Is Impassibility Passé?

The doctrine of divine impassibility, in its most brusque definition, is the invulnerability of God to suffering. More broadly, it is the absence of creaturely passions in God. 

Long a staple of especially Reformed theology, the doctrine of impassibility has come under rather severe criticism in the last quarter century. Lewis and Demarest remark that the doctrine is "unquestionably" to be rejected (1:236); Grudem remarks that the doctrine "clearly conflicts with much of the rest of Scripture" (166). Erickson is largely negative about the doctrine too, arguing that the doctrine borrows significantly from Greek philosophy rather than the Bible. He does, however, offer a helpful mediating position of divine empathy vis-à-vis divine sympathy: God feels emotion/pain, but not as his creatures do (295).

As is so often the case in theology, dueling definitions have become the devil's playground. The current vitriol against impassibility derives largely from a subtly refined definition of the doctrine, viz., the absence of emotions in God. If this be the definition for impassibility, then we should indeed reject the theory as unambiguously conflicted with Scripture. But emotions and passions are not synonyms, so denying emotions in God and denying creaturely passions in God are not the same thing.

William G. T. Shedd offers an outstanding definition of impassibility that I'd like to suggest deserves a fresh hearing. He writes,

God cannot be wrought upon, and impressed, by the universe of matter and mind which he has created from nothing. Creatures are passively related to each other, and are made to be affected by the other creatures; but the Creator is self-subsistent and independent of creation, so that he is not passively correlated to anything external to himself.... Even when God is complacent towards a creature’s holiness, and displacent toward a creature’s sin, this is not the same as a passive impression upon a sensuous organism, from an outward sensible object, eliciting temporarily a sensation that previously was unfelt. Sin and holiness are not substances; and God’s love and wrath are self-moved and unceasing energies of the Divine nature. He is voluntarily and eternally complacent towards good, and displacent toward evil (1:171).

If I may summarize, divine impassibility for Shedd means that God, being outside his decreed universe and possessed, by virtue of his decree, of absolute prescience, cannot be surprised by his creatures so as to be suddenly affected psychologically by them. Or perhaps better, impassibility is God’s aseity or independence in the sphere of the affections. 

Let me explain this last statement. We tend to think of independence in the sphere of volition: God’s decree is not affected by the decisions of his creatures or subject to the freedom of his creatures. What I am suggesting is that the same thing is true in the sphere of affection: God’s emotions are not influenced by, subjected to, or overcome by the passions and savagery of his creatures. And so while his emotions of love, hatred, etc., are very real, they are independent, dispositional, and dispassionate, not contrived, reactionary, or passionate. God’s emotions are qualitatively different than those of his creatures.

So why is this important? Well, let me suggest one practical answer. When open theism made its attack on orthodoxy, it did so not by denying the doctrine of divine freedom (they redefined divine freedom into omnicompetence, to be sure, but they did not reject it out of hand). They instead attacked orthodoxy where they met the least resistance: they attacked the doctrine of divine impassibility. In short, open theism earned its hearing in the evangelical world by affirming that God’s primary affection of love was qualitatively the same as man’s. And they met very little resistance.

Thankfully, orthodoxy has stepped up to battle open theism, and has experienced some success. The popularity of open theism is not nearly what it once was. However, I’m convinced that if divine impassibility had been ably defended from the beginning, open theism would have been cut off much earlier, and casualties would have been fewer. In short, I’m not convinced that the doctrine of impassibility is passé.  

You Can Lead a Horse to Water...

“How to Lead a Child to Christ.” The title of the article stood out to me, if for no other reason than that I have been thinking very hard lately about the spiritual condition of my sons. But the more I thought about the title, the more agitated I became. I scanned the article skeptically, and to my dismay, I found that it was much as I had expected: a mini-manual instructing church workers how to effectively persuade children to ask Jesus into their hearts. At first I was angry, reliving afresh the damage and confusion that this approach had caused not only for me and my wife, but to a lesser degree, for our children. After all, any first-year seminarian knows that, in point of fact, (1) no one but the Spirit can effectively cause a person to embrace Christ and (2) anybody who thinks otherwise is almost sure to leave a tragic trail of false profession, angst, and spiritual carnage.

Then I cooled down a bit and considered with some sympathy the earnestness that marked those who had inflicted this damage. They were, for the most part, model church-members who had somehow become convinced that “leading children to Christ” was the very raison d’être for children’s ministry. And that’s when I decided to write up a blog post.

There’s a real sense that introducing children to Christ IS the very raison d’être for children’s ministry. Bible stories that introduce children to the Bible’s story line and catechesis that introduces them to the basics of the Christian faith do this quite admirably. I laud those who are adept at this skill. If that is what you mean by leading a child to Christ, and you have particular insight into how the adolescent mind receives this kind of data, then I’m all for you writing an article about it. I frankly need articles like that. But as you write, please recall the worn words of the old proverb—not a biblical proverb, mind you, but one that illustrates theological truth pretty well on this point—“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.” And if your article on “how to lead a child to Christ” reads instead like an article on “how to make him drink,” please rethink your article. Because you can’t make him drink.

One little book that has proved exceptionally helpful to me in this regard is Dennis Gunderson’s Your Child’s Profession of Faith, now in its second edition (Grace and Truth Books, 2010). It won’t take more than an hour or so to read. But it will be an hour very well invested.

Thought Question for the Day

I’m at home sick today and spending more time than I ought reading blogs.

Anyway, Darryl Hart had a very penetrating question on his blog today: “Is neo-Calvinism proximately responsible for the triumph of bad taste and poor music in Reformed churches?”

…or, for that matter, in many evangelical churches?

Read the whole thing here.

Follow-Up on Evangelical Secondary Separation

In November last year I asked you, the readers, a couple of questions about conservative evangelicalism and what any given conservative evangelical would have to change before ecclesiastical fellowship could ensue.

The response was not overwhelming, but the persistent answer was that secondary separation was the critical issue. Specifically, he needed to either purge or withdraw from alliances that include believers who grant Christian recognition to people who are demonstrably not Christians. The particular concern in view was James MacDonald, a founding member of the Gospel Coalition, who insisted on calling a oneness Pentecostal by the label brother. Today the news came out that James MacDonald has withdrawn from the Gospel Coalition.

Nowhere is it communicated by this statement or by those who accepted the resignation that MacDonald was "forced out," nor is there any statement of censure. If these occurred, they were private in nature, and as such can at best be inferred. This will no doubt be a stumbling block to some. But let me ask the questions anyway: (1) Is this secondary separation? And, as a follow-up, (2) what more would you, the reader, require in order to pave the way for fellowship?

Christianity and Rawlsianism

As a Baptist and proponent of the two-kingom model of civil engagement I believe strongly in the separation of Church and State. But I don't believe in the separation of religion and state. In fact, I don't believe in the separation of religion from anything. While there is undoubtedly a civic sphere answerable immediately to Caesar and an ecclesiastical sphere answerable immediately to Christ, there truly is “not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry out: ‘Mine!’” (Kuyper). Everything that a person does in life is a testimony to whether or not he believes this fact, i.e., whether or not he fully embraces Christian religion. Political theory cannot be excepted from this rule.

While evangelicals have historically tended to vote as something of a conservative block, the idea of an evangelical "right" has been slowly eroding. Part of this is surely due to the fact that economic and foreign policies rather than social policies are "trending" right now. But even when one looks strictly at social concerns, the consistently evangelical right is disappearing. Two key issues seem to be feeding this trend: (1) abortion fatigue and (2) a considerable uptick in concern about social justice. About the former I can say nothing except that we simply cannot afford to become fatigued into ambivalence about the consent to and even advocacy of infanticide. I realize that in this election cycle "it's the economy, stupid." But it's hard to imagine how any issue can possibly ever eclipse mass murder of the helpless such that it becomes an ancillary issue.

But this post isn't about abortion. This post is about the second factor: social justice. The Bible is, of course, replete with divine expectations of justice, and at first blush, the political left seems far more attuned to this concern than is the political right. In fact, the genius of American political liberalism, expressed most neatly (perhaps) in John Rawls's Theory of Justice, is that the purpose of human government is to enforce "justice as fairness" in every sphere of life. To this end, society must be structured to attend to the most disadvantaged in society, irrespective (for Rawls at least) of the circumstances of their disadvantage. No greater good exists in society than equity or fairness, and the best government is the one that most successfully facilitates such fairness. In this model, the highest form of societal evil is for the socially advantaged to (1) refuse to share their wealth with the disadvantaged or to (2) discriminate in the sharing of their wealth. This is the prevailing political theory undergirding, for instance, the "Occupy" Movement.

Surely, no one wants to be perceived as an opponent of social justice. But here's the thing. Not everyone who champions social justice, and Rawls most especially, is championing the kind of social justice promoted in the Christian Scriptures. Note the following:

(1) Rawlsianism misdefines justice. The biblical concept of justice is not fairness/equity, but the establishment of moral rectitude in keeping with God's holy and revealed standard--a standard that almost immediately informs us that social welfare is not a matter of moral right, but of common grace. It is never truly deserved and is at times even inappropriate (after all, if an [able-bodied] man will not work, he should not eat--2 Thess 3:10), though select circumstances render it both appropriate and good.

(2) Rawlsianism offers an inadequate standard for justice. Rawls claims that the principles of justice are chosen from behind a "veil of ignorance," and represent the consensus of the "reasonable" from a "fair position." Of peculiar interest here is Rawls's insistence that private religion is a primary obstacle to social justice. For Rawls, the best politician is the one who can most completely excise private religion from his political theory. While Rawls is not opposed to "reasonable" religion (i.e., religion that can be normed by independent, socio-cultural standards), he sees "unreasonable" religion (which I most ardently and unapologetically practice) as one of the greatest enemies of justice. This is a serious problem for any true believer.

(3) In keeping with the previous point, Rawlsianism tends to deflect attention away from other biblically prescribed social structures such as the family and the church, vesting government with the social responsibilities that previously belonged to these other structures. As such, Rawlsianism actually tends to undermine the explicitly stated NT purposes for government, viz., to establish an environment in which "we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness" (1 Tim 2:2) and to, according to divine standards of righteousness, "punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right" (1 Pet 2:14).

(4) Rawlsianism confuses ontological equality with economic equity. While all mankind are created equally in God's image and have intrinsically identical worth (ontological equality), this does not mean that all share identity of station in life (economic equity). As nothing less than the Trinitarian arrangement informs us, there is no injustice in economic inequality. In fact, it is a necessary part of every orderly society.

(5) Finally, Rawlsianism operates on the presupposition of the goodness of man. The very idea that man can be expected to be rightly "reasonable" apart from dependence (witting or unwitting) upon the Christian worldview is absurd. Depraved man's tendency is always to exchange the truth of God for a lie.

I hasten to add here that this is not an argument for absolutely free capitalism. Untethered capitalism fares no better than Rawlsianism in the matter of depravity, creating a certain vulnerability to private oppression just as surely as Rawlsianism creates a certain vulnerability to public oppression. We cannot afford to be blind to this fact. More troubling still is libertarianism, which foolishly ignores human fallenness and pretends that government is therefore unnecessary. As Paul clearly opines, we cannot hope for moral rectitude to prevail in society without secular governors functioning (unwittingly at times) as "ministers of God for good" (Rom 13:4). Ironically, however, the presence of government, itself a manifestation of common grace, can effectively stifle other operations of common grace if it exceeds its biblical purposes.

This is by no means an argument for any particular candidate in either primary or general election. I can honestly say that I am still somewhat undecided at this point. What I am saying is that for the believer, politics cannot possibly be thought of as an activity independent of one's Christian worldview. Voting is no less a religious discipline than is preaching. And it is high time we realize it.

Back from Overseas

Just got back yesterday from two weeks overseas. Thanks for all who prayed. Sorry about the silence. Happily I missed the Tebow 316-yard performance against my Steelers (which some likened to John 3:16). Instead I saw his 136-yard performance against New England, which undoubtedly should be connected with Matthew 13:6: "But when the sun rose they were scorched, and since they had no root they withered away." Which tells you what I really think about the hermeneutics of Tebowmania.

For what I think about the apologetics of Tebowmania, see this.

Sorry, that's all I have today. Just went 36 hours without sleep!

"He Had to Be Made Like His Brothers in Every Way."

Also posted at our new Detroit Baptist Seminary blog, Theologically Driven 

My pre-Christmas series on the virgin birth focused on preserving (1) the preincarnate divine personhood of Christ and (2) his impeccability. But the virgin birth also guaranteed that Jesus would be fully man as well. Christ was tempted at every point like as we are, with only one exception—unlike us he had no sin nature (Heb 4:15): Christ as God did not and could not have sinned. But apart from this exception, Jesus was "made like his brothers in every way"; indeed, the author of Hebrews can countenance nothing less (2:17).

Surely, we exclaim, there must be some additional exception to this statement! But as we look at the proposed exceptions, none seems to meet the test of Scripture:

• Some suggest that Christ never got sick. But the author of Hebrews says that Christ was acquainted with our weaknesses (Heb 4:15). His earthly body was not glorified until after the Resurrection, and his vital connection with Mary would suggest that his body broke down just as ours from the effects of hunger, thirst, disease, and injury. There is no reason to think that he had any sort of “super-immunity” to shield him from these things. And when his body was subjected to the torture of the Passion, his horribly battered body ultimately stopped working: he died. We must insist, of course, that he had no personal sin or imputed guilt, but this does not mean that he escaped the inherited effects of sin on the human race in general.

• Some suggest that Christ never suffered the effects of clumsiness and was always perfectly efficient in all that he did. But this does not follow either. Like the rest of us he tripped and stumbled as he learned to walk. In the carpenter’s shop, he did not at first hit all his nails squarely, and perhaps even struck his thumb or forefinger on occasion. That’s an ordinary part of learning, and there is no reason to think that he escaped this process of maturation (Luke 2:52). Surely he developed a healthy work ethic, but there is no reason to believe that he was anything more than an ordinary, hard-working carpenter’s apprentice (Isa 53:3–4).

• Others have suggested that his body and blood were constitutively different from ours and even “divine” in nature—that there was something in their physical properties that made them intrinsically more capable of atoning for sin. But Hebrews 2:17 tells us that the palpable reason why Christ was able to make atonement for sin is his absolute identification with his brothers. His blood atoned not because of its constitutive superiority, but because of the sinlessness of the person who spilled it. In fact, if his body and blood are constitutively different from ours, his death does not help us at all. Our very redemption is jeopardized if we confound the divine and human natures of Christ.

One might look at the points above with consternation and conclude that I am denigrating the greatness of our Lord Christ by humanizing him overly much. On the contrary, Paul teaches us that the degree of Christ’s exaltation is coordinate with and dependent on the degree of his humiliation:

      [Christ Jesus], being in very nature God,

            did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own
      advantage;

      rather, he made himself nothing

            by taking the very nature of a servant,

            being made in human likeness.

      And being found in appearance as a man,

            he humbled himself

            by becoming obedient to death—

            even death on a cross!

      Therefore God exalted him to the highest place

            and gave him the name that is above every name,

      that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,

            in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

      and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,

            to the glory of God the Father (Phil 2:6–11).