“The fundamental point is that such language is not dispensable but necessary, not necessary only for the plowman but necessary for us all, in view of our moral and metaphysical position vis-à-vis God. If a timelessly eternal God is to communicate to embodied intelligent creatures who exist in space and time and to bring about his purposes through them, and particularly to gain certain kinds of responses from them, then he must do so by representing himself to them in ways that are not literally true. How could God put Moses to the test, apart from testing him step by step and so appearing to change his mind? So the impression we may form, reading the biblical narrative, that God changes is an illusion that arises because we learn of God’s purposes for the actors in the narrative (and perhaps for others) only bit by bit.

On the theory of divine accommodation, statements such as “God repented” are false if taken literally, because God does not literally repent and cannot do so. But although they are literally false, some truth about God may nevertheless be conveyed by them.


. In G. E. Ganssle (Ed.), God & Time: Four Views (pp. 45–46). Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic.”