of foresight cannot be attributed to God:

‘What can be wanting to an infinite understanding? How can any unknown event defeat his purpose, since nothing happens in the world but what he wills to effect, or wills to permit; and therefore all future events are present with him? Besides, it doth not consist with God’s wisdom to resolve anything, but upon the highest reason; and what is the highest and infinite reason, cannot but be unalterable in itself; for these can be no reason and wisdom higher than the highest.’

Secondly, there cannot be in God ‘…a natural instability of his will, or an easiness to be drawn into that which is unrighteous’.

‘If his will should not follow his counsel, it is because it is not fit to be followed, or because it will not follow it; if not fit to be followed, it is a reflection upon his wisdom; if it be established, and he will not follow it, there is a contrariety in God, as there is in a fallen creature, will against wisdom.’

In summary, declares Charnock:

‘The righteousness of God is like a great mountain (Psalm 36:6). The rectitude of his nature is as immovable in itself, as all the mountains in the world are by the strength of man. ‘He is not as a man, that he should repent or lie’ (Numbers 23:19); who often changes, out of a perversity of will, as well as want of wisdom to foresee, or want of ability to perform. His eternal purpose must be either righteous or unrighteous; if righteous and holy, he would become unholy by the change; if not righteous or holy, then he was unrighteous before the change; which way soever it falls, it would reflect on the righteousness of God, which is a blasphemous imagination. If God did change his purpose, it must be either for the better – then the counsel of God was bad before; or for the worse, – then he was not wise or good before.’

The third reason why we should not say that God can change his mind is because of the consequences that would follow from saying this. It would mean that we cannot rely on God to retain the relationship with us that he has established. If we are Christians, we are those whom God has called to be his children. If he can change his mind, then the day might conceivably come when he no longer wants us as his children. He might repent of having made us such. Worst case scenario, he could decide to reject us at the final judgement even though he has said that he will not do so.

It would also mean that we could never be sure of what it means to live in accordance with God’s will. If God changes his mind, then he might will something tomorrow that is different from what he wills today and what he willed yesterday, and this would mean that there is no stable basis for ethics.

A changeable God would be an unreliable God, a God who we could not rely on in terms of our salvation, or as the basis for our behaviour, and living in a world with such a God would be a nightmare.

It might, however, be argued, that the biblical evidence indicates that we live in just such a world. A number of biblical texts, it is argued, tell us that God does change his mind. For example, Genesis 6:6 -7 declares:

‘And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, ‘I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the ground, man and beast and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.’

Likewise, in 1 Samuel 15:11 God says to Samuel: ‘I repent that I have made Saul king; for he has turned back from following me, and has not performed my commandments,’ and in 1 Samuel 15:35 the chapter re-iterates ‘the Lord repented that he made Saul king over Israel.’

Finally in Jonah 3:10-4:2 we read concerning the people of Nineveh:

‘When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God repented of the evil which he had said he would do to them; and he did not do it.

‘But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. And he prayed to the Lord and said, “I pray thee, Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that thou art a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and repentest of evil.’

All these passages and others like them, such as Exodus 32:10-14, Isaiah 38:1-6 and Amos 7:1-3, do seem to indicate that God does change his mind. God does something, or says he is going to do something, and then repents. Surely, it is said, this means that God’s will is changeable.

The first thing that needs to be noted in response is the point made by the great Medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas that all language used of God is analogical. Because God is not a creature, no words used of him are used in the same way as when they are applied to creaturely realities. Thus, when we are told that God is a rock, or a father, or a shepherd, all these words mean different things when applied to God. God is not a rock in the same way that a piece of granite is. God is not a father in the same way I am, and God is not a shepherd in the same way as the competitors in One Man and his Dog.

The same is true of the language of repentance when applied to God. It does not mean the same thing in the case of God as it does in the case of human beings. To quote Charnock once more:

‘God is said to repent when he changes the disposition of affairs without himself; as men, when they repent, alter the course of their actions, so God alters things extra to, or without himself, but changes nothing of his own purpose within himself. It rather notes the action he is about to do, than anything in his own nature, or any change of his eternal purpose. God’s repenting of his kindness is nothing but an inflicting of punishment, which the creature by the change of his carriage has merited: as his repenting of the evil threatened is the withholding of the punishment denounced, when the creature hath humbly submitted to his authority, and acknowledged his crime.’

To put it simply, God’s mind and will are unchangeable, but they have different results depending on human behaviour.

In summary Richard and Christopher Hays base their argument for Christian acceptance of same-sex relationships on God having changed his mind. This means their argument is flawed from the start, because that is one thing that God never does.