Does God Change? the Word's Becoming in the Incarnation

by Thomas G. Weinandy

An exploration of process theology, centering on the major paradox challenging how to reconcile a timeless, changeless God with the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity.

Genres: Theology

212 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2002

About the author

Thomas G. Weinandy was born January 12, 1946, in Delphos, Ohio. He entered the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin in 1966, was solemnly professed in 1970, and was ordained to the priesthood in 1972.

He earned a B.A. in Philosophy at St. Fidelis College, Herman, Pennsylvania in 1969, an M.A. in Systematic Theology at Washington Theological Union in 1972, and a Doctorate in Historical Theology at King’s College, University of London, in 1975.

Father Weinandy’s major fields of specialty are History of Christology, especially Patristic, Medieval and Contemporary, History of Trinitarian Theology, History of Soteriology, and Philosophical Notions of God.

He has held academic positions at Georgetown University, Mount St. Mary’s College, Emmitsburg, Maryland, Franciscan University of Steubenville, and Loyola College, Baltimore. Father Weinandy has served at the University of Oxford since 1991. He is the Warden of Greyfriars and tutor and lecturer in History and Doctrine in the Faculty of Theology. He was Chairman of the Faculty of Theology from 1997 to 1999. He also administers the Greyfriars Year Abroad Program.

Father Weinandy is a member of the Catholic Theological Society of America, the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars, the Catholic Theological Society of Great Britain, the North American Patristics Society, and the Association Internationale D’Etudes Patristiques.

His books include Does God Change? The Word’s Becoming in the Incarnation, which has been translated into Romanian; In the Likeness of Sinful Flesh: An Essay on the Humanity of Christ; The Father’s Spirit of Sonship: Reconceiving the Trinity; Does God Suffer, which has been translated into Polish; The Lord Jesus Christ: An Introduction to Christology and Soteriology; Jesus the Christ; Receiving the Promise: The Spirit’s Work of Conversion; Be Reconciled to God: A Family Guide to Confession; and Sacrament of Mercy: A Spiritual and Practical Guide to Confession.

Father Weinandy has published scholarly articles in such journals as The Thomist, New Blackfriars, Communio, First Things, Pro Ecclesia, Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture, and the International Journal of Systematic Theology. His popular articles include those written for New Covenant, National Catholic Register, Pastoral Life, Canadian Catholic Review, New Oxford Review, the Arlington Catholic Herald, and The Family.

Reviews

[Will O'kelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very helpful for understanding divine immutability and the hypostatic union. This book requires slow attention to detail with a highlighter in hand--it is dense and technical at times, especially if you don't know any of the historical/philosophical background on these topics. However, Weinandy does his best to make the technical accessible; I'd say with moderate success. The content/topic of the book and Weinandy's deft treatment of the subject make time investment in this book worthwhile. My only complaints are: 1) I wish the author had translated a bit more of the Latin for people like me, particularly in the Aquinas section, and 2) I wish the author had included at least a little bit on Augustine's view of the incarnation and how this impacted subsequent theology. The author self-consciously focuses on Eastern theologians leading up to Chalcedon, but Augustine is so influential that at least a passing reference would have been nice.

[Jack Hayne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Does God Change? is Capuchin Monk Thomas Weinandy's historical theological inquiry into change and the incarnation. Its thesis is that Chalcedon's formulation of the incarnation as God "becomes" man is orthodox because He remains immutable while fully God and man (Jn 1:14).

Weinandy’s survey begins with pre-Nicaea Christians’ concern for preserving God’s immutability. Their concern partially originates with Neoplatonism, and while good, results problematically in formulations of Jesus emanating from the Father. Eventually, the desire to defend immutability goes too far when Arius claims the Logos is a created creature. In a riposte to Arius, Nicaea frames the homoousion. “Confirm[ing] both the full divinity of the Son and the unity of God since the Son, being offspring from the substance, is one substance, himself and the Father that begot him." Despite Nicaea’s success, tension still surrounded "how" God ‘becomes’ “without changing his nature.” While Athanasius attempts resolution by conjecturing the Logos does not "come into man" or "change into man." He ultimately fails because he predicates "human attributes” to the Logos and overlooks the necessity of Jesus’s soul. Despite strides made at Nicaea, issues with the incarnation and immutability linger unsolved.

Following Nicaea, theologians attempt to unravel the relationship between human and divine nature as one substance. Theodore takes up this call articulating a real union between natures but incorrectly contrives the incarnation as a "common prosopon." As a result, the union of the two natures has no ontological reality; it is only a "phenomenological representation" or an appearance of ousia. Eventually, Nestorius seizes Theodore’s misstep and divides the incarnation’s 'common prosopon' into two ‘prosopon’ or "two concrete realities."

Enter stage right Cyril of Alexandria. He counters, "Christ is one ontological reality in himself, and that distinction of natures must be made within this one reality.” Divine and human natures are in an actual relationship, not an apparent one (prosopon). Cyril compares the relationship between divine and human nature to humanity's "composite nature," where "the body and soul form one reality of man.” Christ’s two “natures form the individual reality of Christ." But does this entail change? For Cyril, no, because “becoming” does not mean God is “changing into a “new person” but is a "new person…existing in a new way." Jesus’s essence or being does not change. This insight, Weinandy surmises, hinges on Cyril's recognition of Jesus's soul as a place to predicate emotion. When Christ suffers, for instance, it is in the soul. Ultimately, Cyril expresses the Chalcedonian insight that "the Logos exists in two modes." "God remains impassible" while as "man he is truly passible." For Weinandy, this is orthodoxy.

In chapter three, Weinandy moves to medieval Christology, focusing on Aquinas’s enrichment of Chalcedon. Aquinas’s chief contribution is that "essence and esse are in act/potency relationship." Meaning "God, whose nature is pure essence, " is "not composite" because God has no "potency." Contrarily, humans are composite and must realize their potential. Humans are ‘to be’ like “nouns,” unlike God, who simply ‘is,’ like a “verb.” Ultimately, "God is pure act (actus purus)," not becoming or changing. Therefore, God's immutability is not "static, inert, or inactive” but "supremely active and dynamic." “Paradoxically, God is supremely immutable because he is supremely active." As for the incarnation, Aquinas follows Cyril’s notion that 'becoming' means God "acquires a new mode of existence." He is "one being (esse) that is the Logos which exists as God and man." Aquinas’s approach for Weinandy is the gold standard.

In the subsequent chapter, Weinandy turns to Kenotic Christology. While gracious towards Luther, he determines Luther’s “functional approach” to ‘becoming’ mistakes Jesus as compositional, neglecting his "ontological constitution." Weinandy takes Luther, positing "Christ…not [as] the person of the Logos existing as man, but rather [a] concrete existentialist/historical being composed from and out of a divine and a human nature." Consequently, there is an "opposition" between divine and human nature. For example, when Jesus foretells Jerusalem's destruction, his divine nature is "overriding" his human intellect. For Weinandy, because God is restraining his omnipotence, he is only half-divine. As a result, homoousion falls apart since the incarnation is not fully God. Instead, the incarnation is hidden divinity in man. Ultimately, Weinandy sees Luther violating Chalcedon’s conviction that Jesus is "perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood."

Weinandy, in his penultimate chapter, evaluates Process Theology, whose base assumption is “change” is the "universal element of reality.” If true, God must change. To explain this, Process Theologians perceive God as "dipolar." Having a "primordial or abstract pole or nature and a consequent or concrete pole or nature." Fundamentally, God realizes his pure potential (abstract) only within time in reality (concrete). Christologically, this means that the Logos "is just God's 'subjective aim,'" whose divinity, Pittegener writes, is only as "God's act in manhood." One, among many reasons, Weinandy deems Process Theology incorrect is its acceptance of God existing in "less perfect states.” In Process Theology, God is not "ontologically ultimate" because God must realize his potential.

In his final chapter, Weinandy surveys three modern Catholic writers, Hans Küng, Karl Rahner, and Jean Galot. Of the three, Weinandy appraises Karl Rahner as most faithful to Chalcedon. Rahner sees "becoming," denoting God has a "real and true manhood if it is really to be man that he is." Yet, the question remains, ‘does God change by becoming man?’ Rahner replies, "If we do call it a change, then since God is unchangeable, we must say that God who is unchangeable in himself can change in another." An idea mirrored in the "oneness of God in relation to the Trinity." Ultimately, God does change in the person of Jesus, but not his divinity. Weinandy considers Rahner "say[ing] that God himself actually and truly became man in fulness of his immutable transcendence."
Jean Galot follows a similar trajectory to Rahner, writing that "the Incarnation is not only the revelation of God in man; it is the involvement of the divine person of the Word who has become man." Where Galot differs from Rahner is his principle that if God "was not affected by this human life," then his humanness is only a "shell without any real concern." If true, the Logos cannot just be a "passive recipient of human experience" because the incarnation’s purpose is to relate to man. Consequently, the Logos has an "inner unchangeable perfect life" and an "outward mutable expression made possible by the inner life which he [Logos] chooses to relate to man." Weinandy only partially approves of Galot’s Logos changes, not realizing that "persons are subsistent relations."

Weinandy's Does God Change? is immensely complex and dense. To synopsize his position: Weinandy believes the incarnation means God is fully man and man is fully God. In the incarnation, the immutable God "becomes" not by ‘changing’ but by existing in a new mode. And because God is actus purus, God's emotions are not an addition but a pure expression of his being predicated on Christ’s human nature.

The above formulation is helpful for us to consider in debates of impassibility/passibility because God’s changing or not is central to the discussion. On the one hand, for Impassiblists, immutability in the incarnation requires vigilance when setting forth Jesus's emotions. Ultimately, the incarnation’s humanity cannot be sacrificed in an overzealous defense of God's immutability (think Arius). Risk can arise from imprecise kenotic formulations that construe Jesus as compositional. If Jesus is compositional and only half of Jesus experiences emotions, is God still human? Impassible theologians must uphold that God is human in the incarnation. In a rush to defend God’s immutability, we must protect against incarnational emotional formulations of merely modified humanness.

As a case study, let's briefly examine Lister, who, in God is Impassible and Impassioned, lays out three theological ideas on the incarnation. One is the communicatio idiomatum: "In the incarnation, the person of the Son experienced human (and not divine) suffering and death." Two, the incarnation's two natures are "Spirit regulated, asymmetrically accessing, two minds model of the incarnation." And three, the extra Calvinisticum or the "Word is fully united but is never fully contained within his human nature."

Now, Weinandy and Lister agree on communicatio idiomatum but differ on ‘how’ idioms are communicated. Weinandy’s ‘how’ stems from Chalcedon and Cyril. Christ has two natures in one ontological reality, and Jesus has a soul. Jesus suffers in his soul, and the suffering is predicated on his human nature. However, the Logos’ ontological reality is involved in the event. Jesus remains homoousion, fully divine, and human while suffering (if being fully divine means immutable).
Lister’s ‘how’ involves two minds existing asymmetrically, regulated by the Spirit. Christ only experiences the mutable event of suffering in his human mind. Lister’s ‘how’ appears to make the incarnation compositional because of their asymmetrical relationship. If God is fully human but has two minds, does he remain perfect in humanity and divinity? Does the mind of God have to think in incarnational mode? Also, even though the Spirit relates them, the two natures do not seem unified in one reality. Lister’s incarnation appears to be two realities bridged by the Spirit. Comparing the two ‘hows’, the human soul may be a preferable seat for emotions because only humans have a soul, and they can be the predicate for emotions.

Regarding Lister’s third point of the extra Calvinisticum, Weinandy would hold this superfluous because God does not limit himself in the incarnation. If he does, he is not fully divine. However, Weinandy fails to mention the extra Calvinisticum because he neglects the entire NT and does not substantively engage texts where Jesus does appear to limit himself. Like how Jesus forgets and needs to grow. As a result, Weinandy glosses over the substance of Luther’s argument and ignores Calvin altogether by framing their formulation of the incarnation almost anachronistically as a psychological/phenomenological divide. Overall, this is the greatest weakness of Does God Change?, though engaging philosophy and church history, Weinandy neglects Scripture.

As for passibilist theologians, Weinandy's book cautions against jettisoning the immutability of God because of implications on other doctrines. For example, when God is taken as more passible, doctrines such as a creatio ex nihlo or God’s ability to actualize himself are in jeopardy. For some, like R.T. Mullins, a ‘maximalist conception’ of God becomes more alluring. But with each step forward into passibilism and maximalism, the distinction between Creator and creature diminishes as God must change.

Similarly, when it comes to passibilist theologians, Weinandy demonstrates that passibilist must engage actus purus. Often God’s impassability is framed as an inability to relate to his creature. However, does this remain true for Aquinas’s actus purus? What if Aquinas is correct? Could an immutable God experience emotion in a divine way since he is ‘pure act?’ Weinandy’s championing of immutability exposes a deficiency in passibilist arguments whose base assumption is that impassibility means inaction, apathy, or unresponsiveness. Perhaps, while God is a rock, he is not an unmovable rock but a wholly active Rock (like magma). While God is like a pillar, he is not an unflappable static alien being. Maybe God can have emotions unchangingly, always being passionate, eternally loving his creatures without changing or needing them. As for prayer, God can listen without growing and respond without needing to improve.

Therefore, imaginably God’s emotions in Scripture are something we cannot understand. To appropriate Wittgenstein’s illustration: we would not understand a lion speaking English. It is altogether a different creature. Humanity’s difference from a lion is incomparable to our distinction from God. In the end, for passibilists, while God might have emotions, we must not become idolaters making God, who is above us, a creature.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is really solid and full. I expect this is a standard work on the immutability of God. Really thorough and clear.

He surveys the Fathers, then Aquinas and then jumps to responsive Process theology and some modern RC theologians, Rahner et al.

[Austin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very, very good historical theological journey of Christology. Challenging but readable for the lay theologian. Jesus is very God and very man. This is enough for most people. But if you want to better grasp the whole approach and way of thinking about the incarnation in the early church and why various heresies were formed in this context, read the first half of this book. It excellently grounds the historical thought contexts needed to see both sides of these debates and follow the orthodox through line.

[Nick Roark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding

[Richard Lawrence · Rating 5 out of 5]

2nd Read and: conclusion from the first time holds; this book is really really good - it is precisely by confirming that God is absolutely immutable/unchanging that we can say that God truly became man; this book is hard work and not for most people, it assumes a high degree of familiarity with scripture and theology but if you've already read some things on the topic and want help reaching and delighting in conceptual clarity on the event of the incarnation, this is the book.

Thoughts from my first read:
This book is really really good.

It explores the incarnation through the window of Immutability - ultimately arguing that we must hold firmly to the doctrine of immutability in order to (rightly) proclaim that it is actually God who became Man.

The author is a Roman Catholic and part of the Charismatic movement BUT based on what he says in the preface I believe he is a christian (according to the evangelical/reformed definition of the term) that said whether you agree with that assessment or not the book as a whole is very helpful for thinking through good and bad approaches to the incarnation.