Revisiting Impassibility

Phil Johnson, of the lamentable Pyromaniacs blog, and who should probably never be taken seriously, nevertheless presents (rather accurately) the modern view (not the recovered view, as his misleading subtitle claims) of divine impassibility. (Ugh. It is from a publication edited by Douglas Wilson. That's rarely a good sign.)

Johnson writes:

In fact, a moment's reflection will reveal that if God is "subject to like passions as we are" (cf. James 5:17), His immutability is seriously undermined at every point. If His creatures can literally make Him change His mood by the things they do, then God isn't even truly in control of His own state of mind. If outside influences can force an involuntary change in God's disposition, then what real assurance do we have that His love for us will remain constant? That is precisely why Jeremiah cited God's immutability and impassibility as the main guarantee of His steadfast love for His own: "It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not" (Lamentations 3:22). God Himself made a similar point in Malachi 3:6: "For I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed."

This argument has something for everyone. It has at its root an implied false dichotomy: God is either as impassioned as Phil Johnson (and presumably his friend Douglas Wilson) define as acceptable, or he is an emotional teenager. (The title of the post, "God Without Mood Swings", makes the dichotomy explicit.) It also has the requisite scripture presented uncritically as proof-text, and which is probably convincing to the casual reader, yet upon even a cursory consideration it is clear that the scripture provided, while it may speak to the matter, does not even come close to proving Johnson’s view (which to be fair is the common, modern view) of impassibility. But most of all it is a strawman, as seen in the money quote:

If outside influences can force an involuntary change in God's disposition, then what real assurance do we have that His love for us will remain constant? (Boldface added)

Notice the despicable sleight of hand. The argument for the historic view of impassibility and against the modern distortion of impassibility is not to counter “God never changes his disposition” with “God involuntarily changes his disposition” (strawman) but rather it counters “God never changes his disposition” with “God voluntarily changes his disposition, in a controlled manner that was decreed from the foundation of the world, as a preordained answer to human actions.”

The latter does not violate immutability, as long as immutability is coupled with God’s transcendence (as was historically understood but has been largely forgotten) to argue that God’s will and plan (and promises) viewed eternally will never change one iota, even though to us, walking through time, they can appear (and effectively are) changes in God's affections and disposition toward us. But never, ever in a way that represents an excursion from God's eternal decree and ordination of all things. The most obvious example is God's massive change in his regard for us at the time of our justification. It is a true instantaneous change from our perspective, yet viewed from eternity it represents no change whatsoever and hence no challenge to immutability and certainly not a divine excursion based on the actions of man.

Many modern proponents of Divine Impassibility are adamant that they are recovering the historic doctrine. They are not, as just a small amount of research demonstrates. As is often the case when theology is reactionary, the reaction morphs into well-intentioned overreach. For example, the well documented “divine absence” arising in some Protestant circles was a “good idea gone too far” response to Roman Catholic transubstantiation with the unhappy result that it rendered God an uninterested (you might say impassioned) observer to the practicing of the sacraments. Likewise the modern, un-nuanced view of Divine Impassibility, which totally neglects the transcendence of God, and which arose as a well-intentioned response to abominations such as the open-theism movement, has gone too far and rendered a God, as Sproul put it, who is “an impersonal force or blob of cosmic energy.”