Chapter 12

A God Who Changes

Dake keeps the word immutable and teaches that God changes His plans, His promises, and His mind

The fifteenth chapter of 1 Samuel tells how God rejected Saul as king of Israel. Early in the chapter the LORD tells Samuel what He has decided.

It repenteth me that I have set up Saul to be king . . . 1 Samuel 15:11 (KJV)

Later Samuel tells Saul that the decision will stand, and he gives the reason.

And also the Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent: for he is not a man, that he should repent. 1 Samuel 15:29 (KJV)

The chapter ends by saying it the first way again: “the LORD repented that he had made Saul king over Israel” (v. 35).¹ The Hebrew verb is the same in all three places.² The writer set a statement that God repented beside a statement that God does not repent, and he plainly expected his readers to notice. One of the two has to explain the other.

Finis Dake let the first statement explain the second. In Lesson Four of his course God’s Plan for Man, where he describes the ways God limits Himself, he wrote this paragraph.

Each sentence grants one of the church’s words and then takes back its meaning. Grace is infinite but limited to the humble. Care is infinite but limited to those who allow it. God is immutable, yet He has had to change His plans. The words “has had to” matter most. In Dake’s account something outside God forced the change, and his last sentence names it: the failure of the people God was dealing with.

Theologians call God’s unchanging nature immutability. The word means that God does not change in His being, His character, His purposes, or His promises. Dake kept the word but changed what it covers. Later in the course he wrote that “it is sheer nonsense to talk about unconditional promises and covenants.”⁴ In his Study Bible he confined God’s words “I change not” to God’s “basic character.” That is false teaching. It contradicts Malachi 3:6, Numbers 23:19, and Hebrews 6:17–18, and it leaves believers holding promises that God may set aside.

It also completes a chain of reasoning that the previous chapters have traced.⁵ In Dake’s system a God with a body lives in one place, a God in one place has to find things out, and a God who finds things out has to revise His plans.

Why it matters whether God changes

Picture a man who has followed Christ for twenty years and then falls into a sin that wrecks his marriage. He repents and comes back to the Lord, but one question will not leave him alone. He wonders whether God is now different toward him, cooler and more guarded, the way people are after a betrayal. Years ago he underlined a promise in his Bible, and he wonders whether it still belongs to him or whether he has given God a reason to set it aside.

Dake’s teaching gives that man a hard answer. If God has “had to change His plans” and “set aside His promised blessings” when people fail, then a man who has failed has good reason to think God has changed toward him. Scripture answers him in the verse Dake’s note narrows.

For I am the LORD, I do not change; Therefore you are not consumed, O sons of Jacob. Malachi 3:6 (NKJV)

The word therefore carries the verse. The verse before it lists the sins of the people and warns of judgment, and the verse after it calls them home.⁶ Between the two, God gives the reason Israel still stands. He does not change. Unchanging holiness alone would have consumed them, so what kept them alive was His unchanging covenant mercy.

A promise from a God who revises His plans is only a strong intention, and the person holding it always has to wonder about a condition he may have missed. Prayer turns into an effort to find God in a good frame of mind. Assurance turns into a guess about God’s present mood, though Hebrews says God swore an oath so that we “might have strong consolation” (Hebrews 6:18). Worship suffers as well. People can admire a God who adapts, but they cannot rest in Him.

What Dake taught about change in God

The word he kept

Dake never gave up the word immutable. His summary of what God is, in Lesson Four, puts it in a list that any confession could use.

God is a person who is Spirit, infinite, eternal, immutable, self-existent, omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, invisible, perfect, impartial, immortal, absolutely holy and just, full of knowledge and wisdom, in whom all things have their source, support and end. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Four, p. 56⁷

Three pages later he lists God’s “spirit faculties,” and among them is “immutability (Heb. 6:17; Jas. 1:17).”⁸ Those are the right verses. In his commentary on Revelation he described God the Father as “spirit, infinite, eternal, unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth, in whom all things have their source, support, and end.”⁹ That wording is close to the Westminster Shorter Catechism’s answer to the question “What is God?”¹⁰

He could also state the doctrine well when he was arguing for something else. Defending the gifts of the Spirit, he wrote of God, “He is ever the same... He will never be what He is not, and what He ever was He is.”¹¹ That is a fine statement of immutability. The trouble lies in what he taught when his subject was God’s dealings with people.

Repentance among God’s feelings

In the same lesson Dake teaches that God has a soul with feelings like a man’s, a teaching that Chapter 8 examines.¹² One feeling on his list bears on this question.

God’s soul is capable of feelings of grief (Gen. 6:6; Judges 10:16); anger (1 Kings 11:9); repentance (Gen. 6:6); jealousy (Exodus 20:3); hate (Prov. 6:16); love (John 3:16); pity (Ps. 103:13) . . . God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Four, Point 8, p. 59¹³

Dake means the list literally. Repentance stands beside grief, anger, and pity as a passion of God’s soul. On the same page immutability stands among the faculties of God’s spirit. He printed both on one page and never asked how both could be true in the plain sense he required everywhere else.

Plans that change and a purpose that holds

Dake’s rules for reading the Bible, in Lesson Three, make the same point from the first chapters of Genesis.

For example, in Gen. 1:31 God saw everything that He had made and it was good, but in Gen. 6:6 God repented that He had made man. In the meantime, between the two passages, sin and rebellion had entered, which made it necessary for God to have a changed attitude toward man. God has had to change His plan temporarily because of man’s sin, but the original and eternal plan of God for creation has never been changed and will never be. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Three, rule 29, p. 46¹⁴

He tested his students on it. Question 48 for that lesson asks, “Has God ever had to change His plan temporarily? Why?”¹⁵

The last clause of the rule is a real limit, and Dake repeats it elsewhere. In Revelation Expounded he wrote, “The fall of man did not cause God to change His eternal purpose for man.”¹⁶ Ages and Dispensations, a compilation published after his death, says, “Nor has the present rebellion of the world caused God to change His original plan.”¹⁷ On page 63 of the course he lists among the things God cannot do, “change His eternal plan.”¹⁸ So his position has a definite shape. God’s final purpose is fixed. Everything between God and that purpose can be revised, including His plans, His promised blessings, His conditional prophecies, and His feelings toward people.

God tired of repenting

Much later in the course, in a list of Israel’s failures, Dake gathers the verses on God’s repenting into one sentence.

Born again Israel provoked God to repentings on many occasions until He said at last that He was tired of repenting (Jer. 15:6; 18:8; 26:3, 13; Hos. 11:8; Ex. 32:14; Deut. 32:36; Judg. 2:18; 1 Sam. 15:35; 2 Sam. 24:16; 1 Chron. 21:15; Psa. 90:13; 106:45; 135:14; Amos 7:3, 6). God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Thirty-Five, p. 697¹⁹

The plural “repentings” is his, and so is the picture of God reversing course until He is worn out with it. His list cites 1 Samuel 15:35, where the LORD repented, and leaves out verse 29 of the same chapter, where the LORD does not. The word “tired” comes from Jeremiah 15:6, the first verse he cites, where God tells Judah, “I am weary of relenting!”²⁰ In its setting that line is a sentence of judgment. A long season of mercy toward a stubborn nation has come to an end. Dake reads it as God worn down by His own reversals.

No unconditional promises

Page 64 said that God has “set aside His promised blessings.” On page 693 Dake states the rule behind that claim.

It is sheer nonsense to talk about unconditional promises and covenants. There is not one jot or tittle in Scripture that teaches such a thing. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Thirty-Five, p. 693²¹

Dake was an Arminian. He believed that God’s grace can be resisted and that a saved person can be lost. Those are in-house positions within historic Protestant teaching, and they are not part of this book’s case.²² The sentence above goes much further. It speaks of every promise and covenant in Scripture, and it says that none of them is unconditional. Hebrews 6, as we will see, says otherwise.

His note on “I change not”

Dake did not ignore the plain verses on God’s unchanging nature. He cited several of them and then confined them. In the course he cites James 1:17 and Hebrews 6:17 for immutability, and Hebrews 6:17–19 for his statement that God cannot lie.²³ The course never cites Malachi 3:6, Numbers 23:19, or 1 Samuel 15:29.²⁴²⁵ His Study Bible, though, has a note on Malachi 3:6 itself, and there he says what the verse may mean.

I change not. This could only refer to basic character, and to keeping covenant, not to acts of judgment or mercy when needed. God has repented or changed His mind when it became necessary because of free moral agents rebelling to the point of judgment; and this was in keeping with His character. Dake’s Annotated Reference Bible, “I change not (Mal. 3:6),” classic O.T. p. 930²⁶

The note grants that God keeps covenant and does not change in basic character. Everything else may change, including His acts of judgment and mercy and His very mind when free creatures rebel. The word “only” is Dake’s addition. Malachi did not say that God is unchanging in basic character. He said, “I do not change,” and he drew the consequence: “Therefore you are not consumed.” Unchanging character alone would never have spared a rebellious people. Israel lived because God’s covenant mercy did not change.

His Bible’s list of God’s attributes says the same thing in another form. It cites Psalm 102:27, Malachi 3:6, 2 Timothy 2:13, Hebrews 6:18, and James 1:17 for immutability, and then it explains what the word covers. Under “Immutable,” item 12, Dake writes that God “is immutable as to His plan for the highest good of being and of the universe. His plan includes change of methods or ways to save as many men as possible.”²⁷ The overall plan stays and the methods change, which is what page 64 of the course teaches.

What Scripture says about God and change

The verses that say it plainly

Dake told his readers to settle a doctrine with plain verses on the subject.²⁸ These verses are plain.

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? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good? Numbers 23:19 (NKJV)

The verse denies of God the very thing Dake listed as a feeling of God’s soul. It also gives the reason that matters to a believer. Because God does not repent, what He says, He does.

They will perish, but You will endure; Yes, they will all grow old like a garment; Like a cloak You will change them, And they will be changed. But You are the same, And Your years will have no end. Psalm 102:26–27 (NKJV)

The psalmist sets God against the heavens and the earth, the most lasting things we know. They wear out like old clothing, and God stays the same.

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. James 1:17 (NKJV)

James takes his picture from the sky. The sun moves, and the shadows turn with it, but God has no turning of that kind. Hebrews says the same of the Son: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).

Dake knew several of these verses and cited them. His error was to read them as if they covered only God’s basic character or His overall plan. The verses set no such limit. Numbers 23:19 speaks of what God says and does, and Hebrews 6 speaks of His counsel and His promise.

How 1 Samuel 15 explains itself

Go back to the chapter about Saul. Two of its statements report what God did. Verse 29 tells what kind of God did it, and it gives a reason: “he is not a man, that he should repent.” The writer is showing his readers how to take his other two statements. When he says the LORD repented, he describes a real change in God’s dealings with Saul. God turned from Saul, and the kingdom was taken from him. What verse 29 denies is a change inside God, as though God had learned something new about Saul and revised His opinion. Saul changed, and God dealt with him as He always deals with a man who turns away from Him.

Theologians call this kind of language anthropopathism, which means speaking of God’s actions in terms of human feelings so that we can grasp them.²⁹ Dake’s own rule allows a figure of speech wherever Scripture gives “some clearly stated reason that the language is not to be taken literally.”³⁰ First Samuel 15 gives that reason a few verses later. By his own rule, verse 29 should have settled how to read verse 11.

Jeremiah 18 and Jonah

Dake listed Jeremiah 18:8 among God’s repentings. The passage reads in full:

The instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, to pull down, and to destroy it, if that nation against whom I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I thought to bring upon it. Jeremiah 18:7–8 (NKJV)

Here God announces a standing policy for His dealings with nations. When He announces judgment and a nation turns from its evil, He relents. The next two verses give the same rule for blessing and disobedience.³¹ God published the policy in advance. It held before Nineveh and after it, and it holds today. Jonah knew it, and that is why he ran.

. . . for I know that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, One who relents from doing harm. Jonah 4:2 (NKJV)

Jonah fled because he knew exactly what God would do. When God spared Nineveh (Jonah 3:10), He acted as He had always said He would.

Dake also cited Exodus 32:14, the hardest of these texts. After Israel made the golden calf, Moses pleaded for the people, and the chapter records the result.

So the LORD relented from the harm which He said He would do to His people. Exodus 32:14 (NKJV)

Before Moses prayed, God said to him, “Now therefore, let Me alone, that My wrath may burn hot against them” (v. 10). God named the one thing that could stay His hand, and Moses did it. Moses did not ask God to become someone new. He reminded God of the oath He had sworn to Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, to whom “You swore by Your own self” (v. 13). Moses argued from God’s constancy, and his prayer was answered because God does not change. The Bible’s own account runs the opposite way from Dake’s. God’s changing dealings with people show His unchanging character.

What unchangeable means

The church has never taught that God is frozen. The Westminster Shorter Catechism says that God is “unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.”³² God’s being does not change, because He is already all that He could be, and His character does not change, so He is never in a better or worse mood than He was yesterday. Because His purpose holds, history is going somewhere. Because His promises hold, His word is as good as the thing itself.

The doctrine does not say that God is idle or without feeling. Nor does it say that He deals with a person the same way before and after that person comes to Christ. Scripture says that God grieves, delights, and relents, and the church has always taken those words as true. What the doctrine denies is that such things happen to God from outside, changing a being who could be improved or worn down.³³ A doctor who is always kind will treat two patients differently, and the difference lies in the patients. God is consistent in the same way, without limit.

An anchor for the soul

The plainest answer to page 64 is in Hebrews.

Thus God, determining to show more abundantly to the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel, confirmed it by an oath, that by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us. Hebrews 6:17–18 (NKJV)

Each phrase answers something Dake wrote. “The immutability of His counsel” attaches the word immutable to God’s purpose and promise, the very things page 64 makes revisable. God “confirmed it by an oath,” adding an oath to a promise so that the heirs would have no room left for doubt. The “two immutable things” are the promise and the oath, so the promise itself is called unchangeable. The purpose of it all is “strong consolation” for people who “have fled for refuge,” and the next verse calls that hope “an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast.”³⁴ Dake quoted that phrase himself.³⁵

The Psalms put it in God’s own voice: “My covenant I will not break, Nor alter the word that has gone out of My lips” (Psalm 89:34). Isaiah says that “the word of our God stands forever” (Isaiah 40:8).

God does attach conditions to many of His promises, and Scripture says so plainly. Conditional security is not the question here. To say that many promises carry conditions differs from saying that no promise is unconditional. Hebrews 6 describes God adding an oath to a promise in order to put it beyond revision. If Dake is right that there is “not one jot or tittle in Scripture” that teaches an unconditional promise, then Hebrews 6:17–18 describes something that does not exist.

Doesn’t the Bible say that God repented?

Some readers will object that the Bible says God repented, and that calling such verses figures of speech is a way to escape any verse one dislikes. The danger is real. A teacher who can call any hard verse a figure can prove anything he likes. But I have not brought in any outside philosophy to soften Genesis 6:6. First Samuel 15 identifies its own language. Setting verse 11 beside verse 29 is the text’s own work, and Dake’s rule asks for exactly that kind of signal. The selective reading is the one that keeps verse 11 and passes over verse 29.

Can a God who does not change respond to us?

Others fear that a God who does not change cannot respond to people or love them. The fear comes from a good instinct. Pentecostal believers expect a God who acts today, and so do I. But a change in God’s being differs from a change in His dealings. A person whose character shifts with the weather is less responsive than a steady one, because no one can count on him. God’s responses to people vary without end because people and their situations vary. The character behind every response stays the same, and that is why He can be trusted to respond rightly every time.

The same fear drives a modern position called open theism. Its teachers read the repenting verses as Dake read them, and they conclude, as he did, that God adjusts His plans as free creatures act.³⁶ Evangelicals rejected the view after a long debate, and Chapter 10 sets out the comparison for God’s knowledge.³⁷ Many believers who would reject open theism by name have studied from margin notes that teach its view of God’s plans.

Isn’t this a Greek idea of God?

A sharper charge is that the doctrine comes from Greek philosophy and not from the living God of Israel. Critics of classical theology have pressed this charge for about a century, and some writers have made God sound like a statue.³⁸ The verses in question, though, are Hebrew. Balaam spoke Numbers 23:19, Samuel spoke 1 Samuel 15:29, and Malachi warned a Hebrew nation. The doctrine set out here also leaves God grieving over Noah’s generation, relenting over Nineveh, and taking the kingdom from Saul, just as Scripture tells it. No one here is defending a frozen God. The God who “has had to change His plans,” on the other hand, is no straw man, because Dake put those words in print.

The God who does not change

Dake kept the word immutable and taught under it that God has had to change His plans, set aside His promised blessings, and change His mind when people fail Him. He confined “I change not” to God’s basic character, and he called unconditional promises “sheer nonsense.” That is false teaching. It contradicts Malachi 3:6, Numbers 23:19, and Hebrews 6:17–18. It follows the pattern Chapter 5 describes, in which the church’s word stays on the page while its meaning shrinks.³⁹

In Dake’s account, God’s constancy is a rule with exceptions for people who fail Him. In Malachi, God’s constancy is the reason people who failed Him are still alive. The man with the underlined promise needs Malachi’s account. God has not become a different God toward him. His holiness has not relaxed, His mercy has not cooled, and the promise means what it meant on the day God gave it. James calls God the Father of lights, “with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.” The shadows in a believer’s life move all day long, and the Light they fall from never turns.