The doctrine of divine impassibility has fallen on onerous occasions. Some theologians at the moment reject the doctrine outright or solely settle for a redefined model, whereas others have merely forgotten about it. Even when believers discuss impassibility, many appear confused over its actual that means.
On this article, I goal to outline, defend, and delineate why the doctrine of divine impassibility nonetheless issues for our worship and non secular consolation.
What’s divine impassibility?
Merely put, the doctrine of divine impassibility teaches that God doesn’t have created flesh since he’s Spirit (John 4:24) and the Creator. God has no “flesh with its passions and needs” (Gal 5:24), and because of this, God is impassible. In contrast, God created people to have fleshly our bodies.
A ardour is one thing like irritability or anger. After we lack sleep, we get irritable. After we lack meals, we get hangry. Each types of anger are passions of the flesh. Therefore, Peter can say, “I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage conflict in opposition to your soul” (1 Pet 2:11 ESV). The important thing right here is that passions of the flesh change and overcome us. In our fallen state, sin entangles itself with the passions and desires of the flesh.
Passions and needs of the flesh, in and of themselves, are not always sinful. But since we reside in mortal and corrupt our bodies (1 Cor 15:42, 53), we undergo an inner conflict between “the regulation of my thoughts” and “the regulation of sin that dwells in my [bodily] members” (Rom 7:23 ESV). And this results in a dysfunction of our passions, which itself is sinful and results in extra sin. We thus endure each disordered needs and bodily ache as passible creatures.
God, in distinction, suffers no dysfunction of passions. He’s immutable. He doesn’t get irritable in the direction of us due to a hormone imbalance or to lack of sleep. God doesn’t miss a meal and bark at us in wrath.
Nor does he observe the lusts of his flesh because the Greek gods of the previous did. Zeus was identified for coming into into the world of mankind and disguising himself in creaturely shapes to rape and seduce mortal ladies. Since Zeus was like us, having passions and needs of the flesh, he gave into these fleshly temptations. God shouldn’t be like Zeus. God’s nature shouldn’t be our created nature.
Traditionally, Christians affirmed impassibility to indicate how the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob differed from the Greek gods like Zeus, Hermes, and Poseidon. Our God doesn’t observe his lusts and passions attributable to his created flesh. He can not as a result of he’s the Creator, not the creature.
In different phrases, divine impassibility is a adverse doctrine (apophatic). In contrast, optimistic statements (kataphatic) like “God is Spirit” (John 4:24), “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16), or God fills earth, heaven, highest heaven by way of his non secular mode of existence (cf. 1 Kgs 8:27) sign one thing optimistic about God. Impassibility, together with doctrines like divine simplicity and immutability, nevertheless, is a adverse doctrine. It says nothing optimistic about God. It’s not supposed to. Impassibility says nothing about God besides that he’s not a creature (implying, after all, that he’s Creator) and never just like the Greek gods which Christians reject.
Impassibility at its most elementary stage, subsequently, says nothing about God besides what he’s not. God shouldn’t be human or a Greek god like Zeus. God has no created physique. He has no sinews, blood vessels, or hormones. These belong to created our bodies like ours. God, as Jesus says, is Spirit (John 4:24).
Why do some deny divine impassibility?
One essential cause why theologians sometimes reject the doctrine of impassibility is its affiliation with Greek philosophy.
Essentially the most well-known advocate of the “Hellenization thesis” was Adolf Harnack (1851–1930). In his History of Dogma, Harnack declared that a very powerful premises of Catholic doctrine derive from “the Hellenic spirit.” Because the New Testomony itself doesn’t include these premises, Harnack argued that some Catholic doctrine can’t be traced to Scripture.
Harnack has in thoughts the doctrines of God, the Trinity, and Christology that councils like Nicaea (325/381) and Chalcedon (451) affirmed. His place depends on the idea that “Judaism and Hellenism within the age of Christ had been opposed to one another.” So any doctrine with a Greek bent can not derive from the Bible. Divine impassibility has notably fallen beneath this criticism of being too Greek and insufficiently primarily based on Scripture.
After Harnack, denying divine impassibility grew to become commonplace. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, for instance, famously wrote whereas in jail that “Solely the struggling God will help us now.” Jürgen Moltmann for his half affirmed that God suffered on the cross, and {that a} believer “suffers with God’s struggling.” For Moltmann, divine impassibility represented a relic of Greek philosophical pondering that has no place in dogma derived from the Bible.
In latest many years, a lot of dwelling theologians have slandered divine impassibility as an artifact of Greek pondering. One latest evangelical theologian has merely said that “it’s essential to reject divine impassibility.” Clearly, impassibility now not looks like a doctrine that Christian theologians should settle for like justification by religion or Christ’s personal union of two natures. It’s now a doctrine that one can reject with out nice concern of problem. In any case, it’s within the minds of many merely a borrowing from Greek philosophy.
Such rejections would shock early Christians who affirmed this exactly to counter Greek conceptions of God and as an alternative to affirm God because the Bible describes him.
Why did early Christians affirm impassibility?
Because of the critique that divine impassibility improperly adapts Greek modes of pondering, it’s price taking a look at some early Greek (and Latin) church fathers and why they affirmed the doctrine of impassibility.
Among the many early apologists of the second century and writers of the later third century, the doctrine of impassibility arose partly from an apologetic try to indicate how the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Job differed from Zeus, Poseidon, and Hermes. They did so by denying that God has a created physique just like the Greek gods did, and so God didn’t reside by passions and needs of the flesh like Zeus. To quote one prolonged instance, Justin Martyr (c. 100–165) in his First Apology writes:
And, secondly, as a result of we, who out of each race of women and men used to worship Dionysus the son of Semele, and Apollo the son of Leto, who of their ardour with males did such issues of which it’s shameful even to talk of, and Persephone and Aphrodite, who had been stung to insanity by love for Adonis and whose mysteries you additionally have fun, or Asclepius, or some one or different of those that are referred to as gods—have now, by way of Jesus Christ, discovered to despise them, although threatened with loss of life for it, and have devoted ourselves to the unbegotten and impassible God; we’re not persuaded that He ever was goaded by lust for Antiope, or such different ladies, or of Ganymede, nor was He delivered by that hundred-handed monster, whose assist was obtained by way of Thetis, nor, on this account, was anxious that her son Achilles ought to destroy lots of the Greeks due to his concubine Briseis. We pity those that consider these items, and we acknowledge those that invented them to be demons.
Justin contrasts the pagan gods who’re led by the lusts of ardour and the God of the Bible who’s neither born within the flesh (unbegotten) or given to such passions (impassible).
Paul Gavrilyuk feedback on this basic sample amongst early Christians: “by calling the Christian God impassible the Fathers sought to distance God the creator from the gods of mythology.” Likewise, Thomas Weinandy states whereas discussing three early Christian apologists that, “To say that God is immutable and impassible is to disclaim of him these attributes that will make him just like the fickle and sensuous pagan gods or like sinful and corruptible humankind.”
What about Jesus?
God the Phrase of the Father grew to become flesh (John 1:1, 14) and died on the cross. Thus, no person denies that Christ suffered on the cross. However did that imply God the Son grew to become passible by nature?
For Nestorius (386–451), preserving the incorruptibility and impassibility of God concerned utilizing language that appeared to divide Christ into two persons: (1) the person who was assumed and (2) the Phrase of God who assumed the person. Refuting Nestorius and his faculty, Cyril of Alexandria (c. 376–444) wrote,
they’re afraid to attribute human traits to him in case he would possibly in some way be dishonored by them, and introduced right down to a dishonorable state. That is why they keep that he assumed a person and conjoined him to himself, and that it’s to this man that every one the human traits relate and might be attributed whereas completely no injury is finished to the character of the Phrase himself.
Discover how Cyril characterizes the talk across the nature of Christ as centering on the query of: Can the Phrase expertise dishonor and injury? That’s, Cyril characterizes the talk between himself and the Nestorians as one which includes impassibility. Nestorius implies that God the Son didn’t endure on the cross, whereas Cyril affirmed that God the Son did. Cyril defined, “They assume it’s not in any respect proper to attribute the struggling upon the cross to the Phrase born of God.” If, nevertheless, God the Son did not die for us, then
we’ve got now not been redeemed by God (how might we’ve got been?) however quite by the blood of another person. Some man or different, an imposter and a falsely-named son, has died for us. The nice and venerable thriller of the incarnation of the Solely Begotten has turned out to be solely phrases and lies, for he by no means actually grew to become man in spite of everything. We actually couldn’t regard him as our Savior who gave his blood for us, we must attribute this to that man.
However, as Cyril claims, we certainly have been “redeemed by God.”
In his stark method, Cyril proclaimed “that the Phrase of God the Father suffered within the flesh for our sake.” And it’s exactly in his personal flesh “the place the struggling happens.” In different phrases, God the Son actually suffered, because it was not simply any flesh, however the flesh that was “his very personal” that suffered.
This doesn’t imply Cyril affirmed God’s passibility, as such. However he spoke of the struggling of God the Phrase, the incarnate Christ himself. For Cyril, one cause why the Phrase grew to become flesh (John 1:14) was to be able to endure for our sake. And the one place that God the Son might endure was in his personal flesh as a result of solely the flesh is passible, that’s, able to struggling. The Phrase or Son of God made flesh his very personal to be able to endure and die for us and for our salvation.
Discover that the Phrase remained alive whereas tasting loss of life: “The Phrase was alive even when his holy flesh was tasting loss of life, in order that when loss of life was overwhelmed and corruption trodden underfoot the facility of the resurrection would possibly encounter the entire human race.” It is because “he didn’t endure within the nature of the godhead, however in his personal flesh.” God as such didn’t endure since that will imply not solely that an impassible nature can be passible, but additionally that the Father and Spirit suffered on the cross, which is absurd. Christ alone suffered on the cross and tasted loss of life (Heb 2:9).
So does God have feelings or affections?
Though impassibility denies that God has creaturely passions, it doesn’t exclude the chance that God has any affective life. In any case, the Bible says “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16). All through Scripture, God describes himself with passions akin to compassion, pleasure, and love (Exod 34:6; Zeph 3:17; Jer 31:3). Given this biblical emphasis, some Christians have spoken of God as having feelings because the Creator God who has no created physique of flesh.
Early conceptions of God’s affections—or lack thereof
Numerous early Christians tried to know God’s affective life by reflecting on the that means of the phrase passibility. At the least two most important opinions existed amongst early Christians. First, some argued that ardour or compassion (these phrases are associated) meant that the agent who has ardour suffers. Tertullian, for instance, in Adversus Praxean defines (or a minimum of implies) that compassion is struggling with one other (4.§29).
Then again, others spoke of ardour or compassion as relieving the struggling of one other with out a essential change within the agent. Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335–394) makes such an argument in his Contra Eunomium (3.4.§724; additionally his Great Catechism 14). Gregory claims that to have sympathy or compassion for somebody signifies that one impacts the sufferer, not the sufferer the agent.
Gregory follows Origen of Alexandria (c. 185–253) who in his Contra Celsum (4.14) outlines an analogy of the Phrase being like a health care provider who involves humanity to be able to heal them of their sicknesses. As a health care provider, the Phrase doesn’t bear any change primarily attributable to his love for humanity. However the physician in his sympathy for a affected person brings well being to the affected person. Likewise, to talk of the Phrase’s philanthropy of sympathy for humankind doesn’t require any change within the one who’s Love, from Love and from whom Love proceeds (see On First Principles 2.10.6).
Importantly for Origen, the explanation why God the Phrase undergoes no change in his philanthropy is as a result of he has no created physique as God (qua God). In actual fact, he lodges the Christian view of the Logos in opposition to the Epicurean and Stoic views of god—views that allege god’s corporeality and changeableness. However that’s exactly what the doctrine of impassibility goals to disclaim: The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob shouldn’t be just like the gods of the pagans. God has no physique, flesh, or passions of the flesh.
Given Origen’s comparatively early date, we will forgive him for being barely infelicitous in his language. Had been we to use Cyril of Alexandria’s Christology to the above analogy, we’d conclude that God in himself has compassion like a health care provider therapeutic a affected person however God the Son, who made flesh his personal, suffers in each varieties of how in his flesh.
Distinguishing kataphatic and apophatic statements about God
Nevertheless one needs to outline impassibility, one should keep in mind that it negates the affirmation of passibility in any bodily method in opposition to the pagans. Because the Bible says, God is the Creator who’s uncreated Spirit and fills heavens and earth (Jer 23:24).
This denial of passions in God affirms nothing optimistic or constructive, and we ought to not assume it does. If we accomplish that, we’d make the notably odd assertion that God has no affective or emotional life on the idea of this doctrine. Whether or not or not that is true—and lots of confessions do deny affections and passions in God in any respect—that a minimum of shouldn’t be discovered because the essence of the apophatic doctrine of impassibility.
Therefore, Origen will clearly declare that “God should be believed to be altogether impassible and free from all these [creaturely] affections.” However then he may also say that God “suffers one thing of affection” when somebody prays to him. No contradiction seems right here when one remembers each Origen’s doctrine of sympathy and that Origen affirms a type of struggling in God that fully denies the creaturely imperfections of the flesh. He affirms that God’s love is regular and excellent because it lifts us up (see Hom. Ezek. 6.6.3).
Put extra merely, Origen affirms that God is love positively, and so he should endure one thing of affection! That may be a optimistic or kataphatic assertion about God. The apophatic or adverse assertion of God (specifically, his impassibility) denies creaturely affections, passions, and desires of the flesh. God has no created physique or flesh.
Disagree with Origen all day. (I’m not Origen’s defender!) However I do assume he illustrates an essential distinction between the apophatic and kataphatic statements of God. Impassibility particularly denies however doesn’t affirm something of God. Divine goodness or love particularly affirms one thing about God, and so Origen needs to say one thing optimistic of God, not mere empty statements.
Differentiating God’s affections from creaturely ones
As Thomas Weinandy affirms, “For God to be impassible and immutable is to not deny love and compassion of him, however to ascertain in his unchangeably excellent being a love that’s completely and completely passionate.” God is love. God is holy. God is compassionate. There isn’t any variance of change in him—however he’s life overflowing.
In distinction, I modify on a regular basis—and so my emotional life does, too. Typically when I’m sick, I get impatient. When I’m in ache, I turn out to be annoyed simply. In contrast, God doesn’t turn out to be impatient or annoyed attributable to illness or ache. So no matter phrases we use to explain God’s affective life (anger, compassion, love, and many others.), we have to apply them to God as God the Creator and to us as the creature.
In his characteristically detailed clarification, Thomas Aquinas explains how the passions of affection and pleasure are in God. First, he distinguishes this from how people expertise the passions by way of our 5 senses, which our created flesh mediates: “in us the delicate urge for food is the proximate motive-force of our our bodies. Some bodily change subsequently at all times accompanies an act of the delicate urge for food, and this modification impacts particularly the center.” As a result of passions come up in us by way of our bodily senses, or quite our delicate appetites, they bring about about in people “some bodily change” and are correctly referred to as passions.
As he says a bit later although, “acts of the delicate urge for food, inasmuch as they’ve annexed to them some bodily change, are referred to as passions; whereas acts of the need usually are not so referred to as.” Discover that “acts of the need” usually are not referred to as passions since acts of the need don’t indicate a bodily change.
So Aquinas concludes concerning God, “Love, subsequently, and pleasure and delight are passions; in as far as they denote acts of the intellective urge for food, they don’t seem to be passions. It’s on this latter sense that they’re in God.” So whereas love and pleasure are ordinarily passions, they exist in God as “acts of the intellective urge for food.” That’s, in keeping with God’s mental (i.e., non secular) nature, then, they don’t seem to be passions as a result of they don’t impact a change in God.
Put merely, Thomas Aquinas defines a ardour as one thing that results a bodily change in a creature. Since God doesn’t have a created physique, he can’t be stated to have passions as a human has them. But the passions of affection and pleasure exist in God supremely—within the fullest method potential. But they don’t change God bodily, since he’s purely non secular or mental by nature (i.e., with out a created physique).
Somewhat than impassibility that means that God doesn’t have an affective life, it denies that God has a creaturely affective life. This paves the best way for us to affirm the biblical instructing that, as Weinandy says, “pleasure and delight are correctly in God.” God has an ideal, unchanging, and overflowing love that can’t turn out to be extra excellent or lack some perfection attributable to a bodily change. God is Love (John 4:8, 16).
Why impassibility nonetheless issues at the moment
The doctrine of divine impassibility signifies that God shouldn’t be just like the gods of our Hindu neighbors, neither is he the distant God of Islam. As a substitute, God the Phrase made human flesh his personal to be able to endure in our place out of affection. And since God doesn’t have fleshly adjustments in himself, we might be assured, within the phrases of John Webster, that “his love is of infinite scope and benevolence.”
Let me put it extra instantly. When tragedy strikes, you by no means need to doubt that God is maximally love or that he loves you perfectly, totally, and in his whole being. Essentially the most primary fact of Christianity is that God is love, and that he loves every part that he has created—together with you and me. Nothing can change that as a result of God’s love shouldn’t be changeable or passible. God’s love burns impassibly with out fail for you.
The doctrine of divine impassibility is a adverse doctrine. It denies that God has a created physique or flesh with its passions and needs. It doesn’t affirm something optimistic. It’s apophatic, not kataphatic.
But it frees us to affirm what the Bible does say; specifically, that God is love in his very being. Impassibility liberates us from pondering of God’s love as if it had been as fickle or conditional as human love might be. As a substitute, God’s love accords together with his non secular nature. He’s love. And he loves you and me.
Really useful sources from Wyatt Graham
- Paul Gavrilyuk, The Struggling of the Impassible God. Oxford College Press, 2006.
- Thomas Weinandy, Does God Endure? College of Notre Dame Press, 2000.
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