IMMUTABILITY. The immutability (άμετάθετος) of God is His unchangeableness. In theology it signifies the attribute, or perfection, of God whereby He remains the same in His divine nature and purpose. The heavens and the earth, the work of God’s hands, will perish, says the psalmist, but He will endure; they change, but He is the same and His years have no end. Therefore, believers and their children can dwell secure (Ps 102:26ff.; Heb 1:10-12). He alone is God forever, with none before Him and no god after Him or beside Him (Isa 43:10; Deut 32:39). He is the first and the last (Isa 41:4; 48:2), who alone is immortal (Rom 1:23; 1 Tim 1:17; 6:16). Because the Lord does not change, the sons of Jacob are not consumed (Mal 3:6). Jesus Christ, Son of God as well as son of man, is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb 13:8).

God is immutable also in His saving purpose. He “will fulfill his purpose” for His steadfast love “endures forever” (Ps 138:8). The “Glory of Israel will not lie or repent; for he is not a man, that he should repent” (1 Sam 15:29). His gifts and calling are not repented of (Rom 11:29); He does not cast away His people (11:1). Rather, He completes what He begins (Phil 1:6).

There are passages which seem to contradict the above. In anthropomorphic terms God is represented as changing His mind, or repenting (Gen 6:6; 1 Sam 15:11; Jer 18:8, 10; 26:3; Joel 2:13; Amos 7:3; Jonah 3:9; 4:2); as changing His purpose (Exod 32:10-14); of becoming angry and then turning from His anger (Exod 32:10-14; Num 11:1, 10; Deut 13:17; 2 Chron 12:12; 30:8; Ps 106:40; Zech 10:3). On one occasion Israel experiences the love of God, on another His wrath. God becomes man in the person of Jesus Christ and becomes subject to the vicissitudes of human experience. The ascended Christ can sympathize with our weaknesses (Heb 4:15) and the Holy Spirit can be grieved (Eph 4:30). Nevertheless, Scripture remains firm in its insistence that in all these relationships with His people, in which God is set forth almost as one of them, He remains God and that His purposes do not fail. He accommodates Himself to His peoples in His revelation and presence among them, but He ever remains the same. That is why He is referred to so often as the Rock (Deut 32:4, 15, 18, 30f., 37; 1 Sam 2:2; 2 Sam 22:3, 32; Ps 19:14; 31:2; 62:2, 6, et al.). He does not change in His nature or purpose. His people can trust in Him.

This does not mean, however, that God is inert or inactive. He is within, as well as outside, His creation and ever working (John 5:17). Immutability is not immobility but God’s sovereign constancy over against, as well as within, a universe of change.

Bibiliography S. Charnock, Discourses Upon the Existence and Attributes of God (1849), 195-230; L. Berkhof, Reformed Dogmatics (1941), 58f.; H. Bavinck, The Doctrine of God (1951), 145-152.