Divine Impassibility: Four Views of God's Emotions and Suffering ed. by Robert J. Matz and A. Chadwick Thornhill (review)

Over three decades ago, Elmhurst College professor Ronald Goetz authored a noteworthy article, "The Suffering God: The Rise of a New Orthodoxy." Goetz demonstrated the ubiquity of the notion of divine passibility, a suffering God, throughout mid to late twentieth-century theology and just how different this new metaphysical landscape was from the past. Matz and Thornhill's book examines, from the standpoint of four Evangelical theologians, the question of whether or not God suffers. The fact that contemporary thinkers find God's passibility so plausible is no reason not to examine its merit.

It is a shame that the book does not examine Lutheran discussions, since Lutherans have been major players in shaping the discussion. Luther highlighted Christ as suffering Anfechtungen. Likewise, historic Lutheran Christology claims that due to the communication of attributes between the divine and human natures in Christ, God the Son, though not the entire Trinity, experiences human suffering, even death.

This book offers four essays on (1) "strong impassibility" (God experiences no suffering), (2) "qualified impassibility" (God chooses to experience some suffering which by nature he would not have to), (3) "qualified passibility" (God's will and nature are passible while his knowledge is impassible), and (4) "strong passibility" (God's nature, will, and knowledge are necessarily passible).

At its core, the discussion deals with God's love. If God is loving, must he not also receive and even suffer in his relationship to the world and humanity or is God's love completely independent of his relationship to his creatures? The thought of impassibility sounds foreign to many contemporary ears. However, to put the concept in historical context, ancient Christians such as Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, and Augustine used it to distinguish God from the Greek pantheon (9). Many ancient Christians admitted that God has a genuine emotional life but that his emotions were in no way uncontrollable like the Olympian gods (10).

Daniel Dolezal defends strong impassibility. That God does not suffer experiences, emotions, or feelings like we do is due to the fact that God does not depend on creatures for some aspect of his being. Any subject which suffers passions experiences change (15) and is dependent on some external causal agent. But that would mean that the sufferer lacks some form of being (19). God however is pure act and as such lacks nothing. In this view, God is not only impassible but also "simple"; God just is the love by which he loves, just is the kindness by which he is merciful, and as such is available to help any suffering creature. If God suffered, God himself would need the assistance of a non-suffering being to free him from his predicament.

Daniel Castelo argues for qualified impassibility, an attempt to mediate truths from both impassibility and passibility. He feels that that the differences between the divine and human affectivity are what makes the similarities meaningful (54). He states his appreciation for the passibilist theologian Jürgen Moltmann but asks whether loving and suffering must go hand in hand (59). He concludes that God is passible but only insofar as he allows himself to be (66).

John Peckham argues for qualified passibility: God has voluntarily opened himself to love relationships with creatures and so God is emotionally affected by and responsive to the actions of creatures (98). He strongly disagrees with the position of God as pure act. The position closest to the Bible for Peckham is that God suffers emotions and changes his will in response to creatures but that his knowledge of matters is resolute.

Finally, Thomas Oord argues for strong passibility. In his way of thinking, only the impassible God can comfort others (139). He distinguishes God's "immaterial nature" from God's actual experience. The former is impassible but the latter is thoroughly passible (143).

For many, this discussion...