To much of the Western world, Augustine has no rival. He is the preeminent—uninspired—theologian of the Christian faith. When reading the titans of the church—i.e., Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin—Augustine’s theology and ideas are voluminously parroted all throughout their writings. His influence is unparalleled. Even the secular world sees Augustine as a mammoth figure in the shaping of human history. And its Augustine’s doctrine of God we will divert our attention to, looking specifically at his articulation of divine immutability
Augustine’s doctrine of God is classical, through and through. He writes, “There is One invisible, from whom, as the Creator and First Cause, all things seen by us derive their being: He is supreme, eternal, unchangeable, and comprehensible by none save Himself alone” (Ep. 232.5).[1] When reading his works, the doctrine of immutability is paramount, coming forth repeatedly. For Augustine, immutability, or God’s unchangeableness, is consequential of divinity. Creatures are mutable; “the Nature which is immutable is called Creator” (Ep. 18.2). As the unchangeable One, “he changes all;” “he is never new, never old, and yet all things have life from him.” As the unchangeable One, he is “ever active, yet always at rest.” And while he gathers all things to himself, he is never in need of them; rather, he desires to nourish his creatures, “and bring them to perfection.” Augustine does not see an inconsistency (and there is none) in saying God is unchangeable and loves his creatures yet can be angry with them (Conf. 1.4).[2]
God’s working and in his resting, Augustine writes, he is not affected. If he is affected by something, “then it implies that there comes to be something in His nature which was not there before” because “whatever is acted upon is changeable” (De civ. Dei 12.17).[3] And because he is unchangeable, and “the source of all good” (Conf. 1.6), his goodness is never idle; he did not “awaken from inactivity” in eternity past to create; rather, “by one and the same eternal and unchangeable will He effected regarding the things He created, both that formerly, so long as they were not, they should not be, and that subsequently, when they began to be, they should come into existence” (De civ. Dei 12.17). Time is a creature; thus, God is not bound by it, for he is “Himself eternal, and without beginning, yet he caused time to have a beginning,” having made man in time according to “his unchangeable and eternal design” (De civ. Dei 12.14.1). God’s infinity means for him, “‘today’ ever comes to an end: and yet our ‘today’ does come to an end in you, because time, as well as everything else, exists in you. If it did not, it would have no means of passing. And since your years never come to an end, for you they are simply ‘today’.” (Conf. 1.6).
Prior to Augustine’s conversion, he was a Manichean. The Manichean’s ontological conception of God did not bifurcate between created and Uncreated being. Augustine thought God was a material thing, “entirely physical” (Conf. 4.2). He struggled to formulate a conception of God that was real but distinct from the material world. While he knew God could not have a bodily shape, he could not free himself from thinking that God “were some kind of bodily substance extended in space, either permeating the world or diffused in infinity beyond it” (Conf. 7.1).
However, his philosophical intuition understood that bodies change and decay, and if God had a body, it means he is inferior. God is free from corruption, mutation, and any degree of change. It was not until he came to understand the Platonic concept of a spiritual substance that his eyes were opened to the “unseen,” Uncreated metaphysical reality in which all things live, and move, and have their being” (Acts 17:28). At one time Augustine did not know that “God is a spirit, a being without bulk and without limbs defined in length and breadth” (Conf. 3.7), “encompassing [creation] on all sides and penetrating it in every part, yet yourself infinite in every dimension” (Conf. 7.5). But his reading of the Platonists prompted him “to look for truth as something incorporeal,” having “caught sight of your invisible nature, as it is known through your creatures” (Conf. 7.20). Paul’s words finally became clear to Augustine. It is through creation, as the Apostle Paul writes, that we can “catch sight of the Truth” (Conf. 7.10). Augustine could now grasp that “God is Spirit, unchangeable, incorporeal, present in his whole Being everywhere” (Ep. 148.1.2).
Scripture reveals the otherness of God’s essence from created beings. Augustine saw God’s substance as, “the Light that never changes casting its rays over the same eye of my soul, over my mind. . . . It was above me because it was itself the Light that made me, and I was below because I was made by it” (Conf. 7.10). Citing James 1:17, as the “Father of lights, who does not change like shifting shadows,” God’s knowledge does not differ from that which it ever was nor shall be because variations in creaturely reality, that of time, past, present, and future, do not affect his knowledge as they do us. God’s unchangeability, or immutability, entails that his knowledge is not derived through “transition of thought, but beholds all things with absolute unchangeableness” (De civ. Dei 11.21.1). As “perfect being, so you alone have perfect knowledge” (Conf. 13.16). For “all things which He knows are at once embraced. For as without any movement that time can measure, He himself moves all temporal things, so He knows all times with a knowledge that time cannot measure” (De civ. Dei 11.21.1).
Augustine posits that that which is in time is a “lower order” than God’s “absolute being,” which he signifies as “real being.” He writes, “[creatures] are real in so far as they have their being from you, but unreal in the sense that they are not what you are. For it is only that which remains in being without change that truly is” (Conf. 7.11; cf. Exod 3:14). God’s perfect “being knows and wills unchangeably; and your will is and knows unchangeably” (Conf. 13.16). And the one who truly is “can never change, because you alone are absolute simplicity, for whom to live is the same as to live in blessed happiness, since you are your own beatitude” (Conf. 13.3).
For Augustine, the fact that the earth and the heavens exist demonstrates they were created. They are subject to change and variation, in that there was nothing before, and “the meaning of change and variation is that something is there which was not there before” (Conf. 11.4). How did they get there, Augustine asks? Because nothing exists apart from God, “it must be that you spoke and they were made. In your Word alone you created them” (Conf. 11.5). And God’s “speech was expressed through the motion of some created thing” (Conf. 11.6). Augustine intimates an incomparable difference between divine speech and human speech, in that human words are “sound in time,” are spoken, are heard, die away, and are lost; whereas the Word is “silent,” “uttered eternally,” and “uttered at one and the same time.” The eternal utterance of the Word entails immutability, otherwise, it would not be truly eternal nor truly immortal (Conf. 11.7). And “mutability belongs to all things that are subject to change” (Conf. 12.6).
Augustine addresses the question that asks if God is eternal, and the will of God “is part of his substance,” and creation is a product of the divine will, why isn’t creation likewise eternal? (Conf. 11.10). Such questions or objections arise due to a lack of understanding immutability. People err because “their thoughts still twist and turn upon the ebb and flow of things in past and future time.” They need to revel in the “splendor of eternity,” seeing that time, in contrast to eternity, “derives its length only from a great number of movements constantly following one another into the past, because they cannot all continue at once.” However, “in eternity, nothing moves into the past: all is present. Time, on the other hand, is never all present at once” (Conf. 11.11).
He reflects further on time and eternity, purposing to quell misconceptions about God’s relation to time. Because our language is couched in creaturely notions, our expressions always come forth in relation to time—then, when, before, after, etc. And all expressions are notions of change. But God “is unchanging, your years never change” (Conf. 11.13; Ps 102:27). God cannot be considered “idle” before creation, as many object regarding immutability because “there was no time” thus “there was no then.” God’s years are present all at once, in a “permanent standstill.” Augustine continues this line of thought to demonstrate the eternality of the Son. He writes, “Your years are one day, yet your day does not come daily but is always today, because your today does not give place to any tomorrow nor does it take place of any yesterday. Your today is eternity. And this is how the Son, to whom you said I have begotten you this day (Ps 2:7), was begotten co-eternal with yourself” (Conf. 11.13).
Creatio ex nihilo, to use the term anachronistically, is the creation doctrine imbibed from Augustine’s ontological framework. Because God is before all things and is not subject to change, when God is said to have “made something in the Beginning,” this “something” Augustine writes, “is of yourself, in your Wisdom, which is born out of your own substance, and you created this out of nothing.” But when Augustine says creation was out of God’s own substance, he does not mean that the heavens and the earth “were made out of your own substance” (Conf. 12.7). There was nothing apart from God that God used to bring the world into existence; otherwise, he would be a craftsman not Creator. Rather, Augustine writes, God created “from matter which you created at one and the same time as the things that you made from it, since there was no interval of time before you gave form to this formless matter” (Conf. 13.33). And Augustine offers a formulaic expression of the simple Trinitarian essence to support his argument, writing, “But besides yourself, O God, who are Trinity in Unity, and Unity in Trinity, there was nothing from which you could make heaven and earth” (Conf. 12.7). For Augustine, creation, and the works of God, “are very good, because it is you who see them in us and it was you who gave us the Spirit by which to see them and love you in them” (Conf. 13.34).
Conclusion
Augustine’s doctrine of divine immutability occupies a chief place in his theology. Modern theology tends to eschew classical doctrines of God, particularly immutability. They contend such terms make God less personal, immobile, and unloving. But why is immutability such a robust doctrine in Augustine’s theology? One answer: Peace. Augustine says he can only find rest and peace in the eternal God (cf. Ps 4:8). He writes, “For, when the saying of Scripture comes true, and death is swallowed up in victory (1 Cor 15:54), who shall withstand us? You truly are the eternal God, because in you there is no change and in you we find the rest that banishes all our labor” (Conf. 10.4).
It is important to understand that the negative ascriptions of God (i.e., the im-terms) are purposed to tell us what God is not. If we speak of God in only those terms, in a manner to speak positively of him, we actually say nothing about him at all, thus we fall into atheism. These terms only make sense and have inestimable value when used to show how God is not like creatures, who constantly change, are swayed by emotions and the passions of the flesh, and from things external to us. When God says he is our refuge, if we understand this metaphor in a strictly creaturely manner, we empty God’s Word of its power. Why is that? Because no creature can live up to or carryout the promises of Scripture. Therefore, we utilize the negative statements (apophatic theology) to ensure the proper holy distinction between God and man, thus safe-guarding us from honoring an idol in our hearts (See Isa 40–48). An idol, a creaturely figment of deity, cannot fulfill what Scripture claims. God is telling us he is unwavering in his promises to his people. He says nothing in creation can separate us from his love in Christ. Creatures cannot make such promises. Rather, only the One, True, Eternal, Unchangeable, and Incomprehensible God can.
Romans 11:36
______________
1. Translation cited: “Letters of St. Augustin,” in Augustine of Hippo, The Confessions and Letters of St. Augustin with a Sketch of His Life and Work, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. J. G. Cunningham, vol. 1, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First Series (Christian Literature Company, 1886).
2. Translation cited: Saint Augustine, Confessions, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, Engl: Penguin Classics, 1961).
3. Translation cited: Philip Schaff, ed., St. Augustin’s City of God and Christian Doctrine, vol. 2, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First Series (Christian Literature Company, 1887).
Comments