Roman Catholic Church The
Catholic Church teaches
dogmatically that God is impassible. Impassibility of
God the Father is mentioned in the
Aquileian Creed (before the 4th century). As the Aquileian Creed affirms, this faith was shared by the Christian Churches of
Rome,
Alexandria of Egypt and
Jerusalem. The impassibility of God is also indirectly affirmed by the
First Vatican Council's apostolic constitution
Dei Filius, which emphasizes the ineffability of God: The divine nature accordingly has no emotions, changes, alterations, height, width, depth, or any other temporal attributes. While Jesus Christ's human nature was complete, and thus Christ possessed a human body, human mind and human soul, and thus human emotions, this human nature was
hypostatically united with the timeless, immutable, impassible divine nature, which retained all of its divine attributes without alteration, just as his human nature retained all of its human attributes. In Catholic doctrine, it would be erroneous and blasphemous to attribute changes or emotional states to God, except by analogy. Thus scriptural expressions which indicate "anger" or "sadness" on God's part are considered anthropomorphisms, mere analogies to explain mankind's relationship to God, who is impassible in his own nature. Some objecting to this claim assert that if God cannot have emotions, then God cannot love, which is a central tenet of Christianity. However, Catholics would point out that love is not an emotion except in a secondary sense, and is far more than simply a changeable emotion. Furthermore, the human nature of Christ expressed emotional love as well as possessing the timeless, unconditioned "
agape" of God.
Main theologians Theodoret, an early Christian bishop and theologian, wrote, "wild and blasphemous are they who ascribe passion to the divine nature," in his Demonstrations by
Syllogism.
Augustinism, one of the chief Christian schools of thought associated most often with
Roman Catholicism and
Calvinist Protestantism, strongly asserts the impassibility of God, as well as his
impeccability. It also defends the notion of
acts of God and divine
intercession, such as the miracles of the
Scriptures.
Martin Luther and especially
John Calvin were heavily influenced by Augustine, and their theologies are similar in many respects in regard to divine impassibility. Generally, scholars do not take anthropomorphic phrases in the Bible like "the finger of God" or "the hand of God" to mean that God literally has a hand or finger. Rather, it is interpreted as an allegory for the
Holy Spirit and an expression of
God's sovereignty over and intervention into the material world.
Views in scripture Other Christian views portray a God who does have emotions and emotional reactions to creation, but these emotions should not necessarily be viewed as altogether similar to human emotions. Genesis 1 says that humans were made in God's image, but human emotions, originally a reflection of God's emotional capacity, have been marred by the
fall of man. Human emotions are subject to time, space, and circumstance. God's emotions are always in keeping with God's character as described by the scriptures and in the person of Jesus Christ, according to Christian scholars and the Bible. A few examples are found in Genesis, chapter 8, in the account of the Flood. God is "grieved" at the pervasive evil of mankind, yet "pleased" with Noah's faithfulness. After the flood, God is "pleased" by Noah's burnt offering. Traditional Christian interpretation understood such depictions of changing emotion in God to be simply an anthropomorphic way of expressing his pleasure or displeasure with human actions. They believed God's eternal will for mankind and love for mankind in Christ does not undergo alteration; God is immutable. Although there are differing opinions in Christian circles about the impassibility of God, Christian scholars consent that Jesus was completely human and completely God, and so expressed
sanctified emotions and was subject to the same physical limitations as humanity, such as hunger or exhaustion. Most Christians traditionally believed these experiences to be proper only to Jesus' human nature. The New Testament says in
Hebrews, "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin." For this reason, God accepted Christ's sacrifice on man's behalf and so is able to offer
atonement through Christ.
Gnosticism Some early adepts of
gnosticism held that Jesus did not have a living body and was not able to suffer the Passion. This debate occupied a great deal of early Church Fathers, who took labours to prove that Jesus really did have a human body.
Theopaschism A rival doctrine is called
theopaschism, which highly insists on the suffering of the Lord Jesus at the Passion. However, theopaschism, along with
patripassionism, has often been rejected by theologians as a form of
modalism. ==Judaism==