The passibility or otherwise of God (aka, Does God have feelings?)
Lamb Chopped
Shipmate
in Purgatory
I thought maybe we could take the long tangent here?
I haven't yet come across a convincing proof from the Scripture of the idea that God is impassible in the sense that we cannot "act on him"--that is, affect him, cause him to feel emotions, etc. All the arguments I've heard for this go back to Greek philosophy or to a vague sense that it's somehow beneath God to suffer reactions to anything--whether it's something we do or something that happens in the universe. On that view, it seems to be preferred that God should simulate feelings--should act in such a way that it looks like he's having emotions, but he's not, really.
The issue matters to me, because for really unhealthy reasons that go back to childhood I did in fact always assume that God was observing me/the world and then analyzing me/it to determine the proper emotional response--which he then ladled out, with no true connection between him and me/it/whatever. In other words, that he was disconnected except by intellect, I suppose.
I now think I was wrong. Extremely wrong, in fact. And I'm glad of it. What say you?
I haven't yet come across a convincing proof from the Scripture of the idea that God is impassible in the sense that we cannot "act on him"--that is, affect him, cause him to feel emotions, etc. All the arguments I've heard for this go back to Greek philosophy or to a vague sense that it's somehow beneath God to suffer reactions to anything--whether it's something we do or something that happens in the universe. On that view, it seems to be preferred that God should simulate feelings--should act in such a way that it looks like he's having emotions, but he's not, really.
The issue matters to me, because for really unhealthy reasons that go back to childhood I did in fact always assume that God was observing me/the world and then analyzing me/it to determine the proper emotional response--which he then ladled out, with no true connection between him and me/it/whatever. In other words, that he was disconnected except by intellect, I suppose.
I now think I was wrong. Extremely wrong, in fact. And I'm glad of it. What say you?
Comments
Jesus wept. John 11:35.
It’s been a long old journey! From what I can gather about Lutheranism, I think it adhered to the classical picture of God the Father as impassible, but this was complicated by Martin Luther’s suspicion of the importation of Greek philosophical concepts. Jesus in His earthly life is certainly viewed as passible and Lutheranism also accepts the fully God fully man understanding of Jesus.
But why a long journey? Well, here’s a short personal summary.
In the roots of Judaism we find a very strong reaction to other Gods and other religions. The prevailing thought is “our God is not like that”.
I think we see a reaction against polytheism and savage pagan Gods who were powerful, fought amongst each other, had sex, demanded human sacrifices, were unbridled in their use of power, needed to be placated by various means.
Jewish understanding did not emerge in a vacuum. Jews had to cope with a world of adversaries such as Egyptians, Canaanites, Sumerians. Babylonians, later on Greeks and Romans, all of whom had pantheons of varying degrees of nastiness!
When more henotheistic understandings were at work, God was the great God and the great King above all gods and fought on the side of Israel to defeat those deities and those who believed in them. In the later monotheistic insights as witnessed by the prophets there was God and there was no other deity; all such beliefs were superstitious. God was above all that stuff.
And so we have the understanding that His thoughts are not our thoughts and his ways are not our ways. God is transcendent, other than human. He was Holy and Perfect, without human sinfulness, ethically just and loving in His divine rule over us, His chosen people.
In a journey not without parallels, Greek philosophy was primarily a reaction against the superstitious nastiness to be found in the polytheistic beliefs in Greek deities and so the theologies of Greek philosophers explored what a true deity would be like. Perfect in every way, free from human frailties and unbridled emotions. Above all that. Totally other.
And then came Jesus!
As Gamaliel said in the other thread, pondering on the significance of His incarnation, holy and miraculous life, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension, Traditional Christian belief brought together the Holy writings, journey and insights of Judaism and what was seen as the very best of Greek philosophy. A humble human and hopefully inspired attempt to get a handle on the ineffable God the Father and the Son of God. Acknowledged that we know in part.
And then came the Reformation!
A long. long journey and a continuing one.
And within that, encompassed by it, is the profound question. Does God have feelings? If He does, can we possibly comprehend his emotional life?
I appreciate and sympathise very much with the confusion of those childhood thoughts, and the influences which surrounded them.
Also, I have some sympathy with Luther’s suspicion of abstract metaphysical conceptions of God and his preference for looking at how God has been revealed, concretely, in the incarnation, life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
Viewed against that understanding, and given the clear passibility of Jesus, his completely involved human engagement with others, I am sure that God has feelings. He is love. He loves us. And His perfect love casts out fear.
(Feel free to ignore everything other than the last three paragraphs! You may see the long long journey quite differently to me.)
Whether we take a 'classic' line on divine impassibility or not, the bottom line is surely that God is loving and benign.
I think Barnabas62's summary of the development of these ideas is fine as far as it goes but - from an Orthodox perspective - jumps too quickly from his description of Patristic understandings to the Reformation.
'Then came the Reformation ...'
To which those in Christian confessions which didn't experience the Reformation and Counter-Reformation might reply, 'Not round here it didn't!'
From what Barnabas62 has said elsewhere he's been reading Gospel Coalition material on this issue, which is fine, but it's one perspective and very much a conservative Reformed one.
Other perspectives are available. 😉
I would posit further stages in Barnabas62's development time-line. Yes, medieval Scholasticism built upon earlier Patristic thought but, put simply, from an Orthodox point of view later veered from it to some extent.
We would argue that what Luther and the Reformers were reacting against was largely late medieval accretions and developments that didn't apply in the Christian East.
We tend to have a downer on the medieval Schoolmen.
We'd also say that Luther and Calvin imbibed a lot of late medieval Scholastic thinking themselves. How could they not have done so?
In some ways we'd say they didn't go far enough. They retained the 'filioque clause' for instance - but that would be matter for another thread and beyond my pay-grade to sort out.
All that is open for debate of course. Other perspectives are available.
At any rate, an Orthodox understanding of divine impassibility doesn't rule out the point @mousethief raises about Christ only doing what he sees the Father doing. I'd say that was both implicit and explicit in Big O and small o understandings of these things.
God is eternally loving, eternally gracious. God-in-Christ is eternally loving, eternally gracious.
In the Incarnation divine impassibility (for want of a better word) and human possibility are conjoined.
Eternally.
From an Orthodox perspective there is no 'confusion', no contradiction.
As @Dafyd says on t'other thread, problems only arise if we conceive of God as being the 'same' as us.
God isn't. God is completely 'other'.
That isn't to say that as human beings we don't bear or reflect something of the divine nature. We do. Even though sinners and 'fallen'.
I was going to start a thread on the Orthodox understanding of the distinction between God's essence and energies.
I may well do that but may introduce some thoughts on that here as they may be pertinent.
There's a lot to unpack on that one and it's another area where it's easy for Christians from different traditions to 'talk past' one another.
So I'll need to slow down and choose my words more carefully than I can sometimes do when responding on the hoof.
So I'll add something on that in due course.
You've hit the nail on the head.
You've said succintly what I've been saying long-windedly all along.
But back to impassibility. I don't see it in the scripture at all. Those verses about "I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O Israel, are not destroyed" refer to his faithfulness, not his lack of emotions.
I suspect what we've done so often as theologians is to treat God as if he had none at all when in reality his emotions are as much higher (perfect) than ours as his thoughts are above ours. We imagine a God who falls below us rather than one who is greater than us.
I do not see why it is axiomatic that an unmoved mover is superior to one who has freely chosen to let his own creation call forth emotional responses (or intellectual responses, for that matter!) in himself.
And given the doctrine of our creation in God's image, surely we create difficulties for ourselves if we deny that God has emotions, and insist on saying that Scriptural references that suggest he does are merely anthropomorphic. One is left to wonder then where our emotions come from, important as they are in our make up. We have no similar trouble in attributing our intelligence to an origin in his, for example. Or our moral sense...
I don't think doing history of theology (as important as that is) tells us whether something is true. And of course, being Lutheran, I look to the Scriptures for support on such a basic statement about God. I don't think I'm finding it, and that disturbs me.
You won’t find impassible in the Bible, that’s for sure. What you will find is that God is perfect. Most famously in Matthew 5:48 “Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect”. What you will also find are scripture relating to the unchanging nature of God. Malachi 3 v 6. (I the Lord do not change) and James 1 v 17 (Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.) Probably others, but those are good examples. Divine Perfection and Unchangingness are at the heart of impassibility.
What Divine Perfection and Unchangingness might be and how human beings have speculated about them was the main reason for my incorporating the view of history. The doctrine of impassibility as a feature of them arose out of that process, and not just in Christianity. In the other thread I linked to the thoughts of Philo of Alexandria, a Hellenistic Jew.
I think we are made in the image of God and like you I have problems with the concept of the totally other. The Reformers argued that human fallibility made our perceptions of Divine Grace and Divine Compassion also likely to be marred by our fallibility. That’s not the same as saying we have no idea what Divine Graciousness and Divine Compassion might be like. We have glimpses of glory.
I don’t like the word impassibility very much! I can see where it came from in the history of religion but in my view it represents a dated human attempt to conceive the Perfect, Unchanging and Ineffable God.
From my reading it looks as though Martin Luther rejected the term as abstract theorising about the divine nature. He seems to have thought that God apart from Jesus was a hidden God about whom speculation was foolhardy and possibly harmful.
But so far as J can see Lutheranism does seem to accept impassibility. I’m not sure how that came about.
As I’ve already said, other terms like gracious, compassionate faithful, just, merciful, loving are all scriptural and seem to me to be more helpful.
As they inherited the scriptures and Trinitarian doctrine and much else besides from all that went before.
Perhaps it's time I returned to the 'essences/energies' thing as that may help here.
It may also confuse things which is why I'm biding my time until I can condense my thoughts sufficiently.
For the time being, I'll bowl this in ...
In my morning prayers this morning, I prayed this from my wee prayer book:
'And we entreat of Thy goodness: be gracious unto our sins and accept our prayer in Thy great tenderness of heart.'
How does that 'work' if God is some kind of unfeeling robot. Well it wouldn't of course if those who do hold to divine impassibility in the classic sense did believe that God is some kind of cold, remote and impersonal 'force'.
But that's not what we believe. No Christians of whatever stripe believe that.
I keep saying that a belief in divine impassibility doesn't mean that we can't relate to God in any way or we don't bear the divine image in terms of our capacity to love.
Far from it.
Anthropomorphic language isn't merely anthropomorphic or a form of 'pretence' - as if God is only 'acting' as it were. No, rather it is one of ways we creaturely creatures can grasp concepts beyond our ken.
I'll come back to this again.
Peace be to all.
I agree with this, and with what you said following it.
I take a different approach to the question than most people. I would argue God is relational to the world at every moment. God is the most emotionally responsive being, not the least.
For me there are two natures of God. One is unchanging and one that is deeply affected. There is an eternal character of love, goodness and creativity, This never changes. However, there is a consequent nature. God's experience with the world, which does change as creation unfolds.
If we say God is love, we have to admit genuine love involves being moved, being affected, being touched by joy and being grieved by suffering (one can see this in the creation stories and in the words of the prophets). In John 3.16 we are told God so loved the world. To me, that implies God is so deeply involved with our experience God made certain choices for us.
If God cannot be moved, God cannot love.
God's perfection is not immunity from feeling but the fullness of relational responses. God is unchanging in character but ever-changing in experience because love implies vulnerability.
The Lutheran theology of the cross expresses this well. God meets us in suffering, covenant, and incarnation. God responds to creation. We hold God genuinely hears prayer and acts in history. The theology of grace is possible because love is God's core nature.
'Terms like gracious, compassionate, just, merciful, loving, are all scriptural and seem to me to be more helpful.'
Well, duh ...
Read any of the Fathers and you'll find those terms over and over again. Where do you think they got them from? The scriptures of course.
We seem to be getting hung up on this word 'impassibility' here as though in using it we are denying that God is gracious, compassionate, just, merciful, loving ... and much more besides.
Yes, the Fathers do tend to use apophatic language in relation to the Godhead - 'unoriginate', 'unending', 'unchanging' - but that's in order to present something positive or cataphatic - God is eternal, all-knowing, everywhere-present etc.
@Nick Tamen observed that 'impassibility' isn't a term he'd generally use and I wouldn't either - but I understand what it's use intends to convey. I'm off to Vespers this evening. If I went round asking people afterwards what 'impassibility' means to them I doubt many of them could tell me.
Which is fine. I wouldn't expect them to. Nor is it necessary for them to do so.
I seem to keep banging the same drum here and that's that it's the Incarnation that mysteriously makes sense of it all.
John 1:18 'No-one has seen God at any time. The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.'
I don't know enough about Luther's 'take' on these things but if he was wary about abstract speculation about the nature of the Godhead then he was in good company because that's the Patristic witness also.
It was some of the Gnostics who went in for abstract speculations, often using the 'names of God' from the Old Testament to weave elaborate theories about God's nature and attributes. Valentinus in the 2nd century and Eunomius and the Anomoeans in the 4th century reasoned this way, I'm told.
No, I hadn't heard of them either.
For the Fathers God was God.
That was sufficient.
Entirely 'other' yet though his 'energies' and actions and supremely through Christ, God had made himself known.
One of the Orthodox liturgical texts says, 'The Virgin now gives birth to Him who is Above All Being.'
Above All-Being.
Goodness me!
Now, the Marcionites ran to the equal and opposite error to Valentinus and Eunomius. They taught that God was completely unknowable and inaccessible to our comprehension.
To which St Cyril of Jerusalem responded that we don't need to know the entire river to drink from it and benefit from it.
The classic Orthodox position is that we can't talk about God's 'essence' but only of his attributes - and what those reveal is that he is gracious, loving, forebearing, all-knowing, unchanging, all-holy wc etc etc etc.
I'm sorry folks, but we seem to be putting concepts up in opposition to each other that really aren't contradictory at all.
That'll do for now.
It's something on the essence/energies thing but there's more that could be said of course.
I don't wish to over-complicate things and St John of Damascus said that God was 'simple'.
We can't speculate as the Gnostics did as to which 'bit' of God or which attribute of God was more prominent or important than any other - if we can put it in those terms.
If any of us have any apprehension of God at all it's because God has revealed himself to us in some way - through the Incarnation and all that flows from that.
The human feelings we all experience may be flawed, imperfect and in the true meaning of that much abused theological term 'totally depraved', but right from the beginning we are told that God made humankind in his own image. In many ways, God is very different from us, and very alien. But in other ways, that cannot be. I think it is essential to conclude that the emotional, feeling, part of human nature is something we share with him, and not just the rational or spiritual. Otherwise, as @Lamb Chopped has asked, where does it come from?
When St John says that God is love (1 Jn 4) and tells us therefore that we should likewise love one another, I think he is speaking of something rather more intense and passionate than a sort of worthy impassive benevolence. I also think, though accept that this may be more controversial, that when St John chooses to say in that Epistle that 'God is love', rather than 'God loves', he is not just pre-empting a different John, John Lennon's somewhat vague aspiration 'all you need is love'. I think St John is pointedly making a statement about God's very nature. Love is inherent to who God is and what he is like. This is fundamental to who the Father is, who Jesus is and who the Holy Spirit is.
Much of what seems to be maintained about God's impassibility strikes me as coming from an abstract notion of what an eternal, unchanging, creator God ought philosophically to be like rather than what it turns out the God who introduced himself to Moses as the one 'who is who he is' has revealed himself to be like, first over the centuries of the Old Testament and then in what Jesus turned out to be like. Yes, God is unchanging, his nature is eternal. That nature, though, also has personality, qualities, a character, which includes perfect, divine, versions of the feelings we experience, and which are part of how he responds to what happens in his creation.
I know I have not put that very well, and may well have uttered what some may claim are heresies that I do not even know the names for. As for essence/energies, that is not something I have ever studied. I do wonder, though, whether what I have said may be an attempt to chisel out something of this distinction but from a different angle.
Having said that I think that theological problems arise from too anthropomorphic an understanding of God. Jesus, the human being, is the best image of the invisible God that we have or could have (*); but Jesus' humanity is still not the invisible God.
(*) and we don't make it better by replacing it with some version of Zeus or Apollo.
Compassion: meaning suffering with. This fits the Lutheran theology of the cross. It means God's deep solidarity without implying fickle human feelings.
Divine steadfast love (hesed): meaning covenant loyalty, mercy faithfulness, enduring commitment.
Divine benevolence: a calm, constant orientation of God's will toward the good of creation.
Divine fidelity: God's unwavering faithfulness--love expressed as commitment other than feeling.
Divine grace: God's unconditional favor toward humanity.
Divine mercy: love expressed as healing, forgiveness and restoration.
Divine relationality (might be a new concept to some): God's active, responsive engagement with the world.
'In these last days he has spoken to us through his Son.'
Hebrews 1;1-2.
@Enoch, no, there is no need whatsoever to 'disaggregate' Christ's 'two natures' - the divine and the human - in the Cleansing of The Temple. 'Synergia' again.
Jesus always and only did the will of the Father. Not in a robotic glove-puppet kind of way but through his divine and human wills acting in perfect harmony and unison.
This is what the creedal Nicene-Chalcedonian formularies are all about. So when clearing out the money-changers, healing the sick, casting out demons, raising the dead, feeding the four thousand and the five thousand, teaching in parables and in everything else he was carrying out the will of the Father.
Are you saying he put his divine nature 'on hold'?
I'm sorry folks but from a Big O Orthodox perspective I fear you may be introducing false dichotomies left, right and centre.
Orthodoxy does believe in divine 'impassibility' but does not believe in an 'Unmoved Mover'. That's an Aristotelian concept that is inadequate from an Orthodox perspective as I've tried to explain several times apparently to no avail.
Where has that idea come from? Late medieval Scholasticism? I don't know. But it keeps being mentioned here as though it's what the concept of divine impassibility is all about. It isn't. Not from an Orthodox perspective that is.
I'm tempted to cite the story of the Russian bishop who was asked by a group of 19th century Anglo-Catholics how they could resist what they saw as the pernicious effects of Protestantism.
'Get rid of your Roman Catholicism,' he replied.
😉
Ok, joking aside, as a convinced ecumenist I believe we all share a common heritage in the scriptures and the Patristic witness. These things belong to all of us. However, it behoves us all to understand what the great Creedal formularies we all hold in common actually teach us about these things.
If we believe that Christ has two wills, the divine and the human working together in complete harmony then there's no contradiction or dysfunction between Christ's actions in the Temple court and the will of the Father.
Christ was acting in submission to the will of the Father and, in his humanity, carrying out an act of righteous judgement.
Equally, rather than being a 'Trinitarian error', there's no problem with the nature of the Godhead prior to the Incarnation either. Jesus said 'If you have seen me you have seen the Father' and 'I and the Father are one.'
If we want to know what God the Father is like we look at God the Son. What is it the Apostle Paul wrote to the Colossians? 'He is the image of the invisible God, the exact representation of His being.'
Likewise with the Holy Spirit, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified.
Why dichotomise these things?
Why set them in opposition to one another?
Here's another snippet of a Western hymn you may be familiar with, 'All my hope on God is founded.'
'God unknown
He alone
Calls my heart to be his own.'
It's based on a hymn by Joachim Neander (1650-1680) whom I presume to have been Lutheran.
It's perfectly Orthodox and orthodox, as far as I can see, both Big O and small o. God is 'unknown' until he reveals himself - through creation, through the Law and the Prophets supremely through the Incarnation.
And what does God do? He calls our hearts to be his own. To unite ourselves with the divine nature, by his grace.
God is Love.
In Christ the divine and the human unite in perfect harmony. In Christ we too can share in the divine life. We can become by grace what God is by nature.
There is no disharmony here. This is all scriptural. All Patristic.
These are trustworthy sayings and worthy of all acceptance. Not because Gamma Gamaliel says so or Martin Luther says so or St John Chrysostom says so or St Francis of Assissi or whoever else says so but because this is the witness of the scriptures and the Church down the centuries.
We may differ in emphases or particular insights but this is the Apostolic testimony. Christ is fully God. Christ is fully human.
The human and divine unite. Eternally.
But you know all that. So why the dichotomising?
All of which is consonant with 'Mere Christianity' of all kinds, it seems to me. I can't see why any Big O Orthodox or small o orthodox Christians would take issue with any of this.
I also agree with @Dafyd's post above.
My heart is strangely warmed by all this. I want to burst into a doxology.
This isn't dry academic theology. This is the core and marrow of the Gospel.
'Beyond all question the mystery of godliness is great ...'
Why all the lecturing? I’m sorry, @Gamma Gamaliel, but your (very long) posts seems to be more talking at us than discussing with us.
"Leave me alone, for my days are a breath.
17
What is man, that you make so much of him,
and that you set your heart on him,
visit him every morning
and test him every moment?
19
How long will you not look away from me,
nor leave me alone till I swallow my spit?
20
If I sin, what do I do to you, you watcher of mankind?
Why have you made me your mark?
Why have I become a burden to you?
21
Why do you not pardon my transgression
and take away my iniquity?
For now I shall lie in the earth;
you will seek me, but I shall not be.” Job 7:16b-21
And the author of Psalm 39 has a touch of it too, at the very end:
"For I am a sojourner with you,
a guest, like all my fathers.
Look away from me, that I may smile again,
before I depart and am no more!”
I have to admit there are days I have trouble living with the sense of this too. It's not always a comfort!
Not to me. Some things require long comments.
My understanding of these matters are not sola scriptura--Greek philosophy helping in our understanding of these things is totally fine in my book, as it has been going very far back in Christian dogma and doctrine. I understand God to be (1) transcending time itself, time itself being part of the created world, and (2) not at all subject, in His Essence, to change (change also part of the created world--of course as stated above, Jesus is both God and Man, so experiences emotions), and (3) not having passions (which seem to me to require God to exist within time and be affected, in a creaturely way). Some good info is on it here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impassibility
As I understand it, this is a very basic traditional Christian doctrine going quite far back, and held, with some variations (see link above), by the Catholic end of the spectrum, Eastern Orthodoxy, Protestantism (whether one sees Anglicanism as more Catholic or more Protestant, of course), and even Judaism and Islam. I therefore understand it, as part of basic traditional Christian doctrine (or even dogma), to be true.
There is at the very least a paradox associated with impassibility and it has been expressed by the Orthodox Cyril of Alexandria. He taught that the Logos, the Divine Word (who became flesh and dwelt among us) suffered impassibly.
Dropping the word impassibly and getting to the central meaning. Cyril argues that the Divine Word, the Divine Christ suffered despite the fact that His Divine nature could not suffer. It’s in the nature of the concept that the Divine cannot suffer. But Jesus clearly did.
So how is this resolved? By yet another concept which seeks to explain how Jesus can be both fully human and fully human. It’s called the Hypostatic Union.
That’s a lot to work through and you may get lost. But you can be saved by the alternative title “the mystical union”. Shorthand, we cannot fully understand it but here’s our best effort.
“ In the most basic terms, the concept of hypostatic union states that Jesus Christ is both fully God and fully man. He is simultaneously perfectly divine and perfectly human, having two complete and distinct natures at once.”. In one hypostasis or personhood.
(@Lamb Chopped , you won’t find hypostatic union in the Bible either)
So Jesus did suffer in the flesh of his human nature, but his simultaneously coexisting divine nature did not suffer. As Cyril puts it. the divine Christ suffered impassibly because of His coexistence.
It’s an ingenious abstract analysis. But if you’re like me, this is the point at which you sympathise with Martin Luther’s suspicion of the value of such abstract excursions.
Another way of putting it is that perhaps the concept of impassibility must have something wrong with it if you have to tie yourself in such logical knots to defend it.
Like Luther I can accept the fully human fully divine belief and at the same time see it as a mystery beyond my human comprehension.
I’d rather do that then go down the road of impassible suffering.
In order to change, God would have to experience only the present moment, as we do. Since God's existence transcends any place or moment, even while Incarnate in space and time, God does not have a before, a now, and an after. So God does not react. God does not even decide. All of those verbs imply a process happening in response to events in time.
But the newly-ordained young priest who just started as associate pastor at the Catholic parish near me said that RCs believe in the communication of idioms, which means that everything that is true about the human Jesus is also attributable to his divine person "in Jesus' humanity". So if Jesus changed, felt emotions, etc., in His lifetime, then God changed too, "in Jesus' humanity". As long as we are tacking on "in Jesus' humanity", I don't really understand the usefulness of saying that God changed, but the priest thinks it is really important.
All of this was in response to my commenting on how the member of our parish in charge of organizing volunteers to be present for each hour of public adoration of the Blessed Sacrament in order to help "keep Jesus safe" from anyone who might want to take the Sacrament away in order to desecrate it. I knew what she meant but was interested in the words themselves and asked why, after the Resurrection, Jesus had any need to be kept safe, and how we any kind of sacrilege anyone could commit could hurt Jesus in any way. The priest responded by saying something like "God can't die, but we killed Him" and then started talking about the communication of idioms. I don't understand the usefulness of saying that "we killed God", even if in some way it is true, but the priest thought it was very important.
I've woken up in the wee small hours, not because I'm lying awake struggling with 'abstract theological concepts' though.
So as it's late I'll try and be careful not to be tetchy.
I must confess to have become pretty exasperated on this and related threads, partly because of the weakness of my flesh and lack of 'impassibility', and partly because our good Shipmate @Barnabas62 is approaching these concepts as if they are alien and exotic rather than what I'd consider to be standard and classic Christian understandings.
I'm sure Luther believed in the hypostatic union. He was steeped in the Church Fathers. So was Calvin. So were the Wesleys.
'Tis mystery all, the Immortal dies,
Who can explore His strange design?
In vain the first-born seraph tries
To sound the depths of love divine.'
Both Eastern and Western Christian hymnody is steeped in all this. Can anyone show me that Luther didn't believe it?
Yet there are Shipmates who are posting about these concepts as though they are something foreign, alien, abstract, without scriptural warrant. They aren't. They are embedded in historic Creedal understandings that underpin traditional Christian theology in its various forms.
And yes, it has 'got me going.' Not in an angry, petulant or vindictive way, although I confess to some irritation at times.
Rather I'm also given to some doxologising as it were.
I almost want to be all charismatic and dance around when I consider these things - things into which even the angels long to look.
If I can put it this way, paradoxical and mysterious as all of this is, to me it's the very core and marrow of the Gospel.
'Beyond question the mystery of godliness is great, (God) appeared in a body ...'
How did Charles Wesley put it?
'He left his Father's throne above
So free so infinite His grace,
Emptied Himself of all but love
And bled for Adam's helpless race.'
I'm far from perfect, I stumble, I struggle, I am inconsistent - yet there is One who is 'beyond All Being' who is without change or 'shifting shadow.'
There is One who has united Himself to our weak humanity and transformed and glorified it.
'That which is not assumed cannot be healed,' as St John of Damascus put it. God has assumed our humanity. God in Christ is reconciling the world to Himself.
This isn't arcane and abstract theology. It's thoroughly biblical, thoroughly Patristic. It underpins what all the great Saints and confessor and Doctors of the Church believed. It underpins what Luther, Calvin, the Wesleys, John Donne, George Herbert, the Anglican Divines, the Puritans and all the great Roman Catholic theologians believed - however much they might differ from the Orthodox in some aspects or other of emphasis and understanding.
I'm not very far advanced in 'phronema' in acquiring the mind of Christ in the context of the Church as it were, but I'm genuinely surprised how apparently 'alien' some Shipmates are finding concepts which are now common currency to me - such as the 'hypostatic union' or 'synergia'.
I find these things a 'given' and part of the warp and woof of how I approach things, whether consciously or subconsciously.
I can't pretend to dissect and fillet them all out. I can't pretend to be an 'expert'. I have no formal theological training. But my heart is strangely warmed when I consider these things.
If my 'passions' are stirred up and get on my soapbox then I apologise. I must learn 'dispassion' as well as 'compassion.'
It makes no sense to me to say 'you won't find the hypostatic union in the Bible' anymore than it does to say, 'you won't find the word Trinity' in the Bible. Of course not. But both views are thoroughly biblical.
Indeed, shock, horror, the same Tradition that brought us the New Testament brought us these concepts in the first place.
Here I stand, I can do no other.
Yes, of course Judaism understands these things without the need for the Incarnation.
But we are Christians, not Jews, which isn't to disparage or dismiss Judaism. 'Salvation is of the Jews.'
As Creedal Christians we believe in One God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth and in ...
This is basic creedal Christianity, people. Hence my passion and my push-backs. This is our faith. We worship One God Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Anything we might say about 'synergia', 'kenosis', 'passibility' or 'impassibility' comes within that framework.
Amen times a million!
He is also commemorated in the Anglican and Lutheran calendars.
I am prepared to stand corrected but I very much doubt that Luther would have considered Cyril's views on the hypostatic union to be abstract and speculative. Rather he would have accepted them as he accepted all the great creedal formularies as far as I am aware.
What he would have been against were late medieval 'how many angels can dance on the head of a pin' type speculations.
Luther could be hyperbolic and could stretch things to emphasise a point at times but as far as I'm aware he wouldn't have had any issues with Patristic and creedal understandings of the Godhead.
Ok, the Orthodox might say that he shouldn't have gone along with the 'filioque' clause but I see no reason to suggest that Luther was on a different page as it were when it came to understandings of the Godhead in traditional, historic, Patristic, Trinitarian terms.
Why would he be?
Your attempt to recruit Luther to your cause and support your scepticism about St Cyril's view of the hypostatic union is misguided.
As far as I'm aware Luther would have been fully au fait and comfortable with all of that.
Luther was a 16th century Reformer in the Western Christian tradition. He wasn't a 17th or 18th century English Dissenter or a 20th or 21st century non-conformist.
He'd have been closer to RC and Orthodox posters here in some respects than he'd be to them. In other ways he'd have been closer to them than he would be to us. It depends on which issues we are talking about.
But on the hypostatic union, I'm pretty sure he'd have pretty much been on the same page as us. Someone will correct me if I'm wrong. I'm not being 'tribal' about all this, simply putting things in their historical and theological context.
Feel free to go back to sleep. I am about to turn in myself.
You misunderstand.
Our common understanding (Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Reformers, Cyril, Luther, you. even me) is of Jesus as fully human, fully divine. We can call it a mystic union or a hypostatic union and that’s fine too. It’s a shared belief. It doesnt matter that the term is not specifically found in scripture. This understanding that Jesus is so is thoroughly biblical, thoroughly Orthodox, thoroughly orthodox.
I don’t think I’ve ever said otherwise and if the way I’ve said things has implied that then I apologise for any part in creating that misunderstanding. It’s not what I intended to convey. And the common deep respect for Cyril of Alexandria is also something I share. That doesn’t make all of his apologetics above criticism.
I am indeed sceptical about the concept of divine impassibility in general and Cyril’s apologetic about Jesus suffering impassibly in particular. It’s a common modern scepticism amongst modern orthodox (with a small ‘o’) Protestant theologians. I don’t see the concept as necessarily and inextricably welded to either the two natures of Christ or Trinitarian belief. Thats where we differ.
I may of course be wrong about that. But I’ve given it a lot of thought. I cide with the sceptics after due consideration.
I’ve been thinking about this part of your post. I don’t think God is trying to pretend or fake emotions for us. It’s more like—as I understand it— our emotions and passions, in time as creatures, are a dim reflection or image of things existing eternally within Him. Our poor human (and fallen as well) love, with its variations during our earthly lives, is a literally infinitely small image of His constant and eternal Love.
I think we tend to think of something absolute and unchanging like a rock or other inanimate object, or perhaps something like the laws of mathematics, because those are the things we can point to most easily that seem to be unchanging—things that are less than human. But God is not only more than human—He is infinitely more than human. (And of course He is Incarnate as Jesus now, so we have a clearer picture of what His Love looks like in human terms than those who came before His Incarnation—and even now, we see as in a glass, darkly, and long to see Him face to face.)
A mathematical way of putting it might be, rather than thinking of ourselves and aspects of ourselves as having numerical values of 1, 2, 3, 47, 10 million, etc. and God as a vague really big “infinity,” of God with a numerical value of one (1) and ourselves—made in God’s image—as infinitely small, so 1/infinity, 2/infinity, 47 or 10 million divided by infinity. Or like God as a human painter and us as 2-dimensional images (but infinitely thinner than a layer of paint on paper or anything we have in this world). His Love is the 3-D reality, and ours is the picture of that. It’s not like having a relationship with a robot simulating feelings for our sake.
Part of the problem in trying to describe this is that all of our analogies are imperfect, but nearly all of the time, we (or the vast majority of us, certain Christian mystics possibly excepted) have to work with what we have rather than give up—I think we’ll wind up with other, worse (and less human, not more) images and analogies if we do that, like God As Giant Multiplication Table or God As Big Glowing Ball Of Light. (Or, as C. S. Lewis said, he knew a girl whose parents described God as a “perfect substance,” which led her to imagine Him as something like a vast tapioca pudding. “To make matters worse, she disliked tapioca.”)
So I’m not, and I don’t believe the traditional Christian beliefs about God being impassable are either, arguing for what you describe as
More the opposite, I think. So if you’re concerned that that’s what God being impassable would mean in a traditional Christian understanding of God, I would take heart. ❤️
😉
More seriously, I can see where you are coming from and am vaguely aware of some of the concerns/objections voiced by contemporary Protestant theologians on this issue.
That's not the pond I swim in so I'm less aware of what they are saying but can hear a faint clamour across the lawn as it were.
On figures like St Cyril, I'd suggest it is thoroughly Orthodox/orthodox to accept their conclusions in broad terms without necessarily having to sign up to every dot and tittle of how they arrived at those conclusions.
It's easy to replace a form of biblical fundamentalism with Patristic fundamentalism or Church fundamentalism.
At the same time, I do wonder in a Swiftian A Tale Of A Tub kind of way what happens if we start to pick at and unravel the fabric of some of these things.
We Orthodox will talk of a 'seamless robe' and use the analogy of Christ's garment which was woven in one piece. If we begin to unravel one thread then we risk damaging the whole.
That's the 'conservative' side as we aren't 'semper reformanda' in that sense. It's doesn't mean that we shouldn't discuss or question these things. We aren't saying that individual Fathers are 'infallible' or have 'Papal' authority of some kind.
We take a conciliar and collegial approach which is partly way our wheels turn so slowly.
I may get passionate and exercised about these things but it doesn't mean I harbour ill-will towards those who see things differently.
Put another way. If I believed that the concept of divine impassibility was essential to two natures and Trinitarian beliefs I would accept it even though it didn’t make sense to me. In that sense I’m also a believer in seamless cloth.
But I don’t so I don’t.
Excellent point. It is a source of confusion, as BroJames alluded to earlier. The current general understanding of impassibility is not the same as that of Philo and the early Christian Fathers.
So I don’t much like the use of the word to summarise the content. But I don’t agree wth the concept either even after taking that into account, as well as clarifications from Gamaliel and others.
My understanding is that they saw love and hate as acts of the will, ie deliberately wishing and working for the best/worst possible outcomes for someone.
I’ve been wondering about that in the context of this thread. It all centres on the meaning of the Greek word used in the New Testament for God’s love and unselfish human love (e.g 1 Corinthians 13). That word is agape.
Here’s a reasonable summary I think of that use.
In the Bible, agape is the highest form of love, defined as unconditional, self-giving, and sacrificial care for the well-being of others. It is distinguished from romantic love (eros) or love for family and friends (phileo). It is an intentional long term choice rather than a matter of temporary or passing emotion.
(Feel free to comment on that summary).
In his book “The Road Less Travelled” M Scott Peck observed about romantic love that the journey from falling in love to loving is a difficult one for human beings and many never make it. I think that’s true. For those of us like my wife and I who have been married for a long time (almost 59 years) we’ve recognised that the journey began with strong initial emotional attraction but has moved very much in the direction of unselfish mutual commitment. But it’s a lot more than just a matter of the will. We are joined both by commitment and emotion. When we say we love one another it’s a statement of both will and deep affection.
The fact that agape is used both for God’s love and the best of human love suggests something to me. It is that seeing unconditional self-giving and sacrificial care as purely a matter of the will without any emotional dimension is an incomplete view. In human love it is also a matter of long term emotional commitment. In other words emotions are not necessarily at all a barrier to a commitment of the will. Not necessarily a temporary or passing matter, but an aid to long term commitment.
I’m suspicious of any separation between the will and the emotions certainly so far as human beings are concerned. So far as God is concerned I have no reason to believe that He lacks an emotional dimension. He can still be constant and unchanging.
I would be very loth to go beyond that but we are made in His image. It seems better to regard emotional incontinence in human beings as more a consequence of our fallen fallibility. Emotional incontinence needs to be redeemed, not removed. Emotional constancy helps us to live better.
I keep coming back to the both/and thing though ... 😉
@Barnabas62's account of his 59 years of marriage exemplifies that I think. The will is involved but also the emotions. Both/and.
I really don't see how that personal example is incompatible with a classic and Patristic view of divine 'impassibility' - although I wish we could come up with a better word.
It's not that Jesus loves with his human nature and will, but not his divine will, as it were, which remains cold and distant like an AI algorithm.
No. God is in his very essence Love. Perfect and unchanging Love.
We love God because he first loved us.
It might be helpful to remind ourselves of St Paul's wonderful paean to Love in 1 Corinthians 13.
'Love never fails.'
It does not falter. It remains constant.
I read Shakespeare's goose-bump inducing Sonnet 116 at my daughter's wedding.
'Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.'
We all know the closing couplet:
'If this be error and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.'
That's how I view God's 'unchangeability' - if that's a better term than 'impassibility'.
God is constant and unchanging Love.
The problem I have, as everyone will be aware, with picking away at the Patristic fabric is that we can end up picking holes in it.
Yes, these concepts were framed using classical, pre-medieval and medieval anthropology and may be expressed in ways that we find anachronistic now.
But I'm not sure I trust all of @Barnabas62's modern small o orthodox Protestant theologians to remain so. There can be a slippery slope. I'm not questioning the small o orthodoxy of Lutheran and Anglican posters here but if we look at the trajectory taken in some strands of German Lutheran and Anglican theology we don't end up in a small o orthodox place at all.
Now, I'm not saying that anyone here is on a slippery slope into apostasy or outright heresy - and I only deploy the 'h' word for outright and arrant Arianism and so forth or the toxic atonement theories and other anomalies in strands of extreme 'name-it-and-claim-it' prosperity gospelism.
But I think we are on safer ground with St Cyril and classic Patristic understandings even if we don’t frame things in quite the same way or arrive at their conclusions by the same kind of logic.
Just sayin'.
I do think we 'talk past each other' to a certain extent as 'Western' and my adopted 'Eastern' Christian traditions approach theology in a different way, even when they share similar or identical conclusions.
Most of the time the insights are complementary from both directions - both/and ... 😉
But sometimes they can be at real variance. We don't always mean the same thing even though we use the same terminology.
“And the LORD changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.” Ex 32.14
“The word of the LORD came to Samuel: “I regret that I made Saul king…”” 1 Sam 15.10-11
It might be more useful simply to point out that in all the negative cases where God changes his mind, the change starts outside him and it's a reaction to something someone else has done first. He never simply wakes up ornery one morning and decides to be angry or regretful. If the created beings stay the same toward the Lord (stay faithful), then that relationship never changes.
But the positive changes (where God decides to forgive and restore, or he chooses to show special favor to one person--those often originate wholly in God's own heart. Sometimes there may be a trigger like the people performing mass repentance, but there doesn't have to be a trigger.
Yes. There are lots of other examples of emotions being attributed to God in the OT. There’s even a name for such attributions. It’s called anthropopathism.
Whether these attribution represent what God thought or what the authors thought God would think is an open question.
But I agree with you. Whether a true attribution or an expectation of the authors, one can certainly conclude that at least some of the authors of the OT believed that God felt emotions. In those examples, sorrow and regret. They are evidence that some Jewish believers did believe that God had feelings and was influenced by human events.
I don’t know how such scriptures were analysed by the early Church Fathers. I’ll have a look. Maybe @Gamma Gamaliel knows more?
FWIW, I agree with @Lamb Chopped that any 'influences' on God's response / reaction or 'attitude' for want of a better term, are external rather than intrinsic internal 'changes' within the Godhead.
God having an off-day or something.
Incidentally, if I understand her post correctly, I see Lamb Chopped's post as thoroughly compatible with what we might call divine 'impassibility.'
As I've said, I'm not fond of the term and tend to see it more in terms of complete consistency, perfection and unchangeability than any suggestion that God is like Spock in Star Trek.