Augustine of Hippo is one of those writers that you can read as carefully as possible, but at the second reading, you will always say at least once: "I forgot about this beautiful passage," or "I didn't really notice this before," or something like that. In a beautiful and very interesting passage, one of those I forgot about for years (I do not know how) of his On The Trinity (5.16.17), Augustine discusses the possibly problematic question of the relationship between the immutable and simple God and the composed and changeable creature. This difficulty has partly to do with some of the Biblical names ascribed to God, such as Lord and Master. The African theologian starts by asking a question that seems to posit some difficulties in conceiving a relationship between the immutable Creator and the mutable Creature. If a lord also is not so-called unless when he begins to have a slave, that appellation likewise is relative and in time to God; for the creature is not from all eternity, of which He is the Lord. How then shall we make it good that relative terms themselves are not accidental, since nothing happens accidentally to God in time, because He is incapable of change, as we have argued in the beginning of this discussion?
Put in other words: if God is unchangeable, then He is eternally Lord. But, as Lord, He has to be Lord over something. But creation is not eternal but had a temporal beginning. Then, how can God be possible called "Lord" since there was not always something to be Lord over? Augustine offers an initial answer relying on the atemporality of God and the temporality of creation.
God, indeed, is alone eternal, and that times are not eternal on account of their variety and changeableness, but that times nevertheless did not begin to be in time (for there was no time before times began, and therefore it did not happen to God in time that He should be Lord, since He was Lord of the very times themselves, which assuredly did not begin in time).
However, there could still be a difficulty if we think to those things that were not created at the very beginning, not with time but in time, such as, for instance, mankind itself, created on the sixth day of creation, according to the account of Genesis 2.
What will he reply respecting man, who was made in time, and of whom assuredly He was not the Lord before he was of whom He was to be Lord? ... How then shall we make it good that nothing is said of God according to accident?
For Augustine, there is only one possible answer worthy of the glorious being of God.
Nothing happens to His nature by which He may be changed, so that those things are relative accidents which happen in connection with some change of the things of which they are spoken.
God has always been Lord, Master, Creator, and so on. He did not need creation or any creature in order to be so because the concept of “need” presupposes a prior lack of something, but there is no lack of anything in God because He is fully self-sufficient and a se. Since God is the ultimate ground of all reality, and everything receives its existence from Him, these names that Augustine calls "relative accidents" denotes a change in the creature, not in the Creator.
We ought to admit, concerning that unchangeable substance of God, that something may be so predicated relatively in respect to the creature, that although it begin to be so predicated in time, yet nothing shall be understood to have happened to the substance itself of God, but only to that creature in respect to which it is predicated.
This is also true for the believer. The elect believer passes from a state of alienation from God to a state of communion with God. However, this does not necessarily imply mutability in God.
"Lord," it is said, "You have been made our refuge." God, therefore, is said to be our refuge relatively, for He is referred to us, and He then becomes our refuge when we flee to Him; pray does anything come to pass then in His nature, which, before we fled to Him, was not? In us therefore some change does take place; for we were worse before we fled to Him, and we become better by fleeing to Him: but in Him there is no change. So also He begins to be our Father, when we are regenerated through His grace, since He gave us power to become the sons of God. Our substance therefore is changed for the better, when we become His sons; and He at the same time begins to be our Father, but without any change of His own substance. Therefore that which begins to be spoken of God in time, and which was not spoken of Him before, is manifestly spoken of Him relatively; yet not according to any accident of God, so that anything should have happened to Him, but clearly according to some accident of that, in respect to which God begins to be called something relatively.
Now, elsewhere Augustine also says that "the Father loved us also before, not only before the Son died for us, but before He created the world; the apostle himself being witness, who says, 'According as He has chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world'" (13.11.15). Therefore, God "becomes" the believer's Saviour, Lord, Master, etc., only in an improper or relative sense, since He, as He is in Himself, has always been the Saviour, Lord, and Master of his elect people.
When a righteous man begins to be a friend of God, he himself is changed; but far be it from us to say, that God loves any one in time with as it were a new love, which was not in Him before, with whom things gone by have not passed away and things future have been already done. Therefore He loved all His saints before the foundation of the world, as He predestinated them; but when they are converted and find them; then they are said to begin to be loved by Him, that what is said may be said in that way in which it can be comprehended by human affections. So also, when He is said to be angry with the unrighteous, and gentle with the good, they are changed, not He: just as the light is troublesome to weak eyes, pleasant to those that are strong; namely, by their change, not its own.
To enlarge Augustine's parallel between God and light, let us say (with reverence) that God is like a sun, our Sun. The rays of the Sun hit man x and man y. x's skin is covered with a suncream graciously given to him by a merciful Stranger, while y does not possess that gift. Through the protection of the suncream, x is enlightened and beautified. Without the suncream, y is blinded and burnt. The sunbeams are the same sunbeams, coming from the same Sun. Recognizing the limitation of human speech and the inevitable imperfections of the analogy, it can be said that so is the Triune God, shining in His immutable nature as one glorious simple being. The suncream is God's righteousness given in Christ through which x can benefit from God through Christ. God, in the simplicity of His nature and in the sameness with and of His attributes, acts and shines equally towards the elect whom He loves and the unrighteous whom He hates. The difference is that the elect are elected in the Son and loved by the Holy Spirit in eternity and redeemed by the Son incarned in time (a necessary thing, since they are temporal creatures) in order to be justified before God, reconciled to Him (and not Him to them, since He always loved them and was eternally favourable to them in Christ), and to partake of the Divine life through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit who, acording to Augustine, is the personal love and communion of God, love Himself, of the same essence of Father and of the Son (15.17.27-19-37). Differently, the reprobate are outside Christ (Sermons on John, 111.5) and, therefore, recipients of judgment, since God in His perfection cannot bear sin. In all this, "when He is said to be angry with the unrighteous, and gentle with the good, they are changed, not He: just as the light is troublesome to weak eyes, pleasant to those that are strong; namely, by their change, not its own" (5.16.17). ©
