What changed?

[earl40]

Dr Oliphint in his lectures on The Doctrine of God part 16 says God changed His disposition towards us when we believed. This is based on Ephesians 2:3 "Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest."

Now if this is so how can we say The Lord loved us while we were yet sinners? I ask this because it appears to me that He loved us even while we were "by nature children of wrath" and thus His His disposition to us really did not change. Or would it be OK to say God did change covenantally towards us in time but not essentially as Dr. Oliphint says?

 

[py3ak]

I think it would be more accurate to say that God's relation to us changed, and that a way was open for Him to manifest the disposition of love He held from eternity past. Because election is obviously not born out of wrath.

 

[R. Scott Clark]

In himself, nothing changed. God does not change. He cannot be other than he is.

Nevertheless, Scripture repeatedly speaks of God changing (e.g., Gen 6, where God is said to "repent.") Most Christians through most of church history, have understood that language to be figurative, a way of speaking.

Traditionally Reformed theology has distinguished between the way God is, in himself, and the way he is described in Scripture or the way he reveals himself in Scripture. Calvin described his self-disclosure in Scripture as "accommodation." What Scripture says is certainly true but it is, as Calvin says, baby talk." It is true in the way that adult speech to infants is true. We don't tell toddlers the brutal reasons why Mommy and Daddy are getting divorced. We tell toddlers that Mommy and Daddy are going to live in separate houses. it's true but it is truth accommodated to the capacities of a toddler. All of Scripture is accommodated to our finitude.

Thus, we know that God is immutable, because Scripture teaches divine immutability, but we don't really know what immutability is, as it really is. We can and must say true things about divine immutability. We can say what it isn't, to some degree but human speech about God always runs into limits. This is because God is infinite and we are not.

Thus, Scripture regularly attributes change to God in order to give us a way of understanding him, to think about him, to speak about him without reifying those things. God doesn't actually change his mind but neither can we simply and high-handedly dismiss the biblical revelation as if it means nothing at all.

For one account of how this works see Richard A. Muller, “Incarnation, Immutability, and the Case for Classical Theism,” Westminster Theological Journal 45 (1983), 22–40.

See also the chapter on this in Recovering the Reformed Confession and/or the chapter on the free offer in The Pattern of Sound Doctrine

 

[earl40]

For one account of how this works see Richard A. Muller, “Incarnation, Immutability, and the Case for Classical Theism,” Westminster Theological Journal 45 (1983), 22–40.

See also the chapter on this in Recovering the Reformed Confession and/or the chapter on the free offer in The Pattern of Sound Doctrine

Would this come from a different perspective than Dr. Oliphant's view?

---------- Post added at 07:35 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:23 PM ----------

I think it would be more accurate to say that God's relation to us changed, and that a way was open for Him to manifest the disposition of love He held from eternity past. Because election is obviously not born out of wrath.

That is how I see it also. I see The Lord's disposition as non changing towards those He loves from eternity past though it is not manifested to the elect until the time He chooses.