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.