The following are dictionary definitions of a couple of God’s attributes.
- Immutable = Immutable objects are simply objects whose state cannot change
- Impassible = does not experience pain or pleasure from the actions of another being
If these are truly His attributes, from 1), How can we pray effectively for favors from him as His state cannot change. If He has willed Grandma to die, how can our prayers change His mind??
If as in 2) He does not experience discomfort, sadness, pain or pleasure, how can anything we do make the slightest difference to Him. We.being good or bad cannot affect Him.
The confusion is about “perfection” versus “movement to fulfillment”.
Something perfect or complete or “in Act” does not move toward its completion, rather it is already there, and “at rest in its being”. That is God, fully at rest, not moving to become something “more fully or completely God”.
But there is another kind of movement, the “movement of operation”. Some things are perfect, complete, at rest, in no movement, like a ball that stops rolling; it just sits there in a “perfected location or being”. There are other things that are “complete”, but their perfection contains operation. This could be like this computer I am using; it is not becoming a computer, not developing new chips, resistors, capacitors, diodes. But it is at rest as a “perfected computer”. Yet it is doing things in its “rest”. It is processing voltages and currents. It is “operating in its rest”, it is “being itself”.
God is complete, at rest, in Act. Yet he is “operating”, eternally moving, eternally the Father is spirating his whole being into the Son. Eternally the Son is spirating his whole being into the Father. Eternally the Holy Spirit is being the being of the Father into the Son. Eternally the Holy Spirit is being the being of the Son into the Father. This is the operation of Love, uniting yourself into the one you love. And it happens that God also loves what is not God, in a manner that will be appropriate for what is not God.
God is not our servant, waiting around to see what we might want, then jumping into action to make it true. We are not here to enjoy the world until we die, to maximize pleasure and avoid pain, “passibly”. We are here to be and “operate” in our union with Him. Those who seek to live passibly, to find meaning in the satisfaction of appetites in temporal satisfactions, these are seeking to “become really alive”, they are in the movement of becoming perfected, seeking rest, yet never fining it because all that they seek is temporal, it does not last more than a moment, and the appetite looks for some other satisfaction to become at rest.
We, however, have been baptized, with the Spirit of God poured into us, the fullness of God in his being, poured into us, God in Love and by Love (Love is a name for the Holy Spirit) united in Perfection in us; we ARE, we are full, complete. But, is it a completion of unmoving Rest, or are we beings who operate? We are beings who pour out our lives in operation. We pour out our being into the One we love to be united to Him. In a human way, that means we pour ourselves into doing what is pleasing to him; we Love one another. We do not pray for things to make us feel good, we pray “Thy will be done”, we pray, “Let it be done to me according to your word.” And then we do all our dongs virtuously.
When a little boy refuses to clean his room as asked by his parents, he is not hurting his parents. A temper tantrum is one of the things most parents realize their children will try out. But if anything is being “hurt” it is something that does belong to his parents (his room in their house is messy). It is the same with our virtuously done or viciously done deeds. We do not hurt God, but something belonging to him experiences defect done to it. And we ourselves experience hurt in it also - loss of friendship with God with our sin, or conciliation with God in our virtuous doings. As for God, he knows us and what we will do as we are maturing in our adoption as sons to be like our Brother, Jesus.
