‘Behold, the Lamb of God’s
ide o amnos tou
theou
College Study
25th teaching
2.11.2013
The ‘Negative’ Doctrines:
“God’s Impassibility”
We finished off a series on the Persons of the
Trinity, and a series on the Omni- doctrines. Next I’d like to tackle the rest
of God’s metaphysical attributes. These attributes define His essence, in other
words, what God is, as opposed to moral attributes that more define who God is.
Now if you were to look at a list of metaphysical
attributes of God, you’ll notice something. Immutability, Immaterial,
Incomprehensible, Infinite, Immutable, Immortal… what do you notice? Most of
them are negative. What do I mean by negative?
What is a negative attribute?
I do not mean negative as in bad, or morally wrong. The
attributes of God are pure, not wrong. Here’s some examples: God is immaterial,
im- meaning not, so therefore God is not
material. Or we say that God is infinite, He is not finite. God is immutable. He is not mutable, or not changeable.
Let’s remember that God is dissimilar to everything in
existence. It is much easier to say that God is unlike something or other, than that He is like something or other, since there is practically nothing like
God.
For example: every object that we know of is material. Even
light has particles. But God is dissimilar. God is immaterial. He has no
particles or parts or pieces. He is Spirit.
So too, everything we know of we know to be finite,
limited. Life is limited. Stars are limited. Words are limited. Humans are
limited. Even the universe itself has had a beginning when it began. But God
has had no such beginning. God is not finite, or rather, infinite.
So the negative attributes are making positive statements
about God’s nature. The negative attributes simply strip the limitation or the
finitude from the attribute before it can be applied to God. Before we can
apply materiality to God, we must strip it of its limitation and make it immateriality.
This method of applying negative attributes to God is known
as via negativa, the way of negation.
The limitation of the attribute must be negated, removed, before it can be
applied to the Unlimited Being. God cannot have limited attributes because He
is unlimited.
To summarize, a negative attribute implies a positive
characteristic. We’re not talking about the attributes of God as wrong, but
simply as without limit. The negation removes the limitation from the
attribute, so that God’s Life is infinite, God’s Being is immaterial, God’s
nature is immutable.
So tonight, we’re going to embark on our journey through
the negative attributes of God beginning with an attribute which can be found,
in one of many places, in Job 22:2-3.
Also check out Job
35:6-8.
Tonight’s study is entitled: “God’s Impassibility”.
Now the doctrine of God’s Impassibility is something that I
had no idea about until last week when I studied up on it, so it might be new
to a lot of us here. To make matters worse, so to speak, the doctrine of divine
Impassibility is a very misunderstood and very debated and very controversial
doctrine.
Impassibility means that God is without passion or
suffering.
Now it may sound like I say this a lot. But I said this
about the Omni- doctrines too. I said that they are misunderstood and debated.
But I said that those were greatly misunderstood, perhaps mostly, outside of
the church. Impassibility on the other hand is not a well-known doctrine. It
has not been argued over outside of the church, but within it.
Therefore, we need all the more to know exactly what the
Bible says about Impassibility, and pray that the Spirit of truth will guide us
into understanding.
To aid our study, we’d like to hit on three points tonight:
1.
What impassibility is
2.
What impassibility is not
3.
What impassibility means for us
1.
What impassibility is
Like many of the doctrines of God, the word impassible comes from Latin. The Latin
word impassibilis means “incapable of
passion”.
Now when we talk about passion, we’re not talking about
some kind of a strong feeling like romance. I might feel passionate about a
beautiful painting, or passionate about my wife. But that’s not the kind of
passion we’re talking about. The Latin word passio,
from which we get the word passion,
means suffering.
Remember the film the
Passion of the Christ? Ever wonder for a moment why it was called that?
Because it was a film about the passio,
the suffering, of Jesus Christ in the
hours before and the hours upon the cross of Calvary.
Now there’s an ironic example to use to help us understand
what impassibility means, since it’s a film about the Son of God suffering,
when the word impassibility means that God cannot suffer. Impassibility means
that God is in fact incapable of feeling pain, suffering or misery.
Can God suffer? Impassibility would claim “No, He
cannot"
St. Augustine said “…in God there can be no suffering.”
Even Norman Geisler, the modern-day apologist, sums it up
by saying: “nothing in the created universe can make God feel pain or inflict
misery on Him.”
You might begin to see why this is a misunderstood and
controversial doctrine. If God cannot suffer than how could Christ suffer and
also be God?
Let’s not get the cart before the horse. Let’s get a grip
on impassibility before we answer that question.
In 1646, the Westminster Assembly wrote up a confession
that formed the standard set of beliefs of the Church of England. This came to
be known as the Westminster Confession of Faith. It says “There is but one only
living and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure
spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions;
immutable…”
Impassibility, without passions, stems from two other
doctrines of God’s nature, one which we’ve already covered in weeks past, and
one which we have yet to study. Impassibility stems from God’s Aseity and God’s
Immutability. The fact that God is self-sufficient and independent, God’s
Aseity, means that God cannot be changed or affected by causes outside of
Himself.
A good couple of verses on God’s total independence, or
Aseity, is Psalm 50:10-12. And
remember Acts 17:24-25, in which
Paul says “God, who made the world and
everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in
temples made with hands. Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He
needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things.”
He is apart, above and independent from everything outside
of Himself, and therefore, nothing can force His emotions to change, cause Him
misery or inflict pain upon Him. God has no emotional needs. He has contentment
in Himself as a Perfect Being. God did not need to create us because He was
bored. God did not need us to be saved because He needs love.
Also, Impassibility stems not only from Aseity but from
Immutability, a doctrine which says that God is unchanging in His being.
Malachi 3:6, “For I am the LORD, I do not change;
therefore you are not consumed, O sons of Jacob.”
Hebrews 13:8, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today,
and forever.”
God cannot change who He is. Remember, He is purely actual,
without potential to change. He is already Perfect and there is nothing else
that can be added to Him. He is already Infinite, there is nothing more that He
needs. God cannot cease to be God. He cannot change who He is. God does not
change.
SO because God is self-sufficient, He is unaffected by
anything or anyone else, and because God is unchanging, His feelings and
emotions do not change. God cannot undergo change in His being, therefore His
feelings do not change, and therefore He cannot suffer.
The 2nd century bishop Irenaeus was an
early church father, the disciple of a disciple of one of the twelve disciples.
He wrote a book called Adversus Haereses,
Against Heresies, around the year 180AD. Irenaeus said that heretics “endow
[God] with human affections and passions. But if they had known the Scriptures,
and been taught by the truth, they would have known, beyond doubt, that God is
not as men are… For the Father of all is at a vast distance from those
affections and passions which operate among men.”
So Impassibility, one more time, means that God cannot
suffer or be affected by external causes. God cannot be forced to change His
feelings.
2.
What impassibility is not
First off, Impassibility claims that God has unchanging
feelings. It does not claim that God has no feelings at all. But how is this
the case?
After all, when I am sad, usually it is something that
makes me sad: my car dies, I run over a puppy, I stub my toe, I offer to cook
dinner and then I burn it, I lose my wallet or I get slapped in the face for
making a bad joke.
It is some external cause which makes me sad. We say this
all the time: “this makes me happy” or “that makes me sad”, “this song makes me
depressed” or “this movie makes me glad”. It is something outside of ourselves
which produces the affect of the emotion inside of us.
Yet for God, as we’ve seen, this cannot be so. God is above
all other things and is self-sufficient and unchangeable. Nothing can affect
Him. Nothing can make God be
depressed or disappointed. When the Bible says that God was provoked to wrath
or stirred up in anger, we must understand these as metaphorical or analogical.
Just as God is not a physical Rock, so too God does not emotionally become
provoked as you and I do, in a literal sense.
But there’s a fine line here. Does God not have
emotions? If nothing can make Him happy or sad, as we experience happiness or
sadness, then does God not have happiness OR sadness?
Paul Ekman is an American psychologist considered to be a
pioneer in the study of emotions, specifically emotions in relation to facial
expressions. In his research, he classified six emotions as the most basic and
universal when it came to facial expressions: anger, disgust, fear, happiness,
sadness and surprise. Although there’s certainly more than these, as even Dr.
Ekman would admit, these six are six basic emotions.
So… does God feel these? Does God know what it is like to
be sad or happy or angry or disgusted? Or is God so perfect that He cannot
experience negative emotion? Well, what does the Bible say?
Anger. Romans 1:18,
“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and
unrighteousness of men…”
Digust. Proverbs
17:15, “He who justifies the wicked,
and he who condemns the just, both of them alike are an abomination to the LORD.”
Fear. Well, God certainly does not seem to ever experience
fear, though He certainly is aware of what fear is, since He can tell us to
“fear not” or “not be afraid”
Happiness. Psalm
149:4, “For the LORD takes pleasure
in His people…”
Sadness. Genesis 6:6,
“And the LORD was sorry that He had made
man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.”
Surprise. We studied Omniscience last week, the doctrine of
God’s all-encompassing, infinite knowledge. Certainly, then, God does not
experience surprise, since He knows everything.
So we see from Scripture that God certainly has emotions,
and yet as we’ve seen from the Scriptural doctrine of Impassibility, that
nothing can affect or force God to change His emotions or feelings. The way in
which God feels is totally different from the way in which you and I feel. Our
feelings are based on external causes. God’s feelings are rooted in His
unchangeable and perfect nature.
Think of it in this way.
We are subject to our emotions. As a human being, you know
about uncontrollable anger, rage, lashing out in violence and sudden wrath. You
and I also know about happy birthday surprises, about nightmares, about the
loss of a loved one that we can mourn over. We are subject to our emotions,
which are caused by external things.
God, however, is not subject to His emotions. His emotions,
rather, are subject only to His Perfect Being, the one thing above all else.
Nothing can force Him to be depressed or sad or weary or bored or even happy or
pleased. He finds each of these emotions in His perfect Self. God always loves
good and God always hates sin.
We may be subject to our emotional natures, but God’s
emotions are subject to His own nature.
Let me quote again from apologist Norman Geisler: he says
that impassibility “…does not mean
that God has no feelings: He has unchanging feelings. Indeed, He even has
different feelings. He always feels good about our being good, and He always
feels bad about our being bad. Further, God does not change when we repent: He
always feels the same about the same. When we change, God does not change. We
simply move under another unchangeable attribute of God. For example, God feels
bad about our badness; when we change, God feels good about our new state of
being good. As noted above, God experiences feelings, but not in the way we
experience them. He experiences them in accordance with His own nature—in an
active, eternal, and unchangeable way.”
God cannot wake up one morning
and be in a bad mood for no reason. God doesn’t have mood swings. We may have
emotional needs and emotional roller-coasters, but God is in full control of
Himself and His feelings. He has no emotional needs and His feelings are
constant and perfect. He loves righteousness and stands against wickedness. All
the time. Always. Unchanging. Forever.
3.
What impassibility means to us
Earlier, we posed the question: “How could it be that Jesus
is impassible God and yet He suffered on the cross?” If God cannot suffer, then
how could Christ be God?
There are a few heresies revolving around God’s
impassibility. These heresies failed to get the point. For example, one heresy
from the 3rd century called patripassianism claims that the Father
suffered on the cross when Jesus did. Another heresy called nestorianism claims
that Jesus was human person and separately a divine Person.
However, neither of these heresies solve the question. If
God cannot suffer, how then could Christ be God and suffer crucifixion?
My wife has a beautiful proverb she made up herself. Blythe
Norton once said “To love is to make oneself vulnerable to both joy and
sorrow.”
What’s more! C.S. Lewis himself said much the same thing,
in his book the Four Loves. Check out
this quote by the beloved author: “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love
anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make
sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap
it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements.
Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that
casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken;
it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be
vulnerable.”
One of the real mind-blowing things about the
incarnation, about God taking on flesh and humanity, has to do with this
doctrine of His Impassibility. God cannot suffer, but He took on a human nature
that was fully capable of suffering, fully capable of experiencing excruciating
agony, pain, misery, weakness, hunger, thirst, physical need and passion.
God, who never knew misery in His whole infinite existence
of perfect contentment, took on flesh and thereby took on the totality of pain
out of love for you and I.
We often think of Christ leaving glory and worship and
honor and His throne and riches in heaven on His way to earth, when in fact He
left behind His invulnerability, and out of love made Himself vulnerable to
physical and emotional pains.
God is impassible, yes, but did you know that you can
grieve His Spirit (Eph 4:30)? Why?
Because He that knew no suffering for all of eternity chose to love you and I,
and thereby make Himself, allowed
Himself, to become vulnerable to emotional pain and physical pain of the
crucifix. The God which no suffering can touch came and suffered. God not only
suffered, but He made Himself able to
suffer, when He never knew suffer at all, for the sake of saving our wretched
souls for His glory. And the impassible God knew what it was like to be spat
on, ridiculed, mocked, abandoned and crucified.
What a beautiful and profound paradox! Interesting that the
whole way through Gethsemane and the trial before the high priest and down the long
path to Calvary, at any moment Christ could have said “Enough” and ended the
pain. But He willingly allowed Himself to be affected by external causes: the
nails, the lashes, the tearing, the beatings, and on and on.
How deep the Father’s love for us, how vast beyond all
measure, that He should give His only Son, allow His Son to experience
suffering when He never knew it, to make a wretch His treasure.
And what’s more!
Do you realize that God’s impassible nature means that His
feelings do not change? He made Himself vulnerable to suffering, but God does
not have mood swings. God does not have bad days. God doesn’t wake up one
morning wishing the whole world was dead because He’s ticked off about
something. God doesn’t get grumpy.
No, God is pleased by righteousness, by worship and by
fellowship always. And God is always displeased, grieved and sorrowed by our
sin.
And so what does God think of you and I, dear Christian?
II Corinthians 5:21, “For [God] made [Christ] who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we
might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
And how does God feel about righteousness? How does God
feel about His own beloved Son? The same way which God shall always feel toward
us who have faith in the Son of God. God looks at you and is pleased, because
He is pleased to justify you by faith and to give you righteousness.
Impassibility declares that He will always, unchangeably,
love you even as He loves His own Son. Impassibility guarantees that God loves.
Jeremiah 31:3, “The LORD has appeared of old to me, saying:
‘Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore with lovingkindness
I have drawn you.”
You hear about people who have been married for years who
fall out of love. They say “I just don’t love him/her anymore”. You see
children playing with their toys, and they grow tired and bored of this toy
after that toy after that toy. You see adultery, cheating, lust and
covetousness all because of the fickle emotions to which we are subject.
But the Lord of lords is not subject to His emotions. He
rules over them according to His perfect nature. And He will always love
righteousness, righteousness that He gives those who have faith in His Son, and
therefore He will always love you, with an everlasting love. Impassibility
guarantees that.
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