The Concept of an Immutable God

Abstract

One of the most dominant developments of various claims about God, at least in Western thought, has been the idea of an immutable God. In this chapter we will briefly survey the development in classical theism of the belief in God’s immutability. We will then discuss the reasons put forward by Charles Hartshorne, and by Latin American liberation theology for rejecting the concept of an immutable God. Throughout our presentation of classical theism and of the objections of these schools of thought our aim will be, given the focus of this exploration and the reflections in the earlier chapters, to inquire into the adequacy of this conceptuality in articulating our beliefs about God in the face of suffering.