If God’s omniscience and immutability rule out a change of mind, then why does the Scripture relate incidents in which he “repents”? I’ve suggested that the biblical authors are using literary devices to demonstrate important points about God—theological points. If you’ll run down the list of those incidents, you should be able to state the point that the author is making in each case—
What do we make of the fact that the Bible says both that God repents and that he doesn’t?
I think the key to what’s going on here comes from the passage about God’s rejection of King Saul. I don’t know whether you noticed this in the previous post, but this event appears in both the list of statements that God doesn’t repent and the list of examples of his repenting.
In other words, the passage says both that God doesn’t repent and that he does.
In a previous post I meditated a bit on the prophets’ repeated description of God as “one who relents concerning calamity” (Jonah 4.2). And as I noted at the time, that assertion introduces what appears to be a significant theological problem.
The Scripture says repeatedly that God does not repent:
“Many of them are awash in messy lives, as I was, but they illogically and absurdly blame God for the mess, even though it’s traceable directly to decisions they have made.” - Olinger
“God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent; Has He said, and will He not do it?” - Olinger
“He is never between a rock and a hard place. His holdings are never decreased by the advance of enemy armies. He is not moved; he is not threatened; he is not set back; he is not frustrated in any of his purposes.” - Olinger
“…we’re incomplete, undeveloped, short of our potential. We have things to learn. We can always get better at something…. One reason that God doesn’t change is that he doesn’t need any of what we’ve just described. He doesn’t need to grow; he doesn’t need to mature; he doesn’t need to get better at anything.” - Olinger
“A lot of people are bewildered, scared, frustrated about all this change… The Scripture doesn’t ignore this problem, and it doesn’t try to ‘pep talk’ us out of our distress with platitudes. But it does offer two truths that can stabilize us despite the instability of our world.” - Olinger
“None of us like having the very ground shift under our feet. Our day-to-day life, perhaps a way of life that we have had for years, has in a matter of months been completely turned upside down. How do we, as God’s people, react to such uncertainty? In the midst of fear and frustration, how can we exhibit to the world people who are fundamentally different?” - James Williams
