The Suffering of the Impassible God

The Suffering of the Impassible God
Author: Paul L. Gavrilyuk
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2004-03-12
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0191533548

The Suffering of the Impassible God provides a major reconsideration of the issue of divine suffering and divine emotions in the early Church Fathers. Patristic writers are commonly criticized for falling prey to Hellenistic philosophy and uncritically accepting the claim that God cannot suffer or feel emotions. Gavrilyuk shows that this view represents a misreading of evidence. In contrast, he construes the development of patristic thought as a series of dialectical turning points taken to safeguard the paradox of God's voluntary and salvific suffering in the Incarnation.

Divine Impassibility

Divine Impassibility
Author: Robert J. Matz
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2019-08-13
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0830866620

Does God suffer? Does God experience emotions? Does God change? This Spectrum Multiview volume brings together four theologians who make a case for their own view—ranging from a traditional affirmation of divine impassibility (the idea that God does not suffer) to the position that God is necessarily and intimately affected by creation—and then each contributor responds to the others' views.

Divine Impassibility and the Mystery of Human Suffering

Divine Impassibility and the Mystery of Human Suffering
Author: James Keating
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2009-07-14
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0802863477

"James F. Keating and Thomas Joseph White have gathered here a selection of essays that consider how God's suffering or lack thereof can relate to our redemption from and through human suffering. The contributors - Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox - tread carefully but surely over this thorny ground, defending diverse and often opposing perspectives. Divine Impassibility and the Mystery of Human Suffering is an excellent contribution to the latest stage in this difficult and important theological controversy."--BOOK JACKET.

Does God Suffer?

Does God Suffer?
Author: Thomas Gerard Weinandy
Publisher:
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2000
Genre: Religion
ISBN:

The author of this book challenges the contemporary view of God and suffering. Calling upon scripture, and the philosophical and theological tradition of the Fathers and Aquinas, he advocates the incarnational truth that the Son of God actually does experience human living, including suffering.

God Is Impassible and Impassioned

God Is Impassible and Impassioned
Author: Rob Lister
Publisher: Crossway
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2012-11-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1433532441

Modern theologians are focused on the doctrine of divine impassibility, exploring the significance of God’s emotional experience and most especially the question of divine suffering. Professor Rob Lister speaks into the issue, outlining the history of the doctrine in the views of influential figures such as Augustine, Aquinas, and Luther, while carefully examining modernity’s growing rejection of impassibility and the subsequent evangelical response. With an eye toward holistic synthesis, this book proposes a theological model based upon fresh insights into the historical, biblical, and theological dimensions of this important doctrine.

The Suffering of God

The Suffering of God
Author:
Publisher: Fortress Press
Total Pages: 228
Release: 1984-10-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9781451418842

In this comprehensive and thought-provoking study, Terence Fretheim focuses on the theme of divine suffering, an aspect of our understanding of God which both the church and scholarship have neglected. Maintaining that "metaphors matter," Fretheim carefully examines the ruling and anthropomorphic metaphors of the Old Testament and discusses them in the context of current biblical-theological scholarship. His aim is to broaden our understanding of the God of the Old Testament by showing that "suffering belongs to the person and purpose of God".

Confessing the Impassible God

Confessing the Impassible God
Author: Ronald Baines
Publisher: Rbap
Total Pages: 466
Release: 2015-08-01
Genre:
ISBN: 9780991659920

The book is structured as follows. The Introduction presses home the importance of the doctrine of divine impassibility. Readers will be challenged to recognize that tinkering with divine impassibility as classically understood has implications that always end up compromising other fundamental articles of the Christian faith. The main argument is contained in seven parts. Part I addresses vital issues of prolegomena. Prior to providing a positive explication of the doctrine, we outline our theological method. Chapter 1 discusses the theological grammar of the doctrine of divine impassibility. Important concepts such as biblical metaphysics, act and potency, and the analogy of being are discussed. These are basic and crucial concepts to understand at the outset. Chapter 2 offers an introduction to the hermeneutical method employed throughout. These two chapters together reflect our commitment to the traditional language of classical theism and the hermeneutics of the Reformed tradition as articulated in the English Reformed Confessions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As readers will become aware in reading the subsequent sections, the issue of method is crucial and foundational in this discussion. Part II (chapters 3-7) covers the Old and New Testaments. Though all potential passages of Scripture are not discussed, the most important texts on the subject of divine impassibility are addressed. The order of these chapters reflects our hermeneutical method: we consider texts on the nature of God first, texts which speak of immutability and impassibility next, concluding with those texts that appear to indicate some sort of passibility in God. Each testamental section ends with a brief conclusion. Part III (chapters 8-9) surveys the history of the doctrine of divine impassibility. We seek to demonstrate that what was once a catholic doctrine has become muddied as scholars of various theological traditions have reformulated, modified, and in some instances rejected classical theism's commitment to divine impassibility. Part IV (chapters 10-12) offers a systematic-theological approach to the subject. It assumes Parts I-III and builds upon them. Careful discussion is provided on such issues as the relationship of divine impassibility to the essence and attributes of God, the divine affections, and the incarnation of the Son of God. Our goal is for readers to realize the significance of divine impassibility in relation to many other essential doctrines of the Christian faith. It is part of the system of doctrine contained in our Confession; tinkering with impassibility has far-reaching ramifications. Part V (chapter 13) offers an overview of the doctrine of divine impassibility as contained in the Second London Confession of Faith (1677/89). This confessional document asserts the same doctrine as the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647) and the Savoy Declaration (1658) on the issue of divine impassibility. The place of the doctrine in the Confession as well as its relationship to other confessed truths is presented. Part VI (chapter 14) seeks to explicate the practical theology of divine impassibility. It draws out implications of the doctrine under the topics the saving knowledge of God, the Christian life, worship, and pastoral ministry. Part VII (chapter 15) offers closing comments and a list of affirmations and denials in light of the entire study. Additionally, we have included two appendices, containing book reviews of contemporary attempts to modify the classical doctrine of divine impassibility. Foreword by Paul Helm. Endorsements by James Dolezal, J. V. Fesko, Ryan McGraw, and Fred Sanders.

All That Is in God

All That Is in God
Author: James E. Dolezal
Publisher: Reformation Heritage Books
Total Pages: 145
Release: 2017-07-13
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1601785550

Unknown to many, increasing numbers of conservative evangelicals are denying basic tenets of classical Christian teaching about God, with departures occurring even among those of the Calvinistic persuasion. James E. Dolezal’s All That Is in God provides an exposition of the historic Christian position while engaging with these contemporary deviations. His convincing critique of the newer position he styles “theistic mutualism” is philosophically robust, systematically nuanced, and biblically based. It demonstrates the need to maintain the traditional viewpoint, particularly on divine simplicity, and spotlights the unfortunate implications for other important Christian doctrines—such as divine eternality and the Trinity—if it were to be abandoned. Arguing carefully and cogently that “all that is in God is God Himself,” the work is sure to stimulate debate on the issue in years to come.

Thinking Through Feeling

Thinking Through Feeling
Author: Anastasia Philippa Scrutton
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 362
Release: 2011-10-06
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 144114577X

Contemporary debates on God's emotionality are divided between two extremes. Impassibilists deny God's emotionality on the basis of God's omniscience, omnipotence and incorporeality. Passibilists seem to break with tradition by affirming divine emotionality, often focusing on the idea that God suffers with us. Contemporary philosophy of emotion reflects this divide. Some philosophers argue that emotions are voluntary and intelligent mental events, making them potentially compatible with omniscience and omnipotence. Others claim that emotions are involuntary and basically physiological, rendering them inconsistent with traditional divine attributes. Thinking Through Feeling: God, Emotion and Passibility creates a three-way conversation between the debate in theology, contemporary philosophy of emotion, and pre-modern (particularly Augustinian and Thomist) conceptions of human affective experience. It also provides an exploration of the intelligence and value of the emotions of compassion, anger and jealousy.

Divine Impassibility

Divine Impassibility
Author: Richard E. Creel
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2005-06-21
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1597522732

In this volume, Richard Creel sets forth a thesis that offers a third way to approach divine impassibility. Defining impassibility as imperviousness to causal influence from external factors, Creel sketches a path between Aquinas and Hartshorne, by asserting that once this definition is accepted, one must still distinguish the various respects in which God is or is not impassible. Virtually no one would dispute that the divine nature is impassible. God will never cease to be God, no matter what happens in creation. With respect to the divine knowledge and will, however, there are conflicting views. Creel claims that God's will is impassible because God knows everything that can be accomplished by divine power. Yet, unlike Aquinas, Creel believes that God has this knowledge in virtue of a 'plenum' of possibilities eternally coexistent with the divine being. The absolute is not simply God, but rather God plus the 'plenum'. Creel suggests that God's knowledge is passible with respect to the contingent future actions of creatures. God knows these actions, therefore, not in their presentiality from all eternity, as Aquinas would hold, but only as they happen and become actual. God's will, however, remains immediately impassible because the divine will is ordered to possibilities, not actualities. God never has to wait until after we do something in order to decide his response to it. He has eternally decided his response to all that we might do. Ultimately God's feelings remain impassible, no matter what concrete decisions human beings make, because the basic intent of the divine plan for us is always achieved: we exercise our freedom to choose for or against God. God is impassible with respect to the divine nature, divine will, and divine feelings; but God is passible with respect to the divine knowledge of future contingent events.