Explain The Christian View That God Is Impassible Flashcards
-Traditionally, God is thought to be omnibenevolent, omnipotent, omniscient and transcendent.
- God is thought to be impassable.
-This means that God cannot experience emotion or suffering or pain and therefore has no emotions similar to human feelings.
- This is because God is traditionally thought of as immutable, meaning unchanging.
- The argument is that if God is a perfect being, then God cannot change since a perfect being that changes necessarily changes away from perfection towards imperfection.
- Since emotions are fleeting; they come and go, this suggests that a being which can feel emotion must thereby change and thus cannot be perfect.
- So, it seems part of God’s perfection that he cannot be subject to emotional change.
- God could potentially display emotions such as anger or grief but only because a particular situation provoked that reaction from his underlying unchanging state of compassion and mercy.
- however the idea that God cannot possibly suffer is a problem when one considers how Jesus supposedly suffered on the cross
- in this case of his crucifixion, the traditional thought has often adhered to some form of the kinetic model whereby Jesus emptied himself of his divine aspects
- making him suffer because of his human nature which makes Jesus passible,whereas his divine nature (God) is still traditionally thought of as impassable.
- This is also highlighted by God’s plan to overcome suffering and death with resurrection of our bodies without their current limitations on judgement day.
Para 1
- the Old Testament reveals an omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenelovent God who transcends existence.
- he is a God that exists at an epistemic distance and can never be truky
