God Is Impassible and Impassioned by Rob Lister

Author:Rob Lister [Rob Lister]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4335-3244-3
Publisher: Crossway
Published: 2012-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

1I designate Richard Creel and Thomas Weinandy as being particularly “pivotal” because they seem to have been on the leading edge of this impassibilist recovery and thereby to have stimulated others to fresh appraisals of this doctrine. Both authors are cited liberally in contemporary scholarly interaction with this topic. Other impassibilist thinkers who have made important contributions in the wake of Creel and Weinandy include Paul Gavrilyuk and David Bentley Hart. At this juncture, of course, I am just pointing out the thought of nonevangelical impassibilists. In the course of this chapter, we will also survey the varied perspectives of key evangelicals on the doctrine of divine impassibility.

2Richard E. Creel, Divine Impassibility: An Essay in Philosophical Theology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 3–9.

3Ibid., 11.

4Ibid. I partially concur with Marcel Sarot’s assessment of Creel’s fourfold application of impassibility. Sarot correctly suggests that we should reserve the term “impassible” in reference to the issue of feelings only, with suffering understood as a subset of the larger category of feelings. Marcel Sarot, God, Passibility and Corporeality (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1992), 29–30. As Sarot points out, we have other more oft used terms (e.g., immutability and omniscience) under which to discuss the possibility of influencing God’s nature, will, and knowledge. Aside from impassibility, there is no such separate term covering the discussion of the influenceability of God’s emotions. Ibid., 30. Moreover, the history of the discussion, ancient (and modern as Sarot points out), validates the select usage of applying impassibility to the category of divine emotion. Where I disagree with Sarot is in his particular application of the term immutability to divine emotion. As he puts it, impassibility should be defined as “immutability with regard to one’s feelings, or the quality of one’s inner life.” Ibid. This is a problem if “immutability” is meant to be applied to divine emotion exclusively in the absolute sense. To be sure, God’s nature and ethical commitments are immutable, but as I will contend in the formative portion of this book, when it comes to a consideration to God’s feelings, “invulnerability” provides a more fitting and more historically accurate description. It retains what we might call God’s emotional sovereignty without implying a basic inability for emotional responsiveness to creation. Having said all that, since Creel’s argument develops this fourfold application, I will trace all four of the elements he proposes.

5Richard E. Creel, “Immutability and Impassibility,” in A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, ed. Philip L. Quinn and Charles Taliaferro (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1997), 314.

6Creel, Divine Impassibility, 12.

7Ibid., 13–14.

8Ibid., 20.

9Ibid., 22, italics his; see also 204.

10Ibid., 82.

11Ibid.

12The example that Creel gives is that “once upon a time . . . God knew that it was not possible for me to go for a swim; now he knows that it is possible for me to do so. Hence, his knowledge of what is possible for me now has been changed by a change in my abilities.” Ibid.

13Ibid., 87.

14Ibid.

15Ibid., 97–99.

16Ibid., 206; also see 132.

17Ibid.

18Ibid., 125.

19Ibid., 206.

20Ibid., 206–7.

21I should point out

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