Daniel Castelo - Divine Impassibility: Four Views of Gods Emotions and Suffering

We would like to first and foremost thank the wonderful contributors who agreed to set their views down on paper for this volume and likewise agreed to be scrutinized by their peers with whom they disagree on this topic. It has been a joy to work with Drs. Castelo, Dolezal, Peckham, and Oord and to have the opportunity to be sharpened by their work. We greatly appreciated their timeliness in responding to inquiries and revisions, and we hope many readers will enjoy the fruits of their labors.

We would also like to thank InterVarsity Press for partnering with us on this project, and particularly David McNutt, who provided insightful and valuable assistance as this project began to take shape. We are also grateful for the work of Ben Forrest who served as the originator of this project but had to step down from it for personal reasons. His work set the initial direction for the volume and we hope he finds it as enjoyable to read as we did to put together.

I (Robert) would like to thank my wife, Jessica, and my children for their love and support. I would also like to thank my colleagues at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary for their encouragement in this writing project. I especially want to thank Rustin Umstattd, John Mark Yeats, Matthew Barrett, Sam Bierig, and David Sundeen, who have each in various ways encouraged and contributed to the completion of this work.

I (Chad) would like to thank my wife, Caroline, and my children for their love and support, as well as my wonderful colleagues in the Liberty University School of Divinity who have encouraged me through this and so many other projects.

ROBERT J. MATZ AND A. CHADWICK THORNHILL

Impassibility, whats that?

This book considers four views on a topic that many Christians may have never given significant thought to: the emotional life of God. Every time we speak of Gods love, Gods anger, Gods jealousy, even Gods suffering, we make assumptions about Gods emotional life. At first glance, questions about Gods emotional life may appear to be speculations similar to questions of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. After all, on what basis can we even begin to speculate as to how a God who exists independently from his creation emotionally relates with and to his creation?

Yet as we consider the references to Gods love, jealousy, anger, and compassion; or ponder what it means for God to be unchanging, distinct from us, and perfect; or reflect on what it means for God to become incarnate as a man, to live, to suffer, and die, we are forced to wrestle with the idea that God reacts and emotes toward us. Yet, if we as the created can bring about such responses within the Creator, how can God be perfect, complete, and full apart from his creation? Would not this imply that God needs us in order to be God? Can such a being even be rightly understood as God? As we consider the question of the passibility and impassibility of God, we consider (in part) what it means for God to be God.

This book presents four theses about what it means for God to be God in relation to himself and to his creation. The first comes from James E. Dolezal (PhD, Westminster Theological Seminary), assistant professor at Cairn University. He argues for strong impassibility, according to which God does not experience emotional changes. The second view comes from Daniel Castelo (PhD, Duke University), professor of dogmatic and constructive theology at Seattle Pacific University, who asserts a qualified impassibility, in which God cannot be affected by an outside force against his own will (implying that God can be affected by that which he wills to be affected by).

In contrast to these first two definitions, the next two views, strong and qualified passibilists, see God as being affected by his creation. John C. Peckham (PhD, Andrews University), professor of theology and Christian philosophy at Andrews University, argues for a qualified passibility, wherein God experiences emotional change because of his creation. This change, for Peckham, is tempered by Gods freedom and omnipotence. Finally, Thomas Jay Oord (PhD, Claremont Graduate University), professor of theology and philosophy at Northwest Nazarene University, argues for strong passibility, in which humans bring about genuine emotional change within the divine life, causing God to experience the unexpected.