# Passibility in Recent Theology



## CharlieJ (May 24, 2010)

I am aware that several modern theologians have tried to overturn the classical teaching that God, including Christ in his deity, is impassible. Does anyone know of conservative responses to the modern arguments for passibility?


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## yoyoceramic (May 24, 2010)

I don't know what a modern theologian is supposed to be, but if he agrees with at least the part of the Nicene Creed that states:
_"...And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father;"_​and he understands that Isaiah 53 is referring to Jesus as the _suffering_ servant, then I see no other place to go. 

It would seem to me that the heresy here is a form of docetism. In the words of Ignatius against the Gnostics:

_They [the docetists] abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again. They who deny the gift of God are perishing in their disputes*_http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0109.htm​


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## lynnie (May 24, 2010)

( hey brother, this is the hardest Reformed doctrine I ever had to face. But when you submit to it, well, the real God is so much better than the old emotional one!)

\Part 1: THEOLOGY PROPER\23. God's Blessedness, or Impassibility\ - Part 1: THEOLOGY PROPER\23. God's Blessedness, or Impassibility\Conclusion: Minding our Language and Mending it.\

23
God's Blessedness, or Impassibility 

In a familiar passage wherein Paul speaks of how God 'gave them up to dishonourable passions' (Rom 1:26) he prefaces the remark by referring to God 'the Creator, who is blessed forever' (Rom 1:25). There is an apparent contrast between people who have 'dishonourable passions' and the Creator, who as 'blessed ', has no passion at all. 'In the New Testament ‎eulog¢tos ‎(blessed) is never used of men. It is exclusively doxological'.1 When the ancient rabbis contemporary with the New Testament, and the people who emulated them, used this word for God (or its Hebrew-Aramaic equivalent) it was as 'Ersatz des Gottesnamens' (substitute for God's name).2 

Though throughout the Bible God is anthropopathically represented as hating, repenting, grieved, loving and similar, these terms were not (or should not be) understood literally any more than references to God's eyes, nostrils, wings, feathers, hands and the like.

God is 'blessed forever' (Rom 1:25; 9:5), never before time began, nor since, in need of anything to be supremely 'happy'. He created the world sovereignly by will and word, but not out of any inner or outer necessity, nor swayed by emotion.

That there is something in God which is commensurable by analogy with human emotions (as we shall say more about) cannot be doubted. But it is not per se passion, pain, feeling in any ordinary sense.

At the present time, social and intellectual forces, both within and without orthodox theology, are very unfriendly to the consistently-held orthodox doctrine of the divine blessedness, or impassibility : hence this chapter, which is a condensation of my own research on the subject.



I. Definitions.

Impassibility comes into our language as translation of the Greek word ‎apatheia ‎in the writings of church Fathers, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Apatheia , despite the obvious etymological connection with apathy and apathetic in modern English (Pelikan), started out as meaning 'the state of an ‎apath¢s ‎(alpha privative, plus ‎pathos‎) without pathos or suffering'.3 Among the Greek Fathers ‎pathos ‎or passion was the right word for the suffering of Christ, as it still is. So in theology, to be impassible means primarily to be incapable of suffering. Early theology affirmed that in heaven our resurrected bodies will be ‎apath¢s ‎in this sense. The word came to be extended to mean incapable of emotion of any kind and beyond that, ‎apath¢s ‎(impassible) in important theological discourse meant without sexual desire.4 As applied to God, incapacity for any emotions sometimes is meant. We will return to this. The twelfth canon of the Second Council of Constantinople ( AD 553, Fifth Ecumenical) seems to say that Christ on earth was impassible in the sense of 'longings (passions, presumably sexual) of the flesh'.5 

In this chapter I am interested mainly in the question of whether or not the divine nature is capable of emotion, including, in a secondary way, the experience of suffering.



II. Impassibility in the Ancient Church.

There was no difference of opinion on this subject among orthodox theologians of the ancient church. Even Tertullian (c. 160 A.D. - 240 A.D.), perhaps the most anti-philosophy theologian among important early writers, vehemently opposed the notion that God could suffer pain.

This appears prominently in the first line of Tertullian's five books Against Marcion . Arguing that since goodness is the most central attribute of God, this center never wavers for any cause. The expression of this goodness as it occurs in what God does in His creation varies. 'The differing expressions', says Tertullian 'are but the expressions of the one constitutive attribute of God — his unchanging and perfect goodness. Thus while God himself does not change... yet the mode of expressing his goodness changes in accordance with the change in the human situation and circumstance.'6 

Reading of the Cappadocian Fathers (Gregory Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa and Basil the Great ) in preparation for a paper on the post-Nicea apologetics of orthodoxy sparked my notice of uniform and vehement agreement of Christians on God's impassibility . A careful rereading of J. N. D. Kelly's Early Christian Doctrines confirms that all the Fathers, including even most heretics, strongly believed the divine Being is impassible.7 Jaroslav Pelikan shows at length and in detail that belief in divine impassibility was firmly asserted by all the orthodox Fathers.8 

This issue colored every aspect of efforts to clarify Christology at the first four ecumenical councils (Nicea 325 A.D., Constantinople 381 A.D., Ephesus 431 A.D., Chalcedon 451 A.D.). Nobody orthodox denied impassibility and even the heterodox acknowledged it. They did not separate impassibility from divine simplicity (mentioned more frequently) but regarded it as a necessary aspect of simplicity. They did not cite Aristotle 's unmoved mover, Plato 's eternal forms or anything of the sort. Their arguments were based mainly on the usual biblical texts we still today cite to teach God's immutability .9 Simplicity, that is, God is not composed of parts, was then as now, established logically. Anything composed of parts is the sum of the parts, each of course less than infinite. Any number of finite parts do not add up to infinity. Since God is infinite, as established by Scripture and demonstrated by reason, God is simple, not compound or complex. The three members of the Trinity each possess the Godhead fully. They are not three thirds: a trinity of God, not three gods.

At this point I want to anticipate charges that the early church Fathers corrupted a pure biblical doctrine of a loving, personal God through introduction of Greek speculative philosophy. Let us hear what they said about this charge.

Thomas Weinandy in concluding his chapter on 'The Patristic Doctrine of God' observes:

What the Fathers brought to the philosophical conversation, a conversation that had been in progress for centuries was precisely the new data of the Christian faith — the revelation of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. Whatever they said that was new was not due to their faithfulness to some philosophical innovators. They were theological innovators and their innovation was founded on the Bible.10 



A sophisticated Christian theology which employs formal logic, precise definitions and elegant literary techniques, as some of the ancient theologians did, does not constitute betrayal of the gospel treasure. The early theologians nevertheless had to defend their doctrine against detractors and opponents. Irenaeus , while insisting 'the faith' is 'one', yet explained that theological refinements were of value. In Against Heresies he says, 'Inasmuch as certain men have set the truth aside... by means of their craftily constructed plausibilities draw away minds of the inexperienced... I have felt constrained to compose the following treatise in order to expose their machinations'.11 These 'certain men' are later named. Most of them were highly educated scholastics, wise in their own eyes, whom Irenaeus felt he had to meet, not entirely on their own ground, but in such a way as to provide his readers sufficient skill and knowledge to rescue themselves from these so called 'gnostics' — not a term of derision then, but more equivalent to our 'experts' or 'intelligensia'. His book is strewn with the language of these people. So to answer these errorists some skill (he does not call it philosophy) is helpful. They should not be allowed to get away with doctrinal murder, so to speak, just because they are cunning and eloquent.12 More importantly, by such skill 'one may [more accurately than another] bring out the meaning of those things which have been spoken in parables, and accommodate them to the general scheme of the faith; and explain [with special clearness] the operation and dispensation of God connected with human salvation....'13 

Christian theology was not 'as Harnak tried to maintain, the product of encounter between Gospel and Hellenism. It is not the Hellenisation of Christianity. It was not the fruit of speculation but sincere effort to use the techniques of the learning of the day to elaborate Christian truth.'14 

Clement of Alexandria had to face opposition from those who opposed any employment of philosophical learning. He said they 'prefer to block their ears in order not to hear the sirens' and that Christians as a whole 'fear Greek philosophy as children fear ogres — they are frightened of being carried off by them. If our faith (I will not say our gnosis [knowledge]) is such that it is destroyed by force of argument, then let it be destroyed; for it will have been proved that we do not possess the truth.'15 

Clement asserted that philosophic learning has many positive uses. He really means theology which employs the techniques of learning, which we would now call systematic theology.16 

The climax of ancient consolidation of orthodoxy was in AD 451, at Chalcedon, the Fourth Ecumenical Council. Jaroslav Pelikan devotes several pages merely to summarize the impassibility doctrine as expressed in the Fathers before the Fourth Ecumenical Council.17 Rather, since the climax of consolidation of orthodoxy came at Chalcedon 451, the Fourth Council, let me cite two learned Fathers whose views on impassibility coincided quite exactly and whose views were specifically endorsed and incorporated in the Definition and Canons of that Council. The letters of each were read at the Council and essentially adopted as the doctrine of the Council: hence passed into received orthodoxy of the church from that day to this.

Neither was present and neither expressly addressed the Council. Cyril's 'Dogmatic Letter ' addressed the heresy of Nestorius and had been written to him twenty years earlier. The letter by Leo, Bishop of Rome (The Tome of Leo ), had been first addressed to Flavian, Bishop of Constantinople, two years before the Council. Both Epistles were read, weighed and vigourously endorsed at Chalcedon.

Cyril's letter had been first addressed directly to Nestorius just before the Third Council (Ephesus 431 A.D.) because it was he who was deemed to be dividing the church through denial that Mary gave birth to incarnate deity. Cyril's Epistle to Nestorius was then read at the Third Council. It had a positive effect in winning that Council to the orthodoxy of 325 A.D. (Nicaea) and 381 A.D. (Constantinople). But shortly trouble arose from another quarter. Eutyches , an old archimandrite at Constantinople, promoted the doctrine 'not only that after his incarnation Christ had only one nature but also that the body of Christ is not of like substance with our own'.18 This and other problems made a Fourth Council (Chalcedon 451 A.D.) necessary.

So Cyril's letter was read again at the later Council.19 Some revelant portions of Cyril's letter now follow:

We say that he 'suffered and rose again'. We do not mean that God the Word suffered in his Deity... for the Deity is impassible because it is incorporeal. But the body which had become his own body suffered these things, and therefore he himself is said to have suffered them for us. The impassible [God] was in the body which suffered.20 



The Tome of Leo was read by his representative. Hold in mind that the doctrinal problem being addressed was to define the incarnation of the Son of God. As Cyril's letter was intended to correct Nestorius, so Leo's Tome was to correct Eutyches. I cite several portions related to impassibility .

While the distinctiveness of both natures was preserved, and both met in one Person... the inviolable [divine and impassible] was united to the passible, so that... the same 'Mediator'... might from the one element be capable of dying and also from the other be incapable [of dying].21 



The Lord of the universe allowed his infinite majesty to be overshadowed, and took upon him the form of a servant; the impassible God did not disdain to be passible Man, and the immortal to be subject to the laws of death.22 



To pass by many points — it does not belong to the same nature to weep with feelings of pity over a dead friend [Jesus over Lazarus] and, after the mass of stone had been removed from the grave where he had lain four days, by a voice of command to raise him up to life again.23 



In the first excerpt passibility is said to be part of human nature but not of God's. In the second the same idea is enlarged in elegant language which says that God was impassible and immortal, hence incapable of suffering as of dying. In the third, as God the Son our Lord was 'incapable of feelings of pity', such as He expressed when He wept at Lazarus' tomb. 'Incapable of feelings of pity' means impassible in the sense of incapable of emotion.

At this climax in the doctrinal consolidation of Christian antiquity, the report of Session II goes on to say that 'after the reading of the foregoing epistle' the most reverend bishops cried out: 'This is the faith of the fathers, this is the faith of the Apostles.... Piously and truly did Leo teach, so taught Cyril. Everlasting be the memory of Cyril...This is the true faith.'24 

In all of Christian antiquity I was able to find only Origen ( AD 185-254) among the learned, orthodox writers (later declared heterodox) who dissented from this view. In a book on early Christian doctrine, Gods and the One God by R. M. Grant, the author shows that Origen's early views promoted the Christian consensus that God is impassible but late in life, when of about sixty-nine years, he taught that God is passible. Grant comments, 'Apparently the threat of Patripassianism did not bother Origen, at least at this point.'25 

[My pursuit of the subject of this chapter has not, of course, included reading even in translation of all of Origen's extant writings. Others have, among them Thomas Weinandy, cited frequently in this chapter. He contends that Origen, in an anthropopathic sense, meant that the transitive attributes (my term) of God set forth in Scripture mean to say God has steady unwavering love, hate, grief, etc. Yet, as a metaphysician trying to affirm absolutes, even Origen held God to be impassible. This is to say, 'Origen upholds both the impassibility of God and the passion of God. To say that god is impassible is to deny emotional (i.e. to speak with anthropopathism ) changes of states with God. It is a negative way of upholding the absolute otherness of God and of His radical perfection'. [Thomas Weinandy, Does God Suffer? (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2000), p. 99]



III. Why the Patristic Consensus on God's Impassibility ?

Enlightenment and liberal critics and historians blame the influence of Plato and other Greek philosophers, but I propose to the contrary a compelling reason in the fact that in Scripture God is most forcefully and grandly said to be supremely 'blessed'.

This occurs ten times in the New Testament, eight times employing ‎eulog¢tos‎, used only of God in the New Testament. I cite two of these, Rom 1:25 and 9:5. The first refers to 'God... the creator, who is blessed [‎eulog¢tos‎] forever! Amen.' The second speaks of 'Christ who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.'26 The first two refer to Jehovah God, the others to the 'Father of the Lord Jesus Christ'. In Mark 14:61 the high priest is employing 'the Blessed' as a very old circumlocution for Jehovah and in 2 Cor 11:31, 'he who is blessed [‎eulog¢tos‎] forever' [emphasis added] is undoubtedly the familiar Septuagint rendering of Ex 3:14 'I am ‎ho on‎' (I Am The One Who Is). It seems to me relevant to the 'impassibility ' of God that ‎eulog¢tos ‎means 'blessed', that it renders ‎baruk ‎(blessed) throughout the Septuagint and seems to refer to the joy of God in heaven and of those whom God has blessed there. In standard Christian theology and hymnody 'blessed' (and 'blessedness') is the standard word for the joys of heaven, unmixed with pain or sorrow (Rev 21:4).

Twice in the New Testament, the word ‎makarios ‎is used of God, both times by Paul (viz. 'the gospel of the blessed God', see 1 Tim 1:11 and 6:15,16). It is a peroration of Paul: 'the blessed [‎ho Makarios‎] and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality dwelling in unapproachable light.' In this passage Paul seems to exhaust the powers of the Greek language to proclaim what recent scholars (neo-orthodox, orthodox, Roman Catholic and even some evangelicals) phrase as 'the Wholly Other', still 'dwelling in unapproachable [uncreated] light' even as incarnate in Christ on the cross. I think ‎ho apath¢tos ‎(impassible) if it had then been in current use for precise theological statement, Paul might have put it in in apposition to ‎ho makarios‎, the blessed.'.

Though I shall not here carry this argument further, the biblical evidence from ‎eulog¢tos ‎and ‎makarios ‎has impressed me that we need not give up the impassibility of God. God transcendent in heaven and immanent in all creation is supremely happy (a synonym of blessed), always has been so, and forever will be.



IV. Impassibility to the Reformation.

As an aspect of the simplicity of God, impassibility continued to be a seldom contested assumption of orthodox theology. It shall be sufficient for present purposes to cite the scholastic work of Anselm that evanglicals love most to cite — Cur Deus Homo (Why the God-man). 'The doctrine of the atonement in Anselm of Canterbury was based on the axiom that the divine nature is impassible, and that it can in no sense be brought down from its loftiness or toil in what it wills to do.' I quote one of Anselm's responses in his dialogue with Boso in Cur Deus Homo:

For without doubt we maintain that the divine nature is impassible — that it cannot at all be brought down from its exaltation... And we affirm that the Lord Jesus Christ is true God and true man — one person in two natures, and two natures in one person. Therefore when we state that God undergoes some lowliness or weakness, we understand this to be in accordance with the weakness of the human substance which he assumed, not in accordance with the sublimity of his impassible [divine] nature.27 





V. Impassibility among the Reformers of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.

It is frequently remarked that Martin Luther was unconcerned about consistency in doctrines. Neo-orthodox writers are pleased with his alleged paradoxes. And we must acknowledge that his kerygmatic theology (doctrinal preaching) was at certain points in tension with his dogmatics, if it is correct to use that word in its proper sense. At the close of Althaus's treatment of Luther's 'Two-nature Christology' he remarks that it was not 'unified within itself but displays contradictions'.28 In one place Luther could say 'Christ on the cross did not feel his deity but suffered purely as a man'.29 Yet he could also say that 'the deity of Christ, because of the incarnation and of its personal unity with the humanity, enters into the uttermost depths of its suffering. God suffers in Christ. However Luther did not teach patripassianism... He always regarded God's suffering as an incomprehensible mystery.'30 

Calvin was more explicit about employing two manners of speaking about God. On the one hand he insisted that we must employ the ad hominem, metaphoric language of biblical revelation, and on the other hand we must employ some technical language in dogmatics because it is necessary to define truth and to expose heresy. In this I think Calvin had as great a debt to Hilary of Poitiers as to any other theologian. He does not quote Hilary but acknowledges admiration for him, especially Hilary's idea about how to interpret the Bible's way of communicating truth about God. I cite a sentence in comment on Ps 110:3, 'I have begotten thee from the womb before the morning' (LXX). God's 'purpose is to educate the faculties of men up to the knowledge of the faith by clothing Divine verities in words descriptive of human circumstances'31 and similarly through several paragraphs.

Calvin puts it this way: 'Let us then leave to God the knowledge of himself... But we shall be "leaving it to him" if we conceive him to be as he reveals himself to us, without inquiring about him elsewhere than from his word.'32 Many times in his writings Calvin discourages all speculation about God's essence. Rather, says he, we should contemplate God in His works as guided by the Bible.33 Yet that did not prevent Calvin from employing the somewhat speculative categories of the 'way of negation' ultimately derived from ancient 'enlightened' Greek speculations about Zeus or Theos conceived in a monotheistic manner (immutability , infinity and similar). Among these Calvin rather incidentally lets out his acceptance of the patristic consensus on divine impassibility . Once in comment on God's 'repentance' he says the description of the deity is 'accommodated to our capacity so that we may understand it. Now the mode of accommodation is for him to represent himself to us not as he is in himself, but as he seems to us. "Although he is beyond all disturbance of mind... whenever we hear that God is angered, we ought not to imagine any emotion [i.e. passion] in him, but rather to consider that this expression has been taken from our own human experience" [emphasis added].'34 A sifting of the Institutes turned up several passages wherein Calvin accepts it as axiomatic that the divine nature in itself is impassible.

Impassibility was not in itself an important issue in the sixteenth century. However, it is clear that the patristic axiom was not rejected. Theologians continued to affirm the immanent attributes of God such as simplicity, immutability, infinity and the rest. In that context of a priori thought about God, impassibility really does not need to be mentioned, for it is a near necessary inference.

Quite early in the Reformation Era the Anglican Articles of 1553 A.D. (Art. #1) affirmed that, 'God is without bodily parts or passions.' This is usually understood to mean that in His incorporeal essence God has no passions, for He is forever 'blessed and only potentate', and so on. The first paragraph of the Augsburg Confession says that evangelical churches confess 'that the decree of the Nicene Synod concerning the unity of the divine essence... to wit, that there is one divine essence... eternal, incorporeal [incorporeus], without parts'. The word impassible is pointedly omitted, though the Nicene Creed as understood by the framers of it ( AD 324, 381 A.D.) unquestionably meant that too.35 Charles P. Krauth, the greatest of Lutheran historians of The Conservative (Lutheran) Reformation, evidently thinks that the divine nature was impassible before incarnation but by virtue of communication of attributes (Communicatio Idiomatum ) the divine nature became passible. So before the incarnation God was impassible but now is passible. He argues this at length.36 If Krauth is right, then after the incarnation the divine nature — Father, Son and Holy Ghost — is passible.

The Roman Church, following the ancients, continued to affirm God the Father is 'invisible, incapable of suffering, immortal, incomprehensible, immutable'37 though the Son incarnate was impassible, untroubled 'by the sufferings of the soul and the longings of the flesh' (cites Canon 12 of Second Council of Constantinople [Fifth Ecumenical]).38 



VI. Among the Immediate Heirs of the Reformation (1600s, 1700s).

Through the scholastic period of Protestant theology I detect no variation from the patristic consensus. The Westminster Confession I, iv , approved by the Long Parliament 1647, says 'God... is... a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions'. I think that clearly says that God's 'infinite being' is 'without parts or passions' as in similar way theology of the day affirmed, though Buswell does not think so39 and A. A. Hodge is obscure on the matter.40 Buswell seems to say that it means God has no body which has parts. I think it says God's infinite being has no body, no parts and no passions, and so agree all the usual readers of the confession.

For present purposes I shall quote only one further representative of the period, the most learned and voluminous of England's dissenting (Baptist) theologians, John Gill (1697-1771). His two great volumes (A Body of Doctrinal Divinity) are the very embodiment of a systematic theology bound to the Scriptures. Even present-day publishers of new editions of Gill's Divinity emphasize that his discussions are in the very language of Scripture. He wrote:

...for as it has been commonly said, 'Christ remained what he was, and assumed what he was not'; and what he assumed added nothing to his divine person; he was only manifest in the flesh; he neither received any perfection or inperfection, from the human nature; though that received dignity and honour by its union to him and was adorned with the gifts and graces of the Spirit without measure.... Nor was any change made in the divine nature by the sufferings of Christ; the divine nature is impassible, and is one reason why Christ assumed the human nature, that he might be capable of suffering and dying.... Yet he was crucified in the human nature only, and his blood was shed in that, to which the divine person gave virtue and efficacy, through its union to it; but received no change at all by this.41 



If you have followed the progress of this chapter you will recognize this extract as a near republication of Cyril's Epistle to Nestorius and Leo's Tome at the Council of Chalcedon ( AD 451).

Both Lutheran and Reformed theology went through a stage of 'scholastic fortification' of the early evangelical symbols and other Reformation formulas: to be followed by a rationalistic reaction in the 'Age of Reason'. In the scholastic period, speculative writing about the simplicity and immutability of God rendered Him not just immutable but almost immobile, hence of course impassible.42 



VII. In the Late Protestant Era.

In Britain and America, the immutability of God came to be a matter of dispute between orthodox writers of Calvinistic persuasion and Wesleyan theologians. I suppose it was a spin-off from the debated question of free will . This is explained clearly in the article on 'Immutability ' in the McClintock and Strong Cyclopaedea (IV, 20). This truly great work of the nineteenth century, though of Arminian-Wesleyan aegis, is always scrupulously fair.

The article first quotes the work of Stephen Charnock (1628-75), On the Divine Attributes, on immutability, a decidedly Calvinistic work. The excerpt was well chosen by the editors. Charnock is still in print and read today as he was when I was in seminary, and for about 300 years now. For Charnock, God is a 'Being, whom nothing from without can affect or alter... an eternal Being, who always has and always will go on in the same tenor of existence'. The word impassibility is not there, but the idea is clearly affirmed in other words.

Then the Cyclopaedea assigns equal space to Richard Watson (1781-1833), the classic interpreter of Wesley in theological terms and most eminent Wesleyan theologian (and perhaps still ought to be).43 After gentle warning to take the Calvinists cautiously Watson (who always wrote in the style of educated English Calvinists) defends the view that God's immutability consists not in his essential nature or even adherence to his 'purposes' (which in Arminian theology are subject to change) 'but in his never changing the principles of his administration'.44 In favour of this Watson (whom I checked out at length in the two tattered volumes of his Institutes that I am privileged to own) writes at considerable length. I suppose this divergence prevails to the present. Interest in such matters has waned in modern Methodism , though not in some related evangelical Wesleyan groups.



VIII. The Impassibility of God in Recent and Contemporary Theology.

With the coming of the Age of Reason (the eighteenth century onward), theologians outside the stream of rather strict Augustinian orthodoxy (Calvinist and Roman Catholic) have veered sharply away from views of God which could entertain simplicity (no parts), and hence immutability and consequent impassibility . Orthodox Wesleyan Arminianism , early in the epoch, has already been noted. Philosophical-theological development (Schleiermacher and his emphasis on feeling, Kierkegaard and his anti-metaphysical subjectivism, and the like) began the mood that welcomed departure from classical theistic-Trinitarian assumptions. Then came Ludwig Feuerbach (1808-1872). In his books The Essence of Religion and The Essence of Christianity, Feuerbach made two points of interest to the present subject. In the first place, theological dogma is purely subjective in origin and crystallizes the inner aspirations, hopes and fears of people. Their inner yearnings create pictures of what they seek. The mental pictures are projected by creating gods which embody what they seek. In the second place, the pervasiveness of evil in the sense of human suffering proves that an omnipotent, holy and loving God does not exist. He is only the creation of religious people, by projection of what they desperately wish to be true. Feuerbach also had a socialist-political agenda to promote with his 'protest atheism'. He rightly discerned that the God of the Bible and Christian creeds could hardly be enlisted to support Feuerbach's political-social programme.

Then also came Adolph von Harnak (1851-1936). In his view Christian theology got off to a bad start by pollution with classical Greek ideas of God, derived mainly from Plato. His seven volumes of History of Dogma (1886-1890) trace what he thought was a true history of a false orthodox theology which 'jumped the track' of ethical religion in the first apologists of the second century and never got back. Christian theology until the rise of liberalism has been simple faith in a God of love taught and exemplified by Jesus, but transformed by the influence of Greek philosophy into cold-blooded dogma.

Several recent and contemporary figures including Karl Barth, John Macquarrie and Jürgen Moltmann, all theologically somewhere between historic orthodoxy and modern liberalism, have sought to answer the protest atheism of Feuerbach, the pure ethicism of Harnak, and liberalism in general by resort to a redefinition of our Lord's incarnation and the holy Trinity. By resort to a redefinition of Trinitarianism these authors have sought to rescue God from the charge of impassibility , which they equate to impassivity and immobility. Jürgen Moltmann, in a manner quite consistent with ancient Patripassianism, has opposed the historic orthodoxy. Recent Roman Catholic theology (not all of it orthodox in any historic sense) is on both sides of the issue.

They have influenced many in the same direction, some of them evangelicals. Among those who now rather thoroughly reject impassibility and regularly participate in programmes of the Evangelical Theological Society are Gordon Lewis and Millard Erickson. One of the founding members of ETS, J. O. Buswell rejected it also.

A rather dispassionate survey of the present situation will be found in Alister E. McGrath's Christian Theology.45 McGrath, who seems to be writing for secular university classes, presents the matter rather clearly but characteristically, without making any commitment of his own. Perhaps it's the current British style, though if so there are exceptions.46 

Process Theology , as a matter of principle, rejects the impassibility of God. Tracing their theology to the philosophy of Hartshorne and before him of Whitehead, they say that 'this concept derives from the Greeks'. Since the world is part of God's 'constitutive reality', the future of the world is not foreseen to God. Self-determining acts of free, worldly beings like human beings contribute to His being. Hence 'These three terms — unchangeable, passionless, and absolute — finally say the same thing, that the world contributes nothing to God and that God's influence upon the world is in no way conditioned by unforeseen, self-determining activities of us worldly beings. Process Theology denies the existence of this God.'

W. Waite Willis, Jr claims the Trinitarian theologies of K. Barth and J. Moltmann as his own and claims Karl Rahner also as a fellow traveller. He asserts that this theology answers the atheistic critics of Christianity of modern times, especially Feuerbach. The God of speculative theology, says Willis, is the one against whom 'protest atheism' succeeds. The Trinitarian God of the Bible has no problem of unexplained suffering. He's against it and suffers from it along with us and will continue to do so until in the consummation, God, we may suppose, becomes completely God. Is this a union of krisis theology with process theology and with liberation theology?47 As related specifically to impassibility , I cite the following assertions of Willis regarding theodicy and the Trinity:

God... has become concrete and sensuous.... [T]he Trinity comprehends the Christian God's concrete, sensuous, praxis on behalf of human suffering... God... joins the protest... against human suffering... works in suffering love and... will not be fully God while suffering persists... surrenders his impassibility .48 





Conclusions and Proposals.

But we really cannot give up the doctrine of divine impassibility . Recent movement to demolish it takes away too much. I see no mightier than Cyril, Leo, Augustine, the three Cappadocians, Anselm, Aquinas, Calvin, Edwards, Gill and Shedd on the present scene or the future horizon. It may be that chucking the ancient faith in this regard is a concession to the Zeitgeist, particularly to the subjectivism at all levels in popular thought today.

When the language of biblical revelation speaks of a wide range of God's emotions it is speaking analogically. Perhaps Thomas Aquinas can help us.

Thomas pointed out that when an adjective (attribute) is ascribed to God, 'wise', for example, it must be understood to apply to God's very being (essence), an aspect of His indivisible simplicity. But when applied to mankind, 'wise' does not apply to our essence, for sometimes we are unwise. So there is analogy between God's 'wise' and mankind's 'wise', but only of proportionality. In an analogy of proportion, 'Two things are related by a direct proportion of degree, distance, or measure: e.g. 6 is in direct proportion to 3, of which it is the double.... This analogy is called analogy of proportion.'49 But when 'two objects are related one to the other by means of another and intermediary relation; for instance, 6 and 4 are analogous in this sense that 6 is the double of 3 as 4 is of 2, or [in mathematical procedure] 6:4::3:2... this kind of analogy is based on the proportion of properties; it is called analogy of proportionality.'50 G.M. Sauvage cites Thomas' treatise, 'De veritate' (Concerning Truth), not in either Summa Theologica or Summa Contra Gentiles. Thomas does not describe analogy of proportionality in the articles on analogy in the two Summas (Theologica i, 13 and Contra Gentiles i, 34).

I think analogy is still the route to go, especially what Thomas Aquinas called the analogy of proportionality, or, as I prefer, of 'commensurability'. Because mankind is commensurable with the divine essence, God could become a member of our race, but never an ape, a camel, an insect or a fish.

Yet we cannot leave the matter there even today. Like us, the believers of old said, 'Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so', and 'the Father loves me too, or He would not have given his only begotten Son to save us from our sins'. The pastors of ancient times also read their Bibles — more than we, for they didn't have all the 'how to' courses in seminary to teach and to master! So they also knew of God's love for His people in every age, however explained.



Final Proposals.

To bring this matter to at least a tentative conclusion, it seems to me we must affirm that we know as much of God as He has seen fit to reveal. The way of negation (incomprehensibility, immutability and similar) in theology is a way of confessing this in part. The simplicity and immutability of God are, however, not merely speculation, Greek or otherwise. Sound Trinitarian teaching affirms not a tripartite God but one God — a God who has no parts at all. In the plurality of personae, prosopa, hypostases, persons is a plurality-in-unity that cannot quite fully be explained, but only affirmed and believed. Like Augustine we affirm, 'Certainly there are three.... Yet when it is asked, what three, human language labors from great poverty of speech. We say "three persons", not that it may [rightly] so be said, but that we may not say nothing at all'.51 

Similarly, it seems to me, to reject the impassibility of the Godhead is to dissipate the unity (simplicity and immutability ) of God in accommodation to a modern understanding of what constitutes personality that is unknown to the people who gave us not only the doctrine but the terminology of a Trinitarian theology. The creeds do not teach three distinct centres of consciousness in the Godhead, as is popularly supposed. Where we say person the ancients said soul . They did not say there are three souls in the Godhead; but that seems to be what many mean by three persons.

Jonathan Edwards rejected every notion of an indigent, insufficient or mutable God 'or any dependence of the creator on the creature for any part of His perfections or happiness'.52 In such a case God did not plan, create and control a world with a man in it who would breed a fallen race so God could either be happy or unhappy. God did not need mankind either then or now in order to be 'God blessed forever'.

The anthropopathisms of the biblical revelations are all true on the basis of analogy. Analogy means similarity of some sort, but not equivalence; otherwise it is not analogy but definition. Ancient theologians figured out right away that God's 'repentance' is not an emotion of His being but a change of treatment of mankind or some other part of the creation. Their writings employ the very illustrations (sun's actions on clay or wax, and so on) that we use today. The analogy is a bit crippled but about the best 1,900 years of thinking has produced. As to God's love and all other emotions — fear, hate, jealousy and the like — we then must say that just as there is analogy between mankind's repentance and God's change of treating us so there is analogy between our emotions (or passibility) and something about God's treatment of us. We just have not found a good name for it — yet. There is no consistency in regarding God's hate, repentance and wrath as only analogically true while making out love and suffering to be non-analogical. We cannot, in my judgment, have it both ways, and this is what those theologians — evangelical or otherwise — are asking us to do in saying God is passible, that is, subject to emotions, either of suffering or its opposite. Prayer is only one aspect of worship which depends on the validity of analogy. In prayer we say, 'Our Father'. Yet father is a human word indicating a human function of begetting with a whole plethora of accompanying ideas. Some of this is like God. Some is not. It does not fit God perfectly at all, but whether in the prayer of a small child or the dying words of his grandmother, 'Father' is a right name for the God of revelation and the vocabulary of prayer.



Conclusion: Minding our Language and Mending it.

Though we affirm the limitations and values of analogical language, let us not read into God's being any human ideal having its origin in the spirit of the present world. The spirit of our epoch is not the Spirit of God, but the sullen mood of this present evil age. There may be something analogous to sexuality in God — the doctrine of the image of God may imply such — but no sexuality. So there is something in God by way of a certain analogy called love and/or hate, but no emotion.

I think we may greatly exaggerate correspondences of analogy in talk about God. There may be analogy of proportionality rather than of strict proportion, to employ the language of medieval, scholastic discourse. But the distinction between analogy of proportion and analogy of proportionality drawn from Thomas Aquinas is a subject for another day. Something about mankind is analogous to something in God. But that scarcely gives us leave to define God as simply a human being on infinite scale, as has been done in polytheism and some Christian writing. The other extreme is so to emphasize the immutability of the divine Being as to render Him immobile, not free even to answer our prayers. This was characteristic of some theology of the age of Protestant scholasticism.53 

The language of technical theological discourse has its place, and that is what I am defending. I must, however, live and die with the language of revelation as expressed best in the perennial hymns. In this too God's lack of change of any kind, dare I say, impassibility , has a prominent place. A stanza from Henry F. Lyte's hymn lyric, Abide With Me, is a noble example:

Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day;

Earth's joys grow dim, its glories pass away;

Change and decay in all around I see;

O thou who changest not, abide with me.

(from Systematic Theology © 2005 by Robert Duncan Culver. All rights reserved.)_


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## MarieP (May 24, 2010)

How about a modern response to modern responses against passibility?

The Emotivity of God

Responses addressed:

1. Anthropomorphism
2. Emotions imply imperfection or lack of sovereignty
3. God's emotions must be like ours.
4. Emotions threaten God's serenity.
5. Emotions mean God changes.


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## jwright82 (May 24, 2010)

The best source that I have found is the book Beyond The Bound: Open Theism and The Undermining of Biblical Christianity edited by John Piper, Justin Taylor, and Paul Kjoss Helseth. It is published by Crossway books. 

It sounds as though you are refering to open theism. They claim to be more biblical than us because they believe that when the Bible speaks of God repenting and the like than it is telling us what God is actually feeling, thinking, and/or doing. Rather than the Reformed insistance on God's revealation being a condecension on His part and being primaraly analogical in nature, as lynnie wonderfully pointed out. If the open theist is right than God must have body parts but they would deny this (why? Their logic practically demands it).

Also it denies the Creator-creature distinction with its view of anthropomorphism. Open theism takes how we understand words unequivicoly between eachother as the only meaning a word can have when describing someone, so it drags God down to our level in saying that if He uses these words than He can only mean what we mean by them when refering to eachother. The proper Reformed/Biblical view is that God can freely use our words as analogies for Himself in an analogical way. He is beyond human comprehension and therefore must condescend to our finitude in using our language to reveal Himself to us. We don't understand how our prayers affect things in regards to His predestination but He uses human analogies to reveal that He not only plans everything out but also loves us and cares about us. So we can both be comforted that we can "bodly aproech His throne" (prayers) and that He is sovierghnly in control of all things at all times and leads all things for "good for those who love Christ Jesus", the places of these verses escapes me but you get the point hopefully. 

We don't have to understand Him on a one-to-one correlation linguistically, al la open theism, to have a meaningful relationship with Him as His little children who in the face of mystery can only trust our heavenly Father to know what is best for us. Open theism is nothing more than a theology that is built on a lack of faith.


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## Dearly Bought (May 24, 2010)

I've consistently heard glowing recommendations of Thomas Weinandy's Does God Suffer?

(Note: He is a Romanist.)


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## MarieP (May 24, 2010)

James, the question was about passibility/impassibility, not open theism. The question is whether or not God has emotions, not whether or not He knows the future. But that's a great book again open theism though


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## jwright82 (May 24, 2010)

MarieP said:


> James, the question was about passibility/impassibility, not open theism. The question is whether or not God has emotions, not whether or not He knows the future. But that's a great book again open theism though


 
Yes but the OP maintained that "some modern theologians" were denying this, open theists are among these people and so they are the most pressing problem for evangelicals at least.


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## CharlieJ (May 24, 2010)

Thanks. I will look into the recommendations. I'm reading a lot on the Fathers right now, and many of the (otherwise excellent) Patristic scholars are neo-orthodox, which affects the way they judge the Christological controversies.


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## Pergamum (May 24, 2010)

It seems like semantics plays somewhat of a role in the modern unpopularity of this doctrine. Terms such as "emotions" or "passions" or "human emotions" or "changeable human emotions" or "feelings" all carry varying nuances, some of which have shifted in this century. To call God "without passions" is startling for many to hear and many prefer ways of putting it such as "God doesn't have changeable human emotions."


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## py3ak (May 25, 2010)

Is there anything actually new in the modern arguments against impassibility? I'd be surprised if there were a lot of modern responses, because this seems like one area where inroads have really been made against the classical doctrine of God.

Pergamum, the reason it isn't enough to say "God doesn't have changeable human emotions", is that it is important to emphasize that God isn't _passive_ in any way. He is _actus purus_.


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## MarieP (May 25, 2010)

When we are to contemplate the height and depth and width and know the love of God which surpasses knowledge, is that to say we are to contemplate something that is merely an anthropomorphism?

---------- Post added at 08:00 AM ---------- Previous post was at 07:48 AM ----------




py3ak said:


> Is there anything actually new in the modern arguments against impassibility? I'd be surprised if there were a lot of modern responses, because this seems like one area where inroads have really been made against the classical doctrine of God.
> 
> Pergamum, the reason it isn't enough to say "God doesn't have changeable human emotions", is that it is important to emphasize that God isn't _passive_ in any way. He is _actus purus_.


 
The thing I'm wondering is why emotions denote imperfection and changeability? In heaven, we will be sinless and complete as well as eternally joyful!


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## py3ak (May 25, 2010)

Marie, this thread might be of some help.

Love is a volition, not a feeling; you can joyfully contemplate the boundless depth and limitless height of God's unconstrained love. But even at the height of their utmost perfection, the redeemed are always creatures: it belongs to them to be both active and passive. But God is not passive: nothing _happens_ to Him. Thus the confessional doctrine is that God is "without passions". He is, of course, eternally blessed, and in the infinite profundity of His joy there is no variableness nor shadow of turning; but precisely because of that, "emotion" or "passion" is the wrong term to use for Him. Even when emotions are largely under our control as far as their manifestation or influence goes, they are things that happen to us.


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## DMcFadden (May 25, 2010)

Evangelical scholarship has run to soft forms of theopaschitism (cf. Stott in his _Cross of Christ_) for numerous reasons in my opinion.
1. Mega trend toward subjectivity in modern thinking.
2. Rejection of overly "philosophical" notions of divine attributes claiming that they follow to closely along the lines of "unbiblical Greek" "unmoved mover" immobility.
3. Bandwagon appeal of Moltmann's notion of the "crucified God."
4. Contamination by the second-hand smoke from existentialism and process thought.

They all claim to escape the heresy of patripassianism. Successfully? We report, you decide.


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## Pergamum (May 25, 2010)

Dennis, How influential do you think Moltmanns views are?


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## MarieP (May 25, 2010)

py3ak said:


> Love is a volition, not a feeling



What's the basis for this definition? I can see that it's more than an emotion, but I don't see where it excludes emotion. I can give all my gifts to the poor and give my body to be burned and still not have love, according to 1 Cor. 13.


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## py3ak (May 25, 2010)

And no doubt you could also be filled with warm enthusiasm and melting zeal and still not have love; it's sadly common for people to have most of the feelings and little of the follow-through.

I think Hosea 14:2 is a good text to start with in considering divine love. But you can't divorce this aspect of the doctrine of God from the doctrines of His simplicity and immutability.


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## MarieP (May 25, 2010)

py3ak said:


> And no doubt you could also be filled with warm enthusiasm and melting zeal and still not have love; it's sadly common for people to have most of the feelings and little of the follow-through.
> 
> I think Hosea 14:2 is a good text to start with in considering divine love. But you can't divorce this aspect of the doctrine of God from the doctrines of His simplicity and immutability.


 
I agree! I'm not denying all that. But why must we say love has nothing to do with emotion whatsoever? If love is only of the volition, then aren't places like Ex 20:6 redundant? "those who love Me and keep My commandments"

Could you explain Hosea 14:2 as a starting point for God's love? For some reason I'm not getting your point.


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## py3ak (May 25, 2010)

Sorry, I should have said 14:4.

Love and emotion are connected, in subjects capable of emotion; humans. They are not connected in subjects incapable of emotion. But even in humans, emotion isn't the fundamental aspect.

To turn it around, though, once anthropopathisms are understood (and if that form of expression isn't understood Scripture is reduced to nonsense) the only evidence I've seen brought forward in defense of divine emotivity is the image of God: it's reasoned that since we see God represented as thinking and willing and feeling in Scripture, and since we do those things, there must be an analogy between us; but of course, God's "thinking" is as widely different from ours as eternal blessedness is from the surging tide of passions.


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## DMcFadden (May 25, 2010)

Pergamum said:


> Dennis, How influential do you think Moltmanns views are?


 
Pergy,

I am not sure how much of this is cause and how much is effect. Moltmann was certainly an influential theologian in the last century. Some have called him the "most important Reformed theologian" of the century. However, to a large extent, he is an example of a trend as much as a instigator of it. And, as some posters have suggested, the issue of impassibility touches upon a range of issues, including Open Theism.

As to the issue of Moltmann's argument in _The Crucified God_ (_Der gekreuzigte Gott_, 1972) , it has been noted:



> On the other side of the dialectic, the cross is God’s loving solidarity in love with the godless and the godforsaken. By recognizing God’s presence, as the incarnate Son of God, in the abandonment of the cross, Moltmann brings the dialectic of cross and resurrection within God’s own experience. God’s love is such that it embraces and suffers what is most opposed to God in order to overcome the contradiction. Moreover, this suffering is internal to God’s own Trinitarian relationships. On the cross Jesus suffers dying in abandonment by his Father, while the Father suffers the death of his Son in grief. As such, the cross is the act of divine solidarity with the godforsaken world, in which the Son willingly surrenders himself in love for the world and the Father willingly surrenders his Son in love for the world. At the point of their most painful separation Father and Son are united in their love for the world, and from this event of suffering love comes the power of the Spirit to overcome all that separates the world from God.
> Hart, T. A. (2000). The dictionary of historical theology (377). Carlisle, Cumbria, U.K.: Paternoster Press.



Picking up on the connections to Open Theism, Piper observes:



> First, as we have insisted, “the desire not to speak about God anthropomorphically” is far from our contention. But further, why would we make an arbitrary distinction between analogies of being and analogies of feeling? If all predicates applied to God and creatures must be regarded as analogical, that would include references to God’s sardonic laughter at his enemies in Psalm 2 or his grief at the disobedience of covenant partners. Perhaps, to attain consistency, an open theist would want to agree with Moltmann that God somehow does actually cry real tears.
> Piper, J., Taylor, J., & Helseth, P. K. (2003). Beyond the bounds : Open theism and the undermining of biblical Christianity (219). Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books.


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## MW (May 25, 2010)

MarieP said:


> The thing I'm wondering is why emotions denote imperfection and changeability? In heaven, we will be sinless and complete as well as eternally joyful!


 
I don't think it denotes imperfection but limitation. It is the result of a dependent condition. In heaven the saints shall continue in a limited and dependent condition notwithstanding the moral and physical perfection they enjoy.

Some distinction should be made when trying to prove divine emotivity. Scholars often fall into the trap of using a generic argument to prove a specific argument. They begin by arguing that God has volitional responses to His own works and conclude that God enters into meaningful "reciprocal" relations with His works. The two are very different questions. The first may be argued on the basis that God decrees all things, including the way He will respond to specific human conditions. If this were all that was intended, then obviously the word "emotivity" will have undergone such a change that it could be predicated of God; but then one would need to carefully qualify the use of the word whenever it was utilised. The latter idea supposes a different doctrine, one in which God's response is conditioned on the crerature. That would produce emotivity in the proper sense of the word. It would require no qualification but it would also teach a falsehood.


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## Semper Fidelis (May 25, 2010)

It seems that a healthy understanding of the Archetypal/Ectypal distinction is useful here. The most we can understand about the nature of God in His attributes is limited to Divine accommodation to our creaturely understanding of God. We can have a true understanding of God as He reveals Himself to our human understanding but we should never make the mistake that we penetrate to an understanding of God as He is in Himself.

While the accusation is typically levied at those who want to respect our limited apprehension of the Divine, the real problem lies in those who want to create a philosophy of God on the basis of human reason. Modern man reckons that, because he believes he comprehends human passions, he is warranted in making univocal statements about God's passions.


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## Peairtach (May 25, 2010)

Paul Helm has done some work in combatting this.

Divine Impassibility: Why Is It Suffering?

Re my own thinking on this, surely the fact that God is omniscient and has a settled will means that what corresponds in Him to "emotions" is very different to ours. 

His intellectual knowledge is only analogical to ours; He knows all things in an eternal moment.

His will is only analogical to ous; He wills all that ever will be in an eternal moment.

His emotions in that context are analogical to ours; He is eternally happy because He knows the end from the beginning, and He knows that His perfect will is being fulfilled. He is happy in an eternal moment. 

The idea of God's emotions being "caught unawares" is therefore ridiculous, as much as God not knowing something, or finding His will frustrated.

So the fact that God is impassible need not mean that God has no feelings, like humans made in His Image have. It just means that because His emotions are in the context of Who He Is, whatever is happening, even if His Son in His human nature is bearing His people's sins, He is eternally happy.

God is therefore more of an emotional rock for His emotion racked people, than an emotional God. His feelings are so regulated by Who He Is that He is eternally happy.

His consolation to His humanly emotional people as the Rock to which they may reside and find comfort and sympathy and strength and regulated feeling, is only enhanced for them by the knowledge that He is now also eternally God and Man.

I don't think love is purely of the will. Love involves the will, actions and affection.

I don't think that it denies God's eternal happiness to say that the Bible teaches that God has eternal affection for His people.

I don't think the Bible teaches an "emotional" God. But I don't think it teaches - speaking reverently - an ice cold God, either.

To say that God is eternally happy is to say that God does have emotions or fellings. But it is to say that because of these emotions being "regulated" by Who He Is, He is always eternally happy.

I certainly agree with what has been said about anthropomorphisms and anthropopathisms.

It is very difficult to contemplate or speak of such things. They are too high for us.


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## timmopussycat (May 25, 2010)

armourbearer said:


> MarieP said:
> 
> 
> > The thing I'm wondering is why emotions denote imperfection and changeability? In heaven, we will be sinless and complete as well as eternally joyful!
> ...



Perhaps it will be helpful when navigating the broader discussions to remember that people like Piper, Packer et al (and Dr. B. Gonzales on this board) seem to be predicating the former sort of emotivity to God i.e. God's decreed way of responding to human conditions.


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## MW (May 25, 2010)

timmopussycat said:


> Perhaps it will be helpful when navigating the broader discussions to remember that people like Piper, Packer et al (and Dr. B. Gonzales on this board) seem to be predicating the former sort of emotivity to God i.e. God's decreed way of responding to human conditions.


 
Each one should be evaluated according to what they teach. If any confine themselves to the first kind of argument then certainly they should be reckoned as such; but I think it is clear that Dr. Gonzales has argued for a rather full meaning to emotivity, including a professed rejection of the traditional reformed explanation in terms of anthropopathos.


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## Pergamum (May 26, 2010)

If a person in your pew asks about whether God has emotions, how do you respond? What is a good response to the layman? No latin terms.

What if they counter with wrath being an emotion, or they say "Yes, God's emotions always follow His will and are not like human emotions, i.e., He decrees His emotions." or what if they mention that Jesus was angry and also wept and that we are not to divide up Christ's human and divine natures and they assert that these were real emotions, proving that God has emotions?


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## MW (May 26, 2010)

Pergamum said:


> If a person in your pew asks about whether God has emotions, how do you respond? What is a good response to the layman? No latin terms.



God is, Heb. 11:6. God is not involved in a process of development. He is all that He has revealed Himself to be. It is what He always was and ever shall be. It is as such that we can look to Him to be the Rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. Whenever we come across passages in Scripture in which God clothes Himself in human emotions it is undoubtedly for man's benefit so that he might see the sincerity with which God offers His blessings and the seriousness with which man is to seek them. They are not designed for man to speculate whether God might be less than absolutely blessed for ever.



Pergamum said:


> What if they counter with wrath being an emotion, or they say "Yes, God's emotions always follow His will and are not like human emotions, i.e., He decrees His emotions." or what if they mention that Jesus was angry and also wept and that we are not to divide up Christ's human and divine natures and they assert that these were real emotions, proving that God has emotions?


 
Wrath is as much a judicial quality as a personal one. The interpreter chooses from the context how to understand the terms as they are presented. Regrettably, God's governmental role in creation is often neglected and interpretations are made unnecessarily to reflect on the nature of God as He is in Himself when a passage has only intended to teach something relative to the administration of His providence.

If a person says God's emotions always follow His will (that is, these are the way He has decreed to respond), then the word "emotion" will be qualified as to be virtually non-emotive; it becomes disposition rather than emotion. But it is often the case that divine emotivity is proven by appealing to those passages where God appears to be conflicted about the way events have turned out. At this point it is obvious that God's will is not the "motivating" factor.

On the person of Christ, I thought you explained it while you were setting up the question. The very reason why we distinguish two natures in Christ is due to the fact that there are certain qualities which belong to one nature which cannot be predicated of the other nature. That suffices to explain the presence of human emotion in the life of our Lord and serves to negate any argument for predicating the emotion of God.


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## Pergamum (May 26, 2010)

Further questions:

Does impassibility mean that God has no emotions, or just that his emotions do not change with time? 

Does God not really possess infinite joy, love, peace, etc, things most classify under the term "emotions"? 

I think few would say that God is driven by passions or changeable human emotions, but God seems to have settled attitudes towards things, such that it is said He takes pleasure in them. Is this really pleasure? Or merely metaphor?


Does divine impassibility require Jesus to be apathetic? How does divine impassibility affect our view of the emotional life of Jesus, even how as He sits in a human body in heaven?


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## alhembd (May 26, 2010)

Richard,

I also am a member of the Houston congregation of the FP Church, and currently am in Jerusalem with the Reverend Mr John Goldby. Is your father the Reverend Tallach of Stornoway? I had a very nice conversation with him once on the eternal generation of the Son. Reverend Matthew Winzer would be very pleased with your father on that subject.

With respect to "emotions" in God - we must remember the attribute of simplicity in God. That means, He is entirely one. What we call "emotions" are really different aspects of the one and same attribute in God. All the attributes of God are eternal and unchangeable, and are coessential with God Himself, and therefore, are God. And since the LORD our God is One LORD, His attributes are all one, too. Accordingly, His love and mercy are also His righteousness and justice. We merely look at the attribute with respect to how it is exercised by Him in specific Providences in time.

If you have ever read Reverend Kersten's Reformed Dogmatics, reread it in the section on the attributes of God. Kersten deals very nicely with the attribute of simplicity. God is without parts, and therefore, all the attributes must indeed be one.

It is true that God is not "an icy cold God." He is perfect, unchangeable blessedness, and therefore, knows unchanging blessed joy in all that He does. He is perfect love, too, and therefore, there is love in His punishment of the wicked - there is love even in His passing by some in the decree of preterition. There certainly is love in punishing wickedness - it would not be love to allow wickedness to go on.

And as for God's "love" toward the reprobate - we must remember that, although it is not a saving love, yet it is full of goodness and mercy toward them. The cause for their not being saved is in themselves. God only chooses not to exercise His sovereign power to convert them, but it is their own wilful resistance of Him that is the mediate cause of their not coming to Him. "Ye will not come to me," Christ says.

So then, there is divine love even in the decree of reprobation, though not the exercise of sovereign love to save. God chooses to pass by some who are open witnesses of His divine goodness and willingness to show goodness to all, but who of themselves choose to reject Him; and He is good in punishing them for their wickedness.

God is one. He is perfect blessedness, He is perfect righteousness, He is perfect holiness. Properly, He does not emote, because His attributes are unchangeably blessed.

Those are my thoughts, anyway.

Al


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## Peairtach (May 27, 2010)

I find the subject extremely difficult. But am not prepared to wrestle with things that are above and beyond me.

I agree with the traditional Reformed teaching that God is simple, immutable and impassible, and that much, or in a sense all, of Scripture language about God has to be anthropomorphic/pathic.

God's will is very different and yet analogical to ours. God's intellect is very different and analogical to ours. Is it not possible that if God is always blessed and at peace within Himself, His "feelings" - for want of another word - are analogical but different to ours? These are just my thoughts. This is not a subject I will be following up closely just now as I think it is a great deep, and I'm happy to be taught like a child using the language of Scripture which is understandable enough to a teachable spirit.

God is a Rock. He is the foundation of everything. If He had "feelings" like our feelings He would not be a Rock to His emotional people. He has everlasting peace, joy and blessedness/happiness.

I haven't read anything by the Rev. Kersten, and may look him up. 

My father was the Rev. Ian Tallach, first cousin of Rev. James Tallach. He passed into glory over thirty years ago.

Yours,
Richard.


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## alhembd (May 29, 2010)

Richard,

So glad to make your acquaintance! I did not know of the Reverend Ian Tallach, your father. But then, having been long isolated in North America, there are many ministers in the FP Church I sadly do not know of.

Do read Reverend Kersten on the attributes of God. You can get a set from Dr Beeke's online bookstore at Reformed Dogmatics, 2 Volumes - Reformation Heritage Books. This URL will take you straight to the books. They cost $20 American, which, I would guess, would be about 12 to 15 pounds, by the time you add in postage. The section on the attributes of God in the first volume, esp on the attribute of simplicity, is most helpful. My guess is that Kersten was extensively read in Charnock.

Al


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## Peairtach (May 29, 2010)

Well, I wish you and Mr Goldby well in what you are doing for Christ's cause and kingdom in the Land of Israel.


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