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“Though a young and upcoming evangelical scholar, Rob Lister has made a very significant contribution to one of the most difficult theological doctrines, the impassibility of God. By combining historical theology, interaction with contemporary nonevangelical theories, a retroductive theological method, circumspect metaphysical reflection on divine revelation, biblical theology, and systematic theology (especially theology proper and christology), Lister offers a convincing case that God is both impassible and impassioned. This book sets the standard on this topic and is a model of evangelical scholarship at its finest!”

Gregg R. Allison, Professor of Christian Theology, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; author, Historical Theology and Sojourners and Strangers: The Doctrine of the Church

“Although the concept of divine passibilism, appropriate in some ways for a deeply sentimentalized culture, is all the rage in modern theology, for most of the history of the church, God was viewed as being impassible. Why was this so, and how did the Bible shape this perspective of God? And can we construct a model in this regard that does justice to what the Scriptures and church history say about God, and that also engages with modern sensibilities? This study by Rob Lister is extremely helpful in answering these questions: it is preeminently scriptural, takes the Rezeptionsgeschichte of this doctrine very seriously, and satisfactorily answers current concerns.”

Michael A. G. Haykin, Professor of Church History and Biblical Spirituality, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

“Rob Lister boldly goes where few evangelicals have gone before in this very helpful study of how best to make sense of what Scripture says about God’s emotions. Lister does away with caricatures of the Patristic tradition as having sold out to Greek philosophy, surveys contemporary evangelical positions on divine impassibility, and provides a constructive hermeneutical method and theological model for doing justice both to the impassibilist tradition and to biblical language about divine emotions. As G. K. Chesterton observes, ‘an inch is everything when you’re balancing,’ and to Lister’s credit he completes his routine without falling off the balance beam that is systematic theology.”

Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Research Professor of Systematic Theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

“Understanding how an infinite God relates to finite creatures is at the heart of most theological difficulties. How can God be holy and sovereign and personal and relational? That God is transcendent and immanent is central to understanding the God of the Bible. In this book, Rob Lister has given us tremendous help in navigating these deep theological waters. His theological method is a fantastic and much needed model of biblically grounded synthetic analysis that incorporates keen exegetical insights that are well informed by historical theology. Lister offers a biblically balanced understanding of God’s emotional life so that his sovereign majesty and covenant intimacy are preserved. The implications of this study for understanding God, humanity, Christ, relationships, and emotions in general are far-reaching and vital. I pray that the conclusions and theological method of this excellent work are deeply and widely influential for the glory of God.”

Erik Thoennes, Professor of Theology, Talbot School of Theology, Biola University; Pastor, Grace Evangelical Free Church, La Mirada, California; author, Life’s Biggest Questions

“In this well-organized and well-written volume, Rob Lister challenges the view that the church fathers’ version of divine impassibility precluded God’s showing emotion. He swims upstream against modern passibilism, and he opposes those evangelicals who reject impassibility in the name of affirming divine passion. I was impressed with Lister’s accuracy and kindness whenever he takes exception to others’ views. The work is largely positive and constructive rather than negative and reactive. Lister argues ‘passionately’ for the view that God is both impassible and impassioned, even as he is both transcendent and immanent. Lister’s work demonstrates multiple areas of competence—historical, biblical, theological, and philosophical—and is nuanced, holding that ‘God’s passion transcends human passion both ontologically and ethically.’ I am, therefore, pleased to commend it to readers for serious consideration.”

Robert A. Peterson, Professor of Systematic Theology, Covenant Theological Seminary

“Whether God is subject to suffering is hardly a recent question, but it is an issue that contemporary Christians have been constrained to ponder carefully in order to provide scripturally measured and biblically tempered answers in a generation that prefers to conceive of and worship a God forged after human likeness. Despite the profundity of this issue and the inherent difficulty of giving adequate expression to whether God is passible or impassible, Rob Lister provides accessibility and clarity to this issue in a scripturally governed, admirably balanced, and manifestly humble manner. He engages theologians ancient and modern as his theological conversation partners while he guides readers through the many pitfalls and hazards that threaten to entangle us primarily in two antithetical but equally defective views of God: either to cast him in our image and likeness or to project onto him an aloofness that renders him cold, even grotesque. Lister rightly insists that in order to provide biblically rooted answers to the questions he addresses it is crucial to acknowledge and embrace the chasm that distinguishes the Creator from his creatures. Yet, equally crucial is the fact that the Creator made humanity, the creature, in his image and after his likeness, for this is God’s revelatory nexus by which God makes himself known to us both as impassible and as impassioned.”

Ardel B. Caneday, Professor of New Testament Studies and Biblical Theology, Northwestern College; coauthor, The Race Set Before Us

“This is an excellent study in systematic theology that exemplifies detailed research in biblical theology and historical theology, and draws these into a coherent systematic construction with relevance for contemporary life. I found Lister’s hermeneutical and theological analyses of passibilist and impassibilist arguments to be instructive and sharp. The project is well conceived and follows an explicit methodology with systematic guardrails from Scripture to frame the difficult biblical and theological details. Lister has ably handled difficult questions that impinge on God’s impassibility and passionate involvement with his creations: God’s relation to time and eternity, incarnate suffering, biblical accounts of God’s repentance, theodicy, and God’s immanence and transcendence. Despite the difficulties, Lister provides careful definitional distinctions and clarity of communication in a surprisingly light writing style that is uncommon to academic theology.”

John E. McKinley, Associate Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies, Talbot School of Theology, Biola University; author, Tempted for Us

G O D  I S

I M P A S S I B L E

A N D

I M P A S S I O N E D

God Is Impassible and Impassioned: Toward a Theology of Divine Emotion

Copyright © 2013 by Rob Lister

Published by

Crossway

1300 Crescent Street

Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law.

Cover design: Studio Gearbox

Interior design and typesetting: Lakeside Design Plus

First printing 2012

Printed in the United States of America

Scripture quotations are from the the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.

Trade paperback ISBN:

978-1-4335-3241-2

PDF ISBN:

978-1-4335-3242-9

Mobipocket ISBN:

978-1-4335-3243-6

ePub ISBN:

978-1-4335-3244-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lister, Rob, 1974–

God is impassible and impassioned : toward a theology of divine emotion / Rob Lister.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4335-3241-2

1. Suffering of God. I. Title.

BT153.S8L57 2013

231'.4—dc23

2012021322

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

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To Lu

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Proverbs 31:29

Contents

Expanded Outline

Foreword by Bruce A. Ware

Preface

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

1 Impassibility: What’s in a Name?

Part 1: The Doctrine of Divine Impassibility in Historical Context

2 Contextualizing Patristic Thought on Divine Impassibility: The Hellenization Hypothesis

3 Patristic Models of Divine Impassibility

4 Medieval and Reformational Reflections on Divine Impassibility

5 Assessing the Widespread Rejection of Divine Impassibility in Modern Theology

6 Contemporary Impassibilist Thought and Evangelical Reflection on Divine Impassibility

Part 2: A Contemporary Case for Understanding God as Both Impassible and Impassioned

7 Impassible and Impassioned: Toward a Theological Hermeneutic

8 Impassible and Impassioned: Interpretive Prospects

9 Impassible and Impassioned: A Theological Model

10 Impassibility and Incarnation: A Concluding Christological Reflection

Conclusion

Bibliography

Expanded Outline

1 Impassibility: What’s in a Name?

The Issue

Definitional Factors Related to Impassibility

Impassibility in Early Christian Thought

Impassibility, Patripassianism, and Theopaschitism

Passibility in Modern Christian Thought

Impassibility and the Vocabulary of “Emotion”

Impassible and Impassioned

Part 1: The Doctrine of Divine Impassibility in Historical Context

2 Contextualizing Patristic Thought on Divine Impassibility: The Hellenization Hypothesis

The Hellenization Hypothesis Explained

A Brief Discussion of Hellenistic Philosophy

Stoicism

Middle Platonism

Neoplatonism

A Preliminary Response to the Hellenization Hypothesis

3 Patristic Models of Divine Impassibility

The Qualified-Impassibility Model

Irenaeus

Tertullian

Origen

Gregory Thaumaturgus

Lactantius

Athanasius

Gregory of Nazianzus

Gregory of Nyssa

Augustine

Cyril of Alexandria

The Extreme-Impassibility Model

Justin Martyr

Clement of Alexandria

The Extreme-Passibility Model

Conclusion: Impassibility in Patristic Theology

4 Medieval and Reformational Reflections on Divine Impassibility

Medieval Reflections on Divine Impassibility

Anselm

Thomas Aquinas

Conclusion: Impassibility in the Thought of Anselm and Thomas Aquinas

Reflections on Divine Impassibility from the Reformation Stream

Martin Luther

John Calvin

Stephen Charnock

Conclusion: Reformational Thought on Divine Impassibility

5 Assessing the Widespread Rejection of Divine Impassibility in Modern Theology

The Modern Rejection of the Impassibility Tradition

A Passibilist View of the Incarnation and the Cross

A Passibilist Theodicy

A Passibilist Reading of Scripture

A Passibilist View of Divine Love and Responsiveness

A Passibilist Application of Rahner’s Rule

Response to the Modern Rejection of the Impassibility Tradition

On the Passibilist Handling of the Incarnation and the Cross

On the Passibilist Theodicy

On the Passibilist Reading of Scripture

On the Passibilist View of Divine Love and Responsiveness

On the Passibilist Application of Rahner’s Rule

The Outcomes of Modern Passibilism: A Definitional Shift, a New Metaphysic, and a Theological Problem

6 Contemporary Impassibilist Thought and Evangelical Reflection on Divine Impassibility

The New Minority: Contemporary Advocates of Divine Impassibility

Richard Creel

Thomas Weinandy

The Strata of Evangelical Reflection on Divine Impassibility

Evangelical Affirmations of Divine Impassibility

Gerald Bray

Paul Helm

Evangelical Rejections of Divine Impassibility

John Stott

John Feinberg

Evangelical Modifications of Divine Impassibility

John Frame

Millard Erickson

Conclusion: Impassibility in Evangelical Theology

Part 2: A Contemporary Case for Understanding God as Both Impassible and Impassioned

7 Impassible and Impassioned: Toward a Theological Hermeneutic

On Drawing Metaphysical Conclusions from Biblical Revelation

Impassibility and Redemptive History

Eternal Intra-Trinitarian Relationality

Pre-Fall Creation

The Fall

Redemption

New Creation

Interpreting the Language of Divine Passion: The Importance of Analogy

8 Impassible and Impassioned: Interpretive Prospects

A Select Consideration of Relevant Biblical Data

Divine Invulnerability

Transcendence

Self-Sufficiency

Omniscience

Sovereignty

Immutability

Divine Emotion

Immanence

Intra-Trinitarian Love

Jealousy

Provoked to Anger

Steadfast Love

Joy/Delight

Repentance/Regret/Relenting

Affliction

Desire

Interpretive Conclusions

9 Impassible and Impassioned: A Theological Model

Creator/Creature Distinction

Transcendence and Immanence Rightly Related

Self-Sufficiency and Condescension

Timeless and Temporal

Excursus: The Difference between Paul Helm’s View and Mine

God’s Two Ways of Willing (and Emoting)

Omniscience, Providence, and Impassibility

Immutability, Divine Love, and Impassibility

Trinitarian Issues: Rightly Relating the Immanent and Economic Trinities

Toward a More Biblical Theodicy

Conclusions: How Should We Understand God’s Impassibility and Impassionedness?

Ontological Transcendence

Ethical Transcendence

Should Suffering, in Particular, Be Predicated of God?

10 Impassibility and Incarnation: A Concluding Christological Reflection

Impassibility and Christology

The Emotions of Jesus

Jesus’s Suffering and Death: The Biblical Data

The Passion Narrative

Gethsemane

Cry of Dereliction

Acts 20:28

1 Peter 3:18–4:2

Hebrews 2:9–18

Incarnation, Atonement, and Impassibility? Toward an Incarnational Understanding

Communication of Idioms

A Spirit-Regulated, Asymmetrically Accessing, Two-Minds Model

Extra Calvinisticum

Conclusion

Conclusion

Summary

Contributions

Implication

A Final Word

Foreword

Theological balance, like physical balance, is normally a sign of health and well-being. The reason such balance is “normally” but not “exclusively” best is simply that, in some situations, imbalance is clearly required. So physically, balancing equally on both legs with sustained upright posture is normally best, yet if one wishes to dive into a swimming pool, one must embrace the imbalance of leaning altogether forward—a position that if done “normally” would result in endless bloody noses and skull fractures!

Something like this is also true theologically. The history of theology is strewn with the imbalances of misguided theological proposals and, at times, its heresies. One thinks, for example, of the imbalances both of Arius’s ontological subordinationism and of Sabellius’s monarchian modalism. In different ways, both affirmed the “oneness” of God (monotheism), and they surely were correct to do so. But they could not balance this rightly also with the “threeness” of God (Trinitarianism), because they perceived (wrongly) that an appeal to genuine divine “threeness” would inevitably serve to compromise and undermine the true “oneness” of monotheism. Athanasius and later Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Augustine all perceived instead the importance—indeed the necessity—of balancing “oneness” with “threeness” in order to conceive rightly of the Trinitarian monotheism that alone could account for the fullness of God’s self-revelation in Scripture and in Christ.

Or consider the imbalance of Wesley’s doctrine of entire sanctification, where the newness of resurrection life in Christ is affirmed (rightly) but in such a way that it fails to be balanced by Scripture’s teaching on the reality of the Christian’s ongoing struggle with sin (Gal. 5:16–17), the inevitability of failure (James 3:2a), and the need for regular forgiveness (Matt. 6:12; 1 John 1:9). On the opposite side, some Reformed advocates seem at times to stress the ongoing reality of the “fight of faith” and the inevitability of ongoing sinning such that the wind is taken from the New Testament sails that would otherwise fill us with confidence that we are, most fundamentally, new creatures in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17), temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 3:16; 6:19), adopted sons of the living God (Gal. 4:6; Eph. 1:5), and united to Christ in his death and resurrection to newness of life (Rom. 6:2–7). Balancing newness of life with the ongoing “flesh” we war against is needed if we are to have a theological understanding that accounts rightly and faithfully for the whole of biblical teaching and avoids the excesses (on either side) that can do great damage to souls.

Examples of the wisdom, even crucial importance, of normative theological balance could be multiplied. Yet, theological imbalance also at times marks out the narrow pathway of truthfulness and biblical fidelity. When sixteenth-century Roman Catholic bishops and apologists called for a theological balance of faith and works for salvation, the Reformers rightly commended their own altogether imbalanced adherence to sola fides. When contemporary pluralists urge upon the culture the balanced view of many saviors from many religions, heirs of this same Reformation heritage decry such balance for the exclusive declaration of solus Christus. When liberal Protestants and proponents of the evangelical left commend experience and tradition alongside Scripture as the church’s multiplexed nexus of ultimate authority, true evangelicals rightly uphold and declare sola Scriptura. Yes, at times imbalance is just as important to theological fidelity as balance, yet it still stands as true that normally theological balance marks real health and faithfulness even though imbalances are at times, on certain issues, necessary. How do we know when to follow the pathway of balance or imbalance? Answer: whichever is required to be faithful to Scripture in all of its teachings, and whichever advances the truth with fullest expression and least distortion—this is the pathway that must be commended.

The book before you is a case study in how important theological balance and imbalance are in the development of doctrine. Rob Lister’s commitments squarely align him as an adherent and practitioner of sola Scriptura. His every instinct is to “go with the Bible.” And where this leads him on this doctrine, through the windy roads that this journey requires, is to navigate when and where to commend balance where imbalance has previously been urged, or to commend imbalance where balance has distorted the purity of the truth revealed in Scripture. The doctrine of divine impassibility is one of the most challenging of all of the attributes of God to understand, assess, and develop. Clarity on where and when balance or imbalance shall prevail is at the heart of this challenge, and Lister exhibits masterful attention both to nuances of the historical doctrine and to aspects of biblical teaching in making a very promising proposal for how best to understand this doctrine.

I admire greatly both the depth of scholarship of this volume and its clarity of expression. Especially when dealing with a conceptually difficult topic—and the doctrine of divine impassibility certainly qualifies under such a description!—you want someone leading the discussion and unfolding facets of the doctrine’s history and biblical grounding who can lighten the conceptual load through clear description and illuminating development. Beyond this, if this theological guide can also provide insight that advances the argument and brings to light better ways of conceiving how the doctrine might be understood, you know you have a superior guide and one from whom you can benefit much. Lister demonstrates these qualities that make what might otherwise be an inaccessible book not only clear and interesting but even inspiring to faith and illuminating of the greatness and glory of God.

The evangelical world is indebted to Rob Lister for the hard work and insight reflected in the pages of this book. One can only hope that it will be read widely for the theological rigor and wisdom it displays. I commend both the erudition and elegance of the book before you and hope you will find, as I have, that this unfolding story will help you know God better. Until that day when the earth is as full of the knowledge of God as the waters that cover the sea (Isa. 11:9), may we grow toward that end, and may this book assist us in the journey.

Bruce A. Ware

Professor of Christian Theology

The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Louisville, Kentucky

Preface

The study of divine impassibility transpires at the intersection of several larger theological issues, including the attributes of God and the doctrines of the Trinity, the incarnation, and the atonement. More broadly still, this entire topic fits under the umbrella of the longstanding question of how best to understand and balance the transcendence and immanence of God. It is important to note, then, that while this study will seek to pay careful attention to theological reflection in these and other areas, it is not my intention to provide a full-scale doctrinal treatment of any of these larger doctrinal concerns. Nor is it my intention to provide exhaustive discussions of the interpretive proposals related to any given text. Similarly, this study is not a specialist’s piece in either historical or philosophical theology. I make no pretense of offering the definitive analysis in any of these areas. Having said that, however, the potential value of this study is found in the very fact that it makes an attempt, in faithfulness to both the narrow and broad contexts of Scripture, to draw on all of these disciplinary strands with a view to articulating a “big picture” vision of how best to formulate and understand these interrelated doctrinal themes of divine impassibility and divine passion.[1]

Of course, there are other limitations that bind this study as well. My engagement not only with related theological issues, but also with various theological traditions is, of necessity, noncomprehensive. I do not, for instance, trace the treatment of divine impassibility in liberation or feminist theologies.[2] This is partly a product of the limitations of space and partly a reflection of the weighted value I attach to the contributions of these traditions on the doctrine of divine impassibility. This latter observation also reflects my admitted intention to write this volume as one who approaches this topic from a historic evangelical perspective—a perspective, I might add, that is vastly underrepresented in the contemporary discussion of this topic.

It is important to acknowledge that, as with any scholarly endeavor, I treat my topic within the framework of a number of important assumptions that I do not take pains here to justify. Of course, that need not mean that these assumptions are unjustifiable. Rather, it is the product of spatial limitations and the basic inability to say everything about the theology on which I build in any given context. Inasmuch as I am a confessional evangelical, my relevant doctrinal assumptions related to this project include belief in sola Scriptura;[3] the overarching unity of the Bible amid all its glorious diversity, and thus the possibility of doing whole-canon theology;[4] the inspiration, inerrancy, and authority of Scripture;[5] orthodox Trinitarianism;[6] Chalcedonian christology;[7] and the epistemic possibility of understanding God’s revelation truly, albeit nonexhaustively.[8]

Finally, concerning the outline of this book, the heart of this project consists of nine major chapters that fall into two halves. Chapters 2–6 are primarily historical in nature, whereas chapters 7–10 are more prescriptive in terms of presenting my own proposal. Chapter 2 will attempt to contextualize the discussion of the Patristic views on divine impassibility by briefly analyzing the “Hellenization hypothesis.” This hypothesis is one of the key allegations made by many modern theologians about the Fathers. In general terms, the Hellenization hypothesis claims that the Fathers, even if unintentionally, allowed the dynamic revelation of God in Scripture to become overwhelmed by and subjugated to the extrabiblical influences of Hellenistic philosophy. The Patristic doctrine of divine impassibility, in particular, is often put forward as evidence of this deficiency. Given the seriousness of this allegation, it requires an analysis and response. For, if the hypothesis were true, it would drastically undermine the value of Patristic reflection on divine impassibility. In this chapter, then, I will seek to examine the key parameters of Hellenistic philosophy to determine whether or not these features invaded and dominated the Patristic doctrine of divine impassibility. In the main, the evidence will show that they did not.

Following the contextual analysis of chapter 2, we are still left asking, what, then, did key early church theologians really believe about divine impassibility? Chapter 3 will document the answer to this question by examining key primary sources themselves and not merely repeating popular allegations about Patristic thought on divine impassibility. This is critical ground to cover since the Patristic era was foundational to the formulation of the doctrine of divine impassibility. In particular, this chapter will demonstrate that a majority of the notable Fathers had a “two-pronged” balance in their doctrine of divine impassibility. That is to say that based on their own statements, most of the Fathers affirmed both the impassibility of God and God’s passionate involvement within his creation. Again, then, we will see that they did not typically mean, by impassibility, that God was devoid of emotion. We should, therefore, understand the mainstream Patristic view of impassibility—and indeed the foundational formulation of impassibility—to be a qualified version of divine impassibility, as opposed to the absolutized version that modern critics have often accused the early theologians of holding. In their own view, the Fathers used impassibility to set limits on how God’s emotions were understood and not to deny their existence altogether. This constitutes a profound and promising insight—one that I also adhere to and will seek to develop in the formative proposal in the second half of the book.

Chapter 4 will provide historical documentation of thought about divine impassibility by representative theologians in both the medieval and Reformational eras. Having extensively documented the foundational Patristic era of the church’s formulation of the doctrine of divine impassibility, we may survey this history more briefly. Nevertheless, even amid some modifications (notably from Luther) to Patristic belief about divine impassibility, this brief examination of select medieval and Reformational theologians on the matter will demonstrate substantive continuity with the tradition—a finding that will further throw the contrast with modern theological opinion on the doctrine of divine impassibility into sharp relief.

A fascinating shift occurred in the dominant opinion on divine impassibility in modern theology. Whereas the doctrine was largely affirmed previously, modern theology essentially anathematized it. Why did this stark, sweeping, and sudden shift occur? Chapter 5 will seek an answer to this question by examining passibilist sources in order to understand the most prominent arguments proffered by modern passibilists for rejecting the church’s prior consensus on divine impassibility. Following an investigation of the passibilist rationale, I will offer a critique of several key shortcomings of modern passibilism.

Despite the predominance of modern passibilism, it seems that in recent years we may have begun to see a mini-resurgence of impassibilism. My purpose in the first half of chapter 6, then, is to analyze the views of two of the earliest and most notable members of this newfound recovery in order to accurately represent contemporary impassibilism. Following that, I will examine the unique and diversified opinions of select evangelical theologians on the topic of divine impassibility. Interestingly, evangelical opinion will be seen to range from affirmation of the tradition, to modification, to rejection. Analyzing the disparate strands of evangelical reaction will help to frame the primary context in which my own proposal seeks to gain a hearing.

At this juncture in the book, the emphasis will shift from the description of passibilist and impassibilist thought to my own prescriptive proposal as to how we might better understand divine impassibility and divine affection. In chapter 7, I will begin by outlining what I believe to be the most suitable methodology for drawing theological and metaphysical conclusions about the affective experience of God from his own self-revelation in Scripture. As with the doctrine of the Trinity, this debate cannot be won by a simplistic appeal to a selection of proof-texts. Rather, the relevant biblical data needs to be interpreted with a conscious commitment to formulating doctrine in the context of a “hermeneutical spiral”—the interplay between a passage’s narrow and broad canonical contexts, framed by the major parameters of redemptive history. Chapter 7 will also observe the value of a method of analogical interpretation that is grounded in a balanced understanding of the transcendence and immanence of God as revealed in Scripture.

Chapter 8 will seek, representatively, to make interpretive application of the methodological theory advanced in the previous chapter to relevant passages of Scripture. In so doing, we will see that there are two strands of biblical data—here termed divine-invulnerability texts and divine-emotion texts—that must be united in our doctrinal formulation. My aim here will be to interpret the relevant texts with integrity in their own contexts, while also showing how we may best honor the intent of both sets of data.

Chapter 9 will culminate my contribution to the main focus of this study. At this point, I will be drawing on the methodological and interpretive insights of the previous two chapters in the endeavor to formulate a holistic theological explanation of the proper senses of impassibility and impassionedness that pertain to God. I will consider the impact of companion doctrines on divine impassibility. I will also argue that this two-pronged view lends itself to a better and more accurate theodicy than that of passibilist construction. At the end of this chapter, I will summarize the overarching conclusion that this two-pronged model results in a recognition that God’s affective experience transcends our own, as humans, both ontologically and ethically. My final observation in this chapter will be to address the question of whether we should specifically predicate suffering, in any sense, to God.

While my main agenda in this book is to wrestle with divine impassibility as an attribute of God, this issue is inevitably intertwined with the christological implications of Christ’s experience in the incarnation. Hence, an account of how this proposal juxtaposes divine impassibility with the incarnation is necessary. I will seek to provide this accounting in chapter 10, first by examining several key scriptural texts that speak prominently to this question. Then, drawing on those interpretive insights, I will attempt to delineate a model for understanding the incarnation that is both fully orthodox and fully consonant with our findings on impassibility as a divine attribute. Once again, I will be drawing on the important insights of earlier proposals while suggesting a few modest developments as well. The conclusion will offer a summary and note a key implication of the model I propose.

[1] That is to say that while all of the disciplinary strands are necessary components of a comprehensive doctrine of divine impassibility, none of these strands is individually sufficient as a basis for the whole of the doctrinal formulation. As a confessing evangelical, I fully intend to privilege Scripture as theology’s “norming norm.” My point here, however, is that the successful biblical resolution of this issue requires a more in-depth analysis—a theological hermeneutic, if you will—than simple proof-texting will allow.

[2] For an examination of the handling of divine impassibility in Latin American liberation theology and North American black theology, one may consult Amuluche Gregory Nnamani, The Paradox of a Suffering God (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1995), 227–309.

[3] By appeal to sola Scriptura, I simply mean that the Scriptures have primacy in theological formulation, and not that other factors such as Christian tradition are to be ignored entirely.

[4] See, e.g., D. A. Carson, “Unity and Diversity in the New Testament: The Possibility of Systematic Theology,” in Scripture and Truth, ed. D. A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992), 65–95.

[5] See, e.g., Norman L. Geisler, ed., Inerrancy (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1980).

[6] See, e.g., the helpful historical and theological discussion in Robert Letham, The Holy Trinity: In Scripture, History, Theology, and Worship (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2004).

[7] See, e.g., Craig A. Blaising, “Chalcedon and Christology: A 1530th Anniversary,” Bibliotheca Sacra 138 (1981): 326–37.

[8] See, e.g., John M. Frame, The Doctrine of God (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2002), 199–207.

Acknowledgments

I could never have written God Is Impassible and Impassioned apart from the invaluable assistance and support of companions too numerous to recount. Time and again, as I worked on this project, God demonstrated his grace toward me by providing just the right support, through just the right person, at just the right time. And for that, I am deeply grateful to God and to these companions who have been his instruments of kindness to me.

This book began as a dissertation that was completed in the fall of 2007 under the supervision of Bruce Ware. Bruce, who is not only a mentor but also a cherished friend, has profoundly shaped my mind and my heart as a theologian, and the formulation that follows in these pages is a massive testimony to his fingerprints on my thinking about God and on life lived for his glory. I am also deeply grateful to my other committee members—Stephen Wellum and Michael Haykin—along with Robert Peterson, my external reader, for giving their valuable time and insightful feedback, all of which served to enhance significantly the quality of my argument.

I am also honored by the partnership that I have formed with Crossway. Allan Fisher, Justin Taylor, Jill Carter, and their team at Crossway provided great encouragement and support as they accepted this project for publication. My editor, Thom Notaro, has been a joy to work with, and his keen eye made the project immeasurably better as he helped guide me through the process of transforming a dissertation into a book. Of course, whatever errors remain in this work are properly my own. As the bulk of the research and writing for God Is Impassible and Impassioned was completed in 2007, I should point out that I have had only slight ability to work with and incorporate scholarly materials published since then.

Heartfelt thanks are also due to my colleagues at Biola University for making it such a gratifying place to work. Several among them merit special mention for their support of this project in particular. My deans at the Talbot School of Theology, Mike Wilkins and Dennis Dirks, certainly stand out in this regard. Mike gave wise counsel on multiple occasions on the pursuit of publication, and Dennis secured crucial funds for me that were instrumental in giving me the release time necessary to make needed editorial revisions. Darian Lockett also played a pivotal role in seeking those research-leave funds on my behalf, and my colleagues in the undergraduate division of biblical studies approved my request for another research grant that enabled my release time. My departmental colleagues Erik Thoennes and Jason Oakes read various portions of this manuscript, and John McKinley read all of it, each one making it better with his observations and feedback. Roger Overton, an MA student, also read and gave valuable feedback on the whole manuscript. At various points, teaching assistants Dane Bundy, Ellie MacDonald, Michael Towson, and Seong Hoon Kim each helped with the acquisition of research materials.

Turning now to the blessings and support of family, my brother, Ryan Lister, an Assistant Professor of Christian Studies at Louisiana College, generously proofread my whole manuscript and even more importantly prayed for me throughout this entire process. I couldn’t be more grateful to my dad and mom, Glenn and Jane Lister, who have supported me in love and prayer since before I was born. That debt can never be repaid, and this project has been no exception. I am thankful also to my wife’s parents, Vic and Joan Jones, for their love and prayers as well. It is hard for me to imagine that there could be a more supportive set of in-laws.

My wife and children have been continual sources of deep joy to me, not just in this project, but in all of life. After thirteen years of marriage, I am more amazed now at God’s grace in giving LuWinn to be my wife than I was at the beginning. During these years she, more than any other human being, has been the primary channel of God’s grace to me and evidence of his favor on me. Her capacity to love me and to love our children is simply staggering to me. I am certain that it grows out of her mature faith in and love for God. I am also fully convinced that the publication of this book is every bit as much her accomplishment as it is mine. For without her loving service and willing sacrifice, I simply could not have completed this project. It is to her then that I dedicate this work.

Our four precious children—Eli, Emma, Eliza, and Ethan—have helped me come to learn experientially, as I have encountered academically in this project, something of a father’s delight in his children. Though they would not begin to understand the discourse in the argument that follows, I do hope that the benefit that flows from this study serves them well, as I seek, by God’s grace, to approximate in my love for them something of the stability and the unyielding delight that our heavenly Father provides for his family of faith. To him be the glory!

Abbreviations

ACO

Acta conciliorum oecumenicorum . Edited by E. Schwartz. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1927–

ANF

The Ante-Nicene Fathers. Edited by A. Roberts and J. Donaldson. 10 vols. Buffalo: Christian Literature, 1885–1896.  Reprint, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994

BDAG

Bauer, W., F. W. Danker, W. F. Arndt, and F. W. Gingrich. Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature . 3rd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999

BDB

Brown F., S. R. Driver, and C. A. Briggs. A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament . Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1906. Reprint, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1999

CCSL

Corpus Christianorum: Series Latina. Turnhout: Brepols, 1953–

CO

Ioannis Calvini opera quae supersunt omnia . Edited by G. Baum, E. Cunitz, and E. Reuss. Brunsvigae: Schwetschke et Filium, 1834–1900

CSEL

Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum. Vindobonae: Tempsky, 1866–

GCS

Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte. Berlin: Akademie, 1897–

LCL

Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, 1912–

LW

Luther’s Works: American Edition . Edited by J. Pelikan. 55 vols. Saint Louis: Concordia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1955–1986

NICNT

The New International Commentary on the New Testament

NICOT

The New International Commentary on the Old Testament

NIDOTTE

New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis . Edited by W. A. VanGemeren. 5 vols. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997

NIGTC

The New International Greek Testament Commentary

NPNF^1

A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church , First Series. Edited by P. Schaff. New York: Christian Literature, 1887. Reprint, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1999

NPNF^2

A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church , Second Series. Edited by P. Schaff and Henry Wace. New York: Christian Literature, 1887–1994. Reprint, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1999

OS

Johannis Calvini opera selecta . Edited by P. Barth and G. Niesel. Munich: Kaiser, 1926–1959

PG

Patrologia Graeca. Edited by J.-P. Migne. 162 vols. Paris, 1857–1866

PL

Patrologia Latina. Edited by J.-P. Migne. 217 vols. Paris, 1844–1864

PNTC

The Pillar New Testament Commentary

SCG

Summa contra Gentiles

STASCG

Saint Thomas Aquinas Summa Contra Gentiles . Garden City, NY: Hanover, 1955. Reprint, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975

ST

Summa theologiae

STAST

St Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiae . London: Eyre & Spottiswoode; New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965–1974

WA

D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe . Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1883–

1

Impassibility

What’s in a Name?

The SS hanged two Jewish men and a youth in front of the whole camp. The men died quickly, but the death throes of the youth lasted for half an hour. “Where is God? Where is he?” someone asked behind me. As the youth still hung in torment in the noose after a long time, I heard the man call again, “Where is God now?” And I heard a voice in myself answer: “Where is he? He is here. He is hanging there on the gallows.”[1]

So began a powerful plea for belief in a suffering God in the wake of the twentieth century’s icon of injustice and wickedness. The prose is riveting. The historical referent of the Holocaust is haunting. And insofar as it bears on the specific concerns of this study, the theology informing this famous quotation represents a seismic shift in the modern theological appraisal of the doctrine of divine impassibility.

The Issue

Interestingly, in this quotation of Jürgen Moltmann, in which he is adapting an account from Elie Wiesel’s Night, it appears that Moltmann may well have departed from Wiesel’s original sentiments.[2] What is quite clear, though, is that Moltmann himself commends to his readers the theology of a suffering God. Though we will parse out the details more precisely as we progress, it suffices for now to say that in the world of academic theology, an affirmation of divine suffering is typically known as a belief in divine passibility. Divine passibility in turn is, quite obviously, the antithesis of divine impassibility, the view that, in some important senses at least, God transcends (i.e., cannot be afflicted with) suffering. The shift in thinking on this matter in modern theology truly has been seismic. Whereas up to the modern era the church could be widely characterized as affirming some notion of divine impassibility, modern theology has broadly rejected the former consensus and championed divine passibility in its place. As a consequence, we have, in the words of Ronald Goetz, witnessed “the rise of a new orthodoxy.”[3]

Part of the reason for this dramatic doctrinal overhaul in modern theology is that many contemporary passibilists have (mistakenly, I will argue) taken divine impassibility to mean that God has no emotional capacity and no interest in his creation.[4] Hastings Rashdall, for example, criticizes the Patristic and scholastic affirmations of impassibility as being endorsements of a God who is “cold, passionless, and loveless.”[5] Perhaps even more starkly, Vincent Tymms claims that the God of impassibilism is nothing more than an “infinite iceberg of metaphysics.”[6]

As it is fleshed out in theological argument, contemporary passibilists have advanced a number of reasons for abandoning the impassibilism of earlier centuries. As they see it, impassibilism is to be chided for (1) dismissing the straightforward readings of numerous biblical texts that powerfully display divine passion, (2) failing to take the love of God and, thus we are told, the possibility of meaningful relationship with God seriously, (3) failing to take the incarnation and cross seriously, and (4) failing to take the problem of evil and suffering seriously. Broadly speaking, then, passibilism is inclined to see impassibilism as failing to uphold the proper balance of divine transcendence and immanence, in that it overemphasizes the former to the neglect of the latter.[7]

Though impassibilists may find themselves in a minority position in more recent history, they nevertheless have attempted to defend their own views and the views of their tradition with what they believe to be suitable responses. Thus, impassibilists have countered the passibilist charges with claims that (1) the theological method undergirding much passibilist exegesis is simplistic and (2) in their attempt to take the love of God, relationship with God, the incarnation and cross of Christ, and the problem of evil seriously, passibilists are often either reductionistic or extrabiblical themselves. In a broad sense, then, impassibilism is inclined to see passibilism as failing to uphold the proper balance of divine transcendence and immanence, in that it overemphasizes the latter to the neglect of the former.[8]

My purpose in this book is to address this seeming theological impasse. Upon concluding the historical and biblical investigations, I will offer my own explanation as to how both divine impassibility and divine impassionedness, when rightly understood, can and must go together. As we will see, this conclusion aligns, in principle, with the best of the impassibility tradition in terms of this juxtaposition of themes, even as I attempt to develop and expand a bit upon this foundation.[9] Before proceeding any further, however, we should give some attention to the important matter of the terminology involved in this debate.

Definitional Factors Related to Impassibility

While the basis for the definition of impassibility will have to be demonstrated in the chapters providing historical analysis, it bears frontloading this project with some preliminary definitional comments in order to provide the basic framework necessary to enter the discussion.

Impassibility in Early Christian Thought

We may begin our remarks by expanding a bit on the observation that when compared with the early church, many modern theologians reflect a deep divergence with the tradition, not only in their evaluation of divine impassibility, but also in their basic understanding of what divine impassibility is thought to mean in the first place. Marc Steen has captured the force of this point nicely.

“Apathy” as it used to be understood, is not necessarily identical to what is understood by it now. In the first systematic text treating our topic, namely, in the Gregory Thaumaturgus’ third-century treatise addressed to Theopompus, we are informed that a loving God must be “impassible.” Nowadays the reverse reasoning is in vogue: if God is love, then He must be “passible.” A misunderstanding of this conceptual difference leads to a veritable tower of Babel. Fighting traditional theism at the present time as if it introduced the notion of an “apathic,” that is a cool and indifferent God, often seems to be a battle like Don Quixote’s. It is, in any case, necessary to recognize that the term “(im)passibility” does not always and everywhere have one and the same connotation.[10]

It is hard to overstate the importance of this point. To put it bluntly, both ancient advocates and contemporary critics of divine impassibility use the same terminology, but they often mean quite different things when they explain what it means for God to be impassible.[11]

Whereas we have already seen that contemporary passibilists have frequently asserted that the doctrine of divine impassibility conveys God’s absence of emotion, the most representative statements of the classical tradition do not, in fact, assert God’s indifference to and aloofness from creation, nor do they claim that God was devoid of vibrant affection. Rather, in the main, the classical tradition simply sought to preserve the notion that, as the self-determined sovereign, God is not subject to emotional affects that are involuntarily or unexpectedly wrung from him by his creatures.[12] As we will see further on, this dimension of God’s self-determination was nearly always held in tandem with an affirmation of God’s meaningful emotional experience by the major proponents of the classical impassibility model.

J. I. Packer clearly expresses this classical sentiment about God when he asserts that impassibility is

not impassivity, unconcern, and impersonal detachment in the face of creation; not insensitivity and indifference to the distresses of a fallen world; not inability or unwillingness to empathize with human pain and grief; but simply that God’s experiences do not come upon him as ours come upon us, for his are foreknown, willed and chosen by himself, and are not involuntary surprises forced on him from outside, apart from his own decision, in the way that ours regularly are.[13]

As we look toward the fuller historical investigation, these statements can count as something of a provisional definition of the classical view of divine impassibility.

Impassibility, Patripassianism, and Theopaschitism

Having said all that, it is also necessary to distinguish impassibility from two related theological terms that were part of the landscape in the doctrine of the early church: patripassianism and theopaschitism. Patripassianism is another name for the Trinitarian heresy of modalistic monarchianism or Sabellianism.[14] In the contemporary discussion, passibilist theologians are sometimes charged with advocating patripassianism.[15] In actual fact, though, this is an imprecise charge, because it misses a nuanced distinction between passibility and patripassianism. We might put it this way: it is possible—as with most of the leading contemporary passibilists—to deny patripassianism and still affirm passibility. That is, both concepts get at the suffering of God, but they do so in different ways. Patripassianism affirms that the Father suffers on the cross because of a modalistic understanding. Most contemporary passibilists, on the other hand, allow the Trinitarian distinction of persons and yet maintain that the Father also suffered at the cross, albeit distinctively.[16] In seeking maximum precision, then, we should acknowledge this important distinction between passibility and patripassianism and not strictly equate the two.

Theopaschitism focuses more properly on the christological issue. In its early history, the theopaschite formula was sometimes defended by monophysites, and as such was condemned on several occasions. In 553, at the Second Council of Constantinople, however, the formula was approved. Presumably no longer linked with monophysitism, the tenth anathema of the council reads, “If anyone does not confess that our Lord Jesus Christ who was crucified in the flesh is true God and the Lord of Glory and one of the Holy Trinity; let him be anathema.”[17] In this mature formulation, then, all that was explicitly affirmed was the fact that the incarnate Christ suffered in the flesh. The formula did not offer a specific claim about how or whether Christ’s divine nature was implicated in the experience of Jesus’s incarnate sufferings.[18] Once again, it appears that theopaschitism—as with patripassianism—is sufficiently distinct from passibility that, for the sake of clarity, we should try to avoid overlapping usage.

Passibility in Modern Christian Thought

In contrast with their ancient counterparts, when contemporary theologians affirm that God is passible, it seems that they most often intend to assert that God suffers, and they usually understand this suffering in a predominantly psychological sense, insofar as they retain a belief in God’s incorporeality.[19] As Thomas Weinandy has observed, with respect to the contemporary milieu, “the question of God’s passibility focused primarily and, at times almost exclusively, upon the issue of whether God could suffer. The catalyst for affirming the passibility of God, one that is still intensely operative, is human suffering.. . . Succinctly,” the passibilists have concluded, “God is passible because God must suffer.”[20] Thus, we are again reminded that not only do passibilists and impassibilists draw different conclusions about the nature of divine emotion, but they also often operate with different definitions from the outset.

Impassibility and the Vocabulary of “Emotion”

Adding yet another layer of complexity to this challenging topic is the fact that while, popularly speaking, there is a great deal of conceptual overlap in the contemporary vocabulary of “emotion,” there is, nevertheless, a place for technical precision and nuance when one uses such vocabulary in certain fields of specialization. Hence, I acknowledge at the outset that while I am interested, for instance, in what modern psychology and philosophy have to say about the definition of various terms in the vocabulary of emotion, I do not write on this topic as a specialist in the psychology or philosophy of emotion. In the main, then, throughout this study, I intend to make use of the major terms of the vocabulary of emotion (e.g., emotion, passion, affection, feelings) with a degree of layman-like interchangeability.[21] There will be exceptions, however, where for some particular historical or theological purposes I discriminate among these terms with more specificity and precision. Those exceptions to my more normal practice will be clear from the context.

Impassible and Impassioned

In terms of my own formulation, my central focus is in the domain of theology proper, though I do not neglect to pair this formulation with the vitally intertwined incarnational component of the debate over divine impassibility. Respecting theology proper, my primary thesis is that, when appropriately understood, a holistic reading of Scripture itself compels the conclusion that proper senses of both impassibility and impassionedness are true of God.[22] To expand a bit, I take it that God is impassible in the sense that he cannot be manipulated, overwhelmed, or surprised into an emotional interaction that he does not desire to have or allow to happen. But this is not at all the same thing as saying that God is devoid of emotion, nor is it the equivalent of saying that he is not affected by his creatures. To the contrary, God is impassioned (i.e., perfectly vibrant in his affections), and he may be affected by his creatures, but as God, he is so in ways that accord rather than conflict with his will to be so affected by those whom, in love, he has made. The development of this thesis will require an integrated examination of the overlapping methodological, hermeneutical, and theological dimensions invoked by the endeavor to provide a holistic reading of Scripture as it pertains to this topic.

Of course, we should not be surprised at the biblically required duality here, for many participants in this discussion immediately recognize that in view of both the Creator/creature distinction and the human status as imago Dei, there must be both similarity and dissimilarity in how the same emotional terminology applies to God and men. Consequently, one of the undergirding methodological components of this proposal is the interpretive guidance of what is sometimes known as Reformed theological method.[23] This method of interpretation, which I argue comes to us ultimately from the framework of Scripture, helps us to navigate the analogical balance between divine and human passion as we examine relevant biblical texts. Additionally, expounding this duality theologically will require that we develop this model of impassibility in the light of insights that come to us from other larger theological structures in the doctrine of God (e.g., transcendence and immanence), as well as companion attributes (e.g., omniscience, immutability, and divine love).

With respect to the christological implications of my thesis, I contend—against passibilist intuitions—that the incarnation and the atonement do not dash the key commitments of divine impassibility. Rather, the incarnation furnishes us with the supreme example of the dual biblical affirmation of divine self-sufficiency and gracious condescension (e.g., Phil. 2:5–8). Accordingly, we see that the second person of the Trinity had to become incarnate in order to overcome natural divine impassibility (i.e., the impassibility of the divine nature), and thereby accomplish the redemptively necessary goal of humanly experiencing suffering and death on behalf of sinners. This account of the incarnation and atonement is important, because it reminds us that the purpose of the Son’s incarnational mission was to save sinners and not to manifest God’s eternal suffering, as some have argued.

[1] Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God, trans. R. A. Wilson and John Bowden (New York: Harper & Row, 1974; repr., Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 273–74. Moltmann follows the quote with this commentary: “Any other answer would be blasphemy. There cannot be any other Christian answer to the question of this torment. To speak here of a God who could not suffer would make God a demon. To speak here of an absolute God would make God an annihilating nothingness. To speak here of an indifferent God would condemn men to indifference.” Ibid., 274.

[2] A few interesting factual inconsistencies about Moltmann’s use of this citation should be observed. First, according to Marcel Sarot: “While suggesting that he quotes Wiesel, Moltmann gives a summary in his own words of Wiesel’s story. Besides, Moltmann suggests that the event that is related happened at Auschwitz, whereas in fact it happened at Buna. Far worse, however, is the fact that Moltmann suggests that Wiesel in the story of the youth on the gallows relates a religious experience of the suffering God.. . . Moltmann presents Wiesel as a victim of Auschwitz who was comforted by the consciousness that God was sufferingly present in Auschwitz.. . . This is a gross caricature of Wiesel’s account in Night, which loses all probability as an interpretation of what Wiesel meant as soon as one reads not only Moltmann’s summary of this one story, but the entire book.” Following several lengthy quotations of Wiesel clearly indicating his own rebellion against—not comfort in—God, Sarot concludes: “In Buna Wiesel was not comforted by the presence of a suffering God; in Buna Wiesel rebelled against God because he could no longer believe in His justice. For Wiesel, it was not God who died on the gallows . . . but his faith in God.” Marcel Sarot, “Auschwitz, Morality and the Suffering of God,” Modern Theology 7 (1991): 137, 138. These findings, of course, lead us to question the validity of Moltmann’s use of the story, and yet it is precisely his use of the story that is of interest to this study. In note 5 of the same article, for instance, Sarot points out that—at the time of his article—well over thirty volumes referenced the Wiesel story, many of which merely quote the Moltmann summary (misplaced locations and all).

[3] Ronald Goetz, “The Suffering of God: The Rise of a New Orthodoxy,” The Christian Century 103 (1986): 385–89.

[4] With minor exceptions, the historical study to follow will demonstrate the general falsity of the allegation equating the classical view of divine impassibility with divine indifference.

[5] Hastings Rashdall, The Idea of Atonement in Christian Theology (London: Macmillan, 1925), 452.

[6] T. Vincent Tymms, The Christian Idea of Atonement (New York: Macmillan, 1904), 312. See also Clark H. Pinnock, “Systematic Theology,” in The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1994), 103.

[7] To be sure, not every passibilist subscribes to all of these arguments, and some passibilists invoke other arguments. The attempt to provide a more detailed explanation of passibilist argumentation will occur in chap. 5.

[8] Of course, impassibilists have also offered positive arguments, for example, the argument from aseity and the argument from immutability. A more detailed investigation into the history of impassibilist thought will occur in chaps. 3 and 4.

[9] I must confess that this finding was initially a little surprising to me. As with many others, my initial exposure to the debates over divine impassibility came from the perspective of the numerous modern critics of the doctrine. Naturally, therefore, I was initially suspicious about the Patristic doctrine of divine impassibility. It was not until I read the Fathers themselves that I came to realize how markedly different their views seemed to be in comparison to the interpretations of their views by their modern critics.

[10] Marc Steen, “The Theme of the ‘Suffering’ God: An Exploration,” in God and Human Suffering, ed. Jan Lambrecht and Raymond F. Collins (Louvain, Belgium: Peeters, 1990), 86–87.

[11] Given this situation, then, it must be judged an unacceptable procedure to try to establish, for instance, the Patristic view of divine impassibility simply on the basis of appeal to etymological arguments pertaining to the Hellenistic thought-world. Paul L. Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God: The Dialectics of Patristic Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 2.

[12] See, e.g., G. L. Prestige, God in Patristic Thought (London: SPCK, 1952), 6–7. Furthermore, the classical adherence to divine impassibility was not discarded in the case of the incarnation. Neither, however, did the classical theologians dismiss lightly the sufferings of the incarnate Christ. How and why these thinkers deemed it important to affirm both divine impassibility and the full reality of the incarnate Christ’s sufferings will receive consideration in chaps. 3 and 4.

[13] J. I. Packer, “Theism for Our Time,” in God Who Is Rich in Mercy, ed. Peter T. O’Brien and David G. Peterson (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1986), 17. See also his statement that impassibility “means, not that God is impassive and unfeeling (a frequent misunderstanding), but that no created beings can inflict pain, suffering and distress on him at their own will. In so far as God enters into suffering and grief (which Scripture’s many anthropopathisms, plus the fact of the cross, show that he does), it is by his own deliberate decision; he is never his creatures’ hapless victim. The Christian mainstream has construed impassibility as meaning not that God is a stranger to joy and delight, but rather that his joy is permanent, clouded by no involuntary pain.” J. I. Packer, “God,” in New Dictionary of Theology, ed. Sinclair Ferguson, David F. Wright, and J. I. Packer (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1988), 277. For yet another valuable statement by Packer see Knowing God, 20th anniversary ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1993), 121.

[14] J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1978), 119–23.

[15] While acknowledging that only one of six would accept the patripassianist label, Warren McWilliams concludes that Jürgen Moltmann, James Cone, Geddes MacGregor, Kazoh Kitamori, Daniel Day Williams, and Jung Young Lee might all be called, “without too much distortion, the new patripassianists.” Warren McWilliams, The Passion of God: Divine Suffering in Contemporary Protestant Theology (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1985), 21.

[16] We find explicit denials of patripassianism, for example, in the writings of these noteworthy passibilists: Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God, 243; Jung Young Lee, God Suffers for Us: A Systematic Inquiry into a Concept of Divine Passibility (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974), 74; and Kazoh Kitamori, Theology of the Pain of God, 5th ed. (Richmond, VA: John Knox, 1965), 15.

[17] The Anathemas of the Second Council of Constantinople, in Creeds of the Churches, ed. John H. Leith, 3rd ed. (Louisville: John Knox, 1982), 50, emphasis mine.

[18] Alister McGrath comments: “The formula can be interpreted in a perfectly orthodox sense.. . . However, it was regarded as potentially misleading and confusing . . . and the formula gradually fell into disuse.” Alister E. McGrath, Christian Theology: An Introduction, 3rd ed. (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001), 278.

[19] Not all passibilists, however, have retained an affirmation of divine incorporeality. See, e.g., Marcel Sarot, God, Passibility and Corporeality (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1992).

[20] Thomas G. Weinandy, Does God Suffer? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000), 2.

[21] It is in this nontechnical sense, for example, that I use the term impassioned in the title of this book. James Beck and Bruce Demarest point out the semantic overlap, in contemporary understanding, of English terms such as “affections, passions, appetites, temperament, and sentiments” and the “umbrella” capacity of at least these three terms: feeling, affect, and emotion. James R. Beck and Bruce Demarest, The Human Person in Theology and Psychology: A Biblical Anthropology for the Twenty-First Century (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2005), 284. Conversely, in more technical discourse on emotion prior to the mid-nineteenth century, the terms passion and affection, for instance, were strongly distinctive. Thomas Dixon, “Theology, Anti-Theology and Atheology: From Christian Passions to Secular Emotions,” Modern Theology 15 (1999): 302. It is also interesting to note the historical argument, proposed by Dixon, that the shift from “passions and affections” to “emotions” represents a clear secularizing of the dominant understanding of emotion. The full form of that argument can be found in Thomas Dixon, From Passions to Emotions: The Creation of a Secular Psychological Category (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

[22] It bears repeating that such a commitment stands me in self-conscious continuity with the fundamental insight of the mainstream classical model of divine impassibility. However much the contemporary literature may attempt to portray the classical model as lifeless and static, the juxtaposition of impassibility and passion comes, as we will see, from the mainstream classical model, and not in spite of it.

[23] I will expand upon this methodological approach when I lay out my own proposal. A brief but helpful summary of this approach may be found in Michael S. Horton, “Hellenistic or Hebrew? Open Theism and Reformed Theological Method,” in Beyond the Bounds: Open Theism and the Undermining of Biblical Christianity, ed. John Piper, Justin Taylor, and Paul Kjoss Helseth (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2003), 204–12.

PART 1

THE DOCTRINE

OF DIVINE IMPASSIBILITY

IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT

2

Contextualizing Patristic Thought on Divine Impassibility

The Hellenization Hypothesis

A survey of the doctrinal history of divine impassibility will occupy the next few chapters of this book. At the outset of this survey, it bears repeating that this project is not fundamentally intended as an exhaustive historical theology of divine impassibility. Rather, the simple goal of this survey is to establish the major doctrinal contours of divine impassibility and thus glean insights from the historical backdrop to my own doctrinal formulation.[1]

With that said, however, the importance and complexity of the historical matters should be evident enough from the inclusion of these historical chapters. In many respects, the historical discussion helps put the major issues on display by setting before us key questions such as the following: What did the dominant strain of the classical tradition intend to affirm in its support of divine impassibility? Conversely, why has the dominant emphasis in modern theology been so strong in rejecting what was once so widely held? And finally, what were the philosophical influences affecting these two groups, and to what degree did these influences exert control over their respective doctrinal conclusions? These questions, and others like them, can be answered only by examining the historical contexts in which the doctrine of divine impassibility was developed, advanced, and eventually rejected.

Among these historical chapters, the reader will notice that I have devoted two chapters to analyzing Patristic reflections on divine impassibility. The rationale for this decision is twofold. First, Patristic thought on this topic represents the most foundational period in church history for laying out the framework of this divine attribute. Second, it is the mainstream Patristic view on divine impassibility that is now hotly contested and in many cases rejected.

As our survey of Patristic thought unfolds, chapter 3 (the next chapter) will constitute the “survey proper” of prominent early church theologians on divine impassibility. The purpose of the present chapter, then, is to address a very specific modern criticism of the dominant early church perspective on divine impassibility, and thus contextualize the formal analysis of Patristic thought on the doctrine in the next chapter. The specific criticism under analysis here in chapter 2 is the popular allegation of many modern scholars that early church theologians were captives to Greek philosophy in their doctrinal formulations. As it pertains to divine impassibility, modern passibilists assert that Greek philosophical presuppositions led to the corruption of the astounding biblical evidence of divine passion. If the evidence sustains this objection, it would count as a devastating blow to the classical view. Consequently, assessing the strength and accuracy of this claim will be the focal objective of this chapter.

The Hellenization Hypothesis Explained

To reiterate briefly, what we are here terming the “Hellenization hypothesis” is the long-standing modern claim that Patristic theology was overwhelmed by the extrabiblical influences of Hellenistic philosophy.[2] In general form, Adolf von Harnack gave this theory one of its earliest and most famous voices when he said, in the first volume of his mammoth History of Dogma, “Dogma in its conception and development is a work of the Greek spirit on the soil of the Gospel.”[3] In a more focused application to the doctrine of divine impassibility, T. E. Pollard’s stringent criticism is representative of this allegation.

Among the many Greek philosophical ideas imported into Christian theology, and into Alexandrian Jewish theology before it, is the idea of the impassible God (ἀπαθὴς Θεός), and this idea furnishes us with a particularly striking illustration of the damage done by the assumption of alien philosophical presuppositions when they are applied to Christian theology. So alien is the idea, so foreign is it to Hebraic-Christian thought, that it makes nonsense of the revelation of God in the Old Testament, it makes the Incarnation no real Incarnation, and it reduces the sufferings and death of Christ to a purely human work.[4]

According to the Hellenization theory, then, the Greek impassibility axiom was uncritically absorbed by the church fathers.[5] Consequently, the argument goes, the classical conception of God must be judged inadequate because it bows to some form of Platonic or Stoic philosophical assumptions (e.g., the notion that emotions are unfitting for deity)[6] rather than the vivacious depiction of God in Scripture.[7] In back of this judgment stands the common assumption of a vast dichotomy between Greek and Hebrew thought.[8] Insofar as it pertains to notions of deity, Hellenization theorists contend that Hebrew views of deity are religious, personal, concrete, and dynamic, whereas Greek concepts are metaphysical, impersonal, abstract, and static.[9]

This alleged succumbing, on the part of the Fathers, to nonbiblical metaphysical principles is said to have at least three ill effects on classical theism. First, it makes God nonrelational. According to Clark Pinnock and Robert Brow, for instance, “The difficulty with classical theism, so influenced by Hellenism, is that it makes God impassive and unable to relate.”[10] As far as modern passibilists are concerned, this lack of relational reciprocity is at odds with love as the essential feature of God’s nature.[11] It is in this respect that Richard Bauckham has argued that the “impassive benevolent despot” of classical theism “has tended to give way to pictures drawn from more intimate human relationships in which a love which is unaffected by the beloved seems unworthy to be called love, even if that term is applied analogically to God.”[12] Second, classical theism is charged with suppressing all the biblical language of divine passion in conformity with the apathy axiom by discounting the anthropopathic language of Scripture as merely symbolic.[13] Finally, the absorption of Hellenistic concepts is said to come at the expense of intellectual consistency, which has resulted in silly paradoxes about the suffering of the impassible God.[14] Jürgen Moltmann has given classic voice to this particular criticism.

Christian theology acquired Greek philosophy’s ways of thinking in the Hellenistic world; and since that time most theologians have simultaneously maintained the passion of Christ, God’s Son, and the deity’s essential incapacity for suffering—even though it was at the price of having to talk paradoxically about “the sufferings of the God who cannot suffer.” But in doing this they have simply added together Greek philosophy’s “apathy” axiom and the central statements of the gospel. The contradiction remains—and remains unsatisfactory.[15]

As it stands, then, the accusation of Hellenization is no insignificant charge. If it is true that the bulk of Patristic theology was compromised by the influence of antibiblical Greek philosophical assumptions, then classical theism is awash with errors, the doctrine of divine impassibility not least among them. At this point though, it remains to be seen just how the Fathers made use of philosophical concepts. Did the use of philosophical terminology trump biblical authority and so wreak havoc on Patristic theology, or was some other motive operative in the use of these terms? We now turn to this very investigation, first by surveying the main forms of Hellenistic philosophy that would have been influential during the time period of the early church and secondly by offering an initial response to the Hellenization thesis at the general level. Following that analysis, the validity of the specific criticism of impassibility as a Hellenized doctrine will then be tested against the Fathers’ self-stated views of divine impassibility in chapter 3.

A Brief Discussion of Hellenistic Philosophy

In a strict sense, the Hellenistic age began with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and ended with the annexation of the last major Hellenistic empire in 30 BC.[16] More broadly speaking, however, Hellenistic culture extended into the Roman Empire as well.[17] It is in this more generic sense that the term Hellenization is most often used in this debate. Within this broad range of Hellenistic philosophy, three specific candidates receive pronounced attention as the most plausible precursors to the Christian impassibility doctrine—namely, Stoicism, Middle Platonism, and Neoplatonism.[18] In what follows, I will briefly sketch the features of these schools of thought that are most relevant to the present study.[19]

Stoicism

Taking Stoicism first, we note that, for the purposes of this discussion, the most important trait of Stoic thought was its assessment of the pathē or emotions.[20] In general, the Stoics held that the pathē were “voluntary, but irrational motions of reason.”[21] In other words, the Stoics contended that all emotions are judgments (or more aptly, misjudgments) of reason.[22] This conclusion was linked to other Stoic distinctives in the following manner: (1) The Stoics were materialists and pantheists.[23] (2) According to their cosmology, the archē of the universe was fire, which they in turn equated with cosmic reason.[24] (3) This impersonal, fully immanent rational principle bestowed “seminal logoi” throughout all of nature. These rational seeds then constituted the spark of the divine that we know as human reason.[25] (4) The Stoics emphasized living according to nature, which in their case clearly meant living rationally, that is, in accord with the principle of cosmic reason.[26] (5) For the Stoics, then, living rationally is virtue, and it is the only thing that can truly be said to be good.[27] (6) Conversely, the only thing that is truly evil according to the Stoic mind-set is vice, or living contrary to this rational nature. (7) All of this led the Stoics to the conclusion that the emotions are irrational judgments, in that they “ultimately involve a wrong evaluation of things, the assumption that something is good or evil, when in fact it is neither.”[28] (8) Accordingly, it is not enough simply to moderate the emotions (i.e., irrational judgments). What is needed in order to achieve the Stoic ideal is the complete eradication of the emotions.[29] Once this background to the Stoic view of emotions as errant judgments is understood, it is not hard to see how, on Stoic terms, it is a perfectly natural and desirable conclusion to contend for the elimination of such rational errors.[30]

Having said all that however, I should emphasize that the Stoic doctrine of apatheia was conceived as an ideal toward which humans should strive. This is a critical point in the explication of Stoicism, because some have been tempted to infer a Stoic doctrine of divine apatheia from the Stoic emphasis on the human ideal.[31] But in addition to the lack of support for this inference in the extant Stoic literature, Paul Gavrilyuk has wisely cautioned us that “the concept of divine apatheia would make little, if any sense” in the framework of Stoic thought, for Stoics primarily spoke of an impersonal deity. Thus, as Gavrilyuk explains, for “the Stoics themselves the issue whether this impersonal deity had emotions or not would be largely irrelevant.”[32] Finally, in their criticism of the popular mythology, the Stoics allegorized the mythological deities into impersonal providential powers. In so doing, they have received criticism for being anti-anthropomorphic. However, as Amuluche Gregory Nnamani notes, this response to the popular mythology was not so much born of anti-anthropomorphic tendencies as it was a reproach—common in philosophical circles—of the rampant immorality of the pagan deities.[33]

Middle Platonism

Turning now to a consideration of Middle Platonism (80 BC–AD 250), we begin by noting that the designation “Middle” is applied to this version of Platonic thought because of its supposed lesser significance, as well as its transitional status between the Platonism of the Old Academy and the development of Neoplatonism in the thought of Plotinus.[34] As an identifiable school of thought, Middle Platonism began around 80 BC, claiming to be a revival of Platonism, while also asserting “substantial agreement” with Aristotelian and Stoic thought.[35] For all of its philosophical diversity and transitional nature, however, Middle Platonism is the philosophical system most likely to have influenced the early church fathers.[36]

A detailed investigation of distinguished individuals in this movement is outside the scope of the present study.[37] For present purposes, it will suffice to summarize some of the distinctive features of the movement as a whole and then examine a bit more closely the thought of the individual through whom Middle Platonism would make its greatest impact on the early Christian tradition. In general, then, the main contributions of Middle Platonist philosophy belong to the religious/theological realm and are summarized nicely by two quotes from A. H. Armstrong.[38] His first passage describes the prevailing metaphysic and cosmology of the Middle Platonists.

If . . . we are to give a generalized picture of reality as seen by the Middle Platonists it will be something like this. At the head of the hierarchy stands a Supreme Mind or God, ineffably remote and exalted, combining Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover with Plato’s Form of the Good.[39] Then come intermediary beings—the Second Mind,[40] the lesser gods, the stars, the daemons—ruling and ordering and some of them inhabiting the visible universe which is itself as in the “Timaeus” a living being animated by a World-Soul.[41]

Subsequently, Armstrong depicts the common Middle Platonist religious practice.

The religion of a Middle Platonist consisted of a remote intellectual devotion to the remote Supreme, to the vision of whom he hoped to attain in the next life and perhaps for a few rare moments in this, combined with a vigorous practice of the normal pagan piety towards the inferior gods, the star-gods and the other deities of mythology and public cult, who administered the affairs of the visible universe and with whom in this life we are most closely connected.[42]

It now comes to us to ask, how is it that Middle Platonist thought came to exercise an influence on early Christian thinkers? The answer is that this influence came to the early Christian community—especially such Alexandrian apologists as Origen and Clement—principally through the labors of Philo[43] (ca. 20 BC–AD 40), an Alexandrian Jew and Hellenistic philosopher.[44] His famed metaphysical speculation on the divine nature attempted to synthesize Hellenistic thought with the Hebrew Scriptures. Some have concluded that in so doing, however, he subordinated the vivacious Old Testament portrait of God to pagan philosophy and thus became instrumental in drawing many of the church fathers into similar errors.[45] Before offering an assessment of this criticism, however, we need to sketch in the outlines of Philo’s system of thought, especially as it pertains to the question of divine impassibility.

Broadly speaking, the relevant features of Philo’s thought can be summed up as follows: First, Philo is famous for his allegorical interpretation of the Pentateuch, the method by which he sought to harmonize the Old Testament with Greek philosophy.[46] Second, Philo’s conception of God resulted from combining the personal God of Judaism with the unknowable Monad[47] of Greek ontology.[48] This formulation yielded a God who, on the one hand, is personal and active but, on the other, is characterized by such an exalted transcendence that his creation and rulership are not exercised directly but only through intermediary powers.[49] In addition to this hierarchy of being, Philo’s theistic conception also required a rigid distinction between God’s existence and his essence. Accordingly, Philo held that while God’s existence is discernible through creation, his essence is utterly unknowable, thus requiring his essential namelessness. As a concession to human weakness, Philo believed that God revealed himself to the patriarchs by the relational titles (not proper names) theos and kyrios.[50]

Turning our focus more narrowly to Philo’s thought on divine impassibility, we begin by noting that, of all the extant ancient writers, Philo was the first to pen a treatise-length assessment of divine immutability—Quod Deus immutabilis sit.[51] Second, Philo voiced well-known critiques of anthropomorphic God-language in Scripture.[52] Where the Scriptures describe God as “repenting” or fluctuating emotionally, Philo suggests that they were merely accommodating themselves to human weakness for pedagogical purposes.[53] Third, Philo clearly affirms the immutability and impassibility of God. The question before us however is, just how does Philo understand these concepts? Is he guilty of holding to a metaphysical immobility and utter impassivity, or is his philosophy more tempered by his theology?

In the case of immutability, he reflects on Genesis 6:5–7 and comments:

Perhaps some of those who are careless inquirers will suppose that the Lawgiver is hinting that the Creator repented [μετέγνω] of the creation of men when He beheld their impiety, and that this was the reason why He wished to destroy the whole race. Those who think thus may be sure that they make the sins of these men of old time seem light and trivial through the vastness of their own ungodliness. For what greater impiety could there be than to suppose that the Unchangeable changes [τὸν ἄτρεπτον τρέπεσθαι]?[54]

A few paragraphs later Philo rhetorically asks whether anyone can doubt that “He, the Imperishable Blessed One, . . . knows no change of will (γνώμης μεταβολῇ), but ever holds fast to what He purposed from the first without any alteration?”[55]

Philo then immediately contrasts these comments with two examples of human mutability, in which he indicates the kinds of changes that he denies of God. In the first illustration, Philo points out that whereas we humans can be fickle with our friendships, God is unwavering in his fidelity.[56] Second, Philo uses the example of humans capitulating, at times, to peer pressure, whereas God is not so capricious respecting his judgments, since his foreknowledge is exhaustive.[57] Joseph Hallman’s conclusion from these examples is instructive.

Philo’s two examples express the religious insight that grounds his conception of divine immutability. Both forms of change, loss of a friend through neglect and conforming because of peer pressure, are impossible for God, who is our constant companion and is unwavering in will. Notice that Philo tells us concretely what type of change he denies of God. He is not necessarily denying any and all types of mutability and passibility.[58]

Beyond this, in another passage, we find Philo articulating a form of change in God. Given the assessment of Philo by modern passibilists, this finding may initially seem surprising. Nevertheless, in De plantatione, Philo says of God that, “in so far as He is Ruler, He has both powers, both to bestow benefits and to inflict evil, changing [συμμεταβαλλόμενος] His dealing as the recompense due to the doer of every deed demands.”[59] It seems here that Philo allows for a sense in which God responds to changing creaturely circumstances.[60] If this is the case, it may not be too far from the mark to see in Philo’s comment something akin to what contemporary scholars might term “relational mutability.”[61]

Now, with respect to impassibility, the first point to note is that Philo refrains from attributing apatheia to God.[62] That said, however, it is still abundantly clear that Philo affirms a form of divine impassibility. He comments, for instance:

Again, some on hearing these words [i.e., the LXX translation of Gen. 6:7] suppose that the Existent [τὸ ὄν] feels wrath and anger [θυμοῖς καὶ οργαῖς], whereas He is not susceptible [ληπτὸν] to any passion [πάθει] at all. For disquiet [κηραίνειν] is peculiar to human weakness [ἀσθενείας], but neither the unreasoning passions of the soul [τὰ ψυχῆς ἄλογα πάθη], nor the parts and members of the body in general, have any relation to God.[63]

Yet, over against such strong impassibilist statements, there are other places where Philo himself characterizes God as merciful, loving, kind, happy, and even angry.[64]

Inevitably, this raises the question of how we are to understand these two apparently conflicting sets of data in Philo’s concept of God. As mentioned above, Philo has already deemed the passionate God-language of the Old Testament to be an anthropomorphic/anthropopathic concession for the sake of the uneducated masses.[65] But if he holds these linguistic accommodations in such low regard, then we are left to wonder why he occasionally uses the very same language to describe God. Some have contended that Philo is basically inconsistent on this point.[66] Advocates of this interpretation usually maintain that Philo’s inconsistencies arise ultimately from his inability to resist comprehensively the force of the Old Testament’s passionate descriptions of God.[67]

In my judgment, although advocates of Philonic inconsistency rightly concede that Philo’s ultimate allegiance is to the Scriptures of the Old Testament,[68] they are nevertheless mistaken in positing a fundamental inconsistency at such a key juncture in Philo’s thought. Here, it is important to note that in several key passages Philo directly—and therefore apparently intentionally—juxtaposes the themes of divine impassibility and divine passion. In perhaps the most notable of these passages (De Abrahamo 202–3), Philo begins by asserting that whereas mankind is “subject to grief” and “fearful of evils,” God’s nature is “without grief [ἄλυπος] or fear [ἄϕοβος] and wholly exempt from passion of any kind [παντὸς πάθους ἀμέτοχος], and alone partakes of perfect happiness and bliss.”[69] But immediately thereafter, he describes God as kind and loving toward mankind.[70] In the face of such evidence, it would seem difficult not to conclude that Philo held some form of both of these views intentionally.[71]

Thomas Weinandy’s analysis of Philo’s thought at this point is illuminating, as he argues that the juxtaposition of these two concepts represents not an occasional inconsistency, but “the birth of a distinction, unarticulated by Philo and probably unconscious, between the impassibility of God and what might be called the passion of God.”[72] In other words, Weinandy contends that Philo had no intention of formulating a view in which God is devoid of passion.[73] Rather, he suggests that, for Philo, God’s freedom from the kind of emotional flux experienced by humans secures the constancy of his good relational emotions, such as loving-kindness and mercy, toward his creatures.[74] If Weinandy’s interpretation is correct, as I am inclined to think it is, then Philo did not altogether deny an appropriate form of divine passion.[75] Rather, it seems that his focus was to differentiate divine passion from the creaturely experience of similar emotions.

In further support of Weinandy’s interpretation, it is important to observe the contrasting ways in which Philo attributed joy and wrath to God. With respect to the former, we discover that Philo’s view is distinguished from Stoic convention regarding the eupatheiai. Whereas, the Stoics did not attribute the eupatheiai to their supreme principle,[76] Philo consciously made such an application to his God, at least with respect to joy—the eupatheia that he considered supreme.[77] It is instructive to note that on the attribution of joy to God, Philo reasoned in what we might call a theomorphic manner. In sections 204–7 of Abr. for instance, Philo argues, in a top-down manner, that the eupatheia of joy belongs to God in an unsurpassed measure, though God gladly bestows a diluted form of it to his creatures who wisely follow him. As such, Philo asserts that the passion of joy is a characteristically divine experience, which we as humans may also experience, albeit in a mitigated creaturely manner.[78]

Conversely, when Philo attributed anger to God, it would appear that he was reasoning anthropomorphically instead of theomorphically. In a telling passage (Deus 71), Philo asserts that wrath, properly speaking, is attributable to men but is only metaphorically applied to God.[79] In contrast to his discussion of joy, then, the point of comparison, with respect to the pathos of wrath (an irrational emotion within the framework of Philonic thought), moves from the bottom up.

If this interpretation of Philo’s view of divine impassibility is accurate, then it must be judged incorrect to condemn Philo as an utter captive of pagan philosophy. By allowing for the predication of particular passions—namely, the eupatheiai or good emotions[80]—to God in addition to his insistence on divine impassibility, Philo charted a new course in Hellenistic philosophy and thus demonstrated that philosophical assumptions did not have a stranglehold on him. As Weinandy suggests, Philo was able to make this break with the prevailing philosophical tradition primarily on the grounds of the Creator/creature distinction—a doctrine that secures both God’s otherness from and his active presence within the created order.[81]

Nevertheless, Philo’s doctrinal formulation is not without its problems. His version of Platonism, which includes a hyper-transcendence and intermediary creators, undoubtedly muddied the waters. Philo’s allegorical method of interpretation is problematic hermeneutically speaking, and it furnished him with the ability to explain away features of the biblical text that proved inconvenient to his views. Finally, Philo continued to rule out the pathē from the divine experience. While Philo’s formulation of a doctrine of divine passion is admittedly superior to any of his philosophical predecessors (at least he had one), it appears that an unquestioned extrabiblical presupposition—namely, that the pathē are inherently and unavoidably irrational—prohibited him from ascribing pathē to God while nevertheless permitting the ascription of at least some eupatheiai.[82] Now, it is certainly understandable in his context, why Philo would want to rule out emotions from God that his culture understood to be irrational by nature. Indeed, if the premise concerning the unavoidable irrationality of all non-eupathetic emotions is correct, then I dare say that we, along with Philo, would be desirous of denying their place in the life of God. But as the formative portion of this study will suggest, this is a premise that needs to be questioned.[83]

Neoplatonism

Finally, we may conclude these Hellenistic philosophical summaries by offering some brief comments on Neoplatonism, a philosophical system of significant influence with Augustine. Synthesized most famously by Plotinus (AD 205–270), Neoplatonism combined elements of Aristotelianism, Neopythagoreanism, and Stoicism alongside the major contours of Platonism.[84] We will focus our observations specifically on the thought of Plotinus, whom A. H. Armstrong identified as “the philosopher in whom the Hellenic tradition in full development and maturity was brought into touch with the beginnings of Christian philosophy.”[85]

Plotinus’s system has been described as the combination of a speculative metaphysic and a form of a doctrine of salvation.[86] According to him, everything emanates from the One, and each individual soul should pursue the arduous path of return to, and mystical union with, the One.[87] Plotinus explained the existence of other entities on the basis of this emanation, because a doctrine of creation would require the undesirable (for him) involvement of the One in the cosmos, which in turn would entail change on the part of the One.[88] Accordingly, it is helpful to note Armstrong’s explanation of how, in Plotinus’s thought, the emanation of the One occurs without the One incurring any loss or diminution.

Mind proceeds from the One . . . without in any way affecting its Source. There is no activity on the part of the One, still less any willing or planning or choice. There is simply a giving-out which leaves the Source unchanged and undiminished. But though this giving-out is necessary, in the sense that it cannot be conceived as not happening or as happening otherwise, it is also entirely spontaneous; there is no room for any sort of binding or constraint, internal or external, in Plotinus’s thought about the One. The reason for the procession of all things from the One is, Plotinus says, simply that everything which is perfect produces something else. Perfection is inevitably productive and creative.[89]

Given this framework, it is not difficult to see how Plotinus incorporated a doctrine of impassibility. In the first place, owing to the utter transcendence and ineffability of the One, no appellation applies to Plotinus’s god properly speaking. Hence, “to say that such a God was impassible was simply to acknowledge that he transcended the distinction between passible and impassible, just as he transcended everything else.”[90] Additionally, however, Plotinus argued that incorporeality necessarily entails impassibility and unchangeability.[91] For him, the argument from incorporeality applied to nonmaterial being of any kind, be it the One, the Nous, or the souls of individual humans.[92] In this system, then, we can accurately, if not technically, refer to Plotinus’s One as impassible. Finally, it bears repeating that this sense of impassibility derives from the One’s utter uninvolvement with lesser orders of being and from the postulate that emotion and susceptibility to action are properties pertaining exclusively to the created realm.

A Preliminary Response to the Hellenization Hypothesis

Having surveyed the pertinent forms of Hellenistic philosophy, I now wish to give brief consideration to two issues in response to the Hellenization hypothesis. The first point involves the variance within Hellenistic philosophy itself. The second issue addresses the debate over whether the church fathers’ doctrine of divine impassibility succumbed to antibiblical presuppositions borrowed from Hellenistic philosophy. Though I offer a general assessment of the latter issue here, my conclusion will depend ultimately on an investigation of the Fathers’ actual arguments for impassibility. Hence, my final assessment of this second matter will have to await the conclusion of the Patristic survey.

Concerning the former matter, the philosophical summaries above have demonstrated an ample diversity among Hellenistic views of divine emotion and involvement, such that charging the church fathers with imbibing “the Greek view” is simplistic, at best.[93] In addition to the diverse nature of Hellenistic thought on this issue, it also appears that there is no precise precedent within these philosophical systems for the concepts—most prominently, the supposed exhaustive denial of a divine capacity for emotions—that the church fathers allegedly imbibed. In this regard, it is critical to remind ourselves of just what these Hellenistic philosophies did in fact affirm.

Stoicism, for instance, never attributed apatheia to its god, because either affirming or denying the emotional experience of an impersonal principle would not have made sense.[94] It is also the case that Philo never applied the term apathēs to God. Though his system is not without problems, what Philo did do, in deviation from his predecessors, was to attribute at least the eupatheia of joy to God. Plotinus, on the other hand, affirmed the impassibility of the impersonal One, but he did so primarily on the basis of the One’s incorporeality[95] and metaphysical preclusion from involvement with lower orders of being.[96] In none of these philosophical systems, however, is there an espousal of a personal, creator deity marked by absolute emotional detachment from his creation. In consequence of the diversity of Hellenistic philosophy and the lack of a clear precedent therein for the alleged deficiency of the Fathers, the Hellenization thesis begins to appear notably more unstable than its proponents may initially lead one to believe.[97]

The second and more important issue for this discussion hinges on an investigation of the Fathers themselves. While that more detailed investigation will follow shortly, a few preliminary observations begin to frame out the case against the Hellenization thesis. First, it is obvious to all that the Patristic theologians borrowed Greek language and made use of Greek concepts. Of itself, however, such borrowing is not necessarily problematic. Indeed, restating the truths of Scripture in contemporary parlance is necessary in every age and culture as a means of faithfully expressing biblical instruction to any given society.[98] The critical issue, then, is discerning whether biblical authority has been compromised in the attempt to express biblical truth through borrowed terminology.[99] By way of response to this hypothesis, we may note that, broadly speaking, there is ample evidence in Patristic theology to demonstrate that the Fathers sought to defer to biblical authority on matters of Christian doctrine, even in the midst of their philosophical influences.[100] This deference is largely discernible from several of the Fathers’ theological emphases that were dramatically at odds with key distinctives of Hellenistic metaphysics. Among the noteworthy Patristic emphases, the Fathers insisted on a personal deity, framed and defended the doctrine of the Trinity, contended for the importance of God’s ex nihilo creation, proclaimed an incarnation of the Logos, and affirmed the goodness of matter—all of which ran counter to the prevailing secular philosophical assumptions.[101]

In the face of such deep biblical convictions, it is hard to conceive how the Hellenistic influence could have been as corruptive as it is said to have been. As an alternative to the Hellenization hypothesis, Gerald Hanratty represents the more plausible view that the church fathers adequately contextualized their theology without making it unbiblical in the process.

There is no basis . . . for the frequently repeated charge that the early Church borrowed indiscriminately from Greek philosophy and thus compromised the original force of revelation. The goal of apologetic and patristic reflection was the precise articulation of the truths contained in the sources of revelation. In order to explain, safeguard, and propagate these truths, the early Church had to translate the concrete, descriptive and kerygmatic language of the Bible into explanatory or philosophical categories.[102]

Hence, on the basis of the anti-Hellenistic impulses listed above, it would seem that we are justified in concluding that, on the whole, the Fathers were both critical and selective in their stance toward the philosophy of their day.[103] In the end, although terms and concepts were imported from Greek philosophy, they were fundamentally subject to the framework of a different worldview.[104]

Having said all that, however, we still need to investigate whether the Fathers adulterated the biblical message in the specific case of divine impassibility. In other words, all that has been shown to this point is that the Fathers generally sought to adhere to scriptural primacy in their theologizing. As a result, the charge that the Fathers corrupted the purity of scriptural teaching was shown—as a rule—to be false. More specificity is required, however, if we are to discern whether the early theologians perhaps deviated from their normal deference to biblical authority in the particular case of divine impassibility.[105] Thus, it is to an investigation of the Fathers’ self-stated views on this doctrine that we now turn. Following this historical survey, I will conclude the Patristic section by incorporating some final comments on the Hellenization thesis among my more general conclusions concerning the Patristic handling of divine impassibility.

[1]Consequently, some “advocates” (e.g., Arnobius) and some “adversaries” (e.g., Eberhard Jüngel) of divine impassibility are intentionally left out of the discussion. This does not mean that their particular contributions are unimportant. Instead, it is a procedural reflection of the primarily constructive goal of this book. To this end, the historical analysis calls for a thorough review of major representatives of the various views, but it does not require an exhaustive examination of every single “advocate” and “adversary” of divine impassibility.

[2]In a chapter entitled “The Appropriation of the Philosophical Concept of God as a Dogmatic Problem of Early Christian Theology,” Wolfhart Pannenberg has acknowledged the wide acceptance of this view: “The thesis that religious and metaphysical understandings of God are irreconcilable and the corresponding assessment of the early Christian doctrine of God are still widely taken as self-evident today, especially in the field of dogmatics.” Wolfhart Pannenberg, Basic Questions in Theology, trans. George H. Kehm, vol. 2 (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971; repr., Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1983), 121.

[3]Adolf von Harnack, History of Dogma, trans. Neil Buchanan, vol. 1 (New York: Russell & Russell, 1958), 17. In other words, for Harnack, Hellenization was a process in which the purity of the gospel was contaminated by foreign thought-forms and then progressively ossified in a rigid dogmatism. This was true both of the “acute Hellenization” of Gnosticism and of orthodoxy, even if its process of Hellenization was somewhat more gradual. Ibid., 43–57, 227–28; Harnack, What Is Christianity?, trans. Thomas Bailey Saunders (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957; repr., Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986), 199–208, 211–12. See also, John Sanders, “Historical Considerations,” in The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1994), 59–60, and Clark H. Pinnock, “Systematic Theology,” in The Openness of God, 103.

[4]T. E. Pollard, “The Impassibility of God,” Scottish Journal of Theology 8 (1955): 356, italics his. For a sampling of similar statements, see the following: Don Hudson, “The Glory of His Discontent: The Inconsolable Suffering of God,” Mars Hill Review 6 (1996): 27; Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, trans. Margaret Kohl (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981; repr., Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 22; Richard Bauckham, “‘Only the Suffering God Can Help’: Divine Passibility in Modern Theology,” Themelios 9 (1984): 7; Francis H. House, “The Barrier of Impassibility,” Theology 83 (1980): 414; O. T. Owen, “Does God Suffer?,” Church Quarterly Review 158 (1957): 177; Dennis Ngien, The Suffering of God According to Martin Luther’s “Theologia Crucis” (New York: Peter Lang, 1995; repr., Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2001), 7–8; Jaroslav Pelikan, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100–600), vol. 1 of The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 52.

[5]For example, Charles Ohlrich has offered the following assessment: “Unfortunately, the formal theological tradition which developed within the early church, as reflected especially in the ante-Nicene and early post-Nicene era (ca A.D. 150–450), was heavily influenced by Greek philosophy. Thus much thought about a suffering Messiah was short-circuited by Greek philosophical assumptions about the nature of God—in particular, his impassibility.. . . For the most part, these early theologians simply carried over Plato’s argument that the gods are exalted above pleasure and pain and Aristotle’s description of God as the ‘first cause’ or ‘unmoved mover.’” Charles Ohlrich, The Suffering of God: Hope and Comfort for Those Who Hurt (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1982), 39. See also, Rem B. Edwards’s related comment about divine immutability: “If only the church fathers had been sufficiently on guard against Athens, they might actually have avoided producing a ‘mottled Christianity.’ Unfortunately, they were seduced by the pagan dogma of the absolute unchangeableness of God. The resulting theology now must die, for the price which the western world has had to pay for it has been too high.” Rem B. Edwards, “The Pagan Dogma of the Absolute Unchangeableness of God,” Religious Studies 14 (1978): 312–13, italics his. See also Joseph M. Hallman, “The Seed of Fire: Divine Suffering in the Christology of Cyril of Alexandria and Nestorius of Constantinople,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 5 (1997): 369.

[6]Abraham J. Heschel, The Prophets (New York: Harper & Row, 1962; repr., New York: Perennial, 2001), 318–28.

[7]Jung Young Lee, for example, has commented: “The traditional idea of divine impassibility is largely based on a metaphysical notion of deity rather than the biblical concept of God.” Jung Young Lee, God Suffers for Us: A Systematic Inquiry into a Concept of Divine Passibility (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974), 46. In short, some suggest that if we would just pay more attention to the Bible, the longstanding bias toward an impassible God will give way in the face of the clear biblical testimony to divine passibility. Colin Grant has argued, in this vein, that “the obvious source of the change of heart on divine passibility is the renewal of interest in the Bible over the last century. Examination of the Bible itself exposed the inadequacy of the immutable and impassible model of God.” Colin Grant, “Possibilities for Divine Passibility,” Toronto Journal of Theology 4 (1988): 9.

[8]Amuluche Gregory Nnamani, The Paradox of a Suffering God (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1995), 48–50, 56–57. For a classical statement of the presumed disparities between Greek and Hebrew thought-forms, see Thorlief Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek, trans. Jules L. Moreau (London: SCM Press, 1960). Boman’s conclusions are summarized on pp. 205–8. Among other issues, he suggests the following dichotomies: “Rest, harmony, composure, and self-control—this is the Greek way; movement, life, deep emotion, and power—this is the Hebrew way.. . . As space was the given thought-form for the Greeks, so for the Hebrews it was time.. . . For the Hebrew, the decisive reality of the world of experience was the word; for the Greek it was the thing.. . . For the Hebrew the most important of his senses for the experience of truth was his hearing (as well as various kinds of feeling), but for the Greek it had to be his sight.. . . The impressions gained by way of hearing or perceived sensually . . . are constantly changing, they are of a dynamic-qualitative sort because they can be expressed in all degrees of intensity and in varying qualities, and they are psychologically meaningful because they can awake every possible mood or feeling. The impressions we gain through sight, the visible things, are static in principle because the eye acts as a camera, and as everyone knows, it can record only momentary or instantaneous pictures.. . . Sight impressions must, therefore, chiefly be based upon those images which have form, objectivity, and immutability.” Ibid., 205–7.

[9]Edwards, “The Pagan Dogma,” 308–9. See also Warren McWilliams, The Passion of God: Divine Suffering in Contemporary Protestant Theology (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1985), 11.

[10]Clark H. Pinnock and Robert C. Brow, Unbounded Love: A Good News Theology for the 21st Century (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1994), 50.

[11]Marcel Sarot, “A Moved Mover? The (Im)passibility of God,” in Understanding the Attributes of God, ed. Gijsbert van den Brink and Marcel Sarot (New York: Peter Lang, 1999), 129. For many in the passibilist camp, God’s loving nature explicitly requires that God suffers. Paul Fiddes comments, “Now, if God is not less than personal, and if the claim that ‘God is love’ is to have any recognizable continuity with our normal experience of love, the conclusion seems inescapable that a loving God must be a sympathetic and therefore suffering God.” Paul S. Fiddes, The Creative Suffering of God (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988), 17. Note the determinative force given to “our normal experience of love” in drawing this particular conclusion.

[12]Bauckham, “Only the Suffering God,” 10. As with the preceding footnote, observe how Bauckham points out the anthropocentric reasoning in the passibilist dependence on human relationships in their view of divine relationality. This is a critical passibilist assumption that will call for further comment when we come to the examination of a proper sense of divine relationality.

[13]McWilliams, The Passion of God, 7, 11–12. Pollard, “The Impassibility of God,” 360.

[14]Ngien, The Suffering of God, 8–9. Ngien identifies Ignatius and Irenaeus as examples of early Fathers who maintained such a paradox. The relevant citations will be considered in the formal analysis of the church fathers below. For the moment, it will suffice to say that what Ngien and others here identify as a weakness in the Patristic formulation may yet turn out to be a conceptual strength that takes aim at affirming varied (though not mutually exclusive) truths in Scripture.

[15]Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, 22.

[16]Martin J. Walsh, A History of Philosophy (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1985), 77.

[17]Ronald Nash has rightly pointed out that “the phrase ‘the Hellenistic world’ is used to refer to the whole culture of the Roman Empire. While Rome achieved military and political supremacy throughout the Mediterranean world, it adopted the culture of the Hellenistic world that preceded its rise to power. Thus, while political control of the Mediterranean belonged to Rome, the culture continued to be Hellenistic.” Ronald H. Nash, The Gospel and the Greeks: Did the New Testament Borrow from Pagan Thought? (Richardson, TX: Probe, 1992), 19. Nash includes a helpful overview of noteworthy distinctives of Hellenistic culture. Ibid., 18–22.

[18]Roy Kearsley, “Faith and Philosophy in the Early Church,” Themelios 15 (1990): 81–82.

[19]In summarizing the main features of these schools, I will be interacting with each one as a whole rather than attempting to offer a detailed study of all the variant strains and nuances. Therefore, I intend to give consideration only to the factors that are broadly representative of each tradition.

[20]In this analysis of Stoicism, I am especially indebted to Paul Gavrilyuk’s very capable treatment. Paul L. Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God: The Dialectics of Patristic Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 21–31. Broadly conceived, Stoicism spans the time period dating from its founding by Zeno of Citium (334–262 BC) to the death of its last major representative, Marcus Aurelius (AD 121–80). Nnamani, The Paradox of a Suffering God, 32. To be somewhat more specific, Stoicism is commonly divided into three eras: early (from the founding by Zeno at Athens to the late second century BC), middle (epitomized by Panaetius and Posidonius and a shift in epicenter away from Athens), and late/imperial (first and second centuries AD, terminating with Marcus Aurelius). Jacques Brunschwig and David Sedley, “Hellenistic Philosophy,” in The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Philosophy, ed. David Sedley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 165. For more thorough surveys of Stoic thought on a wider range of issues, see Everett Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 354–69, and J. M. Rist, Stoic Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969).

[21]Michael Frede, “The Stoic Doctrine of the Affections of the Soul,” in The Norms of Nature: Studies in Hellenistic Ethics, ed. Malcolm Schofield and Gisela Striker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 99–100. In the Stoic view, there were four principal pathē (distress, pleasure, fear, and desire) “under which all other emotions could be arranged as species.” Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 29.

[22]This put them at odds with the two-tiered Platonic and Aristotelian traditions that identified an irrational part of the soul as the domain of the emotions. This two-tiered notion, in turn, allowed for the possibility—very much at odds with the Stoic tradition—of reasonable as well as unreasonable emotions, depending in a given case on how well the emotional response was subject to the dictates of reason. Frede, “The Stoic Doctrine,” 94. See Frede’s helpful explanation of how it is that the Stoics sometimes “talk as if the affection of the soul were a judgment, but at other times say that the affection has its origin in a judgment.” Ibid., 102–3. See also Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind, 29–46.

[23]Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity, 356.

[24]Nash, The Gospel and the Greeks, 68–69. Christopher Stead, Philosophy in Christian Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 47.

[25]A. H. Armstrong, An Introduction to Ancient Philosophy, 3rd ed. (n.p.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1989), 124–25.

[26]Ibid., 125. Their strong belief in natural law was an obvious corollary of this view of cosmic reason. Ibid., 128–29. The Stoics were rigid determinists, but they clearly maintained the value of moral exhortation to the apathetic life. According to Frederick Copleston, they held to both propositions by contending that “man is rational and so, though he will follow the laws of nature in any case, he has the privilege of knowing these laws and of assenting to them consciously. Hence there is a purpose in moral exhortation: man is free to change his interior attitude.” Frederick Copleston, Greece and Rome: From the Pre-Socratics to Plotinus, vol. 1 of A History of Philosophy (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 396.

[27]Copleston, A History of Philosophy, 1:396–97.

[28]Frede, “The Stoic Doctrine,” 107. Ferguson expounds this point nicely when he cites a common Stoic illustration to this effect: “To feel fear if you see a lion is a false judgment, since the only thing to fear is an evil life. It is all right to save your life, but do not feel terror.” Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity, 358. For a brief but helpful summary of how the Stoics understand the rational faculties to rule out the pathē (errant judgments) when properly functioning, see David Winston, “Philo’s Conception of the Divine Nature,” in Neoplatonism and Jewish Thought, ed. Lenn E. Goodman (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), 25–26.

[29]Heschel, The Prophets, 322, 325, 327. Nnamani, The Paradox of a Suffering God, 37. In this, the Stoics disagreed with the Peripatetics and Platonists, who maintained that moderation of one’s emotional responses (metriopatheia) rather than the elimination of them was characteristic of the wise man. Frede, “The Stoic Doctrine,” 93. The Stoic ideal of eradication, it should be noted, is not controverted by the affirmation of the eupatheiai. These eupatheiai (principally joy, caution, and wishfulness) are good (i.e., rational) feelings, but the Stoics did not consider them as pathē, because they were thought to be “non-perturbing” counterbalances to the principal pathē mentioned above. Nicholas Wolterstorff, “Suffering Love,” in Philosophy and the Christian Faith, ed. Thomas V. Morris (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 201. Also see Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God, 27–28. Furthermore, in the Stoic conception, these eupatheiai were operative only in the sage, and “it is unclear whether the Stoics believe that anyone has yet attained to sagehood. It is to a large extent an ideal.” Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind, 47.

[30]It is also apparent that the Stoic concept of emotions differs greatly from modern assumptions (both psychological and popular) about our emotions. Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God, 28.

[31]E.g., J. K. Mozley, The Impassibility of God: A Survey of Christian Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1926), 38.

[32]Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God, 29. See also, the assessment of John Dillon: “In terms of Stoic theory, the attribution of eupatheiai to God would make no sense, since God is not a person but an impersonal force, and there is naturally no evidence of any such attribution in the sources.” John Dillon, “The Nature of God in Quod Deus,” in Two Treatises of Philo of Alexandria, ed. John Dillon and David Winston (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1983), 223–24.

[33]Nnamani, The Paradox of a Suffering God, 31–32, 37. Also see Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity, 321.

[34]Nash, The Gospel and the Greeks, 52.

[35]Stead, Philosophy in Christian Antiquity, 54. According to Ferguson’s summary, “Middle Platonism was Platonism influenced by Stoic ethics, Aristotelian logic, and Neopythagorean metaphysics, religion, and number symbolism.” Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity, 387–88.

[36]Pannenberg, Basic Questions, 122. Neoplatonism, of course, was often in the background of the later Fathers.

[37]Key thinkers in Middle Platonism would include Plutarch (AD 45–125), Albinus (AD second century), Apuleius (b. ca. AD 125), and Atticus (fl. ca. AD 176).

[38]For a fine scholarly treatment of Middle Platonism see John Dillon, The Middle Platonists: A Study of Platonism 80 B.C. to A.D. 220 (London: Duckworth, 1977).

[39]The Middle Platonists identified Plato’s form of the Good as their supreme Mind/God and then interpreted Plato’s other forms as ideas eternally subsisting in the mind of God. In this way, they truly did merge Platonic and Aristotelian thought by locating Plato’s forms in Aristotle’s divine Mind, as it were. Nash, The Gospel and the Greeks, 54.

[40]In this model, this refers to the Creator.

[41]Armstrong, An Introduction to Ancient Philosophy, 152.

[42]Ibid., 154.

[43]There is some debate among Philonic scholars as to whether Philo should, in fact, be designated a Middle Platonist. It is clear, for instance, that he drew on insights from other schools when it suited his purposes (e.g., Stoicism). The consensus of current Philonic specialists so far as I can tell, however, is that while it would be inappropriate to classify Philo as a de jure Middle Platonist, Middle Platonism was indisputably the most significant philosophical influence on him. While I suspect that, in hindsight, this is the correct assessment, we should acknowledge that, for his part, Philo likely would have rejected the Middle Platonist label (or any other philosophical label for that matter), since he conceived of his labors primarily in terms of developing a Mosaic philosophy. This is especially evident in that he maintained that all subsequent philosophies were dependent on Moses in the first place. To follow a discussion by Philonic specialists that broadly confirms and provides this analysis while providing more detailed documentation on the place of Philo vis-à-vis Middle Platonism, see the special section entitled “Philo and Middle Platonism” in The Studia Philonica Annual: Studies in Hellenistic Judaism, ed. David T. Runia, vol. 5 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993), 95–155. Articles by Gregory E. Sterling, David T. Runia, David Winston, Thomas H. Tobin, and John Dillon are included.

[44]Armstrong sheds some helpful light on Alexandrian culture and Philo’s place in it: “The Jews of Alexandria were the most thoroughly Hellenized of all the Jews of the Dispersion. They read the Scriptures in their own Greek translation, the Septuagint, and produced a considerable religious literature in Greek.. . . The young men of their leading families were educated in Greek philosophy, of which Philo has a very extensive, if not always profound knowledge. But in spite of their Hellenization the Jews of Alexandria remained practicing and fundamentally orthodox Jews, and Philo is no exception.” Armstrong, An Introduction to Ancient Philosophy, 159–60.

[45]See, for example, Edwards’s comment that the suppression of biblical portrayals of divine passion were “derived from Greek ideas of perfection which were superimposed upon the interpretation of Biblical religion first by Philo . . . who created the conceptually unstable supernaturalistic theology by fusing (or confusing) Greek with Hebraic notions of divine perfection, then by many early Church Fathers such as Justin, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Ambrose, etc. who uncritically accepted Philo’s position. By the time of Augustine, Philo’s belief in the utter unchangeability of God had been crystallized into infallible, unquestioned dogma.. . . What agonies and confusions Western theology might have been spared if the earliest church fathers had not followed Philo in fusing and confusing two quite distinct and basically incompatible ideas of perfection, one dynamic and Biblical, and the other static and Greek.” Edwards, “The Pagan Dogma,” 308–9, 311–12.

[46]Underlying this practice was his supposition that the truths of Scripture and philosophy both obtain from God. Indeed, according to Philo, the Greek philosophers acquired their wisdom from the Hebrew Scriptures. Henry Chadwick, “Philo and the Beginnings of Christian Thought,” in The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, ed. A. H. Armstrong (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 139.

[47]At times, Philo even referred to his supreme principle as “more primordial than the Monad” or “superior to One and Monad and Origin.” See Dillon, The Middle Platonists, 156. Dillon suggests that these statements are mainly rhetorical flourishes. Weinandy, on the other hand, suggests that their intent was to emphasize a distinction between Creator and creature: “In saying that God was ‘beyond the Monad,’ Philo did not want to make God abstract and impersonal or even beyond being, but rather he wanted to ensure that God was not ‘numbered’ as the first in a series and so part of that series. As the Creator, God cannot be numbered with or placed within that which is created.” Thomas G. Weinandy, Does God Suffer? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000), 75n9.

[48]Dillon, “The Nature of God,” 217. Philo found support for this ontology in the Septuagint—the version of the Old Testament Scriptures he read and believed to be infallible—rendering of Ex. 3:14 as ho ōn or “he who is.” Philo in turn switched this to the neuter and took to calling God to on or “the Existent.” Joseph C. McLelland, God the Anonymous: A Study in Alexandrian Philosophical Theology (Cambridge, MA: The Philadelphia Patristic Foundation, 1976), 26, 32–33. As a result of his conclusions from the Septuagint translation, Philo understood Ex. 3:14 as follows: “My nature is to be, not to be spoken.” Philo, De mutatione nominum 11 (trans. F. H. Colson and G. H. Whitaker, LCL 275 [1934]: 147).

[49]Chiefly, these intermediaries are the Logos, along with the two principal powers, goodness and sovereignty, designated by the names theos and kyrios. See Philo, De Abrahamo 121–22 (LCL 289 [1935]: 62–65). The relationship of these intermediaries to one another and to Philo’s God is complicated and confusing (perhaps even to Philo), and although a detailed examination of this particular feature of Philo’s thought is not necessary for the present study, a few comments will help to shed some additional light on the matter. Stead, for instance, indicates that “it is often unclear whether these ‘powers’ represent God’s own action expressed in terms of condescension, or whether they are subsidiary beings created to serve him and deputize for him.” Stead, Philosophy in Christian Antiquity, 58–59. Offering his specific assessment of Philo’s view of the Logos, Armstrong says, “The function of the Logos is instrumental and intermediary. It is the instrument by which God makes the world and the intermediary by which the human intelligence as it is purified ascends to God again. The exact degree of its independent existence must remain doubtful because Philo is so vague about it, and it certainly cannot be said to be a person, still less a Divine Person.” Armstrong, An Introduction to Ancient Philosophy, 162. For a more in-depth discussion of the interrelations of these powers (including the place of Sophia in Philo’s hierarchy), see Dillon, The Middle Platonists, 155–65.

[50]David T. Runia, Philo and the Church Fathers: A Collection of Papers (New York: Brill, 1995), 208–16. In consequence of all this, Philo believed that “man can know that God exists; what he is remains incomprehensible.” McLelland, God the Anonymous, 35, italics his. For Philo, the unknowability of God occasions his recourse to apophatic theology. We will return to this feature of Philo’s thought below.

[51]Joseph M. Hallman, The Descent of God: Divine Suffering in History and Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991; repr., Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2004), 23. Philo’s treatise is offered in the form of a commentary on Gen. 6:4–12.

[52]See especially Philo, Quod Deus immutabilis sit 51–68 (LCL 247 [1930]: 36–45).

[53]Philo commented, “All the same the Lawgiver uses such expressions, just so far as they serve for a kind of elementary lesson, to admonish those who could not otherwise be brought to their senses.” Ibid., 52 (trans. F. H. Colson and G. H. Whitaker, 37).

[54]Ibid., 21–22. On Philo’s treatment of divine immutability, I am especially following the very capable discussion by Hallman. His research documents most of the relevant Philonic passages on divine immutability. Hallman, The Descent of God, 24–29.

[55]Philo, Deus 26 (trans. F. H. Colson and G. H. Whitaker, LCL 247:22–23).

[56]Ibid., 27–28.

[57]Ibid., 28–29. See also section 72. In addition to identifying the importance of these two illustrations for framing Philo’s concept of divine immutability, Hallman has also drawn attention to the fact that Philo never used the term analloiōtos to denote God’s immutability. Philo’s preferred term for God’s immutability was atreptos. Hallman acknowledges that an “argument from terminological omission is admittedly weak.” But in light of the philosophical precedent for using this term with respect to God and in conjunction with the stronger contextual evidence already mentioned, Hallman believes that this omission indicates that “Philo shows that he is aware that the God of Israel cannot be described in language drawn indiscriminately from Greek philosophy.” Hallman, The Descent of God, 24, 29.

[58]Hallman, The Descent of God, 25.

[59]Philo, De plantatione 87 (trans. F. H. Colson and G. H. Whitaker, LCL 247 [1930]: 256–57).

[60]This interpretation of Philo is dependent, of course, on a proper assessment of Philo’s doctrine of the subservient powers. As was mentioned above, this is a difficult concept to grasp in Philo, and even he may not have remained entirely consistent on this point throughout his writings. In any case, if the powers (which are clearly in view in this context—see De plantatione 86) are mere personifications of God’s immanent activity in the world, then the above interpretation is decidedly more likely than if the powers are, in fact, actual lesser deities whose function it is to preserve “the Existent” from contact with creation. It has been suggested above that while certitude on this point is evasive, on balance these powers appear more likely to be personifications than actual persons.

[61]E.g., Bruce A. Ware, “An Evangelical Reformulation of the Doctrine of the Immutability of God,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 29 (1986): 438–41. On this view, God’s relational responses to his creatures do not constitute a violation of his immutability, but rather are an expression of it. In other words, God’s unchanging nature and character require that he express himself in ways that morally reflect his character in the face of the changing moral circumstances of humans.

[62]Hallman, The Descent of God, 23–24. Again, as with Philo’s treatment of immutability, we do not wish to overemphasize a point drawn from a case of “terminological omission.” Nevertheless, we should take note of this and then add it together with other evidence (to be considered below) to see what obtains in Philo’s view of impassibility.

[63]Philo, Deus 52 (LCL 247:37). Philo’s comment here reflects the Stoic understanding of passions as irrational infirmities of humankind when he labels them “the unreasoning passions.”

[64]Ibid., 26 (happiness), 74–76 (mercy); Philo, De opificio mundi 156 (LCL 226 [1929]: 122–24 [anger at Adam and Eve]); Philo, De somniis 2.177–79 (LCL 275 [1934]: 522 [provoked to anger]); Philo, De vita Mosis 1.6 (LCL 289 [1935]: 278 [wrath]); Philo, Abr. 203–4.

[65]Philo, Deus 52–55, 63–65 (LCL 247:36–38, 42). Here he draws his famous distinction between two theological principles, one represented by the LXX translation of Num. 23:19, in which “God is not as a man,” and the other represented by the LXX of Deut. 8:5, in which God is like a man because he provides instruction for the masses, just as a man trains his son (53–54). Hence we are told that the instruction of God given in anthropomorphic or anthropopathic terms is “for training and admonition, not because God’s nature is such” (54). Accordingly, we see that for Philo the principle represented by Num. 23:19 takes priority over the Deut. 8:5 principle in that the former, in accordance with the via negativa, is a more truthful statement, whereas the latter principle merely represents an accommodation to those “whose natural wit is more dense and dull” (63).

[66]After extensively pondering the possibilities, Dillon finally settled on this conclusion as the most likely. Dillon, “The Nature of God,” 222–26. See also Winston, “Philo’s Conception of the Divine Nature,” 24–32.

[67]Winston, for example, tellingly comments, “We may conclude that it was the frequent application of eleos to God in the Septuagint, Philo’s canonical text, that made it so difficult for him to avoid the philosophically problematic attribution.” Ibid., 32.

[68]Hallman acknowledges as much, and he (correctly I believe) states it even more forcefully: “Philo does not . . . completely absorb the Greek notion of divine immutability and impassibility. Because his aim is the programmatic reconciliation of the Scriptural portrait of God with the Hellenistic notion, he cannot have been expected to see clearly how they might rather fundamentally differ. Nevertheless the Scriptural portrait remained uppermost in his mind.” Hallman, The Descent of God, 29.

[69]Philo, Abr. 202 (trans. F. H. Colson, LCL 289:99). Here Philo breaks with Stoic practice by attributing joy (one of the principal eupatheiai) to God. This is a point to which we will return shortly.

[70]Ibid., 203.

[71]The alternative (but seemingly less persuasive) interpretation is that Philo affirmed deeply incompatible concepts—sometimes even in adjacent passages—but was too obtuse to notice the havoc that this wrought on his own system.

[72]Weinandy, Does God Suffer?, 78.

[73]In this way, Weinandy argues that Philo’s apophatic statements about God (e.g., that he is im-passible and im-mutable) are limited in their aims. Weinandy advises that Philo’s negative statements about God are not meant as expansive ontological claims. Rather, they served to capture the ways in which the Creator is distinct from his creatures. Ibid., 77. This interpretation of Philo’s negative theology is supported by H. A. Wolfson, “Negative Attributes in the Church Fathers and the Gnostic Basilides,” Harvard Theological Review 50 (1957): 145.

[74]Weinandy, Does God Suffer?, 79. It should be noted that Weinandy does not comment on Philo’s occasional affirmations of divine anger—a point to which we will return below.

[75]Though he would presumably limit the range of divine passion to those emotions that could be classified under the rubric of the eupatheiai.

[76]Recall the discussion above, in which it was emphasized that the Stoic deity was impersonal and therefore not a proper subject of emotions in any form.

[77]Philo, Abr. 201–7. See also Winston, “Philo’s Conception of the Divine Nature,” 29–30.

[78]For example, God’s joy is permanently possessed and unshakeable, whereas the human experience of joy is fluctuating and subject to alteration from the circumstances that befall us.

[79]In context, it appears that what Philo referred to as God’s wrath is merely the natural consequence to action born of “irrational impulses,” otherwise termed sin. Dillon, “The Nature of God,” 222.

[80]It is true that of the three principal eupatheiai, Philo ascribes only joy to God. However it is presumable that he would have viewed his descriptions of God as loving and merciful as falling under the principal categories of the eupatheiai.

[81]Weinandy, Does God Suffer?, 79.

[82]Admittedly, Philo tried to ground such a discrepancy on the basis of a theological principle. Recall the preceding discussion of Philo’s treatment of anthropomorphic/anthropopathic language in Deus 52–55, in which Philo appealed to Num. 23:19 and Deut. 8:5 as principles framing the ways that God is respectively like and unlike men. Taking stock of Philo’s reasoning here requires the following comments. First, Philo is to be commended for the fact that he explicitly appeals to Scripture and not Middle Platonic metaphysics as the basis of his discrimination. Second, in principle, it is correct to seek scriptural guidelines to direct our understanding of how God is both like and unlike humankind. As a class, evangelicals operate on the basis of this kind of principle with respect to anthropomorphisms properly speaking. For example, evangelicals generally recognize that though the Scriptures in certain places attribute bodily parts to God, those same features are elsewhere transcended when we learn that God, for instance, is omnipresent (Psalm 139) and incorporeal (John 4). But since the particular texts to which Philo appeals do not convey the inherent and unavoidable irrationality of the pathē, we may not be too far afield in supposing that his interpretations were colored by a bit of philosophically predisposed eisegesis.

[83]In the formative section of this project, it will be important to ask, for example, whether the wrath of the Christian God constitutes an irrational or a perfectly fitted response to creaturely sin.

[84]Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity, 391.

[85]A. H. Armstrong, The Architecture of the Intelligible Universe in the Philosophy of Plotinus: An Analytical and Historical Study (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940; repr., Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1967), 120.

[86]Samuel Enoch Stumpf and James Fieser, Philosophy: History and Problems, 6th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003), 120.

[87]The One is unknowable, absolutely simple, and beyond being. Emanating successively from the One, in Philo’s thought, are the Nous (mind), the World Soul, human souls, and the material world. For a more detailed discussion of this emanation and return, see Copleston, A History of Philosophy, 1:466–71.

[88]Stumpf and Fieser, Philosophy, 121. While Plotinus certainly would have rejected anything approaching the Christian doctrine of creation, his system does not technically amount to pantheism either, because each level of emanation is always transcended by the level above it. Copleston, A History of Philosophy, 1:467.

[89]Armstrong, An Introduction to Ancient Philosophy, 186. On hearing all this, it is interesting to learn that Plotinus evidently knows quite a few things about the unknowable One.

[90]Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God, 32.

[91]Plotinus, Enneades 3.6 (LCL 442 [1967]: 210–89). Also see A. Hilary Armstrong, “Plotinus and Christianity,” in Platonism in Late Antiquity, ed. Stephen Gersh and Charles Kannengiesser (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992), 117.

[92]In the case of humans, Plotinus contended that though human souls appear passible, it is uniquely the body that is passive and affected. Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God, 33. However, the human soul, though impassible, is asleep and needs to be awakened from the body in order to recover its true state. Hallman, The Descent of God, 17.

[93]Roy Kearsley, “The Impact of Greek Concepts of God on the Christology of Cyril of Alexandria,” Tyndale Bulletin 43 (1992): 308. Also see William V. Rowe, “Adolf von Harnack and the Concept of Hellenization,” in Hellenization Revisited: Shaping a Christian Response within the Greco-Roman World, ed. Wendy E. Helleman (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1994), 88.

[94]Paul L. Gavrilyuk, “God’s Impassible Suffering in the Flesh: The Promise of Paradoxical Christology,” in Divine Impassibility and the Mystery of Human Suffering, ed. James F. Keating and Thomas Joseph White (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 136. Recall moreover that what the Stoics meant by apathy was not a rejection of emotions in the modern sense, but a rejection of rational errors.

[95]Setting aside the issue of the incarnation for the moment, this is not a problematic assertion for Christian theists. Since God is, in fact, a spiritual being (e.g., John 4:24), passibility cannot be attributed to him in a bodily sense outside the sphere of the incarnation. The implications of the incarnation for a doctrine of divine impassibility will be considered in the exposition of the Fathers below, as well as in the formative portion of this book.

[96]As we will see, this latter facet of Neoplatonism (i.e., the One’s lack of involvement with lower orders of being) is something that the Fathers never countenanced, because they were following the scriptural doctrines of creation and preservation.

[97]James F. Keating and Thomas Joseph White, “Introduction: Divine Impassibility in Contemporary Theology,” in Keating and White, Divine Impassibility and the Mystery of Human Suffering, 6–7.

[98]To this effect, Gerald Bray makes the following helpful observation concerning the Fathers: “There is no doubt that the early Christians were influenced by the philosophical currents surrounding them. They had to address their contemporaries in ways the latter would understand, just as modern theologians must do. It is no more surprising to find Origen or Augustine addressing the issue of the goodness of matter—a belief that was widely denied in ancient times—than it is to find their modern descendants grappling with the problem of suffering in a world that has experienced genocide on a previously unheard-of scale.” Gerald L. Bray, “Has the Christian Doctrine of God Been Corrupted by Greek Philosophy?,” in God Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents God, ed. Douglas S. Huffman and Eric L. Johnson (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 112.

[99]To register the opinion of one scholar who believes that the Fathers failed to preserve biblical authority in this endeavor, note the following comment by Pollard: “Of course, the theologians of the early Christian centuries had to use current thought-forms in order to reach the minds and hearts of their hearers, but they allowed the thought-forms of Greek philosophy so to dominate their theological thinking, that much that was distinctive in Christianity was either lost or falsely expressed, and alien elements which they imported into Christian thought have cursed theological thought ever since their time. Nowhere is this bad influence of Greek philosophical presuppositions on Christian thinking about God more clearly to be seen than in what are commonly known as the traditional attributes of God, and in particular in the attribute of impassibility.” Pollard, “The Impassibility of God,” 354, italics his.

[100]Of course, there were exceptions to this norm. It is true for instance, that some, especially in the second century (e.g., Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria), viewed the truths in philosophy as at least a dim reflection of and a preparatory step to scriptural revelation. Kearsley, “Faith and Philosophy,” 81. However, see the critique of this precise notion in Irenaeus, Adversus haereses 2.14.7 (ed. Domni Renati Massueti, PG 7 [1857]: 754–55).

[101]Bray, “Has the Christian Doctrine of God Been Corrupted?,” 108–9, 114–16.

[102]Gerald Hanratty, “Divine Immutability and Impassibility Revisited,” in At the Heart of the Real, ed. Fran O’Rourke (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1992), 147.

[103]Undoubtedly, there was a collective development over time as the parameters of orthodoxy were progressively laid down. Moreover, there were exceptions during this period (e.g., Justin, Clement of Alexandria) who appear to have been more influenced by the reigning philosophies of the day. And assuredly, some of the Fathers displayed inconsistencies within their own thought. None of these concessions, however, diminish the fundamental character of the Patristic stance toward the relationship of scriptural revelation and philosophy. Herman Bavinck’s observations in this matter are astute: “The church was not the victim of deception. In the formation and development of the dogmas, the church fathers made generous use of philosophy. They did that, however, in the full awareness of and with clear insight into the dangers connected with that enterprise; they were conscious of the grounds on which they did it, and they did it with express recognition of the word of the apostles as the only rule of faith and conduct. For that reason also they did not utilize the whole of Greek philosophy but made a choice; they only utilized the philosophy that was most suited to help them think through and defend the truth of God. They went to work eclectically and did not take over any single philosophical system, be it either from Plato or from Aristotle, but with the aid of Greek philosophy produced a Christian philosophy of their own.. . . In the opinion of the church fathers, philosophy was the servant of theology. From everything it is clearly evident that the use of philosophy in theology was based, not on a mistake, but on firm and clear conviction. The church fathers knew what they were doing. Mind you, this does not rule out the possibility that at some points the influence of philosophy was too strong. But in that connection we must make a distinction, nevertheless, between the theology of the fathers and the dogmas of the church. The church was at all times alert against the misuse of philosophy; it not only rejected Gnosticism but also condemned Origenism.” Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 1, Prolegomena, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 607–8. See also Bray, “Has the Christian Doctrine of God Been Corrupted?,” 112. Aloys Grillmeier has argued that, in actual fact, it was the heretics who were guilty of Hellenizing the faith. Aloys Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, 2nd ed., trans. John Bowden (Atlanta: John Knox, 1975), 1:555–56.

[104]G. L. Prestige, God in Patristic Thought (London: SPCK, 1952), xiii–xiv. For a similar observation, with particular reference to the relation between Patristic theology and Stoicism, see Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity, 368.

[105]Admittedly, however, the Father’s general practice should predispose us to read the Fathers’ impassibilism in a charitable light unless there is unambiguous evidence to the contrary.

3

Patristic Models of Divine Impassibility

The historical survey in this chapter and the next depicts the development of what can accurately be termed the “classical” understanding of divine impassibility.[1] To be sure, this tradition is not completely uniform. Throughout these eras, there have been varying shades of doctrinal emphasis and even the occasional individual who seems out of step with the mainstream of the tradition. When the relevant evidence is weighed, however, the dominant characteristic of these eras, despite any number of individual nuances and the existence of minority models, is some form of affirmation of the doctrine of divine impassibility.[2] What is equally important to see, however, is that the mainstream of the classical impassibility tradition did not oppose the vibrant affection of God on account of an affirmation of divine impassibility. Indeed, as these chapters will show, the joint declaration of God’s impassibility and impassionedness originally comes to us from this tradition, and not in spite of it. This finding, in turn, will validate and begin to flesh out the provisional definition of impassibility with which we began in chapter 1. It will be left to subsequent chapters to propose what components of the classical model should be retained, revised, or rejected.

Again, while not intending to be comprehensive, the survey of Patristic theologians to follow does aim to examine major representatives from the early church, with a view to establishing the parameters of Patristic reflection on divine impassibility.[3] Prior to considering the Patristic contribution, however, we should remind ourselves of the need to be careful about reading early church comments through twenty-first-century eyes. Unlike the modern era, for instance, in which there is a seemingly limitless supply of articles and monographs devoted specifically to the topic of impassibility, the early church theologians rarely wrote on this issue in a sustained and systematic manner.[4] Though we may wish that the church fathers had treated this topic more exhaustively, for the most part they inserted their discussions of impassibility into treatments of otherwise larger issues (e.g., developing Trinitarian and christological theology) and in responses to the sub-orthodox proposals of their opponents.

Along the same lines, we must also admit at the outset that this survey of Patristic theologians cannot avoid recourse to some element of intentional anachronism. In the main, these theologians were operating before or during the development of orthodox Trinitarian and christological creedal formulations, and as such, they did not have the benefit of the sweeping doctrinal hindsight that subsequent generations would enjoy. These early formulations, then, were not always marked by the specificity that we would expect of a treatment written in the aftermath of a long-established tradition of orthodox Trinitarianism and christology. It is taken as a given, therefore, that our analysis, while endeavoring earnestly to be accurate, may classify some of these theologians with more specificity than they would have employed in their own time.

Finally, we may anticipate our findings here by noting that the main views on divine impassibility in the Patristic era may adequately be organized under three different models.[5] Based on their own statements, most of the Fathers affirmed both the impassibility of God and the passionate involvement of God in creation, thus effectively establishing the mainstream of the impassibility tradition. By contrast, a few of the Fathers may be read as proposing a more unmitigated notion of divine impassibility. And finally, we will see that several unorthodox figures in the early church contended for what may retrospectively be identified as a fully passibilist model, most notably in the patripassian controversy.

The Qualified-Impassibility Model

The qualified-impassibility model is the model that dominated the landscape of Patristic reflection on the question of divine impassibility. Generally speaking, its proponents posited a form of divine impassibility along with affirmations of divine passion. We begin our survey of this model in the ante-Nicene era of the church, during which “there was neither an agreed upon canon of Scriptures nor a universal ‘orthodox’ creed that could be relied upon to help early Christian thinkers consider a topic such as the passibility of God.”[6] While it is true that anticipatory statements of this kind of model come from sources as early as the thought of the Christian martyr Ignatius[7] (d. ca. 110) and Theophilus of Antioch[8] (late second century), Irenaeus is the first theologian classified under this heading who merits our sustained attention.[9]

Irenaeus

Early church theologian and bishop of Lyons, Irenaeus (ca. 130–200) is renowned for his response to the growing threat of Gnosticism in his day.[10] In arguing against Gnosticism, Irenaeus found himself in the interesting position of having to correct a view that simultaneously held a false sense of transcendence and a false sense of immanence.[11] For Irenaeus, the key to the successful navigation of this dilemma was a proper understanding of creation, whereby God is of a different ontological order than his creation, on the one hand, and yet providentially and intimately involved with—as opposed to being locked out of—his creation, on the other.[12]

It was in view of this more biblical sense of divine transcendence and immanence that Irenaeus affirmed the impassibility of God. He critiqued, for instance, the Gnostic creation story, in which one of the Aeons became subject to passion, went astray, and as a consequence birthed, so to speak, the material order.[13] Irenaeus, of course, found it utterly inconsistent that one of these Aeons, whom the Gnostics said were of the same substance as the Father, could be passible.[14] So, it is not surprising then that he condemned his Gnostic opponents for putting God on a creaturely level. In one of his critiques of this error, Irenaeus observes that his opponents

ascribe those things which apply to men to the Father of all, whom they also declare to be unknown to all; and they deny that He himself made the world, to guard against attributing want of power to Him; while, at the same time, they endow Him with human affections and passions [hominum autem affectiones et passiones donantes]. But if they had known the Scriptures, and been taught by the truth, they would have known, beyond doubt, that God is not as men are; and that His thoughts are not like the thoughts of men. For the Father of all is at a vast distance from those affections and passions which operate among men [Multum enim distat omnium Pater ab his, quae proveniunt hominibus, affectionibus et passionibus].[15]

None of the above, however, entails the conclusion that Irenaeus believed God to be passionless. To the contrary, he unhesitatingly portrayed God’s emotional expression.[16] Noteworthy among his descriptions of divine emotion is Irenaeus’s treatment of divine anger. In the course of criticizing the Marcionites, who objected to the Old Testament depiction of God as wrathful, Irenaeus maintained that God’s anger was not a fit of mind-numbing passion, but rather an expression of his justice and righteous indignation against human sin.[17]

From this pairing of divine impassibility and divine emotion, we are able to see that Irenaeus, as did most of the Fathers, understood specific limits to attach to his appropriation of “negative” theology. That is to say that in designating God impassible, Irenaeus was not attempting to make a positive statement about the metaphysical makeup of God. Rather, the application of such a term to God was a mechanism primarily for the purpose of conveying God’s utter distinctiveness as Creator.[18] As Paul Gavrilyuk has insightfully noted:

Divine transcendence was expressed in patristic thought by the distinction between created and uncreated. The negative characteristics of the uncreated God followed from this distinction. Creatures are finite, visible, and passible; God, in contrast, is infinite, invisible, and impassible. One should beware of overinterpreting this contrast in the sense of “detached,” “apathetic,” and “unemotional.” There is no warrant for such an interpretation in the sources. The idea expressed is fairly general and modest: God is unlike everything else, and therefore he acts and suffers action in a manner different from everything else.[19]

Used with such a descriptive value, the term impassible simply establishes the boundary of the analogy between divine and human experience, when the same emotionally colored terms (e.g., kindness, compassion, love, anger) are applied to both God and man.[20]

Finally, with respect to his incarnational theology, Irenaeus has been accused of gross inconsistency for his dual affirmation of Christ’s passion and divine impassibility.[21] For example, Irenaeus’s detractors on this point have often identified his comment in Adversus haereses 3.16.6 as evidence of his belief in mutually exclusive propositions. In this passage, Irenaeus states that “He [the Word] took up man into Himself, the invisible becoming visible, the incomprehensible being made comprehensible, the impassible becoming capable of suffering [et impassibilis passibilis], and the Word being made man, thus summing up all things in Himself.”[22]

What needs to be noted, however, is that, in the main, Irenaeus’s incarnational ruminations were set against the backdrop of his opponents’ Gnosticism/Docetism.[23] In making an assertion such as the preceding, Irenaeus seems fundamentally to be affirming the true humanity of Jesus Christ. In Haer. 3.19.3, which provides more specificity, we get a clear sense that Irenaeus sought to affirm both the true humanity of Jesus and the impassibility of his divine nature.

For as he was man that he might be tempted, so also he was the Logos that he might be glorified. The Logos remained quiescent [ἡσυχάζοντος] during the process of temptation, crucifixion and death, but aided [συγγινομένου] the human nature when it conquered, and endured, and performed deeds of kindness, and rose again from the dead, and was received up into heaven.[24]

According to this comment, Irenaeus apparently believed that an incarnation was necessary to overcome the natural impassibility of God (i.e., the impassibility of the divine nature). Apart from the incarnation he suggested that the experiences of temptation, physical suffering, and death are foreign to the Godhead. As a consequence, Irenaeus maintained that some aspects of Jesus’s incarnate existence impinged uniquely on one or the other of his natures.[25]

Tertullian

In Tertullian (ca. 160–225), renowned anti-Marcionite and probable coiner of the term Trinity, we find one of the preeminent Latin fathers also making a dual affirmation of divine impassibility and divine passion. It is certainly clear that Tertullian affirmed God’s immutability[26] and impassibility.[27] And yet, alongside those strong convictions, he also saw the necessity of affirming God’s relational and emotional responsiveness to his creatures. For instance, at the end of Adversus Marcionem 2.16, Tertullian comments that God

must needs bring all things into operation for all things’ sake, as many sensations as there are causes for them [tot sensus quot et causas]: anger because of the wicked, indignation because of the ungrateful, hostility because of the proud, and for all evil men whatever is a hindrance to them [et iram propter scelestos, et bilem propter ingrates, et aemulationem propter superbos, et quicquid non expedit malis]. So also mercy because of the erring, patience because of those not yet repentant, generosity because of those who deserve it, and whatever it is the good have need of [Sic et misericordiam propter errantes, et patientiam propter non resipiscentes, et praestantiam propter merentes, et quicquid bonis opus est]. All these he experiences in his own particular manner, that manner in which it is seemly for him to experience them: and because of him man also experiences the same, himself no less in his own particular manner.[28]

What he has in mind here is, of course, nothing like modern passibilism. Rather, Tertullian views God’s responsiveness as flowing from and being expressive of his eternal and unchanging nature. As he sees it, God’s foundational attributes of goodness and justice, require that he respond appropriately to the various states in which men find themselves.

Describing how God’s justice had to take on a new function in the aftermath of sin, Tertullian contends that

when afterwards evil had broken loose, and the goodness of God had from thenceforth to deal with an opponent, that same justice acquired for itself another function, that of guiding goodness along the path of censure and correction, in such sort that, God having set aside that liberality which offered no check to his goodness, his goodness should be measured out according to each man’s deserts, granted to the worthy, denied to the unworthy, taken away from the ungrateful, and in this way vindicated against all opponents. Thus the whole work of justice is a service done to goodness: the fact that by judgement God condemns, that by condemnation he punishes—that, as you put it, he exercises severity—tends to good and not to evil. In short the fear of judgement contributes to good, not to evil.[29]

Further on, he points out that part of God’s responding appropriately to different human states involves exhibiting the proper emotion—or as he terms it, “judicial sentiment”—to match the given judicial function being exercised at the time.[30] So, for example, if God is truly good, Tertullian argues, his goodness must take on the form of anger when confronted with sin.[31]

However, Tertullian did not thereby intend to put divine emotion on an identical par with the human counterpart. Whereas the Marcionites held that experiencing emotions such as anger would entail the corruptibility of God, Tertullian responded that though such an argument may be true for humans, it is not so for God, on account of the difference between divine and human natures. His comment is telling.

O these fools, who from things human form conjectures about things divine, and because in mankind passions of this sort are taken to be of a corruptive character, suppose that in God also they are of the same quality. Distinguish the substances, and assign to each its own sensations, as diverse as the substances demand, even though they are seen to make use of the same terminology. We read of God’s right hand, his eyes, his feet: yet these are not to be supposed exactly the same as a man’s, just because they partake of the same designation. Great is the unlikeness of divine body and human, though their members are identical in name: equally great must be the difference of divine mind and human, though their sensations are referred to in the same terms. And as in man it is the corruptibility of the human substance which makes these a cause of corruption, so it is in God the incorruptibility of the divine substance which makes them no cause of corruption.[32]

It is important to note, in this passage, how Tertullian condemns what he believes to be the backward reasoning of his opponents. Evidently, they reasoned from human experience to a conclusion about God, but Tertullian argues that the point of comparison moves in the other direction. Thus, humans are emotional beings as image bearers of God.[33] Yet our finite and fallen experience of emotion is tainted by a corruption which God’s emotions have never known. Hence, Tertullian can argue that though God experiences anger, he is never susceptible to being overwhelmed by that emotion. Here he observes that

those other emotions, of anger, I mean, and exasperation, we experience with no such felicity, for felicity appertains to God alone, because of the incorruptibility which belongs to him and no one else. He can be angry without (being shaken), can be annoyed without coming into peril, can be moved without being overthrown.[34]

By way of summary to this point, it seems that though his impassibility doctrine was not exhaustively worked out,[35] Tertullian fully intended to juxtapose senses of divine impassibility and divine passion. To that end, we have seen how Tertullian viewed God’s relational responsiveness as expressive of—rather than a violation of—his eternal nature and character. Additionally, in an attempt to strike the appropriate balance between God’s otherness and his likeness to us, Tertullian advanced something like an analogical understanding of the way that emotional predicates apply to God and mankind.[36] In short, we may say that, for Tertullian, God is neither caught off-guard nor overwhelmed by emotion, but in his self-determination responds perfectly to changing temporal circumstances as befits his unchanging nature and character.

With respect to his incarnational theology, Tertullian argued that Jesus was fully human and that his sufferings were undeniably real.[37] In tandem with that conviction, Tertullian also held that Jesus’s suffering and death properly pertained only to his human nature. In Adversus Praxean 29 Tertullian responds to the alleged patripassianist Praxeas that his assertion of the Father’s fellow-suffering is absurd.

In fact because they are ashamed of direct blasphemy against the Father, they hope it may in this manner be mitigated, while they now admit that Father and Son are two if indeed in this fashion the Son suffers while the Father suffers with (him). In this also are they fools. For what is “compassion” except “suffering with” another? Further, if the Father is impassible he is of course incompassible: or if he is compassible he is of course passible. So you do him no benefit by this fear of yours. For you fear to call passible him whom you do call compassible. But the Father is just as incompassible as the Son also is impassible as regards that state in which he is God [tam autem incompassibilis pater est quam impassibilis etiam filius ex ea condicione qua deus est].[38]

Additionally, Tertullian supported his belief that suffering and death impinged uniquely on Christ’s human nature with his doctrine of the communication of idioms.[39]

Origen

We now turn our attention to the thought of Origen of Alexandria (ca. 185–254), a theologian whose legacy is generally seen as both prodigious and conflicted.[40] Origen offers one of the most striking passibilist comments in the Patristic era.

He [the Savior] came down to earth in pity for human kind, he endured our passions and sufferings before he suffered the cross, and he deigned to assume our flesh [Descendit in terras miserans humanum genus, passiones perpessus est nostras antequam crucem pateretur et carnem nostram dignaretur assumere]. For if he had not suffered he would not have entered into full participation in human life. He first suffered, then he came down and was manifested [Primum passus est, deinde descendit, et visus est]. What is that passion which he suffered for us? It is the passion of love [Charitas est passio]. The Father himself and the God of the whole universe is “long-suffering, full of mercy and pity” [Pater quoque ipse et Deus universitatis, longanimis et multum misericors et miserator]. Must he not then, in some sense, be exposed to suffering? So you must realize that in his dealing with men he suffers human passions [An ignoras quia quando humana dispensat, passionem patitur humanam]. “For the Lord thy God bare thy ways, even as a man bears his own son.” Thus God bears our ways, just as the son of God bears our “passions.” The Father himself is not impassible [Ipse pater non est impassibilis]. If he is besought he shows pity and compassion; he feels, in some sort, the passion of love, and is exposed to what he cannot be exposed to in respect of his greatness, and for us men he endures the passions of mankind [Si rogetur, miseretur et condolet, patitur aliquid charitatis, et fit in eis in quibus juxta magnitudinem naturae suae non potest esse, et propter nos humanas sustinet passiones].[41]

In this context, it is undeniable that Origen speaks in passibilist terms, not only of the incarnate Messiah,[42] but also of the pre-incarnate Logos and God the Father as well.[43]

In tandem with that remarkable testimony to divine passion, however, Origen held equally strong convictions concerning the impassibility of God. He explained, for instance, that Scripture predicated emotionally laden terminology of God only in a nonliteral manner.[44] Moreover, he stated, “When we speak of God’s wrath, we do not hold that it is an emotional reaction on His part, but something which He uses in order to correct by stern methods those who have committed many terrible sins.”[45] According to this comment, God is not properly the subject of anger, but rather he merely gives the appearance of anger as a corrective measure that sinners have brought on themselves.[46]

What are we to make of the simultaneous emphasis of these two themes in Origen’s thought? Origen has been variously interpreted as a fundamentally impassibilist theologian,[47] a beacon of passibilist insight breaking through the hegemony of absolute impassibility,[48] and a merely inconsistent thinker.[49] It seems, however, that despite the questionable elements in his broader theology,[50] Origen may just as well have been on the leading edge of a more balanced approach in his dual affirmation of divine impassibility and divine passion. Indeed, I suspect that a reading of Origen along the lines of that advanced by Weinandy is closer to the mark than the three previously mentioned theories. In his analysis,

Origen upholds both the impassibility of God and the passion of God. To say that God is impassible is to deny emotional changes of states within God. It is a negative way of upholding the absolute otherness of God and of his radical perfection. Thus, while God does not undergo any passible change of emotional states, yet, because of his immutable perfection, he is perfect in his passionate love for humankind. Note that Origen states twice that the suffering that God endures over the fallen condition of man is “the passion of love.” The Father is “not impassible,” not in the sense that he changes from not suffering to suffering, but in the sense that, in his unchangeable love, he passionately grieves over his people. The suffering that God endures is not due to a change in his love, but is subsumed by and predicated upon his impassible and unchangeable perfect love. This is why Origen insists that the scripture passages which speak of God’s emotions must be interpreted metaphorically, and yet without denying the reality of which they speak.[51]

According to Weinandy’s interpretation, then, the biblical attribution of emotion to God does not intend to convey a divine experience of emotional vicissitude, but rather serves as an expression of God’s unchanging and unwavering love.

In closing our analysis of the ante-Nicene fathers, the contributions of Gregory Thaumaturgus and Lactantius merit brief mention. From the pens of these two Fathers we encounter the two earliest treatises formally devoted to issues bearing on divine impassibility.[52]

Gregory Thaumaturgus

Gregory Thaumaturgus (ca. 213–270), a disciple of Origen, has traditionally been recognized as the author of Ad Theopompum de passibili et impassibili in Deo.[53] In this letter, which proceeds in the form of a dialogue, it seems that two primary arguments are advanced: (1) that freely chosen passion is not improper to God,[54] and (2) that God’s impassible suffering is redemptive and so destroys suffering.[55] Though it does not resolve the dispute over divine impassibility with anything like an exhaustive synthesis, Ad Theopompum nevertheless constitutes yet another Patristic attempt to combine the themes of impassibility and divine passion.[56]

Lactantius

When we come to Lactantius (ca. 250–325), tutor to Constantine’s son, we find that, in his thought on divine impassibility, he too made a very strong case for the compatibility of God’s impassibility and passionate emotional experience. In his Divinarum institutionum, Lactantius clearly evinces his commitment to impassibilism when he identifies God as “inpassibilis inmutabilis incorruptus beatus aeternus.”[57] And yet, in De ira Dei, he offers perhaps the strongest defense of divine anger in the Patristic era. As we shall see, Lactantius’s affirmation of both doctrines was intentional, not accidental. In his view, divine anger is a necessary component of divine providence, in that God’s anger is a necessary expression of God’s eternal perfection in certain circumstances. He comments, for instance:

Now if God exercises care for the world, then God cares for the life of men, and He takes note of the acts of individuals, and He wants them to be wise and good. This is the will of God; this is the divine law. He who follows it, he who observes it is dear to God. It is of necessity, therefore, that God be moved to anger against one who has violated or spurned this eternal and divine law.[58]

E. F. Micka has summarized Lactantius’s connection of divine providence to divine anger as follows:

His idea of God’s providence is the basis not only of his entire theology but especially of his teaching on divine anger. Lactantius’ reasoning may be summed up in these words. If God cares for man, then he must be interested in what man does. It is impossible, then, that he be indifferent to human actions whether they be good or evil. On the contrary, if there is a divine providence, God must be moved to look with favor upon the good and be filled with anger against the wicked. For if his wrath were not aroused by sin, God would not be seeking man’s welfare but would be encouraging evil. And so it is easy to understand that the clearer one’s notion of God’s care and solicitude is, the better will be his grasp of divine anger.[59]

In his defense of divine anger, however, Lactantius was quite conscientious about distinguishing between just and unjust anger, with the latter not to be found in God.[60] He roundly criticized earlier philosophers—especially the Stoics—for failing to recognize this distinction, and consequently, he proposed that just anger should be defined as “a movement of a mind arising to the restraint of offenses [ira est motus animi ad coercenda peccata insurgentis].”[61] Additionally, Lactantius made it clear that his defense of divine anger does not mean that God experiences any and every kind of emotion known to man. To the contrary, God experiences only those emotions suited to and arising from his perfection, for the sake of the providential direction of the world.[62] Nor does Lactantius’s doctrine of divine anger entail that God is ruled by his emotions. Rather, Lactantius strongly advocated God’s mastery of his own emotional expressions: “He has His wrath in His power and is not ruled by it, but . . . He Himself governs the wrath as He wishes (in potestate habere iram suam nec ab ea regi, sed ipsum illam quemadmodum uelit moderari).”[63] In summary, then, we may observe that though Lactantius did not spell it out precisely, he too was advancing a view in which God’s relational responsiveness is grounded on and grows out of the perfection of God’s being and character.[64]

Turning now to the Nicene and post-Nicene era of church history, we pick up the historical survey with a brief consideration of three of the major pro-Nicene theologians of the fourth century, before finally turning our attention to perhaps the two most important post-Nicene contributors on this issue, Augustine and Cyril of Alexandria.

Athanasius

The survey of this era, however, must begin with Athanasius (ca. 296–373), one of the key defenders of the Son’s consubstantiality with the Father in the Arian controversy. It is important to note that both parties[65] in this controversy resolutely affirmed divine impassibility.[66] The difference between them was whether the Logos should be viewed as a created being or as homoousios with the High God.[67]

According to the Arian logic, the Logos must have been a creature, because his experience of suffering would have been improper to the divine nature. As R. P. C. Hanson assessed the matter:

At the heart of the Arian Gospel was a God who suffered. Their elaborate theology of the relation of the Son to the Father which so much preoccupied their opponents was devised in order to find a way of envisaging a Christian doctrine of God which would make it possible to be faithful to the Biblical witness to a God who suffers. This was to be achieved by conceiving of a lesser God as reduced divinity who would be ontologically capable, as the High God was not, of enduring human experiences, including suffering and death.[68]

In this way, the Arian proponents could both affirm the impassibility and immutability of the High God and deny the same of the Logos.[69]

Whereas his Arian opponents denied the consubstantiality and impassibility of the Son, Athanasius defended both concepts,[70] and he was the one who did so largely for soteriological reasons. His primary soteriological emphasis, as is well known, was on deification by incarnation.[71] It was on account of this emphasis that he maintained the utter necessity of the Word’s consubstantiality prior to and during the incarnation. For, according to his view, only one who was fully divine could make provision for our deification, by virtue of his union of the divine and human natures.[72]

However, the consubstantiality of the Son entailed for Athanasius that Jesus’s divine nature could not be subject to suffering and death. Therefore, since a death was necessary to undo the corruption of mankind, Athanasius instructed his readers that the incarnation was necessary to overcome natural divine impassibility (i.e., the impassibility of the divine nature).

For since the Word realized that the corruption of men would not be abolished in any other way except by everyone dying—but the Word was not able to die, being immortal and the Son of the Father—therefore he took to himself a body which could die [τούτου ἕνεκεν τὸ δυνάμενον ἀποθανεῖν ἑαυτῷ λαμβάνει σῶμα], in order that, since this participated in the Word who is above all, it might suffice for death on behalf of all, and because of the Word who was dwelling in it, it might remain incorruptible, and so corruption might cease from all men by the grace of the resurrection.[73]

Hence, we find that Athanasius advocated an incarnational theology that sought to uphold the union of divine and human natures in the person of Christ while attributing his sufferings exclusively to his humanity.[74] Nevertheless, because Athanasius’s commitment to the true union of Christ’s divine and human natures was so strong,[75] he could at times speak paradoxically[76] or even with evident theopaschite force.[77] In the final analysis, though, it seems that Athanasius’s affirmation of divine impassibility primarily focused on (1) denying physical suffering and death to the divine nature, and (2) denying Christ’s susceptibility to sinful passions. Conversely, he affirmed Christ’s pre-incarnate experience of certain emotions,[78] and he maintained the vital union of the incarnation, such that the Son personally acted through the instrumentality of a human body[79] and could be truly said to have experienced such things as hunger, suffering, and fatigue in the flesh.[80]

Gregory of Nazianzus

Gregory of Nazianzus (ca. 329–389), one of the great Cappadocian fathers, known for their contributions to the development of orthodox Trinitarian doctrine, was the author of several striking statements concerning the suffering of Jesus.[81] At the same time, however, he explicitly disavowed the passibility of the divine nature.[82] The resolution of these seemingly antithetical statements hinges upon Gregory’s soteriology,[83] which Gregory Telepneff has nicely summarized insofar as it bears on the interests of this study.

The entire crux of Saint Gregory’s understanding of the Incarnation is contained in its goal, the healing, cleansing, and deification of human nature. This must not be understood in a crude “physicalist” manner, i.e., the Word unites flesh to himself and the flesh is, as it were, “automatically” deified. The Word does not make “our condition his own” simply because a human body, soul, and nous are physically assumed by or united to the divine Logos.. . . In other words, the Logos must assume not only a complete human substance or essence, but must also assume the entire ontological condition of man in order to heal, cleanse, and sanctify human nature. The entire condition of man must be existentially manifested in the life of the incarnate Logos.. . . Suffering, death, and ontological corruption are the results of sin, and therefore must be addressed in the saving oikonomia of Christ. In assuming suffering and death in his humanity, Christ “bears” (Heb 9.28) the effects of sin and therefore can be said to bear sin itself—sin in its resultant ontological manifestation.[84]

For Gregory, then, the incarnation was the key to balancing the paradox of divine impassibility and Christ’s redemptive suffering. In his view, Christ’s sufferings were the sufferings of his humanity,[85] and yet they could truly be said to be the sufferings of the Logos in virtue of the union of natures in the incarnation and the fact that for Christ’s suffering to be redemptive it “had to be predicated on the divine hypostasis.”[86] As with many other church fathers, therefore, it appears that Gregory believed that an incarnation was necessary to overcome natural divine impassibility (i.e., the impassibility of the divine nature), but he clearly did not impose this belief in such a way as to divide Christ’s natures. To the contrary, Gregory steadfastly refused to undo the tension in the doctrine of the incarnation.

Gregory of Nyssa

Gregory of Nyssa (ca. 330–395), another of the Cappadocians, likewise ascribed the sufferings of Christ to his humanity, commenting for instance that

as . . . the teaching of the Gospel concerning our Lord is mingled, partly of lofty and Divine ideas, partly of those which are lowly and human, we assign every particular phrase accordingly to one or the other of these Natures which we conceive in the mystery, that which is human to the Humanity, that which is lofty to the Godhead, and say that, as God, the Son is certainly impassible and incapable of corruption: and whatever suffering is asserted concerning Him in the Gospel, He assuredly wrought by means of His Human Nature which admitted of such suffering [τὸ μὲν ἀνθρώπινον τῷ ἀνθρωπίνῳ τὸ δὲ ὑψηλὸν τῆ θεὸτητι, καὶ ϕαμεν ὅτι, καθὸ θεὸς ὁ υἱός, ἀπαθὴς πάντως ἐστὶ καὶ ἀκήρατος, εἰ δέ τι πάθος ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ περὶ αὐτοῦ λέγοιτο, διὰ τοῦ ἀνθρωπίνου τάντως τοῦ δεχομένου τὸ πάθος τὸ τοιοῦτον ἐνήργησεν]. For verily the Godhead works the salvation of the world by means of that body which encompassed It, in such wise that the suffering was of the body, but the operation was of God.[87]

In making this distinction, Gregory argued forcefully for the union of Christ’s natures and against Eunomius’s charge that the attribution of suffering uniquely to the human nature effectively resulted in “two Christs.”[88] As it turns out, the problematic aspect of Gregory’s incarnational formulation was not his selective predication of certain experiences to Christ’s human nature, but his apparent overemphasis on deification, which led to his postulation that the humanity of Jesus was eventually absorbed by his deity.[89] Lastly, we should note that Gregory also made a point of denying Christ’s susceptibility to passions that led to sin.[90]

We now turn to Augustine and Cyril of Alexandria, the last—and likely most significant—Patristic proponents to be considered under the heading of this model.

Augustine

Augustine (354–430), renowned theologian and bishop of Hippo, treated divine impassibility mainly in the context of theology proper, and there, as with others before him, he upheld the notion of God’s impassibility in the sense that “God has perfect control of His feelings in a way which lies beyond human experience, and is never surprised into any kind of involuntary outpouring of this or that emotion.”[91] Consequently, Augustine sought to embrace a proper sense of God’s experience of the emotions attributed to him in Scripture while also differentiating his experience of those emotions from the human experience of the same.

In this, Augustine was not entirely consistent, and thus not all of his explanations of divine emotion are equally valuable. It is true, for instance, that in certain passages he seems to have taken recourse in an interpretation of divine emotion whereby God actually remains entirely unchanged, and the perception of divine emotion, in fact, only indicates a human reaction.[92] His statement to this effect in De civitate Dei 22.2 is indicative of his treatment in a number of places.

Even though we speak of God changing His mind, of His becoming angry, for example, after being kind to certain people, it is, in reality, these people, not God, who change [Ac per hoc cum Deus mutare dicitur voluntatem, ut quibus lenis erat verbi gratia reddatur iratus, illi potius quam ipse mutantur]. They find God changed because they have undergone a change, much as the sunlight seems to change from soft to sharp or from pleasant to painful to the eyes that have been hurt, although, in fact, the light remains precisely as it was before.[93]

On other occasions, however, Augustine’s reasoning resists a strictly subjective account of divine emotion, such as we find in his commentary on God’s patience.

The virtue of the soul which is called patience is so great a gift of God that it is even said to belong to Him who bestows it, in that He waits for the wicked to amend. So, although God cannot suffer [deus nihil pati possit], and patience [patientia] surely has its name from suffering [patiendo], we not only faithfully believe in a patient God, but also steadfastly acknowledge Him to be such. Who can explain in words the nature and the quantity of God’s patience? We say He is impassible, yet not impatient [nihil patientum nec tamen inpatientem]; nay, rather, extremely patient. His patience is indescribable, yet it exists as does His jealousy, His wrath, and any characteristic of this kind. But if we conceive of these qualities as they exist in us, He has none of them [nam si tamquam nostra ista cogitemus, in illo nulla sunt]. We do not experience these feelings without annoyance [sine molestia], but far be it from us to suspect an impassible God of suffering any annoyance. Just as He is jealous without any ill will, as He is angry without being emotionally upset, as He pities without grieving, as He is sorry without correcting any fault, so He is patient without suffering at all [sicut autem zelat sine aliquo livore, irascitur sine aliqua perturbatione, miseretur sine aliquo dolore, paenitet eum sine alicuius suae prauitatis correctione: ita est patiens sine ulla passione].[94]

Similarly, in Contra adversarium legis et prophetarum, Augustine argues that

God does not repent as does a man, but as God; just as He is not angry after the manner of men, nor is pitiful, nor is jealous, but all He is He is as God. God’s repentance does not follow upon error; the anger of God carries with it no trace of a disturbed mind, nor His pity the wretched heart of a fellow-sufferer, . . . nor His jealousy any envy of mind [Paenitentia dei non est post errorem; ira dei non habet perturbati animi ardorem; misericordia dei non habet compatientis miserum cor, . . . zelus dei non habet mentis livorem]. But by the repentance of God is meant the change of things which lie within His power, unexpected by man; the anger of God is His vengeance upon sin; the pity of God is the goodness of His help; the jealousy of God is that providence whereby He does not allow those whom He has in subjection to Himself to love with impunity what He forbids.[95]

Assuredly, Augustine’s argument with respect to divine emotion in the two preceding passages surpasses his subjectivist interpretation from Civ. 22.2. In these latter two instances, he affirms carefully qualified senses of divine emotion—explicitly juxtaposed with a simultaneous affirmation of impassibility in De patientia 1—alongside a balancing emphasis on God’s transcendence and the analogical nature of these emotions, when compared to mankind’s experience of them.[96] That is to say that Augustine, when at his best, allowed meaningful predication of emotional terminology to God, with the proviso that in God’s case, such emotional experience is unencumbered with the negative effects of human emotional experience.[97] Hence, for Augustine, God’s emotional expressions may not be taken as evidence of God’s reaction to something unforeseen or of impotence in the attempt to accomplish his purposes.[98]

Cyril of Alexandria

Cyril of Alexandria (d. 444) played a pivotal role in delineating the balance between divine impassibility and the incarnational condescension of the Son of God. In his debates with Nestorius, Cyril was determined to preserve the unity of the incarnate Christ over against what he saw as Nestorius’s effective division of natures.[99] According to Cyril, nothing less than salvation is at stake in achieving the proper incarnational balance.[100] Thus, he insisted that it is unacceptable to simplistically divide the experiences of Jesus into those that applied uniquely to his humanity or his divinity.[101] Rather, Cyril maintained that all the actions of the incarnate Christ were the actions of a single unified subject.[102]

In response, Nestorius charged that Cyril’s view of the incarnation led to an acceptance of the passibility of the divine nature, despite Cyril’s protestations to the contrary.[103] Cyril, for his part, insisted that the divine nature is impassible, though the incarnation required a recognition that God the Son suffered through the instrument of the flesh. For example, he opined that

God’s Word is, of course, undoubtedly impassible in his own nature and nobody is so mad as to imagine the all-transcending nature capable of suffering [ἀπαθὴς μὲν γὰρ ὁμολογουμένως τό γε ἧκον εἰς ἰδίαν ϕύσιν ὁ τοῦ θεοῦ λόγος καὶ οὐδεὶς οὕτως ἐμβρόντητος, ὡς νομίσαι δύνασθαι πάθους εἶναι δεκτικὴν τὴν ὑπὲρ πάντα ϕύσιν]; but by very reason of the fact that he has become man making flesh from the holy Virgin his own, we adhere to the principles of the divine plan and maintain that he, who as God transcends suffering [τὸν ἐπέκεινα τοῦ παθεῖν ὡς θεόν], suffered humanly in his own flesh [τῇ ἰδίᾳ παθεῖν ἀνθρωπίνως]. If whilst being God he has become man yet has not departed from any aspect of his being God; if he has been made part of creation and yet abides above creation; if whilst being as God the giver of law he has been made under law and yet was still giver of law, and whilst being, divinely, master he put on slave’s form, and yet retains unimpaired the dignity of mastership; if whilst being only-begotten he has been made the first-born among many brethren and yet is still only-begotten, does it tax credibility if by the same token he suffered humanly and yet is seen as divinely impassible?[104]

Indeed, this notion of the instrumentality of the flesh was a key concept for Cyril, because he could thereby deny the incarnate Word’s experience of divine suffering, while fully allowing his experience of human suffering.[105] After all, Cyril maintained that it was Christ’s experience of human suffering—human emotional distress included—not divine suffering, that was soteriologically necessary.[106] This latter feature of Cyril’s christology is one that Weinandy has thoughtfully reflected upon in his analysis of Cyril’s treatment of divine impassibility.

If the Son of God experienced suffering in his divine nature, he would no longer be experiencing human suffering in an authentic and genuine human manner, but instead he would be experiencing “human suffering” in a divine manner which would then be neither genuinely nor authentically human. If the Son of God experienced suffering in his divine nature then it would be God suffering as God in a man. But the Incarnation, which demands that the Son of God actually exists as a man and not just dwells in a man, equally demands that the Son of God suffers as a man and not just suffers divinely in a man. If one wishes to say in truth that the Son of God actually experienced and knew what it was like to be born, eat, sleep, cry, fear, grieve, groan, rejoice, suffer, die, and most of all, love as a man, and it seems this is precisely what one does want to say, then the experience and knowledge of being born, eating, sleeping, crying, fearing, grieving, groaning, rejoicing, suffering, dying, and again most of all, loving must be predicated of the Son of God solely and exclusively as a man. Thus to replace the phrase “the Impassible suffers” with “the Passible suffers” immediately purges the suffering of all incarnational significance.[107]

In order to defend the coherency of this dual insistence on divine impassibility and the unity of Christ, Cyril emphasized the importance of the Word’s appropriation of humanity in the incarnation. After emphasizing that “flesh” stood for complete humanity, Cyril contended that it was Christ’s flesh, or humanity, that

should be seen as the basis for the occurrence of the suffering whilst the Word is impassible. Yet we do not therefore exclude him from the attribution of suffering. Just as the body has been made his own possession, so all features of the body (with the sole exception of sin) are to be attributed to him in accordance with God’s plan of appropriation [ὥσπερ γὰρ ἴδιον αὐτοῦ γέγονε τὸ σῶμα, οὓτω καὶ πάντα τὰ τοῦ σώματος δίχα μόνης ἁμαρτίας λέγοιτο ἂν οὐδὲν ἧττον αὐτοῦ κατ’ οἰκείωσιν οἰκονομικήν].[108]

Cyril grounded his understanding of this appropriation of humanity on what he saw as an improved doctrine of the communication of idioms, wherein the attributes of the two natures were not attributed each to the other, but instead were attributed to the person.[109] Thus, it can be said that, in the incarnation, the Son of God performed all his actions and experienced all his experiences—suffering and death included—as a man.

Of course, all of this christological reflection serves to draw some distinctions between the Nestorian and Cyrillian conceptions of divine impassibility. For Cyril, Christ’s suffering, though voluntary, was truly the suffering of the Son of God, experienced humanly, whereas Nestorian thought disallowed so close an incarnational union and attributed Christ’s suffering directly and only to his human nature.[110] Though some may initially find this to be a trivial conceptual distinction between the two views, Cyril perceived the importance of upholding the vital unity of Christ before addressing the effect of various incarnate experiences upon his respective natures. Indeed, at the end of his Scholia, Cyril anticipated and responded to the objection that, in the end, he too had divided the natures.

But wait, he says, we find that you are doing exactly the same thing as us; for you confess that he suffered, in so far as you attribute the sufferings to the flesh, even though you keep him impassible as God. Ah, but we, my friend, have first of all united the Word and Man, and only then do we attribute the passions to the flesh while keeping him impassible as God [At nos, vir optime, cum prius adunaverimus Verbum et hominem, carni quidem passiones tribuimus, impassibilem vero ut Deum servavimus].[111]

At this point, we may draw our documentation of the majority Patristic model to a close and move on to consider two less helpful—and less representative—Patristic views of divine impassibility, before returning to draw some cumulative conclusions about the nature of Patristic thought on divine impassibility as a whole.[112]

The Extreme-Impassibility Model

In general, the more extreme impassibilists proposed a much less qualified notion of divine impassibility—one that tilted in a hyper-transcendent direction and thus proved an impediment to accounting for divine involvement with creation.[113] Given the kind of sweeping criticisms that modern theologians have leveled against the Fathers’ views on divine impassibility, we might expect to find most of the Fathers classified in this category. In actual fact, however, this is a model with only slight representation, though in the interest of handling the evidence honestly, we must acknowledge that it is not a completely empty category. Some of the earliest Fathers do appear to fit here, the most significant of which are Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria.

Justin Martyr

While it seems likely that the influence of Middle Platonism on early Christian apologist Justin Martyr (ca. 100–165) was not as comprehensive as some have thought,[114] it is nevertheless likely that his background in Middle Platonism propelled him to affirm a hyper-exalted transcendence that could not fully account for divine involvement with the created order.[115] Though it is true that Justin did identify God as “compassionate and long-suffering” (εὐσπλάγχνου καὶ πολυελέου),[116] it seems that he ruled out the possibility of God’s having any direct contact with creation. This latter point is one that he labors in his Dialogus cum Tryphone by repeatedly denying that the “ineffable” God could have been present in the Old Testament theophanies. In Dial. 56, for instance, Justin observes that

Moses . . . the blessed and faithful servant of God, declares that He who appeared to Abraham under the oak in Mamre is God, sent with the two angels in His company to judge Sodom by Another who remains ever in the supercelestial places, invisible to all men, holding personal intercourse with none [ἐν τοῖς ὑπερουρανίοις ἀεὶ μένοντος καὶ οὐδενὶ ὀϕθέντος ἢ ὁμιλήσαντος δι’ ἑαυτοῦ ποτε], whom we believe to be Maker and Father of all things.[117]

Since the “Maker and Father of all things” is entirely uninvolved with the creation, Justin invokes the Logos as the intermediary between God and creation.[118] In Dial. 127, Justin forcefully sums up this very point.

Therefore neither Abraham, nor Isaac, nor Jacob, nor any other man, saw the Father and ineffable [ἄρρητον] Lord of all, and also of Christ, but [saw] Him who was according to His will His Son, being God, and the Angel because He ministered to His will [ἐκεῖνον τὸν κατὰ βουλὴν τὴν ἐκείνου καὶ θεόν, υἱὸν ὄντα αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἄγγελον ἐκ τοῦ ὑπηρετεῖν τῇ γνώμῃ αὐτοῦ].[119]

By going this route, however, Justin makes the charges of a Platonic influence on his doctrine of creation and a subordinationism in his theology look very likely.[120] Indeed, in spite of a deep scriptural influence on his doctrine of God,[121] it seems that Justin reverts to a Platonized view of divine transcendence, which effectively locked God the Father out of his creation.

While Justin Martyr is not the theologian most often singled out by moderns as one who succumbed to Hellenistic influence at points in his theology, he does nevertheless provide one example of an early theologian who appears to have done just that. As such, his doctrine of divine involvement must be judged sub-biblical.[122] Having said all that, however, we may draw out one very positive feature of Justin’s appeal to God’s apatheia in 1 Apol. 25. There he states:

And . . . because we, who out of every race of men and women used to worship Dionysus the son of Semele, and Apollo the son of Leto, who in their passion with men did such things of which it is shameful even to speak of, and Persephone and Aphrodite, who were stung to madness by love for Adonis . . . or some one or other of those who are called gods—have now, through Jesus Christ, learned to despise them, though threatened with death for it, and have dedicated ourselves to the unbegotten and impassible [ἀγενήτῳ καὶ ἀπαθεῖ] God; we are not persuaded that He ever was goaded by lust for Antiope, or such other women, or of Ganymede, nor was He delivered by that hundred-handed monster, whose aid was obtained through Thetis, nor, on this account, was anxious that her son Achilles should destroy many of the Greeks because of his concubine Briseis. We pity those who believe these things, and we recognize those who invented them to be demons.[123]

In this case, it is clear that Justin’s interest in explicitly affirming divine apatheia stems from a desire to distinguish the character and behavior of the Christian God from that of the Greek gods, who were frequently depicted as behaving very much like immoral pagans themselves.[124]

Clement of Alexandria

Like Justin, Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150–215) was influenced by Middle Platonism. As a consequence, his doctrine of divine impassibility was also marked by a proclivity toward hyper-transcendence.[125] For instance, he viewed God as distant from creation,[126] entirely incomprehensible and ineffable,[127] and apathetic in the sense of experiencing no emotions whatsoever.[128] In regard to the latter, he responded to the presentation of divine emotions in Scripture by appealing to anthropomorphic language. For instance, Clement comments:

It seems that we continually think of the Scriptures in worldly terms in such respects, making analogies from our own passions, wrongly accepting our understanding of the will of God (who is impassible) by the analogy of stirrings within us. If we, who have a capacity for hearing, were to imagine a similar condition in the Almighty, we should be committing a godless error. It is not possible to speak of the divine in its actual nature. But even though we are fettered to flesh, it is possible for us to hear the Lord, accommodating [συμπεριϕερομένου] himself to human weakness [τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἀσθενείᾳ] for our salvation, in the words of the prophets.[129]

With regard to the incarnation, some have observed that Clement could sound quite Docetic at times.[130] One of his most infamous comments along these lines is his statement that Jesus

ate, not for the sake of the body, which was kept together by a holy energy, but in order that it might not enter into the minds of those who were with Him to entertain a different opinion of Him; in like manner as certainly some afterward supposed that He appeared in a phantasmal shape [δοκήσει]. But He was entirely impassible [ἀπαθής]; inaccessible to any movement of feeling—either pleasure or pain.[131]

Elsewhere, Clement also spoke of the incarnate Christ having an impassible human soul.[132]

Despite all this impressive testimony to a more extreme doctrine of impassibility, we must nevertheless point out that Clement did sound the note—albeit minor in comparison—of divine passion as well. With respect to the Lord Jesus for instance, Clement held that the Savior “assumed flesh capable of suffering [τὴν παθητὴν ἀναλαβὼν σάρκα].”[133] Clearly, this comment fits rather awkwardly with the quotation above from Stromata 6.9. How is it that Jesus’s body did not actually need physical nourishment, on the one hand, but was capable of suffering, on the other? It seems that Clement cannot give a satisfactory answer to this question and that it was left to later Patristic theologians to resolve these kinds of inconsistencies.

Along the same lines, Clement also described the Father in emotionally colored terms on occasion. One of the most notable of these descriptions is his finding that God is, by nature, merciful.

But God is naturally “rich in mercy” [ϕύσει πλούσιος ὢν ὁ θεὸς ἐν ἐλέῳ] and out of his goodness cares for us although we are not parts of him, and not his children by nature. And the greatest indication of God’s goodness is that although we are what we are, by nature “alienated” from him, he nonetheless takes total care of us.[134]

Interestingly, Clement penned this comment in the same section in which he made some of his strongest impassibilist statements. Thus, it seems that despite Clement’s dominant proclivity toward an extreme form of impassibilism, he nevertheless provided a couple of instances wherein some limits were attached to the meaning of impassibility.[135]

The Extreme-Passibility Model

In the early church, patripassianism (early third century) is arguably the main example of the extreme-passibility model.[136] According to Tertullian and Hippolytus, alleged patripassianists such as Noetus, Praxeas, and Callistus taught that the Father suffered on the cross because of their commitment to a modalistic theology.[137] Thus, although this approach seems to entail divine passibility,[138] the primary heresy being advanced was a failure to distinguish the persons of the Trinity.[139] In any case, as an overtly heretical teaching, this model need not detain us, since it cannot constitute the basis of any proposed evangelical formulation.[140]

Conclusion: Impassibility in Patristic Theology

Our survey of the Patristic theologians above, along with duly noted exceptions to the mainstream model, would suggest that, in the main, the evidence bears out G. L. Prestige’s well-known finding.

It is clear that impassibility means not that God is inactive or uninterested, not that He surveys existence with Epicurean impassivity from the shelter of a metaphysical insulation, but that His will is determined from within instead of being swayed from without. It safeguards the truth that the impulse alike in providential order and in redemption and sanctification comes from the will of God. If it were possible to admit that the impulse was wrung from Him either by the needs or by the claims of His creation, and that thus whether by pity or by justice His hand was forced, He could no longer be represented as absolute; He would be dependent on the created universe and thus at best only in possession of concurrent power.[141]

This, of course, is not to say that the majority Patristic model of impassibility was absolutely pristine, nor that it has no room for development. The evidence we have examined, however, clearly suggests that the majority model was far more nuanced and biblically faithful than the caricatures of it found so often in the modern theological era.[142]

Assuredly, there was development and a refining of thought over time. So, for example, it is not surprising to find a greater degree of sophistication and insight in Cyril’s incarnational thought than in Ignatius’s incarnational observations.[143] Common to all the representatives of the qualified model, however, was a shared recognition, at some level, of the need for a dual affirmation of divine impassibility and divine passion. Consequently, they were not troubled by the paradoxical appearance of some of their statements.

In terms of a positive assessment, the representatives of the qualified-impassibility model are broadly to be commended for laying out several essential parameters for reflecting on the doctrine of divine impassibility in a biblically faithful manner. First, and most importantly, these Fathers were committed to the importance of the Creator/creature distinction. Indeed, it was the Judeo-Christian doctrine of creation that furnished the Fathers with their sense of balance concerning divine transcendence and immanence. And it was this doctrine, first and foremost, that drew the line of demarcation between Christian and Hellenistic reflection on the nature of God. As Weinandy notes:

There is here a significant difference between the Greek view of God and his attributes and the Christian view of God and his attributes. Within Greek thought these attributes constitute God as one who is removed from, even if related to, all else that is. They constitute him as transcendent in the sense of not only making him other than the cosmic order, but also as often being incapable of actively relating to the cosmic order. Within the Judeo/Christian tradition these attributes do constitute God as wholly other than all else, but they equally constitute him as Creator and so immediately related to all else that is.[144]

One manifestation of the Fathers’ desire to uphold a proper sense of the Creator/creature distinction is their use of apophatic terminology like impassible to designate God’s transcendence.[145] As we have clearly seen, their understanding of a negative term like impassible did not prohibit the application of emotionally laden characteristics to God. In light of the fact that the Fathers predicated impassibility as well as passionate characteristics of God, Gavrilyuk has correctly concluded that for the Fathers, “the function of apophatic qualifications, such as ‘God is impassible’ is fairly modest: it spells out the truth that emotionally coloured characteristics should not be conceived entirely along the lines of their human analogies.”[146]

Thus, the representatives of the majority model affirmed a meaningful category of divine emotion, though qualified analogously, even as they sought to protect a form of God’s impassibility that upheld biblical senses of divine transcendence and lordship. It may initially seem odd, however, to suggest, as I have above, a basic “biblical” fidelity on the Fathers’ part on the issue of divine emotion. Certainly, I do not mean to suggest that the Fathers developed their thoughts on impassibility primarily by appealing to specific biblical texts that directly taught the doctrine of divine impassibility. “In fact,” as Dennis Johnson has noted, “when biblical texts appear in the discussion, it is because they seem to be evidence against God’s impassibility, evidence which had then to be explained or accounted for by defenders of the doctrine.” Nevertheless, Johnson continues, “the doctrine of impassibility was an attempt to express some broader biblical teachings about God.”[147]

What I do mean, then, by suggesting that most of the Fathers exhibited a biblical fidelity in their formulation of divine emotion, is that the proponents of the qualified model were operating within the framework of what we might call (a bit anachronistically for some) whole-Bible theology. Their analogical exegesis of emotional language applied to God in Scripture was not born out of a Hellenistic impulse to classify all such predication as metaphysically illegitimate. Rather, it stemmed from an effort to honor the intent of the text,[148] while also placing some analogical limitations on its “straightforward” appearance, in view of other biblical teaching about God (e.g., transcendence, incorporeality, immutability, the Creator/creature distinction, divine holiness, and sovereignty) that balanced the notion of human similarity to God with an emphasis on our dissimilarity from him. Hence, the Fathers recognized, as we also must, that this topic requires a great deal of biblical and theological synthesis and so cannot simply be resolved by merely “proof-texting” one’s position.[149]

Second, the effect of the incarnation on the Fathers profoundly shaped their understanding of divine impassibility and involvement.[150] To that end, the incarnation constituted another boundary for the orthodox beyond which Hellenistic philosophy could not penetrate. As noted above, it was the heretics, not the orthodox, who bowed to an unqualified form of impassibility and so eviscerated the tension inherent in the incarnation.[151] To flesh this out with one example, we may briefly examine the deficiency of Jerry McCoy’s allegation that Cyril of Alexandria derived his view of impassibility from Platonic thought and subsequently imposed that alien category on his incarnational formulation. McCoy alleges that Cyril nowhere gave

any rationale for this belief [divine impassibility] either on the basis of the biblical witness or upon the grounds of theological reasoning. He simply accepted the assertion as a foregone conclusion. Instead of allowing his conviction that God was incarnate in Jesus to provide him with clues as to what might be said about God, he allowed a prevailing concept of God, drawn principally from the Platonic tradition, to limit what he could say about the Incarnation.[152]

Surely, this is a sizeable caricature. The depth of Cyril’s christological ruminations essentially exceeded all of his predecessors’. Despite some early terminological deficiencies, Cyril’s articulation of the doctrine of appropriation and the doctrine of the communication of idioms were of enormous importance, and it would seem very difficult to deny that these formulations constitute “theological reasoning.” Moreover, Cyril’s model of the incarnation with respect to impassibility was much more biblically balanced than that of Nestorius, in large part because of his widespread reflections on key biblical texts, such as John 1:14 and Philippians 2.[153] It is not surprising, then, that John J. O’Keefe directly contradicts McCoy’s assessment and finds instead that Cyril privileged the biblical data over philosophy, whereas his Nestorian counterparts did the opposite.[154]

Third and last, we may offer a few summary words about the Hellenization hypothesis. In our initial response to the Hellenization thesis above—and even in the preceding paragraphs of this section—we have noted that the Fathers’ general disposition displayed a deference to scriptural authority, and we may now conclude from the specific evidence examined that, on the whole, the Fathers’ deference to Scripture extended to their formulation of divine impassibility as well. They believed that Scripture established a balancing of God’s impassibility and his passion, as a subset of the scriptural balance of God’s transcendence and immanence. The very fact, then, that they insisted on holding these themes in tandem testifies to their scriptural deference in this matter, for the reigning Greek philosophies would have required that they relinquish the balance in favor of a hyper-biblical transcendence.[155] Hence, it should be fairly unobjectionable to conclude that, broadly speaking, the Fathers were quite capable of making use of the “conceptual tools” of Greek philosophy while also molding the conceptual content in accordance with the guidelines of a different worldview.[156]

Despite all the solid footing supplied by these pillars of Patristic impassibilism, even the majority model of Patristic theology leaves some room for expansion. As we have stressed, the Fathers’ dual affirmation of divine impassibility and divine passion is fundamentally right. In keeping with that foundational insight, however, it seems that the grounding they offered for it can yet be further developed. In the main, my attempt to contribute to this expansion will merely draw the classical Patristic formulation further along the track it is already on. At a few points, however, I will propose some possibilities for refinement. Here we may take Augustine—perhaps the preeminent representative of the Patristic tradition—as an example of just two issues that immediately suggest themselves.

First, as with most of his predecessors, Augustine carefully expounded the ways in which God’s emotional experience is unlike mankind’s. However, he did not provide much of a positive explanation of the ways in which God does experience emotion. In the quote from Leg. 1.20.40, discussed above, Augustine gestured in the direction of interpreting the emotionally colored terms predicated of God as descriptions of actions that God undertakes,[157] but in that passage—and again more generally—he did not expound what, if any, affective content such terms retain.[158] Second, Augustine’s doctrine of divine eternity appears to hinder his case for God’s emotional expression, since he concluded from it that God’s temporal emotional manifestations are only apparent and merely reflect our perception.[159]

To anticipate snippets of my own formulation, then, an enhanced grounding for a dual affirmation of divine impassibility and divine emotion must improve on these two shortcomings in Augustine and the broader tradition. First, it will be necessary to build on the analogical hermeneutic, not only by stating negatively what the ascription of emotional terminology to God does not mean, but also by suggesting positively what affective content is true of God’s experience according to Scripture. It will not suffice, for example, merely to dissolve all of the affective connotations into expressions of the divine will. Second, from my perspective, one aspect of accounting for this positive affective content, while retaining an emphasis on the best aspects of the early impassibility tradition, will involve the adjustment of the Augustinian stance on divine eternity, such that the eternal God is capable of having actual in-time relations with his creatures.

[1]Here, I am singling out the “classical” understanding of divine impassibility. This is a related, though for present purposes, distinct issue from the larger category of “classical” theism that is under fire in many circles today. For a description of classical theism more broadly, see Eric L. Johnson and Douglas S. Huffman, “Should the God of Historic Christianity Be Replaced?,” in God Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents God, ed. Douglas S. Huffman and Eric L. Johnson (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 28–38.

[2]Marc Steen, “The Theme of the ‘Suffering’ God: An Exploration,” in God and Human Suffering, ed. Jan Lambrecht and Raymond F. Collins (Louvain: Peeters, 1990), 70.

[3]In the analysis that follows, I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to J. K. Mozley, The Impassibility of God: A Survey of Christian Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1926), and Joseph M. Hallman, The Descent of God: Divine Suffering in History and Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991; repr., Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2004), for identifying many of the most salient Patristic passages on divine impassibility. Beyond that, I have discovered several other germane passages as well. At the outset of this early church survey, I need to be clear that I do not intend to give sustained attention to overtly heretical formulations. I do, however, intend to give such attention to individuals of suspect theological repute, insofar as their treatment of divine impassibility was unencumbered by obvious heresy. So, for example, I give consideration to Origen’s contribution, but I do not treat patripassianism in nearly the same detail. Similarly, Arianism, Apollinarianism, Nestorianism, and monophysitism—though all mentioned insofar as they formed part of the historical context for the development of orthodox christological thought—are not formal objects of consideration in this study. Finally, it should also be noted that I intend to limit my analysis strictly to the features of these theologians’ thought that are most directly relevant to the inquiry into divine impassibility.

[4]In the early church, there are only two treatise-length treatments formally devoted to issues pertinent to divine impassibility. These are Gregory Thaumaturgus, Ad Theopompum de passibili et impassibili in Deo, and Lactantius, De ira Dei. The former is the more systematic, whereas the latter, as the title suggests, focuses on the theme of divine anger. There is some debate, which will be further noted below, over whether Ad Theopompum has been correctly attributed to Gregory.

[5]The categories that I am here identifying bear some resemblance to Amuluche Gregory Nnamani’s threefold classification. Amuluche Gregory Nnamani, The Paradox of a Suffering God (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1995), 366–69. However, there is some distance between Nnamani and me when it comes to our respective descriptions and assessments of these models. We are also at variance on the appropriate classification of a number of the individual Patristic thinkers under discussion.

[6]Peter H. Vande Brake, “Divine Passibility” (PhD diss., Calvin Theological Seminary, 2001), 67.

[7]In Ad Polycarpum 3.2, Ignatius speaks of the “one who is beyond suffering, who suffered for us” [τὸν ἀπαθῆ τὸν δι’ἡμᾶς παθητόν]. Ignatius, Ad Polycarpum 3.2 (trans. Bart D. Ehrman, LCL 24 [2003]: 314–15). In Ad Ephesios 7.2, he speaks of “one physician, both fleshly and spiritual, born and unborn, God come in the flesh, true life in death, from both Mary and God, first subject to suffering and then beyond suffering [πρῶτον ταθητὸς καὶ τότε ἀπαθής], Jesus Christ our Lord.” Ignatius, Ad Ephesios 7.2 (trans. Bart D. Ehrman, LCL 24 [2003]: 226–27). Ignatius, Ad Romanos 6.3 (LCL 24 [2003]: 278). A few passing comments on Ignatius’s view are merited: (1) The problem with nailing down Ignatius’s view is that his reflections come very early in the history of the church—well in advance of definitive confessions such as Chalcedon—and they are lacking in terms of extended discussion and synthetic reflection. (2) It is clear, however, that his comments do focus on the issue of suffering. More particularly, his affirmations of suffering are all tied to Jesus’s incarnate experience. (See the list of relevant citations in Jonathan Bayes, “Divine ἀπάθεια in Ignatius of Antioch,” Studia patristica 21, ed. Elizabeth A. Livingstone, 25–31 [Leuven: Peeters, 1989], 27–28.) (3) Clearly, the sparseness of commentary leaves open the door for more than one possible interpretation. It is possible, for instance, as Bayes suggests, that Ignatius believed there was a temporary window, limited to the earthly experience of Jesus’s incarnation, in which the divine nature actually experienced suffering (ibid., 29). (4) On the other hand, it seems just as plausible to suggest that Ignatius’s sparse comments were rather more simple protests against Docetism. On balance, I tend to think the latter interpretation is a bit more likely. Ignatius clearly assumed that God was impassible by nature, and as such he evidently believed that an incarnation was necessary for overcoming God’s natural immunity to suffering. If, against the Docetists, Ignatius was emphasizing the true humanity of Jesus, then he could well have made such comments without ever intending to parcel out how or whether the divine nature experienced human suffering. In the final analysis, however, we are confronted with a case of insufficient discussion to adjudicate the matter decisively. Despite the interpretive uncertainty, Ignatius is to be commended for identifying the incarnation as a central component of the tension on the matter of divine suffering. As we will see, later theologians hammered out a more thorough synthesis. For a more extensive introduction to Ignatius of Antioch see chap. 2 in Michael A. G. Haykin’s, Rediscovering the Church Fathers: Who They Were and How They Shaped the Church (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2011).

[8]Theophilus’s well-known passage respecting divine immutability and impassibility affirms that God appropriately expresses anger or kindness in response to the various behaviors of mankind. Immediately thereafter, however, Theophilus predicates immutability of God on the basis of his immortality. Theophilus, Ad Autolycum 1.3–4 (ed. and trans. Robert M. Grant, in Theophilus of Antioch: Ad Autolycum, Oxford Early Christian Texts [Oxford: Clarendon, 1970], 4–6). J. K. Mozley’s analysis of this progression of thought in Theophilus seems quite correct: “The attributes of anger and mercy are ascribed to Him in relation to the varied behaviour of men.. . . When Theophilus goes on almost immediately to say that God is ‘unchangeable, inasmuch, as He is immortal,’ we must regard him as meaning that no outside force can so act upon God as to alter the essential constancy of His nature. In this sense he could have used of God . . . the adjective ἀπαθής, but the Stoic idea of a God who is above all feeling would be incompatible with what he has already said.” Mozley, The Impassibility of God, 14.

[9]One very handy introduction, written for evangelical audiences, that provides additional background on many of the church fathers discussed in this chapter is Bryan M. Litfin’s, Getting to Know the Church Fathers: An Evangelical Introduction (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2007).

[10]Irenaeus described the Gnosticism he encountered in book 1 of Adversus haereses.

[11]Thomas Weinandy comments, “While God was transcendent for the Gnostics, in that he was remote from the created realm (which he himself did not create but some lesser being, since for him to do so would have jeopardized his perfect transcendence) and could have no direct contact with it, he was, nonetheless, only relatively transcendent since he too was part of the whole.” Thomas G. Weinandy, Does God Suffer? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000), 90.

[12]Irenaeus, Haer. 2.1.1, 3.8.3 (PG 7 [1857]: 709–10, 867–68). Irenaeus was one of the earliest Fathers (see also, Theophilus, Autol. 1.4, 2.10, 2.13) to enunciate clearly an affirmation of creation ex nihilo. Irenaeus, Haer. 2.10.4. (PG 7:736).

[13]Irenaeus, Haer. 2.10.4, 2.12.1 (PG 7:736, 737–38). For more details on the nature of this Gnostic teaching, see R. A. Norris Jr., God and World in Early Christian Theology: A Study in Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Origen (New York: Seabury, 1965), 76–78.

[14]Irenaeus, Haer. 2.17.3–8 (PG 7:762–65). We should be clear to note that the sense of passibility employed in these passages clearly emphasizes the experience of passions/emotions.

[15]Ibid., 2.13.3 (PG 7:743–44; trans. A. Roberts and W. H. Rambaut, ANF, 1:374). For the record, it should be noted that in the surrounding context, Irenaeus connects his doctrine of impassibility with the doctrine of divine simplicity. Additionally, it should be noted that the original text of Adversus haereses survives only in fragments. Hence the traditional manuscript comes from a complete Latin translation dating to about 380. Eric Osborn, “Irenaeus of Lyons,” in The First Christian Theologians, ed. G. R. Evans (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), 122.

[16]Irenaeus, Haer. 3 preface (love of God); 4.38.3 (kindness); 3.10.2, 5.17.3, 5.21.3 (compassion); 3.4.2, 5 preface (love of the pre-incarnate Son). These citations are located respectively in PG 7:843–44; 1107–8; 873–74, 1170, 1181–82; 855–56, 1119–20. As we shall see below, though he did not use such terminology, we might say that Irenaeus understood the divine and human experience of these emotional states to be analogical, but not identical in every respect.

[17]Ibid., 3.25.2 (PG 7:968). In commenting on this passage, Paul Gavrilyuk observes that Irenaeus was making the point that when the Marcionites attempted to divest God of anger by positing two Gods, they “failed to see that without the emotions expressing God’s condemnation of evil, God could be neither just, nor merciful, nor good, nor intelligent.” Paul L. Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God: The Dialectics of Patristic Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 54.

[18]Weinandy, Does God Suffer?, 92–93, 94.

[19]Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God, 60–61.

[20]Ibid., 62.

[21]Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, trans. Margaret Kohl (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981; repr., Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 22. Dennis Ngien, The Suffering of God According to Martin Luther’s “Theologia Crucis” (New York: Peter Lang, 1995; repr., Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2001), 8–9.

[22]Irenaeus, Haer. 3.16.6 (PG 7:925–26; trans. Roberts and Rambaut, ANF, 1:443).

[23]Ibid., 3.11.3, 3.11.7, 3.16.1, 3.17.4, 3.18.3, 3.18.5.

[24]Ibid., 3.19.3 (PG 7:941; Adolf von Harnack, History of Dogma, vol. 2, trans. Neil Buchanan [New York: Russell & Russell, 1958], 284). The translation included by Harnack is to be preferred in this instance, because it comes from the available Greek text of this passage. For some reason, the ANF translators appear to have stayed with the Latin translation.

[25]On account of this, some have suspected Irenaeus of unhelpfully dividing the natures of Jesus and thus undermining the unity of his personhood. E.g., Vande Brake, “Divine Passibility,” 75. Others, however, have summarized Irenaeus’s contribution to christology differently. According to Nnamani, for example, Irenaeus “maintains the unity of Jesus Christ, that is to say, the unity of his humanity and divinity. Even without specifying the exact nature of the unity of the two natures, he has set the framework for the Christological discourse for the later centuries.” Nnamani, The Paradox of a Suffering God, 68. Since Irenaeus wrote well in advance of the major Trinitarian and christological councils, it is hard to know with certainty just how much precision undergirded his statement in Haer. 3.19.3, and what implications, if any, he conscientiously intended concerning the unity of Jesus’s personhood.

[26]In De anima 21, Tertullian reasons that God is immutable in virtue of his being uncreated. Tertullian, De anima 21 (ed. Augusti Reifferscheid and Georgii Wissowa, CSEL 20 [1890]: 335). Elsewhere, he reasons that God is immutable on the grounds of his eternity. Tertullian, Adversus Hermogenem 12 (ed. Aemilii Kroymann, CSEL 47 [1906]: 139–40); Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem 1.3 (ed. and trans. Ernest Evans, in Tertullian: Adversus Marcionem, 2 vols., Oxford Early Christian Texts [Oxford: Clarendon, 1972], 8).

[27]Tertullian, Adversus Praxean 29 (Tertullian’s Treatise Against Praxeas, ed. and trans. Ernest Evans [London: SPCK, 1948], 127).

[28]Tertullian, Marc. 2.16 (ed. and trans. Evans, 132–33).

[29]Ibid., 2.13 (ed. and trans. Evans, 122–23). “At enim ut malum postea erupit atque inde iam coepit bonitas dei cum adversario agere, aliud quoque negotium eadem illa iustitia dei nacta est iam secundum adversionem dirigendae bonitatis, ut seposita libertate eius, qua et ultro deus bonus, pro meritis cuiusque pensetur, dignis offeratur, indignus denegetur, ingratis auferatur, proinde omnibus aemulis vindicetur. Ita omne hoc iustitiae opus procuratio bonitatis est; quod iudicando damnat, quod damnando punit, quod, ut dicitis, saevit, utique bono, non malo proficit. Denique timor iudicii ad bonum, non ad malum confert.” For a more extended development of how Tertullian understood God’s goodness and justice to give rise to God’s relational responsiveness to the changing states of mankind, see Weinandy, Does God Suffer?, 100–101, and Hallman, The Descent of God, 54–59.

[30]Tertullian, Marc. 2.17 (ed. and trans. Evans, 132–33).

[31]Ibid., 2.11, 2.16 (ed. and trans. Evans, 118, 128–32).

[32]Ibid., 2.16 (ed. and trans. Evans, 130–31). “Stultissimi, qui de humanis divina praeiudicant, ut quoniam in homine corruptoriae conditionis habentur huiusmodi passiones, idcirco et in deo eiusdem status existimentur. Discerne substantias, et suos eis distribue sensus tam diversos quam substantiae exigunt, licet vocabulis communicare videantur. Nam et dexteram et oculos et pedes dei legimus, nec ideo tamen humanis comparabuntur quia de appellatione sociantur. Quanta erit diversitas divini corporis et humani sub eisdem nominibus membrorum, tanta erit et animi divini et humani differentia sub eisdem licet vocabulis sensuum, quos tam corruptorios efficit in homine corruptibilitas substantiae humanae quam incorruptorios in deo efficit incorruptibilitas substantiae divinae.”

[33]He comments, “It is highly inconsistent of you to put human characteristics in God rather than divine characteristics in man, and to clothe God with man’s image rather than man with God’s. So then the image of God in man is to be understood in this fashion, that the human mind has the same emotions and sensations as God has, yet not of the same quality as God has: in accordance with their substance both their actuality and their consequences are far apart.” Ibid. (ed. and trans. Evans, 132–33); “satis perversum est ut in deo potius humana constituas quam in homine divina, et hominis imagine deum induas potius quam dei hominem. Et haec ergo imago censenda est dei in homine, quod eosdem motus et sensus habeat humanus animus quos et deus, licet non tales quales deus; pro substantia enim et status eorum et exitus distant.”

[34]Ibid. (ed. and trans. Evans, 132–33). “Ita et illas species, irae dico et exasperationis, non tam feliciter patimur, quia solus deus de incorruptibilitatis proprietate felix. Irascetur enim sed non (quatietur); exacerbabitur sed non periclitabitur; movebitur sed non evertetur.”

[35]Weinandy comments that in predicating emotions of God, “Tertullian is able to state more clearly how these ‘emotions’ do not apply to God than how they positively do apply to him. While he wishes to predicate them of God in some true manner, he positively predicates them of God by rejecting false manners of predication. This is another example of attempting to state something positive about the nature of God, but doing so through negation. The real problem is that Tertullian does not clearly state what it means for God to possess them in accordance with his nature, but it does at least mean that he does not possess them in a human manner, which does betoken change.” Weinandy, Does God Suffer?, 103.

[36]Joseph M. Hallman, “The Mutability of God: Tertullian to Lactantius,” Theological Studies 42 (1981): 380.

[37]Tertullian, De carne Christi 3, 5 (ed. and trans. Ernest Evans, in Tertullian’s Treatise on the Incarnation [London: SPCK, 1956], 8–12, 16–20).

[38]Tertullian, Prax. 29 (ed. and trans. Evans, 127, 177). This assertion of the Son’s impassibility with respect to the divine nature must necessarily qualify the sense in which Tertullian speaks of the Son’s suffering in the very next paragraph. Then in Prax. 30, Tertullian says concerning the cry of dereliction, “This utterance of flesh and soul (that is, of the manhood), not of the Word and Spirit (that is, not of God), was sent forth with the express purpose of showing the impassibility of God who thus forsook the Son when he delivered his manhood to death [sed haec vox carnis et animae, id est hominis, non sermonis nec spiritus, id est non dei, propterea emissa est ut impassibiliem deum ostenderet qui sic filium dereliquit dum hominem eius tradidit in mortem].” Ibid., 30 (ed. and trans. Evans 128, 178).

[39]He stated, “Thus the official record of both substances represents him as both man and God: on the one hand born, on the other not born: on the one hand fleshly, on the other spiritual: on the one hand weak, one the other exceeding strong: on the one hand dying, on the other living [hinc morientem inde viventem]. That these two sets of attributes, the divine and the human, are each kept distinct from the other, is of course accounted for by the equal verity of each nature, both flesh and spirit being in full degree what they claim to be: the powers of the Spirit proved him God, the sufferings proved there was the flesh of man. If the powers postulate the Spirit, no less do the sufferings postulate the flesh.” Tertullian, Carn. Chr. 5 (ed. and trans. Evans, 18–21). See also Prax. 27, 29. For a thoughtful rebuttal of Hallman’s claim that Tertullian essentially espoused divine mutability in his incarnational theology only to contradict himself when polemically attacking patripassianism, see Weinandy, Does God Suffer?, 103–5n102.

[40]Indeed, the Second Council of Constantinople in 553 anathematized Origen. For a very capable introduction to Origen’s allegorical method of interpreting Scripture (including some safeguards that would have differentiated his allegorical exegesis from that of his pagan counterparts) and his “subordinationist” comments concerning the Son and the Spirit, see Haykin, Rediscovering the Church Fathers, 69–90.

[41]Origen, Homiliae in Ezechielem 6.6 (ed. C. and C. Vincentii Delarue, PG 13 [1857]: 714–15; trans. H. Bettenson, The Early Christian Fathers: A Selection from the Writings of the Fathers from St. Clement of Rome to St. Athanasius [London: Oxford University Press, 1956], 256–57). The scriptural citations in this text are of Ps. 86:15 and Deut. 1:31 respectively. It should be pointed out that though Origen himself wrote in Greek, many of his works (such as the present one) are only available to us now in the form of their Latin translations.

[42]I will not here treat Origen’s incarnational theology in great detail, but only note that, as with his broader formulation, Origen’s incarnational thought is characterized by seemingly paradoxical affirmations. See, for example, Origen, Homiliae in Leviticum 3.1 (ed. C. and C. Vincentii Delarue, PG 12 [1857]: 423), where he comments, “Dum qui erat in forma Dei, in forma servi esse dignatur: dum qui immortalis est, moritur, et impassibilis patitur, et invisibilis videtur.. . .” For his explanation that in Jesus Christ, the divine nature—though in complete union with the human nature—was not the subject of his earthly suffering, see Origen, De principiis 2.6.2 (ed. Paul Koetschau, GCS 22 [1913]: 140–41).

[43]For other passages where Origen struck a similarly powerful passibilist note, see Origen, Homiliae in Numeros 23.2 (ed. C. and C. Vincentii Delarue, PG 12 [1857]: 746–48); and Origen, Selecta in Ezechielem 16.8 (ed. C. and C. Vincentii Delarue, PG 13 [1857]: 809–12). However, note that in these passages, unlike Hom. Ezech. 6.6, Origen directly juxtaposed his passibilist sentiments with statements of divine impassibility.

[44]He commented, “For ourselves, however, whenever we read of the anger of God, whether in the Old or the New Testament, we do not take such statements literally, but look for the spiritual meaning in them, endeavoring to understand them in a way that is worthy of God.” Origen, Princ. 2.4.4 (GCS 22:132; trans. G. W. Butterworth, Origen: On First Principles [London: SPCK, 1936], 100). “Sed nos sive in veteri sive in novo testamento, cum de ira dei legimus, non secundum litteram quae dicuntur advertimus, sed spiritalem intellectum requirimus in talibus, ut ita sentiamus, sicut intellegere de deo dignum est.”

[45]Origen, Contra Celsum 4.72 (ed. M. Marcovich, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae [SVC], 54 [Leiden: Brill, 2001], 285; trans. Henry Chadwick, Origen: Contra Celsum [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953], 241). “’Oργὴν μὲν οὖν ὀνομάζομεν θεοῦ, οὐ πάθος δ’ αὐτοῦ αὐτὴν εἶναί ϕαμεν, ἀλλά τι παραλαμβανόμεμον εἰς τὴν διὰ σκυθρωποτέρων ἀγωγῶν ταίδευσιν τοῖς τὰ τοσάδε καὶ τοιάδε ἡμαρτηκόσιν.” A little further on in the same section he continues, “Therefore we do not attribute human passions to God, nor do we hold impious opinions about Him [Oὐκ ἀνθρώπινα οὖν πάθη προσάπτομεν τῷ θεῷ οὐδὲ δυσσεβεῖς δόξας ἔχομεν περὶ αὐτοῦ], nor are we in error when we produce explanations concerning Him from the Scriptures themselves by comparing them with one another. The task of those of us who give an intelligent account of Christianity is simply to deliver our hearers from stupidity as well as we can and to make them sensible.” Ibid., 286 (trans. Chadwick, 242). This line of thinking is surely reminiscent of Philo’s observation (noted above—Deus 52) that biblical depictions of God’s emotional fluctuation primarily served a pedagogical purpose for the benefit of the ignorant masses.

[46]Origen also displayed his predilection for an anthropomorphic interpretation of emotionally colored God-language in the aforementioned Hom. Num. 23.2, where this interpretive proposal followed closely in the wake of a strong affirmation of divine passion.

[47]Mozley, The Impassibility of God, 63. Mozley concludes that by opting for an allegorical interpretation of passionate God-language, Origen had in effect abandoned the scriptural tension of themes, despite his otherwise stark passibilist comments to the contrary. Mozley surmises that “he [Origen] gives up the attempt to hold together, or to show how a place may be found for, both the enduring blessedness of God in the perfection of His nature and a moral interest of God in the world, which can be represented as real only by attaching to it that flow of the emotions which is both the symbol and the expression of the varying moral judgments.”

[48]Robert Grant has contended, largely in view of the comment in Hom. Ezech. 6.6, that Origen has accomplished “something of great theological significance.” He continues, “What Origen has finally done is to give more weight to the revelation of God in Christ than to the negative conceptions provided by philosophical theology. We do not know how he would have related the two frames of reference had he continued to develop his theology. All we can say is that an authentically Christian insight has appeared and that it was bound to have drastic consequences.” Robert M. Grant, The Early Christian Doctrine of God (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1966), 31–32.

[49]Hallman suggests that the tension between passibilism and impassibilism in Origen’s thought stems from his conflicted commitments to Platonism and the Scriptures. That we see such strong passibilism in Origen is a testament, Hallman believes, to the powerful influence of Scripture in Origen’s thinking—an influence that, nevertheless, could not finally dispense with his philosophical presuppositions about the divine nature. Hallman, The Descent of God, 46.

[50]For a more complete study of Origen, see Henri Crouzel, Origen, trans. A. S. Worrall (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989).

[51]Weinandy, Does God Suffer?, 99–100.

[52]That is true, of course, if Gregory has been properly identified as the author of Ad Theopompum. For further information on the dispute over this attribution, see below.

[53]In recent scholarship, that attribution has increasingly come under criticism. Gregorian authorship has been defended by Henri Crouzel, “La Passion de l’Impassible: un essai apologétique et polémique du IIIe siècle,” in L’homme devant Dieu: Mélanges offerts au Père Henri de Lubac (Paris: Aubier, 1963), 1:269, 277. For the case against Gregorian authorship, see Luise Abramowski, “Die Schrift Gregors des Lehrers ‘Ad Theopompum’ und Philoxenus von Mabbug,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 89 (1978): 273–90. Abramowski concurs that the treatise was written in the third century and that its author was named Gregory, but contends that it was not Gregory Thaumaturgus. Finally, it should be noted that though it was originally written in Greek, the only extant version of this treatise is in Syriac.

[54]He states, “Passion would truly be passion if God proposed something of no benefit or fittingness to himself. But when the will of God is aroused to heal and remedy the evil thoughts of human beings, we cannot then call it a passion of God that this God, by his humility and extraordinary abasement, serves the human race.. . . Those passions which occurred at his will for the common benefit are not considered passions for God. For his blessed and impassible nature manifested its impassibility precisely in its passion. For whatever suffers is subject to passion when destructive passion prevails over it against the will of the one who suffers. But when someone voluntarily—being by nature impassible—is involved in the passions so as to defeat them, we do not say that he has been subjected to passion, even though he shared in passions by his own will.” Gregory Thaumaturgus, Ad Theopompum 6, trans. Michael Slusser, St. Gregory Thaumaturgus: Life and Works, The Fathers of the Church 98 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1998), 156. In making his case, Gregory resolutely denies the possibility that God’s nature and will could be opposed.

[55]Here he remarks, “So how could we deny that he who alone is good and who is above all vainglory, untouched by indignity, impassible in passions, most excellent of all, in his impassibility reigned over the passions, when by his Passion passion itself suffered? For the impassible one became the suffering of the passions, inflicting suffering on them by the fact that impassibility manifested itself as his impassibility in his Passion. For what the passions do to those who are passible, that same thing he, the impassible one, did to the passions by his Passion, in that by his impassibility suffering occurred to the passions.” He continues with the analogy of adamant being struck by iron: “For if a piece of adamant struck with iron does not suffer by the impact, but on the contrary remains impassible as it was, to such an extent that the force of the impact returns upon the smiter, since adamant shows itself impassible by nature and does not yield to the impact of the passions, why should we not say that the impassible one became a cause of suffering for the passions?” Ibid. (trans. Slusser, 157–58). As Mozley has pointed out, in Ad Theopompum, “the relation of God to suffering is . . . described as a relation not of subjection but of triumph.” Mozley, The Impassibility of God, 67.

[56]Taken as a whole, the author—whether Gregory Thaumaturgus or some other third-century theologian—seems to support the notion of divine impassibility in the sense that God is not subject to involuntary affectation.

[57]Lactantius, Divinarum institutionum 2.8 (ed. Samuel Brandt, CSEL 19 [1890]: 137). Also see his comment in Epitome divinarum institutionum: “There is then one God, perfect, eternal, incorruptible, passionless, subject to no circumstance or power; possessing all things, ruling all things, one whom the mind of man cannot assess nor mortal tongue describe [Unus igitur Deus est, perfectus, aeternus, incorruptibilis, impassibilis, nulli rei potestative subjectus, ipse omnia possidens, omnia regens, quem nec aestimare sensu valeat humana mens, nec eloqui lingua mortalis].” Lactantius, Epit. 3 (ed. and trans. E. H. Blakeney, in Epitome of Lactantius [London: SPCK, 1950], 63).

[58]Lactantius, De ira Dei 17 (ed. Samuel Brandt, CSEL 27.1 [1893]: 110; trans. Mary Francis McDonald, Lactantius: The Minor Works, The Fathers of the Church 54 [Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1965], 99); “si uero mundi curam gerit, curat igitur hominum uitam deus et singulorum actus animaduertit eosque sapientes ac bonos esse desiderat. haec est uoluntas dei, haec diuina lex: quam qui sequitur, qui obseruat, deo carus est. necesse est igitur ut ira moueatur deus aduersus eum qui hanc aeternam diuinamque legem aut uiolauerit aut spreuerit.” Also see Ir. 16 and his defense of the position that God must display both kindness and wrath—wrath toward the wicked and kindness toward the just (Ir. 5).

[59]Ermin F. Micka, The Problem of Divine Anger in Arnobius and Lactantius (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1943), 90. For his full discussion of the significance of providence for Lactantius’s doctrine of divine anger, see ibid., 81–112.

[60]Lactantius, Ir. 17 (CSEL 27.1:112–14).

[61]Ibid., 17 (CSEL 27.1:114; trans. McDonald, 102).

[62]Ibid., 13–16 (CSEL 27.1:99–109). In these sections, Lactantius variously emphasized that envy, fear, avarice, grief, and sexual desire have no place in God, whereas, under the appropriate circumstances, anger, love, and compassion are hallmarks of divine providence. As Hallman summarizes, “Lactantius’s theology of God rests on this crucial point. God has whatever emotions God needs to have to govern. God does not, however, experience feelings that conflict with divine perfection.” Hallman, The Descent of God, 69.

[63]Lactantius, Ir. 21 (CSEL 27.1:122; trans. McDonald, 109).

[64]Here it is helpful to follow Gavrilyuk in noting that in the early church, while there was a strong consensus that something like the just anger that Lactantius defends is quite appropriate to God, there was nevertheless some discrepancy as to whether God actually experienced this anger or merely made it such that the recipients of his judgment perceived it “as if” God was angry. Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God, 55–58. Gavrilyuk identifies Tertullian, Lactantius, Novatian, and Cyril of Alexandria as carefully qualified (in virtue of divine incorruptibility and analogical predication) proponents of the former thesis, and Clement of Alexandria and Origen as proponents of the latter.

[65]Here I am referring broadly to the Arians and the pro-Nicenes. At the Council of Nicea it seems that there were actually three parties present, “Arius and his supporters; his opponents, including Athanasius the future bishop of Alexandria who came as Alexander’s attendant; and a majority of Eastern bishops who wished to maintain the traditional Logos theology of the church without taking a strongly anti-Arian position.” William G. Rusch, ed., The Trinitarian Controversy, Sources of Early Christian Thought (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980), 19. In the years that followed Nicea, there would be still more variations on the Arian theme, for example, the Eunomians, Homoiousians (also less charitably known as semi-Arians), and Homoian Arians. For summaries of these nuanced positions, see Robert Letham, The Holy Trinity: In Scripture, History, Theology, and Worship (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2004), 122–26. In light of this more precise taxonomy, my analysis of this controversy is clearly just staking out its most generalized outlines. My aim is not to produce a detailed historical map of the Arian controversy, but simply to demonstrate the basic point—which still obtains even amid all the nuancing—that, in the main, the conflict was between subordinationist and consubstantialist views of the Son.

[66]Dennis Edward Johnson, “Immutability and Incarnation: An Historical and Theological Study of the Concepts of Christ’s Divine Unchangeability and His Human Development” (PhD diss., Fuller Theological Seminary, 1984), 43.

[67]See, e.g., Athanasius, De synodis 45 (ed. J.-P. Migne, PG 26 [1857]: 772–76). In recent scholarship on Arianism, a soteriological motivation has been suggested as the primary impetus for differentiating the Son’s essence from that of the Father. R. P. C. Hanson, for example, has commented that “because Arians were determined that the Son of God did genuinely, seriously, undergo human experiences, within the limits of their doctrine they understood the scandal of the Cross much better than the pro-Nicenes.” R. P. C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy, 318–381 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988; repr., Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005), 122; see 40–41 as well. In contrast, Gavrilyuk’s rebuttal provides ample documentation to discredit the thesis that the Arian postulation of a creaturely Logos was primarily driven by soteriological concerns. Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God, 121–34. His final statement deftly exposes the Arian claim to have a superior grasp on the scandal of the cross: “On the contrary, the pro-Nicenes felt this problem even more intensely than did the Arians. The pro-Nicenes claimed that the Logos was involved in human sufferings without being overwhelmed by them and without copying the sufferings of his flesh. In the long run, it was the Arians who explained away the paradox and the scandal of the incarnation by claiming that a unique creature suffered and by extricating the High God from all involvement in human history. The orthodox sustained the vital tension of the creed, just as they upheld the scandalous message of the cross.” Ibid., 134.

[68]Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, 121; also see 112. Again, Hanson’s supposition that biblical/soteriological factors and not cosmological ones drove the Arian hypothesis of an ontologically reduced Logos needs to be challenged. Arian thought did, indeed, reduce the divinity of the Logos, but it seems it did so mainly for cosmological and philosophical reasons. In this respect, the Arians might be seen as the true Hellenizers in this controversy.

[69]J. N. D. Kelly notes that since the Arians held that the Word took the place of Christ’s human soul, they referred directly to the Word “the Gospel passages attributing to the Lord ignorance, growth in wisdom, and the need for help in temptation. This they could do without inconsistency or embarrassment since His status on their theory was that of a creature, superior to all others but none the less passible and susceptible—as one Who was God by nature manifestly could not be.” J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1978), 281–82.

[70]E.g., Athanasius, Orationes contra Arianos 1.9, 1.39, 3.34 (ed. J.-P Migne, PG 26 [1857]: 28–29, 93, 396–97).

[71]Letham has captured well what Athanasius meant by deification: “In becoming man, Christ received and assumed what is ours and, in doing so, sanctified (deified) it, making it fit for fellowship with God. In turn, he gave to humanity the grace of partaking of the divine nature. This exchange in the Incarnation is the basis for Athanasius’s teaching on deification.” Shortly thereafter, Letham continues, “He no more means that we cease to be human and become God than he implies that, in the Incarnation, the Word ceased to be God and changed into man. Rather, the idea is that of union and communion, just as the deity and humanity in Christ remain what they are, but are in unbreakable personal union.” Letham, The Holy Trinity, 129–30.

[72]Athanasius, Syn. 51 (PG 26:784).

[73]Athanasius, De incarnatione 9 (ed. and trans. Robert W. Thomson, in Athanasius: Contra Gentes and De Incarnatione, Oxford Early Christian Texts [Oxford: Clarendon, 1971], 152–55). See also his comment in Inc. 54: “. . . he endured insults from men that we might inherit incorruption. He himself was harmed in no respect, as he is impassible and incorruptible and the very Word and God, but he cared for and saved suffering men, for whom he endured these things, by his impassibility [αὐτὸς ὑπέμεινε τὴν παρ’ ἀνθρώπων ὕβριν ἵνα ἡμεῖς ἀϕθαρσίαν κληρονομήσωμεν. ἐβλάπτετο μὲν γὰρ αὐτὸς οὐδέν, ἀπαθὴς καὶ ἄϕθαρτος καὶ Aὐτολόγος ὢν καὶ Θεός. τοὺς δὲ πάσχοντας ἀνθρώπους, δι’ οὓς καὶ ταῦτα ὑπέμεινεν, ἐν τῇ ἑαυτοῦ ἀπαθείᾳ ἐτήρει καὶ διέσωζε].” Ibid., 54 (ed. and trans. Thomson, 268–69).

[74]Athanasius, Epistula ad Epictetum, 5 (ed. J.-P Migne, PG 26 [1857]: 1060); C. Ar. 3.31–32 (PG 26:388–92). His comment in C. Ar. 3.34, is especially telling. In that passage, after urging the importance of saying that Christ suffered “in the flesh” on the basis of 1 Pet. 4:1, he drew the following conclusion: “So, then, let no one be scandalized by the human characteristics [of Christ]. Rather, let people see that the Logos himself is impassible by nature and that he nevertheless has these passions predicated of him in virtue of the flesh which he took on, since they are proper to the flesh and the body itself is proper to the Savior [ἀλλὰ μȃλλον γινωσκέτω, ὡς τὴν ϕύσιν ϕὐτὸς ὁ Λόγος ἀπαθής ὲστι, καὶ ὅμως δι’ ἣν ἐνεδύσατο σάρκα, λέγεται περὶ αὐτοῦ ταῦτα, ἐπειδὴ τῆς μὲν σαρκὸς ἴδια ταῦτα, τοῦ δὲ Σωτῆρος ἴδιον αὐτὸ τὸ σῶμα]. Furthermore, he himself remains as he is—impassible in nature. He takes no hurt from these passions, but on the contrary destroys them and brings them to nothing. And human beings, because their own passions have been transferred to the impassible and abolished, are henceforth becoming impassible and free of them to all eternity. That is what John teaches when he says, ‘And know that he was manifested to take away our sins, and in him there was no sin’ [1 John 3:5].” Athanasius, C. Ar. 3.34 (PG 26:396–97; ed. and trans. Richard A. Norris Jr., in The Christological Controversy, Sources of Early Christian Thought [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980], 93). It seems in this context (as well as in C. Ar. 3.33) that Athanasius is emphasizing not only that Christ was not susceptible to the kinds of sinful passions that plague fallen humanity, but also that he came with the very intention of destroying those sin-besetting passions in us—a theme that fits well with his emphasis on deification.

[75]In C. Ar. 3.32, for instance, Athanasius maintained that “when the flesh was suffering, the Logos was not apart from it. That is why the suffering also is said to belong to him. When he was doing the works of the Father in a divine way, the flesh was not external to him. On the contrary, the Lord did these things in the body itself [῞Oθεν τῆς σαρκὸς πασχούσης, οὐκ ἦν ἐκτὸς ταύτης ὁ Λόγος. Διὰ τοῦτο γὰρ αὐτοῦ λέγεται καὶ τὸ πάθος. καὶ θεϊκῶς δὲ ποιοῦντος αὐτοῦ τὰ ἔργα τοῦ Πατρὸς, οὐκ ἦν ἔξωθεν αὐτοῦ ἡ σάρξ. ἀλλ’ἐν αὐτῷ τῷ σώματι ταῦτα τάλιν ὁ Kύριος ἐποίει.].” Athanasius, C. Ar. 3.32 (PG 26:389; ed. and trans. Norris, 90).

[76]Athanasius, Ep. Epict. 6 (PG 26:1060).

[77]Ibid., 10 (PG 26:1065–68). In instances such as these, it is wise to recall Gavrilyuk’s counsel that all theopaschite statements are not necessarily making a claim about the divine nature. Some merely intend to depict the reality of the Savior’s passion and affirm the true union of his divine and human natures. What a given author intends by such a comment is best weighed out in the context of the entirety of his theology. Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God, 128.

[78]Evidently, Athanasius allowed that the pre-incarnate Son experienced love, pity, and mercy toward fallen mankind. Athanasius, Inc. 8 (ed. and trans. Thomson, 150–52).

[79]According to Inc. 8–9 (ed. and trans. Thomson, 150–54), Athanasius emphasized that the body that the Logos took on was the “instrument” through which the Logos acted and experienced—a point further illustrated later on in the aforementioned C. Ar. 3.32, where Athanasius explained, in one of several examples, that in resurrecting Lazarus, Jesus’s act was human insofar as his pronouncement was uttered through human physiology and in human language, and yet the act was also divine insofar as it effectively raised Lazarus from the dead (PG 26:392).

[80]Athanasius, C. Ar. 3.53 (PG 26:433–36).

[81]In Oratio 45.19, for instance, Gregory spoke of God’s blood and death. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 45.19 (ed. J.-P. Migne, PG 36 [1858]: 649). Further on in the same oration, he argued that, for our salvation, “We needed an Incarnate God, a God put to death, that we might live [‘Eδεήθημεν Θεοῦ σαρκουμένου καὶ νεκρουμένου, ἵνα ζήσωμεν].” Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 45.28 (PG 36:661; trans. Charles Gordon Browne and James Edwards Swallow, NPNF^2, 7:433). In Or. 43.64, he paradoxically identified God both as crucified and impervious to suffering (PG 36:581). See his Fourth Theological Oration for a similar paradoxical predication. Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 30.5, theologica IV (PG 36:109).

[82]One of Gregory’s well-known comments was that the incarnate Son was παθητὸν σαρκὶ, ἀπαθῆ θεότητι. Gregory of Nazianzus, Epistola 101.4, ad Cledonium (ed. J.-P. Migne, PG 37 [1862]: 177). Similarly, see Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 40.45 (PG 36:424).

[83]Gregory’s famous maxim directed against the Apollinarians—“the unassumed is the unhealed [Tὸ γὰρ ἀπρόσληπτον, ἀπεράπευτον]”—encapsulates his key soteriological concern. Gregory of Nazianzus, Ep. 101.5 (PG 37:181; trans. Lionel Wickham, in On God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius, ed. John Behr [Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002], 158). In the immediate context, Gregory was condemning the Apollinarian notion that in the incarnation the Logos took on flesh, but not a human soul/nous. His fundamental point was simply that “if we were to be redeemed truly, it was necessary for the Word to assume our full human nature, soul as well as body.” Johnson, “Immutability and Incarnation,” 121.

[84]Gregory Telepneff, “Theopaschite Language in the Soteriology of Saint Gregory the Theologian,” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 32 (1987): 409–10, italics his.

[85]Ibid., 413.

[86]Ibid.

[87]Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium 3.4.8–9 (ed. Wernerus Jaeger, Gregorii Nysseni Opera [GNO] 2 [Leiden: Brill, 1960], 136; trans. H. A. Wilson, NPNF^2, 5:183). It should be noted that in Migne’s PG (vol. 45) and in the NPNF^2 translation, differently constructed book divisions place this passage in book 6.

[88]Gregory of Nyssa, Eun. 3.3.57–69 (GNO 2:128–33). According to Migne’s PG book divisions, this section occurs in book 5. One aspect of Gregory’s effort to uphold these two points simultaneously—the union of natures and the predication of certain experiences uniquely to one or the other of those natures—was his affirmation of the communicatio idiomatum. Gregory of Nyssa, Eun. 3.3.42–43 (GNO 2:122–23). Also see Gregory of Nyssa, Antirrheticus adversus Apollinarem 54 (ed. Fridericus Mueller, GNO 3.1 [1958]: 223). This last citation is found in section 54 of Migne’s PG vol. 45.

[89]Gregory’s famous analogy to this effect suggested that Christ’s humanity was progressively absorbed by his divinity as a “drop of vinegar” mixed into the ocean. Gregory of Nyssa, Eun. 3.3.68 (GNO 2:132–33); also see 3.3.45–46 (GNO 2:124). It seems that, for Gregory, this deification of Christ’s humanity was completed upon Christ’s resurrection, such that afterward it becomes impossible to distinguish his two natures any longer. Kelly infers as much: “The situation changes with His resurrection and glorification.. . . The immaterial essence of the Logos ‘transelements’ the material body born of the Virgin into the divine, immutable nature; the flesh which suffered becomes then, as a result of the union, identical with the nature which assumed it. Like a drop of vinegar which falls into the sea and is wholly absorbed, the humanity loses all its proper qualities and is changed into divinity.” Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 300.

[90]Gregory contends that “nothing is truly ‘passion’ which does not tend to sin [ὅτι οὐδὲν κατὰ ἀλήθειαν πάθος ἐστίν, ὃ μὴ εἰς ἁμαρτίαν ϕἐρει].. . . For we give the name of ‘passion’ only to that which is opposed to the virtuous unimpassioned state, and of this we believe that He Who granted us salvation was at all times devoid, Who ‘was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.’ Of that, at least, which is truly passion, which is a diseased condition of the will, He was not a partaker [τοῦ μὲν οὖν κατὰ ἀλήθειαν πάθους, ὃ προαιρέσεώς ἐστι νόσος, οὐκ ἐκοινώνησεν]; for it says ‘He did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth’; but the peculiar attributes of our nature, which, by a kind of customary abuse of terms, are called by the same name of ‘passion,’—of these, we confess, the Lord did partake,—of birth, nourishment, growth, of sleep and toil, and all those natural dispositions which the soul is wont to experience with regard to bodily inconveniences,—the desire of that which is lacking, when the longing passes from the body to the soul, the sense of pain, the dread of death, and all the like, save only such as, if followed, lead to sin.” Gregory of Nyssa, Eun. 3.4.27–29 (GNO 2:144–45; trans. Wilson, NPNF^2, 5:186).

[91]Mozley, The Impassibility of God, 109. See, e.g., Augustine’s comment that no one can “hurt the nature of God [nec naturae dei nocere potest quisquam].” Augustine, De natura boni contra Manichaeos 40 (ed. Josephus Zycah, CSEL 25.2 [1892]: 874; trans. Albert H. Newman, NPNF^1, 4:359).

[92]Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God, 57.

[93]Augustine, De civitate Dei 22.2 (ed. Emanuel Hoffmann, CSEL 40.2 [1900]: 584; trans. Gerald G. Walsh and Daniel J. Honan, Saint Augustine: The City of God (Books XVII–XXII), The Fathers of the Church 24 [New York: Fathers of the Church, 1954], 418), italics his. See also Augustine, Enarratione in Psalmo 2.4 (ed. D. Eligius Dekkers and Johannes Fraipont, CCSL 38 [1956]: 4).

[94]Augustine, Enarratione in Psalmo 2.4 (ed. Dekkers and Fraipont, CSEL 41 [1900]: 663–64; trans. Luanne Meagher, Saint Augustine: Treatises on Various Subjects, The Fathers of the Church 16 [New York: Fathers of the Church, 1952], 237).

[95]Augustine, Contra adversarium legis et prophetarum 1.20.40 (ed. Klaus D. Daur, CCSL 49 [1985]: 71–72; trans. taken from Mozley, The Impassibility of God, 106).

[96]Vande Brake’s reflections on Augustine’s handling of divine repentance are illustrative of this conclusion: “God is able to repent without regret or remorse. Repentance does not change God’s plan, but his works are changed. Humans repent to change themselves, God repents to change the lives of human beings. For Augustine, God is able to have emotions and repent, but he is not passible in the sense that passions are able to influence the person of God to be overwhelmed or to act out of emotion rather than out of his plan.” Vande Brake, “Divine Passibility,” 100.

[97]Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God, 59.

[98]For all the helpfulness of Augustine’s formulation, it is worth noting that, as with most of his predecessors, his theological grounding for that formulation was not as expansive as it could have been. However, lest we are too severe with Augustine and other Patristic theologians for their “shortcomings” on this point, it bears repeating that the theologians of the early church rarely intended to address the topic of divine impassibility on its own in a sustained and systematic manner. Finally, before we take leave of Augustine, one final positive feature of his thought warrants comment. Anastasia Scrutton has noticed a tendency in Augustine to discriminate between affectiones (which voluntarily accord with the will) and passiones (which are involuntary and thus cannot accord with the will) in his assessment of human emotion. She suggests that such a discrimination is beneficial, and she extrapolates from it a helpful paradigm for affirming God’s experience of affections but denying his experience of passions. According to Scrutton, this incipient tendency in Augustine anticipates a similar line of thought in Thomas Aquinas. Anastasia Scrutton, “Emotion in Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas: A Way Forward for the Im/passibility Debate?,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 7 (2005): 169–77.

[99]Nestorius, for his part, thought Cyril was guilty of blending the natures of Christ, such that what resulted from the incarnation was a tertium quid. Steven A. McKinion, Words, Imagery, and the Mystery of Christ: A Reconstruction of Cyril of Alexandria’s Christology, SVC 55 (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 85. At this point, I should note that it is not my intent to provide a detailed analysis of the Nestorian controversy, its accompanying political intrigue, or even Cyril’s progression of thought from before the controversy to its onset. For detailed treatments of these issues, see especially John A. McGuckin, St. Cyril of Alexandria: The Christological Controversy. Its History, Theology, and Texts, SVC 23 (Leiden: Brill, 1994). My intent is rather more limited. Hence, it is enough, for present purposes, to acknowledge this controversy as the backdrop to Cyril’s reflections and proceed with the simple aim of describing Cyril’s model of incarnation and impassibility.

[100]Thomas G. Weinandy, “Cyril and the Mystery of the Incarnation,” in The Theology of St Cyril of Alexandria: A Critical Appreciation, ed. Thomas G. Weinandy and Daniel A. Keating (London: T&T Clark, 2003), 24–28.

[101]See the fourth anathema appended to Cyril’s third letter to Nestorius. Cyril of Alexandria, Ad Nestorium III 12.4 (ed. and trans. Lionel R. Wickham, in Cyril of Alexandria: Select Letters, Oxford Early Christian Texts [Oxford: Clarendon, 1983], 30). This letter is sometimes known as Epistola XVII.

[102]Cyril, Ad Nestorium III 8 (ed. and trans. Wickham, 22–24). In his defense of a single unified subject, Cyril employed the mia physis formula, which led to charges that he was Apollinarian. By way of response, we may note that although his terminology was imprecise, he was clearly not an Apollinarian. Indeed, in repudiating the specific charge of Apollinarianism, Cyril could offer an explanation of his mia physis terminology that anticipated Chalcedonian language, including an affirmation of δύο ϕύσεις. Cyril, Ad Successum episc. Diocaesareae 5–6 (ed. and trans. Lionel R. Wickham, 74–76). This first epistle to Succensus is sometimes known as Epistola XLV. For a more extended discussion and defense of Cyril’s orthodoxy in this matter, see John Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1987), 18–23. Johannes Quasten’s comments sum up the matter: “It is evident that Cyril in reality sees the union in Christ resulting from the person, the duality from the natures. In this he has anticipated the decision of the Council of Chalcedon and prepared the theological foundation for it. However, his terminology is by no means satisfactory and was no doubt a source of great misunderstanding. He used the terms ϕύσις and ὑπόστασις without any distinction to signify ‘nature’ as well as ‘person.’ He speaks of the ‘one incarnate nature of the Word,’ . . . when he intends to denote the unity of the person, thinking that St. Athanasius was responsible for this dangerous expression,” when in fact it came from Apollinaris. “From such and similar statements it can be easily understood why Cyril was accused of Apollinarism and Monophysitism. In reality, he endeavored to defend the traditional doctrine against both extremes, Apollinarianism and Nestorianism. There is no doubt that the terminology of the Antiochenes was clearer, but Cyril’s was the deeper theological thought. It took the Council of Chalcedon (451) to combine both in the definition that there is in Christ a union of both natures into one person.. . .” Johannes Quasten, The Golden Age of Greek Patristic Literature: From the Council of Nicea to the Council of Chalcedon, vol. 3 of Patrology (Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1992), 139–40.

[103]Nestorius, Ad Cyrillum II 6 (ed. E. Schwartz, ACO 1.1.1 [1927]: 30). Listed as Epistola V in PG 77. Theodoret (ca. 393–460) concurred with Nestorius. For a brief discussion of Theodoret’s thought on the relation of the incarnation to divine impassibility, see John J. O’Keefe, “Impassible Suffering? Divine Passion and Fifth-Century Christology,” Theological Studies 58 (1997): 54–57. For a discussion of how Theodoret’s rejection of Cyril’s understanding of the communication of idioms (see below) factors into his view, see Joseph M. Hallman, “The Communication of Idioms in Theodoret’s Commentary on Hebrews,” in In Dominico Eloquio, In Lordly Eloquence: Essays on Patristic Exegesis in Honor of Robert Louis Wilken, ed. Paul M. Blowers et al. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 369–79. It should be noted, however, that following the Council of Ephesus (431) Theodoret accepted the Formula of Reunion (and may have even written it). Later, at Chalcedon (451), he reluctantly joined in the condemnation of Nestorius.

[104]Cyril, De symbolo 24 (ed. and trans. Lionel R. Wickham, 122–23). Similarly, see Cyril, Ad Nestorium II 5 (ed. and trans. Wickham, 6–8); Cyril, Ad Successum II 2, 4 (ed. and trans. Wickham, 86, 90); Cyril, Ad Acacium Beroeensem 7 (ed. E. Schwartz, ACO 1.1.7 [1929]: 149); and Cyril, Scholia de incarnatione Unigeniti 33–35 (ed. Joannis Auberti, PG 75 [1859]: 1404–10).

[105]To the end of denying divine suffering, Cyril commented that Christ “suffered impassibly [patiebatur autem impassibiliter], because he did not humble himself in such a way as to be merely like us, rather, as I have said before, he reserved to his own nature its superiority over all these things.. . . If . . . he remained unchanged, even though he became a man like us (since it is the special characteristic of a heavenly nature to be impassible), then he could make a passible body into his very own by the union, and in that case it would be fitting that he suffers, in so far as the body suffers which is his very own. Nevertheless he himself remains impassible in so far as it is his special characteristic [as God] to be unable to suffer [manet vero ipse impassibilis, eo quod ipsius est proprium ut pati non possit].” Cyril, Scholia 35 (PG 75:1409–10; trans McGuckin, in St. Cyril of Alexandria, 333). This portion of the text is no longer available in the original Greek. Also see Cyril, Quod unus sit Christus 764 (PG 75:1337). In his appeal to the instrumentality of the flesh, Cyril was clear to distance himself from Apollinaris by insisting that the flesh stood for the entire human nature, including the rational soul. Cyril, Ad Nestorium III 8 (ed. and trans. Wickham, 22–24); Cyril, Responsiones ad Tiberium 7 (ed. and trans. Wickham, 158); Cyril, De symbolo 14 (ed. and trans. Wickham, 108–10); and Cyril, Ad Acacium Beroeensem 7 (ACO 1.1.7:149). Indeed, for Cyril, the importance of Christ having a complete human nature was crucial. Absent a rational soul, Christ’s human nature would be incapable of experiencing human emotional angst. Cyril, Oratio ad Augustas de fide 44 (ed. E. Schwartz, ACO 1.1.5 [1927]: 58).

[106]For instance, in his comments on John 12:27–28, he stated: “Moreover, just as death was brought to naught in no other way than by the Death of the Saviour, so also with regard to each of the sufferings of the flesh: for unless He had felt dread, human nature could not have become free from dread; unless He had experienced grief, there could never have been any deliverance from grief; unless He had been troubled and alarmed, no escape from these feelings could have been found [Eἰ μὴ γὰρ ἐδειλίασεν, οὐκ ἂν ἐν ἐλευθερίᾳ τοῦ δειλιᾷν ἡ ϕύσις γέγονεν. εἰ μὴ ἐλυπήθη, οὐκ ἂν ἀπηλλάγη τοῦ λυπεῖσθαί ποτε. εἰ μὴ ἠταράχθη καὶ ἐπτοήθη, οὐκ ἂν ἔξω ποτὲ τούτων ἐγένετο]. And with regard to every one of the affections to which human nature is liable, thou wilt find exactly the corresponding thing in Christ. The affections of His Flesh were aroused, not that they might have the upper hand as they do indeed in us, but in order that when aroused they might be thoroughly subdued by the power of the Word dwelling in the flesh, the nature of man thus undergoing a change for the better.” Cyril, Commentarii in Iohannem 8 (ed. Joannis Auberti, PG 74 [1859]: 92; trans. T. Randell, Commentary on the Gospel According to S. John IX–XXI [London: Walter Smith, 1885], 154).

[107]Weinandy, Does God Suffer?, 204–5, italics his.

[108]Cyril, Ad Successum II 2 (ed. and trans. Wickham, 86). Cyril, Scholia 33–35 (PG 75:1404–12). For a very helpful and much more thorough discussion of Cyril’s doctrine of appropriation, see McGuckin, St. Cyril of Alexandria, 201–7.

[109]Weinandy, Does God Suffer?, 200.

[110]Gavrilyuk’s statement of the differences of these two christological conceptions with respect to divine impassibility is incisive. He holds that, whereas Nestorius’s embrace of divine impassibility led him to dissolve the union of the incarnation, Cyril’s application of divine impassibility “meant that the Word remained unconquered by suffering and death and that he was unable to experience suffering in his ‘naked divinity,’ but only in and through the flesh. The presence of the Word transformed Christ’s human sufferings, while preserving their tragic reality. The Word was in a qualified sense passible to the degree to which he made the sufferings of his humanity his very own. In appropriating the experiences of humanity the Word directed them towards the salvific end and rendered them life-giving.” Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God, 171.

[111]Cyril, Scholia 35 (PG 75:1411–12; trans. McGuckin, in St. Cyril of Alexandria, 334–35). This portion of the text is no longer available to us in Greek.

[112]We may note that other Fathers who came after Augustine and Cyril certainly contributed to the development of this model through their own nuances and emphases. However, by the time Augustine and Cyril had made their contributions, the fundamental commitments of this model had been sufficiently laid down—even if not exhaustively developed. Additionally, the framework had been set so as to allow for the best components of Antiochene and Alexandrian christological thought. For a fine summary of the treatment of the nexus of incarnation and impassibility in the thought of Leo the Great (d. 461) and in the Definition of Chalcedon (451), see Johnson, “Immutability and Incarnation,” 155–66. Also see Geoffrey D. Dunn, “Divine Impassibility and Christology in the Christmas Homilies of Leo the Great,” Theological Studies 62 (2001): 71–85. Meyendorff provides a nice survey of the debates over monophysitism and theopaschitism in the aftermath of Chalcedon. Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought, 29–89. Recall, however, the terminological distinction drawn above in which it was emphasized that the theopaschitism that was finally affirmed at the Second Council of Constantinople (553) is not equivalent to and does not necessarily entail divine passibility. Rather, it merely asserts that the incarnate Christ suffered. Finally, for a succinct discussion of John of Damascus’s (ca. 655–750) treatment of incarnation and impassibility, see Mozley, The Impassibility of God, 99–102.

[113]Though it has not been my intention to devote detailed space to heretical views, it is worth noting that christological heresies such as Docetism, Arianism, and Nestorianism all belong under this heading. Each of these views embraced an unqualified form of impassibility that disallowed divine involvement and thus dissolved the tension of incarnation in its own unique way. Paul L. Gavrilyuk, “God’s Impassible Suffering in the Flesh: The Promise of Paradoxical Christology,” in Divine Impassibility and the Mystery of Human Suffering, ed. James F. Keating and Thomas Joseph White (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 143.

[114]R. M. Price, “‘Hellenization’ and Logos Doctrine in Justin Martyr,” Vigiliae Christianae 42 (1988): 18–23. See also Hallman, The Descent of God, 32.

[115]By his own account Justin successively identified with several different schools of philosophy, the last of which being Platonism, before converting to Christianity. Justin Martyr, Dialogus cum Tryphone 2–8 (ed. Miroslav Marcovich [Berlin: de Gruyter, 1997], 71–85).

[116]Ibid., 108; trans. M. Dods and G. Reith, ANF, 1:253.

[117]Ibid., 56. See also Dial. 60.

[118]It should be noted that Justin clearly identifies the Logos with the Son. Justin, Apologia i.23 (ed. D. Prudentii Marani, PG 6 [1857]: 364). Justin, Apologia ii.8 (PG 6:457).

[119]Justin, Dial. 127 (ed. Marcovich, 291; trans. Dods and Reith, ANF, 1:263).

[120]Weinandy, Does God Suffer?, 86nn20, 21. Weinandy suggests that in having the Logos function as the “spatial intermediary” in contact with the creation, Justin must have viewed the Logos as less divine than the Father (note 20). The quote of Dial. 56 given above would seem to support this conclusion. See also Dial. 60, 127.

[121]L. W. Barnard, Justin Martyr: His Life and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 77–78.

[122]Barnard sums up Justin’s contribution fairly: “Our conclusion is that two conceptions of the Deity existed in Justin’s mind. On the one hand was his acceptance of the biblical and Christian idea of God as a living Creator, a compassionate Father who in Christ had drawn near to men and who was concerned with the welfare of each soul. On the other hand Justin retained the Middle Platonist emphasis on God as the unknowable and transcendent Cause far removed from the world and disconnected with it.. . . Justin had no real theory of divine immanence to complement his emphasis on divine transcendence. His doctrine of the logos . . . in fact kept the supreme Deity at a safe distance from intercourse with men and left the Platonic transcendence in all its bareness.. . . It was not given to him, as a pioneer second-century Apologist, to unite transcendence and immanence in a system at once rational and biblical.” Ibid., 83–84.

[123]Justin, Apologia i.25 (PG 6:365; trans. Leslie William Barnard, St. Justin Martyr: The First and Second Apologies, vol. 56 of Ancient Christian Writers: The Works of the Fathers in Translation [New York: Paulist Press, 1997], 40).

[124]This is a point well summed up by Paul Gavrilyuk, who contends that, among other purposes, the application of impassibility to the Christian God in the early church often served to demonstrate God’s freedom from the kinds of sinful passions that marked the gods of pagan mythology. In his interpretation of the Justin Martyr quote above, he states: “The God of Christians is impassible, free from passions, in the sense that, unlike Dionysius, he is not prone to debauchery; unlike Apollo, he is not a woman-hunter; unlike Persephone and Aphrodite, he is not engaged in rivalry over the handsome Adonis.. . . In this context divine impassibility means that God is above the passions of envy, lust, and all selfish desires. To ascribe these passions to God the creator was to obliterate important distinctions between him and his fallen creatures.” Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God, 49–50.

[125]Salvatore Lilla gives a helpful exposition of this aspect of Clement’s thought and its relationship to his probable philosophical influences. Salvatore R. C. Lilla, Clement of Alexandria: A Study in Christian Platonism and Gnosticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 212–26.

[126]Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 2.2, 2.16, 6.7 (ed. O. Stählin and L. Früchtel, GCS 52 [1960]: 115, 152, 460–61). In Strom. 2.2, he emphasizes that God is a being far off and unapproachable by the creature. In 2.16, he stresses that there is no natural relation between God the Creator and man the creature. Finally, in 6.7 he reiterates his emphasis on the Father’s unapproachability by suggesting that he is distant even from the archangels. In the first two of these passages, however, it should be noted that Clement appears to moderate the force of these otherwise strong statements with comments to the effect that God nevertheless draws near to and cares for his creation.

[127]Ibid., 5.10, 5.11, 5.12. Nevertheless, Clement did allow that we may know God by virtue of his gracious Word.

[128]Ibid., 2.18, 4.23. In these passages, Clement contends that, unlike men who must exercise self-control over their passions, God is entirely above the experience of them. Also see, Clement, Paedagogus 1.8 (ed. M. Marcovich, SVC, 61 [Leiden: Brill, 2002], 42).

[129]Clement, Strom. 2.16 (GCS 52:151; trans. John Ferguson, Clement of Alexandria: Stromateis Books One to Three, The Fathers of the Church 85 [Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1991], 206–7). See also Strom. 5.11 (GCS 52:371) and Paed. 1.8 (ed. Marcovich, 42).

[130]Vande Brake, “Divine Passibility,” 76.

[131]Clement, Strom. 6.9 (GCS 52:467; trans. B. P. Pratten, ANF, 2:496). Also see Hilary of Poitiers (ca. 315–367), who voiced a similar statement in his De Trinitate 10.24 (ed. J.-P. Migne, PL 10 [1845]: 363–64).

[132]Clement, Paed. 1.2 (ed. Marcovich, 3–4). It should be noted that twice in this context Clement juxtaposes Christ’s apatheia with his sinlessness. In this particular instance, then, Clement may be supporting the more limited sense of impassibility in which God can have no passions that lead to sin.

[133]Clement, Strom. 7.2 (ed. O. Stählin, L. Früchtel, and U. Treu, GCS 17 [1970]: 6; trans. B. P. Pratten, ANF, 2:524). However, a bit further on in same section, he allowed that Jesus trained his human flesh to impassibility. For a yet stronger statement of Jesus’s experience of sufferings and death, see Clement, Protrepticus 10.106.4–5 (ed. M. Marcovich, SVC, 34 [Leiden: Brill, 1995], 155).

[134]Clement, Strom. 2.16 (GCS 52:152; trans. Ferguson, The Fathers of the Church, 85:208).

[135]Even for Clement, it seems that impassibility was fundamentally a way of expressing God’s transcendence and dissimilarities from his creation. See Strom. 5.11–12. The problem with his view, then, is not that he desired to emphasize God’s transcendence, but that he did so in hyper-biblical ways.

[136]Recall, however, the earlier discussion in which it was stressed that patripassianism and passibility are not identical categories. As with many moderns, one can be a passibilist without being a patripassian. Conversely, if one truly is a modalist patripassian, then the passibilist designation seems hard to avoid. On another note, it might be questioned why theopaschitism has not been identified under this heading. Clearly, some modern thinkers have equated passibility and theopaschitism, with the result that they would place theopaschitism under the present heading. As we saw above, however, once theopaschitism was dissociated from monophysitism, it became conceptually distinguishable from passibility. By the time the theopaschite formula received affirmation at the Second Council of Constantinople (553), it merely pointed out the undisputed fact that the incarnate Christ suffered, without making any specific sort of claim about how or whether Christ’s divine nature was implicated in the experience of Jesus’s incarnate sufferings. For further terminological clarification on both of these issues, see Marcel Sarot, “Patripassianism, Theopaschitism, and the Suffering of God: Some Historical and Systematic Considerations,” Religious Studies 26 (1990): 363–75.

[137]See, for example, Tertullian, Prax. 1, 2 (ed. and trans. Evans, 89–90). Unfortunately, we do not have access to the writings of those charged with patripassianism. This makes it difficult to discriminate between what the alleged patripassians actually taught and what their opponents surmised from their teaching.

[138]It should be acknowledged that even some of those accused of patripassianism may have held the divine nature to be impassible in itself and overcome by suffering and death only during the incarnation and crucifixion. See Hippolytus, Refutatio omnium haeresium 10.27 (ed. Miroslav Marcovich [Berlin: de Gruyter, 1986], 403).

[139]Sarot, “Patripassianism, Theopaschitism, and the Suffering of God,” 370.

[140]To be sure, it has been argued that at least some of the alleged patripassians may have been a bit more nuanced than has previously been allowed. Gavrilyuk, for instance, argues that while the historical record appears to undergird the patripassian designation for Noetus (see Hippolytus, Contra haeresin Noeti 2 [ed. J.-P. Migne, PG 10 (1857): 805]), Callistus and Praxeas may deviate slightly from the patripassian prototype. Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God, 93–100. Gavrilyuk’s interpretation may be correct, as evidenced by Tertullian’s acknowledgment in Prax. 29 (quoted above) that Praxeas held that the Son suffered while the Father “suffered with” the Son. Nevertheless, even if this historical analysis is correct, the Praxean/Callistian model still fails to present an orthodox christology. At best, as Gavrilyuk points out, Praxeas and Callistus identified the Father with the divine spirit and the Son with the human flesh. Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God, 97, 99.

[141]G. L. Prestige, God in Patristic Thought (London: SPCK, 1952), 7.

[142]Similarly, we can say that the majority model was also more nuanced and biblically faithful than either the extreme-passibility or the extreme-impassibility model.

[143]In fairness, it is no fault of Ignatius that he came early in the chronology of incarnational reflection. Along these lines, I find Gavrilyuk’s observation about the earliest Fathers’ reflections on the incarnation very judicious: “The church Fathers of the second and third centuries agreed that Christ suffered truly and resisted all Docetic reinterpretations of the incarnation. It remained to be spelled out more precisely just what Christ’s suffering meant for God. Without abandoning divine impassibility, the Fathers at times were prepared to state the issue in boldly theopaschite terms. On other occasions they resorted to a paradoxical affirmation, implicit in the rules of faith and early christological hymns that the Impassible suffered. This paradoxical affirmation was intended to emphasize the personal unity of the incarnate Son of God in the face of the Docetic division of Christ into two subjects. The permanent contribution of the apologists to the development of church teaching lies in holding tenaciously to the paradox of the incarnation. In my judgement, in the writings of the apologists we do not yet have a clear sense as to how and under what conditions suffering may be predicated of God.” Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God, 89–90.

[144]Weinandy, Does God Suffer?, 72.

[145]Prestige, God in Patristic Thought, 4.

[146]Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God, 62. As he elaborates elsewhere, “This [use of an apophatic term] implies that divine impassibility is primarily a metaphysical term, marking God’s unlikeness to everything in the created order, not a psychological term denoting (as modern passibilists allege) God’s emotional apathy.” Gavrilyuk, “God’s Impassible Suffering in the Flesh,” 139, italics his.

[147]Johnson, “Immutability and Incarnation,” 174.

[148]For all of their appeal to anthropomorphism or analogical descriptions, recall that on many occasions the Fathers also specifically attributed emotional characteristics to God.

[149]According to Millard Erickson, “This issue [divine impassibility] also becomes a test of the philosophical profundity of theological methodology. The issue is not one that can be settled on purely exegetical grounds.” Millard J. Erickson, God the Father Almighty: A Contemporary Exploration of the Divine Attributes (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998), 143.

[150]Over time, the emphasis grew among the Fathers that an incarnation was necessary to overcome natural divine impassibility, so that Jesus might suffer and die on our behalf and thus accomplish the basis of our salvation. Apart from the incarnation, God could not have been subject to human suffering and death.

[151]The orthodox, as we have seen, were quite comfortable uttering seemingly paradoxical statements, wherein they affirmed impassibility, on the one hand, and employed theopaschite language (recall the mature sense of theopaschitism discussed above), on the other. Their dual emphases, then, must be understood in tandem. To stress only the Fathers’ affirmation of impassibility or only their use of theopaschite language inevitably leads to a misconstrual of their intentions.

[152]Jerry D. McCoy, “Philosophical Influences on the Doctrine of the Incarnation in Athanasius and Cyril of Alexandria,” Encounter 38 (1977): 384–85.

[153]For a discussion of Cyril’s treatment of these and other influential passages on his christology, see O’Keefe, “Impassible Suffering?,” 43, 45–49.

[154]Ibid., 41.

[155]Frans Jozef van Beeck has pointed to the fact of the Fathers’ eclectic use of Greek philosophy as another indicator of their deference to Scripture on this matter. He comments that “it is unwise and superficial for contemporary theologians to hint that the massive patristic affirmation of apatheia as a divine attribute is simply an example of the Church making common cause with Greek philosophy as well as protecting its socio-political privilege by projecting status and stoicism onto Christ and the Father by way of a divine attribute. The patristic tradition’s indubitable respect for Greek philosophy was exceeded only by its eclectic use of it. If anything, its sheer consistency on the subject of divine impassibility was theological.” Frans Jozef van Beeck, “‘This Weakness of God’s Is Stronger’ (1 Cor. 1:25): An Inquiry Beyond the Power of Being,” Toronto Journal of Theology 9 (1993): 18.

[156]Paul Helm, “The Impossibility of Divine Passibility,” in The Power and Weakness of God: Impassibility and Orthodoxy, ed. Nigel M. de S. Cameron (Edinburgh: Rutherford House, 1990), 135. See also Roy Kearsley, “The Impact of Greek Concepts of God on the Christology of Cyril of Alexandria,” Tyndale Bulletin 43 (1992): 328. Indeed, it is because of this kind of understanding that Vande Brake has concluded that “the philosophical conception of God, as it is portrayed in modern theological discourse, is rightly condemned, but it is erroneously attributed to the orthodox tradition of theology as a whole. The Hellenistic understanding of God that is battled against with such vigor and gusto is really something of a mirage. There are certainly some aspects of Greek philosophy that are adopted by Christian theologians, but in the vast majority of cases the thinker shapes the Greek idea to fit the God of the Bible rather than the other way around. Christian thinkers who contributed to orthodox theology are not unscrupulously appropriating Greek ideals, but are using concepts and terms of Greek philosophy to describe the God of the Bible. Greek philosophy provides structure for ancient, medieval, and scholastic theology, but it is not the basis for thought about the Christian God of the Bible.” Vande Brake, “Divine Passibility,” 228–29.

[157]Augustine, Leg. 1.20.40 (CCSL 49:71–72).

[158]Nicholas Wolterstorff, “Suffering Love,” in Philosophy and the Christian Faith, ed. Thomas V. Morris (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 212. See also Vande Brake, “Divine Passibility,” 100. I am not claiming that Augustine and other Fathers failed to predicate emotionally laden terms to God. To the contrary, as we have seen, the literature is littered with such predications. What I am saying is that Augustine and many of the other Fathers frequently stopped short of suggesting a sense of how the affective content of those terms did apply to God. Though he employed an analogical hermeneutic, Augustine, along with most of the Fathers, mainly used it to stress the ways in which divine emotion was unlike human emotion. To be sure, pointing out these dissimilarities is crucial, but what remains to be addressed is whether anything positive can be stated about the nature of God’s emotional experience.

[159]Augustine, De Trinitate 5.16.17 (ed. W. J. Mountain, CCSL 50 [1968]: 227). For one extended discussion of Augustine’s doctrine of divine eternity, see Wilma Gundersdorf von Jess, “Divine Eternity in the Doctrine of St. Augustine,” Augustinian Studies 6 (1975): 75–96.

4

Medieval and Reformational Reflections on Divine Impassibility

Medieval Reflections on Divine Impassibility

The remaining historical survey chapters can afford to be briefer than the foregoing Patristic analysis, since that foundational era for the doctrine of divine impassibility has now been considered. In the main, up until the modern era, formulations of the doctrine of divine impassibility continued according to the pattern established during the Patristic period. Indeed, during the medieval period, remaining faithful to the esteemed Fathers of the past—especially Augustine—was seen as a vital component of doctrinal formulation.[1] Novelty, at least in terms of doctrinal content, was not a commodity in high demand.[2] As we turn to representative medieval treatments of divine impassibility, we may note that though additional theologians could be surveyed, examining just two of the period’s leading lights—Anselm and Thomas Aquinas—will suffice to give a flavor of medieval thought on our topic.

Anselm

Anselm (ca. 1033–1109), the medieval monk and eventual archbishop of Canterbury, is well known for his ontological argument for God’s existence and his satisfaction theory of the atonement. As with the mainstream Patristic tradition before him, he sought an explanation of divine impassibility that simultaneously attempted to incorporate an affirmation of divine passion. In his best-known comment on the matter, Anselm penned the following reflection:

But again, how art thou at once compassionate and impassible [Sed et misericors simul et impassibilis quomodo es]? For if thou art impassible, thou canst not suffer with others, and if thou canst not suffer with others, thy heart is not wretched out of sympathy for the wretched—but this is what being compassionate means. Yet if thou art not compassionate, whence does such great consolation come to the wretched?

How is it, then, O Lord, that thou both art and art not compassionate? Art thou compassionate with respect to us, but not according to thy being? Yes, thou art compassionate according to our sense, but not according to thine. For when thou lookest upon us, wretched as we are, we feel the effect of thy compassion, but thou dost not feel emotion. So, then, thou art compassionate, because thou savest the wretched and sparest those who sin against thee, and yet thou art not compassionate, because thou art not affected by any share in our wretchedness [Es quippe secundum nostrum sensum, et non es secundum tuum. Etenim cum tu respicis nos miseros, nos sentimus misericordis effectum, tu non sentis affectum. Et misericors es igitur, quia miseros salvas et peccatoribus tuis parcis; et misericors non es, quia nulla miseriae compassione afficeris].[3]

Several comments are in order concerning Anselm’s intent in this passage. To begin, it seems clear enough that when he says “we feel the effect of thy compassion, but thou dost not feel emotion,” Anselm is interpreting divine compassion anthropopathically. However, that does not necessarily entail the conclusion that Anselm succumbed to unbiblical philosophical presuppositions, nor that he believed God to be entirely and utterly devoid of any form of emotional experience whatsoever.[4] It may be the case that Anselm’s comment was more simply directed at affirming God’s sovereignty and voluntary condescension, as opposed to granting that God could be externally compelled into a given reaction such as the contextually supplied example of forgiving sinners.[5]

If we may capitalize on this potential interpretation for a moment, we can appreciate its value. As the final sentence quoted above indicates, wretched sinners have no claim on God’s compassion. His sparing of sinners is wholly unmerited and comes uniquely and graciously at his initiative, but in freely choosing to rescue sinners, God does not thereby join us in being wretched and sinful. If such an interpretation is correct, it may be the case that Anselm left open the door for some form of divine emotional capacity that differs significantly from the emotional experience of sinfully wretched creatures.

While the preceding interpretation strikes me as likely, Anselm’s shortcoming, as with most of his predecessors, was in failing to elaborate on this more thoroughly. Thus, we find ourselves, at present, having to make this interpretation of Anselm by way of inference rather than by appeal to any explicit statement of his. Moreover, even Anselm’s best effort may be interpreted as suggesting that apparent expressions of divine emotion are better understood, in actuality, as expressions of the divine action/will.[6]

Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1225–1274), generally regarded as the most prominent medieval theologian, also wished to affirm a sense of divine passion alongside his support of divine impassibility.[7] In his important discussion of God’s love in Summa theologiae 1.20.1, Thomas invokes a distinction between the sensitive and intellective appetites to support this dual affirmation. Here he reports that, in the case of humans, the intellective appetite is conjoined to the mediation of the sensitive appetite.[8] Thus when a desire springs forth from our sensitive appetites, it is always accompanied by some form of bodily affect. According to Thomas, then, the “activities of the sense appetite” are properly termed “passions or emotions” on account of their attachment to such bodily affects. The same designation is not appropriate, however, when it comes to “activities of the will [actus voluntatis].” Therefore, Thomas concludes that “loving, enjoying and delighting are emotions when they signify activities of the sensitive appetite; not so, however, when they signify activities of the intelligent appetite. It is in this last sense that they are attributed to God.”[9] In other words, Thomas appears chiefly to argue, in this context, that God is indeed loving, for example, but since God is incorporeal, his experience of love is unattached to the experience of bodily affects.[10] Thus, in God’s case, it would be improper to identify divine love as a “passion.”[11]

Continuing in response to a second objection, Thomas notes that even if the dimension of bodily change could be removed from the passions of the sensitive appetite, nevertheless certain passions, such as anger and sorrow, retain an element of imperfection. These, then, cannot be attributed to God “except metaphorically, namely by a likeness in their effect [nisi metaphorice propter similitudinem effectus].”[12] On the other hand, those attributes, such as love and joy that signify no such imperfection “can properly be attributed to God.”[13] Shortly thereafter, in his discussion of divine mercy, Thomas similarly stresses that God’s mercy ought to be understood according to its effect, not in the sense of a sorrow-filled emotional reaction. He comments, “To feel sad about another’s misery is no attribute of God, but to drive it out is supremely his (Tristari ergo de miseria alterius non competit Deo; sed repellere miseriam alterius hoc maxime ei competit).”[14] In other words, according to Thomas, God is merciful not because he joins us in sorrow, but because he is able to overcome it.[15]

Finally, with respect to Christ’s incarnation, Thomas seeks to follow a Cyrillian understanding of the communication of idioms. Thus, he holds that the attributes of both Christ’s human and divine natures are properly ascribed to the hypostasis, but not to each other.[16] Consequently, as with Cyril, Thomas can affirm that the Son of God suffered, while insisting that he suffered as a man. He explains:

For this reason certain predicates are attributed to the Son of God which are not attributed to the divine nature; we say, for example, that the Son of God is generated, but not that the divine nature is generated. Similarly with the mystery of the Incarnation, we say that the Son of God suffered, but we do not say that the divine nature suffered [Et similiter in mysterio Incarnationis dicimus quod Filius Dei est passus; non autem dicimus quod divina natura sit passa].[17]

Accordingly, Gerald Hanratty has rightly observed that, for Thomas, “rather than being a revelation of a suffering God, the Cross shows an infinitely loving and merciful God who can overcome suffering and redeem us from sin and death.”[18]

Conclusion: Impassibility in the Thought of Anselm and Thomas Aquinas

As we have seen, Anselm and Thomas Aquinas, our representative medieval theologians, stayed close to the primary contours of the mainstream Patristic doctrine of impassibility. In this, they joined their predecessors in displaying a commitment to defending God’s sovereign freedom and unconditionedness, on the one hand, and an anthropomorphically circumscribed yet no less “real” category of divine emotion, on the other. That said, it remains as true of Anselm and Aquinas as it was of their forebears that their respective formulations of this doctrine may benefit from an expanded grounding. In the final analysis, however, while we may have moved beyond their scholasticism, and while we may wish to expand their reasoning and perhaps even refine certain details in their respective views, the fundamental impulse they have demonstrated toward a dual affirmation of divine passion and divine impassibility is both correct and commendable.

Reflections on Divine Impassibility from the Reformation Stream

When we come to consider the Protestant Reformation and its aftermath, we again find that, with one particularly notable exception, the mainstream commitment to a dual affirmation of divine impassibility and divine passion, dating all the way back to the early church, is carried forward. Once again, therefore, we can afford to be brief. Though additional representatives could certainly be included on this list, we will limit our formal consideration to treatments of divine impassibility by Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Stephen Charnock.

Martin Luther

It is in the person of the great Reformer Martin Luther (1483–1546) that we encounter the first theologian of note to vary from the Patristic consensus on divine impassibility.[19] Despite his formal allegiance to the doctrine when considering God in the abstract (i.e., apart from the incarnation),[20] Luther’s commitment to a “theology of the cross” and his concomitant understanding of the incarnation nevertheless led him to predicate suffering of God to an unprecedented degree. As Dennis Ngien explains, “Luther’s theologia crucis is to be understood as a theology in which God’s true identity can be known only in His saving relationship to us in the suffering and cross of Jesus Christ.”[21] Luther’s christology, therefore, placed a high premium on the unity of Christ’s natures, so much so in fact, that some have accused him of blending the natures and tilting in the direction of monophysitism.[22]

Luther’s concern in so postulating the union of Christ’s natures was primarily soteriological. He was certain, for instance, that if the divine nature did not experience suffering and death for us in Christ, then the plight of sinners would be hopeless.[23] Thus, for him it was perfectly natural to assert that

we Christians must ascribe all the idiomata of the two natures of Christ, both persons, equally to him. Consequently Christ is God and man in one person, because whatever is said of man must also be said of him as God, namely, Christ has died, and Christ is God; therefore God died [drumb ist Gott gestorben]—not the separated God, but God united with humanity.[24]

Clearly, Luther stresses here, as he does repeatedly in his writing, that God’s suffering is limited to the sphere of the incarnation.[25] Nevertheless, it is also clear that Luther understood the divine nature to be subject to suffering and death in the incarnation in a way that virtually none of his predecessors had[26]—a fact further attested by the way Luther’s christological (and sacramental) concerns at times led him to employ the doctrine of the communication of idioms.[27]

It seems, therefore, that Luther’s christology strained at the seams of paradox. At the same time, however, it would be unwarranted to classify Luther as, more or less, an earlier version of Jürgen Moltmann.[28] Unlike Moltmann, Luther, for example, was decidedly not a panentheist.[29] Moreover, we have already seen how, for Luther, the experience of divine suffering is limited to the sphere of the incarnation.[30] In my judgment, then, though Luther did exhibit some actual deviations from mainstream impassibilism by his understanding of divine suffering in the incarnation, his position is nevertheless substantially distinguished from the perspective of modern passibilism that will be delineated in the next chapter.

John Calvin

Though John Calvin (1509–1564) did not formally treat divine impassibility as an attribute of God in his Institutes, his views on the matter are discernible through comments he made concerning other doctrines, perhaps most notably in his intertwined analysis of divine repentance and God’s accommodated self-revelation. According to Calvin, scriptural presentations of God’s repenting are actually instances of God’s accommodating his self-revelation to us. He explains that we require this gracious condescension from God “because our weakness does not attain to his exalted state.” Therefore, he contends, “the description of him that is given to us must be 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.”[31]

Immediately thereafter, Calvin turns to the examples of divine anger and divine repentance to illustrate what this accommodation means for the interpretation of anthropomorphic and anthropopathic descriptions of God in Scripture. In the case of divine anger, Calvin stresses that biblical portrayals of God’s anger fundamentally describe God’s exercise of judgment against sinners.[32] Calvin instructs his readers that, when Scripture depicts God as angry, God is in fact “beyond all disturbance of mind.” Indeed, Calvin continues, “whenever we hear that God is angered, we ought not to imagine any emotion in him [imaginari non debemus aliquam in ipso motionem], but rather to consider that this expression has been taken from our human experience.”[33]

When he comes next to consider divine repentance, Calvin argues that God’s repentance simply indicates a “change of action,” which in no way alters his eternal decree.[34] This, according to Calvin, is to be contrasted with the way in which mankind repents: “Men are wont by changing their action to testify that they are displeased with themselves [soleant homines, facta sua mutando, testari sibi displicere].”[35] In his commentary on Genesis 6:6, Calvin similarly states:

The repentance which is here ascribed to God does not properly belong to him, but has reference to our understanding of him [Poenitentia quae tribuitur Deo non proprie in ipsum competit, sed ad sensum nostrum refertur]. For since we cannot comprehend him as he is, it is necessary that, for our sake, he should, in a certain sense, transform himself. That repentance cannot take place in God, easily appears from this single consideration, that nothing happens which is by him unexpected or unforeseen [Quod non cadat in Deum poenitentia, hoc uno facile constat, quia nihil illi inopinatum, vel non praevisum accidit]. The same reasoning, and remark, applies to what follows, that God was affected with grief. Certainly God is not sorrowful or sad; but remains for ever like himself in his celestial and happy repose: yet, because it could not otherwise be known how great is God’s hatred and detestation of sin, therefore the Spirit accommodates himself to our capacity.. . . God, in order more effectually to pierce our hearts, clothes himself with our affections. This figure, which represents God as transferring to himself what is peculiar to human nature, is called ἀνθρωποπάθεια.[36]

What the preceding arguments demonstrate is that Calvin limits the category of divine passion in specific but not exhaustive ways. That is to say that one of Calvin’s concerns is to point out some facets of the human experience of emotion that he believes are not attributable for God. Calvin’s argument concerning divine anger is a nice case in point. In that context, he begins with the assumption that human anger is characterized by mental disturbance that so often manifests itself in a wild loss of control.[37] I take it that this propensity to “fly off the handle” or “to lose it” in response to some external and unforeseen provocation is what Calvin proscribes from God’s anger.[38] Certainly, though, Calvin is not depriving “anger” of all its meaning when attributed to God.[39] For, in this same context, he has already identified divine anger with the exercise of divine judgment. So, it seems that Calvin has retained a place for divine anger, though he has divested it of the anthropopathic connotations of surprised reaction and loss of control.

This interpretation gains strength when coupled with Calvin’s treatment of divine repentance. For there, he explicitly states that God does not—anthropomorphically speaking—repent because he is never surprised by something unforeseen.[40] Conversely, he maintains that the repentance of men generally springs from one of two founts: (1) they repent in view of some unforeseen development, or (2) they repent out of their displeasure with themselves.[41] Since neither of these two facets can be true of God, Calvin concludes that Scripture’s portrayal of divine repentance points to a temporal “change of action” that is commensurate with God’s eternal decree.[42] In short, Calvin contrasts human and divine expressions of emotion, and as a consequence he maintains that, in view of other doctrines (e.g., omniscience) and passages (e.g., 1 Samuel 15), certain connotations of human emotion are not applicable to God.[43] Some emotional components thus accompany finitude (e.g., surprise owing to ignorance) and sinfulness (e.g., repentance born out of displeasure with one’s own previous actions) that do not pertain to an infinite and sinless deity.

Nevertheless, for all that insight, it is still hard to know whether Calvin has retained emotional terminology for God while nevertheless dissolving its affective content largely into the divine will. In the aforementioned instances, he does appear to equate anger with the action of judgment, and repentance with a mere change of action. Perhaps he saw this as an appropriate interpretation of perceived “negative” emotions, such as anger and repentance, whereas elsewhere, he unhesitatingly affirmed God’s display of positive emotions such as love, compassion, and happiness.[44] And yet even this account may not be the most charitable reading of Calvin’s views on the so-called “negative” emotions, for in a very telling comment on Genesis 6:6, he specified that the description of God as grief-stricken was an accommodation designed to reveal his “hatred and detestation of sin.”[45] It seems, then, that in this case, Calvin sought to eliminate the presumably troublesome anthropomorphic element of a sorrow born of surprise, while simultaneously intending to retain an affective dimension to God’s hatred of sin.

What then of the passages in Calvin, such as his comments on Hosea 11:8–9 and his sermon on Ephesians 4:29–30, that seem expressly to state that in God there are no passions at all?[46] Again, in both of these passages, Calvin is interpreting emotional language—of repentance, anger, and grief—that carry the “negative” connotations of creaturely finitude and sinfulness mentioned above. I think it is likely, then, that he means there are no passions in God that bear the human limitations or deficiencies generally associated with these emotions.[47] Thus, it seems that Calvin is not attempting to argue that God is entirely dispassionate.[48]

Stephen Charnock

The reflections of Puritan theologian Stephen Charnock (1628–1680) on divine impassibility are among the most extensive of the post-Reformation theologians. In his massive work The Existence and Attributes of God, Charnock takes up the theme of God’s impassibility under the larger heading of divine immutability. There it seems that Charnock, like Calvin, builds his strong assertion of God’s impassibility primarily upon two intertwined lines of thought: (1) accommodated revelation, and (2) an identification of human limitations/deficiencies associated with select passions that cannot be predicated of God.

In the first place, Charnock contends that God allowed for the depiction of himself as repenting or grieving in Scripture to accommodate himself “to our weak capacity.”[49] This then leads to Charnock’s second point, namely, that although God has condescended to tell us something about himself by means of these anthropopathic descriptions, we should not understand them—when applied to God—to entail the same creaturely limitations or deficiencies that are true of the human emotional experience. Thus, Charnock maintains that, whereas human repentance stems from either an ignorance of the future or an error in judgment, “God is so wise that he cannot err, so holy that he cannot do evil; and his certain prescience, or foreknowledge, secures him against any unexpected events.” He continues, “God doth not act but upon clear and infallible reason; and a change upon passion is accounted by all so great a weakness in man, that none can entertain so unworthy a conceit of God.”[50] Similarly, according to Charnock, we should not understand God to be a proper subject of grief, for just as “repentance is inconsistent with infallible foresight, so is grief no less inconsistent with undefiled blessedness.”[51]

While Charnock’s burden to eliminate these elements of human limitation from his interpretation of perceived negative emotions (e.g., repentance and grief) is evident,[52] it remains for us to inquire just what Charnock does understand such descriptions of God to mean. In perhaps the best example of Charnock’s thought on this matter, he specifies that biblical depictions of divine repentance and grief (e.g., Gen. 6:6) were positively intended to portray “only a change of [God’s] outward conduct” with his creatures.[53] Such a comment suggests that Charnock is inclined, at least in the case of so-called negative emotions, to reduce the affective dimensions of these anthropopathisms, instead interpreting them more as temporal expressions of God’s eternal will.[54] And yet, this is not all there is to say about Charnock’s handling of the matter. For, similarly to Calvin, Charnock has tucked a very telling comment into his analysis of Genesis 6:6, where he observes that in addition to indicating a change in God’s outward action, the designation of God as repenting “is a word suited to our capacities to signify his detestation of sin, and his resolution to punish it.”[55] So, as with many impassibilists before him, it appears that Charnock’s affirmation of divine impassibility did not thereby lead to him to the conclusion that God is entirely dispassionate, even when “negative” emotions are in view.[56] In short, he seems to have employed an analogical interpretation of anthropopathic language in Scripture in which certain characteristics (e.g., lack of exhaustive foreknowledge and the consequent ability to be surprised) of the human experience of various emotions do not apply to God. For Charnock, this interpretive maneuver resulted in the shifting of some affective content into volitional categories, but it did not thereby commit him to the concept of a passionless deity.

Conclusion: Reformational Thought on Divine Impassibility

As we bring this brief survey of Reformational thought to a close, several points merit our focus. First, with respect to Luther, we must insist that although his thought on divine impassibility is difficult to pin down, and the christological component of his view especially reflects some notable divergences from the mainstream impassibility tradition, his proposal is nevertheless not an equivalent of modern passibilism.

Second, it seems clear that both Calvin and Charnock advanced an analogically circumscribed understanding of divine emotion. In and of itself, this hermeneutical device is a positive one, for it presupposes the Creator/creature distinction as well as a “whole-Bible” context for the interpretation of any individual exegetical datum. In their practice, however, we have noticed, especially in the face of the so-called negative emotions, that Calvin and Charnock were more helpful in clarifying the ways in which divine emotion is unlike human emotion than they were in identifying features of continuity. Much of the evidence suggests that both were prone to shift “negative” emotional terminology into categories of volition. Even though we saw counterevidence from both Calvin and Charnock related to their analysis of Genesis 6:6, it appears to me that more formative work needs to be done here in applying their analogical hermeneutic to an analysis of what affective (not just volitional) content does apply to God in the case of these presumed negative emotions.[57]

Third, the conceptual distinction that many of the Reformed thinkers made between voluntary affections and involuntary passions provides a useful framework for elucidating the both-and approach that the mainstream model of impassibility has always embraced.[58] Of course, we should avoid employing this distinction in such a way that the so-called negative emotions are entirely proscribed from God.[59] Nevertheless, when it is applied in conjunction with the Reformed analogical hermeneutic, this conceptual rubric helps ground the differences and the likenesses in divine and human emotion—“negative” categories included.[60] Here, then, is a methodological insight fit to help preserve exactly those things that mainstream impassibilists have always sought to retain, while simultaneously emphasizing, as mainstream impassibilists traditionally have, that God’s emotional engagement with his creation is perfect.

Finally, as with their predecessors, it seems clear that the Reformed also cannot be judged captives of an alien philosophical construct. Muller’s comments provide a fitting conclusion to our brief analysis of impassibility in broader Reformed thought.

In sum, the Reformed interpretation of the divine affections was in the interest, not of a metaphysical structure, but of a consistent view of the way God relates to the human race. The method by which the interpretation was achieved, moreover, reflects the general hermeneutics of the era: the argument did not consist in the direct application of a philosophical theme of transcendence or immutability to a particular biblical text, but in a recourse to the general principles of the analogia fidei and scriptura sui interpres by way of drawing conclusions from the juxtaposition of biblical texts.[61]

[1]Bruce A. Ware, “An Evangelical Reexamination of the Doctrine of the Immutability of God” (PhD diss., Fuller Theological Seminary, 1984), 112–13.

[2]Conversely, it is important to note that a new methodology, scholasticism, was on the scene. One example of this new methodology in operation is found in Anselm’s preface to his Monologion, where he stated that, in accordance with the wishes of several of his brothers in the faith, he would adopt the procedure that “nothing at all in the meditation would be argued on Scriptural authority, but that in unembellished style and by unsophisticated arguments and with uncomplicated disputation rational necessity would tersely prove to be the case, and truth’s clarity would openly manifest to be the case, whatever the conclusion resulting from the distinct inquiries would declare [quatenus auctoritate scripturae penitus nihil in ea persuaderetur, sed quidquid per singulas investigationes finis assereret, id ita esse plano stilo et vulgaribus argumentis simplicique disputatione et rationis necessitas breviter cogeret et veritatis claritas patenter ostenderet].” Anselm, Monologion prologus, in Opera omnia ad fidem codicum recensuit, vol. 1, ed. F. S. Schmitt (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson, 1946), 7; trans. Jasper Hopkins, A New, Interpretive Translation of St. Anselm’s Monologion and Proslogion (Minneapolis: Arthur J. Banning, 1986), 48–49.

[3]Anselm Proslogion 8, in Schmitt, Opera omnia ad fidem codicum recensuit, 1:106; trans. Eugene R. Fairweather, in A Scholastic Miscellany: Anselm to Ockham, Library of Christian Classics 10 (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1956), 77–78.

[4]Contra the view found in Kenneth Surin, “The Impassibility of God and the Problem of Evil,” Scottish Journal of Theology 35 (1982): 113.

[5]Ware, “An Evangelical Reexamination,” 89–90.

[6]With respect to the incarnation, Anselm also retained the Patristic inclination to ascribe passibility properly to Jesus’s human nature. Anselm, Cur Deus homo 1.8, in Opera omnia ad fidem codicum recensuit, vol. 2, ed. F. S. Schmitt (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson, 1946), 59.

[7]It should be noted that Thomas did not treat impassibility as a formal attribute of God in either of his two Summae. Rather, his comments on impassibility surface “in the context of discussing God’s willing and loving.” Thomas G. Weinandy, Does God Suffer? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000), 124. In addition to these contexts, which will be discussed below, Thomas’s doctrine of impassibility was also informed by several doctrines/concepts that he viewed as correlative. His discussion of God’s ontological immutability, for instance, is found in Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae [ST] 1.9, in Existence and Nature of God, ed. Timothy McDermott, STAST 2:126–33. The doctrine of God’s incorporeality, which will be taken as part of the considerations below, was also an important component of his reflection on divine impassibility. His extended discussion of divine simplicity can be found in Aquinas, ST 1.3 (ed. McDermott, STAST 2:18–47). Thomas clearly viewed passivity as an indication of imperfection. This belief, coupled with Thomas’s understanding of God as purus actus, prohibited the ascription of passivity to God. Aquinas, ST 1.25.1 (ed. Thomas Gilby, STAST 5:154).

[8]Thomas states: “A cognitive power does not set things in motion except through an appetitive power.. . . Sensitive appetite is the proximate moving principle for animal bodies [Ad primum ergo dicendum quod vis cognoscitiva non movet nisi mediante appetitiva.. . . unde proximum motivum corporis in nobis est appetitus sensitivus].” Aquinas, ST 1.20.1 (ed. Gilby, STAST 5:56–57).

[9]Ibid. “Amor igitur, et gaudium et delectatio, secundum quod significant actus appetitus sensitivi, passiones sunt; non autem secundum quod significant actus appetitus intellectivi; et sic ponuntur in Deo.” See also Aquinas, ST 1.82.5 reply 1 (ed. Timothy Suttor, STAST 11:232).

[10]See his similar reasoning in Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles [SCG] 1.89.3, Book One: God, trans. Anton C. Pegis, STASCG 1:271–72.

[11]This explains Thomas’s concluding statement that God “loves without passion (sine passione amat).” Aquinas, ST 1.20.1 (ed. Gilby, STAST 5:56–57). As with Augustine, mentioned above, Anastasia Scrutton has noticed a tendency in Aquinas to associate passiones with an involuntary and corporeal response, whereas he tends to categorize affectiones as voluntary and not necessarily corporeal actions. Thus, the latter class of affectiones is attributable to God. Scrutton then praises the potential of this discriminatory insight (i.e., attributing voluntary affectiones to God, while proscribing the ascription of involuntary and corporeal passiones to him) to bridge some of the concerns of passibilists and impassibilists, since it would seemingly allow for God’s genuine emotional and relational involvement with his creation, while also leaving room for a retained emphasis on God’s sovereign freedom and insusceptibility to involuntary emotional manipulation by his creatures. Anastasia Scrutton, “Emotion in Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas: A Way Forward for the Im/passibility Debate?,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 7 (2005): 175–77.

[12]Aquinas, ST 1.20.2 (ed. Gilby, STAST 5:58–59). Thomas has illustrated this principle in ST 1.3.2, reply 2: “Anger and the like are ascribed to God by a metaphor drawn from their effects. For it is characteristic of anger that it stimulates men to requite wrong. Divine retribution is therefore metaphorically termed anger [Ad secundum dicendum quod ira et hujusmodi attribuuntur Deo secundum similitudinem effectus. Quia enim proprium est irati punire, ira ejus punitio metaphorice vocatur].” Aquinas, ST 1.3.2, reply 2 (ed. McDermott, STAST 2:26–27). See also Aquinas, ST 1.19.11 (ed. Gilby, STAST 5:46–49), and SCG 1.91.15–17 (trans. Pegis, STASCG 1:281–82).

[13]Aquinas, ST 1.20.2 (ed. Gilby, STAST 5:59). Though, again, Thomas emphasizes that in God even love and joy are not technically passions. See also Aquinas, SCG 1.90.1 (trans. Pegis, STASCG 1:275). Weinandy’s summary of the matter heretofore is insightful: “Aquinas, in denying passion in God, is simply denying of God the passible, and so changing, process which is inherent within human passion. Thus there is no passion in God, not in the sense that he does not love, but because, being pure act, there is no need for an arousal of his will to love the good and so to come to desire the good and rejoice in it.. . . God cannot become more passionate or loving by actualizing, as human beings do, some further potential and so become more passionate or loving.” Weinandy, Does God Suffer?, 126–27.

[14]Aquinas, ST 1.21.3 (ed. Gilby, STAST 5:80–81).

[15]For a more extended discussion of Thomas’s understanding of divine compassion as that which drives out suffering, see Michael J. Dodds, The Unchanging God of Love: A Study of the Teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas on Divine Immutability in View of Certain Contemporary Criticism of This Doctrine (Fribourg: Editions Universitaires Fribourg Suisse, 1986), 301–4.

[16]Aquinas, ST 3.16.4–5 (ed. Colman E. O’Neill, STAST 50:16–23).

[17]Aquinas, ST 3.16.5, reply 1 (ed. O’Neill, STAST 50:22–23). See also his comment in ST 3.46.12: “The union of the divine and human natures took place in the person and in the hypostasis and in the supposit, but the natures remained distinct; the same person and hypostasis serves for both the divine and the human nature, and each nature retains what is proper to it. Hence, . . . the passion is to be attributed to the divine person, not by reason of Christ’s divine nature which is impassible, but by reason of his human nature.. . . The passion of Christ therefore pertains to the divine person by reason of the assumed human nature, but not by reason of the impassible divine nature [Pertinet ergo passio Christi ad suppositum divinae naturae, ratione naturae passibilis assumptae, non autem ratione divinae naturae impassibilis].” Aquinas, ST (ed. Richard T. A. Murphy, STAST 54:50–53).

[18]Gerald Hanratty, “Divine Immutability and Impassibility Revisited,” in At the Heart of the Real, ed. Fran O’Rourke (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1992), 161–62.

[19]Warren McWilliams, The Passion of God: Divine Suffering in Contemporary Protestant Theology (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1985), 14.

[20]Martin Luther, Die disputation de divinitate et humanitate Christi, WA 39^2 (1932): 101. In a comment on Gen. 6:6, Luther stated: “One should not imagine that God has a heart or that He can grieve [Non est cogitandum, quod Deus habeat cor, aut dolere possit]. But when the spirit of Noah, of Lamech, and of Methuselah is grieved, God himself is said to be grieved. Thus we should understand this grief to refer to its effect, not to the divine essence [Ut intelligamus tristiciam hanc de effectu, non de substantia divina].” Martin Luther, Text der Genesisvorlesung, WA 42 (1911): 296–97; trans. George V. Schick, in LW, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (St. Louis: Concordia, 1960), 2:49.

[21]Dennis Ngien, The Suffering of God According to Martin Luther’s “Theologia Crucis” (New York: Peter Lang, 1995; repr., Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2001), 53. See, for example, theses 19–21 of the Heidelberg Disputation. Martin Luther, Disputatio Heidelbergae habita, WA 1 (1883): 354.

[22]Luther defended himself against the charge of blending the natures and affirmed a two-nature christology in Vom Abendmahl Christi Bekenntnis, WA 26 (1909): 324. See also Martin Luther, In epistolam S. Pauli ad Galatas commentarius ex praelectione, WA 40^1 (1911): 427.

[23]Martin Luther, Auslegung des ersten und zweiten Kapitels Johannis in Predigten 1537 und 1538, WA 46 (1912): 554–55.

[24]Martin Luther, Von den Konziliis und Kirchen, WA 50 (1914): 589; trans. Charles M. Jacobs, in LW, ed. Eric W. Gritsch (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1966), 41:103. Similarly, see Martin Luther, Von den letzten Worten Davids, WA 54 (1928): 92.

[25]As Ngien observed, “The assertion of God’s suffering, for Luther, can only be made in concreto, that is, in the person of Jesus, the God-man in toto. Though God in abstracto, that is, God ‘by himself’ does not suffer, God in his sovereign freedom determined himself in his Word, and hence became passible in Jesus Christ out of his unfathomable love toward the sinner.” Dennis Ngien, “Trinity and Divine Passibility in Martin Luther’s ‘Theologia Crucis,’” Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology 19 (2001): 53. This article is an updated and slightly modified version of Ngien’s chap. 5 in his previously cited The Suffering of God According to Martin Luther’s “Theologia Crucis.”

[26]We may recall here that even Cyril, who stressed that it was God the Son who suffered during the incarnation, equally insisted that he did so through the instrumentality of the flesh (by which Cyril meant the entirety of his humanity).

[27]Luther at times extended the doctrine of the communication of idioms to the point that it did not merely signify the communication of attributes from the two natures to the person of Christ, but rather entailed the exchange of properties between the two natures. Dennis Ngien, “Chalcedonian Christology and Beyond: Luther’s Understanding of the Communicatio Idiomatum,” The Heythrop Journal 45 (2004): 59. Ngien cites Luther’s comment in his Sermons on the Gospel of St. John to this effect: “You know about the communication of properties: two natures dwell in the Lord Christ, and yet He is but one person. These two natures retain their properties, and each also communicates its properties to the other.” LW 22:491–92. To be fair though, it should be noted that Luther appeared to offer a more traditional interpretation on occasion. In his Confession Concerning Christ’s Supper he stated, “Indeed, you must say that the person (pointing to Christ) suffers, and dies. But this person is truly God, and therefore it is correct to say: the Son of God suffers. Although, so to speak, the one part (namely, the divinity) does not suffer, nevertheless the person, who is God, suffers in the other part (namely, in the humanity).” Luther, Vom Abendmahl Christi Bekenntnis, WA 26 (1909): 321; ed. and trans. Robert H. Fischer, in LW (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg, 1961), 37:210. Properly understanding Luther’s intent here, however, is complicated by virtue of the fact that shortly before this comment he seemed to state exactly the opposite: “Beware, beware, I say, of this alloeosis, for it is the devil’s mask since it will finally construct a kind of Christ after whom I would not want to be a Christian, that is a Christ who is and does no more in his passion and his life than any other ordinary saint. For if I believe that only the human nature suffered for me, then Christ would be a poor Savior for me, in fact, he himself would need a Savior.” WA 26:319; LW 37:209–10.

[28]Burnell F. Eckardt offers a nice justification of this point in his “Luther and Moltmann: The Theology of the Cross,” Concordia Theological Quarterly 49 (1985): 19–28. Though Moltmann borrowed terminology from Luther, there is a great divergence in their theologies.

[29]As Eckhardt notes, with respect to the cross, “Luther tended to stress the transfer of Christ’s righteousness to the unrighteous.. . . This, for Luther is the main thing accomplished on the cross. Moltmann, on the other hand, sees the cross as an event taking place entirely in God—as God’s self-abandonment. It is an event which is part of God’s process of becoming. As such, it is not a completed event, but an event which can only be called complete in an eschatological sense.. . . The cross is for Luther an activity that has nothing to do with God’s internal perfecting, since He is already perfect and complete. But, for Moltmann, the cross is the key element in God’s process of being perfected.” Ibid., 25.

[30]Ngien, it seems, is inclined to see a bit more passibilism in Luther’s thought. He suggests that in view of Luther’s belief in the permanence of Jesus’s incarnate state and his understanding of the relation of the economic Trinity and the immanent Trinity, Luther may be read as implying God’s eternal immanent suffering. Ngien opines that for Luther, “The passion and death of Jesus Christ is . . . the revelation of God, i.e., the revelation of the immanent Trinity. The perception of the Suffering Christ as the lowly servant is thus carried into the inner life of God, allowing a predication of Christ’s suffering not only of the economic Trinity but also of the immanent Trinity, the former being the self-manifestation of the latter.” Ngien, “Trinity and Divine Passibility,” 62. While I am admittedly not a Luther expert, it nevertheless seems to me that Ngien may be over-reading the evidence here. His interpretation seems to make Luther a full-fledged proponent of Rahner’s rule, but I do not think that such a conclusion is supportable. Ngien himself repeatedly notes that Luther refrained from speculation about the “immanental relations within the Godhead for that smacks too much of a theologia gloriae” (55, see also 40, 56, 62). Beyond that, we must recall that, even as Ngien noted, Luther presupposed “God’s eternal impassibility” prior to the incarnation (53). But a full-fledged embrace of Rahner’s rule, which singles out the event of the cross as the revelation of God, could not abide this presupposition. Such a view could not consistently allow that God is in any sense different in his eternal immanent life than he is on the cross. Perhaps I have misunderstood Ngien’s interpretation of Luther. He is certainly restrained in making his claims. Yet, it seems that he believes there is enough evidence in Luther to warrant such an extrapolation (63–64). More analysis of Rahner’s rule will be offered in the next chapter, and a more specific proposal as to the proper understanding of the relationship between the economic and immanent Trinity will follow in the formative portion of this study.

[31]John Calvin, Institutio Christianae religionis 1.17.13, in vol. 3 of Joannis Calvini opera selecta [OS], ed. P. Barth and G. Niesel, 2nd rev. ed. (Munich: Kaiser, 1957), 217–18; trans. Ford Lewis Battles, in Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, vol. 1, Library of Christian Classics 20 (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), 227. “Quia enim ad eius altitudinem non pertingit nostra infirmitas, quae nobis traditur eius descriptio, ad captum nostrum submittenda est, ut a nobis intelligatur.” See also Calvin, Institutio 1.13.1 (OS 3:108–9). For, perhaps, the classic introductory discussion of Calvin’s understanding of God’s revelatory accommodation, see Ford Lewis Battles, “God Was Accommodating Himself to Human Capacity,” Interpretation 31 (1977): 19–38.

[32]Calvin, Institutio 1.17.13 (OS 3:218).

[33]Ibid. (trans. Battles 1:227).

[34]Ibid.

[35]Ibid.

[36]Calvin, Commentarius in Genesin, 6.6, CO 23 (1882): 118; Commentaries on the First Book of Moses Called Genesis, trans. John King, Calvin’s Commentaries 1 (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society; repr., Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998), 248–49.

[37]Recall Calvin’s comment above that when God is described as angry in Scripture, he nevertheless remains “beyond all disturbance of mind.”

[38]Once again, recall Calvin’s comment above that “whenever we hear that God is angered, we ought not to imagine any emotion in him, but rather to consider that this expression has been taken from our human experience.”

[39]That is to say, he is not offering a univocal interpretation of divine anger, but an analogical one.

[40]Recall his comment, “That repentance cannot take place in God, easily appears from this single consideration, that nothing happens which is by him unexpected or unforeseen.” Calvin, Comment. in Gen., 6.6, CO 23:118; trans. King, Genesis, 1:249.

[41]The former point is inferred from Calvin’s comment on Gen. 6:6. The latter is derived from the comment in Institutio 1.17.13 cited above: “Men are wont by changing their action to testify that they are displeased with themselves.” For further support of both these points, see Calvin, Institutio 1.17.12 (OS 3:217).

[42]Calvin, Institutio 1.17.13 (OS 3:218).

[43]For Calvin’s thoughts on how 1 Sam. 15:29 governs the understanding of 1 Sam. 15:11 (and presumably 1 Sam. 15:35) see his Institutio 1.17.12 (OS 3:217).

[44]Calvin, Institutio 2.8.21 (OS 3:362–63), 2.16.1–4 (OS 3:481–85).

[45]Calvin, Comment. in Gen., 6.6, CO 23:118; trans. King, Genesis, 1:249, emphasis mine.

[46]Calvin, Praelectiones in Hoseam, 11.8–9, CO 42 (1890): 442; and Sermon XXXII sur L’Epitre aux Ephesiens, Eph. 4:29–30, CO 51 (1895): 648–49.

[47]Again, for Calvin, divine repentance, anger, and grief must be differentiated from the human experience of these emotions, because God is eternal and omniscient. Thus he is neither surprised by the events of history nor provoked involuntarily into some form of unanticipated reaction.

[48]Though we will not here pursue a detailed analysis of Calvin’s christology, there are at least two facets of his incarnational thought that will prove useful to my own proposal of how best to conceptualize the place of divine impassibility in the incarnation. The first of these has come to be known as the extra Calvinisticum, though the concept hardly originated with Calvin. E. David Willis, Calvin’s Catholic Christology: The Function of the So-Called Extra Calvinisticum in Calvin’s Christology, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1966), 60. The concept designated by the term extra Calvinisticum simply maintains that “the Word is fully united to but never totally contained within the human nature.” Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1985), 111. Calvin’s formal discussion of this christological principle is found in Institutio 2.13.4 (OS 3:458), 4.17.30 (OS 5:388–89). The second beneficial aspect of Calvin’s christology, for the purposes of this discussion, is his affirmation of the communicatio idiomatum in concreto (Institutio 2.14.1–3; OS 3:458–62). For a helpful exposition of Calvin’s doctrine of the communication of idioms, see Joseph N. Tylenda, “Calvin’s Understanding of the Communication of Properties,” Westminster Theological Journal 38 (1975): 54–65. The benefit of these concepts will be extrapolated further in the formulative portion of this book.

[49]Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God (n.p.: Robert Carter, 1853; repr., Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996), 1:341. Charnock continues at length, “Because he is said to have anger and repentance, we must not conclude him to have passions like us. When we cannot fully comprehend him as he is, he clothes himself with our nature in his expressions that we may apprehend him as we are able, and by inspection into ourselves, learn something of the nature of God; yet those human ways of speaking ought to be understood in a manner agreeable to the infinite excellency and majesty of God, and are only designed to mark out something in God which hath a resemblance with something in us; as we cannot speak to God as gods, but as men, so we cannot understand him speaking to us as a God, unless he condescend to speak to us like a man. God therefore frames his language to our dulness, not to his own state, and informs us by our own phrases, what he would have us learn of his nature, as nurses talk broken language to young children. In all such expressions, therefore, we must ascribe the perfection we conceive in them to God, and lay the imperfection at the door of the creature.” Ibid.

[50]Ibid.

[51]Ibid.

[52]It would seem that Charnock is directing most of this analysis at the so-called negative emotions, for when he begins his discussion of divine repentance, he asserts that as a “pure Spirit” God “is not capable of those passions which are signs of weakness and impotence, or subject to those regrets we are subject to.” Ibid., 340–41, emphasis mine. Additionally, he does elsewhere speak of God’s love toward his people as “his affection to them.” Ibid., 2:449. However, it should be noted that on p. 342 of his discussion of divine impassibility, Charnock groups joy together with grief and repentance as an affection that is not proper to God.

[53]Ibid., 341. Charnock then quickly proceeds to note that this outward change of conduct is completely commensurate with God’s exhaustive foreknowledge and eternal will. He elaborates, “For God, foreseeing man would fall, and decreeing to permit it, he could not be said to repent in time of what he did not repent from eternity.. . . But God is said to repent when he changes the disposition of affairs without himself . . . so God alters things, extra se, or without himself, but changes nothing of his own purpose within himself.” Ibid., 342.

[54]It seems that a number of the post-Reformation theologians shared the view that anthropopathic God-language should be interpreted primarily as an action of the divine will. See, e.g., William Ames, The Marrow of Theology 1.4.62 (ed. and trans. John Eusden [Boston: Pilgrim, 1968; repr., Grand Rapids: Baker, 1997], 87). John Owen (1616–1683) arrived at a similar conclusion in his analysis of the passionate language ascribed to God in Scripture. Owen observed, “To the whole I ask, whether these things are in the Scriptures ascribed properly unto God, denoting such affections and passions in him as those in us are which are so termed? or whether they are assigned to him and spoken of metaphorically only, in reference to his outward works and dispensations, correspondent and answering to the actings of men in whom such affections are, and under the power whereof they are in those actings? If the latter be affirmed, then as such an attribution of them unto God is eminently consistent with all his infinite perfections and blessedness.” John Owen, Vindiciae evangelicae, in The Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold (Edinburgh: Johnstone and Hunter, 1850–1853; repr., Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1966), 12:108. See pp. 108–15 for the full scope of Owen’s interaction with this issue. Also see Richard A. Muller, The Divine Essence and Attributes, vol. 3 of Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725 (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 559–60.

[55]Charnock, Existence and Attributes, 1:341–42, emphasis mine.

[56]On the issue of negative emotions, Muller notes a general tendency in the Reformed and post-Reformed orthodox to draw a technical distinction between positively conceived affections and negatively conceived passions. Affections seemingly were viewed more positively because they were seen to be voluntary, as opposed to the involuntary and impermanent nature of passions. Muller, The Divine Essence and Attributes, 553. For his part, Charnock seems to have made a similar conceptual distinction without employing the categories technically. Charnock, Existence and Attributes, 1:340–41. For an analysis of American Reformed thought on the issue of divine impassibility into the modern era, see J. Ligon Duncan, “Divine Passibility and Impassibility in Nineteenth-Century American Confessional Presbyterian Theologians,” Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology 8 (1990): 1–15.

[57]As we have seen above, Calvin and Charnock both identify God’s grief in Gen. 6:6 with his hatred of sin. Certainly, it is good in this instance to see them retain affective content for God in the case of a “negative” emotion such as grief, while they also helpfully clarify what human accompaniments of grief and repentance do not pertain to an all-knowing, eternal, and perfectly holy God. And yet, even here, there appears to be room for improvement. It seems, for instance, that Calvin and Charnock can make such valid distinctions without having to make a strict exchange of grief over human sin for hatred of the same. In other words, just as God can decree to permit what he truly abhors (e.g., human sin) for the sake of some greater good, surely he can just as well decree to permit what truly grieves him (e.g., human sin) for the sake of that same greater good. In neither case, of course, should we presume that God hates (e.g., has righteous indignation) or grieves in exactly the same manner as mankind.

[58]Recall that this distinction appears to date back, in some form at least, to Augustine.

[59]Sinful emotions, on the other hand, obviously should be proscribed.

[60]On this framework, then, it is easy to explain that emotional passivity due to finitude (i.e., the lack of self-sufficiency), repentance due to personal sin, or errors in judgment stemming from a lack of prescience, overreaction, etc. are all ruled out of the divine emotional experience.

[61]Muller, The Divine Essence and Attributes, 588–89.

5

Assessing the Widespread Rejection of Divine Impassibility in Modern Theology

The doctrine of the impassibility of God, taken in its widest sense, is the greatest heresy that ever smirched Christianity; it is not only false, it is the antipodes of truth.[1]

Theology has no falser idea than that of the impassibility of God.[2]

Perhaps the least popular of the traditional theistic canon, the most likely to fade away, is the tenet that God is impassible.[3]

Impassibility is the most dubious of the divine attributes discussed in classical theism.[4]

During this present century the idea that God is immutable and impassible has slowly but surely given way to the idea that God is sensitive, emotional and passionate.. . . By now the rejection of the ancient doctrine of divine impassibility has so much become a theological common place, that many theologians do not even feel the need to argue for it.[5]

Everyone familiar with modern biblical studies knows that the philosophical doctrines of divine immutability and impassibility are not taught in the Bible.[6]

As the representative quotations above suggest, sometime in the modern era the broad consensus on divine impassibility experienced a significant shift. This chapter will seek to summarize and examine many of the primary reasons offered for the modern embrace of divine passibility. As a matter of procedure, I should clarify at the outset that the approach taken in this chapter to investigating the modern concerns with divine impassibility will differ from the more routine historical survey of the two preceding chapters.[7] In this chapter, I seek not to isolate and summarize the thought of notable individuals who have commented on this topic.[8] My greater aim here is to survey the main arguments that modern theologians have commonly identified as persuasive enough to warrant an overhaul of traditional impassibilist thought.[9] Following the summary of these arguments in the first part of the chapter, I will devote some space to providing a brief response to each of them.

The Modern Rejection of the Impassibility Tradition

While multiple factors undergird the widespread modern rejection of divine impassibility, the main arguments basically fall under five major headings. In what follows, we will survey these factors in terms of their influence on the modern embrace of passibilism.[10] Of course, as we investigate these features of passibilist thought below, it should be noted that our survey aims only to be representative of prominent reasons that various passibilists give for their views. I make no pretense of engaging every modern passibilist thinker or every passibilist idea. Finally, two additional caveats. First, separating these factors into distinct categories is somewhat artificial, in that there is a great deal of overlap and close association among them. Thus, it is commonly the case that passibilist contributors affirm passibilism not merely on the basis of one or two of these arguments, but because they find most, if not all, of these arguments compelling. That said, however, these features are sufficiently distinguishable to warrant our exploration and classification of passibilism in this way. Second, it should also be pointed out that not everyone who rejects impassibility does so for all of these reasons.

A Passibilist View of the Incarnation and the Cross

It is not difficult to discern that modern passibilist thought about the Christ-event operates on a substantially different trajectory than that of premodern orthodoxy.[11] Indeed, in modern passibilist thought, the crucifixion of Christ is seen as one of the major defeaters of traditional impassibilism. On the passibilist view, it does serious damage to the union of natures to maintain, as the classical consensus did, that Jesus’s experience of suffering and death was a human one.

In its most basic form, the passibilist argument from the incarnation and cross advances along the following lines: (1) Jesus was God incarnate. (2) Jesus both demonstrated passion and experienced suffering.[12] (3) Therefore God (or at least the divine nature during the incarnation) is susceptible to passion and suffering.

We see this kind of argument stated more eloquently in T. E. Pollard’s assertion that

when impassibility is ascribed to God, the Incarnation of God in Jesus Christ is no real incarnation.. . . Some of the Early Fathers tried to overcome this dilemma by saying that the divine in Christ is impassible, but that the human is passible; it was His human nature that suffered, not His divine nature. But can there be a real incarnation of God in man in such circumstances as these? . . . To say that the Son of God, as divine, is impassible is to assert that the divine in Christ was unaffected by the human; and therefore that there is no real Incarnation, or if there is an Incarnation, it is meaningless.[13]

In a more aggressive form of the argument from the Christ-event, certain passibilists such as Jürgen Moltmann see that the real objective of the incarnation and crucifixion is not so much God’s plan to redeem sinners.[14] Instead, for Moltmann, the object of the incarnation and crucifixion is to exhibit the extent of God’s love in fellow-suffering, which is itself necessary for God’s own completion.[15] Moltmann stresses in Hegelian fashion the importance of the incarnation for God’s own completion:[16]

God has to give himself; and he cannot possess himself apart from this act of serving. God has to give himself completely; and it is only in this way that he is eternal. He has to run his full course on earth as a servant; and it is only in this way that he is lord of heaven. He has to be man and nothing but man; and it is only in this way that he is completely God. So God’s divinity is not cut off from his humanity, and his humanity is not cut off from his divinity: “It was necessary for God to be Man, for only so could He be truly God.”[17]

Moltmann sees the crucifixion in a similar light. Again, in his view, the cross was necessary not mainly, it seems, for the purpose of redeeming sinners, but for the purpose of constituting and displaying the very being of God.[18] Thus, Moltmann can make his famous declaration, “The pain of the cross determines the inner life of the triune God from eternity to eternity.”[19] In one of his most striking comments, then, Moltmann depicts the force of this conclusion.

If we follow through the idea that the historical passion of Christ reveals the eternal passion of God, then the self-sacrifice of love is God’s eternal nature. There is no definition of the divine nature which could avoid including this in its concept. The sacrifice of love is not, either, merely a divine reaction to man’s sin. Nor is it a free decision of will on God’s part, in the sense that it need not have been made. For the cross of Christ is not something that is historically fortuitous, which might not have happened. God himself is nothing other than love. Consequently Golgotha is the inescapable revelation of his nature in a world of evil and suffering.[20]

Of course, given this theological framework, Moltmann repudiates any denial that the reach of suffering extends to Christ’s divine nature.[21] For him, “it would be ridiculous to say . . . that, as the Son of God, Jesus . . . only suffered in the body.”[22] The absurdity of affirming the previous proposition, in his mind, is that such a notion would reduce the cross to nothing more than a human tragedy, and if that were the case, we would lose out on the supposed comfort of divine fellow-suffering, and God would forfeit his own fulfillment.[23]

A Passibilist Theodicy

Historically speaking, one of the major landmarks on the road from the primacy of impassibilism to the primacy of passibilism was the stark existential reality posed, especially in the twentieth century, by the problem of evil.[24] As Richard Bauckham has put it, “The basic problem of traditional theism, with its purely active, impassible God, is the problem of theodicy: how can an all-powerful and invulnerable creator and ruler of the world be justified in the face of the enormity of human suffering?”[25]

In light of such travesties, many passibilists have concluded that a new theodicy is needed—one in which God joins us in our suffering—to meet the challenges posed by creaturely suffering of this magnitude. A God, Moltmann argues, who does not suffer in solidarity with the oppressed is unworthy of the name.

A God who cannot suffer is poorer than any man. For a God who is incapable of suffering is a being who cannot be involved. Suffering and injustice do not affect him. And because he is so completely insensitive, he cannot be affected or shaken by anything. He cannot weep, for he has no tears. But the one who cannot suffer cannot love either. So he is a loveless being. Aristotle’s God cannot love.[26]

Thus, several pages later he concludes that “the only way past protest atheism” is to recognize that “God’s being is in suffering and the suffering is in God’s being itself, because God is love.”[27]

The operative assumption behind this version of theodicy seems to be that some form of psychological benefit will accrue to the sufferer when God is understood to be a companion in our suffering. Paul Fiddes expresses this sentiment nicely.

At the most basic level it is a consolation to those who suffer to know that God suffers too, and understands their situation from within. The psychological effect upon a sufferer of being aware of a suffering God who understands his predicament may be below the level of theological argument, but it may in the end soar on wings far higher than any formal theodicy can. No theological argument can justify the mountain of misery represented by an Auschwitz, a Babi Yar, or a Hiroshima.[28]

In light of the emphasis placed on responding to the problem of evil, then, it seems that we can sum up the modern passibilist commitment not just to divine emotion but especially to divine suffering as follows: (1) Human suffering of such magnitude necessitates divine suffering. (2) Even though the thesis of divine suffering does not constitute a formal theodicy, it is the only acceptable response to the problem of evil.[29] (3) Once it has been concluded from the theodicy question that God is a fellow-sufferer, then it may easily be inferred that God is passible.[30]

What this demonstrates, then, is that the passibilist logic on this point runs not from passibility to theodicy, but from theodicy to passibility. Or, as Thomas Weinandy more succinctly puts it, the passibilists have concluded that “God is passible because God must suffer.”[31]

A Passibilist Reading of Scripture

Passibilists frequently claim that they provide a superior—that is, more natural—reading of Scripture when it comes to the question of divine impassibility. Sometimes, it is stated as a simple hermeneutical observation, as when Kelly James Clark remarks: “While the Scriptural record can be made to fit the hypothesis of divine impassibility, the fit is at best forced and unnatural. There is a certain naturalness of the passibilist interpretation given Scripture.”[32] At other times, it is stated more polemically, as when Pollard opines,

If we take seriously the idea that God cannot suffer or experience “passions,” we have either to re-write the Scriptures or treat them as a collection of books embodying primitive anthropomorphic conceptions of God; the Love and Wrath of God, His Mercy, His ardent desire that Israel should worship Him and Him alone, His Justice, and His serious concern for the welfare of His people are meaningless.[33]

In back of this claim to provide a superior reading of the biblical text stands the assumption—sometimes explicitly stated and sometimes not—that impassibilists blind themselves to the plain meaning of Scripture because they come to the text with the antibiblical presupposition of divine apatheia already in place.[34] Consequently, passibilist interpreters warn us that the impassibilists take biblical descriptions of divine passion anthropopathically when they should be taking them literally.

While some passibilists adopt a simplistic, “face value” hermeneutic in defense of their view,[35] some of the more seminal passibilist thinkers on this score have attempted to provide more substantial analyses. To ensure that a fair hearing is given to the best of the passibilist tradition, we will now consider a few summary comments from Terence Fretheim, one of the principle architects of a passibilistic reading of Scripture.[36]

In Fretheim’s proposal, we observe a depth of analysis that far exceeds the “face value” interpretation suggested above. At the heart of Fretheim’s hermeneutic is the endeavor carefully to come to terms with Scripture’s “anthropomorphic metaphors” for God. In principle, this approach is commendable, for it attempts to take an analogical tack, recognizing both the similarity and dissimilarity involved in the way these metaphors apply to God and men. We may let Fretheim speak for himself.

A metaphor always has a duality of association: the surface associations, drawn from life as experienced, and the analogical association. But insight into the latter can be attained and, indeed, retained only by reflecting on the former in relationship to it. Such insight comes, not only through observing what is similar between the two terms, but also through that which is different. Crucial to a proper understanding of a metaphor is the recognition of both similarity and difference.[37]

While his principial commitment to analogical interpretation is laudable, the weakness of Fretheim’s proposal is found in his methodologically imbalanced procedure for reconciling Scripture’s diverse anthropomorphic metaphors. Fretheim proposes that we should recognize certain of these metaphors to be “controlling metaphors.”[38] In order to discern these controlling metaphors, he proposes two classes of criteria, one explicitly experiential and the other biblical in orientation. Speaking of the experiential criterion, Fretheim states:

The first factor noted is a general literary observation pertinent to the assessment of the value of metaphors in any context. Certain metaphors have a greater richness of association in human experience; such metaphors ring true to life in special ways, revealing a breadth and depth of fitness with respect to that experience. They have a high level of capacity to capture, illuminate, organize, and communicate our experience and understanding of God . . . , to focus our thinking, feeling, and acting with respect to our life experience. Generally, with respect to God language, it would appear that metaphors drawn from interpersonal relationships have the greatest such capacity.[39]

When Fretheim turns to his biblical criterion, he suggests that this is made up of three subcomponents: (1) pervasiveness (i.e., frequency); (2) “the traditions with which the metaphor is associated,” by which he intends to invoke the categories of distribution employed by critical scholarship; and (3) genre distribution.[40] Fretheim self-consciously understands and intends this process to lead to a “canon within the canon” of established controlling metaphors.[41] These metaphors then serve as a sort of theological interpretive key, in which they exert authority in governing, shaping, and qualifying other metaphors that supposedly are less significant. In Fretheim’s view, these controlling metaphors should include divine repentance and divine suffering, and they should lead us profoundly to reconceive traditional understandings of immutability, impassibility, and sovereignty.

A Passibilist View of Divine Love and Responsiveness

Passibilist theologians often report that the potential for “authentic,” “genuine,” or “real” reciprocation is at the heart of divine love. Indeed, if the love of God is to carry any significance, the passibilist further maintains that it must be a suffering love. This belief about the nature of divine love and relationality appears to depend on an anthropocentric assumption, and it further appears to have achieved something like axiomatic status in passibilist thought. In order to demonstrate the widespread nature of this passibilist conviction, we turn initially to a simple consideration of several representative statements.

If God cannot feel anguish, he cannot love. In human life, to love involves being deeply concerned for others and hence being affected by what happens to them—their agonies as well as their joys. It entails sharing their pains, vulnerability to their suffering. He who cannot suffer is incapable of true love as an outgoing, caring regard for the other. Thus if human love affords dependable intimations of divine love, to exclude suffering from God would eliminate from Christian faith the basic conviction that God is love.[42]

We must choose whether or not we will accept the Christian revelation that “God is love.” If we do, then we must accept the implications of the revelation.. . . It is an entire misuse of words to call God our loving Father, if He is able to view the waywardness and rebellion of His children without being moved by grief and pity.. . . It is of the very nature of love to suffer when its object suffers loss, whether inflicted by itself or others. If the suffering of God be denied, then Christianity must discover a new terminology and must obliterate the statement “God is love” from its Scriptures.[43]

If love implies vulnerability, the traditional understanding of God as impassible makes it impossible to say that “God is love.” An almighty God who cannot suffer is poverty stricken because he cannot love or be involved. If God remains unmoved by whatever we do, there is really very little point in doing one thing rather than the other. If friendship means allowing oneself to be affected by another, then this unmoved, unfeeling deity can have no friends or be our friend.[44]

Love is another matter. Our human experience suggests that to love another is to make oneself vulnerable to suffering, to care enough about the other so that one is in a real, mutual relation, with all the risks involved. Divine love, to be sure, must differ from human love, but a love without vulnerability seems less rather than greater.[45]

GOD IS LOVE. That is why he suffers. To love our suffering sinful world is to suffer. God so suffered for the world that he gave up his only Son to suffering. The one who does not see God’s suffering does not see his love. God is suffering love.. . . Suffering is the meaning of our world. For Love is the meaning. And love suffers. The tears of God are the meaning of history.[46]

To modern sensibilities an impassible deity seems woefully out of touch with both biblical and personal experience; we value a God who suffers with us, who hears and responds to our prayers, who is active in redemptive history and attentive to our personal needs. We want a God who loves us and is responsive to our free choices, who answers prayer and, when we lose our way, coaxes us back to himself.[47]

Passibility is the corollary of responsiveness, for we cannot respond to someone without relating to that person, and we cannot relate to that person without being affected by him. A God who loves his creation must be a God who is affected by its travails.[48]

Now, if God is not less than personal, and if the claim that “God is love” is to have any recognizable continuity with our normal experience of love, the conclusion seems inescapable that a loving God must be a sympathetic and therefore suffering God.[49]

Now love is passible; and if God is love, God is passible. A person who can love, and yet cannot suffer, is unimaginable; and if God is such, He is unthinkable; for we cannot think of a love that is out of range of suffering. Love and suffering dwell in one house.[50]

Whether or not we ultimately deem this particular formulation of divine passibility and divine love to be best, I would join my passibilist counterparts in contending that the issue of divine love and responsiveness is one of the pivotal pieces informing the passibility/impassibility debate. In other words, I do not at all suggest that framing the impassibility question in connection with divine love is the wrong way to go. Rather, it is fundamentally appropriate to juxtapose the two themes, though I will diverge from passibilist thought and argue, in the formative portion of this book, that on a more adequate understanding, divine love is not a hindrance to divine impassibility, but rather the close companion of it. Some of that critique will be anticipated in my reflections in this chapter on this passibilist theme.

A Passibilist Application of Rahner’s Rule

The central point I wish to expound here, taking Moltmann as the preeminent representative of this kind of argument, is the intended passibilist effect of dependence on “Rahner’s rule”: “The economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity and the immanent Trinity is the economic Trinity.”[51] For Moltmann, the cross is a necessary expression and the central constituting feature of God’s eternal Trinitarian life.[52] In this manner he asserts that “the content of the doctrine of the Trinity is the real cross of Christ himself. The form of the crucified Christ is the Trinity.” Continuing, he states, “I think that the unity of the dialectical history of Father and Son and Spirit in the cross on Golgotha, full of tension as it is, can be described so to speak retrospectively as ‘God.’”[53]

On this view, the Trinity is in a process of becoming, such that Father, Son, and Spirit, really have no existence independent of creation.[54] Consequently, God’s economic relations in the created order—and in particular the event of the crucifixion—have a retroactive constitutional effect on the very being of God. In addition to his Hegelianism and panentheism, here we begin to see how Moltmann makes use of Rahner’s rule in developing his Trinitarian theology of the cross. He testifies:

In order to grasp the death of the Son in its significance for God himself, I found myself bound to surrender the traditional distinction between the immanent and the economic Trinity, according to which the cross comes to stand only in the economy of salvation, but not within the immanent Trinity. That is why I have affirmed and taken up Rahner’s thesis that “the economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity, and vice versa.” If the central foundation of our knowledge of the Trinity is the cross, on which the Father delivered up the Son for us through the Spirit, then it is impossible to conceive of any Trinity of substance in the transcendent primal ground of this event, in which cross and self-giving are not present.. . . The economic Trinity completes and perfects itself to immanent Trinity when the history and experience of salvation are completed and perfected. When everything is “in God” and “God is all in all,” then the economic Trinity is raised into and transcended in the immanent Trinity.[55]

On this interpretation, what we find is that, for Moltmann, the immanent Trinity loses conceptual priority and is thus collapsed into the economic Trinity.

Now we are in a position to pick up our earlier analysis of Moltmann’s handling of the cross and incarnation and thus examine his advocacy of a similar conceptual collapse of “two nature” christology. Evidently, Moltmann believes that “two nature” christology was a philosophical deduction from an a priori commitment to the Platonic doctrine of apatheia.[56] Such a commitment, he argues, has been employed to deny divine suffering by maintaining that Christ suffered only in his human nature.[57] This, however, is unacceptable for Moltmann. For, if the cross is not the place where God suffered and died, then according to Moltmann, it is emptied of all benefit.[58] Gary Badcock elaborates on this point.

According to Moltmann in The Crucified God, for example, a trinitarian theology of the cross must abandon the doctrine of the two natures altogether in order to avoid emptying the cross of deity. Moltmann understands the doctrine of the two natures as interpreted in the context of the problem of the suffering of Jesus to be a function of the doctrine of divine apatheia. If, however, we take our concept of God from the event of the cross, the suffering of God on the cross becomes essential to a trinitarian doctrine of God.. . . Moltmann’s position is best understood as a trinitarian intensification of the doctrine of the hypostatic union: Because the economic Trinity “is” the immanent Trinity, and vice versa, the human nature of Christ in some sense “is” his divine nature, and vice versa. Moltmann’s point is not to deny the divinity but to affirm its unity with the humanity, on the basis of his understanding of the unity of the economic and the immanent Trinity.[59]

In all of this, the cross represents, for Moltmann, a transaction between the persons of the Trinity, wherein the Father and Son both suffer—albeit it distinctively—in such a way that it can genuinely be said that God suffered and died.[60]

What is interesting here is how the Trinitarian logic escalates the aforementioned incarnational logic. As was noted above, many passibilists have reasoned from Jesus’s incarnate experience of suffering and death to the conclusion that, because he is a two-natured person, Jesus’s divine nature must have been implicated in those experiences. Here, on the Trinitarian front, however, the argument is taken to another level. For Moltmann and others who intend to be Trinitarian passibilists in this sense, the incarnation is not the exception to the rule of God’s otherwise impassible existence. Instead, the incarnation and cross are seen as the temporal expressions of the suffering that has always been central to the divine identity, even prior to creation. As Jung Young Lee has put it:

The Cross of Calvary always points to the eternal Cross.. . . The essential meaning of divine suffering points to the eternal Cross, which represents the inner experience of divine love to participate in the bottom of our existential estrangement.. . . This inner travail of God represents the eternal Cross, that is, the prototype of the Cross, standing behind the historical event of salvation. The redemptive suffering of Christ on the Cross is a temporal manifestation of the eternal Cross.. . . The suffering and death of Christ on the Cross point to the eternal reality, that is, the eternal suffering and death of God on the eternal Cross.[61]

In a nonmodalistic sense, then, the suffering at the cross becomes, for Moltmann and others like him, the definitive event for God’s being. And, in dependence on Rahner’s axiom, this economic reality becomes the eternal constituting feature of the immanent Trinity.[62] As such, the cross, with its eternally retroactive effect, is simultaneously the occasion of the greatest strain on the fabric of the Trinity and the pinnacle of solidarity between Father and Son according to their united will.[63]

Response to the Modern Rejection of the Impassibility Tradition

At this point, I wish to provide some brief reflections on the reasons—noted above—that modern advocates of passibility have put forward as some of the bases for adopting their position. A more extended discussion of my own formulation of these issues will be given in the formative chapters of this book.

On the Passibilist Handling of the Incarnation and the Cross

Taking the issues in the order presented above, we first offer two brief observations on modern passibilist treatments of the incarnation and the cross. First, it has been well said that the insistence of modern passibilists on ascribing suffering to the divine nature “renders the assumption of humanity [i.e., incarnation] superfluous.”[64] In other words, the logic of redemptive history requires an incarnation precisely because the divine nature itself is not subject to or constituted by suffering in the sense that contemporary passibilism demands. The traditional view is that an incarnation was necessary precisely to overcome the impassibility of the divine nature. But if the divine nature is already passible, then an incarnation of a passible divine person in passible humanity would be redundant. Second, and closely related to the first observation, it is important to note that, whereas the classical view sees the cross in relation to the achievement of victory over sin, many contemporary passibilists see the cross instead merely as a sign of God’s suffering solidarity, without the accompanying assurance that this necessarily portends any final victory. In that sense, the passibilist actually downplays the power and significance of the cross.[65]

On the Passibilist Theodicy

Here we may begin by reminding ourselves that the passibilist logic portrayed above displays a tendency to run not from a theological argument for divine passibility to the conclusion of a particular kind of theodicy, but rather from a sense that their particular theodicy is more existentially satisfying, to a conclusion that the doctrine of divine passibility is needed to make their theodicy work. Interestingly enough, then, these theodicy-oriented passibilists, who often loudly contend that impassibilism begins from extrabiblical commitments, are seen themselves to adopt a presupposition—in this case a presupposition about the experience of human suffering—from which they then argue to their conclusion about the necessity of divine passibility.[66] In and of itself, this observation need not mean that passibilism is mistaken. It does reveal, however, that on this point at least, passibilists might not be immune to the “presuppositions” charge.[67] The specific question of whether or not the proposed passibilist theodicy suffices as biblical, however, can only be taken up after our consideration of the pertinent biblical and theological data in the formative chapters ahead.

On the Passibilist Reading of Scripture

It seems we need a two-tiered response to the passibilist reading of Scripture. First, a brief response is needed to the simplistic, “face value” reading of Scripture suggested by some passibilists. Simply put, this category of passibilist interpreters is guilty of a facile proof-texting approach to the topic. That is, while they may cite a multitude of Scripture references in which divine emotion is displayed, the treatment of these passages is often superficial, presumably because the passibilist reading of those texts is thought to be so obvious and clear-cut. Thus, the argument moves rather directly from a citation of God’s emotion to the conclusion that wholesale passibilism is warranted. This procedure reflects a naïve univocism, which—unlike Terence Fretheim’s analysis—fails to reckon seriously with the place of analogy in scriptural God-language. Notwithstanding the insistence on taking divine-emotion texts at “face value,” “straightforwardly,” or “literally,” the question must be asked—and the answer not merely assumed—in light of a whole-canon theology, should the predication of these terms to God be understood as univocal or analogical to the predication of these same terms to human beings? I will argue in due course that Scripture itself requires the latter answer.

Second, a response to the more sophisticated, yet still problematic treatment of someone like Fretheim is needed. In contrast with the “face value” passibilist hermeneutic, we may begin by appreciating Fretheim’s thoughtful foray into the realm of Scripture’s “anthropomorphic metaphors” for God and his resultant emphasis on the importance of analogical interpretation. And yet, for all of the attention that Fretheim has invested in this hermeneutic, substantial deficiencies remain. In the first place, we must immediately register our dissatisfaction with his methodology that places human experience on par with, or perhaps even above, scriptural primacy in the formulation of doctrinal belief.[68] Indeed, it seems that his preferred scriptural metaphors are just that, something more a product of his own preferences than a product of emphasizing the authorial intent of all Scripture’s metaphors together.

As a result, Fretheim’s development of his scriptural criterion is itself sub-scriptural. Any establishment of a “canon within the canon” leads ultimately to the authority of the interpreter as opposed to the authority of Scripture. For as we can see in the case with Fretheim, an interior controlling canon subjectively reflects one’s personally preferred elements in Scripture.[69] Fretheim demonstrates this approach when he pits the controlling metaphors of sovereignty and suffering alongside each other, and yet privileges the ascendancy of suffering, due to the needs of our time and place. As he puts it, “Contextual factors, however, the needs of a given time and place, may call for one metaphoric field to achieve some ascendancy over the other. Hence, given the present common understanding of sovereignty, suffering will have a more decisive effect on sovereignty than the other way around.”[70]

By way of response, we must remember that as theologians bound to biblical authority, we are not at liberty to excise or de-emphasize those parts of Scripture that we may happen to find less appealing. Indeed, in order to practice analogical interpretation on scriptural terms, and thus avoid the establishment of our own preferred “canon within the canon,” we must take all of the analogies together. As Michael Horton points out in a slightly different but related context:

Here the analogy of Scripture becomes essential. We might even call it, somewhat awkwardly, the analogy of analogy. No single analogy, abstracted from the rest, adequately represents God’s character. Only taken together as one multifaceted self-revelation do the analogies effectively render a sufficient knowledge of God.[71]

In the final analysis, therefore, it seems right to judge that Fretheim is principially right to pursue an analogical hermeneutic, but in practice he carries it out in a manner that does not meet Scripture’s own demands. In response, then, to both the more and less sophisticated versions of a passibilist hermeneutic, what is needed is a more balanced analogical analysis of scriptural God-language, framed within a whole-canon context, that attempts to avoid the pitfalls of privileging the interpreter’s (or the broader culture’s) intuitively or experientially preferred criteria. I will seek to elaborate on this sort of hermeneutical approach in the chapters ahead.

On the Passibilist View of Divine Love and Responsiveness

As we noted above, passibilists are correct, in principle, to connect the impassibility issue with an understanding of divine love. The passibilist mistake, however, is to conceive of that love simplistically, one-sidedly, and anthropocentrically. The consequence of this mistake is an unbalanced understanding of God, coming particularly at the expense of divine impassibility. Indeed, as we saw in our survey of passibilist statements, many passibilists have assumed that impassibility and “real” relationship with God are intrinsically incompatible. Consequently, in their view, for divine love and relationship to be “authentic,” those capacities must comport with our own experience of vulnerable love in human-to-human relationships. In my own judgment, however, this assumption establishes a false criterion for judging divine love, for the standard is now conceived in an explicitly anthropocentric fashion. Or to put it differently, this passibilist argument makes human experience the measure of meaningful love and relationship, and if God’s experiences are not substantially similar to ours, then they are deemed inauthentic.

“We want a God who loves us and is responsive,” says Kelly James Clark.[72] But again, to have what “we want,” it is assumed that we must forsake the impassibility of God. This is the error of univocism. What this reveals is that, even though most of the passibilists surveyed above formally agree with the notion that there must be some dissimilarity between the Creator’s love and that of the creature,[73] in practice this formal agreement fails to provide a conceptual guardrail for passibilist thought on this point. Thus the passibilists quoted above gravitate nearly entirely toward the similarity criterion, which again results in an unbalanced view.

According to the classical model of divine impassibility, however, divine love and divine impassibility are not opposed. God is the one being who is both “impassible and impassioned.” God’s love toward and meaningful relationship with his creatures are grounded precisely upon the fact that he is impassible in the sense here advocated. This means that divine love and relationship cannot be conceived entirely along human lines. But this does not make his love and relationship less real. Rather, God’s expression of love and relationship, while certainly being a divine and not a human expression, is the apex of “meaningful” love and relationship. Consequently, the proper mode of theological argument to pursue here is theocentric in nature, as opposed to anthropocentric. That is to say, given that humans image God and not the other way around, our theology of divine and human love and relationality must begin with God’s own revelation of himself and then move to an understanding of our analogous (having both similarities and dissimilarities) human experiences. The major advantage of this kind of approach, of course, is that it does not prematurely foreclose on the possibility that there might be some aspects of divine love and relationality that are both “real” and different from human experience.

On the Passibilist Application of Rahner’s Rule

Though in the formative portion of this book I will offer additional analysis of the kind of Trinitarian passibilism that is epitomized in the thought of Moltmann, we may anticipate those comments, for the moment, by noting first that, left unchecked, Rahner’s rule calls God’s self-sufficiency into question and suggests a necessary creation.[74] Not surprisingly, this is exactly what we see in the case of Moltmann’s panentheistic view of the God-world relationship. Second, the passibilist application of Rahner’s rule allows Moltmann to abstract certain elements of the economy (namely, the crucifixion) and read them as the totality of the immanent reality of God. As Thomas Weinandy reports, when this happens,

the significance of Christ’s suffering and death is no longer found in their historical truth and in the present and future efficacy that these actual events have upon human beings and their relationship to God, but rather, as is exemplified in the case of Moltmann, it is diminished to a mythological expression or symbol of what is happening transcendentally and ahistorically to and within God as God. Because contemporary theology has focused almost exclusively on God suffering within his divine nature, the true christological and soteriological import of Jesus’ suffering is thus either misconceived or neglected, and so enfeebled.[75]

This kind of procedure inevitably tears the selected economic element (even the crucifixion) out of its already interpreted, redemptive-historical framework of Scripture. But to abstract an event from that canonical context and supply it with some other meaning is ultimately to transgress biblical authority. For Scripture provides us not only a record of the events of redemptive history, but also the authorized interpretation of those events.

The Outcomes of Modern Passibilism: A Definitional Shift, a New Metaphysic, and a Theological Problem

The foregoing analysis of modern passibilism calls for three final observations. First, we have seen that, definitionally speaking, modern passibilism has shifted the usage of the key terminology away from the traditional understanding. Of course, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with this. In this case, however, it has promoted a misrepresentation of the earlier view, thus leading further to a lack of clarity in the discussion. Modern passibilists have decried their impassibilist forebears as propagating a message of divine indifference and utter passionlessness. But given our preceding survey of mainstream impassibilists, it would seem hard to avoid the conclusion that some of the traction of contemporary passibilism is gained by reacting against a parody—whether intentionally created or not—of what self-identifying impassibilists predominantly believed.[76] Then, over against that characterization of impassibility, many self-identifying passibilists have insisted that what we need instead is a suffering God. Insofar as they have retained a belief in divine incorporeality, contemporary passibilists understand that God’s suffering is of a psychological sort, and in the most extreme formulations, this is made out to be the central and defining feature of the divine nature.

Second, we should note that this definitional shift has not occurred in a vacuum. Rather, it reflects a different philosophical ethos and metaphysical influence. Interestingly, though some passibilists are fond of disclaiming metaphysics, what they more precisely mean to disclaim is “Greek” metaphysics.[77] For, as the foregoing survey of passibilist arguments suggests, passibilist thinkers often show themselves to be taking their cues from modern extrabiblical influences.[78] A useful summary of certain of these modern philosophical influences is supplied by Richard Muller.

In the nineteenth century, under the impact of Immanuel Kant’s critique of traditional rationalistic metaphysics, a new perspective on philosophy was developed by Hegel, Fichte, and Schelling according to which the older ontology of immutable being was replaced by . . . an ontology of becoming or of the becoming of being. The impact of this alternative ontology upon theology was enormous.[79]

The effect of modern philosophical influences such as these is seen in many of the manifestations of passibilism. Though it has not been my intent to provide a formal analysis of it, process theology displays an extreme indebtedness to modern process philosophy.[80] Other panentheistic proposals of passibilism, such as Moltmann’s, also strongly reflect the influence of modern philosophy.[81] Similarly, Open Theism, which has a strong commitment to passibilism, has grown out of the soil of modern philosophical presuppositions. Indeed, Clark Pinnock gladly acknowledges his debt to process philosophy, recognizing in principle that one may engage the philosophy of one’s day without necessarily being drawn away from biblical fidelity in so doing.[82] Of course it is not only the more radical models of passibilism that display the effects of extrabiblical philosophical and cultural influences. Some of those same influences can also filter down and be seen, though not to the same extremes, in the prevalent tendency among all stripes of passibilists to conceptualize a doctrine like the love of God in overly anthropocentric terms.

In all of this discussion, we should take care to remember that philosophical concepts, whether old or new, are neither necessarily sacred in toto nor necessarily corrupt throughout on the simple ground that they are philosophical in origin. But if some philosophical concepts are adopted or borrowed for the purposes of conceptual clarification or coherent exposition, this must be done in subservience to Scripture, and only those concepts may be borrowed—whether in modified or original form—that are conformable to scriptural teaching.[83]

Third, in light of the definitional shift and new set of philosophical influences just described, the most important thing to note about modern passibilism is the distinctly theological problem that arises as a result of this project. In simple terms, one of the more major theological problems in passibilism involves, to varying degrees, a shift from a theocentric approach to theology to a more anthropocentric perspective, a shift that is itself broadly reflective of the modern outlook. This in turn leads to the theological problem of doctrinal imbalance. In this case, the imbalance is particularly seen in the tendency to tilt one’s doctrine of God in general, and one’s view of the divine attributes in particular, in a hyper-immanent direction.[84] Of course, depending on how extremely the imbalance is pushed, it can lead to anything from the moderately objectionable to the severely antibiblical. In any case, when it comes to the comparison of mainstream impassibilism and modern passibilism, it is clear that the root of the difference between the two views often runs much deeper than a mere marginal disagreement on the understanding of an isolated attribute. Indeed, in the larger picture, the divergence between these two prominent positions reflects, in many respects, substantially different views of God and, in some cases, an entirely different frame of reference for the God-world relationship.

[1]Douglas White, Forgiveness and Suffering: A Study of Christian Belief (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1913), 84.

[2]A. M. Fairbairn, The Place of Christ in Modern Theology (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1911), 483.

[3]Charles Taliaferro, “The Passibility of God,” Religious Studies 25 (1989): 217.

[4]Clark H. Pinnock, “Systematic Theology,” in The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1994), 118.

[5]Marcel Sarot, “Suffering of Christ, Suffering of God?,” Theology 95 (1992): 113.

[6]Joseph M. Hallman, The Descent of God: Divine Suffering in History and Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991; repr., Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2004), 20.

[7]The person-focused approach of chaps. 3 and 4 was fitting there because those chapters were concerned with documenting and establishing the baseline definition and understanding of impassibility in the foundational era.

[8]Consequently, as a reflection of this chapter’s priorities, I will not give dates for the theologians discussed in this chapter. Hereafter, publication dates will provide a rough chronological context.

[9]Where appropriate, of course, our analysis of a given argument will focus itself through the lens of a seminal representative(s) of that position.

[10]One pillar of passibilism not considered in this chapter is the charge that the “classical” view was corrupted by the influence of Greek philosophy. As we have already investigated and responded to that allegation in chap. 2, there is no need to rehearse those details here. Additionally, I have no plans here to engage Marcel Sarot’s passibilist argument for divine corporeality. This particular argument is omitted, because, strictly speaking, it is not an argument for divine passibility; it is instead an argument from divine passibility. That is to say that Sarot does not argue from the premise of divine corporeality to the conclusion of divine passibility. Rather, his belief in passibility leads him to conclude that corporeality is necessitated. For more on Sarot’s corporeality thesis, see Marcel Sarot, God, Passibility and Corporeality (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1992), 160–243.

[11]As Thomas Weinandy explains, “From the Incarnation and the cross theologians argue for God’s passibility on three interconnected levels. First, it is because God has always suffered with those He loved that He sent His Son into the world. The cross then expresses fully God’s eternal divine nature and thus is the paradigm of a suffering God. Second, while the Christian Christological tradition has always upheld the truth that the Son of God suffered as man, though not as God, contemporary theologians find such a distinction illogical and therefore unacceptable. If the Son of God actually became man, then He not only suffered as man but such suffering must have washed into His very divinity as well. Third, the Son, on the cross, did not then merely experience the abandonment of the Father as man but equally as God. Moreover, such abandonment simultaneously pertains to the Father’s own experience. The Father suffered the loss of His Son. Thus the suffering cry of dereliction was a cry being experienced within the very depths of God’s passible nature.” Thomas G. Weinandy, “Does God Suffer?,” First Things 117 (2001): 36. In this section, we will concentrate mainly on the second argument in favor of passibility on the basis of the cross, noted here by Weinandy. The other two aspects that he mentions will be considered separately below.

[12]Though the implications of Jesus’s emotions on impassibility will be taken into consideration in chap. 10, the stronger passibilist emphasis is on his suffering and death. So that is where attention will be focused in this section.

[13]T. E. Pollard, “The Impassibility of God,” Scottish Journal of Theology 8 (1955): 361–63. See also the following comment by Paul Schilling: “If the Christ event is truly revelatory—if it really makes God known—what we discern in the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ must manifest central truth regarding the life and character of God. Then the cross speaks to us decisively of the suffering love of God himself. In this perspective, those who deny that God can suffer implicitly, deny the Incarnation and therefore are closer to heresy than those they censure as ‘Patripassians.’” S. Paul Schilling, God and Human Anguish (Nashville: Abingdon, 1977), 253. Additionally, see Theodore Simpson, “A Very Present Help in Trouble,” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 21 (1977): 44; and Bertrand Brasnett, The Suffering of the Impassible God (London: Macmillan, 1928), 36.

[14]Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, trans. Margaret Kohl (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981; repr., Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 114–18.

[15]Peter Vande Brake’s comment is notable in this respect: “That God suffers with humanity seems to be more the point for Moltmann than that the sins of the world are forgiven in the suffering, death, and resurrection of the Son.” Peter H. Vande Brake, “Divine Passibility” (PhD diss., Calvin Theological Seminary, 2001), 195.

[16]The influence of Hegel’s dialectical thought on Moltmann may be seen, for example, in The Crucified God when Moltmann, speaking of the revelation of an entity in its opposite, affirms: “This means that God is only revealed as ‘God’ in his opposite: godlessness and abandonment by God. In concrete terms, God is revealed in the cross of Christ who was abandoned by God. His grace is revealed in sinners. His righteousness is revealed in the unrighteous and in those without rights, and his gracious election in the damned. The epistemological principle of the theology of the cross can only be this dialectical principle: The deity of God is revealed in the paradox of the cross.” Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God, trans. R. A. Wilson and John Bowden (New York: Harper & Row, 1974; repr., Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 27. For more on the influence of Hegel on Moltmann’s theology of the cross, see Brian J. Spence, “The Hegelian Element in Von Balthasar’s and Moltmann’s Understanding of the Suffering of God,” Toronto Journal of Theology 14 (1998): 45–60.

[17]Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, 33.

[18]Richard Bauckham reminds us that “in Moltmann’s understanding, the cross does not solve the problem of suffering, but meets it with the voluntary fellow-suffering of love. Solidarity in suffering . . . does not abolish suffering, but it overcomes what Moltmann calls ‘the suffering in suffering’: the lack of love, the abandonment in suffering.” Richard Bauckham, “Jürgen Moltmann,” in The Modern Theologians, ed. David F. Ford, 2nd ed. (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1997), 215.

[19]Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, 161. For more on the implications of this for Moltmann’s Trinitarian thought, see the discussion on passibilist Trinitarianism below.

[20]Ibid., 32.

[21]Indeed, Moltmann’s rejection of this proposition is extreme, reaching perhaps even unto a denial of two-nature christology. For an explanation of Moltmann’s rationale on this point, see the discussion of passibilist Trinitarianism below.

[22]Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, 76–77. Moltmann, The Crucified God, 245.

[23]Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, 22.

[24]For some, the initial encounter with the problem of evil was more personal than global. It seems this was the case, for example, with Nicholas Wolterstorff and Dennis Ngien. See Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 80–81; and Dennis Ngien, “The God Who Suffers,” Christianity Today 41, no. 2 (1997): 40.

[25]Richard Bauckham, “In Defence of The Crucified God,” in The Power and Weakness of God: Impassibility and Orthodoxy, ed. Nigel M. de S. Cameron (Edinburgh: Rutherford House, 1990), 96. Bauckham’s observation occurs in the context of a discussion of Moltmann’s The Crucified God.

[26]Moltmann, The Crucified God, 222. Stated perhaps even more provocatively is Kenneth Surin’s comment that “the only credible theology for Auschwitz is one that makes God an inmate of the place.” Kenneth Surin, “The Impassibility of God and the Problem of Evil,” Scottish Journal of Theology 35 (1982): 105. However, it should be noted that in a later book, Surin states that he personally is “now less certain that the denial of this axiom [apatheia] is a pre-condition of affirming that God is ‘involved’ in the sufferings of his creatures.” Surin, Theology and the Problem of Evil (New York: Blackwell, 1986), 151n3.

[27]Moltmann, The Crucified God, 227.

[28]Paul S. Fiddes, The Creative Suffering of God (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988), 31. This point is confirmed in the comments of other passibilists as well. See, for instance, the comment of Paul Schilling that “when we turn for guidance to the totality of our experience, we discover that people who hurt most are far more likely to find comfort and strength in the God disclosed on Golgotha than in the almighty potentate, dispassionately seated on a lofty throne.” Schilling, God and Human Anguish, 254. See also William Placher’s statement: “Suffering love has its own kind of strength. It strengthens the suffering with the comfort that they do not suffer alone.” William Placher, “The Vulnerability of God,” in Toward the Future of Reformed Theology: Tasks, Topics, Traditions, ed. David Willis and Michael Welker (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 204.

[29]Surin, “The Impassibility of God,” 114.

[30]Or, as Charles Taliaferro very simply states it: “Why think the passibilist is right and that there is a strand of unhappiness, sorrow, or suffering in God? Because of creaturely suffering and harm.” Taliaferro, “The Passibility of God,” 220.

[31]Thomas G. Weinandy, Does God Suffer? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000), 2.

[32]Kelly James Clark, “Hold Not Thy Peace at My Tears: Methodological Reflection on Divine Impassibility,” in Our Knowledge of God, ed. Kelly James Clark (Boston: Kluwer, 1992), 186.

[33]Pollard, “The Impassibility of God,” 360.

[34]In effect, this is the Hellenization charge once again. Since this particular claim was amply documented and engaged in chap. 2, I will not extensively rehearse those details here. For illustrative purposes, however, recall the comments to this effect by Jung Young Lee and Colin Grant respectively: “The traditional idea of divine impassibility is largely based on a metaphysical notion of deity rather than the biblical concept of God.” Jung Young Lee, God Suffers for Us: A Systematic Inquiry into a Concept of Divine Passibility (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974), 46; “The obvious source of the change of heart on divine passibility is the renewal of interest in the Bible over the last century. Examination of the Bible itself exposed the inadequacy of the immutable and impassible model of God.. . . The focus on the Bible as the authoritative source of knowledge of God encourages the disentangling of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ from the impassible God modeled on Greek metaphysics and Roman imperialism.” Colin Grant, “Possibilities for Divine Passibility,” Toronto Journal of Theology 4 (1988): 9.

[35]The following comment by Charles Ohlrich is suggestive of this kind of simplistic hermeneutic: “We cannot write off these expressions of God’s deep emotion . . . in the Old Testament as mere attributions of human emotion to God. Since we are made in the image of God and he describes himself as suffering, we have little, if any, reason not to take these expressions at face value. If God is indeed like us, as we are like him, what reason, apart from some prior philosophical commitment, have we to think that God does not suffer?” Charles Ohlrich, The Suffering of God: Hope and Comfort for Those Who Hurt (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1982), 52, italics mine. The observation Ohlrich makes about taking biblical emotional expressions of God at “face value” suggests that he conceives his interpretation along univocal lines, that is, that emotional predicates apply to God in essentially the same fashion that they apply to humans. Here he overemphasizes our similarity to God at the expense of maintaining a balanced emphasis on the dissimilarity criterion as well. Ohlrich stresses the imago Dei (similarity), without any corresponding mention of the Creator/creature distinction (dissimilarity). And yet, it is almost as if Ohlrich intuitively recognizes the unsatisfactory imbalance summoned by his appeal to “face value” interpretation. For immediately after the quotation just cited, even he finds that one must attach some kind of proviso: “So long as we do not imagine that God is tossed to and fro by emotional upheavals or that he alters his purposes in response to such yearnings, we gain more from learning that God is able to understand and enter into our struggle than from holding that he is remote and unaffected by it.” Ibid. See the similar comment of Richard Rice: “The Bible itself provides important reasons for taking many of its descriptions of God’s thoughts and feelings at face value. One is the frequency with which they appear in Scripture; another is the strategic significance of the passages where we find them.” Richard Rice, “Biblical Support for a New Perspective,” in The Openness of God, 35. But, of course, if we adopt the criterion of “frequency” as a ground for taking a given metaphor at “face value,” then we would be hard-pressed to avoid attributing corporeality to God. Additionally, it seems odd for an Open Theist, such as Rice, to stress a frequency criterion, since the application of that same criterion, in view of the widespread biblical testimony to exhaustive divine foreknowledge, would severely undercut his belief that God cannot foreknow free human actions. As for the “strategic significance” criterion, it suffices to say for now that what counts as “strategic” is at least potentially subject to the predilection of the interpreter in question.

[36]Abraham Heschel is another seminal Old Testament scholar who has prominently influenced a passibilist reading of the prophets in his book The Prophets. Although Heschel himself is a Jewish scholar, his influence on passibilist thinkers in the Christian tradition has been enormous, and as a result he is frequently cited in their literature. To provide one representative comment, Heschel observes: “In order to conceive of God not as an onlooker but as a participant, to conceive of man not as an idea in the mind of God but as a concern, the category of divine pathos is an indispensable implication. To the biblical mind the conception of God as detached and unemotional is totally alien.” Abraham J. Heschel, The Prophets (New York: Harper & Row, 1962; repr., New York: Perennial, 2001), 330. What is interesting, however, is that there does seem to be some tension in Heschel’s overall treatment, and thus although most passibilists understand him to be an ally, it has been argued elsewhere that Heschel’s analysis of the prophets might lean less in the direction of passibilism than is commonly thought. For the argument that Heschel’s formulation hedges his seemingly passibilist statements with some genuinely impassibilist insights on the dissimilarity of divine and human pathos, see Weinandy, Does God Suffer?, 64–68. For the seemingly more common view that Heschel’s theology of pathos is a genuinely passibilist argument, possibly laden with an occasional inconsistency, see Dennis Ngien, “‘The Most Moved Mover’: Abraham Heschel’s Theology of Divine Pathos in Response to the ‘Unmoved Mover’ of Traditional Theism,” Evangelical Review of Theology 25 (2001): 137–53.

[37]Terence E. Fretheim, The Suffering of God: An Old Testament Perspective (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), 5.

[38]Ibid., 11.

[39]Terence E. Fretheim, “The Repentance of God: A Key to Evaluating Old Testament God-Talk,” Horizons in Biblical Theology 10 (1988): 52–53.

[40]Ibid., 53.

[41]Fretheim, The Suffering of God, 11.

[42]Schilling, God and Human Anguish, 253–54, italics mine. Note the anthropocentric assumption.

[43]H. Maldwyn Hughes, What Is the Atonement? A Study in the Passion of God in Christ (London: James Clarke, 1924), 92–94.

[44]Ngien, “The God Who Suffers,” 40, italics mine.

[45]Placher, “The Vulnerability of God,” 192, italics mine. Why does impassible love seem “less rather than greater” to Placher? Once again, this is due to the application of an anthropocentric criterion, despite Placher’s acknowledgment that divine and human love are different in certain respects. In other words, his assessment of what is fitting for divine love is made on the basis of his own experience of human love.

[46]Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son, 90.

[47]Clark, “Hold Not Thy Peace at My Tears,” 167–68, italics mine. Again, note the anthropocentric interpretive criterion. Further note the assumption that impassibility is necessarily incompatible with meaningful love and relationship.

[48]Surin, “The Impassibility of God,” 113–14, italics mine.

[49]Fiddes, The Creative Suffering of God, 17, italics mine. Fiddes supplies yet another example of the anthropocentric interpretive criterion.

[50]White, Forgiveness and Suffering, 83–84.

[51]Karl Rahner, The Trinity, trans. Joseph Donceel (New York: Crossroad, 1970), 22. My intent here is not to provide a full-scale exposition of Moltmann’s theological program, but only to take a focused look at one key element of his theologia crucis.

[52]Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, 32. Indeed, for Moltmann, there can be no Trinity without the crucified Son. “The cross is at the centre of the Trinity.. . . Before the world was, the sacrifice was already in God.” Ibid., 83. As Gilles Emery summarizes this feature of passibilist thought: “. . . ‘classical’ theology has insisted upon the unity of the person of Christ and the duality of his natures: the passion and suffering of Christ are experienced by the person of the Son in virtue of his human nature. Yet many authors believe that this interpretation is insufficient, and propose instead to understand Christ’s suffering as a ‘trinitarian event.’” Gilles Emery, “The Immutability of the God of Love and the Problem of Language Concerning the ‘Suffering of God,’” in Divine Impassibility and the Mystery of Human Suffering, ed. James F. Keating and Thomas Joseph White (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 39–40, italics his.

[53]Moltmann, The Crucified God, 246–47.

[54]Here we see a glimpse of Moltmann’s panentheism and denial of God’s self-sufficiency. Ibid., 277, and Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, 109–10. Vande Brake summarizes Moltmann’s contention: “God is not free not to create. God did not have any other choice, but to create the world so that he could become actualized in it.” Vande Brake, “Divine Passibility,” 189.

[55]Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, 160–61, emphasis his. For fuller discussions of Moltmann’s Trinitarian theology of the cross, see ibid., 75–83, 158–62; Moltmann, The Crucified God, 235–49.

[56]Moltmann, The Crucified God, 228.

[57]Moltmann states, “The doctrine of two natures must understand the event of the cross statically as a reciprocal relationship between two qualitatively different natures, the divine nature which is incapable of suffering and the human nature which is capable of suffering.” Ibid., 245.

[58]Ibid.

[59]Gary D. Badcock, Light of Truth and Fire of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 219–20.

[60]Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, 81. It is worth reminding ourselves that though Moltmann (along with other contemporary passibilists) has, at times, been charged with patripassianism (a modalistic heresy), he (along with most of his contemporaries) is correct in denying that his passibilism equates to patripassianism. Recall the definitional factors discussion in chap. 1, in which patripassianism and passibility were properly distinguished. For his part, Moltmann offers the following explanation: “We cannot therefore say here in patripassian terms that the Father also suffered and died. The suffering and dying of the Son, forsaken by the Father, is a different kind of suffering from the suffering of the Father in the death of the Son.. . . The Son suffers dying, the Father suffers the death of the Son. The grief of the Father here is just as important as the death of the Son. The Fatherlessness of the Son is matched by the Sonlessness of the Father, and if God has constituted himself as the Father of Jesus Christ, then he also suffers the death of his Fatherhood in the death of the Son.” Moltmann, The Crucified God, 243.

[61]Lee, God Suffers for Us, 59, italics his. Also see Lee’s comment that “divine passibility was not the consequence of the incarnation but the incarnation was the consequence of divine passibility.” Ibid., 56.

[62]For yet one more expression of this sentiment, consider Bruce McCormack’s affirmation of his understanding of Karl Barth’s view that “the modality of receptivity vis-à-vis the man Jesus is not merely an economic relationship; it is rather that which constitutes God’s second ‘mode of being’ already in eternity-past. The second ‘person’ of the Trinity is not a Logos asarkos considered in abstraction from the human ‘nature’ to be assumed. The second ‘person’ of the Trinity is the God-man. So even in the act of hypostatic uniting, the ‘subject’ who performs that action is the God-man, Jesus Christ in his divine-human unity. What happens in time in the historical enfleshment is simply the actualization in history of that which God has determined for himself from eternity and which, therefore, is already real in him.” Bruce L. McCormack, “Divine Impassibility or Simple Divine Constancy? Implications of Karl Barth’s Later Christology for Debates over Impassibility,” in Keating and White, Divine Impassibility and the Mystery of Human Suffering, 178, italics his.

[63]Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, 80–82.

[64]Paul L. Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God: The Dialectics of Patristic Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 159. Gavrilyuk continues the development of this thought: “If God could suffer as humans do without assuming humanity, the incarnation would be unnecessary.”

[65]David Cook, “Weak Church, Weak God: The Charge of Anthropomorphism,” in Cameron, The Power and Weakness of God, 88.

[66]Of course, many of these same passibilists do argue elsewhere that the Bible endorses their view. Nevertheless, what this appears to suggest is that the theodicy issue figured prominently in awakening passibilist tendencies, for which confirmation was then sought in Scripture.

[67]Emery’s critique of Moltmann on this point is lucid: “This system is motivated chiefly by theodicy.” He goes on to add that while Moltmann’s view is encumbered by some very significant theological problems, “the problems here stem from the philosophical resources Moltmann draws upon (e.g., dialectical thought, tensions in God, the historicization of God, an opposition between being and freedom).” The result of which is that, “Moltmann attempts to provide an explanation of suffering, but he does so through divinizing suffering and rendering it eternal, as an event that is constitutive of the divine persons.” Emery, “The Immutability of the God of Love,” 43–44.

[68]Fretheim, “The Repentance of God,” 52–53.

[69]Brevard Childs puts a very fine point on this criticism when he suggests, in one place, that Fretheim’s metaphorical predilections seem to have been influenced more by process theology than by the Old Testament. Childs is responding to Fretheim’s depiction of the God-world relationship according to an “organismic” image. Fretheim expounds on what such an image entails: “The world is not only dependent upon God; God is also dependent upon the world. The world is not only affected by God; God is affected by the world in both positive and negative ways. God is sovereign over the world, yet not unqualifiedly so, as considerable power and freedom have been given to creatures.. . . God knows all there is to know about the world, yet there is a future which does not yet exist to be known even by God.” Fretheim, The Suffering of God, 35. Childs responds: “My initial response is to dismiss this paragraph as an egregious intrusion of modern American Process Theology! However, a more temperate reaction is to point out that this depiction is not the way that Israel throughout all of its history understood God or interpreted the biblical imagery.” Brevard S. Childs, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 357.

[70]Terence E. Fretheim, “Suffering God and Sovereign God in Exodus: A Collision of Images,” Horizons in Biblical Theology 11 (1989): 45. It should be noted here that Fretheim’s appeal to “contextual factors” is not an appeal to the context of Scripture, but to the context of the perceived needs (preferences?) of contemporary culture. Similarly, see the comment of Kelly James Clark, “Within the context of what may be viewed as an immanent divine struggle against oppression and injustice, the metaphors of a monarchial, transcendent and impassible deity may prove wanting.” Clark, “Hold Not Thy Peace at My Tears,” 185.

[71]Michael S. Horton, “Hellenistic or Hebrew? Open Theism and Reformed Theological Method,” in Beyond the Bounds: Open Theism and the Undermining of Biblical Christianity, ed. John Piper, Justin Taylor, and Paul Kjoss Helseth (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2003), 221–22.

[72]Clark, “Hold Not Thy Peace at My Tears,” 168.

[73]Placher is the only one cited above who explicitly acknowledges this in the context within which he was quoted. Placher, “The Vulnerability of God,” 192. Nevertheless, the rest of our representatives would agree in principle, and they allow as much in other contexts.

[74]In the words of David Hart, “If the identity of the immanent Trinity with the economic is taken to mean that history is the theater within which God . . . finds or determines himself as God, there can be no way of convincingly avoiding the conclusion . . . that God depends upon creation to be God and that creation exists by necessity . . . so that God is robbed of his true transcendence and creation of its true gratuity.” David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 157.

[78]Weinandy, Does God Suffer?, 172–73.

[76]As was demonstrated in chap. 3, the Patristic representatives we considered employed a negative term like impassibility to balance divine emotion in view of God’s transcendence, not to suggest the positive ontological content of one who is static and inert. Their modern counterparts, however, seem to have understood those terms to be making just such a positive ontological statement.

[77]Recall, from chap. 2, that the Hellenization charge is a way of saying that Greek metaphysical presuppositions about the nature of God were introduced into the early church’s reading of Scripture, with the result that the biblical portrayal of God was subjugated to those alien presuppositions.

[78]Paul Helm has rightly said, “Much as one may like to, one cannot avoid metaphysics by taking refuge in divine passibility even though one suspects that there is a strong anti-metaphysical bias at work in those who favour it.” Paul Helm, “The Impossibility of Divine Passibility,” in Cameron, The Power and Weakness of God: Impassibility and Orthodoxy, 136. In other words, just as there is no such thing as presuppositionless exegesis, similarly there is no such thing as theology done devoid of metaphysical assumptions and implications. Indeed, an “anti-metaphysical bias” itself reflects a metaphysical presupposition.

[79]Richard A. Muller, “Incarnation, Immutability, and the Case for Classical Theism,” Westminster Theological Journal 45 (1983): 23.

[80]As David Bentley Hart points out, “As speculative grammars and intellectual fashions have changed, versions of theology have taken shape in which the teaching of divine impassibility enjoys no welcome; indeed, there are now alternative theologies aplenty that insist upon not only a capacity for suffering in the divine nature, but a necessity for it. Some . . . like the various forms of process theology, stray far beyond the identifiable boundaries of the Christian story in their pursuit of metaphysical completeness.” David Bentley Hart, “No Shadow of Turning: On Divine Impassibility,” Pro Ecclesia 11 (2002): 188. In view of the process metaphysic, Charles Hartshorne could say, “God is not the being whose life is sheer joy and beauty, but the cosmic sufferer, who endures infinitely more evil than we can imagine.” Charles Hartshorne, Man’s Vision of God (New York: Harper & Row, 1941), 331. For a more thorough exposition of the process argument for divine suffering, see Fiddes, The Creative Suffering of God, 40–44. For a yet more detailed exposition and critique of the process view of the related doctrine of divine immutability, see Bruce A. Ware, “An Exposition and Critique of the Process Doctrines of Divine Mutability and Immutability,” Westminster Theological Journal 47 (1985): 175–96.

[81]Of course, in Moltmann’s case, the influence comes more from Hegel’s idealism than from Whitehead’s process account.

[82]Clark H. Pinnock, Most Moved Mover: A Theology of God’s Openness (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001), 140–50. Of course, Pinnock himself is of the opinion that he and other Open Theists have done a better job of avoiding unbiblical compromise with process philosophy than classical theism has done with Hellenism. He comments, “We [classical theism and Open Theism] are both indebted to philosophers, in their case ancient and in my case modern, but one must still measure the extent of indebtedness and the propriety of what is being borrowed. Candidly, I believe that conventional theists are more influenced by Plato, who was a pagan, than I am by Whitehead, who was a Christian.” Ibid., 143. Of course, in order to make this claim, Pinnock really has to stretch the definition of “Christian” to include Whitehead. In further demonstration of extra-biblical influence on Pinnock’s doctrine of God, note his evident affinity for divine corporeality. Ibid., 33–35.

[83]Helm, “The Impossibility of Divine Passibility,” 136.

[84]The comment of Bruce Ware regarding modern theology’s handling of divine immutability is apt here. “Modern theology . . . has stepped . . . into the trap of taking some aspect of divine revelation as primary and dominant over all else God has revealed of himself.” Bruce A. Ware, “An Evangelical Reexamination of the Doctrine of the Immutability of God” (PhD diss., Fuller Theological Seminary, 1984), 387. This tendency was seen above, for example, in Moltmann’s abstraction of the crucifixion from the narrative of redemptive history and in the passibilist’s one-sided argument from divine love.

6

Contemporary Impassibilist Thought and Evangelical Reflection on Divine Impassibility

The New Minority: Contemporary Advocates of Divine Impassibility

Though passibilism has been in the ascendance in modern theology, impassibilism has not disappeared. Indeed, in the last couple of decades, while still a minority position within the academy, impassibilism seems to have begun a miniature resurgence. During this time, several prominent figures have produced noteworthy scholarly defenses of divine impassibility. For our purposes, we may mention two such pivotal figures—Richard Creel and Thomas Weinandy.[1]

Richard Creel

In 1986, Richard Creel published Divine Impassibility: An Essay in Philosophical Theology with Cambridge University Press. It has come to be recognized by passibilists and impassibilists alike as one of the most important monographs defending divine impassibility in the twentieth century. The frequency with which Creel’s argument turns up in the subsequent literature sufficiently testifies to its reputation. As the title indicates, the book is a work of philosophical theology, and thus it does not attend much to scriptural argument.

Creel’s central argument in Divine Impassibility proceeds as follows. First, he surveys a variety of ways in which impassibility has been understood. Over the course of this brief survey, he adduces eight possible nuanced understandings of divine impassibility.[2] Creel then abstracts a core definition from these eight senses: “That which is impassible is that which cannot be affected by an outside force. Hence, impassibility is imperviousness to causal influence from external factors.”[3] Immediately thereafter, he notes that impassibility could potentially apply to an incorporeal being in any of the following four respects: nature, will, knowledge, and feelings.[4] Throughout the remainder of the book, Creel makes his case that God is impassible in nature, will, and feelings, but partly passible and partly impassible with respect to knowledge.

At this point, I should insert a brief observation about the core definition of divine impassibility employed by Creel, for I believe he makes a key misstep here that hampers his argument throughout. As we just noted, Creel takes the following definition as the core sense of divine impassibility: “Impassibility is imperviousness to causal influence from external factors.” In a more recent essay, Creel has stated it even more strongly: “Impassibility means that it is logically impossible for God to be affected by anything.”[5] For my part, however, I do not concur that impassibility should be conceived as—or was classically understood as—the logical impossibility of being “affected by anything.” As I see it, the tradition is better represented by the view that God is invulnerable to emotional fluctuation that would be involuntarily precipitated by members of his creation. In this sense, God is impassible, so long as his emotional engagement with creation is voluntary and proceeds from his initiative.

Interestingly, it would seem that Creel thinks a statement like mine makes me a passibilist.[6] My reply is simply that this is not so if we derive our definition of impassibility from the mainstream classical tradition of impassibility. As best I can tell, what leads Creel to formulate his core definition the way he does is his approach to culling historical nuances of the doctrine. In particular, he does not sort his terminological contributions according to chronology or to theological self-identification. In other words, his core definition gets tipped in favor of including the “logical impossibility” element precisely because he allows his definition of impassibility to be colored not only by classical impassibilist statements of the doctrine, but also by passibilist statements of what impassibility supposedly meant. This reflects Creel’s intention that his primary conversation partners in this book be modern passibilists, and process thinkers in particular. It is probably noteworthy, then, to point out that Charles Hartshorne gets by far the most space in Creel’s definitional survey.

By now, however, it should be fairly clear that passibilists were operating with a misunderstanding of what impassibilists classically believed. So Creel’s approach to defining the term actually inhibits him from getting a precise handle on what the classical impassibilists intended. As insightful as Creel’s book is in many respects, then, this definitional misstep at the outset proves to be at least a mild hindrance throughout. First, instead of guiding us toward terminological clarity, it serves the continuation of terminological confusion. Second, it creates a scenario in which Creel has to defend more than is necessary in his exposition of divine impassibility.

Resuming our survey of Creel’s fourfold development of his position on divine impassibility, we may begin by observing that Creel takes belief in the impassibility of the divine nature to be fairly widespread, even among passibilists, and thus unobjectionable.[7] With respect to God’s will, Creel contends that God is impassible because he eternally knows all possibilities, and thus his will is eternally determined regardless of which possibilities become actualities.[8] He further argues that the implementation of God’s will in time is a “presponse” as opposed to a “response.” Creel states:

He should be thought of as eternally willing a set of mutually exclusive possibilities the actualization of some of which is contingent upon human action. Hence, God should not be thought of as implementing now this decision and now that. He should be conceived as eternally willing and doing everything that he ever wills and does.[9]

Turning to a consideration of divine knowledge, Creel holds that God is passible in certain respects and impassible in others. Since God eternally has exhaustive knowledge of all “abstract possibilities,” his knowledge of those abstract possibilities is impassible.[10] However, Creel allows that God’s knowledge of “concrete possibilities, i.e., of the possibilities of existents,” is passible.[11] In other words, even though God eternally knows all possibilities, God’s knowledge of the world changes as some of the abstract possibilities move into the foreground and become concrete possibilities in this or that scenario, while other abstract possibilities do not.[12]

Beyond even that distinction, Creel points out that God’s knowledge of actuality may also be subdivided into a passible and an impassible component. God always knows the past perfectly, and in this sense his knowledge of the past is impassible. And yet,

the content of the past changes, i.e., the past gains content as the present changes, since every change in the present (that which is actual) means that something that was the case is no longer the case. Consequently, God’s knowledge of what is past must change as things pass from being the case to no longer being the case, and hence God’s knowledge of the past must be passible, i.e., subject to change by what occurs in the present.[13]

Similarly, God’s knowledge of the present is perfect and thus impassible in one sense, while also being passible in that the present is constantly changing, which leads to change in God’s knowledge of the present.[14] Finally, God’s knowledge of the future is passible, because he has exhaustive knowledge only of all abstract possibilities. God’s knowledge of which possibilities become actualities is dependent on their being actualized by his libertarianly free creatures.[15]

Lastly, with respect to feelings, Creel returns to argue that God is again impassible. In summing up his own lengthy argument here, Creel refers to three primary reasons to affirm God’s emotional impassibility. The first is that God is eternally blissful, and therefore his emotions are not dependent upon any other individual.[16] Second, God’s primary purpose in creation was to make free creatures, who in their freedom may “choose for or against his kingdom.”[17] In other words, his creational purpose, strictly speaking, was not that “we love him,” but only to provide this free choice.[18] But since his will was only to provide this meaningful choice to his moral creatures, “he is not grieved by those who choose against his kingdom.”[19] Third and finally, Creel argues that the greater good that “will obtain in his kingdom” justifies the innocent suffering that is a precondition to the good to be experienced in the kingdom.[20]

Turning to a brief evaluation, we may conclude this summary analysis of Creel’s contribution with a sense of appreciation for the rigorous philosophical thinking here on display, even if we cannot endorse the entirety of Creel’s proposal. It certainly makes for an interesting scenario when a libertarian who denies both God’s knowledge of the future free actions of moral creatures and the doctrine of creation ex nihilo nevertheless defends a more extreme version of divine impassibility than is biblically required or historically warranted. From my own perspective, then, the strengths of Creel’s argument do indeed primarily lie in their philosophical rigor, whereas the weaknesses derive from the lack of attachment to biblical controls. It is in this latter respect that I find Creel’s defense of emotional impassibility to be one-sided in a more extreme impassibilist direction, and thus inadequate. Interestingly, when Creel gives up the doctrines of exhaustive divine foreknowledge and creation ex nihilo, he is also giving up two important components of a more biblically conceived model of divine impassibility, and in the case of creation ex nihilo, he is giving up the doctrine’s critical starting point.

While his philosophical argument for emotional impassibility over against philosophical arguments for emotional passibility is commendable and correct at many points, it is Scripture that leads us to the conclusion that God is both invulnerable to involuntarily precipitated emotional vicissitude and supremely passionate about his creatures’ practice of either obedience or rebellion, as well as their experience of either joy or affliction. According to Creel, God’s eternal blissfulness blocks his experience of responsive passion to his creation.[21] Beginning with the next chapter, I will argue that, according to Scripture, it does not.

Thomas Weinandy

In 2000, Roman Catholic scholar Thomas Weinandy published his widely regarded monograph Does God Suffer? with the University of Notre Dame Press.[22] In his exposition, Weinandy seeks to give biblical and theological weight to the doctrine of divine impassibility by making hearty appeals to the Creator/creature distinction and the Trinitarian life, and he maintains that arguments for a passible God fall short on both of these accounts. Over against contemporary theology’s passible deity, Weinandy articulates a vision of God who is both impassible and passionate.

After opening the book with a sketch of passibilist rationale and a quick tour of his theological method, Weinandy surveys relevant biblical material from the Old and New Testaments in chapters 3 and 4. From his treatment of the Old Testament especially, Weinandy concludes that the biblical notion of God’s transcendence is exactly what founds his immanence within creation. Weinandy observes,

While God, in his complete otherness, is ontologically distinct from the created order, and thus from all other beings, yet he is able to bring into existence, be present to, and act within the created order as one who is ontologically distinct from the created order, and he is able to do so only because he is ontologically distinct.[23]

Then, in chapter 5, Weinandy provides a fairly detailed examination of key Fathers from the second and third centuries. His broad conclusion with respect to these Fathers is that, in the main, they “did not fall into all the pits that they are alleged to have fallen into, nor then did they, on the whole, innocently, but nonetheless erroneously, abandon the God of Israel for the God of the Greeks.”[24] They preserved themselves from such a fate largely by the affirmation of the Creator/creature distinction.[25] What is primarily lacking in the Fathers, according to Weinandy, is a more detailed philosophical grounding for the vision of an impassible but passionate God.

In chapter 6, then—the chapter most central to his argument—Weinandy turns his attention to an attempt at providing such philosophical grounding. As he sees it, proper Trinitarian thinking is a key component to bringing about the right resolution. The main cog in this Trinitarian argument (following Augustine and Aquinas) is seeing the persons of the Trinity as “subsistent relations.” That is, the persons are constituted in their relations to one another. Along with holding the philosophical vision of God as actus purus, Weinandy understands the Trinitarian persons to be fully in act. Again, “they are immutable not because they are static or inert in their relationships.” Rather, because “they are subsistent relations fully in act . . . they do not have any relational potential which would need to be actualized in order to make them more relational.”[26] Similarly, “they are impassible not because they lack passion.” Rather, as “subsistent relations fully in act, the persons of the Trinity are completely and utterly passionate in their self-giving to one another.”[27] As it concerns creation, then, Weinandy argues that this vision establishes God as ontologically independent of creation because God is already self-fulfilled in the intra-Trinitarian fellowship. This, in turn, preserves the Creator/creature distinction and constitutes creation as a free, and not necessary, act of God.

In the next chapter, Weinandy labors three fundamental points: “1) Sin is the cause of evil and so of human suffering. 2) Sin and human suffering do not cause God to suffer. 3) The relationship between sin as the cause of human suffering and God’s love.”[28] Weinandy argues that God does not suffer in the sense of undergoing “passible changes of state” because he is the Creator and sin is not constituent to the creation. This avoids locating evil “in the ontological constitution of things,” as opposed to the panentheistic theodicy affirmed by many passibilists.[29] Additionally, God does not suffer because of the Trinitarian constitution mentioned above. The being in act of the Trinitarian persons can never be deprived of perfection, which would usher in suffering.[30] This implies no absence of love however. Rather, because God is self-sufficient and free from suffering, his giving of love is absolutely free and without respect to what might be accrued in exchange.[31] According to Weinandy, God’s love is always fully actualized. Moreover, this vision of God is more compelling in Weinandy’s estimation, for though it does not identify God as a “co-sufferer,” God is actually able decisively to do something about the evil in the world, once again unlike a panentheistic deity.[32]

Weinandy’s labor in chapter 8 centers on examining the incarnation and the suffering of Jesus as a man. Here he notes that contemporary theology’s obsession with suffering in the divine nature has obscured the “true Christological and soteriological import of Jesus’ suffering.”[33] Following an extensive discussion of the communication of idioms, Weinandy concludes by arguing that the Son experienced suffering and death only as a human. To argue for a suffering God, according to Weinandy, would actually lock God out of human suffering, which is the real issue in need of addressing.[34]

In the ninth chapter, Weinandy considers the redemptive accomplishment of the work of Christ, in which it is significant that Christ’s suffering and death were human suffering and death. The resurrection is the vindication and expression of the Father’s love for the Son, and God’s good pleasure in raising the Son is also the answer to human suffering. All of this anticipates Pentecost and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, who inaugurates the new creation and empowers obedience on the basis of Christ’s death, thus showing salvation to be a fully Trinitarian accomplishment.

Finally, chapter 10 brings the book to a close by reconsidering human suffering (particularly that of the church) in the light of Christ’s work. Here Weinandy considers the ecclesial reality of the body of Christ and our individual union with him. He maintains that in our sufferings as believers, we can take comfort in the fact that we are united to the risen Christ.[35] Interestingly, Weinandy suggests (following the logic of Vatican II) that all humanity is united in some sense to the risen Christ on the basis of the church as the “universal sacrament.”[36] He does try to hedge this by arguing that non-Christians must become Christians to experience Christ’s benefits fully. Finally, he notes that following Colossians 1:24, it is not so much that Christ shares in the present sufferings of believers, but that Christians, in the present, share in the sufferings of Christ.

By way of response, I wish to reiterate the importance of Weinandy’s contemporary defense of divine impassibility. His exposition of the Fathers is very helpful in its articulation both of what they affirmed and of what is needed to build on their insights. Picking up on their central insight, Weinandy’s juxtaposition of impassibility and divine passion is both essential and correct. Weinandy forcefully develops this nexus as a necessary product of the Creator/creature distinction, which grounds a proper transcendence/immanence balance and avoids all the problems of panentheism. Connected to the preceding point, Weinandy’s view of the eternal intra-Trinitarian relational fulfillment further protects the notion of God’s self-sufficiency, with the result that God’s act of creation and involvement within creation are rightly seen as voluntary and not necessary. Finally, Weinandy’s handling of the communication of idioms in Christ’s incarnation and the “true . . . soteriological import of Jesus’ suffering” is very incisive.

This notwithstanding, there remain a few weaknesses even in so helpful a book as Weinandy’s. First, his statement on method in chapter 2 is not nearly as extensive as it could be. More importantly, however, Weinandy’s own embrace of divine impassibility reaches too far. For instance, he rejects, as an argument of passibilism, that God might be “capable of freely changing his inner emotional state in response to and interaction with the changing human condition and world order.” He then further denies (and rejects as passibilistic) even the possibility that God may have something “analogous to human feelings.” He concludes, “It is this notion of passibility—that God experiences inner emotional changes of state . . . whether freely from within or by being acted upon from without—that will be denied in this study.”[37]

On this point, I would have hoped that Weinandy’s strong affinity for the Creator/creature distinction would have protected him from disallowing even God’s own voluntary change of emotional disposition. For it is the wise balance of the Creator/creature distinction that helps to preserve the analogy of emotional predicates applied to God and men. In opting to preclude even such voluntary emotional participation on God’s part, however, Weinandy departs from an otherwise strong analogical position. On the whole, then, it seems to me that what we find in Weinandy is a thoughtful two-pronged model that is unfortunately hampered by this denial that God could even experience voluntary changes of emotional disposition from within.[38] The effect of this, I believe, is that Weinandy—like Creel—has obligated himself to defend a more forceful version of impassibility than is biblically necessitated.

The Strata of Evangelical Reflection on Divine Impassibility

What about evangelicals? Where do they stand with respect to this debate? Although monographs by evangelicals on the topic of divine impassibility are in short supply, evangelical opinion on the matter has nevertheless proven quite diverse.[39] In what follows, I will suggest that most of the major evangelical voices on the doctrine of divine impassibility can be classified into one of three categories: affirmation, rejection, or modification. As we progress throughout these categories, I will classify select representatives according to their own self-understanding, as best it can be discerned. However, owing to the terminological confusion that we have repeatedly noted, it may be that in the case of some of these individuals, their technically correct classification is at variance with their self-understanding. Where that is the case, I will make note of it, and I will attempt a few summary observations related to this possibility in the conclusion to this survey of evangelical thought on divine impassibility.

Evangelical Affirmations of Divine Impassibility

There are, of course, those within evangelicalism who understand themselves as defenders of the traditional view. The best representatives of this stance do not hold a caricatured version of divine impassibility. All those mentioned here maintain that God has passionate emotions, though they must be conceived as divine, and not human, emotions. This is critical to point out, for as we have already mentioned, many passibilists would tell us that impassibilists believe God has no passions. And yet here we have a group of evangelicals who understand themselves as representatives of the classical tradition, and none of them asserts what most contemporary passibilists say they must assert to be impassibilists. As examples of such a viewpoint, we may briefly consider the contributions of Gerald Bray and Paul Helm.[40]

Gerald Bray

Gerald Bray argues that the early Christian understanding of divine impassibility was simply a reference to God’s “inability to suffer,” what Bray calls “impassibility in the strict sense.”[41] Taking John of Damascus representatively, Bray further explains, “The emphasis was not on tranquility in a state of indifference, but on the sovereignty of God, whose being could not be attacked or harmed by any outside power.”[42] From this, Bray reminds us that “this attribute . . . belongs to God’s essence.”[43] In other words, though “the persons of the Trinity are indeed moved by our suffering . . . God’s essence is untouched by it.”[44] With respect to Christ’s incarnation and atonement, Bray concurs with the tradition that “on the cross the divine person of the Son of God suffered and died for us in his human nature.”[45]

Paul Helm

Paul Helm is perhaps the most notable evangelical defender of divine impassibility.[46] He gets at his defense of divine impassibility in a number of ways. He notes first off that impassibility is a corollary of immutability, and that immutability itself is a corollary of God’s timeless eternity. So, one could argue in a theologically inferential fashion: “(1) God is timelessly eternal. (2) Whatever is timelessly eternal is unchangeable. (3) Whatever is unchangeable is impassible. (4) Therefore, God is impassible.”[47] Then following a detour through a discussion of Richard Creel’s postulation of four senses in which impassibility may be understood, Helm revisits the question of God and feelings.

This time, he argues for his understanding of divine emotion, with a discussion of the problems entailed, by applying the term feelings to the kind of being God is. As he puts it, “In the same way that it makes no sense to ascribe bodily feelings to God, because God is not that sort of being, so, the doctrine of divine impassibility asserts, it makes no sense to ascribe emotional affects to God because he is not that sort of being.”[48] The reason it is wrong to apply “emotional affects to God” is that such a view “supposes that there are occasions when God is less than wholly active.”[49] In other words, God’s emotional dispositions, unlike their human counterparts, are always “maximally active.. . . There is no unfulfilled potential in God, and an unexercised disposition is of course just that.”[50]

Helm then argues that Scripture itself prohibits the passibilist understanding of divine emotion in that it presents us with “two sets of data . . . about God; namely those data which portray him as having traits that are compatible with him being human, and those that are incompatible with humanity.”[51] As he sees it, “the metaphysical or ontological or strictly literal data must control the anthropomorphic and anthropopathic data, and not vice versa. The alternative is quite unacceptable, namely, a theological reductionism in which God is distilled to human proportions.”[52] The application of this criterion, then, governs our understanding of Scripture’s emotional predications to God. So, for instance, emotions that imply ignorance, such as regret, “cannot be attributed literally to God,” because they are incompatible with the perfection of God’s omniscience.[53] Helm appeals to divine accommodation as the explanation for why Scripture presents God this way, even if it is not literally true.[54]

Finally, to put his conclusions more positively, Helm concludes the essay with an application of the doctrine of analogy.

Necessarily, human beings experience emotions or passions as affects.. . . But it is conceivable that what are necessarily experienced by humans as affects are, as a matter of logic, capable of being experienced, or possessed, in non-affective ways.. . . Suppose we call any such state had by God a themotion. (A themotion X is as close as possible to the corresponding human emotion X except that it cannot be an affect). Nothing that has been said in this paper is a denial that God has all those themotions which are consistent with his moral character to an unsurpassed degree.[55]

In a more recent article, Helm attempts to develop this positive statement in more detail while remaining true to his earlier position. In this article Helm defines God’s feelings as “his attitudes to what he knows.”[56] Our understanding of these attitudes should not be modeled “strongly on human feelings” because the word “passion” suggests irrationality and the response of one who has been overwhelmed.[57] And yet, to be more precise, Helm argues that there is a better sense in which we can conceive of divine passion. He reasons as follows:

It is at this point, I suggest, that we take some care, for a person may speak with full control of himself, yet in an impassioned way; and the control he exercises may be the direct result of his passion. To talk of a scientist’s passion for truth, or a judge’s for justice, may be a way of speaking of the strength of these commitments. In some cases human passion distracts and impairs the reason, while in other cases it intensifies the engagement of the reason.. . . If God in himself is to be said to be passionate, then this is how it must be with him. We must think of him as essentially impassioned, full of feeling, utterly engaged in the most clear-eyed way possible.. . . So perhaps we would be nearer the truth if we thought of God not as “having passions” or as a “suffering God” but as being utterly impassioned in all that he does.[58]

Evangelical Rejections of Divine Impassibility

It is no surprise to find that Open Theists have strongly rejected divine impassibility.[59] What is far more interesting is that a number of more conservative evangelicals have also gone on record in making denials of divine impassibility. Here, we may examine the contributions of John Stott and John Feinberg as two key representatives of this perspective.[60]

John Stott

John Stott begins his argument by accepting the terms of the Hellenization thesis, which he concludes led the Fathers to speak of God in ways “more Greek than Hebrew.”[61] Their intent was undoubtedly noble, Stott avers, and there is even an element of truth in what they wanted to protect.

They were wanting above all to safeguard the truths that God is perfect . . . and that God is changeless.. . . We today should still wish to maintain these truths. God cannot be influenced against his will from either outside or inside. He is never the unwilling victim either of actions which affect him from without or of emotions which upset him from within.[62]

Nevertheless, Stott accepts that the basic definition of impassibility speaks of God’s incapacity for suffering, and thus he rejects it.[63]

Next, Stott briefly discusses the impact of both scriptural God-language and the cross on divine impassibility. But he maintains that “the best way to confront the traditional view of the impassibility of God” is to understand the nature of love. He continues, “If love is self-giving, then it is inevitably vulnerable to pain, since it exposes itself to the possibility of rejection and insult.”[64] Then, in dependence on Kazoh Kitamori’s influential book Theology of the Pain of God, Stott expands on this point with the explanation that “God’s pain” is fundamentally produced by the conflicting impulses of his love toward and his wrath against sinners. God’s pain, in this sense, is unceasing.[65] Stott then concludes his analysis with what has become a fairly oft-quoted statement: “I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross. The only God I believe in is the One Nietzsche ridiculed as ‘God on the cross.’ In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?”[66]

John Feinberg

John Feinberg’s comments on the matter are instructive in a different manner than Stott’s. Both candidly and succinctly, Feinberg states that he rejects the doctrine of divine impassibility and contends instead that God can experience “real emotions.”[67] In his discussion of God’s aseity, Feinberg comments that responsiveness should not be seen as a deficiency in God. At length he remarks:

If God hears and answers our prayers, and if he changes his attitudes toward us when we repent of sin, for example, it seems that his mental and emotional states at any given moment must to some extent be influenced by what we do. But, why is that a deficiency in God? Holding that God’s mental focus and emotional responses are determined in part by the actions of his creatures does not entail that his creatures either bring him into existence or maintain him in being. It doesn’t even require that God’s purposes, desires, or choices depend on anything or anyone but himself.. . . Moreover, for Calvinists, God has already decided before the foundation of the world what he will think and do at the appropriate moment in response to us.. . . It would seem that the only way that the influencing of God’s mental and emotional states (and even his actions) by his creatures could count as an imperfection in God would be for his creatures’ thoughts and actions to force God to think, choose, or do things he does not want to think, choose, or do. But there is no reason for this to happen according to any Calvinistic theology nor for many Arminian theologies.[68]

As I read this comment, I cannot help but conclude that it would be quite satisfactory to many in the impassibilist mainstream, because Feinberg appears to have defined God’s emotional responses as voluntary, not involuntary. Here, then, it seems we have a good example of a theologian who understands himself to be in a particular camp (rejection) when in fact he is not, at least according to a traditional definition.

If this reading of Feinberg is correct, then it would appear that at least some in this camp are reading impassibility through the lens provided by modern passibilism. That is to say, it may be that some evangelicals are rejecting what they have been told impassibility means, but not in fact what classical proponents of impassibility generally believed. Thus, they may not be rejecting the best understanding of impassibility, but only its caricature. Perhaps upon hearing a more accurate description of the qualified-impassibility model, some of these evangelicals would find that they have more of an appreciation for what was being attempted.[69]

To return to a final, brief remark on Open Theism: I doubt that Open Theists would find even the qualified-impassibility model acceptable. In particular, I do not think they would accept the notion that God is intrinsically invulnerable to any involuntarily precipitated emotional displays. It seems that they have so loaded the concept of “meaningful relationality” with the prospect of being surprised by the unforeseen, that the possibility and, indeed, the experience of precipitating involuntary emotional reactions on the part of God is a necessary component of their view.

Evangelical Modifications of Divine Impassibility

Some evangelicals have understood their task as one of modifying the doctrine of divine impassibility. That is, while they appreciate certain emphases of the impassibility tradition, they are also of the opinion that the traditional doctrine is one-sided and thus stands in need of some correction. While proposing differing degrees of revision, this group may be represented by notable evangelicals such as John Frame and Millard Erickson.[70]

John Frame

On the question of divine emotion, Frame appears to accept the view that the traditional understanding of impassibility, deriving from Hellenistic influence, meant the absence of emotion.[71] Frame then supplies a very nice set of reflections on divine emotion that I would contend serve to develop (and not revise) the two-pronged insight of the classical position insofar as divine emotion is specifically concerned.[72] In other words, on the issue of divine emotion in particular, we should see Frame standing in the same stream as his classical forebears.[73] When we turn to the question of divine suffering, however, Frame, though still in a qualified sense, aligns himself more with Moltmann’s position and thus concludes, “I agree with Moltmann that Christ’s sufferings are the sufferings of God.”[74]

Millard Erickson

Even though John Frame identifies Millard Erickson as one who holds the traditional view of divine impassibility,[75] it is more appropriate to see Erickson as one who views himself as making some modifications to the traditional view. In one of his earlier extended treatments of divine impassibility (The Word Became Flesh), Erickson seems somewhat unsatisfied with the traditional doctrine.[76] He acknowledges the presence of anthropomorphisms in Scripture, but urges his readers not to reduce the force of such texts by overemphasizing their anthropomorphic nature.[77] Furthermore, in light of the incarnation, Erickson believes that some form of divine suffering is an inescapable conclusion. Though God’s suffering is completely voluntary (a self-limitation), we must allow that he has chosen this.[78]

In another work (God the Father Almighty), Erickson indicates that he is satisfied with some of Richard Creel’s observations, particularly the notion of impassibility of the will.[79] On his discussion of divine emotion, Erickson points out clearly that there are some emotions that God cannot experience (e.g., lust).[80] And yet, he contends we should not conclude that God is devoid of emotional experience in every possible sense. Here, Erickson suggests the analogy of an emotionally mature person—one who can empathize without sympathizing.[81]

In summation, then, we may rehearse Erickson’s overall argument as follows: (1) God is impassible in his will. (2) God is impassible with respect to sinful emotions (e.g., lust). (3) Divine-emotion texts are anthropomorphic. Nevertheless, they do tell of a genuine “emotional life” in God, though we should conceive of it more as empathy than as a sympathetic reproduction of our own emotions. (4) In light of the incarnation, God does suffer, but it must be stressed that he only does so voluntarily.[82]

Once again, we may point out that if the historical survey in chapters 3 and 4 is in any way adequate, some of the revisions proposed by this wing of evangelical thinkers are not applicable to the best of the traditional model (though various individuals in the tradition may stand in need of correction). It seems, then, that a number of evangelicals—myself included at one point—have had their thoughts about the classical model filtered through, and thus skewed by, the modern criticisms of it. One final observation needs to be pointed out in relation to this grouping of evangelical theologians. Sometimes those who wish to retain a connection to impassibility, with the self-understanding that they are modifying it, will speak of God’s voluntary emotional participation in response to creation as though this distances them a bit from traditional impassibility. In fact, it seems that this places them squarely in the impassibility tradition, because it was the involuntariness of unwittingly extracted emotional flux by his creatures that the core impassibility tradition always resisted.[83]

Conclusion: Impassibility in Evangelical Theology

Perhaps the first conclusion that suggests itself in the face of such a diversity of evangelical opinion is the aforementioned possibility that there may be a degree of confusion in evangelical understanding, stemming from the lack of definitional clarity. Of course, if impassibility is understood through the passibilist prism such that God is utterly void of all emotion, then it is understandable that evangelicals would want to reject or revise that. I would too. The problem, of course, is that, in the main, this is not what impassibility historically meant.[84] On the other hand, if impassibility is understood as something having to do with God’s own emotional sovereignty, something that is fully compatible with—even essential to—a divine display of emotion, then it does not seem quite so objectionable.

Such a misunderstanding seems present, for example, in the explanation of the issue given by James Spiegel. He comments that “the debate” over divine impassibility “has been cast in strictly binary terms, presupposing that either God has no emotions or has emotions essentially as we humans do.”[85] As we have repeatedly noted, however, this assessment of the history of the debate is incorrect. It has never been a simple debate in “binary terms,” and the mainstream impassibility tradition is not accurately represented as a position that believes “God has no emotions.” Since, however, such a negative understanding of the classical view is so influential today, one must explicitly and simultaneously describe God as “impassible and impassioned” if one wishes to make clear one’s belief in the two-pronged nature of God’s own sovereign emotional lordship and his vibrant passion. And while it is certainly helpful to parse the details so precisely, constantly having to state both halves together makes it sound as if earlier impassibilists were guilty of denying the latter half of the equation, when in fact they were not.

Thus, it may be that at least some of the conservative evangelicals who fancy themselves as rejecting impassibility may find that they are really only rejecting what modern passibilists say impassibility means, and not what the primary original proponents of the concept actually meant. In the end, some of these evangelicals may even find that they basically agree with the main thrust of impassibility as it has been classically conceived, and their reformulations (while possibly extending the gains of impassibility) may nevertheless turn out to look rather like the fundamental two-pronged classical insight. In this sense, some within the evangelical camp may view the addition of a second prong of meaningful divine passion as a revision of the tradition, when in fact that commitment has always been present.

It is here with this last category of evangelicals—those who seem to identify themselves as modifiers of the tradition—that I wish to introduce a slight distinction between revision and development. In my mind, this is a critical distinction, and the recognition of it reflects my own shift in thinking about how I view my own approach to the doctrine of divine impassibility. This distinction can be drawn out with a question: Are we as evangelicals revising the doctrine of divine impassibility by including something that was not previously there—namely, a meaningful affirmation of divine passion—or are we simply developing in greater detail what was in fact always there? Given my understanding of the tradition, I believe my own place in this discussion belongs to the latter category and not the former.[86]

[1]I designate Richard Creel and Thomas Weinandy as being particularly “pivotal” because they seem to have been on the leading edge of this impassibilist recovery and thereby to have stimulated others to fresh appraisals of this doctrine. Both authors are cited liberally in contemporary scholarly interaction with this topic. Other impassibilist thinkers who have made important contributions in the wake of Creel and Weinandy include Paul Gavrilyuk and David Bentley Hart. At this juncture, of course, I am just pointing out the thought of nonevangelical impassibilists. In the course of this chapter, we will also survey the varied perspectives of key evangelicals on the doctrine of divine impassibility.

[2]Richard E. Creel, Divine Impassibility: An Essay in Philosophical Theology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 3–9.

[3]Ibid., 11.

[4]Ibid. I partially concur with Marcel Sarot’s assessment of Creel’s fourfold application of impassibility. Sarot correctly suggests that we should reserve the term “impassible” in reference to the issue of feelings only, with suffering understood as a subset of the larger category of feelings. Marcel Sarot, God, Passibility and Corporeality (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1992), 29–30. As Sarot points out, we have other more oft used terms (e.g., immutability and omniscience) under which to discuss the possibility of influencing God’s nature, will, and knowledge. Aside from impassibility, there is no such separate term covering the discussion of the influenceability of God’s emotions. Ibid., 30. Moreover, the history of the discussion, ancient (and modern as Sarot points out), validates the select usage of applying impassibility to the category of divine emotion. Where I disagree with Sarot is in his particular application of the term immutability to divine emotion. As he puts it, impassibility should be defined as “immutability with regard to one’s feelings, or the quality of one’s inner life.” Ibid. This is a problem if “immutability” is meant to be applied to divine emotion exclusively in the absolute sense. To be sure, God’s nature and ethical commitments are immutable, but as I will contend in the formative portion of this book, when it comes to a consideration to God’s feelings, “invulnerability” provides a more fitting and more historically accurate description. It retains what we might call God’s emotional sovereignty without implying a basic inability for emotional responsiveness to creation. Having said all that, since Creel’s argument develops this fourfold application, I will trace all four of the elements he proposes.

[5]Richard E. Creel, “Immutability and Impassibility,” in A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, ed. Philip L. Quinn and Charles Taliaferro (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1997), 314.

[6]Creel, Divine Impassibility, 12.

[7]Ibid., 13–14.

[8]Ibid., 20.

[9]Ibid., 22, italics his; see also 204.

[10]Ibid., 82.

[11]Ibid.

[12]The example that Creel gives is that “once upon a time . . . God knew that it was not possible for me to go for a swim; now he knows that it is possible for me to do so. Hence, his knowledge of what is possible for me now has been changed by a change in my abilities.” Ibid.

[13]Ibid., 87.

[14]Ibid.

[15]Ibid., 97–99.

[16]Ibid., 206; also see 132.

[17]Ibid.

[18]Ibid., 125.

[19]Ibid., 206.

[20]Ibid., 206–7.

[21]I should point out that in his more recent dictionary article, Creel revised his assertion of emotional impassibilism as follows: “Perhaps we can save what is most important on each side of this conflict by distinguishing between God being emotionally ‘touched’ and emotionally ‘crushed’ by the experiences and actions of his creatures. What I think we should save out of the impassibilist position is that God in himself is not emotionally ‘crushed’ by what goes on in the world.. . . What I think we should save out of the passibilist position is that God is emotionally ‘touched’ by the joys and sufferings, the good and the evil actions of his creatures. This was not my position in Creel (1986), but now . . . I think an adequate conception of God must include the notion that God is touched by our sufferings and joys, victories and defeats—though not necessarily in the same ways we are.” Creel, “Immutability and Impassibility,” 318. While this modification of his earlier position on emotional impassibilism is certainly an improvement, it would nevertheless appear to be at odds with Creel’s more forceful definition of impassibility earlier in this same article. In principle, I am inclined to agree with his distinction between God’s being “touched” and “crushed.” But I would certainly like to hear him elaborate further on that distinction so as to gain a more precise understanding of what he intends thereby.

[22]Though Weinandy has treated the topic of divine impassibility in other venues (see this book’s bibliography for additional materials on impassibility and related topics), we will focus our summary of his thought through the lens of this book, since it is his focal and most thorough engagement with the issue.

[23]Thomas G. Weinandy, Does God Suffer? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000), 53. He continues a few pages later, “The OT never conceives of God’s transcendence in opposition to his immanence, as if that which makes God wholly other is different from that which allows him to be a personal God who lovingly acts in time and history. For the Bible, transcendence and immanence do not describe two divine modes of being or two sets of distinguishing qualities.. . . That which makes him divine, and thus wholly other and so transcendent, is that which equally allows him to be active within the created order and so be immanent.” Ibid., 56.

[24]Ibid., 108.

[25]According to Weinandy, the major problem of contemporary critics is that they “consistently give to the attribute of divine immutability the positive noetic content of being static, lifeless and inert, something which the Fathers never argued for nor even contemplated.” Ibid., 110. A few paragraphs later, he notes that contemporary critics make a similar mistake with impassibility, founding their argument on the “false premise that to be impassible is to be devoid of passion.” Ibid., 111.

[26]Ibid., 119.

[27]Ibid. According to Weinandy, for God “to be is to be fully relational.” Ibid., 127.

[28]Ibid., 147.

[29]Ibid., 153.

[30]Ibid., 157.

[31]Ibid., 160, 162–63.

[32]Ibid., 167.

[33]Ibid., 173.

[34]Ibid., 206.

[35]Ibid., 246.

[36]Ibid., 250.

[37]Ibid., 39.

[38]Weinandy’s model is two-pronged because, while he defends a strong doctrine of divine impassibility, he has also argued that the persons of the Trinity are eternally, fully actualized in their passion and self-giving to one another, such that there is no additional relational potential remaining to be actualized that could yield an affective fluctuation. In this sense, God could never possibly be more passionate than he already and eternally is. On the other hand, this appeal to God as actus purus (or pure actuality), while seemingly guaranteeing that God is never passive, also ensures that God is never, properly speaking, responsive either. My own judgment will be that we should differentiate “passivity” and “responsiveness” on the part of God. In other words, the Creator’s responsiveness to his creatures need not proceed from a posture of passivity. I believe that making this distinction better preserves the analogical balance we are seeking, and I will attempt to elaborate further on this point in the remaining chapters of this book.

[39]The closest thing to a major single-authored evangelical monograph on the theme of divine impassibility to date would probably be Kevin Vanhoozer, Remythologizing Theology: Divine Action, Passion, and Authorship (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). And yet, even here Vanhoozer’s largest aim remains to develop a theology of “divine communicative action,” with the impassibility question serving as a critical “litmus test” for this larger theme. This is not at all to diminish the value of Vanhoozer’s contribution, but only to point out that divine impassibility, while prominently featured within Remythologizing Theology, is nevertheless a subtheme in support of Vanhoozer’s larger aims. I should state, at this point, that Remythologizing came out when I was well into the revising/editing stage of my own book. The research and bulk of the writing for this volume had long been completed. Because of Remythologizing’s significance, however, I have sought to have some engagement with it, even if not in all the painstaking and detailed attention that it deserves. Consequently, I have not formally classified Vanhoozer’s work in this section, though I would venture to say that, as best I can tell at present, he would most accurately be classified under the heading “Evangelical Affirmations of Divine Impassibility.”

[40]Additional representatives of this camp would include Norman Geisler and J. I. Packer. Geisler holds that “God cannot undergo passion or suffering; nothing in the created universe can make God feel pain or inflict misery on Him. This does not mean that God has no feelings, but simply that His feelings are not the results of actions imposed on Him by others. His feelings flow from His eternal and unchangeable nature.” Norman Geisler, Systematic Theology, vol. 2, God, Creation (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2003), 112. The entirety of Geisler’s discussion may be found on pp. 112–24. With respect to Packer’s position, we may simply remind ourselves of his statements, which were documented in chap. 1. For convenience’s sake, I provide them here once more. Impassibility is “not impassivity, unconcern, and impersonal detachment in the face of creation; not insensitivity and indifference to the distresses of a fallen world; not inability or unwillingness to empathize with human pain and grief; but simply that God’s experiences do not come upon him as ours come upon us, for his are foreknown, willed and chosen by himself, and are not involuntary surprises forced on him from outside, apart from his own decision, in the way that ours regularly are.” J. I. Packer, “Theism for Our Time,” in God Who Is Rich in Mercy, ed. Peter T. O’Brien and David G. Peterson (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1986), 17, italics mine; “This [impassibility] means, not that God is impassive and unfeeling (a frequent misunderstanding), but that no created beings can inflict pain, suffering and distress on him at their own will. In so far as God enters into suffering and grief (which Scripture’s many anthropopathisms, plus the fact of the cross, show that he does), it is by his own deliberate decision; he is never his creatures’ hapless victim. The Christian mainstream has construed impassibility as meaning not that God is a stranger to joy and delight, but rather that his joy is permanent, clouded by no involuntary pain.” J. I. Packer, “God,” in New Dictionary of Theology, ed. Sinclair Ferguson, David F. Wright, and J. I. Packer (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1988), 277, italics mine.

[41]Gerald Bray, The Doctrine of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1993), 98. Early theologians understood suffering as physical, notes Bray.

[42]Ibid.

[43]Ibid., 99.

[44]Ibid.

[45]Ibid., 100.

[46]In this brief exposition of Helm’s thought, I will be interacting primarily with his chief contribution on the matter: Paul Helm, “The Impossibility of Divine Passibility,” in The Power and Weakness of God: Impassibility and Orthodoxy, ed. Nigel M. de S. Cameron (Edinburgh: Rutherford House, 1990), 119–40. However, at the end I will supplement this with a glance at a more recent treatment by Helm. This latter work, as we will see, appears wholly in line with his earlier statement, though in it he does develop the positive argument for how to understand divine emotion in greater (and clearer) detail.

[47]Ibid., 119. From this framework, Helm argues later in the paper that there cannot be any “timelessly eternal affects in God.” Why? “For any change, from wrath to love, from self-sufficiency to self-giving, appears to pre-suppose or to imply a corresponding change in belief or knowledge. For it is the change in belief which gives to the emotional affect its distinctive character. Emotion is not just sensation; the fear of betrayal differs from the fear of war because of the different beliefs in each case. If so, then a God who has (undergoes?) emotional changes (whether timelessly eternal or not) also has changes in belief or knowledge, and either was not or is not omniscient.” Ibid., 137.

[48]Ibid., 123.

[49]Ibid., 124–25.

[50]Ibid., 125.

[51]Ibid., 128.

[52]Ibid., 129. Helm goes on to suggest that those who undertake the reverse procedure are forced to accept as literally true of God passages that compare him to an animal or physical object, or else be guilty of arbitrarily applying their interpretive principle.

[53]Ibid., 131.

[54]Ibid., 131–34.

[55]Ibid., 140.

[56]Paul Helm, “B. B. Warfield on Divine Passion,” Westminster Theological Journal 69 (2007): 101.

[57]Ibid., 102.

[58]Ibid., 102–3, italics his. I appreciate, and find some confirmation for my own view, in the fact that Helm has seen fit also to use the term impassioned as descriptive of God’s emotional perfection. His use of terminology similar to mine calls for a few brief comments here. First off, and for clarity’s sake, I wish to stress that Helm and I have each arrived at the use of this term independently of the other. That is to say, I settled on the term impassioned, as well as the impassible/impassioned formula, long before reading Helm’s 2007 article. Second, and perhaps more importantly, as good as Helm’s use of the term impassioned is, he does not intend it fully in the same manner that I do. That is, while I agree with much of what Helm intends in his usage, I also intend more than he does. Additional clarification of our differences on this point will be offered in chap. 9. For now, it is enough to note that while appreciative of some of Helm’s insights, I have developed my understanding of God’s impassionedness independently of and, in several key respects, differently from him.

[59]E.g., Clark H. Pinnock, “Systematic Theology,” 118. Briefly, I should note that although I do have a belief on the matter, I do not here intend to weigh in on the debate as to whether Open Theism is viably evangelical. My acknowledgment of Open Theists here is merely descriptive of their self-representation as an evangelical subgroup. For a few valuable criticisms of Open Theim’s deficiencies on a larger scale, see Bruce A. Ware, God’s Lesser Glory: The Diminished God of Open Theism (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2000); John M. Frame, No Other God: A Response to Open Theism (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2001); John Piper, Justin Taylor, and Paul Kjoss Helseth, eds., Beyond the Bounds: Open Theism and the Undermining of Biblical Christianity (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2003).

[60]Another notable evangelical on record as rejecting divine impassibility is Wayne Grudem. Grudem states that impassibility means that “God does not have passions or emotions.” A little further on he argues that “God does not have sinful passions or emotions. But the idea that God has no passions or emotions at all clearly conflicts with much of the rest of Scripture, and for that reason I have not affirmed God’s impassibility in this book.” Wayne A. Grudem, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 165–66, italics his. Here we see that Grudem defines impassibility according to passibilist standards. But as we have repeatedly noted, the definition (“no passions or emotions at all”) ascribed to traditional impassibilists is one that would have been foreign to them. This leads me to believe that in Grudem we have an example of one who understands himself to be a rejector of divine impassibility because of the definition to which he subscribes. However, on a more accurate historical understanding, it may well be that Grudem is not in fact a rejector of the classical formulation. We should also note that Dennis Ngien—whose works have been cited throughout this study—belongs in this category as well.

[61]John R. W. Stott, The Cross of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1986), 330.

[62]Ibid. In and of itself, and historically understood, this comment is actually a rather fine statement of impassibility, though Stott appears not to recognize it as such.

[63]Ibid., 331.

[64]Ibid., 332.

[65]Ibid., 332–33.

[66]Ibid., 335.

[67]John S. Feinberg, No One Like Him (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2001), 277.

[68]Ibid., 241–42, italics mine.

[69]Some of the statements in Stott, Feinberg, and Grudem, for example, suggest that they would be amenable to this.

[70]Donald Bloesch, Michael Horton, and Bruce Ware likely also fit into this category. Donald Bloesch states that “the notion of impassibility can be retained so long as it does not mean that God is impassive and unfeeling.” Donald G. Bloesch, God the Almighty (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1995), 94. Presumably, then, Bloesch believes that impassivity and unfeelingness are parts of the traditional understanding that must be overcome. As Michael Horton understands the matter, he has “revised” the definition of impassibility to mean “incapacity for being overwhelmed by suffering, not inability to enter into it.. . .” Michael S. Horton, Lord and Servant: A Covenant Christology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005), 195. For Bruce Ware’s exposition, see Bruce A. Ware, “An Evangelical Reformulation of the Doctrine of the Immutability of God,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 29 (1986): 444–46; and Ware, God’s Greater Glory: The Exalted God of Scripture and the Christian Faith (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2004), 144–47.

[71]John M. Frame, The Doctrine of God (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2002), 609.

[72]Ibid., 610–11. Here he points out (1) that God’s emotions are not manifest corporeally, (2) that there is a valid distinction to draw between God being passive and God being responsive, (3) that God’s passions are not irrational, and (4) that there are certain emotions that are “inappropriate for God.”

[73]Though there is a caveat related to the way that Frame works out the issue of God’s relationship to time, it seems to me that someone like Augustine would see Frame as heir and developer of the classical principle at this point, and not as one who is reformulating the principle itself.

[74]Frame, The Doctrine of God, 613. Where he seems to agree with Moltmann is that on the cross the Father suffered differently, but genuinely, with the Son because of the doctrine of the mutual indwelling of the Trinitarian persons. Ibid. Where he disagrees with Moltmann is on his elevation of divine suffering at the cross “into a metaphysical assertion” about the vulnerability of God’s eternal nature. Ibid., 615.

[75]Ibid., 612n18.

[76]Millard J. Erickson, The Word Became Flesh: A Contemporary Incarnational Christology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1991), 541–44, 607–12.

[77]It appears that he wants to preclude the notion of bodily suffering, since God is incorporeal, without diminishing the affective continuity. Ibid., 609. I take it that the affective element is what he is referring to when he says that “there must be some univocal factor.” Ibid.

[78]Ibid., 611.

[79]Millard J. Erickson, God the Father Almighty: A Contemporary Exploration of the Divine Attributes (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998), 161; see 141–64 for his full discussion.

[80]Ibid., 164.

[81]Ibid., 163. In his yet more recent book responding to Open Theism, Erickson reaffirms his distinction between empathy and sympathy. “The emotions of the creatures evoke a response from God, but they do not merely replicate their own emotion in God.” Erickson, What Does God Know and When Does He Know It? The Current Controversy over Divine Foreknowledge (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), 225.

[82]In personal correspondence, I sent Dr. Erickson a description of my understanding of his position in terms very much like the account I have employed here. Erickson replied that, broadly speaking, the characterization I have supplied of him is sufficiently accurate. In his words, “Given the categories you appear to be working with (not all of which would be my way of expressing it), your depiction of my view is reasonably accurate.” Millard Erickson, e-mail response to my query, April 7, 2005.

[83]See, for example, the following statements of Donald Bloesch and Michael Horton. Bloesch: “God freely involves himself in the travail of his creation, yet he does not cease to be joyous as he looks forward to the overcoming of this travail. God remains above pain and suffering even while descending into the world of confusion and misery. He is not invulnerable to pain and suffering, but he rises above them. He transforms our pain into his joy.. . . Suffering is not inherent in God, but God freely wills to enter into our suffering so that it can be overcome. God cannot be changed by either heavenly or earthly powers, but God can change himself.” Bloesch, God the Almighty, 94–95. Horton: “The answer proposed here is to recognize that although God exists independently of creation, he freely chooses to enter into a genuine relationship with the world. In this freedom for creaturely reality, God is genuinely affected, although in any given case this is to be understood in an analogical rather than a univocal sense. Is he moved to compassion? Yes, but not as we are.” Horton, Lord and Servant, 43, italics his.

[84]Again, we have noted the existence of a strand of early impassibilist thinkers (e.g., Clement, Justin) who did seem to suggest something closer to divine passionlessness. But this was far and away a minority position in the early church. Moreover, it would not seem credible for passibilists to point out this minority strand as the source of their confusion since when they claim that impassibility equals impassivity, they rarely cite Clement or Justin, and instead usually cite, at times without much depth of analysis, theologians who have been seen to be representatives of the mainstream qualified understanding of divine impassibility.

[85]James Spiegel, The Benefits of Providence: A New Look at Divine Sovereignty (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2005), 152.

[86]Prior to beginning this study, my own self-identification was as a reviser. Now I understand my contribution to be much more along the lines of development. My shift in thinking came after carefully examining the relevant premodern sources for myself. At the conclusion of that investigation, I became convinced that, contrary to the claims of modern passibilism, the mainstream classical model has always been two-pronged, that is, it always included an affirmation of divine impassibility and divine passion.

PART 2

A CONTEMPORARY CASE

FOR UNDERSTANDING GOD

AS BOTH IMPASSIBLE

AND IMPASSIONED

7

Impassible and Impassioned

Toward a Theological Hermeneutic

At this juncture of the book, we take an important turn from a descriptive discussion of the history of thought on divine impassibility to a prescriptive proposal and formulation of the doctrine. My goal in what follows is to faithfully develop this historically precedented and biblically required model, here entitled “Impassible and Impassioned.” As we begin this exposition, we must remain aware of our debt to our forebears on this issue. We are not the progenitors of the dual emphasis on divine impassibility and divine passion. That insight, as we have seen, is properly attributable to the mainstream representatives of the impassibility tradition—of what I have termed the qualified model—going all the way back to the Fathers surveyed in chapter 3.[1] Having gratefully acknowledged this debt, we now will focus on how we might more thoroughly develop, both biblically and theologically, this precious insight about God that has been bequeathed to us.[2]

Before we begin this endeavor, however, two preliminary comments are called for. First, in order to further clarify the focus of this formative proposal on the doctrine of divine impassibility, I should reiterate, in light of the preceding historical study, that the central hub of this issue is the question of divine emotion, of which suffering should be considered a subset.[3] Therefore, in my formulation of the matter, I will focus my attention most prominently on the issue of divine emotion, without neglecting, however, the supplementary question of divine suffering.

Second, I also intend, in chapters 7–9, to focus on the issue of divine emotion specifically in relation to theology proper.[4] My primary thesis in this respect is that, when appropriately understood, both impassibility and impassionedness are true of God. The duality inherent in this model stems, I suggest, from the duality inherent in Scripture’s overarching presentation of God’s transcendence and immanence, as well as in Scripture’s particular portrayal of this nexus of impassibility and impassionedness. In the remainder of this book, then, I will attempt to provide a sufficient methodological, hermeneutical, and theological expansion on the classical impassibilist insight that God is both impassible and impassioned.[5]

On Drawing Metaphysical Conclusions from Biblical Revelation

Though it has been acknowledged in passing heretofore, it bears elaborating a bit at this point that, just as with the doctrine of the Trinity, Scripture nowhere provides a direct metaphysical proposition about the impassibility of God. Of course, it should also be noted that the contemporary passibilist understanding of metaphysical divine co-suffering itself extends beyond any explicit statement in Scripture. Had Scripture provided an explicit metaphysical statement in support of either divine impassibility or divine passibility, debate on this issue would be either precluded or framed very differently from its current form.[6] In the absence of such a direct metaphysical statement, however, some may wonder why we should attempt to provide a theological category that Scripture itself does not explicitly supply.[7] More broadly conceived, this concern brings into focus the crucial issue of second-order theological reflection on Scripture’s first-order statements.

Here we would do well to heed the counsel of Paul Helm, who has rightly noted in his essay on divine impassibility that it is a false dichotomy to present second-order theological and metaphysical reflection as necessarily opposed to first-order biblical discourse. As he puts it:

Biblical language and metaphysical concepts (whether these concepts are derived from Greek sources or from elsewhere) are not strict rivals. This is because of the fact that from the point of view of metaphysics the Bible is an underdeveloped book; there are few, if any, passages which are theoretical and reflective, or which make general claims and which rebut alternatives, of the sort typically advanced in metaphysical discussion. So the Bible does not repudiate developed metaphysics; rather, for the most part it obliquely sidesteps it, for its interests are for the most part elsewhere. But this does not mean that its first-order statements do not have metaphysical implications, only that they are not themselves metaphysical claims.[8]

Thus, we may contend that metaphysical reflection on scriptural revelation is not, in principle, unacceptable. More than that, though, it is unavoidable. Indeed, Scripture does commend a metaphysic (e.g., the Creator/creature distinction), though of course, as Helm notes, its primary concern is not to provide a formal discourse on metaphysics. The operative question, then, must be, are we following scriptural parameters with respect to our metaphysical reflections on Scripture? Indeed, to be yet more precise, this question must concern itself with discerning whether or not the metaphysical proposal in question actually illumines the joint intent of the various aspects of the biblical data.

What we are specifically speaking of here is known as the retroductive element of theological formulation. Following induction and deduction, retroduction is the model-building component of logical reasoning that attempts to present a comprehensive theory sufficient to account for all the relevant data. Again, as is well illustrated in the case of Trinitarianism, the retroductive procedure understands that when the relevant biblical data are rightly related together, the joint conclusion following from the juxtaposed scriptural truths may yield a model that is itself scriptural in virtue of the synthesis of canonical teaching, though no individual text considered in isolation would be seen to convey the totality of the canonically synthesized model. Of course, it is possible to arrive at incorrect retroductive conclusions, just as one may arrive at an incorrect inductive observation or deductive conclusion. Thus, the retroductive formulation must be accountable to the totality of scriptural teaching, but it does not follow from this that retroduction is, in principle, an invalid procedure.[9]

It is along these lines precisely, then, that we can see that the lack of a direct metaphysical proposition in Scripture, and thus the inability to settle this issue based singularly on the exegesis of an individual text, does not immediately disqualify either impassibility or passibility as unscriptural.[10] In other words, the disqualification or affirmation of one or the other of these views depends not upon the citation of a singular verse, but upon a whole-canon theology of divine emotion. Based on this approach, my contention remains that in this holistic sense it is in fact Scripture that leads us to the conclusion that God is both invulnerable to involuntarily precipitated emotional vicissitude and supremely passionate about his creatures’ practice of obedience and rebellion, as well as their experience of joy and affliction.

Impassibility and Redemptive History

In the attempt to develop this theological hermeneutic concerning the nature of divine emotion, we may begin with a survey of divine impassibility and passion in the broad sweep of redemptive history. The purpose of including this analysis, again, is to ensure that our hermeneutical approach to this question fully integrates Scripture’s broader (and not just narrower) contexts, thus helping us to avoid reductionistic exegesis.[11] Graeme Goldsworthy provides a fitting reminder about the urgency of allowing this kind of hermeneutical interplay.

When the exegete gets down to a close reading of a text, there is always the attendant problem of losing sight of the forest (the big picture) for the trees (close exegesis). Contextual exegesis demands that we refuse to be content with our understanding of an individual text until we understand its place in the entire canon. In biblical theology, synchronic analysis of the theology of individual documents needs to be linked constantly with the diachronic synthesis of the theology of the whole range of biblical literature.[12]

In light of that good counsel, my specific aim in this section is to sketch, in miniature, the duality of divine impassibility and divine passion through the major phases of redemptive history. Though much of what is outlined here will require additional theological expansion further on, beginning with a big-picture glimpse at divine impassibility across the landscape of redemptive history will supply us with the needed interpretive protection to engage individual texts in a biblically balanced manner in the next chapter. If we follow the most basic framework of redemptive history, I suggest that this duality may be seen to unfold along the following lines.

Eternal Intra-Trinitarian Relationality

Prior to and apart from creation, both divine impassibility and divine impassionedness may be found co-terminously in the same act of eternal intra-Trinitarian love (John 3:35; 5:20; 14:31; 17:24). Prior to creation, there exists no creaturely entity that could hope to extract emotion (in this case, either involuntary or otherwise) from the triune fellowship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It would seem also that, within the triune fellowship itself, there would be no emotional fluctuation, but only the perfectly pitched ontology of love, glory, holiness, and intra-Trinitarian delight, from which there would be no occasion to deviate. For in the sinlessly perfect union of the Godhead prior to creation, the perfection of divine love would never have need of receding, for example, in favor of an expression of either wrath or remorse.

And yet, while this pre-creational Trinitarian reality admits of no shadow of emotional turning—for again, on what occasion would the Trinitarian love burn any brighter or dimmer—it does not follow that it is therefore either less than complete when compared to ours or in some sense “unreal.” No, it is not necessarily true that emotional variation, or even emotional volatility, testifies to the strength or fullness (biblically understood) of one’s emotional capacity. I suggest that we are prone to assume the superior strength/fullness of emotional variation because of our own experience. But often what our own experience of emotional variation reveals is the weakness, and not the strength, of our emotional capacity.[13] We see this, for instance, every time our delight to obey God wavers, only to be swallowed up instead in the desire to pursue the fleeting pleasures of sin.

Therefore, we must not conclude that unwavering passion is the antithesis of “real” passion, where the criterion for “real” is the human experience of emotional fluctuation. Rather, in God’s pre-creational existence, the perfectly passionate and perfectly steady expression of intra-Trinitarian love is the epitome and fountainhead of all other forms of passion, whether creaturely reflections by divine image bearers or the expressions of God’s ultimate passionate commitment to his own glory that come to be manifested in relation to a creation fallen into sin and rebellion against its Maker.

Pre-Fall Creation

In the pre-fall environment of Genesis 1 and 2, God remains impassible in that he cannot be forced by his creatures into any involuntary emotional experience. God’s act of creation and his decision to involve himself with his creatures subsequent to creation are both actions of divine freedom (Isa. 66:1–2; Acts 17:24–25; Rom. 11:36). As Karl Barth puts it, “God is not dependent on anything that is not Himself; on anything outside Himself. He is not limited by anything outside Himself, and is not subject to any necessity distinct from Himself. On the contrary, everything that exists is dependent on His will.”[14] And yet that is not all there is to say.[15] For, remarkably, in the aftermath of God’s free decision to create, the impassionedness of God, though it remains ever grounded in the undiminished passion of intra-Trinitarian delight, now begins to find a new outward expression in the voluntary outgoing of divine love toward the created other.[16]

The Fall

As a result of the fall (Genesis 3), God’s emotional expression takes on yet new manifestations in relation to his image-bearing creatures. Now, for the first time, God’s image-bearing creatures have rebelled against their Maker. Therefore, God’s eternal passion for his own glory (e.g., Ex. 20:4–5; 34:14; Deut. 6:4–15; Isa. 48:9–11; John 17:1–5)[17] takes on the expression of justified wrath in the presence of that rebellion (e.g., Rom. 1:18).[18] Divine wrath, then, every bit as much as God’s outwardly focused redemptive love, is grounded in God’s eternally passionate self-commitment. The difference is just that following the entrance of sin, the expression of that foundational passion and character becomes manifest in ways suitable to the situation of human rebellion.

At the same time, however, it is important for us to see that God’s post-fall passion remains an impassible passion, in the long-standing sense we have advocated. That is to say that God’s emotional expression, even in the aftermath of the fall, continues to be voluntary. Everything occurring in creation history is the outworking of God’s eternal intention (e.g., Eph. 1:11). So, God has always purposed to respond volitionally and emotively in just this or that way in the face of given actions by his creatures.[19] In this, then, God remains the initiative bearer. And again, we must maintain that God’s emotional expression of wrath in response to a sinful creation is grounded upon the eternally stable and unwavering reality of God’s intra-Trinitarian love. Yes, God now has occasion to express himself anew in the face of a fallen order, but this new emotional manifestation does not arise from a varying ultimate principle of divine passion.[20] In other words, God’s emotionally varying responsiveness to his creatures’ status in a fallen world is perfectly expressive of his unwavering passion of intra-Trinitarian character. Seen in this light, the manifestation of God’s eternally holy love in the expression of wrath against sinful creatures is ultimately a testimony to the strength and utter stability of divine emotion.[21]

Redemption

From the protoevangelium of Genesis 3:15 all the way until the final consummation of the eschaton, it is the zenith of grace that, though God was not obliged to intercede, he did not leave mankind under the wrathful condemnation of their sin, but instead provided a way in which sinners may be reconciled to God.[22] From the standpoint of divine passion, this means that now as sinners move from their sinful rebellion to repentance and forgiveness, God’s emotive response likewise parallels his volitional response to repentant sinners. That is, just as surely as God’s in-time volitional response to a newly redeemed sinner shifts from a posture of judgment to one of forgiveness, God’s in-time emotive response to a newly redeemed sinner shifts from a posture of wrath to a posture of loving acceptance.[23]

Here we begin especially to grasp something of the complexity of God’s passionate relation to the created order—a complexity that is one biblical element protecting us from an anthropocentric reading and instead requiring an analogical interpretation of divine-emotion texts. Indeed, the reality is even more complex than I have just described in the preceding paragraph, for it is God’s love, even toward his fallen creatures (e.g., John 3:16), that initiates the offer of grace to them in the first place.[24] And this outward disposition of redemptive love occurs simultaneously, and without conflict, with his unremitting wrath against sinners. So, it is hardly the case that sinners inadvertently stumble upon the mechanism of repentance, in turn setting off a stunned and perhaps unexpected divine response of compassion and forgiveness to the unanticipated gesture of human contrition. Rather, God, who is rightly angered at sin, is also the one who lovingly initiates the offer of his grace to undeserving sinners in order that he may respond to them with compassion and forgiveness when they turn from their sin in repentance and faith to receive his gracious provision.[25]

Additionally, in this redemptive period of the “already and not yet,” justified sinners continue to experience an ongoing struggle with the flesh. Just on the individual level, this admits of much emotional complexity on the part of God’s engagement. For now we observe (and personally experience) redeemed sinners falling at times into sin (e.g., Gal. 3:1–3), whereupon God must look at them with both tenderness and harshness because, though they are covered with the righteousness of Christ, their sin nevertheless still produces a relational offense to God.[26] Add to that the observation that God is perfectly and simultaneously responsive to all of his image-bearing creatures—whether unredeemed, newly repentant, backsliding saints struggling with sin, or long maturing believers—with all of the emotional diversity required thereby. Again, I say, though there is evident analogy with human emotional experience, this complexity clearly precludes us from conceiving the divine emotional capacity univocally along anthropocentric lines.[27]

These observations lend credence to the notion that God’s redemptive emotions are not involuntarily extracted from him by his creatures. For ultimately it is God’s loving initiative—both volitional and emotional—that first provides sinners with the opportunity for redemption and then subsequently responds to the ebb and flow of sinful humanity. In this, God’s relationally redemptive responsiveness remains grounded in his eternally perfect passion. In other words, God’s varying emotional response to his fallen and repentant creatures is the in-time expression of his eternal character and passion. The temporal fluctuation is secured in virtue of the fact that God’s commitment to his own glory is perfectly and eternally unwavering.

In all of this, it is critically instructive to point out the centrality of covenant relationship. God’s relationship to his people is, according to Scripture, a covenant relationship. While it is not my purpose to supply an exposition of the various biblical covenants—it has already been capably done by others—we cannot neglect to mention this fabric of God’s relationship to mankind in Scripture.[28] We may highlight the overarching theological point behind this relational apparatus by citing, with approval, the following observation by Michael Horton:

God is bound by his nature, but only by his nature. But just so, God is bound to us (better, has bound himself to us) by a free decision to enter into covenant with us and with the whole creation. God is not free to act contrary to such covenantal guarantees because doing so would entail the violation not only of his decision but of his nature, particularly his faithfulness.[29]

Again, given the nature of divinely initiated covenant relationship with humanity, we must not rush headlong into an anthropocentrically conceived belief about divine relationality, without understanding the very covenant framework in which it is essentially bound up.

On this point, one of the most crucial features to observe about the biblical structure of covenant relationship is that the creature has no intrinsic claim on God the Creator, and so the only reason we may have relationship with God is that he has freely chosen to bind himself in faithfulness for our good. What this is not is a peer-to-peer relationship. Indeed, this relationship even exceeds the more analogous king-vassal form of many of the ancient Near Eastern covenant patterns that are structurally similar to the biblical covenants. Yes, beyond even that, God’s covenantal invitation to us signifies the gracious condescension of one who metaphysically stoops, as it were, to love us. Indeed, without at all invoking a Platonic metaphysic, we may rightly acknowledge that God is the one being who engages us from the posture of a higher ontological order.

New Creation

Though the biblical teaching treating the new creation (e.g., Revelation 21–22; Isa. 65:17–25) is sparser than that covering the period between the fall and the eschaton, certain findings related to the doctrine of divine impassibility nevertheless seem reasonably clear. For example, in the new heavens and earth, it follows from what we have already seen that certain of God’s redemptive emotional fluctuations will cease when the sinful created order is restored and the age of salvific opportunity is no more. God’s wrath of course will burn eternally toward the unrepentant in hell (e.g., Matt. 25:41–46; 2 Thess. 1:5–9), just as his delight in the redeemed of heaven will not waver. But in that day, all the destinies will be fixed (Heb. 9:27). There will be no more sinners moving into repentance (Luke 16:19–31) and no more of the redeemed stumbling through a period of backsliding (1 John 3:2). Thus there will no longer be the possibility of God’s moving from an emotive posture of wrath toward one of mercy or vice versa in response to any individual.

Moreover, God’s impassibility, once again, will not have to be forsaken in this era of redemptive history in order for this passionate display to occur. The redeemed will not be able to claim that they have extracted an involuntary emotion of delight from God, as if God were uncertain of the outcome of their salvation (Phil. 1:6). Nor will the condemned have the pleasure of knowing that they caused God to rage against his ultimate will (Rom. 9:15–24). Rather, as with the other epochs we have surveyed, it seems best to conclude of the eschaton that God will remain both impassible and impassioned in the senses we have been advocating.

Interpreting the Language of Divine Passion: The Importance of Analogy

Before launching into an interpretive analysis of theologically relevant texts, we must spend a moment expanding upon the biblically necessitated method of analogical interpretation that I have only gestured at up to this point.[30] To begin, in the simplest terms, we are forced to think with careful precision about God’s experience of emotion precisely because it is a divine, and not a human, experience of emotion. Moving a step further into this reflection, we must keep in mind that, when it comes to God’s relationship to creation, he not only is engaging with his people in the redemptive economy, but also stands over redemptive history as the one who has ordained all that has taken place, the nature of his responsive engagement included.[31] In his own terms, Horton makes a similar point by commending to us a covenant theology that

focuses on the dynamic outworking of God’s redemptive plan in concrete history, taking very seriously the twists and turns in the road—including God’s responses to human beings. But it does so without denying the clear biblical witness to the fact that God transcends these historical relationships. Transcendence and immanence are not antithetical categories for us, compelling us to choose one over another.[32]

As Horton suggests here, it is Scripture itself that gives rise to analogical interpretation. Fundamentally, this observation is grounded not in an alien metaphysical presupposition, but in the Creator/creature distinction. This distinction, in turn, uniquely gives rise to a transcendence/immanence balance that avoids the twin pitfalls of hyper-transcendence and hyper-immanence. Spiraling off of the Creator/creature distinction and arising throughout the Scriptures, there are a number of teachings about God—for example, the aforementioned transcendence/immanence balance, incorporeality, self-sufficiency, eternality, omniscience, exhaustive sovereignty, immutability, intra-Trinitarian love and holiness[33]—that place hermeneutical constraints on the way we interpret God-language in general, and for our purposes, the language of divine passion in particular. These factors and others like them led our forebears, as I believe they should also lead us, to expect some (but not complete) dissimilarity in how emotion-laden predicates apply to God and humans. Recognizing that humans are made in the imago Dei, we also expect some (but not complete) similarity. Again, it is this scriptural and theological framework that requires the method of analogical interpretation.

At this point, in order to continue this analysis with yet more precision, we need to make some comments on the connection of analogical God-language to the doctrine of accommodated revelation more broadly. Simply put, all Scripture presents us with revelation accommodated to human understanding. At one level, this is rather obvious. For, if God were to speak to us in some sort of heavenly language, none of us could hope to understand any of it.[34] It is precisely at this point, however, that we must proceed with great care, for sometimes theologians have reasoned as though the accommodated revelation of God in Scripture justifies our theologizing about God anthropocentrically.[35] But that is precisely not the point of accommodated revelation.

Rather, our need of God’s accommodated self-disclosure serves to remind us that there are crucial dissimilarities between the Creator and his creatures. God’s thoughts and knowledge vastly transcend our own (Pss. 139:6; 147:5; Isa. 55:8–9; 1 Cor. 2:9–11), and we would have no hope of knowing him apart from his gracious self-revelation.[36] On the other hand, there is a similarity criterion established not only in the fact of God’s self-revelation to humanity, but also in making mankind in the “image” and “likeness” of God (Gen. 1:26), whereby man is fitted to receive the accommodated revelation God has provided. As A. B. Caneday nicely puts it:

God made mankind in his image and likeness. Therefore, God reveals himself to us with reference to ourselves. The image of God is his revelatory nexus integrated into our very being. He discloses himself to us with reference to his likeness in us. Thus, apart from this first analogical revelation imprinted upon us, we would know nothing about God.[37]

To take our handling of accommodated revelation a step further, we may benefit from John Frame’s attempt at clarifying proper senses in which we should understand scriptural God-language as both anthropomorphic and theomorphic. He reasons as follows:

All Scripture is written in human language, not some divine language. God’s revelation is “accommodated” as Calvin liked to say, to human understanding.. . . This is the only kind of revelation there is.. . . All human language is taken from human life. But all human language is also God’s creation, given to us not only to communicate earthly realities, but also to reveal God to us.. . . We should not think of human language as if it were wholly concerned with the creation and therefore has to be twisted, qualified, or taken figuratively in order to refer to God. All human language is anthropomorphic; but more fundamentally it is, like the creation itself, theomorphic.[38]

Stated differently, I suggest that we think of God’s self-revelation as anthropomorphic in the order of knowing and theomorphic in the order of being.[39] That is to say that we can understand God’s revelation because it comes to us in an accommodated form using human language. But undergirding that is the reality that all of God’s creation, including human beings (imago Dei) and human language, is first of all, as Frame says, theomorphic.

Thus, in the realm of emotion, we can understand something of what it means for God to exhibit emotion because he has disclosed this of himself using human language. It would be a huge mistake, however, to attempt to fill out our understanding of divine emotion by univocally extrapolating from our experience of emotion and applying that to God on a larger scale. Instead, I submit that the order of being (the ontology of the matter) moves from the Creator, as the point of origin, to the creature, as the reflection or image. So, then, it is God who, in fact, is most perfectly passionate, and we the creatures have the God-given (or theomorphic) capacity—diminished, though not obliterated, by sin—to reflect that passion in a creaturely manner.

We must now make a brief comment about the truth-value of analogical God-language, for it is sometimes thought that “analogical” equates to nonliteral or even untruthful. Here I must stress that I am not using the term analogical as the opposite of the term literal. Moreover, I do not believe that there is a necessary disjunction between those two terms. In fact, I concur with Michael Horton’s argument that scriptural God-language may be (and often is) both analogical and literal.[40] To elaborate on this construct with an example for a moment, I would argue that, in the case of an anthropomorphism narrowly defined, describing God as possessing an outstretched arm (e.g., Ex. 6:6) is an example of nonliteral speech applied to God, because of divine incorporeality. However, even this recognition does not undermine the truth-value of the revelation about God. The question is simply one of authorial intent: what does the author want us to understand about God in Exodus 6:6 when he is described with an outstretched arm? The answer of course is not that God has a fleshly appendage, but that he is strong to deliver his people. Now, when we shift over to a consideration of divine love, for example, we should understand that, theomorphically speaking, love does refer literally to God because God is a personal being. Corporeality is thus a prerequisite of having a literal arm; it is not, however, a prerequisite of literally expressing love. To put it yet another way, divine incorporeality leads us to the conclusion that anthropomorphisms are analogical and nonliteral (though nevertheless truth bearing), whereas anthropopathisms are analogical and literal.

All of that is to say, then, that analogical God-language does not at all undermine the truth-value of the revelation. It merely reflects the fact that the statement in question is accommodated. The point, according to Horton, is that analogical revelation “is correct description, but not univocal description.”[41] For our purposes, then, we should affirm that the emotional predications of God in Scripture refer literally and truthfully to him. Thus God is truly impassioned. At the same time, the truth of these predications is analogical, in that the meaning of these terms when applied to God is both similar and dissimilar to how the truth of these terms applies to humans. God literally and truthfully loves his creation. But what it means for God the Creator to love the created other involves some important dissimilarities from any expression of creaturely love—not the least of which is the sense of impassibility for which we have been arguing, namely, that God’s love (or any of his other ad extra emotional expressions) cannot be wrung from him involuntarily. Finally, we must also recall that, in deference to biblical authority, we are not at liberty to pick or privilege our own preferred analogical emphases within Scripture. In order to practice analogical interpretation on scriptural terms and thus avoid the establishment of our own preferred canon within the canon, we must take all of the analogies together.[42]

[1]It is neither necessary nor desirable, therefore, to drift over into the formulation of contemporary passibilism in order to affirm a meaningful—or more importantly, a biblical—sense of divine passion.

[2]Recall my distinction at the end of the previous chapter between developing and revising. I undertake the expansion in my remaining chapters with the mind-set of a developer.

[3]We may remind ourselves that many of the modern passibilists appear to have argued back from the subsidiary point of suffering to the main category of passibility. As was noted in the previous chapter, however, Marcel Sarot has rightly identified divine emotion as the focal point of the debate over divine impassibility. Marcel Sarot, God, Passibility and Corporeality (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1992), 29–30. See also Richard Bauckham’s similar assessment. Richard Bauckham, “‘Only the Suffering God Can Help’: Divine Passibility in Modern Theology,” Themelios 9 (1984): 9. Sarot’s mistake comes in his seeming insistence that impassibility be defined entirely, and only, in terms of the absolute immutability of divine emotion. Recall his assessment that impassibility should be defined as “immutability with regard to one’s feelings, or the quality of one’s inner life.” Sarot, God, Passibility and Corporeality, 30. Now it is true—and this will be expounded further on—that there is an important sense in which we should conceive of the essential immutability of divine emotion. But if that is all that we recognize, then we have not understood enough. The remaining chapters of this book will seek to expound this duality, and more particularly, the way in which divine impassibility is the very foundation that gives rise to God’s perfectly fitted emotional and relational responses to his creatures.

[4]My reflections on the incarnational component of this question will come in chap. 10.

[5]The progression of the constructive chapters of this book through a series of considerations on methodology, hermeneutics, and theology reflects a self-conscious attempt to heed Kevin Vanhoozer’s instructive guidance that we treat “the questions of God, Scripture and hermeneutics as one problem,” something that he terms “first theology.” Kevin J. Vanhoozer, First Theology: God, Scripture and Hermeneutics (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2002), 9. Richard Lints would remind us of the related point that to read Scripture in a truly “biblical” manner, that is, to read Scripture as Scripture itself requires, we must account for the “textual,” “epochal,” and “canonical” horizons of Scripture. Richard Lints, The Fabric of Theology: A Prolegomenon to Evangelical Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993; repr., Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1999), 259–311.

[6]Though all of the following will be expanded upon in due course, it seems fitting to anticipate a possible objection on the grounds of the abundance of scriptural displays of divine emotion. For several reasons, the fact that Scripture contains many narrative depictions of divine emotional involvement with creation does not itself decide the matter in favor of passibility. First, since these narrative portrayals are not archetypal, metaphysical statements about the nature of the divine emotive capacity, they cannot serve as straightforward proof-texts of an archetypal, metaphysical understanding of the divine emotive capacity. This is hardly to suggest that such narrative statements are not truth bearing, but to get at their truth content, we must examine their purpose in the covenantal context of God’s gracious relation toward humanity. If we want to know their authorially intended truth content, we must first ask what function they bear in this context. Second, I will argue below that even the biblical descriptions of divine emotion ground the covenant-relational passion of God in the economy on his eternally unwavering passion in the Trinity. Third, these narrative descriptions of divine emotion are themselves complemented by narrative depictions of God’s transcendent lordship over creation, and thus the former category may not, on biblical grounds, be interpreted irrespective of the latter category. The method of analogical interpretation recognizes these two mutually interpreting sets of biblical data and proceeds accordingly. Passibilism and extreme impassibilism do not.

[7]In the case of contemporary passibilism, it is interesting to observe the following inconsistency: On the one hand, as we have pointed out, passibilists often suggest that they are suspicious of metaphysical reflection. On the other hand, they are very quick to appeal to Scripture’s many narrative depictions of God’s emotional involvement with creation as grounds for the metaphysical doctrine of divine passibility. That is to say that when passibilists claim that the divine affective capacity is constituted as they understand it, the doctrine of divine passibility is itself the product of second-order metaphysical reflection on (one side of, as we shall see) the biblical narrative. It seems that at least some passibilists, then, may be unaware of the fact that they themselves depend on metaphysical reflection to arrive at their doctrinal conclusion. Of course, we have also seen that many passibilists have intentionally and aggressively adopted an anticlassical metaphysic to undergird their views.

[8]Paul Helm, “The Impossibility of Divine Passibility,” in The Power and Weakness of God: Impassibility and Orthodoxy, ed. Nigel M. de S. Cameron (Edinburgh: Rutherford House, 1990), 135. John Feinberg concurs. See John S. Feinberg, No One Like Him (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2001), 237–38.

[9]For a more detailed statement about the nature of this methodological procedure, see John W. Montgomery, “The Theologian’s Craft: A Discussion of Theory Formation and Theory Testing in Theology,” in The Suicide of Christian Theology, ed. John W. Montgomery (Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, 1970), 267–313.

[10]Millard J. Erickson, God the Father Almighty: A Contemporary Exploration of the Divine Attributes (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998), 143–44. Note the similar observation in Kelly James Clark, “Hold Not Thy Peace at My Tears: Methodological Reflection on Divine Impassibility,” in Our Knowledge of God, ed. Kelly James Clark (Boston: Kluwer, 1992), 188. Though they are not directed specifically at the issue of divine impassibility, note also the more generic statements of similar sentiment in Gerald L. Bray, “Has the Christian Doctrine of God Been Corrupted by Greek Philosophy?,” in God Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents God, ed. Douglas S. Huffman and Eric L. Johnson (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 109; and in R. P. C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy, 318–381 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988; repr., Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005), xxi.

[11]Here it is important to remind the reader of my evangelical assumptions about the nature of Scripture (e.g., divine inspiration, overarching unity amid diversity) noted in chap. 1.

[12]Graeme Goldsworthy, “The Ontological and Systematic Roots of Biblical Theology,” The Reformed Theological Review 62 (2003): 154.

[13]Augustine well illustrated this point with a parallel observation related to God’s omnipotence. He reports, “Neither is His power diminished when we say that He cannot die or fall into error,—for this is in such a way impossible to Him, that if it were possible for Him, He would be of less power. But assuredly He is rightly called omnipotent, though He can neither die nor fall into error. For he is called omnipotent on account of His doing what He wills, not on account of His suffering what He wills not; for if that should befall Him, He would by no means be omnipotent. Wherefore, He cannot do some things for the very reason that He is omnipotent.” Augustine, De civitate Dei 5.10; trans. Marcus Dods, NPNF^1, 2:92. In other words, the fact that we as humans can do certain things that God cannot do—e.g., die, fall into error, or be afflicted against our wills—is not an intrinsic testimony to our superiority, but rather a sign of some of our significant frailties. Having said all that, however, I do wish to return to my initial point of human emotional variation and clearly state that I do not intend to absolutize a principle whereby all human emotional variation is a sign of emotional weakness, even though some of it certainly is. In other words, when patterned after God’s own commitment to his glory, our own emotional variation (e.g., experiencing righteous indignation against sin) is sometimes an appropriate testament to our emotional fortitude, biblically speaking.

[14]Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics [CD], ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance, vol. 2, The Doctrine of God, pt. 1, trans. T. H. L. Parker et al. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1957), 560.

[15]Nor, of course, is it all that Barth himself had to say on the matter. Although Barth evidently (and mistakenly; see following quote) attributes to the mainstream impassibility tradition a belief in impassivity, it appears that he may nevertheless be classified as a proponent of the two-pronged model: “The personal God has a heart. He can feel, and be affected. He is not impassible. He cannot be moved from outside by an extraneous power. But this does not mean that He is not capable of moving Himself. No, God is moved and stirred, yet not like ourselves in powerlessness, but in His own free power, in His innermost being: moved and touched by Himself, i.e., open, ready, inclined (propensus) to compassion with another’s suffering and therefore to assistance, impelled to take the initiative to relieve this distress.. . . God finds no suffering in Himself. And no cause outside God can cause Him suffering if He does not will it so.. . . The ‘affection’ of God is different from all creaturely affections in that it originates in Himself. But in this sense it cannot be denied.” Barth, CD, 2/1:370–71. Note how Barth defends the content of the classical model of impassibility, while also asserting that God “is not impassible.” In concept, therefore—though his use of terminology is less than desirable—Barth is denying extreme impassibility and affirming classical impassibility. For a plausible interpretation of Barth on this matter, see John M. Russell, “Impassibility and Pathos in Barth’s Idea of God,” Anglican Theological Review 70 (1988): 221–27.

[16]Surely, this outgoing of God’s love toward creation is part of the thematic, even if not lexical, emphasis of Gen. 1:31—“And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.” This is similarly apparent in the more detailed narrative of God’s creation of Adam and Eve in Genesis 2.

[17]Erik Thoennes provides us with an instructive reminder when we come to consider biblical passages that convey God’s passion (i.e., his jealousy) for his own glory. “Because the theology of the Bible unfolds within human history, God’s character is usually revealed in the context of his relationship with humanity. So, as would be expected within this salvation history scheme, the majority of divine jealousy passages have God’s people as the focus. Although God’s self-directed jealousy is foundational for all other types of godly jealousy, passages where God’s own honor is emphasized are not as common or consistently found through all parts of Scripture.. . . This does not make God’s jealousy for his own glory any less significant or foundational, it merely points to the historical nature of God’s revelation of himself.” K. Erik Thoennes, Godly Jealousy: A Theology of Intolerant Love (Ross-shire: Mentor, 2005), 32–33.

[18]Clearly, God’s display of wrath toward his image-bearing creatures is depicted narratively in accord with the judgment dispensed in Genesis 3.

[19]Much more on this, of course, is forthcoming in the systematic formulation in chap. 9.

[20]As we will see, this statement is true of all God’s forms of emotional engagement within the created order, whether benevolent or condemning.

[21]As it has been stated on a few occasions prior to this, God’s emotional responsiveness toward his creation is perfectly fitted. Thus, divine wrath is the appropriate, and not excessive, response to creaturely sin and rebellion. Accordingly, God’s wrath should not be misinterpreted along the lines of our experience of “losing it” or “flying off the handle.”

[22]For our purposes, I am leaving this heading of “Redemption” very broad. Obviously, although there is an overarching redemptive continuity, it is widely understood that this category of redemption could be subdivided into smaller epochs or administrations of the plan of redemption.

[23]Bruce Ware nicely demonstrates this divine responsiveness by pointing out the transition that occurs in God, when moving from Rom. 1:18 (“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth”) to Rom. 5:1 (“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ”), and similarly from Eph. 2:3 (“among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind”) to Eph. 2:7 (“so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus”). Bruce A. Ware, God’s Greater Glory: The Exalted God of Scripture and the Christian Faith (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2004), 142.

[24]Amazingly, the doctrine of God’s love involves yet more complexity, some of which we will return to in our textual examinations and theological formulations to follow.

[25]This point may be illustrated from numerous soteriological perspectives, for example, the nature of new covenant transformation (Jer. 31:31–34; Ezek. 36:22–28), election (Eph. 1:3–6), regeneration (John 3:3–8), etc. Perhaps it is even clearer still in the teaching of Rom. 5:8 that “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

[26]The logic that opposes the errant doctrine of eternal justification is valid here as well. The doctrine of eternal justification wrongly maintains that because an individual is elect before the foundation of the earth, he is therefore eternally justified, which is to say, eternally a believer. But that, of course, is not so. Even the elect are born into the world not as justified believers, but as “children of wrath” (Eph. 2:3), who need at some point in time to become justified by faith if they are to be saved. Similarly, we should not conclude that the ongoing struggle with sin of one who has already been justified is not offensive to God at the time the sin is committed, because the person committing the sin is justified. Paul’s argument in Romans 6 seems, at least implicitly, to reject this argument.

[27]I should clarify here that I am intentionally using the term anthropocentric in a sense that should be distinguished from anthropomorphic. That is to say, I am using anthropocentric as a synonym of univocal, in which a supposed understanding of God’s emotions would be reasoned to on the basis of human experience. This sense of anthropocentricism may be contrasted with a focused sense of anthropomorphism, which ascribes nonliteral corporeal features to God in the service of conveying a particular point. I will offer more extended comments on the importance of this kind of hermeneutical issue in the section below on analogical interpretation. For now, it will suffice to reiterate that I am proposing to avoid this kind of anthropocentric reading of divine emotion.

[28]One such capable treatment of the biblical covenants can be found in W. J. Dumbrell, Covenant and Creation: A Theology of the Old Testament Covenants (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1984). Since I am only now, in this section on redemption, treating the biblical concept of covenant relationship, some may wonder whether I do not acknowledge a pre-fall creation covenant. In response, I would briefly say that though Scripture does not explicitly state the presence of a pre-fall creation covenant, I do recognize its implicit presence. For more on the presence of a pre-fall creation covenant, see especially chap. 1 of Dumbrell’s book. The debate over whether such a covenant should be understood as a covenant of works, as it is sometimes explained, must remain a discussion for another occasion.

[29]Michael S. Horton, Lord and Servant: A Covenant Christology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005), 33. This very fine statement anticipates some of our systematic theological reflections on the relation of divine immutability and divine impassibility, which in turn will help us to avoid dichotomizing the capacities of divine volition and divine affection.

[30]It is not my purpose to trace the formal history of or the technical debates over the doctrine of analogy. For a thorough discussion of analogical language and its accompanying debates, see Michael S. Horton, Covenant and Eschatology: The Divine Drama (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002). To quote Horton in another context, however, we may point out one feature of the Reformed view of analogy that is axiomatic for my own view. He observes, “One important difference between the Thomist and Reformed approaches to analogy is that the latter is suspicious of the claim that we can know what God is not (via negationis) any more than we can know what God is, apart from God’s own self-disclosure in revelation. We cannot start with our idea of perfect being, in a way either of eminence or negation.” Horton, Lord and Servant, 29, italics his. This, of course, is not to say that God is not the most perfect being; only that the categories of perfection must themselves be supplied to us from God’s self-revelation in Scripture. Finally, I should point out that, on a purely terminological level, my embrace of analogical interpretation seemingly puts me at odds with a theologian like Carl F. H. Henry, someone for whom I have the utmost regard. See, for example, his comment that “only univocal assertions protect us from equivocacy; only univocal knowledge is, therefore, genuine and authentic knowledge.. . . Unless we have some literal truth about God, no similarity between man and God can in fact be predicated.” Carl F. H. Henry, God, Revelation and Authority, vol. 3, God Who Speaks and Shows: Fifteen Theses, Part Two (Waco, TX: Word, 1979; repr., Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1999), 364. On a conceptual level, however, I believe that my explanation to follow will demonstrate that I have not relinquished what Henry sought to protect, namely, a proper sense of the incomprehensibility of God. It seems clear from Henry’s statement that he has equated univocal with literal and analogical with nonliteral. I do not make such an equation between these terms, however, and in fact I will argue below that to force a necessary disjunction between analogical and literal is mistaken.

[31]As I have intimated above and will expand upon further on, this kind of observation helps establish the analogical point that while God in his voluntary emotional engagements with his creatures in the economy of salvation is certainly responsive (similarity), since he also transcends those very relationships that he has ordained, his responsiveness should not be seen either as involuntarily extracted or as the equivalent to passivity (dissimilarity).

[32]Michael S. Horton, “Hellenistic or Hebrew? Open Theism and Reformed Theological Method,” in Beyond the Bounds: Open Theism and the Undermining of Biblical Christianity, ed. John Piper, Justin Taylor, and Paul Kjoss Helseth (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2003), 208.

[33]Each of these doctrines and its impact on the impassibility question in particular will be explored in more detail in the theological formulation of chap. 9.

[34]For the relevant citations and a discussion of Calvin’s famous treatment of accommodated revelation, refer back to the analysis of Calvin in chap. 4.

[35]A. B. Caneday shows how Open Theist John Sanders steps into this trap. A. B. Caneday, “Veiled Glory: God’s Self-Revelation in Human Likeness—A Biblical Theology of God’s Anthropomorphic Self-Disclosure,” in Piper, Taylor, and Helseth, Beyond the Bounds, 155–56. Additionally, it seems that the passibilistic reading of Scripture and the passibilistic understanding of divine love and responsiveness discussed in chap. 5 of this study display this error in abundance. There we saw that passibilists often appear to tend more toward univocal interpretation because they build more exclusively on one half of the balance, namely, the similarity springing from our status as imago Dei. Recall that for my purposes I am using the term anthropocentric as a synonym of univocal, and thus distinguishing it from anthropomorphism specifically.

[36]Because of God’s self-revelation, we can know God truly, as Scripture itself indicates (Deut. 29:29; Jer. 9:23–24; 31:31–34; John 17:3; 1 John 2:3; 4:7–8), though not exhaustively. I will provide an additional comment on the proper sense of divine incomprehensibility below.

[37]Caneday, “Veiled Glory,” 170.

[38]John M. Frame, The Doctrine of God (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2002), 367–68. Clearly, Frame is here using the term anthropomorphic in a broader sense than in the more common (and narrower sense) in which an anthropomorphism depicts God, in nonliteral fashion, as having human bodily characteristics. His point is simply that all of scriptural revelation is anthropomorphic in the broader sense that it is given in human (and not divine) language, while human language is ultimately theomorphic in that, “like the rest of creation,” it comes to us from God, bearing his imprint. Similarly, see e.g., J. I. Packer, “The Adequacy of Human Language,” in Inerrancy, ed. Norman L. Geisler (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1980), 214–16.

[39]My intent here in using the term anthropomorphic in this way is simply to capitalize on Frame’s precedent in using the terminology this way. Though I understand and agree with the way he is using his terms here, I will more customarily reserve the term anthropomorphism for the more specific sense of describing God nonliterally, with some form of corporeal characteristic.

[40]Horton, Covenant and Eschatology, 50–54, 75–76, 84–85. On p. 52, Horton distances his analogical/literal view from the analogical/mythological view of Langdon Gilkey. His point is that Gilkey equates univocal with literal, so that when Gilkey himself moves to adopt an analogical model, he assumes that it cannot be literal (and so must be symbolic or mythological) because it is not univocal. In this respect, Horton observes that Gilkey’s move displays “a surprising unfamiliarity with the clearly stated positions of medieval scholastics, the Reformers, and their own scholastic successors.” On p. 75 Horton adds, “. . . ‘literal’ is not synonymous with ‘univocal.’ In analogical language particularly, as applied to interpreting scripture, certain characteristics ascribed to God are meant to be taken literally.. . . That determination rests on the goal of the text. What really counts is not what signs or even genres ‘mean’ in the abstract, but how they are used.” To stress the point once more, on p. 84, Horton states, “An apt analogy picks out literal predicates, but God’s acting and God’s embracing or loving (or, for that matter, God’s being good, just, etc.) are both like and unlike an embodied . . . agent’s.”

[41]Horton, “Hellenistic or Hebrew?,” 210. Since it is not my intention to provide an extended engagement with the debate over divine incomprehensibility, I will make a brief comment here, followed by the citation of a couple of similar scholarly observations on the matter. First, my own comment: In harmony with this analogical method, I should point out that I differentiate two senses of divine incomprehensibility, one that I reject and one that I accept. Because God has seen fit to reveal himself to us, I reject incomprehensibility when it is held to mean that God is entirely unintelligible. On the other hand, because God’s self-revelation is analogical, I also reject the belief that we can know God exhaustively. Thus, the definition of incomprehensibility that I accept in relation to God is that of unfathomability. Hence, while we may know God truly in accord with his self-revelation, we may never hope to exhaustively fathom the depths of God. John Frame commends a similar understanding. He says, “We should think of God’s incomprehensibility, then, not as a ‘wholly otherness,’ but as the result of transcendence in the biblical sense: God has control and authority over creaturely knowledge. So his thoughts are not our thoughts, and his mystery permeates our knowledge. This kind of incomprehensibility does not compromise God’s knowability. Rather, God’s incomprehensible nature becomes immanent in his revelation of himself.” Frame, The Doctrine of God, 207. As Herman Bavinck puts it, “The ectypal knowledge of God that is granted to creatures by revelation is not the absolute self-knowledge of God but the knowledge of God as it has been accommodated to and made fit for the finite consciousness—hence anthropomorphized.” Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 1, Prolegomena, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 214.

[42]The following quotation of Michael Horton, used previously in chap. 5 to critique Terence Fretheim’s proposal, is fitting here as well: “Here the analogy of Scripture becomes essential. We might even call it, somewhat awkwardly, the analogy of analogy. No single analogy, abstracted from the rest, adequately represents God’s character. Only taken together as one multifaceted self-revelation do the analogies effectively render a sufficient knowledge of God.” Horton, “Hellenistic or Hebrew?,” 221–22.

8

Impassible and Impassioned

Interpretive Prospects

A Select Consideration of Relevant Biblical Data

Now that we have sketched the contours of an appropriate theological hermeneutic, we must turn our attention to a survey of the relevant biblical data. What makes this seem such a daunting task is that the Bible presents us with two sets of data (i.e., transcendence and immanence). As I have been suggesting, and as we will now begin to see more clearly, this duality in the biblical data is not a reflection of intrascriptural conflict; rather, it portrays a particular—though to us it may seem counterintuitive—relationship between God’s impassibility and his passion, namely, one in which the latter is grounded on the former. My goal in this chapter is not to ask whether these emotional predications apply literally to God. As I have already suggested, they do.[1] Instead, my primary objective, in accord with our theological hermeneutic sketched above, is to demonstrate that these literal predications of divine passion are analogically, and not univocally, true of God. As we navigate this balance, it will be critical to keep in mind the covenant context within which God’s relational and emotional interchanges with his creatures come to pass.

Before attending to the interpretive task, though, I should procedurally acknowledge that the textual engagement that follows is necessarily selective. I will not supply every biblical category of divine emotion, and I certainly will not examine every text in which God displays his affective covenant responsiveness. Passages portraying God’s affective engagement are legion, and it is an understatement to say that there is insufficient space here to treat them all. I do intend, however, to treat certain key texts representatively. What we learn from the passages we survey will be suggestive as to the plausible interpretation of other similar passages that are not explicitly considered. Thus, though our interpretive analysis will not be exhaustive, it will strongly gesture in the direction of the two-pronged model.

Divine Invulnerability

My use of the term invulnerability here is an attempt to reflect the sense of God’s insusceptibility to involuntary manipulation (emotional or otherwise) that we have been stressing in our understanding of divine impassibility.[2] Thus, I recognize that while, as noted in the preceding chapter, Scripture never makes a direct assertion of a metaphysical doctrine of divine impassibility, it does instruct us as to this kind of divine invulnerability, which again is at the very core of our definition.[3] Briefly tracing this line of biblical teaching, then, will protect us from errantly drawing univocal conclusions, from our own emotional experience, about God’s experience of emotion. Since each of the categories here considered under the heading of divine invulnerability will be taken up more fully in the theological formulation of chapter 9, my aim for the moment is limited. Here, I wish only to preface our consideration of the biblical data on divine emotion with a brief consideration of the biblical evidence of divine invulnerability.[4] That is to say, it is my desire to show that my insistence on divine invulnerability does indeed derive ultimately from Scripture and not from anyone’s philosophical speculation or theological imagination.

Transcendence

While more remains to be said, it will suffice for the moment to note that it is the act of creation that founds both God’s transcendence and immanence.[5] It founds God’s transcendence in that it reveals his ontological otherness (Pss. 33:13–15; 113:4–6),[6] as well as his rights of lordship over creation (Ps. 33:6–9; Isa. 43:6–7; Acts 14:15; Rev. 4:11).[7] The very same act of creation founds God’s immanence, not in the necessary sense that God is metaphysically obligated to involve himself in creation, but in the sense of his free decision to give himself fully to his own handiwork (Acts 17:24–31). The Creator/creature distinction, then, is the fountainhead of a biblically balanced understanding of transcendence and immanence, the likes of which can be clearly seen in both of the following passages:

For thus says the One who is high and lifted up,

who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy:

“I dwell in the high and holy place,

and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit,

to revive the spirit of the lowly,

and to revive the heart of the contrite.” (Isa. 57:15)

Know therefore today, and lay it to your heart, that the LORD is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other. (Deut. 4:39)

In this vein, then, we will not be surprised to see that the Creator/creature distinction, and the transcendence/immanence balance that follows from it, also gives rise to the dual model of divine impassibility and divine passion. For this model similarly recognizes that the creature has no intrinsic claim, whether affective or volitional, on his Maker (e.g., Isa. 45:9; Rom. 9:20). It is only as a consequence of God’s free decision to involve himself in creation and relate to his creatures that such an interchange becomes possible for the creature. The primary point for our purposes now is that the creature cannot affect God against his will. In the next chapter, however, we will need to return and treat the significance of this Creator/creature distinction in yet more detail, for getting it right proves to be something of a watershed issue for this (and many other) doctrines.

Self-Sufficiency

Not only do the Scriptures attest God’s self-existence, in the sense that he does not owe his existence to anyone or anything else (Isa. 44:24; John 5:26); they also attest his self-sufficiency. That is to say, Scripture also teaches that God did not create out of a sense of lack or need. We do not—indeed cannot—contribute to the perfections of God. The rhetorically obvious questions of Isaiah 40 demonstrate this clearly.

Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand

and marked off the heavens with a span,

enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure

and weighed the mountains in scales

and the hills in a balance?

Who has measured the Spirit of the LORD,

or what man shows him his counsel?

Whom did he consult,

and who made him understand?

Who taught him the path of justice,

and taught him knowledge,

and showed him the way of understanding? (Isa. 40:12–14)[8]

For our purposes, then, we may note that while God immanentally and covenantally gives himself in relationship to us, God does not create in order to fill a relational void. Drawing on the same observation of eternal intra-Trinitarian love that we have mentioned a few times now, John Piper instructively comments:

From all eternity, even before there were any human beings to love, God has been overflowingly happy in his love for the Son. He has never been lonely. He has always rejoiced, with overflowing satisfaction, in the glory and partnership of his Son.. . . God is not constrained by any inner deficiency or unhappiness to do anything he does not want to do. If God were unhappy, if he were in some way deficient, then he might indeed be constrained from outside in some way to do what he does not want to do, in order to make up his deficiency and finally to be happy. This is what distinguishes us from God. We have an immense void inside that craves satisfaction from powers and persons and pleasures outside ourselves. Yearning and longing and desire are the very stuff of our nature. We are born deficient and needy and dissatisfied.. . . But God is not like that. He has been complete and overflowing with satisfaction from all eternity.. . . No one can offer anything to him that doesn’t already come from him.. . . So no one can bribe God or coerce him in any way.[9]

Omniscience

The scriptural testimony to God’s omniscience is profound. God is infinite, as it were, in his knowledge (Ps. 147:5; Isa. 40:13–14; Rom. 11:33–36). He has comprehensive knowledge of the past and present (2 Chron. 16:9; Job 28:24; Ps. 139:1–3, 16; Heb. 4:13). And his knowledge of all things actual is equaled by the reach of his knowledge to all things possible (Matt. 11:20–22; 1 Cor. 2:7–8). Moreover, and especially for our purposes, Scripture teaches that God possesses knowledge of the future, including the future actions of his free moral agents (Isa. 46:8–11; Ps. 139:4; Acts 2:23–24).[10] As we will see in the theological formulation of chapter 9, God’s exhaustive foreknowledge entails that God is never surprised into an emotional reaction. The traditional view of God’s exhaustive divine foreknowledge then strongly supports the main point about impassibility that we have been stressing, namely, that God is passionate, but not in such a way that his emotions could be extracted from him against his will.[11]

Sovereignty

In Scripture, God’s absolute sovereignty (Job 42:2; Pss. 33:10–11; 115:2–3; 135:6; 139:16; Prov. 16:4; Isa. 46:9–11; Jer. 23:20; Dan. 4:34–35; Zech. 1:6; Eph. 1:11) extends not only to cover natural processes, such as control of the weather (Ps. 148:8; Matt. 5:45), but also to the actions of humans (Ezra 1:1–4; 6:22; Ps. 105:23–25; Prov. 16:9; 19:21; 21:1, 30–31; Jer. 10:23–24), even including the evil deeds they perform (Deut. 32:39–43; 1 Sam. 2:6–10; Isa. 45:5–7; cf. together Josh. 10:8, 40; 11:20).[12] The scriptural testimony to God’s exhaustive sovereignty, therefore, further undergirds the point we just saw with divine omniscience, namely, that God is invulnerable to involuntary emotional manipulation by his creatures.

Immutability

When we come to examine the interrelation between the closely connected doctrines of immutability and impassibility in more detail below, I will expand on my sense of indebtedness to Bruce Ware’s formulation, whereby God’s ontological (Ps. 102:25–27; Mal. 3:6; James 1:17) and ethical immutability (Num. 23:19; Isa. 46:9–11; Lam. 3:22–23; Rom. 11:29; Heb. 6:13–18) give rise, in the context of covenant relationship, to God’s relational mutability (Jer. 18:7–10; Ezek. 33:1–20).[13] For now, we may simply stress that the biblical teaching on God’s ontological immutability reinforces our point that the prospect of relationship with God comes only in consequence of God’s free decision to enter into a relationship with his creation and bind himself with promises to his image-bearing creatures.

Divine Emotion

As Wayne Grudem points out in his Systematic Theology: “God rejoices (Isa. 62:5). He is grieved (Ps. 78:40; Eph. 4:30). His wrath burns hot against his enemies (Ex. 32:10). He pities his children (Ps. 103:13). He loves with everlasting love (Isa. 54:8; Ps. 103:17).”[14] Additionally, God is alternately said in Scripture to be jealous (Ex. 20:5; 34:14; Zech. 1:14) and compassionate (Ps. 103:8; Jer. 3:12). We could go on and on. Suffice it to say that the biblical portrayal of divine emotion is both powerful and pervasive. One cannot read Scripture and come away with the conclusion that God is affectionless. On the other hand, Scripture itself, as briefly surveyed above, also establishes a framework for us that prevents us from concluding that the passion of God is completely univocal to ours. While we will eventually take up the task of attempting to relate these two lines of biblical data—invulnerability and passion—into a more fleshed-out and precise theological formulation, our aim in the present section will be to read some of the powerful biblical data on divine emotion along the lines of this analogical balance, in accord with the framework of both God’s transcendence and his voluntary covenant relatedness.

What we must take care to remember in this section, then, is that these individual narrative displays of divine emotion are also part of the larger redemptive-historical narrative in which God is working out all his will (e.g., Eph. 1:11). Therefore, they must be interpreted not only in their immediate contexts, but also with reference to their broadly covenantal context, in which God has voluntarily and graciously condescended to make relationship with him possible in the first place.[15] In relation to that, we must also remember that while these narrative texts powerfully attest God’s passion in the economy, they are most often not discrete metaphysical propositions. In other words, as narrative statements of God’s gracious covenant relatedness, these texts tell us that God does indeed express emotion; and we rightly thank God for that. But we must also keep in mind what these texts generally speaking do not do—comment metaphysically on how a divine, triune, self-sufficient, omniscient Creator God experiences emotion. So, if all we ever do is interpret divine-emotion passages in their narrow contexts, then we will be able to say that God experiences emotion, but we will have to suspend judgment about the nature of God’s emotional engagement with creation.

A word of warning is apropos at this point, for when it comes down to advancing the best understanding of how God experiences emotion, we are likely to fill out our thinking either by relying on the guidance of our own emotional experience or by relying on a broader theological hermeneutic, the likes of which we described in chapter 7. Those who opt for the guidance of our own experience at this point will probably be prone to assume that the experience of emotion inherently involves involuntary fluctuation and instability. But I would caution us not to read that assumption into the biblical data on divine emotion. For, as we will see, some of the most passionate language for God in Scripture indicates his deepest affective stability. And in light of our theological hermeneutic, we have seen that even where God shows himself responsive in the redemptive economy toward his covenant people, there are good reasons to understand his responsiveness as both passionate and voluntary.

Immanence

As was pointed out above, both divine transcendence and divine immanence are products of the Creator/creature distinction. What the scriptural formulation guards against is thinking, on the one hand, that God’s immanence is necessary or, on the other hand, that God has not seen fit to involve himself in his creation. Recall that Isaiah 57:15 tells us not only that the Holy One “who inhabits eternity” dwells “in the high and holy place,” but also that he dwells

with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit,

to revive the spirit of the lowly,

and to revive the heart of the contrite.

It is crucial to the task at hand, therefore, to note that God’s immanence is a product of divine freedom and not divine necessity. We should understand God’s involvement with creation—whether in time, in space, in his self-revelation to us, or especially in salvifically sending his Son—to be fundamentally gracious on the part of God. In what follows, then, we will see, perhaps counterintuitively to our own experience, the stunning way in which God’s economic passion is grounded on his eternal impassibility—an impassibility that is itself stably and utterly passionate.

Intra-Trinitarian Love

We noted previously in our survey of redemptive history that all of God’s relational displays of love toward the creation are grounded on, and not opposed to, the eternal intra-Trinitarian love of God (John 3:35; 5:20; 14:31; 17:24). Here, given our purposes, we may benefit from focusing our attention especially on this connection of the intra-Trinitarian love of God with its subsequent creaturely oriented manifestation as seen particularly in the context of John 17:20–24.

Following the Farewell Discourse, John records Jesus’s High Priestly Prayer in John 17, which itself immediately precedes Jesus’s arrest, trial, beatings, and crucifixion in chapters 18–19. Generally, it is understood that there are three main movements of Jesus’s prayer in John 17: (1) Jesus’s prayer for his own glorification (vv. 1–5), (2) Jesus’s prayer for the disciples present with him (vv. 6–19), and (3) Jesus’s prayer for those who will believe through the ministry of the disciples (vv. 20–26).[16] Our focal portion of Jesus’s prayer comes in the third movement, which John transmits as follows:

I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world (John 17:20–24).

As Jesus prays for these future believers, what quickly becomes apparent is the remarkable motive of his prayer—a motive directly observable in verse 24. After praying for the profound unity of these disciples—indeed a unity that is to reflect in some measure the perfect union of God the Father and God the Son (vv. 21–23)—Jesus then asks, “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me,[17] may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world [ἵνα θεωρῶσιν τὴν δόξαν τὴν ἐμήν, ἣν δέδωκάς μοι ὅτι ἠγάπησάς με πρὸ καταβολῆς κόσμον]” (v. 24).

Jesus’s prayer of salvific love here for these present and future disciples is explicitly connected to the bedrock of intra-Trinitarian love. That is, he does not just pray that believers will go to heaven when they die. He prays that those whom the Father has given to him will be with him in order that they may see the glory that the Father has given the Son because of the Father’s eternal pre-creational love of the Son.[18] In other words, the glory of heaven is the glory of beholding the intra-divine fellowship of love.[19] Thus, as Jesus himself stands at the verge of the cross, he acknowledges that, in an ultimate sense, the salvation of sinners does not simply terminate on them. It is so much more than simply escaping judgment, as glorious as that is. Indeed, the salvation of sinners ends where it began; it proceeds from and terminates on the love and glory of the triune God (cf. 1 Cor. 15:24–28; Phil. 2:9–11).[20]

If we conceptually detach God’s relational display of love in the economy from the perfect existence of triune love for all eternity, then we will undoubtedly miss much of the magnitude of salvation. On the other hand, if we get this point, then perhaps we begin to get just a bit of a taste of “what is the breadth and length and height and depth” of “the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” (Eph. 3:18–19). More specifically for our purposes here, we may also begin to grasp that every divine display of love in the economy proceeds from the initiative of the God who is eternally, perfectly, and unwaveringly passionate in the union of Trinitarian love. Yes, there is an important sense—indeed the most important sense—in which God’s love is a characteristic of divine stability. It is this ontology of perfectly pitched intra-Trinitarian love, as opposed to metaphysical dispassion/disinterest, that is the basis of God’s intrinsic invulnerability to involuntary affective manipulation. This intra-Trinitarian love is perfectly willed; it never wanes, and it never needs to be bolstered from without.

It is only when this aspect of divine love is accounted for that the fluctuation of God’s covenantal displays of responsive love toward humanity can be correctly understood. And it is in light of this Trinitarian-grounded self-fulfillment that we can fully appreciate the nature of divine initiative in God’s redemptively oriented displays of love. As Don Carson puts it, God’s redemptive “love . . . wells up amidst his perfections and is not generated by the loveliness of the loved.”[21] Indeed, how could it be otherwise? For God’s people have no intrinsic loveliness of their own.[22] Rather, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8; cf. Eph. 2:4–5; 1 John 4:7–12). Clearly, when God pours forth his redemptive love, he is taking initiative to provide for the sinner’s desperate need.[23] Therefore, we should see God’s redemptive love as an expression or outpouring not of some sort of intrinsic neediness, but of his own intrinsic fullness.

Jealousy

In a broad sense, we may consider the affective dispositions of God’s jealousy and anger together, because they express a parallel reality akin to what we have just seen from the relation of God’s intra-Trinitarian and creaturely oriented loves. As with the foundational sense of divine love, there is an eternal basicness to divine jealousy, in the sense that God’s delight in his own glory is always unwaveringly uppermost in his affection (Ex. 20:5; 34:14; Deut. 4:23–24; 6:4–15; Isa. 48:9–11; Ezek. 36:21–23; 39:25–27). And it is this constant disposition that, in turn, gives rise to God’s wrath in the face of sin (e.g. Rom. 1:18), thus providing us with another example of how some of the most powerful emotional dispositions of God counterintuitively wed impassible stability and peak affective commitments.

In order to see this a little more clearly, we will observe a couple of texts in Deuteronomy where the prospect of the outbreak of covenantal wrath against sin is predicated on God’s own profoundly passionate self-commitment.[24] In Deuteronomy 4:23–24, we read the following covenant warning to Israel as the people prepare to occupy the land in Canaan:

Take care, lest you forget the covenant of the LORD your God, which he made with you, and make a carved image, the form of anything that the LORD your God has forbidden you. For the LORD your God is a consuming fire , a jealous God .

Similarly, in Deuteronomy 6:13–15, we read:

It is the LORD your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear. You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you, for the LORD your God in your midst is a jealous God , lest the anger of the LORD your God be kindled against you, and he destroy you from off the face of the earth.

Of central importance to understanding both of these passages is the issue of covenant relationship. Here, as Moses is leading the nation in a covenant-renewal ceremony, he reminds the people not to forget/transgress their (Sinai) covenant with God (4:23; 6:14), for if they do, they will face the inevitable wrath of God (4:24; 6:15). And in both cases, the reason for God’s anger, should the Israelites pursue (as they would) such infidelity, is God’s eternal passionate commitment to his own glory, known often in Scripture as the jealousy of God.

These warnings, however, are not the machinations of a tyrannical and emotionally unstable deity. God’s binding himself in covenant to these people displays the outward reach of his eternally perfect inner divine love toward the created other—an outreach designed to draw his image bearers (for their good) into an adoration of his glory as well. In the same way, God’s response of wrath, when his people scorn his glory, tells not of a knee-jerk overreaction, but of God’s constant ultimate commitment to himself.[25] It is the certain and perfectly fitted response to those who would betray the covenant and trample the glory of God in their hearts.[26]

As Peter Craigie puts it in his comment on Deuteronomy 4:24:

The language is stern, but it is closely related to the theme of the love of God in Deuteronomy. The covenant relationship was one of love, initiated in the covenant of God and demanding a response of love from the Israelites (see 6:5). To construct images would be to indicate that the first love of the Israelites had been forgotten, and to this the response of the Lord would be jealousy. Jealousy, however, does not represent a change in God, but is, as it were, the reverse of the coin of love; it was the people who were prone to change and forgetfulness, and from outside the relationship of love, God was indeed awesome like a consuming fire.[27]

Provoked to Anger

A little more specifically on divine anger, a number of interesting Old Testament texts use the verb (often in the Hiphil) or the noun form of to speak of God as “provoked to anger” (e.g., Deut. 4:25; 9:18; 31:29; 32:16, 21; Judg. 2:12; 1 Kings 14:9, 15; 15:30; 16:2, 7, 13, 26, 33; 21:22; 22:53; 2 Kings 17:11, 17; 21:6, 15; 22:17; Pss. 78:58; 106:29; Jer. 7:18; 8:19; 11:17; 32:29–32; Ezek. 8:17; 16:26). Surely we might think that if God’s people have done something to provoke him to anger, then they have caused an involuntary or perhaps even unexpected emotional reaction on the part of God. What shall we say about passages like these? I would suggest that what we have just seen in our discussion of God’s jealousy also helps us understand these passages.

First, what is almost always true in these texts is that the “provocation” occurs in the context of idolatry.[28] But this leads us right back to the core commitments of God’s jealousy. God’s love for his people brooks no rival loves. As the first commandment in the Decalogue makes clear, “the relationship between Israel and Yahweh is to be uncompromisingly exclusive.”[29] So when the people of Israel turn from God to idols, anger is the perfectly fitted expression of God’s commitment to his own glory. Indeed, God’s display of striking passion in the context of covenant relationship is the outworking of his eternally unwavering affective commitments.

With that in mind, let us look briefly at one example of this provocation to anger by the generation following Joshua in Judges 2:11–15.

And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the LORD and served the Baals. And they abandoned the LORD, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. They went after other gods, from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed down to them. And they provoked the LORD to anger . They abandoned the LORD and served the Baals and the Ashtaroth. So the anger of the LORD was kindled [30] against Israel, and he gave them over to plunderers, who plundered them. And he sold them into the hand of their surrounding enemies, so that they could no longer withstand their enemies. Whenever they marched out, the hand of the LORD was against them for harm, as the LORD had warned, and as the LORD had sworn to them. And they were in terrible distress.

As we noted above in general, it is also specified here that God is provoked by his people’s idolatry, which itself is tantamount to adultery, as verse 17a makes clear (“Yet they did not listen to their judges, for they whored after other gods and bowed down to them”).

Thus, when Israel worships other gods, we see that God is rightly indignant at this great transgression of the covenant. At the same time, however, this offense was not unexpected to him, for in verse 15 we read that on account of their idolatry, God was against them, as he “had warned” and as he “had sworn.” This obviously leads us to ask, when did the Lord swear that he would be against them in their idolatry?

Certainly, the covenant curses in Deuteronomy 28 (see esp. v. 25) communicate this principle of judgment for disobedience. More particularly still, when God is speaking with Moses at the commissioning of his successor Joshua in Deuteronomy 31, God declares to Moses:

Behold, you are about to lie down with your fathers. Then this people will rise and whore after the foreign gods among them in the land that they are entering, and they will forsake me and break my covenant that I have made with them. Then my anger will be kindled against them in that day, and I will forsake them and hide my face from them, and they will be devoured. And many evils and troubles will come upon them, so that they will say in that day, “Have not these evils come upon us because our God is not among us?” (Deut. 31:16–17)

God then goes on to command Moses to write the song that appears in chapter 32 as “a witness for me against the people of Israel” (31:19). And chapter 31 concludes with Moses’s statement:

For I know that after my death you will surely act corruptly and turn aside from the way that I have commanded you. And in the days to come evil will befall you, because you will do what is evil in the sight of the LORD, provoking him to anger through the work of your hands.[31] (v. 29)

What we have here, it seems, is a case where God foreknows, forewarns, and foretells what will happen in terms of Israel’s committing idolatry. And then, in fidelity to his promise, God responds to that provocation at the time of its occurrence just as he said he would. Taking both perspectives together—namely, the in-time response to the covenant-breaking idolatry and the transcendent lordship over these very covenant relationships—we are well positioned to see that this is a powerfully passionate response to God’s people’s treachery in time that is nevertheless still perfectly voluntary. God hates the sin, to be sure. But his being provoked in the economy of redemption does not warrant the conclusion that these events are metaphysically unexpected by God, or that his responses to them are involuntarily extracted. In other words, the sin certainly and rightly provokes God’s anger in view of the transgression of the covenant, but the provocation is not a surprise to God.

To take this line of thought one step further, we recognize that sometimes we think of this sort of burning anger as being irrational or disproportionate to the offense. Certainly, this is often true of the human experience of anger. But it is never so with God.[32] His anger, once again, is a perfectly fitted response to sin against his glory, and thus it is nothing like our experience of “flying off the handle.” In this respect, Don Carson’s comment is apt: “God’s wrath is not an implacable, blind rage. However emotional it may be, it is an entirely reasonable and willed response to offenses against his holiness.”[33] Indeed, as was noted above, if God were not angry at sin, he would not be holy.

Steadfast Love

What is perhaps more amazing still is the fact that God persists in keeping covenant love with these people who so often break covenant with him. In this respect, it is interesting to note that a number of texts in the Old Testament effectively state that in God’s relation with his people, his anger will not have the last word (e.g., Pss. 30:5; 103:8–9, 17–18; Isa. 54:8; 57:16; Lam. 3:31–33; Mic. 7:18). Psalm 106 displays this theme beautifully, recounting God’s steadfast love and faithfulness to Israel despite her long history of repeated infidelities.[34] Among the idolatrous deeds mentioned in this psalm are the episodes of the “golden calf” (Ps. 106:19–23; cf. Exodus 32), the worship of “Baal of Peor” (Ps. 106:28–31; cf. Numbers 25), and the recurring idol worship and even child sacrifice in the time of the Judges (Ps. 106:34–39; cf. Judges 2). To be sure, as we have seen above, these idolatrous practices “kindled” the Lord’s anger (Ps. 106:40), with the result that he did indeed punish them (vv. 41–42), presumably again because of his constant commitment to his own glory.

But notice here that God’s self-commitment leads not only to wrath and judgment in response to Israel’s idolatry, but also to faithful love and even deliverance of this covenant people. As the book of Judges also depicts, “many times he [God] delivered them,” even though “they were rebellious in their purposes” (Ps. 106:43). The obvious question at this point is, why did God continue in his faithfulness to and deliverance of these people? The answer is found in verse 45:

For their sake he remembered his covenant,

and relented according to the abundance of his steadfast love.

While we will look at what it means for God to “relent” in due course, two observations call for our attention more immediately. First, when verse 45 says that God “remembered his covenant,” the point is not that he had previously forgotten the covenant, but that he, unlike Israel (v. 7—“Our fathers, when they were in Egypt, / did not consider your wondrous works; / they did not remember the abundance of your steadfast love,”), was faithful to the covenant (i.e., he acted on his covenant promises).[35] Thus, on the one hand, Israel did not “remember” God’s steadfast love. On the other hand, God “remembered” (i.e., kept) his covenant, operating on the basis of his steadfast love.[36]

Second, the motive of God’s acting on his covenant commitments irrespective of Israel’s covenant failures is his steadfast love (). To be sure, God’s loving deliverance is for the good of Israel (v. 45—“for their sake”). But we must not fail to recognize that, on account of their sin, Israel is in no position to command the loving-kindness of the Lord. Moreover, we must not forget that they are in covenant with God in the first place because of his initiative to bind himself to them by his word. And given God’s immutable character and nature, it is certain that once he has pledged himself for these people, he will not ultimately forsake them. Here again, we are reminded of the importance of the nature of covenant relationship. God’s love of his own glory is rightly manifested in the form of anger/wrath against sin in the redemptive economy. But his love of his own glory also renders it certain that he will keep the covenantal pledges that he has freely made.

To reflect on this from a more theological perspective for a moment, we can see that not only God’s response of wrath to sin, but also his response of love to sinners is a relational change toward his people that ultimately expresses his ethical and ontological immutability. In other words, God’s relenting of his judgment against Israel “according to the abundance of his steadfast love” is rooted in the fact that he immutably keeps his unconditional promises, something he certainly has pledged to Israel (cf. Genesis 12, 15, 17). At this point, it might be objected that “it sure looks like God changes from anger to love in Psalm 106.” How, then, can we talk of immutability if God is changing?

This is precisely where Bruce Ware’s analysis proves so beneficial. We might put it this way: God is changing in relationship to Israel here (i.e., moving from anger to love), because he does not change in his unconditional promise keeping, which itself is based on the fact that God does not change in his intrinsic nature.[37] This point is nicely illustrated in Malachi 3:6: “For I the LORD do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.” By this point in the disputation against Israel, it is clear that the “children of Jacob” deserve to be consumed. The reason they are not, we are told, is that YHWH does not change.[38] As Ware explains, “the changelessness of God’s character also forms the basis for the certainty of God’s continued faithfulness to his covenant people Israel. His commitment to love them uniquely is inviolable because it is an expression of his very nature, which cannot change.”[39] Again, therefore, while God’s volitional and affective engagement certainly is responsive in the economy, it is not involuntary. Rather, it is profoundly guaranteed by his nature and character.[40]

Joy/Delight

As it concerns this study, there are some very interesting texts pertaining to the joy or delight of God. For example, in an eschatological comment, Isaiah 65:19 states:

I will rejoice in Jerusalem

and be glad in my people;

no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping

and the cry of distress.

The immediate context (vv. 17–25) depicts a radically transformed future environment, marked in part (in this verse in particular) by the jubilation of God over his fulfilled promises to his people. While stunning and full of vibrant affection that ought not be minimized or explained away, this text does not, in any way, lead us to think of God’s affective display as involuntary. To the contrary, as we have seen in the previous section on God’s covenantally faithful love, the fulfillment of God’s eschatological promises occurs at the initiative of God.

In a somewhat similar fashion in the New Testament, Jesus concludes the parable of the lost sheep (Luke 15) with this point: “Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy [χαρα] in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance” (v. 7). Then again, at the end of the parable of the lost coin, Jesus comments, “Just so, I tell you, there is joy [χαρα] before the angels of God over one sinner who repents” (v. 10). In light of these texts, it is appropriate to ask who exactly is doing the rejoicing in heaven, for as Gregory Nichols points out, “The Lord does not explicitly name the one who rejoices.”[41] Nichols continues this deliberation:

Possibly, he means to say that the angels themselves rejoice when a sinner repents. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that this is so. What then? Shall we conceive of angels brimming with a sensation of exuberance over God’s redemptive work while the Redeemer himself, who performed the work, who gave the sinner repentance unto life, sits on his throne glum and morbid, unmoved, experiencing no sensation of exhilaration and satisfaction? Preposterous! Outrageous! To the contrary, God’s joy over a penitent sinner surpasses the exuberance he feels when he beholds one hundred righteous men.[42]

Certainly, we would expect no less from the God who, as we have already seen, is overflowingly happy and fulfilled in the delight of intra-Trinitarian fellowship. In this respect, I submit that Jonathan Edwards is exactly right when he proclaims that “heaven is a world of love.” He says:

The apostle tells us that “God is love”; and therefore, seeing he is an infinite being, it follows that he is an infinite fountain of love. Seeing he is an all-sufficient being, it follows that he is a full and overflowing, and an inexhaustible fountain of love. And in that he is an unchangeable and eternal being, he is an unchangeable and eternal fountain of love. There, even in heaven, dwells the God from whom every stream of holy love, yea, every drop that is, or ever was, proceeds.[43]

By all means, we should understand that heaven is a happy place, and it is chiefly so because of God.

Lastly, it will be helpful to end this section with a comment on one of the covenant curses pronounced in Deuteronomy 28:62–63.

Whereas you were as numerous as the stars of heaven, you shall be left few in number, because you did not obey the voice of the LORD your God. And as the LORD took delight in doing you good and multiplying you, so the LORD will take delight in bringing ruin upon you and destroying you. And you shall be plucked off the land that you are entering to take possession of it.

What makes this passage a little confounding at first is that the two English words translated “delight” in verse 63 both derive from the same Hebrew root . How can it be, we might wonder, that God can “delight” both in doing his people good and in bringing ruin and destruction upon them? Michael Grisanti’s observation illumines the way when he points out in reference to this text, “Moses affirms that Yahweh can take delight in prospering or devastating his vassal nation, depending on their response to the covenant stipulations (Deut. 28:63).”[44] Once again, we see the nature of covenant relationship is at the heart of God’s dealings with his people.

More than that even, this passage helps us see past a potential objection to our formulation of divine impassibility. Given the statements of heavenly joy in Isaiah 65 and Luke 15, we might come to draw the conclusion that since God is delighted in deliverance, he must presumably be disillusioned when it comes to the necessary dispensing of condemnation to the unrepentant. Evidently, however, according to Deuteronomy 28:63, there are senses in which God does delight both in deliverance and in judgment. Thus, since there is a form of delight when God judges sin, we ought not think that God’s judgments are forcibly (i.e., involuntarily) extracted from him (cf. Rom. 9:22–23). Indeed, to hold that God’s judgments are ultimately extracted against his will dangerously depersonalizes the wrath of God.[45] At the same time, we should acknowledge that the manners in which God delights in deliverance and in condemnation are distinguishable.

Behind the covenantal relationship, again, stands God’s uppermost commitment to himself. In that light, I would suggest we take God’s “delight” in doing good, here, in the sense that he loves to show himself merciful to the undeserving. On the other hand, I suggest we take God’s “delight” in condemnation in the sense that he esteems the vindication of his justice and holiness when judging the unrepentant. This point will receive further theological elaboration in chapter 9 under the heading “God’s Two Ways of Willing (and Emoting).” For now, it is worth noting that when Lamentations 3:33 says that God “does not afflict from his heart or grieve the children of men,” this is best understood as corresponding to the Deuteronomy 28:63a sense of “delight,” where we saw that God “delights” to do good. In this sense, when Lamentations 3:33 tells us that God does not afflict “from his heart,” we should understand that to mean that God does not sadistically revel in this kind of affliction. On the other hand, though (the Deut. 28:63b sense of “delight” that Lamentations 3:33 itself does not speak to), God does afflict the unrepentant with sober approval of his just judgments. All that is to say, while Lamentations 3:33 does help move us to the theological conclusion that God has two ways of willing and emoting, it specifically is not saying that God’s judgments are ultimately involuntary. As we have already begun to see and will further develop, God, in a consistent fashion, both does and does not “delight” in bringing judgment on the unrepentant.

Repentance/Regret/Relenting

The biblical data on divine repentance/regret/relenting also provides a fascinating case study, because once again the evidence appears conflicting on first glance.[46] Certain passages seem to suggest that God does repent (e.g., Gen. 6:6; Ex. 32:10–14; 1 Sam. 15:11, 35; Isa. 38:1–6; Jer. 26:1–6; Amos 7:1–3; Jonah 3:10; 4:2), while others suggest that he does not (e.g., Num. 23:19; 1 Sam. 15:29; Ps. 110:4; Jer. 4:28; Ezek. 24:14; Zech. 8:14–15). What the 1 Samuel 15 narrative makes clear, by its juxtaposition of both categories, though, is that God’s repenting is dissimilar to human repentance in some crucial respects.

On the heels of Saul’s disobedience in failing to devote the Amalekites to complete destruction (1 Sam. 15:3, 9) God, speaking through the prophet Samuel, says, “I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments” (v. 11). In verse 35, the narrative closes with a reiteration that God “regretted” making Saul king. But in the middle of the narrative, Samuel confronts Saul with the news that the kingdom will be taken from him and then says, “And also the Glory of Israel will not lie or have regret , for he is not a man, that he should have regret ” (v. 29). Right there in one passage, God regrets/repents and he does not regret/repent. What are we to make of this?

The answer is supplied in verse 29, for there we are given an explicit anti-anthropocentric interpretive criterion—“for he is not a man” (cf. Num. 23:19). In other words, the similarity between divine and human repentance is the covenantal change of direction. So, Saul violates the covenant, and God responds accordingly and fittingly by removing the kingship from him. Conversely, because God is not a man, he does not repent like one. That is to say that God does not repent/regret/change his mind on account of sin, error, or lack of foresight.[47] Again, Bruce Ware helpfully explains this phenomenon by pointing out that God’s relational mutability in the renunciation of Saul’s kingship in this case is, as we have also seen above, an expression of his own immutable being and promises: “Thus when the human moral state changes . . . the immutable divine nature must now reflect itself in ways that are appropriate to this new situation.”[48]

Indeed, God explicitly builds this principle of relational mutability into the fabric of his relationship with his people in Jeremiah 18:7–10.

If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it. And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will relent of the good that I had intended to do to it.

In other words, if people turn from their wickedness and honor God, his certain and constant character guarantees his fidelity to those who seek him, and the reverse is also true.[49]

In this light, Jonah’s response to God’s “relenting” of the disaster (Jonah 3:10) he threatened against Nineveh is very telling. Jonah, who very clearly wanted no part in the deliverance of Nineveh from judgment, replied to God when the deliverance did come by praying, “O LORD, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster ” (Jonah 4:2). It seems, then, that Jonah was quite familiar with the principle of what we are calling God’s relational mutability.[50] Indeed, because he knew God’s character and was confident that God would forgive the Ninevites if they repented, Jonah started off for Tarshish instead, and we all know how that went for him.

Not surprisingly, then, this finding about the grounding of God’s relational mutability in his ontological and ethical immutability bears some significant similarities to the aforementioned juxtapositions of God’s intra-Trinitarian and outgoing love, as well as his jealousy and wrath. So even when Genesis 6:6 adds to the statement of divine repentance one of divine grief over the wickedness of mankind, it is not difficult to understand on these terms. God both foreknew the wickedness into which the world would devolve (cf. Acts 2:23–24) and, when it came to pass in time, responded with the perfectly fitted emotional response. The foreknowing and even foreordaining of sin for the sake of some larger purpose do not in the least diminish God’s displeasure in that sin when it occurs.[51]

Affliction

The next passage we will consider is one of covenantal remembrance found in Isaiah 63:7–9. The passion on display in this passage and the surrounding context is both gripping and diverse. Following God’s statement of covenant fidelity to Israel (62:4–5), in which God promises to delight and rejoice over her as a bridegroom with his bride (v. 5), there comes a vision of a divine warrior dispensing stark wrath against the enemies of Israel (63:1–6).[52] Immediately thereafter Isaiah recounts God’s covenant dealings with Israel both in her election and at the time of the exodus (63:7–14), which in turn ultimately ushers in Isaiah’s appeal to God to act again on their behalf (63:15–64:12).[53]

In the historical remembrance that is our focal passage we read:

7 I will recount the steadfast love of the LORD,

the praises of the LORD,

according to all that the LORD has granted us,

and the great goodness to the house of Israel

that he has granted them according to his compassion,

according to the abundance of his steadfast love.

8 For he said, “Surely they are my people,

children who will not deal falsely.”

And he became their Savior.

9 In all their affliction he was afflicted,

and the angel of his presence saved them;

in his love and in his pity he redeemed them;

he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old. (Isa. 63:7–9)

Verse 7 opens the reflection with high praise for God’s goodness and steadfast love toward Israel and then moves into a rhetorical recounting of God’s election of Israel in verse 8. Verse 9 powerfully speaks of God’s joining the Israelites in their servitude in Egypt and delivering them from it in the exodus.[54]

How should we view all of this? Does it reveal to us a God who is bound up with uncertainty, anxiety, and severe emotional instability? Or is it more plausible to see this as the blood-earnest covenant relatedness of a God who transcends all of these historical relationships, even while purposefully investing himself in them? We may begin by observing that the Lord’s initiative and purpose stand behind all of this (v. 7). It was his own outgoing love that he originally set on Israel, thus initiating the covenant relationship with her. And we must remember that this choice had absolutely nothing to do with the merits or size of Israel (Deut. 7:6–8; 10:14–15). Of course, this in no way diminishes the warmth of God’s affection for his people, but it does confirm the divinely initiated voluntariness of it.

The depiction of God’s pondering over the election of Israel in Isaiah 63:8—“Surely they are my people, / children who will not deal falsely”—is not a testament to divine uncertainty and ignorance as to Israel’s future. Rather, it is, as A. B. Caneday points out in a similar context, an “idiomatic rebuke.”[55] It is as if to say, in virtue of all God pledged and did for Israel, her perpetual hardheartedness, though certainly foreknown, is nevertheless “unthinkable” when one steps back to consider the folly of abandoning God in favor of pursuing false gods.

Taking the Qere reading in verse 9a as more likely correct,[56] what does it mean for God to be afflicted in his people’s affliction, as a reference back to Israel’s bondage in Egypt? Have we stumbled over the perfect proof-text for the metaphysical doctrine of divine passibility? No, it is a statement of powerful personal identification, but it is not a metaphysical description of some unwilled eternal suffering of the divine nature. YHWH has purposefully bound himself to this rabble for the sake of displaying his glorious name (Isa. 63:12, 14).[57] For the purpose of this display, God designs a great victory for himself, which will spill forth in his renown. And in so doing, God is the one standing behind (in asymmetrical fashion) the increased affliction of his own people. For in his commissioning of Moses, God tells Moses, before Moses ever appears before Pharaoh, that he (God) will harden Pharaoh’s heart, so as not to let the people go (Ex. 4:21; cf. Ps. 105:23–25).[58] Thus, whatever the affliction is that God joins them in, it is not ultimately an affliction against his will. To the contrary, it is intentioned by God that God will gain the most remarkable victory for his people over the greatest power at the time so that it will be abundantly clear that their redemption was completely a work of God (cf. Isa. 64:4), with the result that all the praise will redound to him (63:12–14).

The point, then, seems more likely to be one of covenant presence—the parallel line in verse 9b states interestingly that “the angel of his presence saved them” [59]—than that God was afflicted in the same sense they were. It is absolutely true that God had compassion on his covenant people and thus vindicated them, but he was never put under the taskmaster’s whip, so to speak. In other words, in God’s covenant presence, he was with the people, identifying with them, upholding them in their oppression, and bringing about their redemption. But again, this seems less like a claim to metaphysical passibilism and more akin, instead, to Psalm 46:1,

God is our refuge and strength,

a very present help in trouble;

and 1 Peter 5:6–7,

Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.

The point is not that God’s nature was beaten down against his will, but that he was with the people in their burdens to bear them up and comfort them, even as he brought them through those afflictions.

Desire

Finally, I want to give a quick comment about ἐπιθνμία in the New Testament. Though there evidently are a few contexts in which ἐπιθνμία has the meaning of a positive desire (e.g., Luke 22:15; Phil. 1:23; 1 Thess. 2:17), it is often found in contexts that carry the negative connotation of sinful desire (John 8:44; Rom. 1:24; 6:12; 7:7–8; 13:14; Gal. 5:16, 24; Eph. 2:3; 4:22; Col. 3:5; 1 Thess. 4:5; 1 Tim. 6:9; 2 Tim. 2:22; 3:6; 4:3; Titus 2:12; 3:3; James 1:14–15; 1 Pet. 1:14; 2:11; 4:2–3; 2 Pet. 1:4; 2:10, 18; 3:3; 1 John 2:16–17; Jude 16, 18).[60] Clearly, in the case of the latter, God is not the subject of sinful desires or passions in any sense, because he himself is perfectly holy (Ex. 15:11; Isa. 6:1–8; 1 John 1:5; Rev. 15:4).[61]

Interpretive Conclusions

The passages just surveyed present us with a transcendence/immanence balance that points in the direction of a dual affirmation of divine impassibility and divine passion. On the one hand, the colorful and expressive descriptions of many of these responses are fitting depictions, within the context of covenant relationship, of the vigor of God’s affective concern for his people. God’s fidelity to himself and therefore to the covenant is certain. Consequently, God, who has freely given himself to his covenant people, literally has passionate, affective convictions about them.[62] Thus, for example, on the heels of the second of Isaiah’s “Servant Songs” (Isa. 49:1–13), God responds to the exiles’ statement of belief that he has forsaken and forgotten them (Isa. 49:14) with these powerful words:

Can a woman forget her nursing child,

that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?

Even these may forget,

yet I will not forget you. (Isa. 49:15)

YHWH does not simply respond with a dispassionate proposition that he does not forget his promises. While it is true that YHWH will never forget his promises, staid prose simply will not suffice at this point. Rather, he declares that his compassion and covenant faithfulness surpass even the devotion that a nursing mother has for her infant. To state it plainly, the difference in this passage between God and what we might think of as the pinnacle of human compassion and faithfulness (i.e., a mother’s love) results from the fact that God is more, not less, compassionate/faithful than human mothers. Thus, when we argue that God is impassible in the sense of being insusceptible to involuntary emotional manipulation, we mean that he is impassible not because he is affectively weak, but rather because he is affectively strong and full. To be sure God is more passionate than we are about the things that matter most.[63] Biblically and theologically speaking, there is no room for a conception of an impersonal deity of the remotest philosophically conceived form of hyper-transcendence.[64]

At the same time, as we have sought to account for the totality of the biblical data, we have kept the continual reminder before us that, even while fully engaged in the covenantal interactions of redemptive history, God transcends in himself all that occurs on the field of history. So, while expressions like the one in Isaiah 49:15 do depict God as vibrant in passion, they nevertheless do not depict God as being forcibly overwhelmed in the way we often are by our emotions.[65] After all, God does not forgo his transcendence even in his emotional displays of love, wrath, joy, repentance, and the like. We must never mistake relationship or emotional engagement with God for relationship with a peer. It is the sovereign and self-sufficient Creator God who is performing these actions and expressing these emotions.

Thus, taken holistically, Scripture drives us toward the appropriate balance—a balance that I believe is best captured in terms of an analogical understanding of divine and human passion. The best way that I have come to think of expressing the nature of that analogy is to say that while God is sinlessly, passionately, and voluntarily responsive in the economy of redemption, he is never ultimately passive, in the sense of being involuntarily forced into an emotional experience that he does not intend to have. To state it differently, God is impassible and impassioned. Fully fleshing out this model will require a more thorough examination of several key doctrines and theological principles that I will attempt to formulate in the next chapter. With this interpretive summary in mind, it is time to wade in and attempt to offer my holistic theological proposal as to the balance of divine impassibility and impassionedness.

[1]Recall the distinction I am making between analogical/literal anthropopathisms that are truth bearing and analogical/nonliteral anthropomorphisms that are also truth bearing.

[2]I should also stress at the outset that God’s intrinsic invulnerability in this sense is itself based on the reality that the triune God is eternally and perfectly self-fulfilled in the delight of intra-Trinitarian love, as we saw briefly in our survey of redemptive history in chap. 7. Therefore, it would be wrong to think of this invulnerability in a dispassionate or aloof sense. We might better think of it as an invulnerability predicated on God’s enjoyment of perfect passion that can never be eclipsed or surpassed. I will, of course, have more to say about this in our discussion of divine love in this chapter and in our theological expansion on that same theme in chap. 9. Additionally, I want to reiterate that this sense of divine invulnerability complements, and does not conflict with, our proposed sense of God’s creation-oriented passion, in which God’s affections are voluntarily and covenantally expressive of his relatedness and responsiveness to his people.

[3]Since Scripture does not make a metaphysical assertion of either impassibility or passibility, this requires that we come to our understanding of this divine attribute through a joint consideration of all the relevant data. It would be unwise, therefore, to restrict our definition of “relevant” to only those passages that portray God as emoting in the economy. While we must not neglect those sorts of passages, we must also not neglect the scriptural framing of God’s invulnerability. Not neglecting the latter category of biblical data is the purpose of this section on divine invulnerability. When we come to the divine-emotion texts in the next section, we will see that this invulnerability extends to certain of the categories of divine passion as well. How the passionate invulnerability of God relates to his economic display of passion will prove instructive for our model.

[4]In much of what follows under this “Divine Invulnerability” heading, then, I will focus more on a survey of the relevant biblical data, as opposed to plumbing the depths of any individual passage. The purpose of opting for this procedure is primarily to get a sense of the scope within which the Bible frames and is committed to this kind of divine invulnerability that cannot be wrested from God apart from his voluntary condescension. As soon as I say this, however, I must anticipate the charge of proof-texting. In response, I hope to have demonstrated by now that I am not treating the Bible as an encyclopedia or even as a systematic theology textbook, from which to draw theological axioms irrespective of the exegetical and redemptive-historical contexts. With John Frame, I may also respond that there is an appropriate kind of proof-texting, where contextual exegesis has adequately been taken into account, though the text itself is simply listed as a “form of theological shorthand.” And since theology “has an obligation to show where it gets its scriptural warrant,” Frame designates this as an appropriate means. John M. Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1987), 197. A further benefit of surveying the breadth of biblical data is that it shows the “pervasiveness” of the doctrine even if spatial constraints limit the discussion. John M. Frame, The Doctrine of God (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2002), 11. In the next main section, treating the biblical data of divine emotion, I will attempt more fully to merge an analysis of the biblical breadth of divine-emotion texts with more in-depth analyses of several key representative passages.

[5]Though the scriptural assertion of the Creator/creature distinction begins in Genesis 1 and 2, the import of this distinction is hardly limited to the introductory chapters of Genesis. Rather, the transcendence and immanence of God flowing from his creative act is celebrated throughout Scripture and across the scope of redemptive history. In this respect, see especially Frame, The Doctrine of God, 289–98. As one additional point, I would note here that I understand God’s relationship to time to be one key element of this transcendence/immanence balance. On the one hand, God’s temporal transcendence is seen in conjunction with his status as the Creator of the space-time continuum. On the other hand, God’s immanence is seen in God’s free decision to inhabit not only the creatures’ space (omnipresence) but also the creatures’ time (omnitemporality). I will elaborate on this duality in the theological formulation in the next chapter. For now we may observe how both halves appear juxtaposed in Ps. 90:1–2: “Lord, you have been our dwelling place / in all generations. / Before the mountains were brought forth, / or ever you had formed the earth and the world, / from everlasting to everlasting you are God.”

[6]Often, as is the case with the two passages cited here, this ontological otherness is conveyed through the metaphor of spatial distance.

[7]Though it is not part of our present focus, we should point out that God’s transcendence is not only ontological (a reality that grounds his epistemological transcendence—Isa. 55:8–9) but ethical as well. That is to say that God’s qualitatively distinct holiness constitutes an important aspect of his transcendence as well. See, e.g., Ex. 15:11; 1 Sam. 2:1–2; Isa. 6:1–8; Rev. 15:4.

[8]Also see Rom. 11:34–36; Acts 17:24–25.

[9]John Piper, The Pleasures of God, rev. ed. (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 2000), 48–49. In an entirely different context, I also love the way that Starr Meade narratively depicts God’s self-sufficiency when in her children’s fantasy tale Penny Poinsettia explains to two children that they can’t give anything to the “Founder” that he needs and they possess: “‘You can’t give him anything he needs,’ the perky plant continued. ‘He doesn’t need anything. You can’t give him anything he doesn’t have; he has everything. You can’t earn his gifts and you can’t pay him back for them. Think back to when you were little and you wanted to give a gift to your mom. Of course, she loved it that you wanted to give her a gift. But the only way you could do it was to go to your mom, ask her for some money, then use her money to go buy her a gift. When you gave it to her, she was delighted, wasn’t she? But, when you think about it, it was almost like a gift from your mom to your mom! That’s how it will be with the Founder. He’ll show you gifts he wants from you. But you won’t have what it takes to give them. He’ll give you all you need to give him a gift.’” Starr Meade, Keeping Holiday (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008), 173, italics hers.

[10]For one of the most extensive and helpful treatments of divine omniscience, with special reference to the issue of divine foreknowledge and the debate with Open Theism, see Steven C. Roy, How Much Does God Foreknow? A Comprehensive Biblical Study (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2006). In the discussion of the relation of the doctrines of divine omniscience and impassibility in the next chapter, I will supply a list of additional sources that capably engage and rebut the Open Theistic denial of God’s exhaustive divine foreknowledge.

[11]This is an important point because, as we will see, Open Theists will tell us that if God foreknows everything and thus cannot ever be involuntarily surprised by anything, then neither can his emotional experience be considered “real” or “genuine.” Again, I will expand on how this reasoning is mistaken in chap. 9.

[12]Though, of course, God himself neither is evil nor does evil (e.g., Isa. 6:1–8; James 1:13). Theologically, this will lead us to observe that while God is sovereign over all things, his sovereignty over evil is executed in an asymmetrical fashion to his sovereignty over good.

[13]Bruce A. Ware, “An Evangelical Reformulation of the Doctrine of the Immutability of God,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 29 (1986): 431–46. In this sense, we will shortly see from the biblical data on divine relenting (surveyed below) that, properly understood, such relenting on God’s part is actually the close companion and not the antithesis of God’s ontological and ethical immutability.

[14]Wayne A. Grudem, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 166.

[15]Recall our discussion of the nature of covenant relatedness in the previous chapter under the heading of “Redemption” in the survey of “Whole-Canon Theology: Impassibility and Redemptive History.”

[16]Leon Morris, The Gospel According to John, rev. ed., NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 634.

[17]D. A. Carson suggests that the similar phraseology with v. 2 points to the conclusion that those “whom you have given me” (ὃ δέδωκάς μοι) here in v. 24 is a reference to “both the original followers and those who would believe on account of their message.” D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John, PNTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 569. The minor text-critical variant here affects neither this point nor the theology of the passage.

[18]Dan Wallace classifies this ἵνα + subjunctive (ἵνα θεωρῶσιν) as a “Complementary ”Iνα” clause indicating purpose. Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 476. Interestingly, although Wallace does not classify John 17:24 specifically as a “Purpose-Result” clause, he comments under that category that in many cases “the NT writers employ language to reflect their theology: what God purposes is what happens and, consequently, ἵνα is used to express both the divine purpose and the result.” Ibid., 473. In other words, his point is that when the divine will is the subject of a ἵνα + subjunctive dependent clause, it often follows that both purpose and result are in view, presumably because the divine will is efficacious. So, on Wallace’s criterion it is possible that our present clause should be viewed as a “purpose-result” clause because Jesus is praying an effectual prayer. That is, Jesus prays that those whom the Father has given to him will be with him in order that and with the result that they will see his glory, given to him by the Father, because the Father loved him from eternity past. I think this is the likeliest reading in this case. In view of John 6:37–44; 17:2, it is clear that when speaking of those whom the Father has given him, Jesus is referencing the elect. So, his prayer here would certainly seem an efficacious one and thus can rightly be viewed through the lens of both purpose and result. Having said that, I would offer one word of interpretive caution. Since it seems that God can will things in two different senses (i.e., decree or precept), we would normally need to discern which of these two exercises of divine will is in view before applying the purpose and result label to any given instance of this grammatical occurrence. Wallace’s examples of John 3:16 and Phil. 2:9–11, however, fit very nicely into this both-and category. For more on God’s two ways of willing, see the discussion in the next chapter.

[19]In this context just before the crucifixion, when Jesus prays that they “may be with me where I am,” he is most likely thinking of the “next world.” Morris, The Gospel According to John, 651. Cf. v. 11 and John 14:3.

[20]D. A. Carson presents a similar finding in his analysis of John 5:16–30, which also treats of the intra-Trinitarian love. He comments, “This marvelous self-disclosure of the Father in the Son turns, ultimately, not on God’s love for us, but on the Father’s love for his unique Son. It is because the Father loves the Son that this pattern of divine self-disclosure pertains. We too quickly think of our salvation almost exclusively with respect to its bearing on us. Certainly there is endless ground for wonder in the Father’s love for us, in Jesus’ love for us.. . . But undergirding them, more basic than they are, is the Father’s love for the Son.” D. A. Carson, The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2000), 35, italics his.

[21]Ibid., 69, italics his.

[22]This is what we mean, in the best sense of the term, when we sometimes designate God’s love as being “unconditional.” That is, God pours forth his love in Christ and in salvation when we do not merit it. But, of course, we can take it a step further and point out not only that sinners do not meet any spiritually good condition by which they would deserve the love of God, but also that their lives are marked by active hostility and opposition to him such that they do meet a condition for condemnation.

[23]Indeed, this loving initiative is so far-reaching that it pertains not only to the sending of his Son and regenerating of his people in time, but even to the predestinating of a people to save, without which none would be saved (Eph. 1:4–5).

[24]For a very fine analysis of many more biblical passages on divine jealousy as well as an insightful discussion into why divine jealousy is appropriate for God and good for us, see K. Erik Thoennes, Godly Jealousy: A Theology of Intolerant Love (Ross-shire: Mentor, 2005).

[25]In this respect, see the appeal in Isa. 48:9–11 to God’s own name and sake as the grounds of deferring his anger and not wiping out his covenant people when he had every reason to, excepting his own covenant fidelity: “For my name’s sake I defer my anger, / for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you, / that I may not cut you off. / Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; / I have tried you in the furnace of affliction. / For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, / for how should my name be profaned? / My glory I will not give to another.”

[26]In this respect, then, it is not so strange to hear David say of God in Ps. 7:11 that God “feels indignation every day” against the wicked.

[27]Peter C. Craigie, The Book of Deuteronomy, NICOT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976), 138, italics his. Though D. A. Carson puts it a little differently, he makes the same point as Craigie: “Wrath, like love, includes emotion as a necessary component. Here again, if impassibility is defined in terms of the complete absence of all ‘passions,’ not only will you fly in the face of the biblical evidence, but you tumble into fresh errors that touch the very holiness of God. The reason is that in itself, wrath, unlike love, is not one of the intrinsic perfections of God. Rather, it is a function of God’s holiness against sin. Where there is no sin, there is no wrath—but there will always be love in God. Where God in holiness confronts his image-bearers in their rebellion, there must be wrath, or God is not the jealous God he claims to be, and his holiness is impugned. The price of diluting God’s wrath is diminishing God’s holiness.” Carson, The Difficult Doctrine, 67, italics his.

[28]See BDB, s.v. “.”

[29]Thoennes, Godly Jealousy, 67.

[30]Though the root from which we get the expression “the anger of the LORD was kindled” is different, the sense seems quite similar to his being “provoked to anger.”

[31].

[32]To put it another way, God never experiences unjust anger.

[33]Carson, The Difficult Doctrine, 69.

[34]Like Psalms 78 and 105, Psalm 106 is a historical psalm in that it recounts major periods of Israel’s history. In this case, most of the infidelities mentioned point back to the time of the exodus, the time in the wilderness, and the time of the judges.

[35]This actional remembrance, so to speak, can be readily seen in the way that vv. 45b–46 explain v. 45a. In v. 45a, we see that God “remembered his covenant.” Verse 45b tells us the manner of his remembering, namely, he “relented” in his judgment of them, specifically (v. 46) by causing them to be pitied by their captors. Leslie Allen effectively makes the same point: “The root and its derivatives have crucial roles in the OT. On the human level, the words embrace reflection, especially on what is in the past.. . . God’s remembering has to do with his attention and intervention, whether in grace or in judgment.” Leslie C. Allen, “,” in NIDOTTE, 1:1101.

[36]Cf. Deut. 4:31: “For the LORD your God is a merciful God. He will not leave you or destroy you or forget the covenant with your fathers that he swore to them.”

[37]Ware, “An Evangelical Reformulation,” 434–41.

[38]I think that Rom. 11:28–29 communicates a very similar point.

[39]Ibid., 433. Cf. God’s proclamation of his character to Moses in Ex. 34:6–7: “The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

[40]So too, with God’s gift of the new covenant, which God says he gives “not for your sake, O house of Israel . . . but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came.” Ezek. 36:22ff.; cf. Jer. 31:31–34.

[41]Gregory G. Nichols, “The Emotivity of God,” Reformed Baptist Theological Review 1 (2004): 121.

[42]Ibid.

[43]Jonathan Edwards, Charity and Its Fruits, ed. Tryon Edwards (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1969), 327. A little further on Edwards continues: “There, in heaven, this infinite fountain of love—this eternal Three in One—is set open without any obstacle to hinder access to it, as it flows for ever. There this glorious God is manifested, and shines forth, in full glory, in beams of love. And there this glorious fountain for ever flows forth in streams, yea, in rivers of love and delight, and these rivers swell, as it were, to an ocean of love, in which the souls of the ransomed may bathe with the sweetest enjoyment, and their hearts, as it were, be deluged with love!” Ibid., 327–28.

[44]Michael A. Grisanti, “,” in NIDOTTE, 3:1223.

[45]Sin against God is anything but an impersonal affair. Recall how vehemently, and personally, God denounces Israel’s harlotry in Ezekiel 16. I will add a few comments in chap. 9 on the mistaken attempt to depersonalize the wrath of God against sin/sinners.

[46]The Hebrew root underlying all these renderings is . See Mike Butterworth, “,” in NIDOTTE, 3:81–83.

[47]Note how 1 Samuel 8 stands behind what takes place in 1 Samuel 15. In 1 Samuel 8, when Israel clamors for a king like the nations (vv. 5, 19–20), we are given a clear picture of God’s fundamental disposition to Saul’s kingship from the beginning. In granting the peoples’ wish for a king, God tells Samuel that it is YHWH whom the people have rejected (v. 9), and that the establishment of a king will not go well with them as they may hope (vv. 10–18). So, it can hardly be the case that God’s repentance is one of surprise in 1 Samuel 15. I owe thanks to Daniel I. Block, who pointed this out to me in personal conversation.

[48]Ware, “An Evangelical Reformulation,” 440.

[49]See also Mal. 3:6–7. However, it does not follow from this either that all prophecies are conditional, or that God does not foreknow what free moral agents will do in the future. For more discussion on the errant use of Jer. 18:7–10 by Open Theists, see Bruce A. Ware, God’s Lesser Glory: The Diminished God of Open Theism (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2000), 133–38.

[50]After all, when Jonah finally did go to Nineveh, the threatened judgment included a time period of forty days before the overthrow of Nineveh would occur (Jonah 3:4). This seems to imply that, in this case, the threat of judgment was designed to serve as a motive for the Ninevites’ “repentance,” with the result that God might “relent” in response. Why else would a time period be announced? The Ninevites were already wicked and deserving of judgment. God could have judged them without warning. Once again, we see the initiating hand of God standing even behind his act of relational mutability.

[51]Ps. 78:40 and Isa. 63:10, the two other instances of divine grief in the Old Testament, would be best interpreted similarly. Cf. Eph. 4:30.

[52]This warrior is seen to be coming from Edom with the lifeblood of Israel’s enemies splattered all over his clothes from his trampling them down in his wrath. John Oswalt rightly points out that “Edom was the perennial enemy of Judah, so much so that it came to represent all its enemies.” John N. Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah: Chapters 40–66, NICOT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 596.

[53]Oswalt points out that this whole section bears “the basic character of a community lament,” such that 63:7–64:12 could be more technically subdivided: 63:7–14, “reminiscence”; 63:15–19, “complaint”; 64:1–7, “confession”; and 64:8–12, “appeal.” Ibid., 603.

[54]The strong sense of divine passion in this text remains regardless of whether one opts for the Kethib or the Qere reading in v. 9a. Most of the major English translations today opt for the Qere, as with the ESV quoted above—“he was afflicted.” Agreeing with them that the Qere reading is more likely correct only adds to the depth of the passion already here on display.

[55]A. B. Caneday, “Veiled Glory: God’s Self-Revelation in Human Likeness—A Biblical Theology of God’s Anthropomorphic Self-Disclosure,” in Beyond the Bounds: Open Theism and the Undermining of Biblical Christianity, ed. John Piper, Justin Taylor, and Paul Kjoss Helseth (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2003), 194.

[56]See Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah, 600–601, 606–7, for a summary of the evidence.

[57]See v. 14b: “So you led your people, / to make for yourself a glorious name.”

[58]For a good discussion of the key statements referencing the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart in Exodus—i.e., whether God hardened it (e.g., 4:21; 7:3; 9:12) or Pharaoh hardened it (e.g., 8:15, 32; 9:34)—see G. K. Beale, “An Exegetical and Theological Consideration of the Hardening of Pharaoh’s Heart in Exodus 4–14 and Romans 9,” Trinity Journal 5 (1984): 129–54.

[59]Almost certainly hearkening back to Ex. 3:2 and especially 14:19.

[60]Cf. BDAG, s.v. “ἐπιθυμία.”

[61]I take it that this is precisely the point of James when he contrasts God’s invulnerability to temptation with human susceptibility to the same, with these words: “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God,’ for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one” (1:13).

[62]It seems that Kevin Vanhoozer has affirmed something similar, and has recently proposed to use the terminology of “covenantal concern-based theodramatic construals” to describe God’s affective displays in the drama of covenant relationship. This terminology appears to be his way of expressing the fact that God’s emotions are transcendent divine analogies to our own, even while seeing them as true and meaningful expressions of God’s covenant concern at any given twist in the theo-dramatic road. Kevin Vanhoozer, Remythologizing Theology: Divine Action, Passion, and Authorship (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 412.

[63]Indeed, as we saw with God’s love and jealousy, many of the emotional descriptions in Scripture actually serve to reveal God’s constancy and stability. We further saw that those stable commitments are what ground God’s relational self-giving in the economy.

[64]Of course, as we saw in the historical chapters, the mainstream of the impassibility tradition never actually propounded such a view.

[65]I would suggest that other powerful texts like Isaiah 54 and Hosea 11 also be interpreted along similar lines.

9

Impassible and Impassioned

A Theological Model

Building on the methodological and interpretive insights of the previous two chapters, as well as the guidance of the classical model, our focus now turns to the attempt to expand theologically on a balanced formulation of a two-pronged doctrine of divine impassibility.[1] My purpose in what follows is not to provide the definitive treatment of any of the corollary issues that come up unto themselves, for indeed, many books have been devoted to each of them. Rather, for our purposes, I will be interested in exploring how these corollary doctrines inform and help us develop the doctrine of divine impassibility.[2]

The following proposal operates on a number of levels. On the one hand, several of the more foundational elements are essential components of orthodox evangelical Christianity (e.g., the Creator/creature distinction, divine self-sufficiency and condescension), and so I hope they will be broadly persuasive of the duality model to orthodox Christians. As we progress further on through the discussion, we will begin to address issues in which some intra-evangelical debate is admissible (e.g., the nature of God’s relationship to time, Arminian versus Calvinist conceptions of providence). While tackling these issues admits a more viable debate than will be undertaken here, taking a stand on them also allows for more specificity and a more concentrated understanding of the nature of the suggested doctrinal duality. On these latter issues, then, I am (obviously) personally more persuaded by the positions that I advocate than by the available alternatives. Those who agree with me at these points will also likely find the specifics of my impassibility proposal more palatable as well. Disagreement on these intra-evangelical issues should not, however, immediately preclude one from accepting the broader proposal here as to the nature of God’s impassibility and impassionedness.

For instance, while a classical Arminian will certainly disagree with my position on divine sovereignty, he would not be justified in rejecting this two-pronged impassibility model on that ground alone. Presumably, a classical Arminian would still agree with me on the Creator/creature distinction, God’s self-sufficiency and gracious condescension, his comprehensive omniscience, and likely at least some parts of the other theological components to be discussed. That being the case, the classical Arminian in question would still have some formidable rationale for embracing the duality model of divine impassibility, even if he could not accept all the specifics of my particular version of it.[3]

I do not hereby mean to suggest that I think my views on the intra-evangelical matters are weaker than those that are orthodox essentials. At this point, however, I simply intend to suggest that, in principle, the two-pronged model cannot be rejected on the basis of intra-evangelical disagreement at one or two points. Finally, to reiterate my thesis once more before offering a fuller defense, I contend that the doctrinal features to be expounded below, in tandem with the balanced interpretive insights we have just seen, constitute a theological framework that requires a doctrine of divine impassibility and divine impassionedness. In what follows, then, it will be our aim to develop this insight of the classical model of divine impassibility with a bit more precision.

Creator/Creature Distinction

In a theological sense, the first three overlapping headings of this model are foundational to everything that follows. We find our bearings in the biblical juxtaposition of transcendence and immanence that is fundamentally framed by the Creator/creature distinction and the balance of God’s intrinsic self-sufficiency and voluntary condescension and involvement in his creation. When it comes to the Creator/creature distinction specifically, we must think carefully about what it means for mankind to be created in God’s image, for many have rushed to an imbalanced judgment on the basis of this correct teaching.[4] We must contend, therefore, that the point of being made in the image of God is an analogical one. That is to say that, as God’s image bearers, we are God’s analogues and not his ontological peers. Thus, it will not do to assert a set of univocal conclusions about God, based on our experience as image bearers.

At least two factors should restrain us from this imbalanced view. One is the obvious point we have heretofore been laboring, namely, that there is an ontological distance between the Creator and the image-bearing creature that must be accounted for. So, we ought never expect to have a univocally shared emotional experience with God. Put differently, we will never know what it is to experience emotion as one who is sovereign, self-sufficient, omniscient, eternal, and so forth. The second point—one that is too often ignored in contemporary discussions—is the presence of creaturely sin, even among the redeemed in this era of the “already and not yet.” This means that in addition to the ontological distance between Creator and creature, there is also now an ethical distance between God’s affection and ours.

Since we have given most of our attention to examining the ontological distance between Creator and creature thus far, we now need to make a brief account of the effects of the fall on our image bearing—affective capacities included. Following Anthony Hoekema’s very helpful discussion, I understand the fall to have damaged in its totality, but not to have destroyed, our bearing of God’s image (Gen. 5:1–3; 9:5–6; James 3:8–9).[5] In other words, the fall did not eviscerate us of the image of God, structurally speaking. Instead, it put our image-bearing “equipment,” which was originally given to us for God-glorifying purposes, to wicked (i.e., sinful) usage. As Hoekema puts it:

After man’s fall into sin, the image of God was not annihilated but perverted. The image in its structural sense was still there—man’s gifts, endowments, and capacities were not destroyed by the Fall—but man now began to use these gifts in ways that were contrary to God’s will. What changed, in other words, was not the structure of man but the way in which he functioned, the direction in which he was going.[6]

Hoekema elaborates, “What makes sin so serious is precisely the fact that man is now using God-given and God-imaging powers and gifts to do things that are an affront to his Maker.”[7]

This misuse of our image-bearing capacities is sadly and strongly evident in the orientation of our fallen affections. Now, in the wake of sin, the essential problem is not just that we happen to disobey God from time to time, but that in the core of who we are, apart from grace, we—dramatically unlike God—delight to sin, and we detest God’s claim on our lives (Deut. 31:16; Judg. 2:17; Jer. 3:1–10; Ezekiel 16 and 23; Hos. 9:1).[8] Only the new birth (i.e., regeneration) can awaken our proper affection for God (Matt. 13:44; John 3:3–8; Acts 16:14; Titus 3:5).[9] Sanctification, insofar as the focus of this study is concerned, is a process of renewing the use of our affective “equipment” in the service of God’s original design for humans “to glorify God and enjoy him forever.”[10]

What all this means for our study of divine impassibility and divine passion is that we cannot, in this age, trust our emotional experience as a guide to the univocal understanding of divine emotion. When we were unredeemed sinners, the orientation of our affections was entirely antithetical to God’s holy delight in himself. Indeed, even as believers, in this period of inaugurated eschatology, we cannot establish our emotional experience as a standard by which to judge divine emotion. Though the hearts’ desires of the redeemed are being transformed into greater likeness to God’s, there remains the ongoing struggle with sin (Rom. 6:12–13; Heb. 12:1; 1 John 1:8) that from an ethical standpoint dilutes the force of our godly passion.[11] What we must not do, then, is to prescribe anthropocentrically what God’s experience of emotion must be like. On the other hand, however, recalling that we are created in the theomorphic image of God, we should reverse the order of influence by looking at what Scripture teaches of God’s emotion with a view to instructing ourselves in the pursuit of increasingly godly affections.[12]

Both of these factors (ontological and ethical distance), then, should disallow us from extrapolating from our creaturely and sinful experience to a univocal assertion of what God’s emotional experience must be like. No, we must take note of the crucial dissimilarities between God and men, and thus understand our comparative emotional experience analogically. In a sense, our salvation hangs on there being this distance between divine and human emotion. On the one hand, ontologically speaking, if God could be involuntarily assaulted and emotionally manipulated by his creatures, we would lose confidence in his ability to accomplish his redemptive purpose. On the other hand, ethically speaking, if God’s passion were identical to our sinful and unstable expression of passion, it would call into question his character and faithfulness to his redemptive promises.

Transcendence and Immanence Rightly Related

It is the Creator/creature distinction, and not reckless metaphysical speculation, that properly grounds a right understanding of both divine transcendence and divine immanence.[13] Absent the controls of this distinction, there is often a tendency to rush headlong into either hyper-transcendent (e.g., deist) or hyper-immanent (e.g., panentheist) views of the God-world relationship. But on a more biblical understanding, God’s ontological otherness is rooted in his identity as the Creator. So too, God’s immanental rights to rule over, act within, and relate to the creation he has made are rooted in the same identity. In this biblical sense, then, God’s immanent relatedness is voluntary. It is the immanence of gracious condescension, wherein God not only creates, but also freely involves himself in his creation, allowing his creatures a claim on him (i.e. the claim of confidence in God’s covenant promises), where none exists by virtue of intrinsic necessity.

God, who is other than us and supremely self-fulfilled in the joy of intra-Trinitarian fellowship, nevertheless opens up a pathway of relationship to us in this covenantal condescension. It is truly God to whom we may relate in the redemptive economy. As Michael Horton explains:

God, it is true, is other than the world. But unless we affirm just as emphatically that God has fully involved himself, and not only an appearance of himself, in our world of time and space, the most important features of the Christian proclamation must be either surrendered or at least said tongue-in-cheek. While analogies and anthropomorphisms do not yield univocal access to God’s being, they do communicate truth.[14]

At the same time, because it is truly God to whom we may relate, the consequence of those relations may be redemptively effective. As Thomas Weinandy points out:

God’s actions are of supreme historical salvific importance precisely because they are performed by a God who transcends the historical, created order, and not merely by another actor from within the historical, created order. If God were merely another member actor within history, his actions could not bestow on history a meaning and goal that exceeded it, for he too would be subject to and so limited by the created historical order. Moreover, specific to our purposes here, if God were ensconced within the historical created order, it would then be impossible for him to act so as to conquer evil and the suffering it causes.[15]

In these descriptions, we can begin to see the profound balance of Christian theology’s view of divine transcendence and immanence.

Self-Sufficiency and Condescension

The doctrines of divine self-sufficiency and voluntary condescension help further expound the nature of God’s transcendence and immanence.[16] In the case of the former, God’s self-sufficiency (Ps. 50:7–12; Isa. 40:12–18; Acts 17:24–25; Rom. 11:33–36) attests the freeness of his relation to creation because he is perfectly self-fulfilled and has no needs that could be met by the creation.[17] But, of course, the explanation for this self-fulfillment does not depend on metaphysical abstractions, but on the reality of God’s eternally passionate tri-personal love. And this intimate personal fellowship of intra-Trinitarian union is actually what secures the gracious and covenantally certain character of God’s creationally oriented affection. Since God’s giving of himself to his creation proceeds from self-fulfillment and not neediness, his self-giving is done with a gracious view to what he can give his creatures and, thus again, not with a view to getting certain “needs” met by his creatures. The final thing to make note of for our purposes at this point is that since, in his relationships with creation, God is not seeking to have an emotional need met by us, we therefore cannot manipulate him emotionally. Not surprisingly, this doctrine serves to distinguish divine and human experiences of relatedness in some important ways. God engages creation from a posture of plenitude, whereas human relatedness assumes finitude and neediness particularly for God.

To be sure, some have objected to the doctrine of God’s self-sufficiency on the grounds that it undermines “real” relationality. Nicholas Wolterstorff has made this sort of argument.

Once you pull on the thread of impassibility, a lot of other threads come along with it. Aseity, for example—that is, unconditionedness. The biblical witness seems to me clearly to be that God allows himself to be affected by the doings of the creatures God created. What led the traditional theologians to affirm aseity was their philosophical argument that the world is such that it can only be explained if we postulate a being which is the condition of everything but itself, itself being conditioned by nothing. To give up aseity then is to give up an argument for God’s existence—an argument which is questionable in any case. One also has to give up on immutability and eternity. If God really responds, God is not metaphysically immutable and, if not metaphysically immutable, not eternal.[18]

The problem here is that Wolterstorff’s argument proceeds on the basis of an imbalanced understanding. While it is true that God’s creatures cannot wrest his affections from him involuntarily, Wolterstorff assumes that divine aseity admits of no moderation, not even if God’s wills to allow his creatures to condition him in some sense. But as we have been arguing, God, in the initiation of covenant relationship, has freely granted us a claim on his covenant fidelity. While that means that God’s relationship of voluntary condescension with us is different in key respects from human-to-human relationships—certainly this is one of those cases of ontological distance—it also means that divinely initiated covenant relationship is so much the more amazing. That the God of the universe, who does not need us, condescends to involve himself with and give himself to us is simply staggering.[19] Thus, it seems a more precise conclusion to say that while the self-sufficient God cannot, in an ultimate sense, be affectively passive, he can be and according to Scripture is emotionally responsive to his creatures.

When we turn to examine the nature of divine condescension more closely,[20] it becomes apparent that the immanental realities of God’s condescension (e.g., inhabiting the creatures’ time and space, relating to his creatures volitionally and affectively) are all contingent on God’s free decision to create in the first place. That is to say that creation was the logically necessary precursor to the expression of these immanent attributes. This notion of contingency is the primary aspect of God’s condescension that I wish to consider for our purposes here.[21] It is observable both in the case of certain divine attributes and in certain dispositions of passion that God takes on in respect to his creation.

We may undertake our reflection on this feature of divine condescension by considering God’s affective display of wrath toward his fallen and rebellious creatures. Having examined, above, the deep and moving biblical testimony to God’s hot wrath against sin, we may now suggest the following theological analysis of divine wrath in virtue of God’s self-sufficiency and condescension. To begin, we reiterate that prior to and apart from creation, the intra-Trinitarian fellowship was exclusively one of love and fullness of joy.[22] Because there was no creation and, more importantly, no fallen creation, there would have been, at that point, no object of wrath, no cause for grief, and therefore nothing to draw forth God’s ire. But in the aftermath of creation’s fall into sin, there is now an occasion for the eternally holy God to manifest his holiness in response to sin in the expression of wrath against that sin.

We must be careful to observe the connection between God’s eternal character and passion and his contingent display of emotion in relationship with his creation. As Bruce Ware points out, it is not as though “these contingent emotional experiences of God’s simply arise ex nihilo.” Rather, he continues, we should

see the contingent emotions of God as new expressions of what are, in God eternally, fixed emotional properties. For example, the anger of God toward sin and rebellion—a contingent emotional property only rightly expressed in the context of the fallen creation—may be understood as a new expression of God’s eternal and necessary emotional property of divine jealousy for his glory. God is eternally passionate for his glory, and now in the context of a fallen creation, when that glory is despised, eternal passionate jealousy gives rise in God to a new and contingent expression of white-hot anger against sin.[23]

This kind of theological exposition gives us a clear picture of divine passion in relation to creation. It helps us to see that God’s emotional involvement with a sinful creation, powerful as it is, ultimately originates in himself. This is not at all to say that, in this example, the sinful creature does not occasion or bear the weight of God’s wrath, but it is to say that the creature does not precipitate an involuntary or inexplicable emotional reaction from God. Because of the infinite dignity and worth of God, his wrath against sin is never an overreaction, as it is always the in-time manifestation of God’s “eternally, fixed emotional properties.” Robust as it may be, God’s wrath always constitutes the perfectly fitted emotional response of the infinitely holy sovereign Creator against creaturely rebellion. Clearly, the experience of divine anger is not univocal to the human experience of it, and the dissimilarity, while it stems from the ethical distance between us and God on account of sin, also stems from the perfect voluntariness involved in God’s expression of even so powerful an emotion as wrath.[24]

Timeless and Temporal

What we have just said of God respecting his intrinsic self-sufficiency and self-giving condescension to the creation lends theological support to the belief that God’s relationship to time involves both his in se atemporality and his in re omnitemporality. Though God’s relationship to time is admittedly a difficult doctrine to formulate in itself, this particular proposal fits well with the many facets of the biblical duality respecting the doctrine of God.[25] That is to say, when it comes to a consideration of the doctrine of God, there is an abundant doctrinal duality following from the senses of biblical transcendence and immanence that we have previously examined. We will see this duality further attested under many of the remaining issues to be considered below. Indeed, this sort of duality is the doctrinal point that we have been laboring for some time now with respect to God’s being both impassible and impassioned. And I would suggest that this duality similarly belongs here as well in God’s relationship to time.

We may begin this theological reflection with a glance at yet another instructive and parallel doctrinal duality, namely, God’s relationship to space. On this point, it is very common for Christian theologians to understand God as both nonspatial in himself and omnipresent within his creation.[26] That is to say, Scripture readers recognize that though God is present (indeed omnipresent) within his creation, this does not diminish the fact that, in himself and apart from creation, God transcends spatial existence and limitation. His intrinsic spacelessness therefore does not preclude his acting within space. It is not within the purview of creation to lock its Creator—who transcends space in himself—out of creation.

Consequently, Millard Erickson asks why the same would not be true of God’s relationship to time: “But is it possible that, just as with space, it is not either that God is timeless or that he is within time, but both?”[27] It seems that Erickson is on the right track, in view of the close connection between time and space. The common Christian understanding of God’s relationship to space nicely reflects the transcendence/immanence balance that is, as we have seen, so structurally important to the orthodox doctrine of God. On account of this, we are primed to expect that God’s relationship to time might express that same balance.

When we turn to Scripture—even allowing that it does not supply us with a metaphysical definition—it seems that this kind of temporal transcendence/immanence balance is suggested. As we noted in passing in chapter 8, Psalm 90:1–2 appears to bear out this balance.

A PRAYER OF MOSES, THE MAN OF GOD.

Lord, you have been our dwelling place

in all generations.

Before the mountains were brought forth,

or ever you had formed the earth and the world,

from everlasting to everlasting you are God

Though we should not mistake this text for a philosopher’s formal reflection on God and time, we nevertheless seem warranted in seeing a few pertinent implications.[28] As it stands, this is a covenantal reflection on God’s care for the people of Israel. And insofar as that goes, Moses opens this psalm in verse 1 by praising God’s longstanding covenant fidelity to his people—“you have been our dwelling place in all generations.” Surely, this implies God’s temporally unending involvement with and fidelity to his covenant people.

What is interesting to note, however, is how the grateful praise of verse 1 is expanded in verse 2. In other words, it seems that there is an intentional progression of thought from verse 1 to verse 2. In verse 1, Moses celebrates God’s unending covenant fidelity. But it seems that the reason Moses has confidence in God’s temporal covenant fidelity (v. 1) in this context is ultimately that God is not bound by time (v. 2). We can be sure of God’s faithfulness to his people, Moses tells us, because God is eternally constant of character.

Before the mountains were brought forth,

or ever you had formed the earth and the world,

from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

I suggest then that in context here, and capitalizing on the space/time parallel already observed, this statement tilts in the direction of God’s pre-creational timelessness. Psalm 90:2 offers an observation on the God-ness of God apart from creation. It seems likely therefore that just as Moses would have understood God to have no spatial limitation prior to the existence of created space, such as “the mountains,” he also would most likely have understood God to have no temporal limitation prior to the existence of created time. This conclusion additionally seems implied by the narrative of Genesis 1 as well, which depends fundamentally on the notion that God existed apart from creation, the creation of time presumably included.[29] The clear chronological progression of the creation narrative that follows is at least suggestive that temporality as well as spatiality had its genesis at creation.[30]

I concur with Erickson, then, in his conclusion that “God both transcends space-time and is immanent within it. He is atemporal/aspatial in his fundamental nature, or is ontologically atemporal/aspatial but actively or influentially present within the space-time universe.”[31] Thus, I believe that atemporality is one way in which God is ontologically other than us. And yet, I also maintain that God’s temporal participation with us, following creation, is reflective of his voluntary and gracious immanence. This finding, in turn, portrays an instructive symmetrical duality between God’s in se atemporality and his in re omnitemporality, on the one hand, and what we might call his in se impassibility and his in re impassionedness, on the other.

With respect to God’s own experience of emotion, this model of God’s relationship to time in himself and in creation means that God has eternally known and ordained not only his creatures’ actions, but also his responses to those actions.[32] But the foreordination or foreknowledge of a relational response is not the same thing as the experience of said relational response, even though it is the ground of it.[33] In this way, we should not think of God as eternally experiencing all of his emotional experiences or as eternally performing all of his volitional actions.[34] For example, God is not eternally wrathful and eternally merciful toward a given individual, any more than we would say that he eternally condemns and eternally forgives that same person. We must allow, in our understanding, for the temporal outworking and redemptive-historical progression of God’s eternal plan. Though his knowledge of that plan is eternal, his unfolding experience of it occurs in the temporally progressive covenantal context, even while he stands as Lord over that very covenantal context.

Excursus: The Difference between Paul Helm’s View and Mine

Framing the question of God’s relationship to time in the way we just have provides an important contrast with Paul Helm’s attempt to correlate only divine atemporality with divine relationality. I should preface this excursus, however, by saying that I have benefited much from and been greatly stimulated by Helm’s reflections on divine impassibility over the years. Furthermore, the reason for including this excursus at all is that our respective proposals are similar in many respects, including his recent and helpful addition of the term impassioned to his own position.[35] Nevertheless, our views are distinct, and as I see it, the distinction can be summed up in the following terms: I am arguing that God is responsive, but never passive. Helm, on the other hand, agrees with me that God is never passive, but he cannot hold that God is ever actually re-sponsive, because of his commitment to an atemporal view of God.[36]

At the junction of divine eternality and divine condescension, Helm argues that the accommodated revelation of God in Scripture is given to make it appear as though God were relating to his people in time, when in fact he is not. When addressing the reason for accommodated revelation, Helm himself states that it “is because God wishes people to respond to him that he must represent himself to them as one to whom response is possible, as one who acts in time.”[37] A few pages later, Helm reiterates this point when he argues that God can never experience emotion as an affect, and thus Helm coins the term themotion as a protection against that supposed error.[38]

My disagreement with Helm comes in a very specific way at this point. While I concur that God has accommodated himself to us in his self-revelation, I disagree that the particular purpose of that accommodation is to make himself appear “as one who acts in time” and “as one to whom response is possible.”[39] Rather, given the proposed both-and understanding of God’s relationship to time, deriving from the duality of God’s self-sufficiency and condescension, we need not go the either-or route. The options are not either that God is eternal or that he is relational. Thus, I would say that God can never experience emotion as an involuntary affect, rather than saying that he can never experience emotion as an affect in any sense. Again, it does not follow from this that God is ever emotionally passive, but only that in view of his freely self-willed condescension, he may also be responsive within the time continuum that in himself he stands over as Lord.[40]

God’s Two Ways of Willing (and Emoting)

I believe that the atemporal/omnitemporal formulation just rehearsed is partially intertwined with the scriptural juxtaposition of God’s decreed and revealed wills. This mechanism, as we will see, helps to explain how God can authentically respond in time to the fluctuating creaturely realities that he also has eternally ordained.[41] Without saying so in the form of a singular explicit proposition, Scripture nevertheless gives us good reason to believe that God can and does exert his will in two different ways. On the one hand, for example, we find in Scripture a sense in which God desires the salvation of all people. We see this, for instance, in 1 Timothy 2:3–4: “This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (cf. 2 Pet. 3:9).[42] We also see something similar in Ezekiel 18:32: “‘For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone,’ declares the Lord GOD; ‘so turn, and live’” (cf. Ezek. 18:23; 33:11).

In light of those texts, then, perhaps it comes to us as initially shocking, on the other hand, when we read for the first time that God’s dealings with humanity do not always proceed from an exclusively salvific will. At the end of Isaiah’s marvelous throne-room vision of God’s holiness, when we are rapt in anticipation of the Old Testament equivalent of a moving exhortation to global missions, we read the somewhat surprising charge Isaiah receives in Isaiah 6:8–10.

And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here am I! Send me.” And he said, “Go, and say to this people:

“‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand;

keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’

Make the heart of this people dull,

and their ears heavy,

and blind their eyes;

lest they see with their eyes,

and hear with their ears,

and understand with their hearts,

and turn and be healed.”[43]

As Alec Motyer observes, “Isaiah’s message (9) and his task (10) constitute, at first sight, the oddest commission ever given to a prophet: to tell people not to understand and to effect heart-hardening and spiritual blindness. There is, however, no way to evade the plain meaning of the verses.”[44]

Similarly, as we saw in chapter 8, the covenant curses of Deuteronomy 28:62–63 portray God’s relationship to his people in such a way that he not only “delights” in doing them good, but also “delights” in bringing judgment on them when they disobey.

Whereas you were as numerous as the stars of heaven, you shall be left few in number, because you did not obey the voice of the LORD your God. And as the LORD took delight in doing you good and multiplying you, so the LORD will take delight in bringing ruin upon you and destroying you. And you shall be plucked off the land that you are entering to take possession of it.[45]

In both of these cases (i.e., Isa. 6:8–10 and Deut. 28:62–63) we see that God has the capacity to will and delight in things that are clearly not universally salvific. If it is objected that the two preceding passages only reflect God’s response to his peoples’ sin, we should point out additionally that in back of all God’s economic dealings is his posture of both universal love toward the whole world (e.g., John 3:16) and his selective love and electing volition to bring it about in time that some will certainly respond to the general offer of the gospel (e.g., Matt. 28:18–20; John 6:35; 7:37; Acts 1:6–8; Rom. 10:8–15) and be saved, while others will not.[46] We see this most clearly in the biblical teaching that gives rise to the doctrines of unconditional election (e.g., Deut. 7:6–8; 10:14–15; Isa. 43:1–4; Mal. 1:1–4; Rom. 8:29–30; 9:10–24; Eph. 1:3–6) and effectual calling (e.g., John 6:37, 44; Rom. 8:30; 1 Cor. 1:22–24).[47]

What shall we say then with respect to the biblical data that shows, on the one hand, a general salvific will toward all people and, on the other hand, a will that effectually brings only some to salvation? What conclusions may we draw about the divine will from this biblical data? John Piper suggests that if we are to avoid asserting schizophrenia to God, we are compelled to conclude that God is able harmoniously to exercise his volition in two ways.[48] As he explains it:

The divine mind is such that God has the capacity to look at the world through two lenses. He can look through a narrow lens or through a wide-angle lens. When God looks at a painful or wicked event through his narrow lens, he sees the tragedy or the sin for what it is in itself and he is angered and grieved.. . . But when God looks at a painful or wicked event through his wide-angle lens, he sees the tragedy or the sin in relation to everything leading up to it and everything flowing out from it. He sees it in all the connections and effects that form a pattern or mosaic stretching into eternity. This mosaic with all its (good and evil) parts he does delight in.[49]

Sometimes these two ways of willing are respectively termed God’s decreed will (i.e., secret will) and God’s preceptive will (i.e., revealed will). God’s decreed will (Deut. 29:29; Eph. 1:11; James 4:13–15) refers to that state of affairs that God has decreed should come to pass. God’s preceptive or revealed will, on the other hand, is the revealed state of affairs that the Lord commands of his people. Soteriologically, this latter aspect of God’s will can be summed up in the evangelistic exhortation to all people to “repent and believe.”

When these two ways of divine willing are juxtaposed in Scripture, we come to recognize that God both hates and ordains the rebellion of the wicked.[50] This, of course, is demonstrated nowhere more clearly than at the crucifixion of Jesus, which was simultaneously the most wicked and most glorious act in all of human history. It is clear that the murder of Jesus was an evil action, transgressing God’s revealed will not to murder (Ex. 20:13). In Acts 2:23b Luke records Peter’s condemnation that Jesus was “killed by the hands of lawless men.” From this perspective, God the Father has never hated any sin more than this. Staggeringly, however, Scripture also teaches that, in another sense—the decreed or wide-angle sense—God willed, for our salvation, that the murder of his own Son should come to pass (Isa. 53:10a).[51] Moreover, he willed it from eternity past, as Peter proclaimed in Acts 2:22–23 and 4:27–28.[52]

Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know—this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. (Acts 2:22–23)

For truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. (Acts 4:27–28)

In all of this, God does not will the sin in an affirming manner, but does so asymmetrically and permissively, for the sake of the salvation that will come to many as a result of Christ’s crucifixion.[53] It is the exaltation of Jesus and the good of our resultant salvation that God approves of, not the sinful plotting and execution of the murder of Jesus considered in itself. Thus, we should not conclude from the fact that God’s revealed will is violated by his creatures’ sin that he is not comprehensively sovereign. As it stands in the case before us, Pilate, Herod, and the others did not wrest control from God and put Jesus to death against the Father’s will. Rather, we learn that God’s revealed will, which can be transgressed, is complemented—indeed undergirded—by his decreed will, in which everything works out in conformity to his plan. The complexity of the divine volition is, in turn, suggestive to us that there is a similar complexity in the divine affection. For since, as we have been arguing, God’s volition and affection are harmonious, we would rightly understand God also to experience two kinds of affection about this same incident. In this case, it would involve the hatred of the wicked deed of crucifying Jesus considered in the narrow lens, and approval and even love for what it accomplishes in the broader lens (Phil. 2:9–11; Col. 1:20; Heb. 12:2).[54] Clearly, we stand with reverence in the face of a transcendent divine analogy to our own experience.[55] And in this case, I dare say that the gospel hangs on the point being analogical. For who among us could simultaneously delight in and disdain to bring about the crushing—even if for the good of others—of one of our children?[56] No, even here, the emotional and volitional initiative remarkably belongs to God, for as we have seen, God not only decreed to bring the crucifixion of Jesus to pass, but in the ultimate sense, he also decreed to love what he hated in the narrow sense.

Another way of making the point that we are discussing in this section is to remind ourselves that some texts speak from the vantage point of God’s relational dealings within the covenant (e.g., Ezek. 18:32; 33:11). As we noted at the conclusion of chapter 8, such texts indicate the literally true vigor of God’s responsive covenantal affection for his people—what I (in dependence on Piper’s phraseology) have here termed God’s “narrow lens” affection.[57] At the same time, other biblical texts speak from the perspective of God’s intrinsic transcendence of these same covenant relationships (e.g., Acts 2:22–23; 4:27–28; Eph. 1:11)—what I (again depending on Piper’s terminology) have here called God’s “wide-angle lens” will and affection. Either way of putting it communicates the point that God’s passion is analogical to ours, particularly at the point of always being ultimately voluntary.

Omniscience, Providence, and Impassibility

My aim in this section is not to provide a defense of God’s exhaustive divine foreknowledge (EDF, hereafter).[58] Nor is it to expound a comprehensive model of divine providence, nor even more specifically the nature of the divine sovereignty–human responsibility subcategory of providence.[59] Rather, my more limited concern is simply to ask in what ways EDF and a broadly Reformed model of providence—both of which I hold to be correct—inform the doctrine of divine impassibility.

In the case of the former, EDF (e.g., Deut. 31:16–21; Ps. 139:4, 16; Isa. 41:21–29; 42:8–9; 43:8–13; 44:6–8, 24–28; 45:20–23; 46:8–11; 48:3–8) precludes the possibility that God might ever be “caught off-guard,” thus experiencing an emotional reaction based on the surprise that comes to him from encountering the unforeseen. Additionally, EDF includes the fact that God foreknows not only all that his creatures will do,[60] but also his own emotional (and volitional) responses to his creatures’ actions, before he himself ever experiences those responses.[61] In the case of the latter, God’s comprehensive sovereignty (e.g., Deut. 32:39; Ps. 135:5–6; Isa. 45:5–7; Dan. 4:34–35; Eph. 1:11) indicates to us that God not only knows in advance how his creatures will act and how he will respond, but also purposes those same things in advance.[62] This in turn forecloses on the possibility that God might be involuntarily overtaken or overwhelmed by passions that he has not foreseen or over which he has no control. On the other hand, of course, Scripture’s teaching on human responsibility (e.g., Deut. 30:19; Josh. 24:15; John 3:16–18; Heb. 12:25) confirms that God has freely entered into relationship with us and has granted mankind moral freedom for which we are rightly held accountable.[63]

When it is inevitably objected by someone, perhaps an Open Theist, that exhaustive foreknowledge or comprehensive sovereignty disqualifies the relationship that follows from being “real,”[64] we need only reply that such an objection falls into the trap of univocism, that is, the thinking that all relationships—relationship with God included—are real only insofar as they bear the distinctive marks of human experience. If anthropocentrism is our criterion, then something like the Open Theistic conception of “real” relationality logically follows. Since, however, anthropocentrism is not our criterion, we join Bruce Ware in celebrating the fact that “a real relationship with God—the true and living God—will be quite unreal, by comparison to any merely human relationship.”[65] Additionally, John Frame’s observation is very illuminating in this regard.

Doctrines like God’s eternal decree, his immutability, and his aseity sometimes lead us to think that he cannot truly respond to what happens in the world. Responding seems to assume passivity and change in God. Now emotions are usually responses to events. They are, indeed, sometimes called “passions,” a term that suggests passivity.. . . But although God’s eternal decree does not change, it does ordain change. It ordains a historical series of events, each of which receives God’s evaluation. God evaluates different events in different ways. Those evaluations themselves are fixed in God’s eternal plan. But they are genuine evaluations of the events. It is not wrong to describe them as responses to these events. Furthermore, we have seen that God is not only transcendent beyond time and space, but also immanent in all times and spaces. From these immanent perspectives, God views each event from within human history. As he does, he evaluates each event appropriately, when it happens. Such evaluations are, in the most obvious sense, responses. Does such responsiveness imply passivity in God? To say so would be highly misleading. God responds (both transcendently and immanently) only to what he has himself ordained. He has chosen to create a world that will often grieve him. So ultimately he is active, rather than passive. Some may want to use the term impassible to indicate that fact.[66]

If we take a moment now to think in terms of the incarnation as the ultimate theomorphic analogy, we should consider how the narrative of Jesus’s resurrection of Lazarus in John 11 instructs us in our effort to understand the relation of foreknowledge and foreordination to “real” relationality. In John 11, it is fascinating to observe that Jesus does exactly what Open Theism says cannot be done. His actions are mysterious to Mary and Martha, for when they send word of Lazarus’s severe illness to Jesus, he only delays in coming—a delay resulting in the death of Lazarus. It would likely seem mysterious to us as well, if we did not have the benefit of reading verse 4 before verses 5 and 6, for on the face of it, the logic moving from verse 5 to 6 hardly seems fitting for someone who professes to love Lazarus and his sisters.

But when Jesus heard it he said, “This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. (John 11:4–6)

What Jesus’s conversation with his disciples in verse 4 and verses 14–15 shows us is that his delaying is intentional. “Then Jesus told them plainly, ‘Lazarus has died, and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him’” (John 11:14–15). Indeed, Jesus tells them he is delaying precisely so that Lazarus will have time to die. It sounds so stupefying, until we recognize that Jesus’s ultimate aim is not to let death have its way with Lazarus, but to pull back the curtain a bit so that his disciples and his friends may see, for the sake of their ultimate benefit, that as he says to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die” (John 11:25–26).

Now, if we follow the anthropocentric relationality criterion, then we will most likely assume that when Jesus does finally show up on the scene, he does so triumphantly and stoically; after all, he already knows and has already planned the imminent resurrection of Lazarus. How odd, then, on the terms of that expectation, to encounter verses 32–36.

Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. And he said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus wept. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” (cf. v. 38)

No, though foreknowledge and foreordination certainly disallow anthropocentric understandings of divine passion, we must not conclude that they disallow meaningful and powerful relationship and passion. Here, Jesus both foreknows and permits Lazarus’s death, and yet he is still compassionately moved at the loss and grief of his friends.

Perhaps it would help if we thought of Jesus as looking at the death of Lazarus through the two lenses mentioned in our previous section. On the one hand, through the “wide-angle lens,” Jesus looks at and allows this event for the sake of the glory it will bring to God (v. 4) and the good it will bring to his friends (vv. 25–26). On the other hand, through the “narrow lens,” Jesus is also able to sympathize with his friends in the face of losing a loved one to the enemy, death—an enemy that Jesus wants them to know he has come ultimately to defeat (vv. 25–26).[67]

Immutability, Divine Love, and Impassibility

It seems odd to conjoin God’s immutability and love in a discussion of divine impassibility only if we are conducting that discussion outside the scriptural frame of reference. Having seen the scriptural bases of these themes and having conceptually engaged several of the key aspects of divine immutability and divine love, we will aim in this section to offer a few brief reflections on these interconnected attributes, such that we come to understand that the vital overlap of divine immutability and divine love is, in reality, the immutability of divine love.

Reflecting first on the impact of divine immutability, we have followed Ware’s model in which God’s ontological immutability gives rise to his ethical immutability, and both of those in turn secure God’s relational mutability toward his creatures in the appropriate moral contexts.[68] In consequence of that balance, we are not surprised to find something similar in the closely related doctrine of divine impassibility. Perhaps we could state it thus: God’s ontological impassibility (by which, again, we mean invulnerability, not impassivity) makes certain, in virtue of his constant character, that God will respond not only with the appropriate volition, but also with the perfectly fitted affective response to his creatures’ in-time moral and personal fluctuations. Though we have noted the harmony of divine volition and divine affection a number of times, this is a pivotal context in which to stress that point again. Don Carson frames it well.

All of God’s emotions, including his love in all its aspects, cannot be divorced from God’s knowledge, God’s power, God’s will.. . . Equally, however, all of God’s will or choice or plan is never divorced from his love—just as it is never divorced from his justice, his holiness, his omniscience, and all his other perfections. Thus I am not surreptitiously retreating to a notion of love that is merely willed altruism; I am not suggesting that God’s love be dissolved in God’s will. Rather, I am suggesting that we will successfully guard against the evils that impassibility combats if we recognize that God’s “passions,” unlike ours, do not flare up out of control. Our passions change our direction and priorities, domesticating our will, controlling our misery and our happiness, surprising and destroying or establishing our commitments. But God’s “passions,” like everything else in God, are displayed in conjunction with the fullness of all his other perfections. In that framework, God’s love is not so much a function of his will, as something that displays itself in perfect harmony with his will—and with his holiness, his purposes in redemption, his infinitely wise plans, and so forth.[69]

In other words, God’s relational passions accord completely with his will, but his passion is no less passionate for being perfectly voluntary.

When we turn to a brief reflection on the impact of a proper understanding of the complexity of divine love, we are able to see how the doctrine of the love of God is a perfect testing ground for framing one’s understanding of divine impassibility. As we saw in chapter 5, many passibilists go astray right here, for they interpret divine love one-dimensionally in accord with human experience. The variegated scriptural portrait, however, suggests that God’s love is much richer and more profound. This profundity is rooted in the eternal tri-personal identity of God as a perfect fellowship of unwavering, unyielding, and undiminished love. Thus we see that stability and invulnerability are not the opposite of passion.

It is in this sense then that God’s immutability is the immutability of divine love. This foundational intra-Trinitarian love never waxes nor wanes, but it is not therefore placid and temperate.[70] No, it is the foundation and apex of divine delight. Furthermore, this intra-Trinitarian reality is the certain ground of God’s covenant-relational passion in the redemptive economy. Though all of God’s relational dealings in the economy are not the same thing as his intra-Trinitarian love, those covenantal relations are all manifest on the basis of that intra-divine reality. Thus, though God’s covenantal affections toward a fallen creation are new affective manifestations of God’s immutable self-commitment, they are not random, disconnected, and ex nihilo emotional experiences.[71] Rather, they are the suited emotional manifestations of divine love in the face of a fallen and rebellious order.

Trinitarian Issues: Rightly Relating the Immanent and Economic Trinities

In certain respects, what we have been arguing for up to this point is a distinction and a union, but not a reductionistic identicality, between the immanent (i.e., ontological) and economic Trinities. That, of course, is not to say that there are two Trinities, but to make note of the important point that while God operates within the world that he has made, the triune God existed eternally prior to and independent of creation. In a sense, this way of speaking is a more explicitly Trinitarian fashion of asserting the Creator/creature distinction and the transcendence/immanence balance that follows from it.

On the other hand, when Trinitarian passibilists like Jürgen Moltmann rely on Rahner’s rule—“The economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity and the immanent Trinity is the economic Trinity”—to establish their doctrine of divine suffering,[72] they wind up collapsing this distinction and making the identity of God necessarily dependent upon certain events in the redemptive economy, in this case particularly the event of the cross.[73] As we saw in chapter 5, this is exactly what Moltmann does, for instance, with his interpretation of the cross, whereby that event of suffering becomes the eternal constituting feature of the Godhead.[74] John Thompson explains this phenomenon in Moltmann by first quoting Richard Bauckham’s analysis and then extending the discussion to show the detrimental application of Rahner’s rule.

For Moltmann, “The cross as the key to the doctrine of God, not only reveals God as the kind of love which is willing to suffer, but in the sense that the actual sufferings of the cross are essential to who God is. This attempt to take God’s temporal experience as seriously as possible ends up eternalizing it.” This is the same as saying that Moltmann confuses economic and immanent Trinity since he fails to make a proper distinction between creator and creature, the redeemer and the redeemed.[75]

Theologically speaking, while it would certainly be wrong to consider the question of divine impassibility without reference to the cross, it is every bit as problematic to abstract, isolate, and therefore misinterpret an event from the economy of redemption—even if that event is the cross—by reading it as the totality of the divine reality, as Moltmann has done.[76] This kind of reading of the crucifixion fails to acknowledge that Scripture presents us with a package including both the narration of key redemptive-historical events (e.g., the exodus, the cross) and the interpretation of those events. We do not have the license, therefore, to interpret these redemptive-historical events in an ahistorical manner that conflicts with the Bible’s own interpretation of them.

But this is exactly what Moltmann does, and as a result, his panentheistic God-world conception yields drastic differences in understanding the purpose of the incarnation and the cross. For his part, Moltmann does not view the redemption of sinners as the purpose of the incarnational mission.[77] Rather, for him, the purpose is simply for God to identify with us in suffering, which presumably brings some comfort to the afflicted. To suggest, however, that mankind can have comforting fellowship with God apart from treating the sin problem is to misunderstand the biblically conceived aim of redemptive history, thus cheapening the biblical notions of sin and grace. David Cook has offered insightful commentary on this deficient feature of Moltmann’s view.

The obvious lack here is of any talk of the real point of the cross. It is to deal with the problem of sin. Sometimes it seems as if the mere fact of enduring suffering is in itself sufficient, and that suffering itself is then sufficient to bring about transformation. But transformation from what? . . . Part of the danger in talk of the weakness and suffering of God is a belittling of the reality of sin. It likewise leads to absence of reflection on the holiness of God and his refusal to look upon sin. It omits the power of God to overcome sin and transform the sinner. The Gospel message to weak and suffering humanity offers genuine hope of change. But that transformation is essentially because sin . . . has been dealt with. Moltmann says “(God) . . . heals all sicknesses and all griefs, by making every sickness and every grief his own suffering and grieving.. . .” But it is not suffering itself which achieves any end. It is only victory over sin. Simple identification with human suffering is not in and of itself transforming. It is not enough simply to get down in the gutter with humility. We needed to be lifted from the gutter of sin by the transforming victory of love over sin.[78]

Again, though, the basic problem with this brand of Trinitarian passibilism is that it lacks the critically necessary methodological balance. Absent a strong Creator/creature distinction and recognition of God’s intrinsic self-sufficiency (i.e., intra-Trinitarian self-fulfillment) and voluntary condescension, Moltmann’s panentheistic view is not surprising.[79] Indeed, we could not maintain that God is any different in eternity than he is in the economy if there were no Creator/creature distinction, that is, if there were no point at which creation, which previously did not exist, came into existence. However, when we maintain the Creator/creature distinction as Scripture demands, we can see that, though God acts and expresses emotion in the redemptive economy in ways (e.g., executing judgment, venting wrath, expressing compassion) he never has in the immanent Trinity, this is not grounds for thinking that God’s economic revelation of himself is an unreliable guide. What the right balance does is protect the voluntariness of God’s creation work, and thus it keeps before us the critical point that, while God’s covenantal dealings are true self-giving expressions to his people, the triune God nevertheless also transcends those creation-oriented relationships.

In this respect, though God’s actions in the economy are all expressions and manifestations of his essential being and character, God’s action in eternity is not identical in every respect to his action in the economy, because in eternity past, God was not engaged with a finite and fallen creation.[80] At the risk of being overly repetitive, this was seen above with our discussion of functional attributes/affections like wrath. There we saw that God’s wrath is an economic expression of his eternally unwavering character coming into contact with a fallen created order. And yet this does not mean that God is eternally wrathful. In fact, he is nothing of the sort, for in the Trinity apart from creation, who may we ask is angry with whom, and for what reason? If, however, we follow only Rahner’s rule to the exclusion of the redemptive-historical framework and the biblical testimony to divine transcendence, we must necessarily conclude in this instance that God is eternally wrathful in the immanent Trinity, because after all, we have seen his wrath against sin in the economy. On the other hand, when rightly constrained by the controls of redemptive history and Scripture’s own exposition of God’s redemptive acts, we understand that God’s wrath in the economy of redemption does reveal something truthful about God in eternity, but it is not that God is eternally angry or eternally suffering. Rather, it is that God is eternally holy, just, and delighted in his own glory, such that following God’s creation of a world that then falls into sin, his holiness and love of his own glory will certainly and rightly take on the expression of godly wrath in the face of that sin.

Toward a More Biblical Theodicy

As we return to one of the primary issues in launching modern passibilism, I begin by noting that an attempt at providing a formal philosophical theodicy is far outside the scope of this volume.[81] I aim only to render my own verdict as to the shortcoming of the passibilist argument from theodicy to divine suffering.[82] Thus, even though the Bible itself does not advance a formal philosophical theodicy,[83] insofar as the Bible does speak to the sufferings and evils of this world it flatly contradicts the passibilist’s supposition that the only satisfactory theodicy is the one in which God eternally joins us in our suffering.[84]

If, in addressing ourselves to the problem of evil, we decide to go the passibilist route and appeal to the suffering solidarity of God as the basis of our theodicy, then what we lose is the hope—the biblically stressed hope (e.g., Rom. 5:1–5; 8:20–21)—that evil and suffering will finally be overcome. The shortfall of many passibilistic theodicies is the failure of impotent suffering to produce any true comfort.[85] We do not hereby deny that God understands our sufferings, nor even that he experiences them in the incarnation.[86] We merely call attention to the fact that the purpose of the cross was to overcome the power and penalty of sin, not merely a cosmic way of saying, “I feel your pain.” As Gerald Bray colorfully illustrates, “A hospital patient would not be greatly comforted by a doctor who got into the next bed and assured him that he understood the patient’s sufferings because he had the same disease himself; the patient wants someone who understands but who can also heal.”[87]

One reason I was drawn to this topic is that a biblically based model of divine impassibility and divine passion holds the promise of personal spiritual benefit and the potential for strengthening one’s faith in the face of the difficult problem of evil. Simply stated, I find that there is great confidence in knowing that God is stable. In this fallen world, it is faith steadying to recall that the purposes of the self-determined and self-sufficient One are not wavering on the brink of being overcome by the whims of creaturely machinations. At the same time, however, I believe that there is also great comfort for the believer in knowing that because God is thoroughly passionate about his own glory, he is therefore also passionate in his love for creation and the body of Christ, his repudiation of sin, and his avowal of righteousness. In other words, God’s genuine care for pilgrims on the way (1 Pet. 5:7) provides a solace amid their current anxieties that would be lacking if the language of divine passion were mere playacting. As with the larger categories of transcendence and immanence, then, I believe that achieving the proper balance between divine impassibility and divine passion offers significant sustenance for a healthy faith.

Such a model, which yields both confidence and comfort, offers biblically reliable counsel to those who approach this doctrine with an interest that springs from their own experience of suffering or grief.[88] In a fallen world, all one has to do is live long enough, and such heartache will come. My contention, though, is that while the passibilist theodicy of divine co-suffering may initially seem appealing, it actually comes at a cost to our faith. For when that day of heartache comes, continued faith hangs on the belief that God is not handcuffed by the realities of sin and evil, but that he is ultimately the conqueror of them. Here we need a transcendence/immanence balance applied to the issue of walking with God in our pain. Without both pillars—confidence in God and comfort from God—our vessel will not hold in that day.[89] Without confidence that God is in exhaustive control of everything that comes to us, we may shrink from evangelical faith. Without comfort from God, our own self-mustered resources will eventually prove insufficient, of themselves, to keep us moving forward in faith toward the day when all will be righted.

It seems that this dual expectation is not so far from the expressions in some of the psalms. On the one hand, in the psalms we learn that God is with his people in their hardship (e.g., Pss. 23:4; 46:1),[90] even as he is present with them in all times and places (e.g., Ps. 139:7–10). But in the case of the psalms, it seems that this knowledge of God’s presence with them, which does give comfort, is also cause for confidence in God.[91] Interestingly, when a psalmist portrays a situation of unjust oppression or suffering with raw honesty over the extent of personal hurt, even then there is usually also at some point an affirmation of God’s ability to do something about the problem. At times this is cast in the form of questioning God or presenting him with a complaint, as if to say, “When are you going to do something” (e.g., Psalm 88).[92] But, of course, such questioning and pleading one’s case before God operates on the presumption that God can do something about the problem, though for some reason he has chosen not to up to this point.

It does not seem then that we have biblical precedent for finding our comfort in suffering from a belief that God has joined us as a victim in our suffering.[93] While he certainly promises to bear our burdens for us (1 Pet. 5:6–7), the point is that he is strong to bear them when we are not, and not that he will unendingly wallow in impotent victimization with us. It seems that the biblical appeal to God’s presence with us in suffering finds comfort precisely in the knowledge that God is not being victimized against his will and that he is strong to deliver at the point at which he has chosen. We then, as with the authors of the psalms, may rightly find comfort in the knowledge that God is with us in our angst. But more than that, we may also have confidence, like the psalmists, that though we may be overtaken or overwhelmed in the face of our suffering, God is not. And that is good news.

Conclusions: How Should We Understand God’s Impassibility and Impassionedness?

The fundamental point we have been laboring is that God is both impassible and impassioned. In attempting to draw all of the foregoing methodological, biblical, and theological observations into an overarching conclusion, we may summarize our primary points underneath the following twofold observation: God’s passion transcends ours both in an ontological sense and in an ethical sense.[94] The former (God’s ontologically transcendent passion) we may accurately term divine impassibility, in accord with the mainstream emphasis of the classical tradition.[95] The latter (God’s ethically transcendent passion), we may rightly designate divine impassionedness. The critical point here is that God transcends humanity not only in his impassibility, but also in his impassionedness. The God/human analogy applies to both aspects. To be clear, I do not mean that God transcends humanity in his passion in the sense that he has no affections.[96] Divine impassibility is not the equivalent of passionlessness. Thus, when I say that God transcends human passion, I mean it in the sense that his passion is qualitatively superior, for his passion is one of ethical perfection. Both senses of God’s transcendent passion grow out of the Creator/creature distinction. God is always ontologically other than us and ethically superior to us.[97]

Ontological Transcendence

In the case of God’s ontological transcendence, divine passion differs from ours in the following respects. First, though we have not pressed this point extensively, we should note that God’s experience of emotion is an incorporeal experience, which is to say that it precludes the kinds of bodily accompaniments that are part and parcel of our emotional experience. Thus, for example, God never has tears, “butterflies” in the belly, or the experience of an adrenaline rush. All that this means, however, is that God’s experience of emotion is divine and not human. His experience of emotion is certainly no less real than ours on account of the fact that he does not have a body.[98]

Second, we return to stress that so much of what has here been argued (e.g., in se atemporality and in re omnitemporality, essential immutability and relational mutability) follows from proper understandings of the Creator/creature distinction, God’s intrinsic self-sufficiency and voluntary condescension, and the perfect love and fellowship of the intra-Trinitarian communion. So, we may ask ourselves, how does a self-sufficient God of completely self-fulfilled loving Trinitarian fellowship love the created other? The answer is with perfect unconditionality. As Bruce Ware explains:

The God of the Bible loves and seeks us out with such eagerness and persistence when he himself stands in no need whatever of the objects of his love. His love, then, is unconditional without qualification. It is, as C. S. Lewis puts it, “bottomlessly selfless by very definition; it has everything to give and nothing to receive.”[99]

Third, we have also seen that God’s omniscience and sovereignty preclude the possibility of God’s ever having the kind of emotional experience that we often do, namely, the experience of an emotional reaction due to the surprisingly unexpected or unforeseen. Fourth, we learned of God’s vast emotional complexity. We saw this primarily in his capacity to will and emotionally engage in two ways, as through a “narrow” and a “wide-angle” lens.[100] This was very instructive in showing us how God is perfectly responsive to all that transpires temporally (narrow lens), while also providing a crucial mechanism for understanding how he also transcends and even approves (wide angle lens) of all that he has ordained.[101] Thus, we conclude that whereas God is perfectly responsive, he is never ultimately passive.

Fifth, when we come to the pairing of affective and rational capacities, it is true that human experience of emotion can and often does lead (though not necessarily in every case) to the overthrow of one’s rational faculties and cause one to act irresponsibly and “out of character.” The same can never be said of God. His passion is always consistent with his most clear-eyed rational assessment of things.[102] We must be absolutely clear, therefore, to stress that when God’s wrath burns bright against human sin, this is not an irrational response or overreaction. Rather, it is the perfectly fitted response to creaturely sin. If we are tempted to think that God has gotten over his bad temper, so to speak, in the shift from the Old Testament to the New Testament, then we betray a lack of thoughtful appreciation of just what transpired at the cross and what will transpire in the great upcoming judgment and eternal condemnation of those who never repent and believe. That God—in both the Old Testament and the New—restrains his wrath at times does not in the least indicate that he is not angry at sin; rather, it does indicate that he is simultaneously gracious (Rom. 2:3–4; 2 Pet. 3:1–12). Similarly, as we undergo greater emotional sanctification and our experience of passion becomes more godly—more theomorphic, we might say—then our sanctified passion will operate in greater harmony with our sanctified reason and volition. In that sense, we should all strive, by God’s grace, to become more (and not less) passionate.

Sixth, when we similarly juxtapose God’s affective and volitional capacities, we have insisted again and again that the proper understanding of divine impassibility proscribes the possibility that any of God’s creatures could ever wring an emotion from him involuntarily. To put it positively, God’s emotion and volition, just as his emotion and rationality, operate in perfect and harmonious accord. To dissolve the affective displays of God in Scripture entirely into volitional categories would depersonalize God’s covenantal affection. To ponder just one example of the damage that would result from such a misstep, this kind of depersonalization would reduce God’s wrath against sin to a mere cause and effect relationship.[103] But as we have seen, the affront of sin is hardly something that is impersonal to God (e.g., Romans 1–3). In this regard, Leon Morris gets the balance right: “To the men of the Old Testament the wrath of God is both very real and very serious. God is not thought of as capriciously angry (like the deities of the heathen), but because He is a moral Being, His anger is directed towards wrongdoing in any shape or form.”[104]

All of these observations lead to the conclusion that God is never seized by passion so as to emote involuntarily. God, then, is the only being in the universe of whom it can be said that he is responsive but never, in the ultimate sense, passive. We have argued, therefore, that it would be mistaken to understand the divine and human experiences of emotion in an entirely univocal fashion. In this, we are right to stand with the tradition and say that God is impassible.

Ethical Transcendence

In the case of God’s ethical transcendence, it is also true that divine passion exceeds ours in depth and perfection. Not only is God supremely loving, but God’s emotional experience is never sinful. Thus, there are certain emotions (e.g., fear, anxiety, dread, greed, lust, unjust anger) that he has never experienced and never will experience.[105] Instead, God hates sin and loves his own glory with an infinite perfection.[106] The weakness of our biblically formed passions is chiefly evident here. In the aftermath of the fall, we do not hate sin as we ought, nor do we pursue righteousness as we should. Instead, we dabble with sin. Given a moment’s reflection, we recognize how foolish it is to dabble with sin. But because of the weakness of our affections, sin dabbling is what we love to pursue, apart from the grace of God (cf. 2 Thess. 2:9–10).

God’s ethical transcendence, then, is not one of dispassion, but of perfect passion. In this we are right to develop, as we have, the second prong given to us by the classical impassibility tradition and say that God is impassioned. Thus, as I have repeatedly argued, God is eternally, transcendently, and unshakably loving in the intra-Trinitarian fellowship. The intra-Trinitarian delight never waxes or wanes. It never grows more vibrant than it is right now and has always been. In itself that foundational reality is not enhanced by virtue of our existence. Neither does it burn any dimmer because of our sin. God is as self-sufficient emotionally as he is volitionally and intellectually.

What does this mean for our pursuit of godly passion? I submit that when we discover the majestically impassible passion of God, we will consider it the grandest news of all that the God who intrinsically does not need us—not for intellectual counsel, not for volitional guidance, not for relational fulfillment, and not for an emotional outlet—has condescended to create us—and now due to sin, to remake us—as, among many other things, little images of his godly passion, to learn, embrace, live, and proclaim a godly jealousy for his glory. As we grow in his grace and imitate his love, we will progressively seek to have God reign supreme in our affections, as well as our intellects; to have as uppermost in our affections that which is uppermost in his, namely, the glory of God; yes, even to hate what he hates, namely, the besmirching—in our estimation, for we cannot do it in reality—of that very glory. In part, then, when our emotional experience is most biblical, we will know the joy of theomorphically imaging God as we were originally designed to do.

Unfortunately, we have seen both passibilists and more extreme impassibilists argue that this dual affirmation cannot be so and that the two concepts of divine impassibility and divine impassionedness are mutually exclusive. My sense is that those who argue this way feel compelled to do so because, on the face of it and in view of our own experience, it sounds incoherent to say that God is both impassible and impassioned. We do not, after all, have any friends or family members that are meaningfully relational because they are entirely self-sufficient. But according to our reading of Scripture, this is true of God. Relationship with God is gloriously unlike our relationship with other human beings, despite similarities in various respects. Given all we have seen, this is exactly as it should be. It is part of the majesty of who God is that, I believe, we will revel in with everlasting delight.

Should Suffering, in Particular, Be Predicated of God?

To speak with clarity on this particular issue, my thesis here is that we must deny the precise senses of divine suffering that most modern passibilists are eager to affirm. Certainly, we must deny the extreme-passibilist contention that suffering is intrinsic to the inner life of God.[107] Furthermore, we must also reject passibilist attempts to attribute to God bodily suffering, death, and the psychological angst deriving from uncertain outcomes. While more will be said about the impact of the incarnation shortly, it follows from divine incorporeality (John 4:24) that God can experience neither bodily suffering nor physical death. And since God exhaustively knows and determines the future, he never faces situations in which the outcome is uncertain.

Having said all that, we should nevertheless affirm with Scripture that God can be grieved by his creatures as they transgress his revealed will (Gen. 6:6; Isa. 63:10; Eph. 4:30). In line with the aforementioned commitments of this model, though, we should note that such grief is best accounted for as an expression of the “narrow lens” of the divine affection, and not as something true of the eternal metaphysical fabric of the Trinity. In other words, there is nothing improper about acknowledging God’s grief over sin in the economy, provided that we simultaneously understand that he transcends all of his relationships in the economy. To say that God is grieved over sin is literally true covenantal discourse. It does not, however, mean that God’s only perspective on the event is from within the economy.

Thus, when we speak of God’s grief or compassion in the economy, we should recall that these are covenantal expressions of God’s eternally loving nature. Some may choose to use the term suffering as a synonym for that economic experience. I suggest, however, that we avoid the use of that particular term, not because it admits of no possible sense in which it could be said to be true, but because in order to use it accurately in contrast to the dramatically different intention of modern passibilists, it would require such an extended series of qualifications before it could ever viably be applied. When self-identifying passibilists describe God as “suffering,” they typically mean that such suffering is constitutive of God’s very nature. By contrast, in virtue of God’s “wide-angle” lens on redemptive history, we reject the notion that God’s effectual will is ever thwarted or that God is consequently eternally anguished (Rom. 9:10–24; Eph. 1:11).

Maldwyn Hughes would beg to differ. Hughes agrees with me that God is not passive relationally, but then goes on to contend that while “the suffering of God is not passive pain or helpless endurance, it is active travail.”[108] Others have made a similar point in defense of divine suffering by arguing that God’s suffering is his self-chosen experience of psychological torment deriving from the internal conflict of love and wrath within himself. Notable among such proponents is Kazoh Kitamori, who has contended that “the ‘pain’ of God reflects his will to love the object of his wrath.. . . God who must sentence sinners to death fought with God who wishes to love them. The fact that this fighting God is not two different gods but the same God causes his pain. Here heart is opposed to heart within God.”[109]

What shall we say to this? Is God really at odds with himself, equally wanting two things that he cannot simultaneously have? Must God begrudgingly concede the event of the cross so as to conquer his wrath toward sinners with love? No; as we have suggested above, both God’s wrath and his love toward the creature are products of his eternally stable commitment to his own glory. Wrath and love in God are not the evidence of divine schizophrenia. Thus, God can will in one sense (i.e., decree) what he prohibits in another sense (i.e., his revealed will). Similarly, as we have seen most profoundly at the cross, God can love in the big-picture lens what he hates in the narrow lens. No, he is not torn between two equal and antithetical dispositions. Rather, his actions and his affections are united in virtue of his uppermost love of himself![110]

Finally, then, we must note that though God does not suffer in the way modern passibilists desire, God has provided what we really need by sending forth his Son in the fullness of time to redeem sinners (Gal. 4:4–5). In this, Jesus Christ took on human nature and redemptively experienced, through that nature, suffering and death on our behalf. As we will reiterate in the next chapter, to ask for more than that—to ask for divine suffering—would render the incarnation superfluous.[111] Outside of Jesus’s experience of human suffering in the incarnation, however, we can bring this chapter to a close by lending our support to the conclusion of Thomas Weinandy over against the passibilist tendency to ascribe suffering to the fabric of the Godhead.

It is pressingly important to the Church’s most important public task: communicating the gospel, and doing so in a culture whose dominant virtues are compassion, empathy, and, as it is sometimes put, feeling one another’s pain. In such a culture, it is very tempting to speak of God as . . . suffering as we suffer.. . . That temptation should be resisted.[112]

Succumbing to the temptation of which Weinandy speaks simply comes at too high a cost, both in terms of biblical and theological cogency, on the one hand, and in terms of sustenance for our faith, on the other hand. By contrast, it seems our need is more clearly met by the duality of divine impassibility and divine impassionedness, in which God is never involuntarily afflicted, though he does voluntarily and graciously condescend to give himself to his creatures for their benefit. The good news is that in so doing, God remains the conqueror and not the victim of sin and evil. In all of this, God supplies the highest, best, and indeed most real forms of relationality and passion—the foundation from which all other derivative forms are birthed and the standard by which all creaturely forms are judged.

[1]Frame rightly points out that the theological disciplines we have been working with in the three formative chapters so far mutually inform one another: “On the one hand (as is often noted), systematic theology depends on exegetical and biblical theology. To develop applications, the systematic theologian must know what each passage says and the mighty historical acts of God that are described therein.. . . On the other hand (and this point is less often noted), the reverse is also true: exegetical and biblical theology also depend on systematics. One can surely exegete the parts of Scripture better if he is sensitive to the overall teaching of Scripture as discovered by systematics. And one can understand better the history of redemption if he has a systematic perspective. Thus the three forms of theology—exegetical, biblical, and systematic—are mutually dependent and correlative; they involve one another. They are ‘perspectives’ on the task of theology, not independent disciplines.” John M. Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1987), 212–13.

[2]In the categories that follow, although there is significant overlap and intertwining, I intend for there to be something of a theological progression from one category to the next.

[3]In this respect, recall the comment of John Feinberg that we pointed out in chap. 6: “If God hears and answers our prayers, and if he changes his attitudes toward us when we repent of sin, for example, it seems that his mental and emotional states at any given moment must to some extent be influenced by what we do. But, why is that a deficiency in God? Holding that God’s mental focus and emotional responses are determined in part by the actions of his creatures does not entail that his creatures either bring him into existence or maintain him in being. It doesn’t even require that God’s purposes, desires, or choices depend on anything or anyone but himself.. . . Moreover, for Calvinists, God has already decided before the foundation of the world what he will think and do at the appropriate moment in response to us. For Arminians who think that God foresees the future free actions of his creatures, God has also already decided in advance what he will say and do. It would seem that the only way that the influencing of God’s mental and emotional states (and even his actions) by his creatures could count as an imperfection in God would be for his creatures’ thoughts and actions to force God to think, choose, or do things he does not want to think, choose, or do. But there is no reason for this to happen according to any Calvinistic theology nor for many Arminian theologies.” John S. Feinberg, No One Like Him (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2001), 277.

[4]As we saw in chap. 5, some passibilists have been inclined to use our image-bearing status as grounds to theologize anthropocentrically about God. Consequently, those formulations of divine passion fail (in practice at least) to account for any significant senses in which divine emotion is dissimilar to human emotion.

[5]The texts cited here show that the image of God is retained in its structural sense, even after the fall.

[6]Anthony Hoekema, Created in God’s Image (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 83.

[7]Ibid., 72.

[8]In this respect, see Raymond Ortlund’s compelling analysis of our harlotry in relation to God. Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Whoredom: God’s Unfaithful Wife in Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996).

[9]Describing his own experience of conversion, Jonathan Edwards termed this awakening the “new sense of things.” He reflects, “I had a variety of concerns and exercises about my soul from childhood; but I had two more remarkable seasons of awakening, before I met with that change by which I was brought to those new dispositions, and that new sense of things, that I have since had.” He continues by pointing out that those two preliminary seasons were not the actual experience of regeneration for him. Then, after expounding on how he came to delight in divine sovereignty where he previously had not, he discusses the converting impact of reading 1 Tim. 1:17 as follows: “As I read the words, there came into my soul, and was as it were diffused through it, a sense of the glory of the Divine Being; a new sense, quite different from any thing I ever experienced before. Never any words of Scripture seemed to me as these words did. I thought with myself, how excellent a Being that was, and how happy I should be, if I might enjoy that God, and be rapt up to him in heaven; and be as it were swallowed up in him for ever! I kept saying, and as it were singing, over these words of Scripture to myself; and went to pray to God that I might enjoy him; and prayed in a manner quite different from what I used to do, with a new sort of affection.” Sereno E. Dwight, Memoirs of Jonathan Edwards, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 1, ed. Edward Hickman (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1974), xii–xiii. As Edwards would go on to argue in his renowned Religious Affections, “As there is no true religion where there is nothing else but affection, so there is no true religion where there is no religious affection.” Jonathan Edwards, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, in ibid., 1:243.

[10]Westminster Shorter Catechism, q. 1. See also 2 Cor. 3:18.

[11]Additionally, even in the glorified state, though sin will be absent in us, there will forever be the ontological distance—that of Creator from creature—between our experience of emotion and God’s. In that day, we will know experientially what it is like to express godly emotion without even the slightest taint of sin. We will never know experientially, however, what it is to emote as one who is infinite, self-sufficient, omniscient, and all-sovereign.

[12]Again, I recognize that there are many things appropriate to the Creator that are not appropriate to us as creatures. This extends to our emotional experience as well. Even as we grow in godly affection, therefore, we will never emote, for instance, as the ex nihilo creators of anything. And yet, while the univocal point does not fit, the analogical one does. Here, there is a pattern throughout Scripture from which we may analogically learn and grow. Divine fatherhood (John 6:38; Eph. 3:14–15) and divine husbandry (Eph. 5:22–32; Rev. 19:7–9), for instance, provide us with great examples of how seriously we ought to take sin (Ezek. 16:32; James 4:4) and how joyously we should receive the news of repentance (e.g., Luke 15). In all this, Jesus is our supreme example. I will say a little more in the next chapter about how the incarnate Christ can be an example of human obedience (human emotion included) for us.

[13]Thomas Weinandy’s comment is helpful here: “The OT never conceives of God’s transcendence in opposition to his immanence, as if that which makes God wholly other is different from that which allows him to be a personal God who lovingly acts in time and history. For the Bible, transcendence and immanence do not describe two divine modes of being or two sets of distinguishing qualities.. . . That which makes him divine, and thus wholly other and so transcendent, is that which equally allows him to be active within the created order and so be immanent.” Thomas G. Weinandy, Does God Suffer? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000), 56. In another section below, I will expand on how the immanent/economic Trinitarian distinction further elaborates and clarifies the nature of the Creator/creature distinction and the resultant balance of transcendence and immanence.

[14]Michael S. Horton, Lord and Servant: A Covenant Christology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005), 42, italics his.

[15]Thomas G. Weinandy, “God and Human Suffering: His Act of Creation and His Acts in History,” in Divine Impassibility and the Mystery of Human Suffering, ed. James F. Keating and Thomas Joseph White (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 111.

[16]Note that condescension in the theological sense is not demeaning, but gracious.

[17]Again, the relationships he undertakes are voluntary and gracious, as opposed to being necessary. Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance, vol. 2, The Doctrine of God, pt. 1, trans. T. H. L. Parker et al. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1957), 562.

[18]Nicholas P. Wolterstorff, “Does God Suffer? Interview with Nicholas P. Wolterstorff,” Modern Reformation 8, no. 5 (1999): 47, italics his.

[19]Cf. Frans Jozef van Beeck, “‘This Weakness of God’s Is Stronger’ (1 Cor. 1:25): An Inquiry Beyond the Power of Being,” Toronto Journal of Theology 9 (1993): 19–20.

[20]We see God’s gracious condescension in his self-revelation in Scripture (2 Pet. 1:21), supremely in the incarnation of his eternal Son (John 1:14; Heb. 1:1–3), and certainly in the context of opening himself up to relationship with us.

[21]Millard Erickson uses different terminology to convey this same point: “It is customary to think of the attributes on some sort of scheme such as absolute and relative. The former refers to God as he is in himself, apart from his creation.. . . So, for example, God is pure love, which expresses itself in the mutual interrelationships within the Trinity. When, however, he creates, this also becomes transitive love, or love for his creatures.” Millard J. Erickson, God the Father Almighty: A Contemporary Exploration of the Divine Attributes (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998), 135.

[22]In this sense, then, the church fathers, such as Augustine, were not wrong to speak of God as “blessed” or eternally “blissful.” Contra Nicholas Wolterstorff, “Suffering Love,” in Philosophy and the Christian Faith, ed. Thomas V. Morris (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 209.

[23]Bruce A. Ware, God’s Greater Glory: The Exalted God of Scripture and the Christian Faith (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2004), 151. What is true of God’s wrath is also true of God’s pity, as Ware notes on the same page. Furthermore, since the divine volition and divine affection are exercised in perfect harmony, this same logic of contingency would apply to the related divine attributes of retributive justice, mercy, and grace. Ibid., 152–53.

[24]By contrast, our experience of wrath is frequently provoked involuntarily, many times by something that comes to us unexpectedly.

[25]Since I am not a specialist in this area, I am leaving the technical discussion over the nature and philosophy of time, as well as the impact of modern physics and cosmology, to the specialists. For very capable representatives of the alternative positions on this issue see, as an advocate of atemporal eternity, Paul Helm, Eternal God: A Study of God without Time (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988). As an advocate of the temporally everlasting view, see John S. Feinberg, No One Like Him, 375–436. As an advocate of a mediating position attempting to juxtapose God’s atemporality apart from creation and his temporality following his creation, see William Lane Craig, Time and Eternity: Exploring God’s Relationship to Time (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2001). John Frame and Bruce Ware additionally provide accounts of a mediating position that is slightly distinct from Craig’s in their assertion of God’s timelessness (in se) and his omnitemporality (in re). John M. Frame, The Doctrine of God (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2002), 543–59; and Ware, God’s Greater Glory, 133–39. I have found these two latter presentations to be (1) especially helpful, (2) compelling, and (3) more accessible to a wider readership.

[26]Ware, God’s Greater Glory, 135.

[27]Erickson, God the Father Almighty, 136, italics his.

[28]As Anthony Tomasino points out, most of the time does not tell of a philosophical view of eternity, “i.e., neither unbounded time nor eternal timelessness.” Thus, a determination of which metaphysical view this verse is likelier to imply must depend on other—presumably more theological—considerations. Anthony Tomasino, “,” in NIDOTTE, 3:346. Interestingly, though, when commenting on Ps. 90:2 specifically a little later on, Tomasino disagrees with me and takes the view that in this context “it most likely means boundless time, stretching forward and backwards into perpetuity.” Ibid., 350. That is, he does not see Ps. 90:2 as teaching God’s in se atemporality. However, he seems to be open to the possibility that Ps. 93:2 does teach such a concept. Ibid., 347.

[29]James Barr lucidly contests the view of Oscar Cullmann in this regard. James Barr, Biblical Words for Time (Naperville, IL.: Allenson, 1969), 75.

[30]For other relevant texts, see also Deut. 33:27; Isa. 57:15; 1 Tim. 1:17; 2 Tim. 1:9; Titus 1:2; Jude 25.

[31]Erickson, God the Father Almighty, 139.

[32]I will have more to say on divine foreknowledge and foreordination below.

[33]In this respect, I heartily agree that we should view God’s foreknowledge in passages like Rom. 8:29 and 1 Pet. 1:1–2 (cf. Rom. 11:1–2 and 1 Pet. 1:20) as including deeply personal and covenantal connotations and not merely precognition of facts. Still, we should not conclude, on the basis of God’s prior devotion to the elect, that he has pre- or fore-experienced the outworking of that covenantal relation with them before they have come into existence. It is better to see the in-time outworking of that devotion growing out of and grounded upon the pre-temporal devotion. Undoubtedly, the two are intimately connected, but they should be distinguished. Indeed, if we collapse these two affective components together, it would be incumbent upon us also to collapse the volitional distinction between pre-temporal election and in-time justification, thus resulting in adherence to the false doctrine of eternal justification. Understanding this connection aright lends further support to our growing conviction that God’s in-time expression of covenantal passion is not grounded on pre-temporal passionlessness, but on pre-temporal intra-Trinitarian passion of the highest magnitude. For more exegetical insights into the proper understanding of divine foreknowledge, see S. M. Baugh, “The Meaning of Foreknowledge,” in Still Sovereign: Contemporary Perspectives on Election, Foreknowledge, and Grace, ed. Thomas R. Schreiner and Bruce A. Ware (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000), 183–200.

[34]Contra Richard Creel, who argues that “God should not be thought of as implementing now this decision and now that. He should be conceived as eternally willing and doing everything that he ever wills and does.” Richard E. Creel, Divine Impassibility: An Essay in Philosophical Theology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 22, italics his.

[35]Paul Helm, “B. B. Warfield on Divine Passion,” Westminster Theological Journal 69 (2007): 102–3. However, please recall from my discussion of Helm’s view in chap. 6 that we each arrived at the use of this term independently.

[36]Helm’s commitment to this position therefore partially undercuts the gain of his very commendable addition and discussion of God’s impassionedness. Thus, as I pointed out in chap. 6, I intend more by the use of the term impassioned than Helm does.

[37]Paul Helm, “The Impossibility of Divine Passibility,” in The Power and Weakness of God: Impassibility and Orthodoxy, ed. Nigel M. de S. Cameron (Edinburgh: Rutherford House, 1990), 133–34, italics his.

[38]Ibid., 140.

[39]In fact, I would maintain that part of God’s accommodation of himself to us is his taking on the property of acting in time, thus actually—and not only apparently—engaging us “as one to whom response is possible.”

[40]In accord with our conclusions in chap. 3 on the Patristic era, we noted that the atemporal-only understanding of God was widely held. Our adjustment of the understanding of God’s relationship to time to include not only intrinsic atemporality but also gracious and covenantal omnitemporality reflects one point at which the Patristic undergirding of the two-pronged impassibility model cannot be developed but instead requires revision.

[41]In the exposition of God’s two ways of willing that follows, I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to John Piper’s seminal essay on this issue. John Piper, “Are There Two Wills in God?,” in Schreiner and Ware, Still Sovereign, 107–31. For a more extensive treatment of this topic see Piper’s essay in its entirety.

[42]It is not my intention in the present context to address the interpretive issue of whether the “all” in 1 Tim. 2:4 and 2 Pet. 3:9 means “all without exception” (i.e., every single individual) or “all without distinction” (i.e., all kinds of people). I would caution that we should not rush to judgment that it is the former simply on the basis of the word πάντας, for there are clear instances in the New Testament where it does mean the latter (e.g., Matt. 10:22; Mark 1:5). On the other hand, even if it were shown that these two texts are more properly understood to mean “all without exception,” it would not suffice to prove that God only exercises one way of willing.

[43]Cf. Matt. 13:14–15; Mark 4:10–12; Luke 8:10; John 12:39–40.

[44]J. Alec Motyer, The Prophecy of Isaiah: An Introduction and Commentary (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1993), 78. After noting that the LXX softens the imperatives to indicatives here, Motyer continues: “The all-sovereign God both knows it [i.e., the point of no return] and appoints it as he presides in perfect justice over the psychological processes he created (cf. Ex. 4:21). It was at just such a point that Isaiah was called to office. His task was to bring the Lord’s word with fresh, even unparalleled clarity, but in their response people would reach the point of no return. The imperatives of these verses must, therefore, be seen as expressing an inevitable outcome of Isaiah’s ministry (cf. 2:9). And, of course, so it turned out to be, as is made clear in chapters 7–11.” Ibid., 79.

[45]Recall that both instances of “delight” here derive from the same Hebrew root .

[46]Though note again that our treatment of Isa. 6:8–10 strongly indicates that his purposes there are not only responsive but also part of his design. This seems also to be the proper interpretation of the citations of this Isaiah text in the noted Gospel passages.

[47]As it is beyond the proper scope of this book to discuss in detail and engage adequately the objections to the doctrines of unconditional election and effectual calling, I simply refer the reader to the following excellent sources: Sam Storms, Chosen for Life: The Case for Divine Election (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2007); Thomas R. Schreiner, “Does Romans 9 Teach Individual Election unto Salvation?,” in Schreiner and Ware, Still Sovereign, 89–106; Bruce A. Ware, “Effectual Calling and Grace,” in Still Sovereign, 203–27. Ware, “Divine Election to Salvation: Unconditional, Individual, and Infralapsarian,” in Perspectives on Election: Five Views, ed. Chad Owen Brand (Nashville: B&H, 2006), 1–58.

[48]Piper, “Are There Two Wills?,” 107.

[49]Ibid., 126. It is worth noting that while the traditional Arminian would obviously disagree with the broader points about unconditional election and effectual calling, he would nevertheless affirm the notion that God wills things in two different senses. For the Arminian also recognizes that while God desires the salvation of all in some sense (1 Tim. 2:3–4), it is also the case that God has not exerted himself to bring to pass the salvation of every single person. Thus, since God does not save “all” people, when he certainly could save “all” people, there must be something else that God wills more, on which basis God determines not to save “all” people. As Piper puts this point, “God wills not to save all, even though he is willing to save all, because there is something else that he wills more, which would be lost if he exerted his sovereign power to save all.. . . Both Calvinists and Arminians affirm two wills in God when they ponder deeply over 1 Timothy 2:4. Both can say that God wills for all to be saved. But then when queried why all are not saved both the Calvinist and the Arminian answer that God is committed to something even more valuable than saving all. The difference between Calvinists and Arminians lies not in whether there are two wills in God, but in what they say this higher commitment is. What does God will more than saving all? The answer given by Arminians is that human self-determination and the possible resulting love relationship with God are more valuable than saving all people by sovereign, efficacious grace. The answer given by Calvinists is that the greater value is the manifestation of the full range of God’s glory in wrath and mercy (Rom. 9:22–23) and the humbling of man so that he enjoys giving all credit to God for his salvation (1 Cor. 1:29).” Ibid., 123–24.

[50]Since God remains entirely and only good, one of the more challenging issues related to the outworking of divine sovereignty and human freedom pertains to the mechanics of how a perfectly holy God can ordain evil deeds even while hating the evil. Again, this is not the context in which to give an exhaustive defense of my view of that nexus. It certainly involves a sense in which God’s exertion of sovereignty over good and evil, comprehensive though it is, is nevertheless asymmetrical—something I will say a little more about in just a bit. For a much more detailed exposition of the view of divine sovereignty and human responsibility that I find especially compelling, see Ware, God’s Greater Glory, 61–130. Additionally, see D. A. Carson, Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility: Biblical Perspectives in Tension (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994).

[51]Isa. 53:10a: “Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him; / he has put him to grief.”

[52]Note how, in these texts, God also held the perpetrators of Jesus’s murder accountable for their voluntarily performed wicked deed that he had sovereignly ordained. For additional biblical examples of the intersection of God’s two ways of willing, see Piper, “Are There Two Wills?,” 112–19.

[53]When I speak of God’s asymmetrical sovereignty over good and evil, I mean specifically, on the one hand, that God’s sovereignty over good is executed in a manner that can be described as “direct and active,” since God himself is the source of all good. On the other hand, I view his sovereignty over evil as being executed in a manner that can best be described as “indirect and permissive,” though no less sovereign. God wills to permit sin, as it were. The nature of this indirect and permissive sovereignty over evil is directly observable in the texts above from Acts 2 and 4 concerning the murder of Jesus that both demonstrate the sovereignty of God over this wicked deed and nevertheless blame the perpetrators (e.g., Herod, Pilate) and not God for the murder. One critical factor in distinguishing the sovereignty of God and the agency of the perpetrators here is their motives. This same asymmetrical feature of God’s sovereignty over evil is clearly seen in other texts as well (e.g., Gen. 45:4–8; 50:18–20; Job 1:12; 2:6).

[54]In this respect, it seems the classical Arminian would agree. In another place, Piper expounds on the yet further dimensions of God’s emotional complexity: “God’s emotional life is infinitely complex beyond our ability to fully comprehend. For example, who can comprehend that the Lord hears in one moment of time the prayers of 10 million Christians around the world, and sympathizes with each one personally and individually as a caring Father (as Hebrews 4:15 says), even though among those 10 million prayers some are brokenhearted and some are bursting with joy? How can God weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice when they are both coming to him at the same time . . . ? Or who can comprehend that God is angry at the sin of the world every day (Psalm 7:11), and yet every day, every moment, he is rejoicing with tremendous joy because somewhere in the world a sinner is repenting (Luke 15:7, 10, 23)? Who can comprehend that God continually burns with hot anger at the rebellion of the wicked and grieves over the unholy speech of his people (Ephesians 4:29–30), yet takes pleasure in them daily (Psalm 149:4), and ceaselessly makes merry over penitent prodigals who come home?” John Piper, The Pleasures of God, rev. ed. (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 2000), 72.

[55]Perhaps here we can imagine something analogous by way of our own experience. Suppose we know one of our children has neglected studying for an important exam in favor of talking on the phone late into the evening. The next morning on the way to school we may on the one hand (i.e., the narrow lens) hate, for the sake of the child, the anticipated likelihood of the child’s failure on the exam. Nevertheless, we may find that we also anticipate with a measure of sober gladness (i.e., the wide-angle lens) the lesson about to be learned from this unpleasant experience that we hope will engender a greater sense of personal responsibility for the child in the long run. Note, then, that our gladness is found not in the fact of the child’s impending hardship, but in the (it is hoped) developed character that results from the experience brought on by personal irresponsibility. The imperfection of this comparison proves that it is only analogically related to God’s two-lens capacity, and yet it seems adequate to illumine our understanding of this concept so far as it goes.

[56]I trust the analogical point is similarly seen in the comparison of divine and human sonship.

[57]Again, I believe our point and terminology correspond rather nicely with what Kevin Vanhoozer has termed God’s “covenantal concern-based theodramatic construals.” Kevin Vanhoozer, Remythologizing Theology: Divine Action, Passion, and Authorship (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 412.

[58]For significant recent defenses of EDF, over against Open Theistic claims that God cannot know the future free actions of his moral agents, see Feinberg, No One Like Him, 299–320; John M. Frame, No Other God: A Response to Open Theism (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2001), 191–203; William Lane Craig, “What Does God Know?,” in God Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents God, ed. Douglas S. Huffman and Eric L. Johnson (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 137–56; Bruce A. Ware, God’s Lesser Glory: The Diminished God of Open Theism (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2000), 99–141; and perhaps most notably, Steven C. Roy, How Much Does God Foreknow? A Comprehensive Biblical Study (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2006).

[59]In this latter respect, however, note the relevance of the brief preceding discussion on God’s two ways of willing and asymmetrical exercise of sovereignty.

[60]Some have argued that the very fact of God’s omniscience must mean that he is passible, for if an omniscient God knows that we are suffering, he must not only know the facts of the matter, but also existentially share in our suffering. This seems to be Randall Bush’s point, for example, when he asserts that “one would have to say that a God who could not know what it is to suffer could hardly be omniscient if suffering is admitted to be a kind of knowledge instead of a deficiency of knowledge as the Platonic tradition suggests.” Randall Bush, “The Suffering of God as an Aspect of the Divine Omniscience,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 51 (2008): 782. Richard Creel’s response to this errant manner of thinking is both clever and fitting: “I agree . . . that God as omniscient must not only know that we suffer but must also know our suffering. But I do not believe it follows that one who knows someone else’s feeling must therefore share that feeling with them. If it were so, the implications for theology would be disastrous. God would have to be thought of as suffering, feeling stupid, feeling horny, taking pleasure in vicious acts, and so forth, because we humans do. Rather than accept such implications it would seem preferable to argue that God does not know any of our feelings directly because it is in principle impossible for any being to know directly the subjectivity of another.. . . Hence, it is conceivable that God can know our pain and pleasure, our joy and grief, our distress, relief, etc., without thereby having these experiences as his own.” Creel, Divine Impassibility, 129–30. Creel continues: “Notice also that, if it were the case that God could not know the feelings of others without having those feelings for his own, then divine omniscience would be incompatible with divine goodness, justice, and unity, so that the concept of God would be incoherent. For example, if omniscience entailed that God would have as his own the feelings of others, then in knowing the pleasure of a sadist at work God would have to have that pleasure as his own; but then he would not be perfectly good.. . . God can feel the desires of the wicked without desiring what the wicked desire. The possibility of this discrepancy is crucial to the compatibility of omniscience and goodness.” Ibid., 131–32.

[61]Recall our observation above, in the discussion on God’s relation to time, that the foreordination or foreknowledge of a relational response is not the same as the experience of said relational response, even though it is the certain ground of it.

[62]Thus we recall J. I. Packer’s observation that impassibility is “not impassivity, unconcern, and impersonal detachment in the face of creation; not insensitivity and indifference to the distresses of a fallen world; not inability or unwillingness to empathize with human pain and grief; but simply that God’s experiences do not come upon him as ours come upon us, for his are foreknown, willed and chosen by himself, and are not involuntary surprises forced on him from outside, apart from his own decision, in the way that ours regularly are.” J. I. Packer, “Theism for Our Time,” in God Who Is Rich in Mercy, ed. Peter T. O’Brien and David G. Peterson (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1986), 17.

[63]I understand the twin biblical emphases of divine sovereignty and human responsibility (e.g., Gen. 45:4–8; 50:20; Isa. 10:5–19; Hab. 1:6–17; Acts 2:23; 4:27–28; Rom. 9:6–26) to require a compatibilist sense of human freedom. For a defense of this view of the sovereignty/responsibility nexus, see Feinberg, No One Like Him, 677–734. Cf. Mark R. Talbot, “True Freedom: The Liberty That Scripture Portrays as Worth Having,” in Beyond the Bounds: Open Theism and the Undermining of Biblical Christianity, ed. John Piper, Justin Taylor, and Paul Kjoss Helseth (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2003), 77–109.

[64]William Hasker represents this sort of objection when he says, “If everything that happens is in accord with God’s plan, then why is God so powerfully affected by these events when they occur?” William Hasker, “The Antinomies of Divine Providence,” Philosophia Christi 4 (2002): 361.

[65]Ware, God’s Greater Glory, 157. Getting the balance just right, Ware also exults: “Oh, how much we should long for our relationship with God to be so unlike any other. In this sense, we ought to long for it to seem and feel very ‘unreal.’ The asymmetry of this relationship ought to strike us constantly. The infinite disparity between God and us should never leave our consciousness, even for a moment.” And yet amazingly, “The God who doesn’t need us comes to us. He enters our space and time. He speaks our language. He meets us where we live. He chooses to be affected by us as part of the Grand Plan to bring about the most incredible effect upon us. He accepts ridicule and rejection, when he deserves nothing but laud and honor. He makes pledges and promises of merciful salvation, when he could abandon and condemn.. . . In the end, relationship with God is as different as infinite is from finite. And yet, by God’s grace and condescension, it is at the same time the epitome of what intimate and joyful relationship with another should be. And indeed, it is a relationship in which so much of the joy and fulfillment is found precisely in remembering always the infinite disparity that exists between God and us. We must call to mind always Who is glorious and why. Only then will we cast aside our sinful pretense and bow, receive, delight, and worship in a joyous intimacy unrivaled by any human relationship. Here, then, is true relationship with the transcendent-immanent God, a relationship that is remarkably unreal in the fullness of its reality.” Ibid., 157–59, italics his.

[66]Frame, Doctrine of God, 610, italics his. In other words, if God’s eternal will allows for fluctuations of the carrying out of that will in time, we should expect it also to allow for temporal fluctuations of divine affection that appropriately match whatever circumstance might be unfolding at any given moment. The only thing that I would want to clarify about Frame’s very helpful statement is that it is not just the case that some people might want to use the term impassible to describe God’s being ultimately active in his responses, but that this is actually the historic meaning of mainstream impassibilism, and so we should all use the term impassible to describe God’s being ultimately active in his responses.

[67]Though in comparison to John 11, it will no doubt prove anticlimactic, I here offer one additional analogy of how we may understand the juxtaposition of foreknowledge and affection, drawn from personal experience. I remember taking my oldest son for his two-year vaccinations. At age two, he obviously did not have the capacity to give me a discourse on his trepidation at the prospect of anticipated pain coming to him in the form of a hypodermic needle. But he did have the wherewithal to communicate in less eloquent (but no less auditory) ways the unpleasantness of the experience for him. On our way to the doctor’s office I, of course, was very well aware that the needles would hurt him and that he would cry. In a sense, it could be said that I foreknew my son’s pain. When we got to the doctor’s office, the nurse administering the shots informed me that I would be responsible for holding my son’s legs still while she gave the shots. Bending over to hold his legs still meant that I was directly face to face with my son as this ordeal transpired. And though I knew exactly what was coming, the moment his tears began to flow, mine did too. It was not that I did not want him to get the shots. I did. I knew that they were good for him. But at the same time, I was able to feel genuine compassion for him, even though I foreknew how he would feel and how I would respond when the time came. Note, however, that though I knew in advance how I would respond, I did not experience the response until the time that my son experienced his pain.

[68]See the prior discussions in chap. 8.

[69]D. A. Carson, The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2000), 60–61, italics his.

[70]Gerald Bray comments similarly: “This relationship of love is living and dynamic in every way that the critics of classical theism might wish for, but it is also perfect and unchanging. By the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, we have been admitted into that Trinitarian fellowship and can know God’s love at work in our lives—never changing in its depth and commitment but, at the same time, new every morning in its blessings. There is no contradiction here between ‘static’ and ‘dynamic’ notions of God, since both pictures are present. Which is more appropriate in a given context depends on what one is talking about. We might even say, as the Bible does, that the daily newness of God’s blessings is a feature of his unchanging character!” Gerald L. Bray, “Has the Christian Doctrine of God Been Corrupted by Greek Philosophy?,” in Huffman and Johnson, God Under Fire, 116.

[71]Ware, God’s Greater Glory, 151.

[72]Karl Rahner, The Trinity, trans. Joseph Donceel (New York: Crossroad, 1970), 22. Since it is beyond the scope of this study to analyze the theological impact of Rahner’s rule, apart from its specific intersection with the debate over divine impassibility, I point out an excellent resource that amply supplies this broader engagement with Rahner’s rule: Fred Sanders, The Image of the Immanent Trinity: Rahner’s Rule and the Theological Interpretation of Scripture (New York: Peter Lang, 2005).

[73]Bruce Marshall relentlessly unpacks the dire consequences of this collapse in terms of the necessary creation, sin, and suffering that follow from it: “God will not only create this world necessarily, as the place in which alone he can give and obey this particular command. He will create this world in order to give the command obeyed on Calvary. The triune God needs this world, logically and ontologically, so that he can undertake the non-contingent actions in which his identity consists. The very existence of this created world will not, therefore, be an act of pure generosity on God’s part, a free sharing of his goodness unexacted by anything in God, let alone by the not-yet-existent creature. It will be an act of self-preservation on God’s part, an act undertaken in his own interests, not the creature’s.” More than that, with respect to sin, Marshall lucidly adds, “a world in which even one innocent person is crucified is a fallen world, one marked by sin. According to” such a collapse “a crucified innocent belongs non-contingently to God’s identity, to the Son as the innocent one who undergoes the cross, and to the Father as the one who commands it. This means, though, that God needs more than this created world in order to be himself. In order to carry out the temporal acts that make him who he is, God needs this world’s sin.” The upshot of all this is that “God does not really will this created world . . . or its sin. They just occur, inexorably, given who God is. Creation and sin are not so much personal acts as inevitable events.” Bruce D. Marshall, “The Dereliction of Christ and the Impassibility of God,” in Keating and White, Divine Impassibility and the Mystery of Human Suffering, 290–91, italics his.

[74]Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, trans. Margaret Kohl (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981; repr., Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 161. Moltmann, The Crucified God, trans. R. A. Wilson and John Bowden (New York: Harper & Row, 1974; repr., Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 205.

[75]John Thompson, Modern Trinitarian Perspectives (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 34.

[76]Witness the respective comments of Maldwyn Hughes and Duncan Reid evidencing this error. First, though preceding Rahner, Hughes’s point nevertheless strikes a similar chord to Rahner: “The principle of suffering self-sacrifice is eternal in the Godhead. The Cross is the Revelation in one great act in time and on the field of history of what God is from all eternity.” H. Maldwyn Hughes, What Is the Atonement? A Study in the Passion of God in Christ (London: James Clarke, 1924), 95, italics his. Second, Reid says: “If God is undivided . . . then the pain that affects God in his relationship to the creation, and most clearly in God’s incarnate life, must also affect God beyond this relationship to the creation. There can be no inner chamber in the divine life that is somehow quarantined from the temporary incarnate suffering of God the Son. The wholeness of God in all God’s eternal vastness is affected by the experience of three hours of torture and three days in the grave.. . . The incarnation—including the pain suffered during the incarnate life—is the revealing episode in the life of the triune God.” Duncan Reid, “Without Parts or Passions? Suffering of God in Anglican Thought,” Pacifica 4 (1991): 268.

[77]Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, 114–18.

[78]David Cook, “Weak Church, Weak God: The Charge of Anthropomorphism,” in Cameron, The Power and Weakness of God, 88–89.

[79]Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, 109–10. Indeed, Moltmann’s panentheistic dependence on Rahner’s rule leads him to conclude not only that creation is necessary, but also that creaturely suffering is an intrinsic part of the original creation fabric and not a result of human sin. He states, “We cannot say, ‘if there were no sin, there would be no suffering.’ Experience of suffering goes far beyond the experience of guilt and the experience of grace. It has its roots in the limitations of created reality itself. If the creation-in-the-beginning is open for the history of good and evil, then that initial creation is also capable of suffering, and capable of producing suffering.” Ibid., 50–51, italics his.

[80]Bruce A. Ware, “How Shall We Think About the Trinity?,” in Huffman and Johnson, God Under Fire, 258–59.

[81]For two treatments that are more oriented in that direction and for which I have much appreciation, see John S. Feinberg, The Many Faces of Evil: Theological Systems and the Problem of Evil, rev. and exp. ed. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2004); and D. A. Carson, How Long, O Lord? Reflections on Suffering and Evil, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006).

[82]Recall the survey of the passibilist logic in chap. 5, in which the assumption seemed to be that there is a sort of psychological benefit to human sufferers who believe that God has eternally joined them as a companion in suffering. In response, David Bentley Hart’s criticism of the passibilist theodicy is incisive: “It is an almost agonizing irony that, in our attempts to revise trinitarian doctrine in such a way as to make God comprehensible in the ‘light’ of Auschwitz, invariably we end up describing a God who—as it turns out—is actually simply the metaphysical ground of Auschwitz.” David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 160.

[83]In this respect, I concur with Michael Horton’s assessment that when the framework of the redemptive-historical narrative “is the context for theodicy, the tables are turned. Instead of God being on trial, it is the creature who is arraigned and questioned.” Michael S. Horton, Covenant and Eschatology: The Divine Drama (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002), 93. I do not intend hereby to devalue the apologetic task of addressing the philosophical problem of evil. Nor am I suggesting that the Bible does not supply us with the resources to do that task. My point, however, is that before we press on to that task, we must first recognize that on the obvious biblical terms, the problem of evil is ultimately the creature’s problem. We are the ones guilty of sin and rebellion. And it is precisely for this reason that we can do nothing to save ourselves. Our only hope, then, is that the One upon whom suffering and evil have no intrinsic claim might condescend in the passion of the incarnation to bear our sin and suffering away.

[84]Note, for example, the misinterpretation of the purpose of the cross by Moltmann, discussed in the previous section.

[85]Here it is interesting to note Paul Fiddes’s attempt to conjoin a sense of divine victory alongside the point of God’s fellow-suffering. After stressing that God is our co-sufferer on p. 31 of his Creative Suffering of God, Fiddes attaches the “corollar[y]” that “we must also be able to speak of a God who at the same time is victorious in his sufferings.” However, immediately after this, he proceeds to announce his second necessary corollary, which is that “we must speak of a God who suffers universally, since a God who suffered only in the historical context of Jesus of Nazareth would seem to have a restricted range of empathy, at least in view of the contemporary sufferer.” Paul S. Fiddes, The Creative Suffering of God (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988), 32. But this seems basically to offset the first corollary and throw all the weight exclusively back onto the aspect of psychological comfort deriving from God’s eternal fellow-suffering. For if God is truly victorious over sin, suffering, and evil, why would he continue eternally to suffer?

[86]How Jesus’s incarnational suffering intersects with our doctrine of divine impassibility will be the subject of our reflection in the next chapter.

[87]Gerald Bray, The Doctrine of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1993), 249–50.

[88]Indeed it seems that many are interested in this topic because of their own experience of suffering. Two passibilist publications that strongly reflect this personal concern come from the pens of Nicholas Wolterstorff and Dennis Ngien. Wolterstorff penned his deeply moving reflections in the aftermath of a tragic mountain-climbing accident that led to his son’s death. Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987). Ngien recounts the following remarkable story: “When I was eight years old, I lost my father to cancer. A week after his burial, I became severely ill. The pain in my body eventually paralyzed me. I still remember how my mother, newly widowed, cared for me.. . . I grew so sick that I was hospitalized. Since we lived in a remote village about 10 miles from the hospital, my mother carried me there on her back, walking powerfully, uphill and down. With tears streaming down her cheek, she said: ‘Son, Daddy is not here. We will make it to the hospital soon.’” Dennis Ngien, “The God Who Suffers,” Christianity Today 41, no. 2 (1997): 40.

[89]I will suggest in a concluding comment below that we should understand God’s presence with us in suffering to be a different sort of thing than the absorption of our suffering into the eternal fabric of the Trinity.

[90]Ps. 23:4: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, / I will fear no evil, / for you are with me; / your rod and your staff, / they comfort me”; Ps. 46:1: “God is our refuge and strength, / a very present help in trouble.”

[91]Think how often psalmists in distress refer to God as a rock, refuge, fortress, stronghold, salvation, etc. (e.g., Pss. 18:2, 31, 46; 19:14; 28:1; 31:2–3; 59:17; 62:8; 94:22; 118:14, 21; 144:1–2). Note then that the cry of forsakenness related to God’s being “far” off in Ps. 22:1 involves the use of a spatial metaphor to make a point about judgment or the lack of deliverance currently being experienced. In other words, the psalmist’s point is not to deny God’s omnipresence, but to give expression to his feeling like God is not interceding though he could.

[92]Theodore Simpson comments, “It is precisely when he is ‘in trouble’ that man experiences God as absent. The affirmation of the psalmist that God is ‘a very present help in trouble’ hardly corresponds to our own experience.” Theodore Simpson, “A Very Present Help in Trouble” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 21 (1977): 43. Simpson is arguing toward passibilism, however, and thus the conclusion that God is most present, as a co-sufferer, where we—as he puts it in this quote—are least likely to experience his presence. Others, however, may question God’s presence with us in hardship because we do sometimes feel alone in our suffering. My response is that the correct view is neither of those two alternatives. It seems to me that when we compare a psalm like Psalm 88 with another like Psalm 46, we may conclude the following: In Psalm 88, the psalmist seems to be telling God how he feels about the situation at hand (i.e., he feels abandoned). In Psalm 46, the psalmist seems to be telling us what actually is the case, irrespective of how we may sometimes feel. Clearly, both of these components are important. The former allows us to be honest with ourselves and not feign unaffected Stoicism when we are beset with hardship. But the latter reminds us of what truly is the case even if, a la Job, we cannot see the truth of the matter at the moment. Understood thus, over against a sense of metaphysical abandonment we rightly believe God to be with us at all times, our experiences of suffering included. And yet, to affirm that God is with us when we undergo suffering is not the same as ascribing to God fellow-victimization in our suffering.

[93]As Paul Gavrilyuk points out, “Perpetual divine suffering has no purpose, except the perpetuation of misery. To postulate the unredeemed suffering in God, as some contemporary theologians tend to do, is to eternalize evil. Far from offering a compelling theodicy, the projection of humanity’s suffering onto the inner life of God only compounds the problem of evil. In this picture, which has an almost hypnotic hold on contemporary passibilists, the destructive nature of suffering is trivialized and falsely romanticized as something intrinsically valuable and redemptive.. . . The Christian martyrs certainly did not suffer atrocious pain in this life so that they could go on enduring the same pain with God for all eternity. This would be a nightmare. Mortality and attendant misfortunes are by definition the features of this life, not of the life eternal. The theology of eternal divine suffering is a misguided and sentimental glorification of evil, despite the best intentions of those who proclaim it. The savior who suffers eternally himself stands in need of the other impassible Savior, who alone is capable of rescuing the impotent savior from his miserable fate. One may imagine that such an impotent savior would be so absorbed in the drama of his own suffering as to be incapable even of sentimental commiseration with his creatures.” Paul L. Gavrilyuk, “God’s Impassible Suffering in the Flesh: The Promise of Paradoxical Christology,” in Keating and White, Divine Impassibility and the Mystery of Human Suffering, 145–46.

[94]His immanence, once again, is seen in his creating us theomorphically (i.e., in the image of God) and his condescension in revealing and relating himself to us.

[95]As was stressed in the Patristic survey, the ascription of an apophatic term like impassible to God is a necessary part of the analogical hermeneutic here employed. It circumscribes the limits of how emotional predication to God should be understood. Unless it is thought that emotional terminology applies univocally to God and men, there needs be a category like impassibility to serve as the balanced companion to divine impassionedness.

[96]Recall that in the specialized fields of the philosophy and psychology of emotion, as well as in some of the historical discussion that we have seen, there is a technical distinction sometimes maintained between the passivity of “passions” and the willed activity of “affections.” To use an example of this distinction that we have not previously pointed out, Jonathan Edwards invoked this distinction in his approach to human emotion in his Religious Affections: “The affections and passions are frequently spoken of as the same; and yet, in the more common use of speech, there is in some respect a difference. Affection is a word, that in its ordinary signification, seems to be something more extensive than passion, being used for all vigorous lively actings of the will or inclination; but passion is used for those that are more sudden, and whose effects on the animal spirits are more violent, the mind being more overpowered, and less in its own command.” Edwards, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, 1:237, italics his. Recall the similar observation of Anastasia Scrutton respecting the views of Augustine and Aquinas. Anastasia Scrutton, “Emotion in Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas: A Way Forward for the Im/passibility Debate?,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 7 (2005): 169–77. Again, just to be clear, I am invoking this conceptual distinction while continuing to use the whole range of overlapping terminology as it would be more popularly understood. That is to say that I understand God to be relationally responsive, affective, and passionate (i.e., to show affection technically speaking), but never in an ultimate sense passive (i.e., to show passion technically speaking).

[97]Lest it be thought that we will “catch up” with God in holiness during the glorified state, we should recall that even then our ethical holiness will always and forever be derivative of God’s. We will never “outgrow” the Creator/creature distinction. Note then how in Isaiah’s throne-room vision (Isa. 6:1–8) even the sinless seraphim cannot bear to look on God’s holiness with an undiminished gaze (v. 2) while they proclaim that very holiness. Similarly see Rev. 15:4.

[98]As I observed in chap. 7, divine incorporeality leads us to the conclusion that anthropomorphisms are analogical and nonliteral (though nevertheless truth bearing), whereas anthropopathisms are analogical and literal.

[99]Bruce A. Ware, “An Exposition and Critique of the Process Doctrines of Divine Mutability and Immutability,” Westminster Theological Journal 47 (1985): 194.

[100]We also noted this complexity in God’s perfect in-time emotional responsiveness to all of his creatures respecting all their various states.

[101]Again, this was best demonstrated at the cross, where we were able to see that God hated the sin and loved the benefit of what he ordained, both for us in salvation and for the Son in exaltation.

[102]In this, Paul Helm is exactly right. Helm, “Warfield on Divine Passion,” 102–3.

[103]This, for instance, is what C. H. Dodd attempted to do with the doctrine of propitiation. C. H. Dodd, The Bible and the Greeks (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1935), 93. More directly relevant to our discussion is the observation that Paul Fiddes similarly depersonalizes the wrath of God. Fiddes, The Creative Suffering of God, 24.

[104]Leon Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965), 149. A little further on, Morris continues with this beautiful remark about our salvation: “Unless we give a real content to the wrath of God, unless we hold that men really deserve to have God visit upon them the painful consequences of their wrongdoing, we empty God’s forgiveness of its meaning.. . . We can think of forgiveness as something real only when we hold that sin has betrayed us into a situation where we deserve to have God inflict upon us the most serious consequences. When the logic of the situation demands that He should take action against the sinner, and He yet takes action for him, then and then alone can we speak of grace.” Ibid., 212–13.

[15]Per Thomas Weinandy, “Nor is God the victim of negative and sinful passions as are human beings, such as fear, anxiety, and dread, or greed, lust, and unjust anger.. . . Thus, to say that God is impassible is again to ensure and to accentuate his perfect goodness and unalterable love.” Weinandy, Does God Suffer?, 111.

[106]Again, if we doubt the truth of this, all that is required is a moment’s reflection on the cross and hell.

[107]As we saw in chap. 5, Jung Young Lee is a representative defender of this extreme-passibilist claim. Jung Young Lee, God Suffers for Us: A Systematic Inquiry into a Concept of Divine Passibility (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974), 59.

[108]Hughes, What Is the Atonement?, 92, italics his.

[109]Kazoh Kitamori, Theology of the Pain of God, 5th ed. (Richmond, VA: John Knox, 1965), 21.

[110]Lest anyone think this sounds vain and egocentric of God, consider with John Piper, the profound gospel freight of this claim: “Because God is unique as an all-glorious, totally self-sufficient Being, he must be for himself if he is to be for us. The rules of humility that belong to a creature cannot apply in the same way to its Creator. If God should turn away from himself as the Source of infinite joy, he would cease to be God. He would deny the infinite worth of his own glory. He would imply that there is something more valuable outside himself. He would commit idolatry. This would be no gain for us. For where can we go when our God has become unrighteous? Where will we find a Rock of integrity in the universe when the heart of God has ceased to value supremely the supremely valuable? Where shall we turn with our adoration when God himself has forsaken the claims of infinite worth and beauty? No, we do not turn God’s self-exaltation into love by demanding that God cease to be God. Instead we must come to see that God is love precisely because he relentlessly pursues the praises of his name in the hearts of his people.. . . God is the one Being in all the universe for whom seeking his own praise is the ultimately loving act. For him, self-exaltation is the highest virtue. When he does all things ‘for the praise of his glory,’ he preserves for us and offers to us the only thing in all the world which can satisfy our longings. God is for us! And the foundation of this love is that God has been, is now, and always will be, for himself.” John Piper, Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 1996), 47–49.

[111]Paul L. Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God: The Dialectics of Patristic Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 159.

[112]Thomas G. Weinandy, “Does God Suffer?,” First Things 117 (2001): 35.

10

Impassibility and Incarnation

A Concluding Christological Reflection

Impassibility and Christology

The main burden of this book has been to expound, primarily in relation to theology proper, a model of divine passion consistent with the emphasis of the classical view of divine impassibility that God’s emotions are never wrung from him involuntarily. Of course, one of the major consequences of our view is that suffering does not pertain to God in the way that modern passibilists would have us believe. Having developed such a model in the previous three chapters, we must now, even if only briefly, address the question of how the proposal in theology proper fits in relation to the incarnation and crucifixion of Jesus.

Although the Scriptures do not directly parse the manner of Jesus’s experiences with respect to his natures, they do raise the question as to how we should understand certain of those experiences (e.g., hunger, thirst, death) in view of the clear biblical presentation of Jesus as both divine and human.[1] We see this sort of tension at one level in the New Testament’s juxtaposition of Jesus’s deity, on the one hand, along with a vivid portrayal of Jesus’s fully human emotional life, on the other. It seems an elevated sort of tension when we observe the anguish that Jesus undergoes in the garden of Gethsemane (Mark 14:32–42; cf. Matt. 26:36–46; Luke 22:40–46) and in his renowned cry of dereliction (Mark 15:33–34; cf. Matt. 27:45–46). Finally, and perhaps most pointedly, the question is raised in the face of the repeated New Testament witness to Jesus’s atoning death on the cross as the only hope for sinners (Mark 15:37–39; cf. Matt. 27:50–54 and Luke 23:46–47; John 19:30–34; Acts 2:22–24; 3:14–21; 10:38–43; Rom. 3:21–26; 5:6–11; 1 Cor. 15:3–5; Phil. 2:5–11; Heb. 9:26–28; 1 Pet. 3:18).

It is in the light of this sort of data that we give our attention to an exposition of Jesus’s incarnate experience of emotion, suffering, and death. Though this matter could easily be the subject of its own book, I nevertheless suggest that an understanding of the incarnation that best accords with what we have discovered in our study of impassibility as an attribute of God may be seen to unfold along the lines sketched in this chapter. In short, the incarnation furnishes us with the supreme example of the dual biblical affirmation of divine self-sufficiency and gracious condescension (e.g., Phil. 2:5–8). Accordingly, my thesis in this chapter is simply that the second person of the Trinity had to become incarnate in order to overcome natural divine impassibility (i.e., the impassibility of the divine nature) and thereby accomplish the redemptively necessary goal of humanly experiencing suffering and death on behalf of sinners. As we will see, this account of the incarnation and atonement is important because it reminds us that the purpose of the Son’s incarnational mission was to save sinners and not to manifest God’s eternal suffering, as many passibilists have argued.

The Emotions of Jesus

Though the Gospels are replete with portrayals of Jesus’s emotions, my attention to this topic (incarnate emotion narrowly conceived) will be briefer than the next one (incarnate suffering and death), because the topic of Jesus’s suffering and death is the most prominently featured aspect of the discussion of the intersection of impassibility and incarnation. Indeed, the passibilist argument from the incarnation usually seizes on Jesus’s experience of suffering and death, believing that if the experience of divine suffering and death can be extrapolated from the incarnational union, then the broader conclusion of divine emotional passibility necessarily follows as well. My argument is completely the opposite of the passibilist logic. Though I do believe that a more detailed examination of Jesus’s experience of human emotion would be very instructive for our own sanctification, for our more limited purposes here I contend that if it can be shown that Jesus’s experience of human suffering and death does not invalidate the impassibility of his divine nature, then neither does his experience of human emotion. In my opinion, there is a strong biblical and theological case to be made in this respect.

Before jumping to that more extended argument, however, we may note a few examples of the New Testament’s portrayal of Jesus’s experience of human emotion, including joy (Luke 10:21; John 15:11), anger (Mark 3:5; 10:13–14), grief (Luke 19:41; Heb. 5:7–8), compassion (Mark 1:41; 6:34), and love (Mark 10:21). Clearly, one the most notable instances of Jesus’s emotional experience in the Gospels is found in the account of the resurrection of Lazarus in John 11. As we saw in the previous chapter, Jesus’s foreknowledge of Lazarus’s death and his intention to resurrect him (John 11:4, 14–15, 23) were profoundly compatible with the deepest sense of compassion and love for his friends (John 11:35–36).[2]

Certainly, biblical data such as these lead us to ask the question of how Jesus’s incarnate experience of human emotion intersected with his divine nature. For my part, I maintain that Jesus experienced human emotion during the incarnation, not because the divine nature is incapable of emotion, but as one expression of the explicit purpose of the incarnation that Jesus carry out the entirety of his mission—including his obedience, emotion, suffering, and death—as a man in dependence on God (Matt. 4:1–11; Rom. 5:12–19; Heb. 2:17–18; 4:15; 5:8–9; 1 Pet. 2:21–25).[3] In this sense, Jesus’s incarnate emotions genuinely dignify godly human emotion. And in this, moreover, we have our role model, Jesus our elder brother, who as the perfect image of God (Col. 1:15) perfectly displayed for us what godly human passion should look like.[4]

Jesus’s Suffering and Death: The Biblical Data

Now we come to what is essentially the central question of this chapter: how does the New Testament portrayal of Jesus’s experience of suffering and death pertain to his divine nature? It will not suffice as an answer merely to point out that the biblical Jesus experienced suffering and death. Though he certainly did, how the two-natured Jesus experienced suffering and death is a slightly different and altogether more difficult question to answer. And since this latter question is one that Scripture does not directly address, we must now attempt to merge careful interpretation of key passages with the drawing of warranted and precise theological conclusions. At the outset of this textual investigation, I should reiterate that while we will examine several of the most critical passages in this respect, it is not my intent to treat every text bearing on this issue.[5] I do believe, however, that the passages we do examine here provide an ample foundation for the rest of our reflections.

The Passion Narrative

It is fitting to begin with the historical record of Jesus’s death and suffering in the Gospel narrative, paying special attention to his straining in Gethsemane and the cry of dereliction from the cross.[6] In Mark’s Gospel, then, the relevant portions of the passion narrative fall out as follows: Gethsemane (Mark 14:32–42; cf. Matt. 26:36–46; Luke 22:40–46), dereliction (Mark 15:33–34; cf. Matt. 27:45–46), and expiration (Mark 15:37–39; cf. Matt. 27:50–54 and Luke 23:46–47; cf. John 19:30–34). Powerful narratives though they be, the question of concern for this study is, what precisely can be concluded from these passages with respect to the relationship of Jesus’s suffering and death to his divine nature?

Gethsemane

We find Mark’s powerful account of Jesus’s anguish in Gethsemane in Mark 14:32–42, with verses 33–36 being especially vivid.

And he took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be greatly distressed and troubled [ἤρξατο ἐκθαμβεῖσθαι καὶ ἀδημονεῖν]. And he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death [περίλυπός ἐστιν ἡ ψυχή μου ἕως θανάτου]. Remain here and watch.” And going a little farther, he fell on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. And he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” (Mark 14:33–36)[7]

Interestingly, what we observe from this is that Jesus’s great anxiety arose not primarily from the prospect of the tremendous physical suffering that lay ahead, but from the anticipation of filial estrangement from and judgment by the Father. This is seen in part from the fact that Jesus’s prayer for deliverance from the “cup” in verse 36 represents a clear allusion to the Old Testament way of speaking of God’s outpoured wrath (Ps. 60:3; Isa. 51:17, 22; cf. Mark 10:38).[8]

Jesus, then, who had never known the wrath of God, in the sense of being an object of it—and who, for that matter, had only and eternally known perfect filial fellowship with the Father—was evidently overwhelmed at the prospect of being made “sin on our behalf” (2 Cor. 5:21).[9] In this regard, Donald Macleod’s account of Jesus’s angst in the garden is most apt.

When Moses saw the glory of God on Mount Sinai so terrifying was the sight that he trembled in fear (Heb. 12:21). But that was God in covenant: God in grace. What Christ saw in Gethsemane was God with the sword raised (Zc. 13:7; Mt. 26:31). The sight was unbearable. In a few short hours, he, the Last Adam, would stand before that God answering for the sin of the world: indeed, identified with the sin of the world (2 Cor. 5:21).. . . Consequently, to quote Luther . . . “No one ever feared death so much as this man.”[10]

To make one final observation of this passage that will benefit our synthetic reflections below, we may take note that Jesus’s prayer in Gethsemane—“Yet not what I will, but what you will” (Mark 14:36; cf. John 6:38)—would seem to require an acknowledgment that two wills are in play. Macleod’s observations are again instructive.

Such language presupposes not only a metaphysical distinction between the will of Jesus and the will of the Father, but also the logical possibility that Jesus’ natural preferences (based on personal self-interest) might not always coincide with the wishes of the Father.. . . This climaxes in Gethsemane, where the dilemma becomes almost unbearably acute. At a very basic level, Jesus does not want this “cup.” His whole nature shrinks from it, and as he speaks to his Father he becomes acutely aware that there are two wills (and two ways): there is “my will” and there is “thy will.”[11]

Or, as Ivor Davidson puts it, “Such language seems clearly to imply that the will of God to whom Jesus prays is distinct from his own will as the praying subject—indeed not only distinct from it, but potentially even in some tension with it.”[12] At this point, the question of how Jesus’s divine and human natures are related, in view of his unified personal experience, comes sharply into focus.

Cry of Dereliction

If Jesus’s prayer in the garden of Gethsemane reveals his anguish in striking terms, his cry of dereliction from the cross (Mark 15:34; cf. Ps. 22:1) is more powerful still:[13] “And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?’ which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” (Mark 15:34). Whereas the prayer in Gethsemane reveals Jesus’s dread at the prospect of facing the wrath of the Father for sins he did not commit, the cry of dereliction portrays Jesus’s experience of that filial abandonment[14] by the Father.[15] To quote Macleod once more:

Golgotha was more awful than Jesus had envisaged in Gethsemane. He felt forsaken, and he was forsaken.. . . Beside the unanswered prayer there was the loss of the filial consciousness.. . . In the moment of dereliction, there is no sense of his own sonship.. . . In his self-image, he is no longer Son, but Sin.. . . No-one was ever less prepared for such an experience than Jesus. As the eternal Word he had always been with God (Jn. 1:1). As the incarnate Son the Father had always been with him (Jn. 16:32).. . . But now . . . God was present only as displeased, expressing that displeasure with overwhelming force in all the circumstances of Calvary.. . . The paradox should not escape us. He was sinless. He was the Son of God. But there, on Golgotha . . . he was sin (2 Cor. 5:21).[16]

Having said all that, however, we are still not entirely in a position to answer our focal question, for as R. T. France observes, the point of this passage is not to provide a theological reconstruction of Jesus’s death and suffering vis-à-vis the two natures, but simply to show in relentless perspicuity that the suffering of the person Jesus was “utterly real.”[17] In other words, the textual observation that Jesus suffered and died does not directly answer the question of how this two-natured person experienced this suffering and death. Answering that question must await further reflection. For the moment, we can only conclude that Jesus experienced suffering and death.

Acts 20:28

Luke records Paul as giving the following charge to the Ephesian elders as part of his larger farewell address to them (Acts 20:17–35): “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God [τὴν ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ θεοῦ], which he obtained with his own blood [ἣν περιεποιήσατο διὰ τοῦ αἵματὀ τοῦ ἰδίου]” (v. 28). As we consider the intent of Paul’s statement, a number of issues arise. First, there is a question of whether the text reads θεοῦ, as rendered by most modern English translations, or κυρίου. That is to say, does the text speak of the church of God or the church of the Lord (i.e., Jesus)? In short, the balance of factors favors the reading of θεοῦ as original.[18] Coupled with that first question, there is also the issue of how to understand the reference to his blood if θεοῦ in the preceding clause is a reference to the Father and not the Son.[19] Some may wonder, for example, whether Paul is hereby condoning patripassianism.

Precise hermeneutical and theological thinking is called for here, since God, as a nonmaterial being (John 4:24), does not have blood. Clearly, Paul has the atoning blood of Jesus in view,[20] but there is a question of how the connection is made.[21] Murray Harris offers the explanation—and I am inclined to agree—that ὁ ἴδιος should be regarded as a “christological title” with the resultant meaning of verse 28b being “to shepherd the church of God (the Father) which he obtained with the blood of his own Son/one” (cf. Rom. 8:32).[22] This point accords well with our thesis, because in this case it indicates that an incarnation was necessary to overcome the natural divine inability (i.e., the inability of the divine nature) to shed the blood that was necessary for the redemption of sinners (cf. Eph. 1:7; Heb. 9:11–14; 1 Pet. 1:17–19; 1 John 1:7; Rev. 5:9).[23] Thus, in taking on a human nature, the incarnate Jesus, who is fully God and fully man, has a physical body with blood coursing through his veins capable of being shed for our redemption.

1 Peter 3:18–4:2

In the context of Peter’s epistle, he is exhorting his persecuted hearers (1:6–7; 2:18–20; 3:1, 13–17; 4:1–4, 12–19; 5:10) to remain faithful in the midst of this evil age because they will share in the destiny of Christ, who also suffered but is now exalted (3:19–22).[24] In our focal passage, we read:

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh [θανατωθεὶς μὲν σαρκὶ] but made alive in the spirit.. . . Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh [παθόντος σαρκὶ], arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God. (1 Pet. 3:18; 4:1–2)[25]

Insofar as this passage concerns the present study, a few features should be noted. First, the text points to similarities and dissimilarities between the sufferings of Christ and the sufferings of sinners. That is, some of the passage focuses on Christ’s uniqueness as the redemptive Victor over sin, which is a role that believers cannot fill (3:18–22), while other portions emphasize the exemplary dimension of Christ’s suffering that believers should emulate (4:1–6). Of particular note for our purposes is the good news that in Christ, God really did triumph over sin and evil.[26]

Second, the passage raises the issue of Jesus suffering and dying “in the flesh” (σαρκὶ—3:18; 4:1). Thomas Schreiner details the debate over how to interpret this dative and concludes that it is a reference to Christ’s body.[27] If his interpretation is correct, as I believe it is, then we are helped to see that Jesus’s suffering and death are denoted as bodily suffering and death. Once again the text makes no explicit statement parceling out the experience of suffering and death among the natures. Nevertheless, it is helpful to see that the statements about bodily suffering in this passage—along with the statement about blood in Acts 20:28—would seem to require that there be an incarnation in order for Jesus to suffer and die. While awaiting the fuller theological formulation, we might tentatively suggest that the biblical texts we have seen so far seem to indicate that God cannot suffer and die because he does not have a body. That is to say, God does not have a nature capable of experiencing the suffering and death that was redemptively necessary as the basis of our forgiveness. Hence, an incarnation was necessary for Christ to experience that redemptive suffering and death and thereby make atonement for sin.[28]

Hebrews 2:9–18

In Hebrews 2:9–18, the author of Hebrews stresses the purpose of the incarnation as follows:

But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death [διὰ τὸ πάθημα τοῦ θανάτου], so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone [ὅπως χάριτι θεοῦ ὑπὲρ παντὸς γεύσηται θανάτου].

For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering [διὰ παθημάτων τελειῶσαι]. For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one origin. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying,

“I will tell of your name to my brothers;

class="table2"in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise.”

And again,

“I will put my trust in him.”

And again,

“Behold, I and the children God has given me.”

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood [αἵματος καὶ σαρκός], he himself likewise partook of the same things [καὶ αὐτὸς παραπλησίως μετέσχεν τῶν αὐτῶν], that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death [ἵνα διὰ τοῦ θανάτου καταργήσῃ τὸν τὸ κράτος ἔχοντα τοῦ θανάτου], that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect [ὅθεν ὤϕειλεν κατὰ πάντα τοῖς ἀδελϕοῖς ὁμοιωθῆναι], so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted [ἐν ᾧ γὰρ πέπονθεν αὐτὸς πειρασθείς], he is able to help those who are being tempted.

The argument provided in this text strongly tells against the passibilist claim of divine suffering, instead emphasizing that through the incarnation, Jesus joined his brothers in human suffering. After applying Psalm 8 to Jesus in Hebrews 2:6–8, the author of Hebrews reasons in verse 9 that Jesus became incarnate in order to “taste death for everyone.” In other words, the purpose of Jesus’s being made “lower than the angels” (i.e., human) was so that he could experience death.[29] Or as Kevin DeYoung has nicely put it, “Christ suffered not to reveal suffering in God; rather, God had to be made a little lower than the angels so that he could suffer.”[30] Following that observation, verses 10–17 explain in greater detail why the incarnation was necessary. The answer, in summary form, is given in verse 17: Jesus “had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God [ἵνα ἐλεήμων γένηται καὶ πιστὸς ἀρχιερεὺς τὰ πρὸς τὸν θεὸν], to make propitiation for the sins of the people [εἰς τὸ ἱλάσκεσθαι τὰς ἁμαρτίας τοῦ λαοῦ].”

The author’s point, it seems, is that Jesus had to become like us—partaking in our “flesh and blood” (v. 14) and our suffering (v. 10)[31]—succeeding as a man where we have failed, in order to represent us before God and make propitiation for our sins (v. 17).[32] Thus, the purpose of Jesus’s incarnational mission was not merely to join us in the human experience of suffering. Though the incarnation certainly accomplished that, ultimately—and again, here is the point that the more extreme passibilists often miss—the purpose of the incarnational mission was to gain victory over and deliver us from sin, suffering, evil, and condemnation. Thus, we note again the instructive purpose clause governing verses 14 and 15—he partook of our humanity in order that through his death “he might destroy the one who has the power of death . . . and deliver all those who . . . were subject to lifelong slavery.”[33]

Coupled with that, we find, in accord with Hebrews 2:18[34] and 4:15,[35] that since Jesus accomplished his obedience humanly, we his brothers can take comfort in and receive help from Jesus in our own suffering and temptation.[36] But again, because this comfort derives from Christ’s fellow-human (and not divine) sufferings, and because that comfort is the corollary of Jesus’s victory over sin and suffering, we need not—indeed should not—understand this sympathy in a passibilistic sense of ongoing divine suffering. Rather, DeYoung reminds us that “the Bible looks not at some sort of present divine passibility for comfort, but goes instead to the past, to Christ’s sufferings, that according to his ongoing sympathy we might have hope for the future (4:15).”[37]

Incarnation, Atonement, and Impassibility? Toward an Incarnational Understanding

Having now progressed through some representative but nevertheless instructive biblical data on Jesus’s incarnate experience of death and suffering, we come to the point of attempting some theological reflections on how this data shapes our thinking about divine impassibility. On the whole, the biblical passages discussed above rather strongly lend credence to the thesis that an incarnation was necessary to overcome natural divine impassibility. This is so because, as Acts 20:28 (blood) and 1 Peter 3:18–4:2 (flesh) indicate, an embodied passion was prerequisite to accomplishing the atonement. Moreover, this seems nearly to be the explicit logic of Hebrews 2:9–18. Additionally, we may note that since Jesus came as the Second Adam (Rom. 5:12–19) to atone for human sin, it was his death as a human that mattered.[38]

Now we will try to delineate the incarnational framework that best accounts for this biblical data and best fits with our proposal as to the larger structure of divine impassibility. While this treatment will be brief, each of the three following theological factors represents an attempt to build on the foundation of Chalcedon without violating its boundaries.[39] In my judgment these doctrinal points are each successful in that aim. And when they are jointly maintained, I believe that they illuminate, with helpful conceptual clarity, the claim that Jesus’s incarnate passion is not the antithesis of divine impassibility.

Communication of Idioms

The first theological factor that supports this thesis in its attempt to reconcile the relevant incarnational data is a Reformed—or to go back even earlier, a Cyrillian[40]—understanding of the communicatio idiomatum.[41] In the Reformed expression (in concreto) of the communicatio, the attributes of Christ’s divine and human natures are each communicated to the person of Christ, whereas the Lutheran understanding (in abstracto) contends that attributes of Christ’s natures are communicated each to the other.[42] According to the in concreto position, we should understand that the divine attributes of omnipresence and eternality, for example, while true of the person of Christ, are not communicated to the human nature.[43] Conversely, on the same terms, the human property of finitude is experienced by the person of the Son without being communicated to the divine nature. Such an understanding has the double benefit of preserving the unity of Christ’s person while also disallowing the absurd conclusions that follow from the in abstracto position.[44]

The way that Cyril sought to avoid Nestorianism in his incarnational understanding is instructive with regard to this double benefit. As he maintained, all the actions of the incarnate Christ were the actions of a single unified subject, such that the person of the Son, in this mode of incarnated existence, performed all his actions and experienced all his experiences humanly.[45] This means that Jesus experienced thirst (John 19:28), hunger (Matt. 4:2), and—most importantly for our purposes—suffering and death as a human because he took on a human nature capable of thirsting, hungering, suffering, and dying. To be clear, then, in the incarnation, the person of the Son experienced human (and not divine) suffering and death, which, as we have been stressing, was the point of the incarnation.

I do not mean by this that the human nature abstractly experienced suffering and death apart from the person. As we have already mentioned, natures (whether human or divine) are not capable of action in the abstract. The person of the Son experienced suffering and death humanly. Or again, as Bruce Marshall astutely makes the point:

Christ’s human nature did not suffer in his passion, any more than his divine nature did. He, the person of the Word become flesh, suffered, because he had assumed a nature that exposes its possessors to suffering.. . . As much suffers as can: the whole person, on account of his human, not his divine, nature.[46]

Again, the benefit of such a formulation is that it avoids the problem of abstractly hypostasizing one of Christ’s natures and making that the seat of experience.[47]

A Spirit-Regulated, Asymmetrically Accessing, Two-Minds Model

Second, we may point out the benefit of a Spirit-regulated, asymmetrically accessing, two-minds model of the incarnation.[48] The advantage of such a model is that it helps account for the impassibility of Christ’s divine nature while not at all undermining the angst of his personal experiences of human suffering and death. In other words, if such a model is an accurate way of thinking about the incarnation—and the strong biblical testimony to Jesus’s reliance on the Spirit throughout his incarnate mission is at least suggestive[49]—then it would broadly be true that Jesus carried out his incarnate ministry as a man predominantly by depending on the will of the Father (e.g., John 4:34; 5:19, 30; 6:38) and relying on the power of the Spirit.[50] Along these lines, Ivor Davidson comments:

As the gospels see it, the ministry of the Spirit in the life of Christ is not so much about setting the subject of their story apart from the common stock of humanity as about signaling the way in which he is the bearer of genuine humanity in a particular fashion and with particular results. All the great moments of Jesus’ career at which the gospels particularly highlight the Spirit’s work—his conception, his baptism, his temptations, his ministry as teacher, preacher and healer, and so on—are glimpses of his solidarity with us as a thoroughly human person, whose fleshliness is in every sense just like ours, but whose humanity is what it is—uniquely sinless, perfect and redemptive in its consequences—because of what the Spirit does.[51]

More particularly for our purposes, this model also holds that Jesus, though omniscient (according to the divine mind),[52] would have relied on the Spirit as the regulator of his recourse to his divine omniscience. Since the purpose of the incarnation was to carry out the Father’s will and eventually face death humanly, Jesus’s access to the divine omniscience would only come at the regulation of the Spirit for appropriate (and presumably limited) purposes.[53] With a self-consciousness centered in the person and a mission focused on obedience as a man, then Christ’s incarnate experience of suffering is far from being minimized. Given Christ’s prayer in Gethsemane—“not what I will, but what You will”—we observe a situation that could quite plausibly be explained on the basis of our Spirit-regulated two-minds model. It would simply be the case that at the hour of Jesus’s most excruciating trial of faithfulness—when recourse to the divine attributes would certainly jeopardize the accrual of positive human righteousness—the Spirit was restricting access to the divine mind.[54]

Hence, at the prospect of facing the Father’s unmitigated wrath for sins he did not commit, Jesus quite understandably responded with the assertion of his human desire to avoid that wrath. And yet to our everlasting blessing, Jesus nevertheless went forward in obedience to the Father’s will.[55] All of this is simply to say, then, that Jesus’s anguish was humanly experienced and completely real, since throughout his passion the Spirit was restricting access to his divine mind. Once again, the person of the Son took on a human nature so he could be redemptively subject to the sufferings of the incarnation, mental duress included—something he was intrinsically incapable of experiencing apart from the incarnation.

Extra Calvinisticum

Third and finally, we come to a discussion of the extra Calvinisticum, which arises in relation to the communicatio idiomatum and teaches that the Logos had an existence beyond the physical body of Christ. That is to say that the “Reformed argued that the Word is fully united to but never totally contained within the human nature.”[56] In the context of the passibility debate, this doctrine clears the way for a significant reminder having to do with Jesus’s filial estrangement from the Father at the cross. As we have seen in the texts considered above, this estrangement was the element of divine judgment that Jesus feared the most in going to the cross. It is precisely here that the extra Calvinisticum helps to furnish a crucial guardrail for our theological formulations. For on the basis of the same biblical data, Jürgen Moltmann, for instance, celebrates the conclusion that the anguish of Jesus’s passion—especially in Gethsemane and the cry of dereliction—tears eternally at the fabric of the Trinity.[57] For Moltmann, it is in this manner that the suffering God is constituted.

Appeal to the extra Calvinisticum, however, reminds us that despite the reality of all the self-conscious distress of Jesus’s passion, the ontological fabric of the Trinity was not so rent. In other words, the fact that the Logos is not exhausted in the human nature, though fully united to it, clarifies that the eternal Trinitarian relationship of Father and Son was not ontologically severed at the cross. Yet another way of making the same observation is to recall that the atonement was a forensic sacrifice (Isa. 53:5–6; Rom. 3:21–26; 8:3; 2 Cor. 5:21; Gal. 3:13; 1 Pet. 2:24), and not the ontological extermination of the Son. The Word made flesh suffered filial estrangement once historically, personally, and humanly as our legal substitute, as Hebrews 9:25–28 makes clear.[58] Consequently, we should not think that the Son (or Father or Spirit) suffers ahistorically, divinely, or ceaselessly. The Son, in other words, did not ontologically cease to be the Son for the duration of the crucifixion. Simply put, the person of the Son tasted death the only way he could—humanly—but the Logos did not go out of existence.

Conclusion

It is interesting to find that passibilism, which claims to take the cross more seriously than impassibilism, actually downplays the real power and significance of the cross. For passibilism—at least in its more extreme forms—makes the point of the cross ontological as opposed to legal, and in so doing, it must forgo confidence in the victory that Jesus’s atoning death achieves. Instead, as we have been arguing, the incarnation was necessary in order to overcome natural divine impassibility (i.e., the impassibility of the divine nature), such that Jesus might experience suffering and death humanly on behalf of sinners.[59] For, as we have seen, especially from Hebrews 2:9–18, it was human obedience and human sin bearing that were necessary to fit Jesus to be our “faithful high priest” (2:17). Thus Thomas Weinandy is precisely correct when he says:

Even if one did allow the Son of God to suffer in his divine nature, this would negate the very thing one wanted to preserve and cultivate. For if the Son of God experienced suffering in his divine nature, he would no longer be experiencing human suffering in an authentic and genuine human manner, but instead he would be experiencing “human suffering” in a divine manner which would then be neither genuinely nor authentically human. If the Son of God experienced suffering in his divine nature, then it would be God suffering as God in a man. But the Incarnation, which demands that the Son of God actually exists as a man and not just dwells in a man, equally demands that the Son of God suffers as a man and not just suffers divinely in a man. If one wishes to say in truth that the Son of God actually experienced and knew what it was like to be born, eat, sleep, cry, fear, grieve, groan, rejoice, suffer, die, and most of all, love as a man, and it seems this is precisely what one does want to say, then the experience and knowledge of being born, eating, sleeping, crying, fearing, grieving, groaning, rejoicing, suffering, dying, and again most of all, loving must be predicated of the Son of God solely and exclusively as a man. Thus, to replace the phrase “the Impassible suffers” with “the Passible suffers” immediately purges the suffering of all incarnational significance.[60]

Jesus’s experience of human suffering is not less real than ours for all that. It is, once again, more so.[61] As we saw in the passages on Gethsemane and the dereliction above, because of Jesus’s intimate union with the Father, he more than any other person had greater reason to dread (humanly) the breaking of that fellowship (again, in terms of judgment, not ontology). And because he did not turn back, but instead pressed forward in faithful obedience to the Father and in dependence on the Spirit, the ground of our salvation was accomplished. Properly speaking, however, what this is not is divine suffering. As God, the eternal Son did not have a nature capable of experiencing the redemptively needed suffering and death. So, in the fullness of time (Gal. 4:4–5), the Word became flesh (John 1:14), taking to himself a human nature through which he would be able to experience that redemptive suffering and death (Heb. 2:9). As Kevin Vanhoozer summarizes the point: “Who then suffers the cross? The second person of the Trinity.. . . In what manner does he experience this suffering? As man.”[62]

[1]Given the limitations of space, I will not take the time to provide a defense of Chalcedonian christology, but it should be reiterated that I am assuming the Definition of Chalcedon as the baseline of incarnational orthodoxy. For one helpful defense of the scripturalness of Chalcedon’s christology, see Craig A. Blaising, “Chalcedon and Christology: A 1530th Anniversary,” Bibliotheca Sacra 138 (1981): 326–37. As Richard Norris puts it: “There is a sense . . . in which it is true that the Council of Chalcedon solves the christological problem by laying out its terms. Its formula dictates not a Christology but formal outlines of an adequate christological language.” Richard Norris Jr., “Chalcedon Revisited: A Historical and Theological Reflection,” in New Perspectives on Historical Theology: Essays in Memory of John Meyendorff, ed. Bradley Nassif (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 31.

[2]See my discussion of this passage in the previous chapter. For fuller discussions of Jesus’s emotional life, see Donald Macleod, The Person of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1998), 170–78; and Benjamin B. Warfield, The Person and Work of Christ (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1950), 93–145.

[3]Thus, rightly conceived, the theme of recapitulation is one pivotal aspect of Christ’s atoning work, as attested by, among other things, the first Adam/last Adam parallel.

[4]Paul Helm concurs, saying of Jesus’s incarnate anger, for example, “It is human anger in sinless expression.” Paul Helm, “B. B. Warfield on Divine Passion,” Westminster Theological Journal 69 (2007): 104.

[5]Nor is it my intention to provide an exhaustive treatment even of the passages that we do examine. My aim, more narrowly, is to discern how these passages inform and shape the doctrine of divine impassibility.

[6]Each of these passages has synoptic parallels. While I point out the parallel passages, for reasons of space I am focusing this analysis on a consideration of the Markan accounts because of the strong portrayal of Jesus’s emotions in Mark.

[7]The depth of Jesus’s agony is further conveyed in Luke’s account, which indicates that Jesus had to be strengthened by an angel (Luke 22:43) and that he sweat drops of blood (Luke 22:44).

[8]His reference to the “hour” in v. 35 should be understood in parallel to the expression about the “cup.” William L. Lane, The Gospel According to Mark, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), 516–17.

[9]I am not denying the excruciating physical torment that Jesus experienced. The beatings and the crucifixion were brutal. The physical agony was devastating. My only point in making the above comment is to say that as bad as the prospect of the bodily suffering was, an even more severe prospect for Jesus was that of becoming the object of God the Father’s wrath.

[10]Macleod, The Person of Christ, 174.

[11]Ibid., 179. In this section of his book, Macleod is arguing against monothelitism, and so he is affirming that in the case of the incarnation, “will” (and “mind” cf. p. 193) goes with nature and not person. Though it is not the purpose of this chapter to rehearse that debate, it is difficult to see how the personal account of will and mind can make a credible account of a passage like this. In other words, if the person of Christ is the divine Logos, to which a human nature was added, and this person only possesses one will, how could Jesus express a different will from that of the Father? On a Spirit-regulated two-minds/two-wills model of asymmetric accessing relations, however, wherein a key feature of Jesus’s recapitulation is obeying as a man in dependence on the Spirit—and not by continual recourse to divine prerogatives—this profession of a different will (i.e., the will of human nature) is more satisfactorily taken into account. I will attempt to sketch such a model below.

[12]Ivor J. Davidson, “‘Not My Will but Yours Be Done’: The Ontological Dynamics of Incarnational Intention,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 7 (2005): 181.

[13]This is seen in the observation that whereas Jesus called on God as “Abba, Father” in Gethsemane (Mark 14:36), he is here, in the words of Psalm 22, only able to call on him as “God.” R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark, NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 652.

[14]The language of abandonment here employs a spatial metaphor to make a point about the presence of the Father in judgment against the sins borne by the Son on the cross. We should not mistake the assertion of “forsakenness” to mean that the omnipresent God literally forsook a patch of real estate on Golgotha for a period of time.

[15]It will not satisfy to suggest, as John Yocum has, that Jesus’s cry on the cross simply reflects “the non-intervention of the Father.” John Yocum, “A Cry of Dereliction? Reconsidering a Recent Theological Commonplace,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 7 (2005): 79. Yocum is correct to argue that the dereliction is not, in a Moltmannian or Balthasarian sense, a portrait of eternal suffering in the Trinity. Ibid., 80. It seems, however, that he overreacts against such passibilist intuitions (coupled with an antipathy for penal substitution), by depersonalizing the wrath of the Father against our vicarious substitute on the cross.

[16]Macleod, The Person of Christ, 176–77.

[17]France, The Gospel of Mark, 653. Again, in my view, this does not preclude the importance of conducting such a theological investigation. It merely calls attention to the fact that the focus of the text is on the experience of the unified person.

[18]For a thorough discussion of the evidence, see Murray J. Harris, Jesus as God: The New Testament Use of Theos in Reference to Jesus (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992), 134–36. While the external evidence is nearly even, Harris concludes in favor of θεοῦ on the basis of “intrinsic probabilities,” and then notes that the majority of text critics, commentators, and English translations have favored this reading as well.

[19]The text-critical concern in this case is whether or not the text speaks of “the blood of his own” or “his own blood.” This question is more easily resolved by the weighty external evidence in favor of the former reading. Ibid., 136–37.

[20]John B. Polhill, Acts, New American Commentary 26 (Nashville: Broadman, 1992), 427.

[21]Historic Reformed thought, as with much Patristic reflection before it, has understood the way forward with texts such as this (cf. 1 Cor. 2:8) to involve discussions of the communicatio idiomatum. E.g., John Calvin, Commentary Upon the Acts of the Apostles, trans. Henry Beveridge, Calvin’s Commentaries 19 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998), 256–57. Since this component will be taken up more thoroughly in the theological discussion of the incarnation below, we may reserve comment on it until that time.

[22]Harris, Jesus as God, 137–41.

[23]We see something similar in Paul’s exposition of Christ’s redemptive sacrifice in Colossians 1. Here we see that Christ’s sacrifice is of infinite value because, as Col. 1:19 makes clear, Christ is the one in whom “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (cf. Col. 2:9). But, again, the incarnation is a necessary prerequisite to his making that sacrifice, for as Paul clarifies in the next few verses, reconciliation was achieved “by the blood of his cross” (v. 20) and “in his body of flesh by his death” (v. 22). For a discussion of the Old Testament background of πλήρωμα that Paul is likely drawing on in 1:19 and 2:9, see the discussion in Peter T. O’Brien, Colossians, Philemon, Word Biblical Commentary 44 (Waco, TX: Word, 1982), 52–53.

[24]Thomas R. Schreiner, 1, 2 Peter, Jude, New American Commentary 37 (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2003), 180.

[25]Given our limited aims in this chapter, I do not intend to address the hotly debated passage in 1 Pet. 3:19–22.

[26]Contra the passibilist model of eternal divine suffering that lacks the needed note of definitive triumph over sin, evil, and suffering.

[27]In 3:18 the statement concerning Christ’s death “in the flesh” is paralleled by the statement of his being made alive “in the spirit.” Schreiner observes that most commentators go wrong by attempting to take the two datives in the same manner. Schreiner proposes instead to take the first term (σαρκὶ) as a dative of reference and the second (πνεύματι) as a dative of agency. The intended meaning of v. 18 would then be that “Christ was put to death with reference to or in the sphere of his body, but on the other hand he was made alive by the Spirit.” Schreiner, 1, 2 Peter, Jude, 184.

[28]The fact that Jesus’s suffering, and obedience in the face of suffering, is identified for us as not only redemptively unique, but also exemplary (Heb. 2:18; 1 Pet. 1:21–23) further suggests a humanly focused frame of reference for Jesus’s incarnational mission. Were it not so, it would be hard to fathom in what credible sense Jesus could serve as an example for us.

[29]With ὅπως + subjunctive indicating purpose. There is a textual issue in v. 9 that is worth noting. Most of the major English translations opt for χάριτι θεοῦ (“by the grace of God”) as opposed to χωρὶς θεοῦ (“apart from God”). The question then is, did Jesus taste death for everyone “by the grace of God” or “apart from God”? The issue is a challenging one because the textual support for the former is stronger, whereas the latter seems to be the more difficult reading. Complicating the scenario further, there are plausible explanations as to how an original χάριτι θεοῦ may have become χωρὶς θεοῦ through the process of transcription. For the most commonly suggested hypotheses defending χάριτι θεοῦ as original, see William L. Lane, Hebrews 1–8, Word Biblical Commentary 47a (Dallas: Word, 1991), 43. On the other hand, there was textual support for χωρὶς θεοῦ known, for example, to Origen that is no longer available to us. For a tentative defense of χωρὶς θεοῦ, see Paul Ellingworth, The Epistle to the Hebrews, NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 155–56. Having said all that, I wish to suggest that the outcome of this textual issue is not terribly significant for our purposes. If the correct reading is χάριτι θεοῦ, then the matter is clearly uncontroversial. On the other hand, if the χωρὶς θεοῦ reading is correct, then the statement that Jesus tasted death for everyone “apart from God,” would most likely be a reference to his experience of abandonment by the Father on the cross, which, as we have argued above, means not the spatial distance of the Father from the cross, but his presence to condemn the sins that Jesus was carrying. In that sense, the point is theologically true—whether it is textually the case here or not—that Jesus tasted death apart from the only kind of fellowship he had ever known with the Father, that of perfect union and love.

[30]Kevin DeYoung, “Divine Impassibility and the Passion of Christ in the Book of Hebrews,” Westminster Theological Journal 68 (2006): 44.

[31]When v. 10 states that “it was fitting” for God to “make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering (διὰ παθημάτων τελειῶσαι),” this process of perfecting the incarnate Son through suffering (cf. 5:8–9) should not be understood as a process of ethically perfecting one who was previously ethically imperfect, which is to say sinful. As George Guthrie points out, “He is not suggesting that the Son had been disobedient and flawed (cf. 4:15). Rather, Jesus’ call involved walking obediently all the way to the end of a path to which the Father had appointed him.. . . Perfection refers to the Son’s . . . accomplishing the mission and making it to the end of that path of passion.” George H. Guthrie, Hebrews, The NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998), 191.

[32]I take both the ἵνα + subjunctive and the εἰς + infinitive in v. 17 to indicate purpose.

[33]Again, the ἵνα + τὸ + subjunctive here indicates purpose.

[34]“For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted” (Heb. 2:18).

[35]“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15).

[36]These passages obviously raise the theological issue of Christ’s impeccability. Though it is outside the scope of this study to address that issue, because of some of the interesting conceptual parallels related to the human focus of Jesus’s experience, I refer the reader to the following insightful analysis of that issue: John E. McKinley, Tempted for Us: Theological Models and the Practical Relevance of Christ’s Impeccability and Temptation (Colorado Springs: Paternoster, 2009).

[37]DeYoung, “Divine Impassibility,” 49. Shortly prior to this comment, DeYoung wisely recognizes that the book of Hebrews itself strictly prohibits the conclusion that Jesus’s incarnate experience of human suffering could somehow wind up eternalized in the divine nature: “The sufferings of Christ were unique insofar as their purpose—to qualify Christ vocationally as high priest—was unique. Therefore, the Son of God knew no suffering prior to the incarnation, because prior to being made a little lower than the angels he was not completely adequate to serve as high priest. And because the purpose of his sufferings has now been realized (5:7–9), we know that the Son of God does not continue to suffer.” Ibid., 47.

[38]Of course, that atonement could not have been made by just any man. Jesus’s divine value must be emphasized as well. But the obedience had to be accomplished as a man, just as the suffering and ultimately the death had to be endured as a man. James P. Boyce gets the balance right: “This one person was, therefore, able to suffer and bear the penalty of man’s transgression, because, being of man’s nature, he could become man’s representative, and could also endure such suffering as could be inflicted upon man; yet, being God, he could give a value to such suffering, which would make it equivalent, not to one man’s penalty, but to that of the whole race.” James P. Boyce, Abstract of Systematic Theology (Charleston, SC: Southern Baptist Publication Society, 1887), 291.

[39]In terms of understanding the logical coherency of the incarnation, I should point out that, in addition to the specific factors discussed below, I am affirming the notion of an enhypostatic union, which protects against the error of holding that the human nature of Jesus ever had an independent existence apart from its enhypostasization in the person of the Logos at the incarnation. This is a critical point, for as Bruce Marshall reminds us, “Natures do not suffer or act. Persons do, because they have a nature that allows them to suffer, and to act.” Bruce D. Marshall, “The Dereliction of Christ and the Impassibility of God,” in Divine Impassibility and the Mystery of Human Suffering, ed. James F. Keating and Thomas Joseph White (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 281–82. In other words, natures do not act in the abstract; persons with a nature capable of action do. Hence, the point that Marshall develops here is that since the second person of the Trinity does not have a nature capable of suffering, he had to take on a human nature through which he would be able to experience human suffering. I am also affirming Thomas Morris’s careful distinctions between (1) individual and kind essences, (2) common and essential properties, and (3) being fully human versus merely human. Thomas V. Morris, The Logic of God Incarnate (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986; repr., Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2001), 38–46, 63–70.

[40]For a more detailed exposition of Cyril’s position, see my treatment of his thought in chap. 3.

[41]Richard Muller defines this concept as “a term used in Christology to describe the way in which the properties, or idiomata, of each nature are communicated to or interchanged in the unity of the person.” Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1985), 72. See John Calvin, Institutio Christianae religionis 2.14.1–3, in vol. 3 of Joannis Calvini opera selecta [OS], ed. P. Barth and G. Niesel, 2nd rev. ed. (Munich: Kaiser, 1957), 3:458–62. For further exposition, see Joseph N. Tylenda, “Calvin’s Understanding of the Communication of Properties,” Westminster Theological Journal 38 (1975): 54–65.

[42]Thomas Weinandy’s criticism of the Lutheran view is apt: “Luther interpreted the communication of idioms, in a far more radical manner than did Calvin . . . as the predicating of the divine and human attributes directly of the other nature, thus creating an impossible tension, for it is now God as God who suffers and it is man as man who creates. It is this unresolved tension that gave birth to modern kenoticism.” Thomas G. Weinandy, Does God Suffer? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000), 185.

[43]Peter Anders’s comment is thoughtful in this respect: “The divine attribute of infinitude, while fully present in the divine nature, cannot be communicated to the human nature. This is simply because an infinite human nature is something more than what is properly human; therefore if Jesus possessed an infinite human nature, soteriological problems would arise since he would not be human in the same sense as humanity in general.” Peter D. Anders, “Divine Impassibility and Our Suffering God: How an Evangelical ‘Theology of the Cross’ Can and Should Affirm Both,” Modern Reformation 6 (July/August 1997): 28.

[44]On the terms of the in abstracto view, for example, it is a logical entailment that since Jesus took naps, the divine nature has the property of taking naps. DeYoung, “Divine Impassibility,” 45.

[45]Cyril of Alexandria, Scholia de incarnatione Unigeniti 35 (ed. Joannis Auberti, PG 75 [1859]: 1411–12). Whereas Nestorius’s embrace of divine impassibility led him to dissolve the union of the incarnation, Cyril’s application of divine impassibility “meant that the Word remained unconquered by suffering and death and that he was unable to experience suffering in his ‘naked divinity,’ but only in and through the flesh. The presence of the Word transformed Christ’s human sufferings, while preserving their tragic reality. The Word was in a qualified sense passible to the degree to which he made the sufferings of his humanity his very own. In appropriating the experiences of humanity the Word directed them towards the salvific end and rendered them life-giving.” Paul L. Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God: The Dialectics of Patristic Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 171. Similar to Cyril’s statements, recall the following passages from Aquinas, both of which were quoted in chap. 4: Thomas Aquinas, ST 3.16.5, reply 1, and 3.46.12.

[46]Marshall, “The Dereliction of Christ,” 283, italics his.

[47]Cf. Richard Swinburne, The Christian God (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 213.

[48]Cf. Gilles Emery, “The Immutability of the God of Love and the Problem of Language Concerning the ‘Suffering of God,’” in Keating and White, Divine Impassibility and the Mystery of Human Suffering, 73. Such a model would be able to draw on the best features of Thomas Morris’s development of the “asymmetrically accessing two minds model” and Gerald Hawthorne’s emphasis on Jesus’s dependence on the Holy Spirit throughout his incarnational mission. Morris, The Logic of God Incarnate, 102–7, 157–62; and Gerald F. Hawthorne, The Presence and the Power: The Significance of the Holy Spirit in the Life and Ministry of Jesus (Dallas: Word, 1991; repr., Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2003), 199–244. Both Morris’s and Hawthorne’s positions, however, would require some adjustment. I do not find Morris’s analogies compelling, for instance. That is to say, the model is better than the analogies he offers. It may be that there is no adequate human analogy for the incarnation, and so perhaps analogies should be left off altogether. Cf. John S. Feinberg, “The Incarnation of Jesus Christ,” in In Defense of Miracles: A Comprehensive Case for God’s Action in History, ed. R. Douglas Geivett and Gary R. Habermas (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1997), 239–40. I also find that Morris’s view would be significantly aided by the explicit addition of Spirit-regulation. With respect to Hawthorne, I find that he over-reads in some of his conclusions. Consequently, we ought to maintain that Jesus’s expression of supernatural power is not foreign but proper to him (even if frequently exercised in reliance on the Spirit). In this way, we can and should allow that some of Jesus’s exercise of authority is an expression of his innate divinity in a way that does not disqualify him from “full” humanity. See Klaus Issler’s response to Hawthorne in this regard, as well as his identification of instances in which Jesus likely made independent use of his divine power. Klaus Issler, “Jesus’ Example: Prototype of the Dependent, Spirit-Filled Life,” in Jesus in Trinitarian Perspective: An Introductory Christology, ed. Fred Sanders and Klaus Issler (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2007), 202–5.

[49]The Old Testament anticipates Jesus’s life of Spirit reliance (Isa. 11:1–9; 42:1–9; 61:1–3). The New Testament confirms this testimony in the life of the incarnate Jesus from conception (Luke 1:35) to death (Heb. 9:14) and resurrection (Rom. 8:11). Throughout Jesus’s incarnate life, his reliance on the Spirit is further stressed at his baptism (Matt. 3:16; Mark 1:10; Luke 1:22; John 1:32–34), and throughout his ministry (Luke 4:1–21; Matt. 12:28; Acts 10:38).

[50]That is to say that for the purposes of the incarnation, Jesus did not make independent use of the divine prerogatives that were properly his throughout, a la Phil. 2:5–8. Cf. David Willis’s comment on Calvin’s view of the kenosis: “The kenosis was the concealment, not the abdication, of the Eternal Son’s divine majesty.” E. David Willis, Calvin’s Catholic Christology: The Function of the So-Called Extra Calvinisticum in Calvin’s Christology, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1966), 80, italics his. Again, it further underscores the humanly focused achievement of Christ’s righteousness that we have been stressing (as well as our ability to emulate Jesus when we face our own temptations, cf. 1 Pet. 2:21–23) if he did not resist temptation by the independent exercise of his native divine power, but did so instead as a man relying on the empowerment of the Holy Spirit.

[51]Davidson, “‘Not My Will but Yours Be Done,’” 200–201. Though he probably claims too much here, the point is valuable so far as it goes. While it is true that Jesus’s possession of the Spirit does aim to show the way he bears genuine humanity, it would seem an overstatement to say that the Spirit’s ministry is “not so much about setting the subject of their story apart from the common stock of humanity.. . .” By contrast, we should note, for example, how the Spirit’s descent upon Jesus in his baptism coalesces with the annunciation of divine sonship by the Father (Matt. 3:16–17 and parallels), which certainly does set him off as unique in a redemptively necessary manner. Furthermore, in inaugurating the new covenant, Jesus is opening up an unprecedented era of the experience of the Holy Spirit (cf. John 3:34). In all of this, what must be stressed is that while Jesus is not less than fully human, he is more than just human. Here again, see Morris’s helpful distinctions on this latter point. Morris, The Logic of God Incarnate, 65–66.

[52]Of course, his human mind was not omniscient.

[53]The specific point about asymmetric accessing relations between the divine and human minds comes into play here. In particular, this model emphasizes that the Son’s divine mind “contained, but was not contained” by his human mind. Morris, The Logic of God Incarnate, 103. Thus, the divine mind always has complete access to the contents of the human mind, though the reverse is not true. For the purposes of the incarnation, the human mind has asymmetric accessing privileges. In this manner, the two minds are related. For the purposes of the incarnation, there is a singular self-consciousness of the Son that is assymetrically focused through the human mind. In this regard, account is taken for both the unity of Christ’s person and the duality of his divine and human natures. Again, my addition would be that in this singular self-consciousness, the human mind, through which Jesus’s incarnate life is focused, does not have access to the contents of his divine mind apart from the regulation of the Holy Spirit. Such a model would help explain passages that indicate Jesus’s growth in knowledge and wisdom (Luke 2:40) as well as his ignorance of certain facts (Matt. 24:36), without our having to abandon the Son’s attribute of divine omniscience to do so. Cf. McKinley, Tempted for Us, 292–93. Morris’s view has, on occasion, been accused of crypto-Nestorianism. As we have seen though, this view—especially with the additional clarification of pneumatological regulation/veiling—actually protects the unity of Christ’s person and the duality of his natures rather nicely. For Morris’s own comments rebutting the crypto-Nestorian accusation in view of Jesus’s unique mode of existence, see The Logic of God Incarnate, 154–58.

[54]This explanation is similarly plausible with respect to the cry of dereliction, and for that matter it is broadly relevant to every battle with temptation that Jesus experienced. For in every such case, the attainment of human righteousness was at stake.

[55]To make a brief, related point, I should stress that Jesus’s obedience to the Father’s will was active and voluntary all the way along (e.g., Rom. 5:19; Phil. 2:8; Heb. 5:7–9). He was never the hapless victim of unfortunate circumstances. Indeed, he could not have been. Jesus never sinned (Heb. 4:15), and so he could not be forcibly required to suffer for sin. Sometimes theologians have distinguished the “active” and “passive” obedience of Christ. This should not be taken simply to mean that Christ is “actively” obedient during his life and “passively” obedient at his death. Rather, he was actively and passively obedient at every stage of his life and death as he met “both the penal and the preceptive requirements of God’s law.” John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1955), 22. This means then that going to the cross is the climactic moment of Jesus’s volitional obedience and not a moment of helpless victimization (cf. Matt. 16:21–23; 20:17–19; John 18:3–11). We should understand that when Jesus was taunted by the crowds to come down from the cross if he was the Son of God (Matt. 27:40), no nails could have finally held him (cf. Matt. 26:53), and the reason he did not come down was that he willed to stay there on our behalf. Jesus actively clung to the cross as it were (John 19:30), drinking down the cup of our judgment to the very last. Cf. John 10:18: “No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.”

[56]Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms, 111. According to Muller, this concept was introduced to safeguard “both the transcendence of Christ’s divinity and the integrity of Christ’s humanity.” Recall, however, that this concept did not originate with Calvin and in fact was widespread, dating back to Patristic theology. Cf. Willis, Calvin’s Catholic Christology, 60. For Calvin’s own affirmation of this concept, see Calvin, Institutio 2.13.4 (OS 3:458), 4.17.30 (OS 5:388–89). Cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Epistola 101.4, ad Cledonium (ed. J.-P. Migne, PG 37 [1862]: 177).

[57]Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, trans. Margaret Kohl (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981; repr., Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 80.

[58]Heb. 9:25–28: “Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.” Cf. Heb. 7:27–28; 9:12.

[59]To quote Cyril once again, “The Word was alive even when his holy flesh was tasting death, so that when death was beaten and corruption trodden underfoot the power of the resurrection might come upon the whole human race (Ἔζη γὰρ ὁ Λόγος καὶ γευομένης θανάτου τῆς ἁγίας αὐτοῦ σαρκὸς, ἵν’ ἡττηθέντος θανάτου, καὶ πεπατημένης τῆς ϕθορᾶς, ἡ τῆς ἀναστάσεως δύναμις εἰς ἅπαν ἔρχηται τὸ ἀνθρώπινον γένος).” Cyril, Quod unus sit Christus 764 (ed. Joannis Auberti, PG 75 [1859]: 1337; trans. John Anthony McGuckin, St. Cyril of Alexandria: On the Unity of Christ [Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1995], 115).

[60]Weinandy, Does God Suffer?, 204–5, italics his.

[61]Bruce Marshall’s comments on the human manner in which Jesus mourns his sin are keen in this respect. After articulating that the sin Jesus mourns on the cross is clearly not his own sin, but ours, Marshall observes that, nevertheless, “his sorrow over all the sins of the world brings with it a suffering in body and soul which is his own, and which has no parallel in our suffering—we who do not mourn our own sin, let alone the sins of others, as Jesus does.” Marshall, “The Dereliction of Christ,” 273. Even in his incarnate passion, Jesus is more, and not less, vibrant in zeal than we are.

[62]Kevin Vanhoozer, Remythologizing Theology: Divine Action, Passion, and Authorship (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 424.

Conclusion

Summary

Finally we have come to the conclusion of this attempt to better understand divine impassibility. Here we may benefit from a brief review of the argumentation we have undertaken throughout this book. Following a brief introduction to the issue of and debate over divine impassibility in chapter 1, we turned in the next five chapters to trace the history of the doctrine. Chapters 3 and 4 surveyed representatives of the Patristic, medieval, Reformation, and post-Reformation eras. There we found that apart from a few minority voices, the juxtaposition of divine impassibility and divine passion began in the foundational era of church history, and this mainstream model continued largely throughout these eras. This historical survey also generally revealed the fallacy of the Hellenization thesis discussed in chapter 2. Chapter 5 both surveyed the ascendancy of passibilism in modern theology and attempted to expose some of the flawed passibilist reasoning. Chapter 6 examined the prominent and contemporary nonevangelical defenses of divine impassibility by Richard Creel and Thomas Weinandy, before turning to an investigation of evangelical opinion on the matter. Though some of the evangelical self-understanding appeared to proceed on the basis of a passibilist (and not an impassibilist) definition of impassibility, many of the evangelicals surveyed nevertheless affirmed the two-pronged model in principle. This collective examination of divine impassibility throughout church history provided much fruitful fodder for the formative proposal in the second half of the book.

In chapters 7–9, I put forward the main pillars of my “impassible and impassioned” model. The proposal itself focused on the intertwined methodological, hermeneutical, and theological development of the classical two-pronged model of divine impassibility and divine passion with respect to theology proper. Observations drawn from redemptive history, covenantal discourse, the analogical method of interpreting scriptural God-language, contextual exegesis, the Creator/creature distinction, God’s intra-Trinitarian self-fulfillment, and other related doctrines were all woven together in an attempt to expound and strengthen our core thesis. In the end, we saw that impassibility and impassionedness are both true of God. Moreover, we discovered that God’s passion transcends human passion both ontologically and ethically.

In the case of God’s ontologically transcendent passion, we saw that God’s creatures cannot wring an emotion from him unexpectedly or against his will. Thus, we came to see that whereas God’s affective displays demonstrate that he is perfectly and voluntarily responsive to his creatures, he is never in the ultimate sense passive. In the case of God’s ethically superior passion, we saw that God’s emotional experience is never sinful, precisely because God is unshakably impassioned in the self-fulfillment of intra-Trinitarian love. By contrast, the weakness of our human affections is chiefly evident right here. Because we do not love God as we ought, our weak affections for God’s glory result at times in our dabbling with sin. In this sense, our passions are not sufficiently biblically formed. In consequence of this understanding, we further learned that the criterion for “real” divine relationality must be biblically (and not anthropocentrically) conceived along these dual lines. Chapter 10 then offered a short reflection of the impact of our findings in theology proper on our understanding of the incarnation and crucifixion. The main biblical and theological contention there was that an incarnation of the eternal Son was necessary precisely to overcome natural divine impassibility (i.e., the impassibility of the divine nature), so that the person of Christ could redemptively experience suffering and death as a man.

Contributions

To be sure, this study could easily double in size by examining additional historical figures and other relevant biblical texts and by expanding the redemptive-historical sketch.[1] Nevertheless, I believe that the foundation has sufficiently been laid in what we have seen to warrant the conclusion that God is impassible and impassioned. As such, I am of the opinion that this proposal makes promising contributions on a number of levels. First off, it is advantageous historically because, while it advocates some developments and clarifications, it nevertheless stands on the shoulders of the well-established legacy of the two-pronged view.[2] Second, this proposal is promising textually speaking because it treats the passages of God’s covenantal passion seriously, in their contexts, as literal displays of God’s covenant commitment to his people. Methodologically, this proposal is promising because it pursues a conscientious theological interpretation of the relevant data, recognizing that God both invests himself in covenant relationship (i.e., immanence) and stands over that same covenantal arrangement (i.e., transcendence).

Theologically, I believe this “impassible and impassioned” model is promising because as it expands on the transcendence/immanence balance of God in Scripture, it does not extrapolate this notion speculatively, but does so especially on the basis of the all-important Creator/creature distinction. In light of this biblical distinction and that of God’s intra-Trinitarian self-fulfillment and voluntary condescension, we have seen that though God’s covenantal affection is literally depicted in Scripture, that same affection is also analogically, and not univocally, related to human emotion.[3] Pastorally, this model’s promise stems from the comfort and the confidence that it commends to believers awaiting the final outcome of their faith (e.g., 1 Pet. 1:3–9). On the terms of this model, the believer has not only the comfort of knowing that God is with us in all that we face, but also the confidence that God is with us precisely as the conqueror, and not the victim, of suffering, sin, and death.

Another way of stating the overall value of this model is to note that it does not polarize divine impassibility and divine passion in an either-or fashion when a both-and perspective is needed. Broadly speaking, it is not the case that either God is transcendent or he is immanent. To be sure, God’s immanence is not forcibly required of him. It is God’s free decision not only to make a world, but also to give himself to that world. But that is just the point; it is his gracious and voluntary self-giving. Similarly, God is not either impassible or impassioned. He is both. But once again, his passionate engagement with creation is voluntary. Of course, this passionate engagement is no less real on account of always being voluntary, but it is quite clearly, therefore, divine and not human passion.

Implication

Having rehearsed a few of the high points of this book, I want to conclude with a brief glance at one exciting implication of our study of divine impassibility. While there is much more to say than spatial constraints allow, I find that our proposal concerning God’s analogical passion is ripe with helpful possibilities for instructing our own pursuit of human emotional sanctification. It is true, of course, that there are crucial ontological factors (i.e., involving the Creator/creature distinction) that will forever preclude us from having the identical emotional capacity as God has. We will never be self-sufficient, omniscient, all-sovereign, and so on. Nevertheless, some of our unlikeness to God, in emotional as well as other areas, stems not only from this ontological distance, but also from our own ethical (i.e., sinful) shortcomings. In the course of our sanctification, these sinful shortcomings may be progressively overcome by God’s grace, so that we may grow over time into an emotive capacity that, in its ethical dimensions, comes more and more to approximate God’s own (cf. 2 Cor. 3:18). This should be one of the major goals of Christian discipleship—to grow in love for the things God loves and in hatred, yes hatred, for the sin that God hates.

In so doing, we will overcome the fallacy—common not only to ancient philosophical thought, but also to much popular evangelical thought—that emotions are the problem and that we should rule or eradicate them by stern reason. There is, of course, such a thing as too much heat without enough light. But in the specific sense we are speaking of here, our problem is not ordinarily that we have too much emotion, but that we have too little, or more precisely, we have too weak of an affection for the things that please the Lord.[4] Sanctification involves not only learning more about God, but loving the God we learn about ever more deeply. May God help us in this endeavor to follow in the footsteps of our Savior and elder brother, so that our hearts might throb full of strong delight to worship, love, and obey God. When that happens, though the ontological distance between divine and human emotion will abide, the ethical distance will begin progressively to narrow.[5]

A Final Word

In the balanced way in which we have come to understand divine emotion, we can with much enthusiasm celebrate as a fitting conclusion to our study these words on the final judgment from the pen of C. S. Lewis:

The promise of glory is the promise, almost incredible and only possible by the work of Christ, that some of us, that any of us who really chooses, shall actually survive that examination, shall find approval, shall please God. To please God . . . to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness . . . to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son—it seems impossible, a weight of burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.[6]

Praise God that it is so. Indeed, praise him that it is so when we have no grounds on which to demand this of God, and when in fact the only thing we have a right to expect is the very opposite. And praise him that we may be an “ingredient in the divine happiness” and recipients of God’s love when the utter realness of this relationship far transcends the real experience of loving or being loved by any other being. For in God alone do such transcendence and immanence find their balance whereby we may rightly say of him that he is “impassible and impassioned.”

[1] Biblically speaking, I remain of the opinion that other relevant passages not here examined would best be interpreted along lines similar to those that we engaged in chap. 8, thus bearing out similar findings. Sometimes it is suggested that the Old Testament’s prophetic literature is prime evidence of divine passibility. That is one reason why we gave a fair bit of attention to key prophetic texts in chap. 8. I am of the opinion, however, that further examination of such texts would serve to bolster, not weaken, my thesis. Covenantally speaking, the prophetic oracles given to pre- through post-exilic Israel reflect the prosecution of covenant transgressions and simultaneously assure God’s covenant fidelity, on the basis of the bedrock covenant commitment of God’s jealousy for his own glory (Ex. 20:5; 34:14; Deut. 4:24; 5:9; 6:14–15; cf. Ex. 6:7; Isa. 48:9–11; Ezek. 36:23–32), as stipulated in the Torah. Again, therefore, I contend that further fleshing out this structure of covenant relatedness against the backdrop of numerous additional prophetic texts would serve to strengthen my argument and further undercut one of the key arguments for passibilism.

[2] Recall my distinction at the end of chap. 6 between development and revision.

[3] Recall the technical distinction we made in chap. 7 between analogical/literal anthropopathisms that are truth bearing and analogical/nonliteral anthropomorphisms that are also truth bearing.

[4] Recall Jonathan Edwards’s comment that “as there is no true religion where there is nothing else but affection, so there is no true religion where there is no religious affection.” Jonathan Edwards, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol 1. (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1974), 243.

[5] This is not to say, however, that our ethical perfection and God’s will one day be the same. As the vision of Isa. 6:1–8 reminds us, even the sinless seraphim cover their faces and feet in the presence of the all-holy God. Thus, God’s holiness alone is intrinsic, whereas that of sinless seraphim and glorified humans will always be derivative of God’s.

[6] C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory (New York: Macmillan, 1949; repr., New York: Touchstone, 1996), 34.

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DeWeese, Garry, and Klaus Issler. “Is the Two-Wills/Two-Minds View of the Incarnation Coherent? A Reexamination of the Condemnation of Monothelitism.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society, 2002.

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Dodds, Michael J. “Thomas Aquinas, Human Suffering, and the Unchanging God of Love.” Theological Studies 52 (1991): 330–44.

Duncan, J. Ligon, III. “Divine Passibility and Impassibility in Nineteenth-Century American Confessional Presbyterian Theologians.” Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology 8 (1990): 1–15.

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Dupre, Louis. “Evil—A Religious Mystery: A Plea for a More Inclusive Model of Theodicy.” Faith and Philosophy 7 (1990): 261–80.

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Emery, Gilles. “The Immutability of the God of Love and the Problem of Language Concerning the ‘Suffering of God.’” In Divine Impassibility and the Mystery of Human Suffering, edited by James F. Keating and Thomas Joseph White, 27–76. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009.

Feinberg, John S. “The Incarnation of Jesus Christ.” In In Defense of Miracles: A Comprehensive Case for God’s Action in History, edited by R. Douglas Geivett and Gary R. Habermas, 226–46. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1997.

Fiddes, Paul S. “Suffering, Divine.” In The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Modern Christian Thought, edited by Alister E. McGrath, 633–36. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1993.

Forster, Peter R. “Divine Passibility and the Early Christian Doctrine of God.” In The Power and Weakness of God: Impassibility and Orthodoxy, edited by Nigel M. de S. Cameron, 23–51. Edinburgh: Rutherford House, 1990.

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Frede, Michael. “The Stoic Doctrine of the Affections of the Soul.” In The Norms of Nature: Studies in Hellenistic Ethics, edited by Malcolm Schofield and Gisela Striker, 93–110. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

Fretheim, Terence E. “The Repentance of God: A Key to Evaluating Old Testament God-talk.” Horizons in Biblical Theology 10 (1988): 47–70.

. “Suffering God and Sovereign God in Exodus: A Collision of Images.” Horizons in Biblical Theology 11 (1989): 31–56.

Fuller, Russell. “The Rabbis and the Claims of Openness Advocates.” In Beyond the Bounds: Open Theism and the Undermining of Biblical Christianity, edited by John Piper, Justin Taylor, and Paul Kjoss Helseth, 23–41. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2003.

Gavrilyuk, Paul L. “God’s Impassible Suffering in the Flesh: The Promise of Paradoxical Christology.” In Divine Impassibility and the Mystery of Human Suffering, edited by James F. Keating and Thomas Joseph White, 127–49. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009.

. “Theopatheia: Nestorius’s Main Charge against Cyril of Alexandria.” Scottish Journal of Theology 56 (2003): 190–207.

Gilbert, Kevin J. “Jürgen Moltmann’s Theological Method: Evangelical Options?” Restoration Quarterly 41 (1999): 163–78.

Goetz, Ronald. “Karl Barth, Jürgen Moltmann, and the Theopaschite Revolution.” In Festschrift: A Tribute to Dr. William Hordern, edited by Walter Freitag, 17–28. Saskatoon: University of Saskatchewan, 1985.

. “The Suffering of God: The Rise of a New Orthodoxy.” The Christian Century 103 (1986): 385–89.

Goldsworthy, Graeme. “The Ontological and Systematic Roots of Biblical Theology.” The Reformed Theological Review 62 (2003): 152–64.

Grant, Colin. “Possibilities for Divine Passibility.” Toronto Journal of Theology 4 (1988): 3–18.

Hallman, Joseph M. “The Communication of Idioms in Theodoret’s Commentary on Hebrews.” In In Dominico Eloquio, In Lordly Eloquence: Essays on Patristic Exegesis in Honor of Robert Louis Wilken, edited by Paul M. Blowers, Angela Russell Christman, David Hunter, and Robin Darling Young, 369–79. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002.

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. “A Vulnerable God Apart from Christ? Open Theism’s Challenge to the Doctrine of God.” Modern Reformation 10, no. 3 (2001): 30–47.

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Theses and Dissertations

Johnson, Dennis Edward. “Immutability and Incarnation: An Historical and Theological Study of the Concepts of Christ’s Divine Unchangeability and His Human Development.” PhD diss., Fuller Theological Seminary, 1984.

Vande Brake, Peter H. “Divine Passibility.” PhD diss., Calvin Theological Seminary, 2001.

Ware, Bruce A. “An Evangelical Reexamination of the Doctrine of the Immutability of God.” PhD diss., Fuller Theological Seminary, 1984.