God Suffers

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Access the slide deck here. 

Can God Suffer?

1) There are two attributes used to describe God:

A)   God is immutable.

1) He is unchangeable in his essence and attributes. He does not evolve, grow, or diminish because he is already perfect. He cannot get better or worse.

2) Mal. 3:6 – “For I the Lord do not change…”

3) Heb. 13:8 – “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”

B) God is impassible.

1) This does not mean that God is apathetic or emotionless.

2) It does mean that he cannot be acted upon by an outside force in a way that causes him to suffer or change his internal state against his will.

3) If God were passible, he would be vulnerable to his creation. Impassibility ensure that God’s love and justice are steady and not subject to mood swings or external pressure.

4) Num. 23:19 – “God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind.”

5) James 1:17 – “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.”

2) Examples

A)   “IMPASSIBILITY: In classical theism, the doctrine of divine impassibility denotes the denial of divine suffering. God does not suffer, nor does God experience emotion. God, as wholly ‘Other,’ does not possess human characteristics. The doctrine tries to protect God’s perfection and transcendence. In his erudite study, Does God Suffer?, Thomas Weinandy clarifies the terms of the debate. Divine impassibility signifies God’s ontological independence: ‘God is impassible in the sense that he cannot experience emotional changes of state due to his relationship to and interaction with human beings and the created order.’ God, as ‘Wholly Other,’ acts within creation without any diminution of divine perfection, and without becoming imprisoned within it.”[1]

B) In practice: Matthew Henry’s Commentary on Judges 10:16 – “God’s gracious return in mercy to them, which is expressed here very tenderly (v. 16): His soul was grieved for the misery of Israel. Not that there is any grief in God (he has infinite joy and happiness in himself, which cannot be broken in upon by either the sins or the miseries of his creatures), nor that there is any change in God: he is in one mind, and who can turn him? But his goodness is his glory. By it he proclaims his name, and magnifies it above all names; and, as he is pleased to put himself into the relation of a father to his people that are in covenant with him, so he is pleased to represent his goodness to them by the compassions of a father towards his children; for, as he is the Father of lights, so he is the Father of mercies.”[2]

C) “The church fathers were of a different mind: they thought only a God free from suffering and death could rescue us from suffering and death. It’s as if you were to see people drowning in deep water. It would be a mistake to suppose that only someone who’s in the water with them can help. The most reliable rescue comes from someone who is standing on firm ground and can hold out a pole or throw in a life-saver. Of course, remembering the doctrines of Trinity and incarnation, we do have to make the story a bit more complicated than that. God the Father, standing on the firm ground of his own eternity, throws his beloved Son into the water with us like a lifesaver, and we pull him down into the depths with us, and he drowns. But in the resurrection the Father pulls him out…”[3]

D)   “Quite the contrary, the Trinity, as ‘pure act’ (actus purus), exhibits perfect love not through the experience of mercurial emotions anthropomorphically projected onto the divine life, but through God’s full immersion into the human condition to transform it. God’s passion, then, reflects divine being, not divine emotion: ‘Being fully in act his love is fully in act and therefore his passion is fully in act. God cannot become more passionate or loving by actualizing, as human beings do, some further potential and so become more passionate or loving.’ In other words, God expresses love by what he does, not how he feels. God embodies love to the utmost degree without recourse to feeling.”[4]

E) “Probably a majority of theologians hold to the doctrine of the impassibility of God. This means, in its weaker form, that God cannot suffer; in its stronger form, that God cannot be acted upon at all. In the stronger form, three aspects of divine passibility were frequently denied to God in the past: ‘(1) external passibility or the capacity to be acted upon from without, (2) internal passibility or the capacity for changing the emotions from within, and (3) sensational passibility or the liability to feelings of pleasure and pain caused by the action of another being.’”[5]

Four things to know about God while suffering

These are written in the back pages of my Bible, so I have them when I need them.

1) God knows (he sees and hears)

A)   None of these mean God knows in the sense that he has an intellectual knowledge of the thing. They all mean that he cares.

B) Gen. 16:11, 13-14 – When Hagar fled from Sarah after being mistreated (v. 6b).

1) Ishmael means “God hears” / “because the Lord has listened to your affliction”

2) “You are a God of seeing” (note: Or “You are a God who sees me”)

(a)   “Truly here I have seen him who looks after (i.e. sees) me.”

(b)   Beer-lahai-roi means “the well of the Living One who sees me”

C) Gen. 21:15-18 – When Abraham sent Hagar and Ishmael away.

D)   Prompting the Exodus.

1) Ex. 2:23-25 – God heard, remembered, saw, knew.

2) Ex. 3:7, 9 – God sees, hears and knows.

E) Ps. 139 (esp. vv. 11-12)

2) God feels

A)   God can be acted upon (i.e. sometimes he relents)

1) Ex. 32:11, 14 - Intercession

2) Amos 7:1-6 - Intercession

3) Joel 2:12-14 – Repentance

4) Jon. 3:10 – Repentance

B) Judges 10:6-16 (esp. v. 16)

‎‎NASU - So they put away the foreign gods from among them and served the LORD; and He could bear the misery of Israel no longer.

ESV - So they put away the foreign gods from among them and served the LORD, and he became impatient over the misery of Israel.

NIV - Then they got rid of the foreign gods among them and served the LORD. And he could bear Israel’s misery no longer.

NKJV - So they put away the foreign gods from among them and served the LORD. And His soul could no longer endure the misery of Israel.

C) Is. 63:8-9 – “In all their affliction he was afflicted”

1) NET – “Through all that they suffered, he suffered too.”

2) NCV – “When they suffered, he suffered also.”

3) NIrV – “When they suffered, he suffered with them.”

D)   Lk. 15:20 (also vv. 6-7, 9-10) – God also feels positive emotions when we do what we’re supposed to do.

3) God heals

A)   His being near to and binding up the brokenhearted are not statements about proximity, but care and concern.

B) Ps. 34:17-18

C) Ps. 147:3 – “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”

D)   Is. 61:1

4) God is present

A)   Dan. 3:24-25 – The fourth man in the fire with God’s people.

B) Is. 43:1-7 (esp. v. 2) – “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.”

[1] Mark Scott, Pathways in Theodicy.

[2] Matthew Henry’s Commentary on Judges 10:16.

[3] Meister, Five Views.

[4] Mark Scott on Aquinas, Pathways in Theodicy.

[5] Carson, How Long, O Lord.