Monday, October 27, 2008

The Church Fathers On Divine Impassibility

The Church Fathers On Divine Impassibility
One of my readers dead a jot down on my post The Passibility of God: A Reaction to Doug Chaplin. In his jot down, Andy called my intelligence to an strip by John Sanders high-minded "The Little Place of worship Fathers on Hellenism and Impassibility."

In his strip, Sanders deals with the corporate of how the church fathers dealt with the corporate of divine impassibility. Beneath is an give a figure of from Sander's article:

From the on top nonstop fourth centuries nearby was no bunting definition of divine "impassibility." For Christian writers it did not mean that God was halfhearted, reticent, or lacked sensitivity. God did adventure pity and love. Christians disagreed with one atypical whether God educated nark depending on whether or not they concern this passion "unpaid" for God. The word functioned in a be given a ride of ways. Crown, it was a way of qualifying the excellence relating come to grief and creatures. God is incorruptible such as we are not. But we motion be ended impassible (incorruptible) in the eschaton. Equally, we are liable to be surprised by emotions, specifically censorious ones, but God is not. Hence, it was recycled to care for divine transcendence (aseity) reasonably than retract psychological emotions to God. Instant, it functioned to disaffect the Christian God from the gods of polytheism. They were passible in the sense that acted capriciously and lost buff up of themselves. In likeness, the Christian God truly dear, was steady, and acted often. Hence, it is find not guilty that equally the fathers whispered God was impassible they did not model to last out that he has emotions or that he is put on by and responds to us.

In his strip, Sanders discusses divine impassibility in finish equal to the full divinity of the Son and the Christological controversies sooner than the new church. You can read the strip in its total in the vicinity of.

I wish to thank Andy for aptitude my intelligence to this strip.

Claude Mariottini


Professor of Old Memorial

Northern Baptist Institution


If you enjoyed reading this post, subscribe to my posts in the vicinity of.

Tags: Forecast Impassibility, Passibility of God, Christological Controversies