GOD IS IMPASSIBLE AND IMPASSIONED
Toward a theology of divine emotion
By Rob Lister
IVP Apollos. 333 pages. £7.99
ISBN 978 1 844 746 019
When this book dropped through my door to be reviewed, a number of people questioned the value of it. However, this is an important book.
Lister argues that the modern trend to suggest that it is possible for God to suffer (a belief in divine passibility) raises profound challenges to an orthodox doctrine of God. In meeting these challenges, Lister’s aim is to develop the traditional (i.e. patristic and biblical) affirmation that God is both impassible and impassioned. He argues that we must insist on both parts of that dynamic. His contention is that God is impassible — in that his emotions cannot be involuntarily wrung from him by his creatures, meaning God is never passive in his emotional stance — and that God is impassioned — in that God does have divine, perfect and vibrant emotions, so is genuinely affected by his creatures but never in a way that conflicts with his choice to be so affected.
Rejecting a caricature
In Part One, Lister surveys how Christians through the years have understood the interaction of God’s impassibility and impassionedness. The intention here is to show that people have often rejected a caricature of impassibility rather than the ‘real thing’. When it is seen that earlier Christian thinkers were able to synthesise the truths that God is impassible and impassioned many of the objections to accepting impassibility disappear.
In Part Two, Lister sets out his own understanding of the interplay between impassibility and impassionedness from a number of different theological angles. These provide us with a way to understand and integrate the biblical affirmations of God’s impassibility and impassionedness in a responsible way. This section concludes with an exploration about how the incarnation nuances our understanding of these issues.
Analogical language
A number of helpful things stood out for me. I appreciated Lister’s careful explanation of how the language in the Bible about God’s emotions is analogical — in that his emotions are like ours in some ways but unlike ours in others. I also valued his insistence that in formulating our doctrine of God we must start with God rather than ourselves. This stops us understanding what his emotions must be like from what ours are like. I found myself agreeing with Lister’s insistence on both God’s impassibility and impassionedness.
Challenging book
However, this is also a challenging book. Any book that uses the terms ‘patripassian-ism’, ‘theopaschitism’ and ‘modalistic monarchianism’ in the first chapter is operating at a certain technical level which will not appeal to everyone. There is a depth of engagement required that means this book is not an easy read. However, Lister writes with clarity even when ranging over weighty territory, making him an insightful guide along the way. I commend both Lister’s contention and his book.
