During TheologyOnline's Battle Royale X, Bob Enyart pointed out that the pagan Greek doctrine of utter immutability is the origin of the Christian view that the future is not open, but utterly settled. On this show, TOL member James Hilston basically admits what millions get stuck believing, that even God Himself is NOT free or able to change anything in the eternally pre-scripted future! (Startling!) Martin Luther argues in his Bondage of the Will that "resistless logic" demands an utterly settled future (exhaustive foreknowledge) if you accept the teaching of immutability. (That is, Luther sadly argues that foreknowledge also must be exhaustive because God is [utterly] immutable. And it is by this pagan influence that millions of Christians have tragically come to believe that the sodomite rapes a child because God decrees that he must, for God's own glory, which teaching is a grotesque perversion of God's love, and sacrifices God's goodness on the altar of immutability.) Hilston attempts to show that Bob exaggerates the common Christian belief in "utter immutability" held by Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, etc. and Bob defends his proposition. Finally, Hilston quoted from Lamerson in our own BR X as an example that Calvinists really do believe that God changes, leading me to summarize how severely Lamerson stonewalled on my question of whether or not God changes, and Hilston admitted that yes, Lamerson did dodge that question!
