I am 100% convinced of the Sovereignty of God, I affirm completely that God is all-powerful, knows all things and indeed ordains all things. Some reformed guys believe in the impassibilty of God, I don't. I see it, it fits well in the Systematic books but it doesn't make sense of how God relates in Scripture. At creation God creates Adam and Eve, knowing by this evil will enter into His newly created world. God will for the first time exercise His mercy as He commits Himself to bringing rebelious sinners back to Himself. In Genesis for example God makes a covenant with Abraham, well actually He makes a covenant with Abraham present but He takes upon Himself all the obligation whilst Abraham sleeps. In essence God makes Himself vulnerable to Abraham and His descendants, if they don't keep the covenant, God will pay the price. He does this knowing all things, knowing that they will not keep the covenant. In the minor prophets He is bound to Israel as a husband, not to a faithful wife but to an adulterous wife. Yet like Hosea he loves at a cost, bringing His unfaithful wife back time and time again. Is he impassive, I think not! No He is a loving husband who is made vulnerable by His wife's infidility. Wounded by His great love.The most vulnerable we see Him is when as the Logos He takes on flesh, knowing that His own will reject Him. He is vulnerable in a human body, subject to joy and tears, hunger and tiredness. He is vulnerable in His love as He weeps over Jerusalem, He stretches out His arms to embrace them and they put nails through His hands and hang Him on a cross. God is love!
3 comments:
Boy I have to say that I disagree with your analysis of impassibility and your equating it with impassive. Indeed you said in a recent comment that you would sign up to the WCF which states God's impassibility in terms of his being 'without passions'.
Hi Bro,
We looked at it not in Systematics but in Old Testament themes. impassibility taken to extremes means that God's emotions never change because He never changes. It sounds good but God is the most moved mover to misquote Thomas Aquinas. Does God change? No, does God reaction with emotions yes. I don't remember putting it writing that I could sign up to WCT, as you know I'd sooner sign up to the Baptist Confession 1689. God Bless, Stephen
Hi Stephen,
If God is immutable, as you say and the Scriptures say, then a good question is, how do we explain His emotional life as something that changes. Impassibility understood in the right way, as it was understood by the early church fathers and still in Christian orthodoxy, explains this.
A correct understanding of impassibility is not to do away with God's emotions it seeks to clarify them as just that, God's emotions and not ours. His emotions are not like ours in that they are not affections but full and pure and holy emotions. God is supremely content in himself that is why we equate God's blessedness with impassibility (meaning that impassibility is more than a systematic concept but a Biblical theme) and how we are meant to understand, I believe, what it is for us to be blessed as Christians. Blessedness is more than happiness for Christians, it is contentment in Christ Jesus as Lord and Saviour. understood in the right way impassibility is not cold or frosty doctrine but it is liberating and hugely beneficial to our understanding of God and consequently to our relationship with him.
There is a lot of confusion around impassibility but it is, I believe, a hall mark of Christian orthodoxy. When it is given up or not believed the door is open for all kinds of heresy. All modern heresy need a god who is passible. Giving impassibility up is a modern phenomenon which is largely not been thought through as people jump on a bandwagon that blames Greek philosophy. This is a wrong conclusion as Robert Muller notes when he says, "The modern writers who argue against a doctrine of divine impassibility as if it were little more than the uncritical importation of a Stoic concept are beating, not a dead, but a nonexistent horse."
Those who believe in the impassibility of God stand with all the great theologians of the Christian church in upholding the biblical doctrine of impassibility which, personally speaking, is comforting.
Sorry must have confused you with someone else re. WCF.
I will pray that you give up your heretical ways!;)
Blessings, R
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