The Living God ATTRIBUTES AND PERSONS: Divine Impassibility and Self-Limitation (original) (raw)
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Why Can't the Impassible God Suffer? Analytic Reflections on Divine Blessedness
According to classical theism, impassibility is said to be systematically connected to divine attributes like timelessness, immutability, simplicity, aseity, and self-sufficiency. In some interesting way, these attributes are meant to explain why the impassible God cannot suffer. I shall argue that these attributes do not explain why the impassible God cannot suffer. In order to understand why the impassible God cannot suffer, one must examine the emotional life of the impassible God. I shall argue that the necessarily happy emotional life of the classical God explains why the impassible God cannot suffer.
The Immutability of the God of Love and the Problem of Language Concerning the "Suffering of God"
In: Divine Impassibility and the Mystery of Human Suffering, ed. James F. Keating and Thomas J. White (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), pp. 27-76.
Both contemporary theology and the preaching associated with it seem to accord an ever-increasing place to the theme of the “suffering” of the tri- une God. Without revisiting in detail the criticisms of this trend which can be posed from a metaphysical perspective, and without entering into a profound theological consideration of human suffering, I propose to sketch out here some of the principal stages of the teaching of the Church (I), then examine certain aspects of the uneasiness that the traditional teaching elicits today (II). After this I will describe various forms of reflection developed by contemporary theologians (III), in order to discuss them in light of the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas (IV).
The Suffering of the Impassible God, 2004
Many modern theologians advocate the claim that God suffers and are convinced that divine impassibility is untenable on philosophical, exegetical, and broadly religious grounds. As a result, the scholars often interpret the patristic notion of divine apatheia as a Greek philosophical axiom the acceptance of which led to a distortion of the biblical image of the (allegedly) suffering God. This dominant interpretation is awed. The problems with the unrestricted divine passibility are equally serious. Passibility and impassibility are correlative concepts, both of which must have their place in any sound account of divine agency. The introduction also provides a summary of the book.
In a theological framework, the problem of suffering is heightened to fundamental, relational questions between God and his creatures. At issue are: what essentially is the problem of suffering, how should it be understood and how close is God to his suffering creatures? The contemplation of these queries plunges the philosopher into the realm of the incomprehensible. Daily, the Christian must grapple with the reality of a God who is the fullness of being - in whom is the perfection of all that is good and a world which is fallen from that perfection. In this, man encounters mystery.