Here is the paper I presented at the Midwest meeting for the Evangelical Theological Society for those of you who stated that you would like to read it. One question that came up in the Q & A session was which position am I taking because it sounds as if I am straddling the fence on the issue (That wasn’t his question but that is what I stated back to him because I recognize how it can be interpreted). My position is that God is impassible but yet impassioned. Although, I don’t believe that impassible and passible are broad enough terms to define God’s nature on the matter. Enjoy (hopefully) and I would love to hear comments.

Does God, as God, Suffer?

Jeffrey D. Chamberlain

Introduction

            9/11, the Holocaust, the killing fields of Cambodia, Two World Wars, and the forced starvation of 4-5 million Ukrainian people under Joseph Stalin. Tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, and plagues, such as the Bubonic Plague, which claimed approximately 20 million lives in Europe in the 14^th century. The first group are examples of the suppression that occurs when men follow their evil ideologies in their quest for power to rule the world. The second group are examples of natural disasters, which are typically defined as, “any catastrophic event that is caused by nature or the natural processes of the earth. The severity of a disaster is measured in lives lost, economic loss, and the ability of the population to rebuild.”[1] A plague such as the Bubonic Plague could possibly fit into both categories because the disease was carried through rats and fleas. Why do I mention these things? It’s simple. All of these events cause a great deal of grief and suffering for the people involved, which ultimately causes those directly related to express concern, compassion, and sympathy for those who have gone through or are going through great suffering or tragedy. Probably, everyone here can remember where they were on September 11, 2001

The questions that generally come to mind are: Where is God when things like this happen? Or how could God allow this to happen? Or what kind of a god would allow this to happen? Or even, is God unable to stop evil? Various other questions could be asked and most likely have been. When we, as Bible-believing Christians, think of the answers to these questions, we must answer from the Scriptures that we claim to believe. Since the Bible claims to be the Word of God, it would seem to be the best source for us to find out who God is, who he has revealed himself to be, and how he acts in history. Our answers, therefore, must flow from the Scriptures. When tragedy strikes us, our loved ones, or those around us, what comfort do we seek or are we able to offer others. A popular answer over the last century has been that God is suffering right there along with us. He is deeply involved in our pain and suffering. Elie Wiesel expresses this sentiment in his book, Night¸ where he recalls an experience of a child hanging on the gallows who was not heavy enough to die quickly like the two men that were hung beside him. He remembers, “Behind me, I heard the same man asking: ‘For God’s sake, where is God?’ And from within me, I heard a voice answer: ‘Where He is? This is where – hanging here from this gallows…’”[2] In regards to the question, does God, as God, suffer? We could answer no because God is sovereign, immutable, and impassible, but, on the surface, that portrays a God that is cruel, uninterested, and distant from his creation. If we answer in the affirmative, then we portray a God that is not only affected by our suffering, but a God that is changing, able to be influenced, and ultimately in need of the creation to be completely whole, which opens up a whole other question about his nature.

The Issue and Misguided Views

            The issue, at hand, is does God suffer. The obvious answer is yes, in the person of Christ, but did the divine nature of Christ suffer or was it strictly isolated to his humanity. An important clarification must be made right from the beginning. The cross, while it is the most important event in the history of mankind as well as the ultimate answer for the problem of evil and suffering, is not the main focus of this paper. The question is whether God, as God suffers. In order to do this, we must first understand the dynamic of what makes up the God-man and how or if, the divine nature suffers. A variety of heresies have been espoused throughout the past twenty-one centuries regarding the issue of how one person could have two natures and how those natures remain distinct, yet unified in the person of Christ. Nestorianism, for example, claims that Christ is two persons, rather one person with two natures and Eutychianism, states that Christ’s humanity was absorbed by the divine, thereby creating a third type of nature, that consists of the human and divine, yet there is no way to distinguish between the two. The historical, orthodox position is that in the person of Christ there exist two natures, the divine and the human, yet they are distinct. This is called the Hypostatic Union (John 1:1; Col. 2:9; Heb. 1:3) where the divine nature took on a human nature in the incarnation. Nestorianism, Eutychianism, and the Hypostatic Union deal with the subject of the nature of the person of Christ and it is beyond dispute that, at the very least, the humanity of Christ suffered and died on the cross. The issue at hand is whether the triune godhead suffers.

Theopaschitism is a 6th-century heretical doctrine maintaining that Christ had only one nature, the divine, and that this nature suffered at the Crucifixion.[3] Kevin DeYoung states, that “theopaschitism was the belief that God suffered as God on the cross. So, that when Jesus died, God suffered.”[4] Theopaschitism is extremely close to Eutychianism, but it is a direct result of Monphysitism, the belief that Christ had only one nature, the divine. Over the last century, the case against theopaschitism has been reopened by many scholars as a viable solution to the problem of whether God is a God who suffers with us. According to Ronald Goetz, “The age-old dogma that God is impassible and immutable, incapable of suffering, is for many no longer tenable. The ancient theopaschite heresy that God suffers has, in fact, become the new orthodoxy” and “the doctrine of the suffering of God is so fundamental to the very soul of modern Christianity that is has emerged with very few shots ever needing to be fired.”[5] Goetz may be guilty of counting his chickens before they hatched because there has been much written on the subject since he wrote that thirty-years-ago.

A similar, yet less argued as a viable option in theology today, is Patripassianism. “Patripassionism is a theological error dealing with the Godhead which states that the Father became incarnate, was born, suffered, and died on the cross, hence, the Father’s (patri) passion (suffer) on the cross. This is an error because we know that Jesus spoke to the person of the Father, and that it was Jesus who went to the cross. If the Father and Son are the same person, than how is it possible for the Father and Son to speak to one another and have separate wills? It is not. Therefore, the doctrine of patripassianism is incorrect and heretical.”[6] As evidenced by the few heresies presented here, regarding the nature of Christ and God and the multiple others not mentioned, it is obvious that men throughout the history of the church have been searching how to define God in a way that makes sense to them or, at least, provides a refutation of what they believe to be the contrary. I mentioned earlier that we, as Bible-believing Christians must find these answers from the Scriptures, otherwise we end up venturing into the world of subjectivity and human opinion. There are three doctrines that I believe are directly at stake when we consider the issue at hand. These are: the sovereignty of God (more specifically whether God is impassible or passible, which I believe flows directly out of the issue of whether God is sovereign or not), God’s compassion and how that corresponds or contrasts with the compassion of man, and God’s affections.

God’s Sovereignty

            The issue of God’s sovereignty is one of the concepts that acts as an umbrella of sorts, because it covers many doctrines about who God is and how he works in and through the world to accomplish his purposes, but it remains a distinct doctrine.  The sovereignty of God, according to Klooster, is “the biblical teaching that God is king, supreme ruler, and lawgiver of the entire universe.”[7] He further adds,

Theologians generally consider “sovereignty” one of God’s communicable attributes; “sovereignty” expresses an inherent characteristic of God, and a distinction is sometimes made between “sovereign will’ and “sovereign power.” God’s sovereign will and power are not arbitrary, despotic, or deterministic; his sovereignty is characterized by his justice and holiness as well as by his other attributes. Divine sovereignty and human responsibility are paradoxical and beyond human comprehension, but not contradictory. Divine sovereignty and human sovereignty are certainly contradictory, but divine sovereignty and human responsibility are not. God uses human means in history to accomplish his purposes, yet such means do not involve coercion.[8]

Michael Horton weds the attributes of omnipotence and omniscience with that of divine sovereignty by stating that,

A biblical view of God’s sovereignty must always bear in mind the following correlatives. First, only when we recognize that God is qualitatively distinct from creation can we see that God is free to be the creator and redeemer, while we are free to be creatures and the redeemed. Second, only when we understand God’s sovereignty in the light of his simplicity – that is, the consistency of his willing and acting in accordance with his other attributes – can we avoid the notion of a divine despot whose sovereignty is unconditioned by his nature. Third, we must always bear in mind that in every exercise of his will and power, God is not a solitary monad but the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.[9]

Since sovereignty is a communicable attribute, we can grasp its concept. We understand that a nation can be a sovereign nation, in that it has the right to protect its borders, a responsibility to protect its citizens, and the freedom to establish its own laws regardless of its system of governance, etc. Its sovereignty is a limited sovereignty when compared to the absolute sovereignty of God. Horton expressed an extremely important aspect that we need to keep in mind as we investigate the concept of whether God is passible or impassible. We need to remember that God is qualitatively distinct from creation, there is no other being like him in existence.

Impassibility or Passibility

The idea of God’s impassibility is closely linked with the concept of God’s immutability, the doctrine that there is no change in God (James 1:17; Mal. 3:6; Num. 23:19). The Westminster Confession in Chapter 2, point 1, states that, “There is but one only, living, and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions; immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute; working all things according to the counsel of His own immutable and most righteous will, for His own glory; most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him; and withal, most just, and terrible in His judgments, hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty.” That is quite a mouth-full for one sentence, but it is undeniably attempting to show just how great and transcendent the nature of God really is. The “without…passions” part is drawn from Acts 14:15, with Paul proclaiming to the people of Lystra that he and Barnabas are “men of like passions with you” instead of the gods they thought they were. Rob Lister quoting Irenaeus states that, “if they [the Gnostics] 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.”[10]

Divine passibility, on the other hand, is the idea that God suffers and has passions that are similar to mankind’s, otherwise he would not be able to sympathize, have compassion, or to even love, since love contains the vulnerability to be hurt. Theologians that hold to this position have criticized the early church fathers for uncritically accepting a Greek philosophical position on the nature of God, while rejecting a Jewish understanding of a God who suffers. It was assumed that there were only two alternatives regarding this discussion, as Jurgen Moltmann points outs, “the Fathers made the mistake of recognizing only two alternatives: ‘either essential incapacity for suffering, or a fateful subjection to suffering. But there is a third form of suffering – the voluntary laying oneself open to another and allowing oneself to be intimately affected by him; that is to say, the suffering of passionate love.’”[11] It is interesting that many of the most prominent voices supporting this position are those who have come out of tremendous suffering. The Japanese Lutheran theologian Kazoh Kitamori published Theology of the Pain of God in 1946, after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for Abraham Heschel and Dietrich Bonhoeffer it was two world wars and the Holocaust that awoke the question of whether God suffers or not, and Moltmann, himself, was a prisoner of war.

It is always interesting to read books and articles concerning theological issues because there always seems to be strong opinions on each side. Unfortunately, mischaracterizations of differing positions happen more than it should. I suppose that it is human nature to believe that if someone does not completely agree with you than their position is completely wrong. Personally, I believe that it is wrong to misrepresent someone’s position, which is why I have attempted to be careful in defining the terms that I have presented. John Frame, while agreeing with many aspects of Moltmann’s theology, believes that it is “wrong to conclude that the doctrine of God’s impassibility is merely a remnant of Greek philosophy… [even though] the doctrine of impassibility should not be used to deny that God has emotions, or to deny that God the Son suffers real injury and death on the cross. But God in his transcendent nature cannot be harmed in any way, nor can he suffer loss. In his eternal existence, ‘suffering loss’ could only mean losing some attribute, being defeated in his war with Satan, or otherwise failing to accomplish his eternal plan. Scripture assures us that none of these things will happen – so they cannot happen. In this sense, God is impassible.”[12] J. Todd Billings echoes the same sentiment, by stating that “portrayal[s] of [the] Classical Christian teaching of divine impassibility often slide into caricature, presenting God as apathetic and unresponsive … [but] it is not a notion imported wholesale from Greek philosophy, as many claim, but rather was refined through debates about biblical exegesis as the Church in the fourth and fifth centuries developed the ecumenical confessions about the Trinity and Christ.”[13]

On the flip side, the same is true, staunch proponents of divine impassibility claim that proponents of divine passibility adhere to the position that God is selfish in that he needs humans to suffer so that he can be fully actualized in his personhood or as Weinandy states, “theologians who espouse a suffering God intentionally advocate a panentheistic notion of God – that is, that while God is potentially more than the cosmos, the cosmos is constitutive of His very being. (Those theologians who espouse a suffering God but deny panentheism fail to grasp the logic of their own position.)”[14] He adds, “being ensconced within the cosmic order God must necessarily assume all that pertains to that order, including sin and the suffering it causes. However, if His very nature is constituted by His being a member of the cosmic order, then He can no longer be its all-loving Creator. He becomes merely the one who attempts to bring order to the cosmic process after the manner of the Platonic Demiurge.”[15] He is right in his conclusions, although I do not believe that he accurately represented the view in question. It seems apparent that a sort of middle ground is necessary, without becoming unbiblical in the process because there are numerous passages in the Bible that give the impression that God is suffering or at least expressing emotion on account of his chosen people.

A simple definition of the word impassible means to be “incapable of suffering or feeling pain,” whereas passible means to be “capable of feeling or suffering.” The Westminster Confession uses the words without…passions, but the context of Acts 14:15, would seem to correspond more with the words, impassioned, passionate, or even ardent because the context of the passage is that people of Lystra are responding to the healing of a man crippled from birth and believing that Paul and Barnabas are the gods, Zeus and Hermes, that have come down in human form in heal this man. We can conclude that they had a belief that only the gods could heal in this manner, therefore they believe that they must worship them. This is where ardent or fervent may work better because they had a strong desire to honor the gods by offering sacrifice to them. Paul is merely stating that he and Barnabas are men just like them that are driven by the same type of passions. The passage does not say anything about the passions of God except that they should turn from these vain things to a living God, who created all things and has providentially cared for them. The quote from Irenaeus stated previously is apropos at this juncture that “God is not as men are; 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” with “which operate among men” being the crucial point. It is at this point where I believe the line of demarcation needs to be drawn. Isaiah 55:9 states that “for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (ESV), which emphasizes not only Irenaeus’ statement, but the fact that God is qualitatively distinct from creation as expressed by Horton. The issue of whether God suffers or not, needs to be handled in a way that corresponds with what we already know about God. We know that God is immutable, that he cannot change (a perfect being cannot become more perfect, any change would move in the opposite direction making him less than perfect), he is transcendent, he is not bound by anything that he created, he is other-worldly, and that he is sovereign over his creation. He is also immanent, which means that he has chosen to interact with his creation and thus he has chosen to become intimately involved in our lives. I want to briefly examine two more aspects before moving to a stated conclusion regarding the matter.                             

God’s Affection

In the NIV, Deuteronomy 7:7 says, “the Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples.” This passage expresses the idea that God made a conscious choice to set his affections upon Israel instead of some other nation or people group and that choice was based on nothing inherently good in them. Billings states that “God’s affections are always in accord with his holy and gracious character. They are perfect, self-derived expressions of his faithful covenant love.”[16]  Mark Baddeley draws a contrast between passions and affections by stating that affections are:

Rational emotions – [such as] love for another person, hatred for evil, grief at another’s suffering, joy arising from something genuinely good. These did not simply happen to a person but were an expression of their settled character and values, and so were naturally partnered with reason and with the fixed qualities of goodness and truth. ‘Emotions’ such as these are what the Bible is referring to when it speaks of God’s anger, love, pity, grief, and the like. They are not changes in his inner world forced upon him by what happens to us, they are constant and fixed expressions of his stance towards good and evil, life and death, the human race that he loves and the enemies ranged against us. [For example] A human father can be angry at his child because he is incensed at what his child has done, and simply finds himself in a rage. That’s a passion, and the emotion is primarily to do with what is happening inside the father. A human father can also be angry at his child because he is completely opposed to anything that threatens to blight his child’s life and character, and so stands against the child for the child’s own sake and long-term good. That’s an affection, and here the emotion is primarily to do with what is happening in the relationship between the parent and child, and how the child experiences their father’s love, rather than on change inside the father.[17]

The picture starts to become more clear as we contrast affections with passions. Affections, especially in relation to God’s affections, tend to deal with the will and a decision regarding the circumstances involved, while passions tend to be reactions that come from within, as Baddeley’s example expresses.

God’s Compassion

            In attempting to understand the compassion of God, there are two things that come to the forefront. First, when God says that ‘I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” (Romans 9:15 ESV), he is proclaiming that he has a choice in the matter. And secondly, as God passed by Moses in Exodus 34:5-7, he proclaimed himself to be 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 no means clear the guilty,” clearing proclaiming that it is in his very nature to be compassionate. In the New Testament, we see Jesus showing compassion many times through the healings that he performed, but we also see the care of God for his people on display through how sees himself as the shepherd for the lost sheep who are without one, and a mother hen who longs to gather her chicks. He portrays the Father as the longing to redeem his people and desirous for the prodigals to return. I mentioned earlier that there are numerous passages in the Scriptures dealing with God’s suffering, but it is in his compassion that we see him caring for his people. Psalm 147:3 states that “he heals the brokenhearted and binds their wounds.” It is passages like this that show that God is intimately involved in our lives.

Conclusion

            The question is does God, as God, suffer and the answer is both yes and no, depending on how you define your terms and in what context you use those terms. Because God is eternal, transcendent, immutable, and sovereign, he is impassible. Because God is immanent, loving, gracious, and merciful, he is passible, but I prefer the term, impassioned. So, as the title of Rob Lister’s book claims, God is Impassible and Impassioned. He states, “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.”[18] Paul Helm makes one small change to Lister’s formula, in that he changes it to: “God is eternally impassible and yet impassioned.” I believe that this expresses the issue better than trying to pack too many aspects into the somewhat limiting words of impassible and passible.

[1] http://www.basicplanet.com/natural-disasters/ accessed on February 20, 2017

[2] Wiesel, Elie. Night. Translated from the French by Marion Wiesel. New York: Hill and Wang. 2006. 65.

[3] -Ologies & -Isms. S.v. “Theopaschitism.” Retrieved March 2 2017 from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Theopaschitism

[4] DeYoung, Kevin, “Tis Mystery All, the Immortal Dies: Why the Gospel of Christ’s suffering is More Glorious Because God Does Not Suffer.” Together for the Gospel 2010.

[5] Goetz, Ronald G. (Ronald George), “The Suffering God: The Rise of a New Orthodoxy.” The Christian Century 103, no.13:385-389. ATLAReligion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost (accessed February 16, 2017

[6] Slick, Matt. www.carm.org. found under the Heresies column. (accessed March 2, 2017)

[7] Klooster, F. H., “Sovereignty of God” Evangelical Dictionary of Theology 2^nd ed. edited by Walter A. Elwell. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic. 2001. 1131-1132

[8] Ibid.

[9] Horton, Michael. The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims On the Way. Grand Rapids, Mi: Zonervan. 2011. 262-263.

[10] Lister, Rob. God is Impassible and Impassioned: Toward a Theology of Divine Emotion. Wheaton: Crossway. 2013, page unknown Kindle edition

[11] Bauckham, Richard. “Only the Suffering God Can Help: divine possibility in modern theology.” Themelios 9, no. 3 (April 1984): 9. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost (accessed February 16, 2017.

[12] Frame, John M. Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Christian Belief. Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company. 2013. 417

[13] Billings, J. Todd. “Undying Love: In Our Suffering, J. Todd Billings Explains, We Find Comfort in God’s Impassibility.” First Things 248, (December 2014): 47. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost. (accessed on February 16, 2017).

[14] Weinandy, Thomas. “Does God Suffer?” November 2001. First Things website. (accessed March 4, 2017)

[15] Ibid.

[16] Billings, “Undying Love.” 47.

[17] Baddeley, Mark. “Does God feel our pain?” The Briefing. http://matthiasmedia.com

[18] Lister, Impassible and Impassioned.