Traditional theism has held that God is “immutable,” meaning that God cannot change. If God changes for the worse, then God would become imperfect. On the other hand, if God changes for the better, then that would mean that God was previously imperfect. Both of these possibilities would contradict the fact that God is the Supremely Perfect Being, and thus eternally perfect.
If God cannot change, many Christians argue, then it follows that God cannot change His mind about any of His actions; all of God’s actions must be eternally preordained, and nothing any human being says or does can actually change God’s mind about what He will do. On the other end of the spectrum, Open Theists claim that God does not even know the future, and so is constantly changing His mind in response to free human decisions which He did not know would be made ahead of time. What does Biblical teaching have to say about this issue?
God Changing His Mind in Scripture
When we examine the stories of Scripture, we encounter quite a few instances where God is depicted as changing His mind. For example, in the book of Jonah, the prophet Jonah prophesies to the city of Nineveh, “Forty days from now Nineveh will be destroyed!” (Jon 3:4). This is Jonah’s entire message; there is nothing in this message that indicates that this prophecy is conditional or that the Ninevites can do anything to change their fate. Yet, the king of Nineveh commands that the whole city repent and fast, telling them, “Who knows? Perhaps even yet God will change his mind and hold back his fierce anger from destroying us” (3:9). As a result, “when God saw what they had done and how they had put a stop to their evil ways, He changed His mind and did not carry out the destruction He had threatened” (3:10).
There are numerous other examples in Scripture of God not following through with a judgment He had threatened to bring because of a repentant response on the part of the audience (e.g., Jer 26: 17-19). It appears that when God pronounces a coming judgment on someone, there is an implied conditionality to the fulfillment of the prophecy, based on whether or not the audience repents. Sometimes, the conditional nature of God’s prophetic judgment is made explicit in the prophecy itself (Jer 26:12-15; Joel 2:1-14), but usually it is implicit. In the book of Jeremiah, God makes clear the conditional nature of all prophecy: “If I announce that a certain nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down, and destroyed, but then that nation renounces its evil ways, I will not destroy it as I had planned. And if I announce that I will plant and build up a certain nation or kingdom, but then that nation turns to evil and refuses to obey me, I will not bless it as I said I would” (Jer 18:7-10). All prophecies about God’s judgments, then, have an implied, “if you do not repent,” as part of their message. If the audience repents in response to God’s warning about the punishment He will bring on them in the future, then God will change His mind about what He said He was going to do.
In other cases, though, we see God change His mind about His commands or what He says He will do simply on the basis of a petition by one of His faithful people, without there being any repentance involved. God calls Moses to go and speak to Pharoah, but after Moses repeatedly objects, God agrees to send Aaron with Him to be His spokesman (Ex 4:1-17). Later, God tells Moses He is going to destroy most of the nation of Israel and carry on His promise to the descendants of Abraham through Moses’s descendants, but Moses intercedes, and “the LORD changed His mind about the terrible disaster He had threatened to bring on His people” (Ex 32:7-14). Another example of this is when the prophet Amos asks God to lessen the punishment He says He will bring on Israel, and God does (Amos 7:1-9).
Probably the clearest case of God changing His mind in response to human petition, though, is the story of King Hezekiah’s illness and recovery (2 Kings 20:1-11=Isaiah 38:1-8). Hezekiah is very ill, and God tells Him through the prophet Isaiah that He will not recover, and will soon die. Hezekiah then prays “Remember, O LORD, how I have always been faithful to you and have served you single-mindedly, always doing what pleases you.” In response, God tells him through the prophet Isaiah that, because of his prayer, He will heal him and give him 15 more years of life.
Hezekiah’s illness was not a punishment for sin, and there was no repentance on the part of Hezekiah. On the contrary, his prayer is what we might call a “self-righteous” prayer. It is very clear that in this story, God was going to let Hezekiah die, but changed His mind and gave Hezekiah 15 more years of life simply because Hezekiah asked.
There are two verses in Scripture that many point to in support of the idea that God does not change His mind. After the prophet Samuel tells Saul that God has rejected him as king, he tells Saul, “He who is the glory of Israel will not lie, nor will He change His mind [Hebrew: nchm], for He is not human that He should change His mind [nchm]!” (I Sam 15:29). Ironically, though, this story begins with God saying that He has changed His mind (nchm) about making Saul king (15:11), and ends with the narrator stating that God had changed His mind (nchm) about making Saul king (15:35). So, we cannot take Samuel’s remark here as being an absolutely true statement.
The prophet Balaam also prophesies that “God is not a man, so He does not lie. He is not human, so He does not change His mind” (Num 23:19). However, given the numerous instances of God clearly changing His mind in Scripture, we cannot take this as an absolutely true statement. God does not change His mind capriciously, as humans do, and so He would not change His prophesy of blessing on Israel for no good reason, as Balak was trying to get Him to do. However, there are times when God will change His mind about something in response to repentance or a petition by a faithful member of His covenant people.
Conclusion
Given this biblical data, it is undeniable that Scripture teaches that God sometimes changes His mind about what He will do in response to human actions. God does not change His mind capriciously. However, in response to a request on the part of a faithful member of His covenant people, God does sometimes act differently than He would have otherwise. Scripture does not depict God as one whose actions are all eternally preordained and unable to be influenced by human beings. Rather, it depicts God as one who enters into a genuine, dynamic, give-and-take relationship with time-bound human beings, responding to them and sometimes basing His decisions on their requests.
This does not, however, provide any support for the Open Theist idea that God Himself is somehow bound by time and does not know the future. As God interacts with us temporal beings, He accommodates His way of speaking to us and interacting with us to our time-bound way of experiencing reality. God may tell someone at one point at time that, as things now stand, He is going to do one thing. Then, at another point in time, because of what has happened in the meantime, He may tell someone that He is going to do something else. This does not mean that God does not know what He is actually going to do in the future or that He is somehow lying when He says He is going to do something which He ultimately will not end up doing. It just means that human beings are time-bound creatures with genuine free will, and that God must accommodate His way of speaking and interacting with us in order to enter into a genuine relationship with us time-bound creatures.
So, in one sense, God does not literally change His mind. He does not experience reality temporally as we do, constantly learning new information that changes His intentions. However, from our perspective, God does sometimes change His mind. He communicates His intention to do one thing, but, in response to human repentance or petition, does something else because of that.
Scripture does not depict God as a tyrannical puppet-master, giving human beings no agency or say in what He does. Rather, it depicts God as One who genuinely enters into a dynamic relationship with us, and (to some extent) allows our prayers and petitions to influence His actions. “The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective” (James 5:16). This should give us great confidence and boldness as we pray and offer requests to God for ourselves, God’s Church, and the world.