Does God Ever Regret? Principles for Understanding Divine Repentance – Seth Porch

ABSTRACT: “The Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth.” In light of the whole counsel of Scripture, Genesis 6:6 and passages like it raise a challenging interpretive question: What could regret or repentance mean for a sovereign, immutable God? Readers of Scripture find help from three core theological principles: (1) The living God is the perfect God. (2) There is an absolute distinction between God and creation. (3) God reveals himself to creatures in ways they can understand. Together, these principles help us interpret passages about God’s regret without imagining God to be like man.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, we asked Seth Porch, PhD candidate at the University of Aberdeen, to provide principles for interpreting passages that speak of God regretting.

The Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth. (Genesis 6:6)

Many scriptural texts stop us short. Arresting our attention, they force us to read them again. And again. And again. “Did God really say . . . ?” Such declarations challenge readers to think carefully over what God says and, in an expression of humble dependence, ask him to give understanding (2 Timothy 2:7).

The many texts ascribing regret, repentance, or change to God provide just such a challenge, particularly when read alongside the scriptural witness to God’s absolute sovereignty over all things. The first such text in the biblical narrative throws the perceived problem into stark relief. In Genesis 6, God regrets that he created mankind and does an almost wholesale reversal of his initial act of creation (Genesis 6:5–7). We will return to this example later in the essay. For now, it suffices to acknowledge the fact that Scripture frequently attests to changes in God in response to his creatures.1

How are we to read such passages, especially in light of divine testimony indicating that God neither regrets his decisions nor changes?2 Answering this hermeneutical question requires layers of close theological work: attention to multiple scriptural texts and their implications; attendance to contemporary questions and positions; recognition and careful deployment of particular theological principles, especially those related to the nature of divine revelation and its recipients. In short, the question presents a bracing challenge for thoughtful readers who want to give due weight to the whole testimony of Scripture.

The aim of the present essay is not to offer a comprehensive analysis of the scriptural texts that present readers with the possibility of repentance in God. It does not present an analysis of the (post?) modern mind and the difficulties that contemporary ways of thinking bring to the table. Nor does it aspire to present an account of Scripture and Scripture’s readers. Its aims are far more modest. It merely lays out a set of dogmatic principles or rules to guide readers as they seek to prayerfully read and interpret Scripture, including texts that ascribe regret or repentance to God.3 In the following, we first explore a set of principles related to God’s self-revelation before asking how those principles inform our interpretation of difficult passages such as Genesis 6:6.

Three Core Principles

Classical accounts in the Western Christian tradition interpret passages such as Genesis 6:6 according to an array of core principles that aim to heed the whole witness of Scripture. These principles reflect a manner of thinking that prioritizes a certain order in the framework of theology: first God, then all else relative to God.4

We do not typically think in such a mode, being instead prone to its opposite: defining God by means of all that relates to him in his going forth in creation and redemption. This is particularly evident in common ways of thinking about God’s repentance. A straightforward reading of texts like Genesis 6:5–7 reveals a God who, like us, changes his mind in response to others. We naturally reflect our creaturely mode of being, defined as it is by constant change, onto the Creator. But natural inclinations do not always lead to biblically faithful conclusions. Because of our natural bent, understanding texts that make God appear like us in some fashion requires a hermeneutic governed by the doctrine of God in himself, a robust understanding of the distinction between Creator and creature, and a recognition of the way God speaks in Scripture.

The present section examines each of these in a limited fashion, beginning with the doctrine of divine perfection.

Divine Perfection

The doctrine of divine perfection affirms that in himself the triune God is perfect without qualification. He is replete, having no lack. “I am God,” he declares through the psalmist. “If I were hungry, I would not tell you. . . . Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats?” (Psalm 50:7, 12–13). He is eternal, without beginning or end. “I am the first and I am the last,” says the Lord of hosts (Isaiah 44:6; cf. 41:4). He is the triune God, the forever glorious Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (see John 17:5). He is the supreme and perfect God over all, the “blessed and only sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light” (1 Timothy 6:15–16).5 As the replete, eternal, supreme, and triune God, he does not change. Rightly creatures confess him to be immutable, for God “remains forever like himself in his celestial and happy repose.”6 God’s self-revelation as the immutable one indicates that in his being he is absolutely perfect.

Ascribed to God, perfection means that nothing beyond him is necessary for him to be complete. And, crucially, nothing can add to or detract from his existence. The perfection of God is his threefold life of utter plenitude as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Writing of God’s triune perfection, John Webster states,

The perfect life of the Holy Trinity is the all-encompassing and first reality from whose completeness all else derives. God’s perfection is the fullness and inexhaustibility in which the triune God is and acts as the one he is. His perfection is not mere absence of derivation or restriction; it is his positive plenitude. God’s perfection is his identity as this one, an identity which is unqualified and wholly realized: “I am who I am” — what the scholastic divines called the perfectio integralis in which God’s life is complete in itself. That completeness is fullness of life, the effortless activity in which God confirms his excellence as Father, Son and Spirit. God lives from himself, he is perfect movement, the eternally fresh act of self-iteration. This act is the “processions” or personal relations which constitute God’s absolute vitality: the Father who begets the Son and breathes the Spirit, the Son who is eternally begotten, the Spirit who proceeds — all this is the positive wholeness and richness of God’s life in himself.7

A consequence of the doctrine of divine perfection is aseity, a theological concept that summarizes the scriptural teaching that God lives from himself (a se) and in himself (in se).8 “Besides me,” God declares, “there is no god” (Isaiah 44:6). He does not exist with necessary reference to the “gods,” deriving his existence as it were from a genus of which he is one instance of a species.9 No, he is the only God. “Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me” (Isaiah 43:10). God is not and cannot be defined by reference to what is not God.10

God’s perfect existence a se has an important consequence for the question at hand: Does God change? The answer drawn from the doctrine of perfection is a definitive no. Why is this the case? Change in any being indicates some form of movement, such as a loss or gain, departure or arrival, unknown to known. Movement indicates un-actualized potential, that is, the possibility for development or declension. But God is perfect; therefore, he does not and cannot change. No potential or possibility can exist for him. As Thomas Aquinas argues, “Since God is infinite, comprehending in Himself all the plenitude of perfection of all being, He cannot acquire anything new.”11 Being from himself means that he does not draw his divinity from some external source. Nor can he increase or decrease in magnitude or “divine-ness.” He does not replenish or add to himself in any way. His self-existence is his perfection, what Webster calls “the eternal lively plenitude of the Father who begets, the Son who is begotten, and the Spirit who proceeds from both.”12

Perfection includes all that is attributed to God — knowledge, wisdom, power, holiness, goodness, and so on.13 Already consequences for how we interpret a text about God repenting begin to emerge. If God’s perfection includes his knowledge, and if repentance or regret, according to the way we understand it as humans, demands a change in what is known or understood (a movement from potential to actualization), then applying the term to God requires us to attribute some measure of imperfection to God. But as we have seen, Scripture as a whole does not allow this, which requires us to significantly qualify what God means when he ascribes repentance to himself.

We will apply the principle of divine perfection to the question of God’s repentance in a subsequent section. Before doing so, however, we must treat another important principle that safeguards theological reason: the distinction between the Creator and his creatures.

The Creator-Creature Distinction

The perfect God, replete in his eternal, joyful existence, creates. This fact alone is enough to stun our minds and draw us to reverential, joyful, fearful awe (see Psalm 8). Exploring what it means when we confess God as “Maker of heaven and earth, of all that is visible and invisible” also leads to restraint when explaining what Scripture means when it ascribes regret and repentance to God.

The doctrine of creation teaches that all that exists does so by virtue of the one creative act of God in accordance with his will (Genesis 1:1; Revelation 4:11). God is “the universal cause of all being.”14 Set against the backdrop of divine perfection, that which God brings into being does not include himself. He simply is, eternal and without cause.15 And he causes the existence of all else. Between him and creation there is no commonality of being. “You were,” confesses Augustine, “the rest was nothing. Out of nothing you made heaven and earth.”16 In our thinking (and the exegesis that informs that thinking), we must hold to an absolute distinction between God and all that is not God.17

The relationship that exists between God and creation is therefore unique. There is nothing like it within the order of creation itself. Within creation, all things are to varying degrees related to and dependent on another. We cannot live without the food produced from the ground. That food depends on the rays of the sun and the cycles of seasons. Those seasons depend on the rotation and location of the earth relative to other objects in space. Creation itself exists entirely in dependence on God (Psalm 104:27–30; Colossians 1:16–17; Hebrews 1:2–3). But God’s perfect existence remains unchanged and, crucially, unaffected by the creation of the heavens and the earth.18

Once again, we are pressed to begin applying the principle to the question of whether God changes with respect to his creation. The absolute distinction between God and creatures implies that God does not change (he remains immutable) with respect to his very mutable creatures. Reflecting on the impermanence of the heavens and earth, the psalmist confesses their absolute contrast to God their Creator:

They will perish, but you will remain;
     they will all wear out like a garment.
You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away,
but you are the same, and your years have no end. (Psalm 102:26–27)

The heavens and earth change and pass away, but there is no corresponding mutability in God. He remains himself, the same, forever.19

This means that God’s perfection — in all its fullness — remains undiminished both with respect to the initial act of creation and its ongoing preservation. As God keeps all things in being, as he continues to direct them to their ordered end, he himself does not undergo development or augmentation. He is not who he is because of what takes place through his works. Rather, he is who he is eternally; he shows who he is to his creatures through his works. If he is to remain true to his own perfect nature, then he will not change in his external works.20 If he were to change, that would indicate an imperfection in his being, making him dependent on creatures to realize his own perfection.21

In his explanation of God’s unchanging nature, Francis Turretin (1623–1687) argues that the biblical position is to ascribe “every kind of immutability” to God “both as to nature and as to will.”22 After he proves the doctrine from Scripture, he explains that creation, being from God, produces no change in him.23 He later draws the conclusion (from creation and the unchanging nature of God) that his immutability extends to his providential governing of all creation.

He is most wise (foreseeing all things and for all) and most powerful (with whom nothing is impossible) and the best (who as he created the world at first with the highest goodness, so he cannot but conserve and govern it when created by the same).24

Working from God toward the creation, Turretin extrapolates the doctrinal logic and ascribes to God an absolute and unerring providence based on his perfect, unchanging nature. He who made all things, who is himself not made, remains utterly distinct from and therefore absolutely sovereign over the entirety of creation.25

When Scripture describes God as relenting from his purpose or regretting his decisions, faithful theological reason preserves the absolute distinction between God and creation and therefore guards against a facile interpretation of what Scripture means by relent or regret. Speaking properly of God means translating those texts in a manner that necessarily transforms the creaturely idiom. When employing such human terms to describe the works of God, we do not assume that they apply in the same way to him as they do to us. We must discipline our reasoning, constantly challenging our natural fallen tendency to think that God is just like us. This method of theological reasoning coheres with the fact that in Scripture God accommodates himself to creaturely understanding.

The Manner of Divine Revelation

God is perfect. In his being and his ways, he is beyond the grasp of finite and fallen (decidedly imperfect, even in the redeemed state) creatures. Furthermore, in himself he is not a part, not even the best part, of the creaturely order of existence. When he speaks and reveals himself to creatures, therefore, he does so in such a way that he brings himself down to creaturely understanding (what has historically been called accommodation26).

God speaks to man. To some he speaks “face to face” (Exodus 33:11). But he does not do so “man to man,” that is, as equal communicants on a common plane. Rather, God speaks in earthly terms to creatures. Because his aim in revealing himself is that we might know him, he communicates with us in a manner commensurate with our creaturely nature and facilities.27 God’s self-revelation to human creatures, because it is self-revelation, remains true to his being. As revelation, it truly makes him known. Because it is his self-revelation to creatures — that is, those whose entire existence is hemmed in by the boundaries of created being — God accommodates himself.28

Careful interpretation of Scripture, especially in the many instances where it attributes creaturely qualities to God, will therefore hesitate before suggesting a univocity or equivalence of meaning between what God reveals of himself in creaturely terms and his own being.29 Rather, confessing “the infinite qualitative distinction between creator and creation” mitigates the temptation to consider God as one of us.30 In Scripture, God stoops. Rightly understanding what he intends to communicate in his stooping requires creatures to let go of the pernicious tendency to define reality only by what we can see, instead asking God to raise our eyes, so to speak, and fill them with divine light.

Perfection, Creation, Analogy

God’s perfection in his own inner life serves as the fundamental principle to guide theological discourse, including interpretation of passages concerned with God’s acts of repentance. Moving from the eternal triune life of God to his outward work of creation, the principle of divine perfection remains, illuminating the nature of God’s relation to creatures as one that produces no essential change in God. In his interaction with his creatures — in creation or judgment or redemption or perfection — he remains entirely unchanged. Therefore, when we come across texts in Scripture that say God “repents” or “regrets,” we interpret them analogically, recognizing that while they communicate meaningful truth about God, they do not mean he is like man (see Numbers 23:19).

Back to Repentance

Establishing doctrinal principles and rules is one thing. It is another to bring them to bear on a given passage of Scripture. How then can Christians faithfully interpret Genesis 6:5–7 in light of the three theological guardrails related to God’s perfection, his absolute distinction from creation, and his manner of speaking to creatures?

Following the genealogy of Adam’s faithful descendants, Genesis 6 opens on a world of unrighteousness. Beholding the wickedness of mankind and knowing “that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5), the Lord declares that he regrets having made mankind and that he intends to destroy them on account of their wickedness (Genesis 6:6–7). On its surface, the text seems to indicate a change in God’s intentions. Turning back a page or two reveals the depth of the apparent problem. At the height of the sixth day in the creation account, God creates mankind (Genesis 1:26) and then, seeing all that he made, declares it “very good” (Genesis 1:31). In Genesis 6, he sees that the people he made are the opposite of very good, being “only evil.” The variance between Genesis 1 and Genesis 6 introduces what appears to be a clear example of divine repentance.31 God, having made man, now regrets his actions.

Adhering to the dogmatic principles outlined above requires care in what we say here. First, though God speaks of this event in a manner understandable to creatures, that does not by itself indicate that God himself undergoes the change we typically associate with regret. The ascription of regret to God is analogical. In other words, while God does speak truly, what it means for him to regret an action is not the same as what it means for humans.

Second, when humans regret or repent of some previous action, it entails a change according to knowledge and intent. But God’s knowledge and will, being essential to his being, are not subject either to ignorance or change. “All causes of change,” argues Turretin, “are removed from him,” including “error of mind” and “inconstancy of will.”32 If the act of creation itself constitutes no change on the part of the perfect Creator (the principle of the Creator-creature distinction), neither can changes within the history of creation produce a change in him.33

There are certainly changes in creation. God creates mankind, yet they turn to wickedness. God establishes Saul as king, yet Saul later rejects God. God threatens punishment on a wicked city, yet later that city repents. But such instances do not indicate a change within the immutable God himself (the principle of divine perfection). Rather, Scripture speaks of God’s regret with regard to changes that take place on the side of creation. Turretin again proves illuminating:

Repentance is attributed to God after the manner of men (anthrōpopathōs) but must be understood after the manner of God (theoprepōs): not with respect to his counsel, but to the event; not in reference to his will, but to the thing willed; not to affection and internal grief, but to the effect and external work.34

The change in events like Genesis 6 occurs on the part of creatures. God knew what would occur during the days of Noah and Saul and Jonah. It comes as no surprise to him that the people he created upright turn to wickedness (see Ecclesiastes 7:29). These events occur according to his immutable will, which establishes his eternal decree both to punish evildoers and to forgive repentant sinners. Our perfect and unchanging God, Creator of all things, “does not repent of any action he has taken, and his purpose with regard to absolutely everything is as fixed as his foreknowledge of it is utterly certain.”35

Clothed with Our Affections

The work of theology serves the church by returning again and again to the Scriptures, demanding that we continually mortify the tendency to conceptualize our God and his work in creaturely (and therefore idolatrous) terms. It aims to lead the church in humble, chastened obedience to the first and second commandments, preserving her allegiance to the living God and disabusing her of idols. The ubiquity of anthropomorphizing language for God in Holy Scripture only heightens the need to submit human language and concepts to the full scope and weight of God’s self-testimony, thus restraining the people of God from remaking him in our own image.

But why then does God speak in such a manner? Why describe himself in terms like unto us? He does so for our good. He desires for us to know him truly, to love and rejoice in him and walk in his ways according to his loving intent for us. He also has compassion on us. He knows our frame, the feeble limits of our capacities, the difficulties we face in thinking rightly about him, and the disastrous consequences of sin upon our intellects and affections. In our infirm and rebellious condition, the knowledge of the Holy One for which we were made is beyond us.

And so, because of his great love for us, he speaks to us about himself in ways that we can understand so that we, by his gracious condescension, might fulfill our end. In a delightful turn of phrase, Augustine describes this kindness of the Lord in Scripture as a “habit of making something like children’s toys out of things that occur in creation . . . to get us step by step to seek . . . the things that are above and forsake the things that are below.”36 He does not intend to hide himself from us. Nor does he demand of us the impossible task of feeling our way toward him in our own power and by our own means. Instead, he reveals himself in terms we can grasp.37

Why specifically does he describe himself as repenting or relenting? Why does he, in the words of Calvin, “[clothe] himself with our affections”?38 Again, his intent is a gracious one. He desires not that we should consider him to be just like us, but that we may come to recognize the full horror of sin, how it is utterly abhorrent and opposed to the One before whose glory the seraphim hide their faces and cry out in reverence, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts” (Isaiah 6:3). He stoops because he desires that we would see clearly the antithesis between the upright nature he gave us and our utter corruption.39 He describes himself as a regretting God so that we, in obedience to his command to repent and in fulfillment of our intended purpose to know him, might walk in the fear of the Lord.

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