I read a book several years ago titled “God is Impassible and Impassioned” by Rob Lister.
Bruce Ware wrote the forward and stated that “when sixteenth-century Roman Catholic bishops and apologists called for a theological balance of faith and works for salvation, the Reformers rightly commended their own altogether imbalanced adherence to sola fides. When contemporary pluralists urge upon the culture the balanced view of many saviors from many religions, heirs of this same Reformation heritage decry such a balance for the exclusive declaration of solus Christus. When liberal Protestants and proponents of the evangelical left commend experience and tradition alongside Scripture as the church’s multiplexed nexus of ultimate authority, true evangelicals rightly uphold and declare sola Scriptura. Yes, at times imbalance is just as important to theological fidelity as balance, yet it still stands as true that normally theological balance marks real health and faithfulness even though imbalances are at times, on certain issues, necessary. How do we know when to follow the pathway of balance or imbalance? Answer: whichever is required to be faithful to Scripture in all of its teachings, and whichever advances the truth with fullest expression and least distortion – this is the pathway that must be commended.”
We do need to tread carefully when looking at how we will view the character of God. And Martin brings up an important point in his post. Divine impassibility is not always impassible. There are many views on this doctrine. There are extreme views, and there are more “balanced” views. And we need to be careful with all of them. There are times for each.
Rob Lister stated that “many contemporary passibilists have [mistakenly he argues] taken divine impassibility to mean that God has no emotion capacity and no interest in his creation.” Some people do hold to impassibility but in the form that God is not involuntarily affected by emotion (God certainly feels, loves, hates, angers, has compassion, but this is voluntary on the part of God). The problem with an impassible but impassioned God is perhaps that the definitions get blurred. The definition that I just mentioned (impassibility meaning that God is not involuntarily affected by emotion) is the definition many denote passibility. What can occur is that people will argue against each other’s position when the only difference is definition. Martin’s doctrine of impassibility may be exactly the same as my doctrine of passibility. So we need to be careful with definitions (and we have moved away from the traditional definitions).
The Reformed position as articulated by people like John Calvin is that God has no emotion in regards to mankind, no love, no anger, no compassion because these indicate a weakness, an incompleteness, a compartmentalization, a need, a desire, and/or a control by an external force. Much of the philosophy that generated these doctrines have IMHO declined or changed within contemporary theology and thought in general. It is not as debated in general whether or not God loves or has compassion on His Children. The traditionally Reformed may answer that God is void of such “feeling” while other congregations appeal precisely to God’s love and compassion. Martin has indicated that this is becoming a debatable topic within Reformed Baptist circles, and I look forward to reading some of the materials he has listed
What I find more interesting a topic is when we move from emotion to suffering (I do not agree with the philosophy that generated the doctrine of impassibility to begin with and I disagree that emotion is suffering caused by something external). But does God, even voluntarily, suffer? I don’t think that this is even a topic except for the Cross (maybe the Incarnation as a whole). And this only to the extent to which Christ suffering is God or man. Anyway, that’s just some thoughts.
If anyone is interested, there is a book titled “Theology of the Pain of God” written by Kazoh Kitamori. I am not necessarily advocating his conclusions, but he does pose some interesting questions and observations….and I’m a collector of quotes (and here's one from that book):
“When we think of Jesus telling of the five sparrows in order to teach us trust in God, we cannot check the tears. But the feeling is something more solemn than tears: let us call it gratitude for grace.”
