Professor Richard Hays’ book, The Moral Vision of the New Testament, has long been highly thought to be an especially useful introduction to New Testament ethics.
One of the chapters in his book uses the problems of homosexuality as a test case for reading and applying the New Testament in relation to a selected ethical issue. In this chapter he writes that:
‘….the New Testament offers no loophole or exception clauses that may allow for the acceptance of homosexual practice under some circumstances. Despite the efforts of recent interpreters to clarify away the evidence, the New Testament stays unambiguous and unequivocal in its condemnation of homosexual conduct.’
This being the case, he goes on to put in writing that:
‘It isn’t any more appropriate for homosexual Christians to persist in homosexual activity than it might be for heterosexual Christians to persist in fornication or adultery … Unless they’re able to change their orientation and enter a heterosexual relationship, homosexual Christians should seek to live lives of disciplined sexual abstinence.’
However, since The Moral Vision of the New Testament was published back in 1996, Hays has altered his position. He has co-authored along with his son Christopher a book called The Widening of God’s Mercy, which has just been published by Yale University Press and which argues for ‘the total inclusion of LGBT+ people in Christian communities.’
The argument recommend on this book is just not that the New Testament accepts or approves of same-sex sexual intercourse. Richard Hays still holds that those biblical texts that mention homosexual activity are unequivocal of their condemnation of it. The argument on this book is slightly that ‘God repeatedly changes his mind in ways in which expand the sphere of his love’ and this principle may be used to argue that God now approves of homosexual conduct, despite the fact that the Bible says he doesn’t. God has supposedly modified his mind on the matter.
In this text I’m not going to explore the small print of the argument recommend by Richard and Christopher Hays of their book. Instead, I shall have a look at the massive issue that the book raises, namely ‘Does God change his mind?’
I need to suggest that there are three explanation why we must always say that the reply to this query is ‘No.’
The first reason is that there’s a whole series of Biblical passages which explicitly state that God doesn’t change his mind. The following six quotations illustrate this point:
‘God is just not man, that he should lie,
or a son of man, that he should repent.
Has he said, and can he not do it?
Or has he spoken, and can he not fulfil it?’ (Numbers 23:19)
‘And also the Glory of Israel is not going to lie or repent; for he is just not a person,
that he should repent’ (1 Samuel 15:29).
‘I the Lord have spoken; it shall come to pass, I’ll do it; I is not going to return, I is not going to spare, I is not going to repent; based on your ways and your doings I’ll judge you, says the Lord God (Ezekiel 24:14).
‘For I the Lord don’t change; subsequently you O Sons of Jacob usually are not consumed’ (Malachi 3:6).
‘Those who formerly became priests took their office without an oath, but this one was addressed with an oath, “The Lord has sworn and is not going to change his mind, “Thou art a priest for ever”‘ (Hebrews 7:21, citing Psalm 110:4).
‘Every good endowment and each perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there isn’t a variation or shadow attributable to change’ (James 1:17).
What we learn from these passages, and from other similar passages within the Bible, is that God doesn’t change or repent, and that is something to be each celebrated, since it implies that God will keep his guarantees to his people and to be feared, since it implies that God will enact the judgements that he has pronounced.
The second reason is that for God to vary or repent could be to go against his very nature. This is a degree that’s made very clearly by the seventeenth century English Puritan theologian Stephen Charnock in his 1682 work The Existence and Attributes of God.
According to Charnock: ‘There may be no reason for any change in the desire of God.’ Human beings change their minds either due to a have to adapt to unexpected circumstances or due to ‘a natural instability with none good cause.’ Neither of those reasons, argues Charnock, may be true of God.
First, lack of foresight can’t be attributed to God:
‘What may be wanting to an infinite understanding? How can any unknown event defeat his purpose, since nothing happens on the planet but what he wills to effect, or wills to allow; and subsequently all future events are present with him? Besides, it doth not consist with God’s wisdom to resolve anything, but upon the best reason; and what’s the best and infinite reason, cannot but be unalterable in itself; for these may be no reason and wisdom higher than the best.’
Secondly, there can’t be in God ‘…a natural instability of his will, or an easiness to be drawn into that which is unrighteous’.
‘If his will mustn’t follow his counsel, it’s since it is just not fit to be followed, or because it is going to not follow it; if not fit to be followed, it’s a mirrored image upon his wisdom; if it’s established, and he is not going to follow it, there’s a contrariety in God, as there’s in a fallen creature, will against wisdom.’
In summary, declares Charnock:
‘The righteousness of God is like an incredible mountain (Psalm 36:6). The rectitude of his nature is as immovable in itself, as all of the mountains on the planet are by the strength of man. ‘He is just not as a person, that he should repent or lie’ (Numbers 23:19); who often changes, out of a perversity of will, in addition to want of wisdom to foresee, or want of ability to perform. His everlasting purpose have to be either righteous or unrighteous; if righteous and holy, he would turn into unholy by the change; if not righteous or holy, then he was unrighteous before the change; which way soever it falls, it might reflect on the righteousness of God, which is a blasphemous imagination. If God did change his purpose, it have to be either for the higher – then the counsel of God was bad before; or for the more serious, – then he was not clever or good before.’
The third reason why we must always not say that God can change his mind is due to the implications that might follow from saying this. It would mean that we cannot depend on God to retain the connection with us that he has established. If we’re Christians, we’re those whom God has called to be his children. If he can change his mind, then the day might conceivably come when he now not wants us as his children. He might repent of getting made us such. Worst case scenario, he could determine to reject us at the ultimate judgement despite the fact that he has said that he is not going to achieve this.
It would also mean that we could never be certain of what it means to live in accordance with God’s will. If God changes his mind, then he might will something tomorrow that’s different from what he wills today and what he willed yesterday, and this could mean that there isn’t a stable basis for ethics.
A changeable God could be an unreliable God, a God who we couldn’t depend on when it comes to our salvation, or as the idea for our behaviour, and living in a world with such a God could be a nightmare.
It might, nonetheless, be argued, that the biblical evidence indicates that we live in only such a world. A lot of biblical texts, it’s argued, tell us that God does change his mind. For example, Genesis 6:6 -7 declares:
‘And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, ‘I’ll blot out man whom I actually have created from the face of the bottom, man and beast and creeping things and birds of the air, for I’m sorry that I actually have made them.’
Likewise, in 1 Samuel 15:11 God says to Samuel: ‘I repent that I actually have made Saul king; for he has turned back from following me, and has not performed my commandments,’ and in 1 Samuel 15:35 the chapter re-iterates ‘the Lord repented that he made Saul king over Israel.’
Finally in Jonah 3:10-4:2 we read in regards to the people of Nineveh:
‘When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God repented of the evil which he had said he would do to them; and he didn’t do it.
‘But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was offended. And he prayed to the Lord and said, “I pray thee, Lord, is just not this what I said after I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that thou art a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and repentest of evil.’
All these passages and others like them, akin to Exodus 32:10-14, Isaiah 38:1-6 and Amos 7:1-3, do seem to point that God does change his mind. God does something, or says he’s going to do something, after which repents. Surely, it is claimed, because of this God’s will is changeable.
The very first thing that should be noted in response is the purpose made by the nice Medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas that each one language used of God is analogical. Because God is just not a creature, no words used of him are utilized in the identical way as after they are applied to creaturely realities. Thus, after we are told that God is a rock, or a father, or a shepherd, all these words mean various things when applied to God. God is just not a rock in the identical way that a bit of granite is. God is just not a father in the identical way I’m, and God is just not a shepherd in the identical way because the competitors in One Man and his Dog.
The same is true of the language of repentance when applied to God. It doesn’t mean the identical thing within the case of God because it does within the case of human beings. To quote Charnock over again:
‘God is claimed to repent when he modifies the disposition of affairs without himself; as men, after they repent, alter the course of their actions, so God alters things extra to, or without himself, but changes nothing of his own purpose inside himself. It slightly notes the motion he’s about to do, than anything in his own nature, or any change of his everlasting purpose. God’s repenting of his kindness is nothing but an inflicting of punishment, which the creature by the change of his carriage has merited: as his repenting of the evil threatened is the withholding of the punishment denounced, when the creature hath humbly submitted to his authority, and acknowledged his crime.’
To put it simply, God’s mind and can are unchangeable, but they’ve different results depending on human behaviour.
In summary Richard and Christopher Hays base their argument for Christian acceptance of same-sex relationships on God having modified his mind. This means their argument is flawed from the beginning, because that’s one thing that God never does.
