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.