Does God Change?: Mutablility and Incarnation: A Review Discussion

DOES GOD CHANGE? MUTABLILITY AND INCARNATION: A REVIEW DISCUSSION ((THIS BOOK ",1 Dr. Weinandy tells us in his Preface, " basically treats two concerns. The first concern is the relationship between the immutability of God and the Incarnation. How can God, remaining immutable, become man? The second concern is the passibility of God as man. . . . Is it true to say that God is born, suffers, dies, loves as man? These two concerns are studied historically, i.e., as they were treated in different periods throughout the history of Christology. _!Iowever, this is not merely a historical study. It is also speculative because I wished to formulate a viable and enriched theological answer to these Christological problems on the basis of careful historical study" (xvi f) . Later on he explains that this involves three elements: " To uphold the truth of the Incarnation, one must maintain that God truly is man, that it is truly God who is man, and that it is truly man that God is" (8~) ; and in dealing with any heretical position he is usually at pains to demonstrate that its error consisted in denying one or more of these elements, or, more frequently, in distorting it in order to make it appear more easily reconcilable with the others. For it is no part of Dr. Weinandy's case to argue that the mutual compatibility of the three elements can be seen at a glance; and the title of his book is itself a reminder that one of the more popular ways of evading a fully orthodox belief is to tamper with the profoundest reality of God. Furthermore, because Christianity is a radi1 Does God Change? The Word's Becoming in the Incarnation. By Thomas G. Weinandy, O.F.M. Cap. Studies in Historical Theology, Volume IV. pp. xxxii + 212. (St. Bede's Publications, Still River, Massachusetts, 1985). 447 448 E. L. MASCALL cally historical religion, announcing that God has performed certain acts and not merely that he has certain attributes, its assertion is not simply that God is man in some timeless metaphysical sense but that he hWJ become man at a particular time and place as the individual Jesus of Nazareth: ho Logos sarx egeneto, "the Word has become flesh " (John i.14) . It is the strength of Dr. Weinandy's study to have grasped the centrality of the notion of" becoming" in Christology. It provides the leading motif for his critique of the main movements and schools of Christology down the ages and in the light of it he has produced one of the most constructive and synthetic works in the field today. Pre-Nicene speculation on the Trinity and the Incarnation is seen by Dr. Weinandy as not so much a study of the immutability and impassibility of God as an introduction to its later history (xxxii). In this the key figures are Arius, Athanasius and Apollinaris, with its culmination in Nicaea and the homoousion . What they failed to realise, says Dr. Weinandy, was " that Nicaea, in proclaiming that the Logos was fully God, ha.d rendered the Logos/Sarx framework unworkable." "Become " in that framework always implies change, and " to understand the concept of ' become ' as only expressing an ontological union, without at the same time expressing a distinction between the Logos and what he has become, namely man, destroys the subjects of which 'become' is predicated" (31). The full implications of Homoousion only appear when the Church has lived through the Nestorian and Monophysite controversies and reached maturity at Chalcedon. These, and especially the part played by Cyril, are discussed in detail, and the Chalcedonian understanding of " become " is characterised as "personal/existential'', "denoting that the Logos has taken on a new mode of existence, that the Logos has come to be man ". " There is no confusion or change because the ' becoming ' does not pertain to a union of natures, but to the mode of existence of a person. Thus Christ is God the Logos existing as man, and his mode of existing, his two na- DOES GOD CHANGE? MUTABILITY AND INCARNATION: 449 tures, remain unchanged and unconfused.... Thus the Logos as God remains impassible, but since he is also man he...