FREE CHURCH COLLEGE
Bachelor of Theology
Academic Year 2009/2010
Systematic Theology 2.2
Term Essay:
Book Review
Weinandy, T.G. Does God Suffer? (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000)
3345 words
Registration No.: 0705
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Summary Introduction
In the book ‘Does God Suffer?’ Thomas Weinandy offers an erudite, able and
sensitive defense of the traditional Christian doctrine of divine impassibility. The work is
undertaken in response to the slew of contemporary theologies which advocate the need for
espousing a passibly suffering God in contemporary Christian proclamation. Weinandy’s
polemic is driven by a sensitive pastoral concern, even while his approach is rigorous
(encompassing biblical, historical, theological and philosophical methodologies) and
comprehensive (not simply defending impassibility, but providing as comprehensive as
possible, a Theology of Suffering as well). The defense is undertaken from within a selfconsciously Orthodox, Catholic, Thomist, position, offering clarification of the tradition,
while at times breaking new grounds in the application of the tradition’s axioms. The stated
aims of the work are twofold: 1) To refute erroneous arguments and assumptions that support
notions of divine passibility and 2) To present positively, divine impassibility as “more
biblically authentic, more historically accurate, more philosophically convincing, more
theologically persuasive, and so more emotionally gratifying.” (p. viii)
Outline of Contents
From the beginning, Weinandy situates his work in the context of post-holocaust
theological responses to human suffering and surveys the arguments raised by these
theologies against divine impassibility. Weinandy sees the persuasiveness of divine
passibility theologies as clustering around three headings: 1) The social and cultural milieu of
post-holocaust pathos, 2) biblical reflections on the passionate God of the Old Testament, and
God incarnate in the New, and 3) philosophical critiques of Greco-Platonic influences on the
traditional doctrine of impassibility. Accordingly, much of subsequent chapters are taken up
in treating these matters.
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Before refuting the arguments and presuppositions of divine passibility however,
Weinandy takes a brief excurses in chapter 2 to treat theological prolegomena, rejecting a
problem-solving approach for a more proper mystery-elucidating one. Here, he also makes
clear what he is arguing for in his central thesis concerning divine impassibility, and what is
the notion of passibility that he is specifically denying: “God is impassible in the sense that
he cannot experience emotional changes of state due to his relationship to and interaction
with human beings and the created order.” (p. 38). This however, “does not imply… that God
is not utterly passionate in his love, mercy and compassion.” Accordingly, the notion of
divine passibility that is denied in the study is “that God experiences inner emotional changes
of state, either of comfort or discomfort, whether freely from within or by being acted upon
from without.” (p.39)
Chapter 3 is taken up with the Scriptural presentations of God in the Old Testament,
revolving around questions concerning God’s transcendence and immanence. Weinandy
deems that “the notion of God’s transcendence and immanence is pivotal to the discussion of
his being impassible or passible.”(p.55) Accordingly, the main burden of this chapter is to
demonstrate that the Old Testament never regards the transcendence and immanence of God
as antonyms. The revelation of YHWH as “One, Savior, Creator and All Holy” shows rather,
that “God is able to be present and active as the Wholly Other, and is present and active only
because he is the Wholly Other”. This revelation of God is, Weinandy believes, “the primary,
central and pivotal mystery of biblical revelation and of the Jewish/Christian faith.” (p.53)
Laid out in more philosophical terms, “While there is an epistemological priority in the
manner in which God is known and an ontological priority in the manner in which God is,
and so can be known, the God who is transcendent is the same God who is immanent and
vice-versa”. (p.42) This being the case, the instances in Scripture which contain possible
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suggestions of change or passibility in God are to be read as anthropomorphisms, and not as
suggestions that God is simply ethically, but not ontologically, impassible.
Chapters 4 and 5 proceed to deal with matters concerning the Patristic Doctrine of
God. Weinandy moves briskly but sure-footedly through the New Testament and Early
Christian bridges to a more extended treatment of Patristic writings with a single aim in
mind: to demonstrate that contrary to popular and even scholarly caricatures, the Fathers did
not ingest Greco-Platonic philosophy hook, line and sinker in their Doctrine of God. The key
inoculum in their theological understanding is the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo. (p.108-9)
Accordingly, the traditional Christian doctrine of impassibility is not to be confused with that
of Greek Philosophy, as it so often is, by those who reject divine impassibility. Weinandy
points out that the fathers were not so much concerned with defending Greek notions of
divine apatheia, as they were with defending the total perfection of God’s scripturally
revealed attributes. “In order to accentuate these positive biblical attributes which accrued to
God as Creator, the Fathers attributed to him a whole cluster of negative attributes some of
which are directly biblical in origin and some of which stem from philosophical reflection.
For the Fathers, these negative attributes served a twofold purpose. They primarily were used
to distinguish God from the created order, but in so doing they equally gave more noetic
content to the positive attributes.” (p.109) “Thus, there is little, if any, ground for the familiar
criticism that the attribute of divine immutability transformed, within the teaching of the
Fathers, the living and dynamic God of the Bible into the static and inert God of Greek
philosophy. The problem is that contemporary critics of the Fathers consistently give to the
attribute of divine immutability the positive noetic content of being static, lifeless and inert,
something which the Fathers never argued for nor even contemplated. The Fathers grasped,
as the contemporary critics do not, that to say that God is immutable is to deny those aspects
of his nature – changes of a diminishing or of a developmental kind – which would
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jeopardize or render less than perfect his dynamic vitality as the one who truly is. While the
Fathers may have snatched the attribute of immutability from the Greek philosophical
vocabulary and tradition, they radically altered it so as to assert, in a philosophical manner,
God’s unconditional goodness and unqualified love as revealed in the scriptures.” (p.110111)
Discussions in the book thus far have been largely polemic. Weinandy has spared no
efforts in demonstrating that passibilist theologies often err firstly, against Scripture, in
treating God’s transcendence and immanence as antonyms, and secondly, against history, in
treating the Patristic Doctrine of God as unfortunately compromised by Greco-Platonic
philosophy. From chapter 6 onwards, the book engages more fully in constructive theology
and philosophical defense of divine immutability.
Weinandy deems Chapter 6, which focuses on the Trinity’s loving act of Creation, as
the heart of the entire study (p.114). The chapter however, does not seek to address the
question of im/passibility directly. Rather, it presents a theological and philosophical account
of God and of his relationship to the created and human order, seeking to demonstrate how
one can theologically and philosophically justify the biblical claim of God’s absolute
otherness while equally and simultaneously maintaining his intimate loving relationship to
the world and human beings. The arguments in this chapter certainly place significant
demands on its readers, especially for those who may be “theological neophytes”. A helpful
summary however, is offered at the end of the chapter (pp.144-146). The key idea that
Weinandy wants readers to grasp; “what holds the entire argument of this chapter together, in
all of its inter-related components”, is the notion of “act” as it relates to God. (p.145) God as
“pure act” (actus purus), has no unrealized potential and hence, is never in the state of
change. To be in a state of change indicates that a being still has unrealized potential and is
hence not fully in act. Accordingly, the immutability and impassibility of God which arises
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from His being “fully in act”, arises not from His being in stasis, but conversely, from His
infinite dynamism and intense involvement. Hence, God as One (the only One) who is “pure
act”, at one and the same time, sets Him apart as Wholly Other, while putting Him
simultaneously in absolute relationship with all that is in Creation. This however, is a
philosophical explication, and Weinandy does not expound this understanding until he has
moved theologically through arguments founded upon the Trinity as Persons in Subsistent
Relations, and God as Existence itself (ipsum esse). Weinandy’s Trinitarian argument for
immutability/impassibility is an attempt to root the philosophical arguments of the tradition
on more biblical-theological grounds. His argument, in its application of the orthodox
Trinitarian axioms to the doctrine of Creation towards a defense of divine impassibility, is
possibly an original endeavor.
It is clear that Weinandy does not wish to make human suffering the foundation for an
understanding of what God is like, but rather, wishes to understand human suffering in the
light of who God is. Having hence treated the Doctrine of God in the previous chapter,
Weinandy progress on in Chapter 7 to discuss the subjects of “sin”, “suffering” and “God’s
love”. The main points of this chapter are clear. 1) Suffering arises because of sin. “Sin, as
the source of evil, deprives human beings of the goods proper to being human. It is this
deprivation of good which, by necessity, causes human suffering. Human beings suffer
because, through sin, they are deprived of their proper relationships with God and
others…etc” (p.152) 2) God does not suffer because there is a Creator-Creature distinction
and because of the Perfection of God as a Trinity of Persons. (pp. 152-158) 3) God
nevertheless, is still the God of love even though he does not suffer, as “suffering is not
constitutive of love”. (p.160) How however, is God’s love related to human suffering?
Weinandy points us back to the fact that God is always “fully in act” and hence, the divine
attribute of love is always fully in act. This re-orientates us to the fact that God’s love is
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always fully present and active in every situation, in all its various facets. In a sin-tinged
creation and existence however, the experience of certain facets of God’s love may involve
the experience of suffering in accordance with an individual’s personal situation at any one
time. “If a person sins, he or she knows and experiences God’s love as a rebuke and as an
admonishment. If the person repents, he or she knows and experiences God’s love as
compassionate and forgiving, and so rejoices in his merciful love. If a person suffers due to
injustice, he or she knows, in faith and sometimes by experience, that God’s loving-kindness
and consolation are present.” “Thus God is perfectly compassionate not because he ‘suffers
with’ those who suffer, but because his love fully and freely embraces those who suffer.
What human beings cry out for in their suffering is not a God who suffers, but a God who
loves wholly and completely, something a suffering God could not do.” (pp.163-164)
Chapters 8 to 10 are taken up with Christology and its implications for a Theology of
Suffering. While these are largely still chapters of constructive theology, they do contain a
polemic barb. In the first instance, the passibilist theologies of Moltmann et.al., frequently
find in the Incarnation and Crucifixion of God in Christ, basis for which to be persuaded that
God is ontologically passible. Those who hold to the doctrine of divine impassibility, it is
claimed, do not take the cross as seriously as the passibilist do. Weinandy turns the criticism
on its head and demonstrates rather, that if we should hold to divine passibility, we end up
relativising the Cross and emptying it of its salvific merits and significance for those who are
suffering. According to Weinandy, “Many modern theologians are so consumed with
championing a God who suffers in himself, that they fail to grasp the full significance of the
Incarnation and the transforming effects of Christ’s redemptive suffering.” (p.173) Weinandy
asserts in chorus with the patristic fathers, that it is the Impassible who suffers in Christ. This
is no incoherent grammar, but an expression of the communication of idioms, through which
we maintain the orthodox assertions that 1) It is truly God the Son who is man, 2) It is truly
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man that the Son of God is, and 3) The Son of God truly is man. It is this orthodox
Christological assertion that puts the Son of God who is truly divine and hence impassible,
within the reach and range of genuine human suffering as the man Jesus. As Weinandy points
out, “This is what humankind is crying out to hear, not that God experiences, in a divine
manner, our anguish and suffering in the midst of a sinful and depraved world, but that he
actually experienced and knew first hand, as one of us -as a man – human anguish and
suffering within a sinful and depraved world.” Conversely, for those who advocate a
suffering God, “the Incarnation is still a scandal, for, while with the best of intentions, having
locked suffering within God’s divine nature, they have, in so doing, locked God out of human
suffering.” (p.206) Weinandy goes on to show in chapter 9, how the human suffering of
Christ has redemptive significance for those who are suffering, and rounds up the work in
chapter 10 by relating how God’s answer to human suffering, is the person and work of Jesus
Christ, now mediated through the mission and ministry of the body of Christ which is His
church. The polemic edge of these ending chapters are summarized earlier in p.173
“…because much contemporary theology has failed to recognize the christological and
soteriological significance of Christ’s suffering, it has in turn failed to grasp the unique
ecclesial significance of suffering, that is, that those who now suffer in Christ, as members of
his body, suffer and experience suffering in a radically different manner than those who have
not come to faith in him. The Father’s response to sin and evil, and the suffering that flows
from it, is Christ, and only those who fully live in Christ share fully in the Father’s response.
Thus the singular evangelistic import of Christ’s suffering, within a tortured world which
cries out in hopeless anguish, is completely lost.” (p.173)
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Brief Response
It is difficult to do proper justice to the intricate and exquisite contours of Weinandy’s
treatment in a summative review of his work. The constructive sections of the book contain
an admirable demonstration of how systematic theology can and should be done: going
beyond propositional proof-texting or logical bull-dozing, to demonstrations of how a
specific dogma arises out of, and is necessitated by, its organic relation with the nexus of
other central tenets of Christian belief. Here, we find an attempt at stating beliefs, not only in
demonstration of their veracity, but also in expression of their beauty and exhibition of their
existential coherence.
The treatment of Patristic Theology and exonerative exposition of Aquinas is also a
welcome and necessary corrective to prevailing caricatures. Perhaps the grand achievement
of the work consists in its successful demonstration that the tradition’s Doctrine of Divine
Impassibility cannot be rejected and overturned on the claimed basis that it is philosophically
compromised, theologically inadequate, and emotionally unsatisfying. The tradition’s
doctrine is shown to be adequate in these respects and hence, if one seeks to move away from
its consensus, the burden of proof lies on the passibilists, to find more adequate reasons for
seeking to offer an alternative account, to one that has served orthodox Christianity well for
nigh two millennia.
The case for closing the lid on reflections concerning God’s im/passibility may
however, yet be premature. This is by no means due to any serious flaw in Weinandy’s able,
articulate and affective exposition of divine impassibility. Rather, it has to do with the fact
that while Weinandy has successfully put a nail on passibilist caricatures of the traditional
doctrine of impassibility, he often however, paints those who seek to give the matter of divine
passibility more serious thoughts, with too broad and flat a brush. For instance, not all who
reach the conclusion of divine passibility do so because they seek to solve problems rather
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than elucidate mysteries as Weinandy suggests in p.361. As a case in point, R.W. Jenson,
whom Weinandy footnotes in p. 27 as a theologian whose theological prolegomena is very
compatible with the mystery elucidating one which he espouses, is in fact a passibilist.
Hence, while the reminder on adopting a proper prolegomena is helpful and necessary, it is a
non sequitur that all passibilist theologies fall into this error and are hence to be rejected.
Further, there might be hermeneutical reasons why we should not be too quick to seal
the box on the question of divine passibility. The issue that is really pertinent in chapter 3 is
the question as Weinandy puts it: “Have I shown, from biblical evidence, that God is
ontologically immutable or ethically immutable? . . . I obviously have been arguing for the
former, and I have been arguing for it from within a biblical setting.” (p.61) If Weinandy’s
main purpose in this chapter is specifically to argue for ontological immutability from within
Scripture, his analysis does not seem to have done so conclusively. This is because, all that
has been successfully shown from his analysis, is that the axiom of divine immutability can
be demonstrated to be coherent to Scriptural revelation if one employs a hermeneutic of
anthropomorphisms when reading texts that indicate divine passion and change. He has not
however, really demonstrated that Scriptural revelation necessitates an understanding of
ontological immutability in God. This is so as Weinandy’s hermeneutic, is rooted in
axiomatic presuppositions concerning divine immutability, and not necessarily necessitated
by Scripture itself. All that Scripture demands, as Weinandy successfully demonstrates, is
that God be known as ontologically and ethically “other”. The move from divine “otherness”
to ontological immutability and impassibility however, requires a logical step to be taken; one
that is justified axiomatically and not directly drawn from Scripture itself, as Scripture does
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“Thus, they deny that God is impassible, and instead assert that he must be passible, and so suffers. Again, the
problem is solved, but is it solved at the expense of maintaining the great mystery of God and of his relationship
to the world and human beings? An affirmative answer to this question will be given in the course of this study.”
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not engage in such philosophical reflection and statement. Weinandy recognizes this, but
assumes nevertheless that “From within biblical revelation…the immanence of God takes
epistemological precedence…[but] it is his transcendence which takes ontological
precedence.” (pp.41-42) This subsequently shapes his reading of the OT narratives, allowing
him to make the logical move from “holy otherness” to “ontological immutability and
impassibility”. The problem here however, is that he has arbitrarily given ontological status
to divine transcendence, but not to divine immanence, and one may validly question why this
should be the case, especially given the simplicity of God’s being. Passibilists may validly
ask if we should not take Scriptural statements about God’s “regret” as literally as we do
when we encounter those concerning God’s utter “un-changeability”.2
Lastly, even if one is convinced that theological and philosophical precision requires
us to assert divine impassibility, further reflection is required as to whether this is the
appropriate kerygmatic language of gospel proclamation, especially so when Scripture itself
seems to have little qualms in saying that God “regrets” (1 Sam 15:11,35), or that his heart
“recoils” within him and his compassion “grows warm and tender” (Hos 11:8), and that he,
not simply his human nature, who knew no sin, was made sin for us (2 Cor 5:21). This is not
to say that we should abandon the traditional doctrine of impassibility, but simply to raise the
question of whether we should allow our kerygma to be overly dictated by the grammar of
our theological and philosophical sensitivities where Scripture itself is not.
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For an alternative narratival and contextual treatment of 1 Samuel 15, the “classic passage which brings relief
into the whole discussion” as Weinandy puts it, see J.P. Fokkelman, Reading Biblical Narrative: A Practical
Guide (Leiden 1999) p.60-61.
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