“Indeed, the idea of becoming predicated of the divine being is of no help whatever in theology.
Not only does Scripture testify that in God there is no variation nor shadow due to change [James 1:17], but reflection on this matter also leads to the same conclusion.
Becoming presupposes a cause, for there is no becoming without a cause. But being in an absolute sense no longer permits the inquiry concerning a cause. Absolute being is because it is.
The idea of God itself implies immutability. Neither increase nor diminution is conceivable with respect to God.
He cannot change for better or worse, for He is the absolute, the complete, the true being. Becoming is an attribute of creatures, a form of change in space and time.
But God is who He is, eternally transcendent over space and time and far exalted above every creature.
He rests within Himself and is for that very reason the ultimate goal and resting place of all creatures, the Rock of their salvation, whose work is complete.
Those who predicate any change whatsoever of God, whether with respect to His essence, knowledge, or will, diminish all His attributes: independence, simplicity, eternity, omniscience, and omnipotence.
This robs God of His divine nature, and religion of its firm foundation and assured comfort.
This immutability, however, should not be confused with monotonous sameness or rigid immobility. Scripture itself leads us in describing God in the most manifold relations to all His creatures.
While immutable in Himself, He nevertheless, as it were, lives the life of His creatures and participates in all their changing states. Scripture necessarily speaks of God in anthropomorphic language.
Yet, however anthropomorphic its language, it at the same time prohibits us from positing any change in God Himself.
There is change around, about, and outside of Him, and there is change in people’s relations to Him, but there is no change in God Himself.
In fact, God’s incomprehensible greatness and, by implication, the glory of the Christian confession are precisely that God, though immutable in Himself, can call mutable creatures into being.
Though eternal in Himself, God can nevertheless enter into time and, though immeasurable in Himself, He can fill every cubic inch of space with His presence.
In other words, though He Himself is absolute being, God can give to transient beings a distinct existence of their own.
In God’s eternity there exists not a moment of time; in His immensity there is not a speck of space; in His being there is no sign of becoming.
Conversely, it is God who posits the creature, eternity which posits time, immensity which posits space, being which posits becoming, immutability which posits change.
There is nothing intermediate between these two classes of categories: a deep chasm separates God’s being from that of all creatures.
It is a mark of God’s greatness that He can condescend to the level of His creatures and that, though transcendent, He can dwell immanently in all created beings.
Without losing Himself, God can give Himself, and, while absolutely maintaining His immutability, He can enter into an infinite number of relations to His creatures.”
–Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: God and Creation, Ed. John Bolt, and Trans. John Vriend (vol. 2; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), 2: 158-159.
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