A common response to the many Scriptures that portray God as relenting—that is, changing His mind or regretting something in response to human actions—is that none of this necessarily means He did not already know exactly what He would do or what would happen. In other words, just because God says or swears that He will do something, or may even be in the very act of doing it, does not necessarily mean He did not already intend to say or do exactly that. But this view seems to contradict the natural meaning, and therefore the truthfulness, of God’s own words.
Let me make clear at the outset what I am not arguing. I am not advocating a Reformed or Calvinistic theology in which God has eternally decreed every human action and every event according to an unalterable plan. Quite the opposite. My point is that Scripture portrays human beings as possessing genuine freedom and God as genuinely interacting with and responding to their choices. Whatever theological label one prefers—Arminian, libertarian free will, or otherwise—the essential point is that human decisions are real decisions, not simply the inevitable unfolding of a predetermined script.
Time and again, Scripture says things like:
“Yahweh relented concerning the harm which He said He would do” (Exod. 32:14).
Jonah likewise says that God saw Nineveh’s repentance and “changed His mind concerning the evil which He had spoken He would bring upon them. And He did not bring it” (Jonah 3:10).
Amos twice records, “Yahweh relented concerning this,” followed by, “It shall not be” (Amos 7:3, 6).
Yahweh says, “I regret that I have made Saul king,” explicitly because Saul “turned back from following” Him (1 Sam. 15:11).
He says, “Perhaps they will listen,” so that He may relent from the judgment He is planning (Jer. 26:3).
Abraham is tested, and afterward God says, “Now I know that you fear God” (Gen. 22:12).
Hezekiah is told that he will die, but after he prays and weeps, Yahweh answers, “I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears,” and adds fifteen years to his life (2 Kings 20:1-6).
We could also add 2 Samuel 24:16, where judgment is already underway against Jerusalem and “Yahweh relented of the calamity,” telling the destroying angel, “It is enough!”
And Jeremiah 18:7-10 gives this general principle: God may announce judgment and then relent—that is, change His mind—if a nation or individual repents and obeys God, or announce blessing and alter that outcome if the people turn to evil.
If God did not really mean what He said in the ordinary sense because all outcomes were already known to Him as one infallibly certain and unalterable sequence, then in what meaningful sense can anything God says be taken as describing truth rather than merely the appearance of it?
This is precisely where the question of human freedom becomes important. I am not arguing that human beings operate independently of God, much less that they save themselves apart from His grace. Nor am I arguing for a Calvinistic or Reformed determinism under another name. I am arguing that when Scripture calls people to choose, repent, obey, rebel, endure, or turn away, those choices are genuine. God deals with human beings as morally responsible agents whose decisions really matter and to whom He genuinely responds.
If God knew with absolute certainty before creation that Saul would rebel, Nineveh would repent, Moses would intercede, Hezekiah would pray, or that Abraham, Noah, David, and even His own Son would obey—and at the same time knew with equal certainty every response He Himself would make—then the whole course of human history and human action would already exist as one infallibly certain future. At the very least, that radically changes what we normally mean by free will.
For example, if before I even exist there is already one infallibly certain future in which I choose a particular course of action, then when the moment arrives I cannot actually choose otherwise. I may experience myself as choosing freely, but there was never a genuinely possible alternative. Calling that “free will” risks redefining freedom so that it fits a theological system imposed upon Scripture rather than allowing Scripture itself to define the categories.
That is why saying, “God changed His mind, but He eternally knew that He would change His mind,” can end up emptying ordinary biblical language of its natural force. It reminds me of “Already but Not Yet” theology—formulas that can become ways of preserving a belief system rather than allowing Scripture itself to define the categories. The issue is not whether we can invent clever sayings or formulas, but whether we are properly exegeting Scripture and allowing the words of God to retain their natural meaning.
The fact is, Scripture presents something considerably more straightforward. God deliberates, tests, waits, responds accordingly, and sometimes acts differently from what He had originally announced, sworn to do, or was already in the process of doing. He genuinely interacts with human beings and responds to what people genuinely choose to do or not do. Again, God saying, “Perhaps they will listen,” or “Now I know,” naturally presents more than one possible outcome.
This does not mean that God is ignorant, helpless, surprised in the way a human being might be, or unable to know what He purposes to know. Nor does it mean that His great prophetic purposes are uncertain. The question is whether Scripture itself requires us to believe that every future free choice exists eternally before God as one exhaustively settled and unalterable sequence. That is the claim at issue. It should not simply be assumed as part of the definition of omniscience and then imposed upon passages that appear to say otherwise.
Some might call this anthropomorphic language—that is, figures of speech accommodating God to human understanding and therefore not to be taken literally. But using such technical language does not make what God says meaningless, unreal, or contrary to what actually occurred. Scripture certainly uses human imagery of God—His “hand,” “eyes,” “arm,” and so forth—but those figures still communicate genuine truth about who God is and what He is doing. When Yahweh “stretches out His arm,” we do not conclude that nothing actually happened merely because the expression is figurative.
The same principle applies here. Even if language about God “changing His mind” is anthropomorphic, what truth is that language intended to communicate? It cannot reasonably mean the opposite of what it naturally conveys. “Yahweh relented concerning the harm which He said He would do” cannot simply mean that Yahweh never genuinely intended the announced judgment and never genuinely altered His course. “Now I know” cannot naturally mean that nothing whatsoever became known through the test. Otherwise, anthropomorphism becomes a convenient device for making straightforward statements say virtually anything required by a theological system.
Simply put, figures of speech still communicate truth. They do not turn divine speech into playacting. God’s words are given precisely so that human beings may understand Him. Whatever theological system we adopt should therefore allow expressions such as “I changed My mind,” “I regret,” “perhaps they will listen,” “Now I know,” and “I have heard your prayer” to retain the genuine truth they were intended to communicate rather than explaining away their natural force.
Lastly, none of this takes away from the sovereignty, holiness, or omniscience of God. Nor is it an attempt to smuggle determinism into Scripture under another name. It is actually an argument in the opposite direction: God is sovereign, and human beings are genuinely free and morally responsible creatures whose choices make a real difference in their relationship with Him.
Scripture presents Him as the true and loving God our Father—genuinely responsive, not as some impassible cosmic Puppet Master directing creatures through an already unalterable script. His sovereign purposes will be accomplished, but Scripture does not require us to turn every individual or collective human decision into something eternally fixed before we ever think or act. God can sovereignly determine what He intends to accomplish without thereby predetermining every choice His creatures will make along the way.
