On the Relation of God to the Suffering of Humankind (original) (raw)
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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 DOCTRINE OF GOD: THEODICY FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF DEUS ABSCONDITUS AND DEUS REVELATUS
In this paper I shall address the doctrine of God. This doctrine fits to be described at its best as God's job description, capturing both who God is and what God does. In Luke 4: 16-20 we have a clear directive on who God is and what God does. Jesus announces the five purposes for which God has sent him to preach good news to the poor; to proclaim freedom for the prisoners; recovery of sight for the blind; to release the oppressed; to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour (4:18-19). Simultaneously we shall be preoccupied with the theological issue known as Theodicy. The term, Theodicy, is a term from the Greek words Theos (God) and dike (justice). A theodicy is an attempt to justify or defend God in the face of evil and suffering. More precisely, when evil and suffering happen to us as believers in God who is responsible. Better how does God's justice relate to evil and suffering here on earth and among us as human beings? All of us struggle at one time or another in life with why evil and suffering happen to someone, either ourselves, our family, our friends, our nation, or perhaps some particularly disturbing instance in the history, for example in Namibian history the evils of German colonialism, the genocide of 1904 to 1908 committed by Germany on the soil of Namibia, the apartheid system under South African, or today, among others the evil of gender-based violence and raped. To borrow from Jürgen Moltmann's The Crucified God, our attempt shall be to relate to our understanding of the Revealed God, the cross of Christ, and suffering-both human and divine. Moltmann focuses on the issue of God's suffering in Christ crucified. The cross of Christ represents not only Jesus's suffering and death but also God's identification with the suffering of the world. According to Moltmann, God and suffering are no longer contradictions. Moltmann challenges the idea of God's impassibility, one inherited by Christian theology. Moltmann's view of the apathetic God of traditional theism as inadequate leads him to conclude that people can now open themselves to God's pathos (suffering) and sympatheia (compassion) as well as that God is capable of suffering and sympathizing with those who suffer.
The Living God ATTRIBUTES AND PERSONS: Divine Impassibility and Self-Limitation
TheoGlobal Journal , 2024
This paper seeks to explore the paradox of God's suffering in the Person of Jesus Christ and God's essential nature of not being subjected to change by exploring the concept of divine impassibility as articulated by select theologians in the history of the Church. This study will argue that a re-examination of divine impassibility in light of the doctrine of divine self-limitation does provide a better framework to comprehend the paradox of God’s suffering, albeit certain cautions are warranted in this process.
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 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.
Can only a suffering God help? Towards a contextual and pragmatic approach to philosophy of religion
Passibilism – understood here as the idea that God suffers in Godself – is sometimes motivated by the idea that a fellow-sufferer provides consolation and so is religiously helpful. Yet people's intuitions about whether a divine fellow-sufferer is indeed religiously helpful are radically different: for some, 'only a suffering God can help', while for others it is precisely by not suffering that God offers consolation. I will explore people's differing intuitions, before arguing that consolation is not a good argument for passibilism. Rather, consolation may contribute to the rationality of belief in a passible God, if it is indeed religiously helpful. And whether it is religiously helpful will depend on factors including what other figures within the religious tradition are able to provide consolation through fellow-suffering. As examples of non-divine fellow-sufferer consolers, I will explore saints in late medieval Western Europe, and bodhisattvas in Japanese Buddhism today. In so doing, I will suggest an account of why passiblism arose out of Protestant Christianity, and attempt to do philosophy of religion in a way that takes context seriously and probes beyond formal arguments into people's practical and psychological motivations for believing what they believe. Finally, I will consider some of the implications of my argument for some other aspects of debates about divine passibility.
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.
Therapeutic Theodicy? Suffering, Struggle, and the Shift from the God’s-Eye View
Religions, 2018
From a theoretical standpoint, the problem of human suffering can be understood as one formulation of the classical problem of evil, which calls into question the compatibility of the existence of a perfect God with the extent to which human beings suffer. Philosophical responses to this problem have traditionally been posed in the form of theodicies, or justifications of the divine. In this article, I argue that the theodical approach in analytic philosophy of religion exhibits both morally and epistemically harmful tendencies and that philosophers would do better to shift their perspective from the hypothetical “God’s-eye view” to the standpoint of those who actually suffer. By focusing less on defending the epistemic rationality of religious belief and more on the therapeutic effectiveness of particular imaginings of God with respect to suffering, we can recover, (re)construct, and/or (re)appropriate more virtuous approaches to the individual and collective struggle with the life of faith in the face of suffering.