Abstract
James Loxley Compton explores and defends the doctrine of divine impassibility. He notes that there has been a ‘passiblist turn’ in Western philosophy which has become hostile to the traditional notion that God is impassible. With very few exceptions, the contemporary debate over divine impassibility has taken place in what he calls a ‘Western arena’ with very little input from the Eastern tradition. To fill this lacuna, Compton draws upon the resources of the Eastern Christian tradition to offer an original response to contemporary critiques of the doctrine of divine impassibility. He does this by exploring two key thinkers, Origen of Alexandria and Gregory Thaumaturgus, and bringing a nuanced discussion of their concept of impassibility into conversation with contemporary philosophy of religion.
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- 1.
Gilles Emery actually refers to passibilism as a new ‘fundamental axiom’ in contemporary theology. See ‘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 (2009).
- 2.
Richard Bauckham offers a detailed account of this rise in passibilist thought (1984). He traces the origin of this trend to the 1946 publication of Kazoh Kitamori’s Theology of the Pain of God, not long after the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the Anglophone world, Bauckham cites the works of A.N. Whitehead as playing a seminal role in this shift regarding traditional affirmations of divine apatheia. Charles Hartshorne, who was taught by and worked with Whitehead, would also come to play a significant role in the development of this passibilist trend. Outside of Anglophone theology and philosophy, Bauckham cites the contributions of Emil Brunner, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Jürgen Moltmann as also furthering this move away from a classical understanding of divine impassibility. Moltmann, in his works The Crucified God and The Trinity and Kingdom, develops these concerns and becomes perhaps the most well known of passibilist authors other than Hartshorne. Representative of this turn, Marcel Sarot comments: ‘During the present century the idea the God is immutable and impassible slowly but surely given way to the idea that God is sensitive, emotional and passionate […] by now the rejection of the ancient doctrine of impassibility has so much become a theological common place, that many theologians do no even feel the need to argue for it.’ (1992, quoted in Lister, 2012, pp. 123–124). See also Ronald Goetz, ‘The Suffering God: The Rise of a New Orthodoxy’ (1986).
- 3.
For further insight as to some general misunderstandings of divine apatheia, see Paul Gavrilyuk discussion of ‘prevalent misconceptions’ in his essay ‘God’s Impassible Suffering in the Flesh’ in Keating and White, 2009, pp. 135—138.
- 4.
On this aspect of apatheia as transcendence and ontological difference, see ‘Impassibility as Transcendence: On the Infinite Innocence of God’, by David Bentley Hart in Keating, J. and White (2009). Note also Gavrilyuk, who writes, ‘divine impassibility is primarily a metaphysical term, marking God’s unlikeness to everything in the created order, not a psychological term denoting (as modern passibilists allege) God’s emotional apathy.’ (2009, p. 139).
- 5.
For recent treatments divine emotion and the possibility of various psychological states (cognitive and affective states) in God, see Ryan Mullins’ recent work God and Emotion (2020). Mullins argues for a qualified passibilist position and explores what ‘emotion’ might be predicated of the divine. See also Anastasia Scrutton’s Thinking Through Feeling (2011).
- 6.
See Paul Gavrilyuk’s The Suffering of the Impassible God (2004), Ch. 2, specifically pp. 60–63. Gavrilyuk articulates this understand of divine impassibility as an ‘apophatic qualifier’ in various patristic sources. He locates a similar function in the other divine ‘attributes’: immutability, incorporeality, indivisibility (simplicity), etc. When understood as apophatic qualifications in ‘describing’ the divine, these serve both to contrast the radical ontological difference between God and creation and to affirm the unique nature of God as revealed in Christ. This deity is altogether different in character from those gods which bepopulate the ancient Mesopotamian and Homeric Greek world who are often tempted, capricious, lustful, desirous of sacrifice, etc.
- 7.
Adolph von Harnack offered his now well known ‘Hellenisation’ thesis, in which both Judaism and Christianity were radically transformed by the adoption of Greek thought and as a result of this, alien concepts such as divine apatheia became central dogmas despite their lacking sufficient scriptural warrant. (Harnack, 1961) While Harnack’s case is overstated and lacking in both an understanding of early Judaism and Christianity, the legacy of Harnack still remains strong in many criticisms of divine impassibility. Often, contemporary critics of divine impassibility seem to work with tacit assumptions of Harnackian thought and uncritically suppose something of this ‘Hellenisation’ thesis. See also Paul Gavrilyuk (2004, pp. 22–46).
- 8.
2 Cor. 3:6.
- 9.
Contra Celsum. Bk. 1, Ch. LXXII., ANF, Vol 4, p. 529.
- 10.
De Principiis. Bk. 4, Ch. IV.4, ANF, Vol. 4, p. 485.
- 11.
Origen, 2014. Trans. M. Hooker.
- 12.
See Robert Grant’s The Early Christian Doctrine of God, 1966.
- 13.
Sabellianism (as it was known in the East) or Patripassianism (its more common name in the West) was an early ‘modalist’ heresy and seemed to expose the Father himself to suffering (patri-passio), a conclusion unacceptable to many in the early church for various reasons, though namely for the sake of preserving God’s transcendence and moral incorruption. For the Theopaschites, the traditional Trinitarian formula is upheld (though still in rough form as the Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople had not yet adjudicated the matter), but ‘the divine’—in the form of the Logos—is subject to passion (Gavrilyuk, 2004, pp. 4, 19). In this case, similarly, it is not only bodily affectations via pain, temptation, etc. which violate divine impassibility, but presumably death also.
- 14.
Joseph Hallman takes the view that Origen is torn between his devotion to scriptures and his philosophical commitments to a Neoplatonic metaphysics. This results, as Hallman see it, in a kind of inconsistency in Origen’s treatment of divine impassibility. See The Descent of God, 1991.
- 15.
I am here indebted to both Fr Thomas Weinandy, O.F.M. Cap. and Robert W. Jenson for their work on Origen’s understanding of this ‘caritatis passio.’ Jenson takes this ‘caritatis passio’ to be, for Origen, ‘a dispositional affect … in God.’ See Jenson’s ‘Ipse Pater Non Impassibilis’ in Keating and White, 2009. Thomas Weinandy devotes significant attention to the ‘passion of love’ of the Father arguing, ultimately, for an impassibilist understanding. See Weinandy’s Does God Suffer?, 2000.
- 16.
Again, see Thomas Weinandy’s Does God Suffer? for a more on this idea of God’s ‘suffering’ as an active expression of God’s love and being.
- 17.
1 John 4:8.
- 18.
For further treatment of this relationship between divine apatheia and ‘divine constancy,’ see Bruce McCormack in Keating and White (2009).
- 19.
Numbers, 23:19.
- 20.
Hebrews 1:3.
- 21.
See Jenson (2009) above, p. 9 fn.
- 22.
All quotations from Ad Theopompum cited here by page number are taken from Michael Slusser’s 1998 translation.
- 23.
Origen’s influence on Gregory (2004) is clear in the latter’s Oration and Panegyric to Origen (Pan. Or.) ANF, Vol. 6.
- 24.
- 25.
- 26.
See the ‘Paschal Homily of St John Chrysostom,’ c. 4th cent. CE. Traditionally, it is read aloud at the conclusion of the Paschal divine liturgy in the Eastern Orthodox Churches.
- 27.
Jas. 1:17.
- 28.
See The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom.
- 29.
For a more ‘ecumenical’ proposal of an ‘energetic kenoticism,’ see J. Compton, Energetic Kenosis As An Approach To The Problem Of Divine Impassibility (2020).
- 30.
‘Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself (ἐκένωσεν), taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.’ Phil. 2:5b-9. This passage in St Paul’s letter to the Philippians is often referred to as the ‘Kenotic Hymn,’ a beautiful account of Christ, thought fully divine, condescending to dwell in human flesh and suffering even unto death.
- 31.
See Philo in De Post. 168–169 and Spec. Leg. 1.47–49. The distinction is found also in Plotinus and in the works of the Cappadocian fathers: St Basil the Great, St Gregory Nazianzus, and St. Gregory Nyssa.
- 32.
For a comprehensive treatment of the origins and scriptural and patristic use of this distinction as well as the development of its theological import in Eastern Christianity, see David Bradshaw’s Aristotle East and West (2004).
- 33.
On this distinction, St Basil the Great writes, ‘…the energies are various, and the essence simple, but we say that we know our God from his energies, but do not undertake to approach near to his essence. His energies come down to us, but his essence remain beyond our reach.’ Letter CCXXXIV, 1, p. 274.
- 34.
Sergei Bulgakov (1871–1944), Russian Orthodox priest and theologian, develops a kenotic theology of God (in this general sense) in several of his works, specifically in Sophia: The Wisdom of God, 1993. The Russian philosopher and theologian, Nikolai Berdyaev (1874–1948) develops a similar idea. See his work The Divine and the Human, 1949.
- 35.
Basil the Great (of Caesarea). Letter CCXXXIV, 1, p. 274. NPNF, Vol. 8.
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Compton, J.L. (2022). Divine Impassibility in Eastern Patristic Thought: Origen of Alexandria and Gregory Thaumaturgus. In: Siemens, J., Brown, J.M. (eds) Eastern Christian Approaches to Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10762-7_5
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