- That's a really good question,
because if you look at a number of places in Scripture,
it looks as though the answer to that would be yes.
But I believe when you consider
everything the Bible teaches, the answer is actually no.
He doesn't literally change His mind,
because of what that would mean,
and that is that He doesn't know in advance
something that's going to take place,
and so learn something and then changes His mind.
Of course, this has been a view that has been advanced
by a group of theologians called open theists,
who denied what the church
in all of its manifestations have always held,
that's God's omniscience includes
His knowledge of everything future, everything.
And that's been denied by open theists.
They deny that God can even know the future free choices
and actions, including the free statements
that human beings will make in the future.
So God learns as people do things, as people say things.
But boy, there's so much in the Bible
that indicates otherwise.
I mean, just look sometime, if you're interested
in this question, particularly from Isaiah 41 to 48.
I mean, there are, goodness, a half a dozen or more places
where God says, 'You know that I am God
'because I can declare the future before it takes place
'so that when it does, you know I am God.'
And so, God really puts His deity to test
on whether or not He can predict the future,
whether He knows the future, and that future includes,
in Isaiah 46, declaring the end from the beginning.
So it really is comprehensive.
It's everything that takes place in all of history,
God knows in advance.
And this is not an outlandish view.
This is the view the church has always held.
Really, the outlandish view is the view of open theists,
which would deny that.
But, you know, there are texts
that would lead people to think that might be the case.
Think, for example, I'm just pulling one example
out of many we could look at in the Bible,
but in I Samuel 15, it's very interesting,
because twice in verses 11 and 35,
God says in regard to Saul that He regrets
or He changed His mind regarding Saul being king.
The Hebrew word there is the word "nacham."
It's a word that can be translated as "regret"
or "relent" or "repent" or "change of mind."
So you have in that chapter two times stated that God
changed His mind or relented that He made Saul king.
But then in the middle of that very same chapter
in I Samuel 15, you have one of the strongest statements
anywhere in the Bible of the fact
that God cannot change His mind or does not relent.
"The Glory of Israel will not lie or change His mind."
So there's that same word "nacham" again.
So verse 11 He said He changed His mind.
Verse 29, "The Glory of Israel
"will not lie or change His mind.
"He's not a man, that He should change His mind."
So it's a very fascinating chapter on this question,
because you've got four uses of "nacham,"
two of them saying He does change His mind,
two of them saying He can't.
So which is it?
I think you cannot say that the writer of Scripture
isn't aware of this problem.
I just think that's ridiculous.
I mean, he's speaking or writing in the Hebrew language
where that same word is used in opposite ways.
So I think the clue comes in verse 29.
"The Glory of Israel will not lie or change His mind."
Notice, he juxtaposes change of mind
with something we know from Scripture God cannot do.
He always speaks the truth.
So just as God always speaks the truth and never lies,
so He never literally changes His mind.
It may appear as a change of mind
because of a change in action, right?
He made Saul king.
Now he's removing the kingship from Saul.
So a change of action looks to us like God changed His mind.
It might even be recorded that way
because of phenomenologically,
that's how it looks to us from a human perspective.
But literally, He cannot lie or change His mind.
The second phrase in verse 29,
"He's not a man, that He should change His mind."
Now, here's the thing,
Men, human beings,
sometimes change their minds and sometimes don't.
Well, if we say of God that He sometimes changes His mind
like with Saul and sometimes He doesn't,
well, he's just like a man.
But here, it says he's not a man.
So the only way to make that meaningful
is to say He's not like men,
like human beings, who sometimes change their mind.
In other words, He never does.
So I think the best resolution of this is to say
that He never does literally change His mind.
What He does is change
what He said was going to take place before.
Now, here's another interesting example of this,
would be with Jonah,
where He sent Jonah to Nineveh.
And it's interesting; Jonah didn't want to go.
Even though Jonah did not like the people of Nineveh,
the reason he didn't go
is precisely because of what ended up happening, right?
He didn't go because he knew from the get-go
what was really going on here, that he would go
and proclaim, "40 days and Nineveh will be destroyed,"
and what's going to happen?
Well, they're going to repent, and God's going to be gracious,
wouldn't you know it, and not destroy the people afterwards!
And he doesn't want to go and be a part of that.
And of course, he's rebuked for that
in chapter four of Jonah, right?
So it is not the case that God didn't know in advance
that Nineveh was going to repent.
If you conclude that, you'd have to say Jonah
had more insight into what was going on than God, right?
Because why didn't Jonah want to go in the first place?
'I knew you would be gracious.
'I knew you would be compassionate,'
he says in chapter four.
God, of course, knew that was going to take place.
So when it says that God changed His mind or He relented
concerning the judgment that He would bring upon Nineveh,
it doesn't mean that God went, "Oh, how about that?
"Nineveh repented, I didn't expect that to happen!"
I mean, then you're in this position
where Jonah knew more than God did.
So no, of course that's not the case.
So what God did was though employ Jonah to say something
that would elicit what God knew would take place
so that He could bring the forgiveness to them
that He intended from the first place.
So I don't think we should interpret passages like that
as a movement in God from plan A to plan B
because God has learned something new.
Rather, it's a movement from plan A part one
to plan A part two that has in the middle
this interesting connection
of, oftentimes, anyway, human involvement,
where He involved Jonah in this to bring this message
and the people's response, by which He would do in the end
what He planned from the beginning,
but through the route of the declaration,
"40 days and Nineveh will be destroyed," their repentance,
and then God brings the forgiveness to them.
So it is not the case that God learned something new
and literally changes His mind.
One of the places where open theists love to go
to talk about God changing His mind,
and this is the account of God telling Abraham
to go to this mountain where I will show you,
and you are to sacrifice your son Isaac there, right?
You remember that account.
So Abraham does that.
He and Isaac go, leave the servants behind,
and he prepares the altar, puts Isaac on top of it,
takes the knife, and is about to plunge the knife
into the heart of his son.
The Lord stopped Abraham before he completed the act,
and He said, "Abraham, do not kill your son,
"for now I know that you fear me."
So, open theists take that to mean,
"Ah, isn't that clear indication
"that God learned something new?
"This was a test by which God was really looking
"to see if Abraham would be faithful."
Well, here's the problem with that.
Notice what it says, or one of the problems.
Notice what it says that God supposedly learned
that He didn't know before.
He learned that he feared God, but hadn't Abraham given
a number of occasions in the past already
to show that he feared God?
I mean, we don't know exactly how old Isaac was,
but maybe around 15 years old.
Well, what about 15 years earlier when God said,
"No, Abraham, through you and Sarah, not through Ishmael.
"Through you and Sarah, you will have a son."
And we read in Romans 4
that Abraham's own body was now as good as dead.
Sarah's womb was dead.
Yet with respect to the promise of God,
"he did not waver in unbelief, but believed
"that what God has promised, He was able also to do.
"Therefore, it was reckoned to him as righteousness."
So Abraham believed.
Well, that is fear of God back then.
So I don't think you can say that God
literally learned something He didn't know before,
namely, Abraham was a God-fearing man.
Oh, no, He knew that.
So what it has to mean is that God witnessed now,
at this moment, what He had always seen in Abraham,
from the time that He had called him from Ur of the Chaldees
to go to this place that I will show you.
You know, it's amazing.
He has seen this God-fearing quality in his life,
and here it is again.
If you really do insist on interpreting that passage
the way that open theists do, listen to Genesis 18,
because here, you have, I mean, goodness,
if you're going to push this sort of literal reading
in a way in which God learned something new,
in Genesis 18, there were these three who come to Abraham.
One of them goes, I'm sorry,
two of them go in the next chapter to Sodom and Gomorrah.
The one that doesn't go
probably is God taking on human form,
perhaps the second person of the Trinity.
But we read, "And the LORD said."
Notice it's "LORD," you know, it's all caps, "YHWH."
"The LORD said the outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah
"is indeed great, and their sin is exceedingly grave."
Listen, "I will go down now to Sodom and Gomorrah,
"and see if they have done entirely according to its outcry,
"which has come to me, and if not, I will know."
So here you have a case where,
if you're going to interpret Genesis 22
in a way that Abraham literally does something
that causes God to change His mind, literally,
then what do you do with this?
I don't know until I get there.
So God is not omnipresent?
He doesn't know what's taking place
in another part of the world until He gets there?
And He doesn't know what is true right now.
"I'll go down there and find out
"if their outcry is actually true or not.
"So not until I get there.
"Then I'll know, right?"
So God doesn't know what takes place in other areas.
He's not omnipresent.
He doesn't know what's true of the past.
He doesn't know what is true at the present.
And of course, none of that is true of God literally.
Again, this is an anthropomorphic way of speaking,
a human way of talking, that is not proper to God literally.
So I think it's in the category of passages
that speak of bodily parts of God,
the strong right arm of the Lord, the eyes of the Lord.
Well, those bodily parts are not literally true of God.
They're metaphorically true, anthropomorphically true.
I think the same thing is true here.
So indeed, God does not literally change His mind.
He knows everything,
"the end from the beginning," as Isaiah 46 says.
So we can have confidence to know
that yes, He changes His plans
from what He previously said He would do.
From time to time, we see that in Scripture,
but those plans always, always reflect His eternal purposes
and what He has already designed should take place,
and nothing that happens in human history
actually changes God's mind.
I think, you know, if you hold the view that God
learns things and therefore literally changes His mind,
you end up with a view of God
that not only conflicts with the Bible all the way through,
but you end up with a view in which it's hard to trust God.
It's hard to trust a God
who does not know what's going to happen in the future.
I remember my dad.
He's passed away now, but he was a wonderful Christian man,
and one of his songs that he would sing in the car
had a refrain that went like this:
"Many things about tomorrow I don't seem to understand.
"But I know who holds tomorrow,
"and I know He holds my hand."
I mean, what strength there is for Christian people
to know that we hold the hand of the God who knows
what is going to take place in the future,
and isn't taken aback, isn't surprised,
isn't flummoxed by things that happen, as we are.
So when we are puzzled, we go to the one
who is not puzzled, who is infinitely wise
and in control of all these things that happen.
(music)
- [Narrator] Thanks for watching Honest Answers.
Don't forget to subscribe.