Why God Cannot Change

Most of us are familiar with the scriptures which inform us that God is unchanging.  Moroni goes so far as to explain that, if He changed, "God would cease to be God" (Mormon, 9:19).  But why?

A common explanation, and one that I myself have likely propagated, is that there is a Divine Order, and that He must necessarily follow that order strictly and never deviate so as to maintain His divinity.  Thus change is not allowable, for it would imply a departure from that strict adhesion to the proper order.  Alternatively, it might be supposed that He never changes for us, that constancy is strictly necessary for us to have faith in Him.  How can we put our full trust and reliance in one who is prone to change His mind?  

But change doesn't necessarily imply going back on one's word, or breaking any sort of rules.  Change can simply be different or novel.  Perhaps it might be explained by the fact that He need not change.  As a perfected being, would not any change be imperfection?  But, again, I don't think so.  Individual differences are not imperfections.  I don't believe at all that, once perfected, we will all be characteristically identical. I don't know about you, but my personality has changed over the years, which is not necessarily for better or worse.  Clearly, mortality is meant for development and change, but why would God cease to be God if he became a little more playful (what if His tender mercies became more like pranks every now and then?)?  Certain verses in the Old Testament certainly allude to the idea that God is not always constant (e.g. Jonah 3:10; Amos 7). 

Here's what I think.  God cannot change because of time.  

Consider this little excerpt from former economist Ludwig von Mises' classic, Human Action:

"The notion of change implies the notion of temporal sequence.  A rigid, eternally immutable universe would be out of time....  The concepts of change and of time are inseparably linked together."

Consider, we believe that, for God, all time is before Him.  He is out of time, rather than within time.  He experiences time as an observer, and not as a player.  

What does this mean for change?  Change, as Mises explains, is inextricably tied to the passage of time.  Change means that at one point in time it was this way, and at another point in time it was different. If there is no time, there cannot be change!  Where there is no time, time-based language such as always, never, old, new, different, etc. become meaningless.  It just is.  

Thus for God to change He would have to come into time, and thereby sacrifice the necessarily divine privilege of having all time before Him.