Divine Impassibility and the Mystery of Human Suffering ed. by James F. Keating and Thomas Joseph White, O.P. (review)

309 BOOK REVIEWS Divine Impassibility and the Mystery of Human Suffering. Edited by JAMES F. KEATING and THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE, O.P. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2009. Pp. 368. $45.00 (paper). ISBN 978-08028 -6347-8. Containing a range of viewpoints, ecclesial locations, and approaches, this volume offers several impressive individual contributions and as a whole instantiates a salutary approach to one of the most perduring questions of modern theological and philosophical reflection, namely, the question of God’s capacity to suffer. The volume contains papers presented at a conference held at Providence College, 30-31 March 2007, organized by the editors, James F. Keating and Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O.P. The contributors are: Giles Emery, O.P.; Gary Culpepper; Thomas G. Weinandy, O.F.M. Cap.; Robert W. Jenson; Paul L. Gavrilyuk; Bruce L. McCormack; Trent Pomplun; Paul Gondreau; Bruce D. Marshall; David Bentley Hart; and Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J. The difficulty of the topic itself, coupled with the density and sophistication of the various contributions, renders any in-depth or comprehensive engagement with the volume impossible. Anyone interested in the topic is well advised to read all the essays in their entirety, many of which could bear review-length treatments in and of themselves. In what follows, I note simply one aspect of a multi-faceted topic. “One of the Holy Trinity suffered in the flesh” (Fifth Ecumenical Council)—the whole question of divine im/passibility can be seen as an attempt to make sense of this fundamental claim at the heart of the Christian gospel. Though the question can be approached from other angles (e.g., from the perspective of the Creator-creation relationship), nearly all the authors in this volume take this affirmation as the touchstone for their reflections. Moreover, all the authors not only take for granted the normativity of Chalcedonian and conciliar Christology (one person, two natures, two wills, two activities, etc.), but also strive to answer the question of divine impassibility through an analysis of the person and experience of the God-Man, understood from this classical perspective. For all these authors, accordingly, this establishes both a baseline about what must be affirmed and a boundary regarding what can be. The different answers here given to the question are driven by different interpretations of this baseline and boundary. This is not insignificant, as it BOOK REVIEWS 310 provides the entire volume with a common frame of reference and vocabulary, allowing for subtle differences of perspective and sophisticated nuances to enter into what emerges as a coherent, indeed profound conversation. To begin with something that is perhaps unremarkable in the contemporary context, all the authors affirm that “in the flesh” the God-Man suffered (though as Trent Pomplun’s essay on Hilary of Poitiers shows, such was not always the case in earlier periods), especially of course in his passion, both in body and soul, even (for some) to the point of the experience of God-forsakenness or dereliction. In light of the common Christological framework, all these authors affirm moreover that, as the single subject of the divine and human natures, it was none other than the Second Person of the Trinity who suffered thus in the flesh. Accordingly, despite differences that subsequently emerge (and perhaps somewhat surprisingly to some who might assume that any theology committed to classical Christology, with all its Greek metaphysical entailments, would ipso facto be committed to unqualified impassibility), all the authors affirm some form of divine passibility. For this reason, the more precise question that drives the entire volume is not rather flatly and abstractly, Is there suffering in God? Rather, it is When suffering is attributed to the Second Person “in the flesh,” that is, in the human nature, what is the implication for the Second Person in divinis, that is, in the divine nature? In other words, can the Second Person be the genuine subject of suffering “in the flesh” without also in some sense suffering in divinis? Three types of answers to this question emerge in this volume and they can be correlated with three different interpretations of the notion of divine selfemptying or kenosis (Phil. 2...