The doctrine of divine impassibility refers to the belief that God cannot suffer, experience pain, or be affected emotionally. This doctrine arose from Greek philosophy and became influential in early Christian theology. Proponents argue that if God could suffer, it would make Him vulnerable and limited. As an all-powerful, sovereign being, God must be incapable of being acted upon or influenced by outside forces. Suffering and emotions are seen as human limitations that cannot apply to a transcendent God.
In contrast, the doctrine of divine passibility claims that God can and does experience suffering, emotions, and sympathetic understanding of human pain. Passibilists argue that the Bible shows God grieving, rejoicing, feeling anger and jealousy, and empathizing with people’s troubles. Jesus Christ, as God incarnate, suffered profoundly in his crucifixion. To say God cannot suffer seems to passibilists to diminish His love and compassion. A God who transcends all suffering may be philosophically appealing, but harder to relate to personally.
This theological debate involves important questions: Is God’s power compatible with vulnerability? Does divine impassibility risk portraying God as cold, distant, and uncaring? Or does passibility improperly limit God and make Him too humanlike? There are thoughtful arguments on both sides of this issue.
Below, we will examine the biblical evidence regarding God’s impassibility versus passibility, the history of this theological controversy, and the differing perspectives on whether divine impassibility or passibility is more faithful to Scripture and crucial theological principles.
The Biblical Evidence
Evidence for Divine Impassibility
Some key biblical passages emphasize God’s unchanging and unshakeable nature, which seems hard to reconcile with a God subject to suffering or shifting emotions:
- “I the Lord do not change.” (Malachi 3:6)
- “God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind.” (Numbers 23:19)
- “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” (James 1:17)
- “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” (Hebrews 13:8)
Such verses highlight God’s eternal consistency compared to fickle, changing humans. He remains perfect, omnipotent, and unperturbed. This seems to support impassibility’s claim that God cannot be affected or shaken by external influences.
Additionally, God’s wrath is presented as principled and measured, not capricious emotion:
- “God is a righteous judge, a God who displays his wrath every day.” (Psalm 7:11)
- “Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.” (Romans 13:1)
Rather than passionate, uncontrolled anger, God’s wrath expresses His steady, righteous judgment against sin. This favors the view of impassibility that God has emotions in an ordered, intentional way unlike human instability.
Evidence for Divine Passibility
However, other biblical texts seem hard to square with the idea of an unfeeling, unaffected God. The Bible frequently speaks of God’s compassion, love, anger, and responsiveness using emotional human terms:
- “In all their distress he too was distressed, and the angel of his presence saved them. In his love and mercy he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.” (Isaiah 63:9)
- “The Lord was grieved that he had made Saul king over Israel.” (1 Samuel 15:35)
- “The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.” (Zephaniah 3:17)
- “Jesus wept.” (John 11:35)
Such emotionally vivid descriptions are hard to square with an unaffected, passionless God. The incarnate Christ evidently experienced the full range of human emotions and suffering. To passibilists, impassibility seems to make God too detached and clinical given the Bible’s relational portrayal of God.
Additionally, a recurring biblical theme is God listening to, responding to, and even changing His mind in response to people’s cries:
- “I am grieved that I have made Saul king, because he has turned away from me and has not carried out my instructions.” (1 Samuel 15:11)
- “The Lord was moved by prayer for the land.” (2 Samuel 24:25)
- “Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for he is…compassionate.” (Joel 2:13)
Such examples portray a God profoundly engaged with human affairs, not aloof and unaffected. This seems more compatible with divine passibility.
Key Considerations in the Biblical Evidence
In assessing the apparent tension between the Bible’s depiction of God’s changeless perfection and its emotional, responsive portrayal, several principles come into play:
- Anthropomorphic language: Scripture frequently uses metaphorical human terms to help convey transcendent spiritual truths to finite human minds. However, this likely does not mean God has fickle human emotions.
- Progress of revelation: God may have chosen to more fully disclose aspects of His nature progressively across biblical history, so all details may not appear consistently across all books and passages.
- Appropriate emotions: Perfect emotions displayed intentionally in appropriate measure differ substantially from uncontrolled human passions. This may allow for biblical attribution of emotions like anger and joy to a God who remains sovereignly above all.
- Incarnation: Jesus Christ’s humanity evidently opened the door to emotional vulnerability impossible for a disembodied deity. The incarnational suffering of Christ may reveal God’s heart in unique fullness.
So in assessing the biblical support for impassibility and passibility, context is key. While some texts highlight God’s supreme transcendence, other passages using emotional metaphors seem intended to reveal, not obscure, deep spiritual truth about God’s passionate care for His people. Both perspectives likely contain insight into the mysteries of God’s nature.
Historical Background
To shed further light on this doctrine, some historical context on impassibility’s rise and eventual decline can be helpful:
- Early Church: Greek philosophy seen in Plato and Aristotle influenced prominent early theologians like Augustine. The prevailing Greek view was that emotions represent weakness and vulnerability inconsistent with the supreme perfection of the divine nature. Early Christian thinkers largely absorbed this perspective.
- Medieval era: Thomas Aquinas systematized doctrine on divine impassibility. God could not suffer due to His aseity – existence in Himself without external influence or control. Impassibility became the predominant view across Catholic and Protestant traditions.
- Reformation: Leaders like Calvin continued to affirm God’s impassibility as a safeguard against thinking of God like an overly emotional human. Strong passibility views were often seen as heretical.
- 19th-20th centuries: A wave of influential theologians like Barth questioned impassibility’s biblical fidelity and harsh impersonal implications. Growing support emerged for divine passibility and a God who suffers alongside humanity.
So while impassibility was long the dominant perspective, reservations about its philosophical assumptions and relational costs prompted re-examination of this doctrine in more recent centuries.
Key Perspectives on Impassibility vs. Passibility
Below we will examine some of the major arguments made by proponents on each side of the impassibility/passibility issue:
Perspectives Supporting Divine Impassibility
Preserves God’s Sovereignty
- If God’s moods and actions were swayed by external factors, this would compromise His complete self-sufficiency and control over all things.
- A God prone to volatile emotions could lash out or make rash decisions He later regrets – clearly incompatible with an all-wise deity.
- Impassibility protects God from being conditioned by anything outside Himself; He remains entirely self-defined.
Guard’s God’s Perfection
- Human emotions are imperfect, so attributing them to God would impugn His moral perfection.
- Suffering involves real loss/harm. But God cannot truly suffer loss since nothing can diminish His eternal wholeness.
- Speaking of God having emotions in human terms is metaphorical, not literal; God is beyond all human limitations.
Upholds Divine Mystery
- If we could completely grasp God’s emotional life, He would be manmade in our image, not wholly Other.
- Impassibility acknowledges the irreducible mystery surrounding the infinite God and finite humanity.
- Human words and feelings cannot fully capture transcendent spiritual realities about God’s inner life.
To impassibilists, denying passibility avoids projecting human frailties onto God and guards His supreme sovereignty and perfection. Some degree of impassibility seems required by God’s utter transcendence of creation.
Perspectives Supporting Divine Passibility
Scriptural Fidelity
- The Bible frequently speaks of God’s emotions, which must be more than just metaphors (see above scriptural passages).
- A God unable to suffer seems incompatible with Christ’s anguish and crucifixion.
- Attempts to safeguard God’s transcendence should not override clear biblical revelation.
Relational Responsiveness
- Impassibility makes God seem detached and indifferent to human suffering and needs.
- Relationships require emotional give-and-take. Impassibility depicts God as more Aristotelian Unmoved Mover than living Person.
- A God who cannot suffer cannot truly empathize with human pain.
Love and Vulnerability
- True love requires openness to being impacted by the beloved, implying passibility.
- Suffering uniquely discloses aspects of one’s inner self in intimacy; so too for God.
- Making oneself vulnerable is central to meaningful relationships. An invulnerable God seems distant.
In passibilists’ view, an utterly impassible God is too abstractly remote to have genuine relationships and empathy with humanity. Love seems to require God’s receptive passibility.
Mediating Perspectives
Some theologians attempt to find common ground between these positions, seeing insight in both viewpoints:
- God has emotions, but not identically to human instability. He combines impassibility (constancy of intention/character) with passibility (capacity for responsive emotions).
- God’s essential nature is impassible, but voluntarily chooses passibility in order to engage humanity. Impassibility and passibility apply to different aspects of God’s character.
- Certain emotions like lust or bitterness are incompatible with God’s nature, while love, joy, and compassion appropriately reflect His heart. Passibility must not encompass sinful human passions.
- The incarnate Christ was fully passible while retaining His divine nature. Passibility thus seems built into God via the Trinity.
In these mediating views, legitimate concerns on both sides can be honored to some degree. Truth may exist in the tension between impassibility and passibility.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the centuries-long debate over divine impassibility vs. passibility remains actively unsettled. Sincere Christians can be found on various places across this multifacted spectrum. Ultimately one’s conclusions hinge on difficult issues like:
- How to weigh Scripture versus tradition/philosophy in forming doctrine
- Whether language of God’s emotions is metaphorical vs. literal
- If impassibility makes God too coldly remote
- Whether passibility jeopardizes God’s sovereign transcendence
This complex issue resists simplistic answers. Mystery undoubtedly remains due to the chasm between infinite Creator and finite creature. But wresting honestly with questions of whether and how the Infinite could open Himself to the suffering of the finite, as in Christ, can lead to deeper worship and awe at a God whose perfect love may be more overwhelming than human words or systems can wholly contain.