The Immutable God Who Can Change His Mind

Scripture says God repented of making man, that His anger was appeased, that He changed His mind about a punishment. The dogma says God is immutable and impassible. Sungenis starts by granting the dogma outright, then argues that it has never been fully worked out, and that conclusions have been drawn from it which neither the Church's teaching nor the passages themselves warrant.

The negative view takes every such text as anthropomorphism or anthropopathism, figurative speech that tells us nothing about God's being, and its two most prominent holders sit oddly together: Thomas Aquinas, led there in large part by Aristotelian metaphysics, and Marcion, who wanted a separate Old Testament god. On the other side stand Athenagoras, Augustine in part, Cyril, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Novatian, Tertullian and Lactantius. The argument is then tested passage by passage, on Amos 7:1-6, Exodus 32-33, Exodus 4:10-14, Genesis 6:5-8, 1 Samuel 23:7-13, 1 Chronicles 21, Malachi 3:2-6, Numbers 23:19-20 and James 1:17, against the Church's dogmatic declarations on immutability, and through the Fathers and medievals on divine emotion. The Church has made no formal judgment on the question, and the book says where it thinks the weight lies. 220 pages.