Brief synopsis of Balthasar's overall position on divine immutability

In our first chapter we examined the reasons why Balthasar considered it necessary to propose a modification of the traditional Christian teaching on the divine immutability and impassibility. The main lines of this modification were sketched in a general way; from the revelation of God in Christ, with its trinitarian presuppositions, and within the context of a christological analogy of being, one argued to an event of love in God. Further reasons were given in our second chapter for positing such an event in God, this time deriving from an examination of the relationship between creation (its history and end) and God. Here it was argued that the trinitarian presuppositions of creation, with the positive significance they gave to otherness and difference without detriment to unity, allowed one to speak in terms of the effect of creation on God, without elimination of the divine transcendence. Within an analogical context (which, in attempting to convey the uniquely personal nature of the God/human relationship, could use language extending on a continuum from the metaphorical to the purely abstract) it was possible to attribute some very untraditional characteristics to God, including forms of surprise, receptivity, self-transcendence (‘ever-more’) and something that was remotely and mysteriously like suffering. It was possible also, to a limited extent, to specify the adjustments required when transferring language from the human to the divine spheres; nonetheless an intrinsic imprecision was also noted, appropriate to the partial nature of human knowledge in respect of the abiding mystery and transcendence of God.