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Avoiding a ‘Passible’ Mistake in Our Interpretation of Scripture

A few weeks ago, I preached on the doctrine of divine impassibility. As I was preparing the sermon, there was a particular section on interpretation that I thought was very helpful (it was for me at least) and thus definitely blog-worthy. What follows is that section (so it has a more pastoral tone), in which we look at a principle of interpretation that maintains the proper Creator-creature distinction when handling biblical texts about God when couched in human language (i.e., eyes, arm, hand, nostrils, etc.). In doing so, we ensure greater consistency in our biblical interpretation. What I articulate here is nothing new; rather, I stand on the shoulders of giants, dead and alive, distilling their insights (and adding a few of my own), so I can pass them along to edify others in Christ. 

First, let’s define our terms. The doctrine of divine impassibility is defined as follows: God does not experience emotional changes either from within or affected by his relationship to creation.[1] And divine passibility affirms the opposite: God does experience emotional changes either from within or affected by his relationship to creation.[2]

So where did we get these terms? What does passible refer to? Acts 14:8–15 will provide our context, with verse 15 as the location of our term, demonstrating that there is a clear distinction between God and creatures, from which our words impassible/passible are derived.

Luke writes:

In Lystra a man was sitting who was without strength in his feet, had never walked, and had been lame from birth. He listened as Paul spoke. After looking directly at him and seeing that he had faith to be healed, Paul said in a loud voice, “Stand up on your feet!” And he jumped up and began to walk around. When the crowds saw what Paul had done, they shouted, saying in the Lycaonian language, “The gods have come down to us in human form!” Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul, Hermes, because he was the chief speaker. The priest of Zeus, whose temple was just outside the town, brought bulls and wreaths to the gates because he intended, with the crowds, to offer sacrifice. The apostles Barnabas and Paul tore their robes when they heard this and rushed into the crowd, shouting, “People! Why are you doing these things? We are people also, just like you, and we are proclaiming good news to you, that you turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made the heaven, the earth, the sea, and everything in them.”[3]

In this text, Paul and Barnabas are dismayed at the people’s reaction in mistaking them for gods. Let's look at verse 15, specifically the underlined portion. 

“People! Why are you doing these things? We are people also, just like you, and we are proclaiming good news to you, that you turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made the heaven, the earth, the sea, and everything in them.

In looking at the Greek for verse 15, Luke uses a very specific word, only used once elsewhere in the NT. The Greek word is ὁμοιοπαθήςhomoipathes. It is a compound word, with the second word, pathes, from which we derive the English term passion and thus our technical term passible. Homoipathes means to experience similarity in feelings or circumstances, with the same nature.[4] And unfortunately, almost all modern translations do not translate the text in a manner that captures this distinction; rather, most versions emphasize with the “same nature” part of the definition. However, in the KJV, it is a bit more pronounced, which says: “. . . We also are men of like passions with you . .”

As we can see, the first half of the definition provides greater clarity in the contrasting statement. Paul and Barnabas were making an ontological distinction between the divine nature and the human nature. God does not experience or have feelings as creatures do. Experience and feelings are proper, or specific, to human nature, not the divine nature. This passage provides the metaphysical framework for interpreting passages that use experiential and emotional language about God, restricting us from applying it to God in the same manner we do for man. Our goal, thus the challenging part, is to figure out what does it mean when God is using this language even though the divine nature doesn’t experience similarity in feelings or circumstances as humans.

First, I will take us through various passages of Scripture that describe God in emotional and experiential language and then I will show you passages that deny emotions and experience in God. We will think through these passages with what Scripture teaches elsewhere to derive a doctrine of divine impassibility.

Genesis 6:6–7 says:

“the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and he was deeply grieved. Then the Lord said, ‘I will wipe mankind, whom I created, off the face of the earth, together with the animals, creatures that crawl, and birds of the sky—for I regret that I made them.’”

This passage says that God regretted having made mankind. 

Deuteronomy 9:7–8 says:

“Remember and do not forget how you provoked the Lord your God in the wilderness. You have been rebelling against the Lord from the day you left the land of Egypt until you reached this place. You provoked the Lord at Horeb, and he was angry enough with you to destroy you.”

Here we see that God is angry, he has been provoked by his people, and wants to destroy them.

First Samuel 15:11 says:

“I regret that I made Saul king, for he has turned away from following me and has not carried out my instructions.” So, Samuel became angry and cried out to the Lord all night.”

As in our passage from Genesis, God shows regret, in this case it is for making Saul king.

And Jonah 3:10 says:

“God saw their actions—that they had turned from their evil ways—so God relented from the disaster he had threatened them with. And he did not do it.”

It appears that God had a change of heart when the Ninevites repented of their actions.
________________

When we look at these passages, the initial response may be to assume that God repents, has a change of heart, that he can be provoked to anger, experience sorrow, and regret his decisions. But we have other passages that show otherwise that we need to consider.

Numbers 23:19 says:

“God is not a man, that he might lie, or a son of man, that he might change his mind. Does he speak and not act, or promise and not fulfill?”

First Samuel 15:29 says:

“Furthermore, the Eternal One of Israel does not lie or change his mind, for he is not man who changes his mind.”

Malachi 3:6 says:

“Because I, the Lord, have not changed, you descendants of Jacob have not been destroyed.”

And James 1:17 says:

“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”

So, what do we do now? We have two sets of passages that seem to contradict each other. In fact, two of them are just a few verses apart in First Samuel, showing conflicting statements within the same narrative context. But we need to continue on. There are other passages that will help us get closer to a solution, in that they reveal it is impossible for God to experience emotions or passions, as humans do.

Now, the passage of Acts 14:15 that we looked at previously has provided the foundation for the doctrine of impassibility. But we will look at a few more to build on it, strengthening our case. 

The creation accounts in Genesis 1:1–26 and John 1:1–3, which we are all familiar with, show us that there is a fundamental distinction between God and his creation, in that he is the eternal Creator, and we are his temporal creation. In the beginning, God said, “Let there be . . . .” And God’s Word, the Logos, the Second Person of the Trinity, responded to God the Father’s command and created all things through himself.  

Exodus 3:13–14 says:

“Then Moses asked God, “If I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what should I tell them?” God replied to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you.””

John 4:24 says:

“God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and in truth.”

When we contemplate these passages, what do we see about God?

In Acts we saw that Paul and Barnabas made a clear distinction between God’s divine nature and our human nature, in that the divine nature does not experience emotions and have passions as the human nature does. Genesis 1:1–26 and John 1:1–3 demonstrate the radical distinction between Creator and creature. In Exodus, we see that God reveals himself as I AM WHO I AM; God presents himself in verb form, speaking of his whatness, though ineffable; God simply is—. And from John 4:24, God is eternal Spirit, implies more than his invisibility or incorporeality (as angels are), but rather God is Spirit “defines his metaphysical properties.”[5] God is his own existence, which is why he is called the Necessary Being. Being eternal Spirit means he is not subject to the conditions of existence that creatures have.

Now what? Scripture is God-breathed, which means it is truthful (consistent) in all that it says; therefore, we must come to a solution that accounts for and coheres both sets of conflicting passages. The way forward is that we must give priority to the theological and scriptural statements about God’s omniscience, his will, his goodness, his holiness, and any attribute that properly belongs to the divine nature, over . . . . passages that speak of God showing indecision, emotion, change, regret, and any characteristic or attribute which is proper to the human nature.[6]

Why is that? It gives us a continuity of purpose in the divine will. The interpreter would be hard pressed to consistently maintain the attributes of God if he were to give theological priority to the anthropomorphic style observed in Scripture. Anthropomorphic language is when Scripture uses figures of speech that attribute human physical characteristics to God for the purpose of illustrating an important point.

For example, when we read texts like Genesis 3:9, where Adam is hiding from God, and God calls out to Adam, “Where are you?”, if we conclude that God did not really know where Adam was then God is not omnipresent (nor omniscient). In Genesis 18:21, just before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, God says, “I will go down to see what if what they have done justifies the cry that has come up to me.” Ask yourself this: From what we know the Bible teaches regarding God’s presence to the world, did God need to “go down” to see what was going on in Sodom (cf. 11:5, 7; Exo 3:8; 33:5; Mi 1:3)? And lastly, in Exodus 33:22–23, when God passed before Moses, revealing his “back” to him, does that mean God was in a different location and then passed by Moses exposing his back? And does God have a back? God’s omnipresence means he is everywhere-present-all-at-once.

If we give precedence to the anthropomorphic reading of such passages, we will end up with a theology that denies the very attributes of God that Scripture reveals (i.e., omnipresence, omniscience, aseity, etc.). 

To bring it home to our day-to-day manner of communication, this is something we do ourselves; we use metaphors and figurative language all the time to emphasize or illustrate a particular point. For example, if I were to say that my friend Steve has cannons for arms, no one would assume that his arms are really cannons. We know what is proper to human anatomy and how arms work and how big they can get. So, if we do this all the time, and we understand what is figurative and what is not, we shouldn’t get tripped up when Scripture does the same thing.

So, what is the term for God’s communicating to us in this manner?

God uses physical features and emotional expressions to communicate to us things about himself that we can understand. And we call this accommodation. Because God is infinite and incomprehensible, and we are finite and have 3lb brains, God accommodates his revelation to us so that we can understand true things about God in a manner suitable to human understanding. And this is no different than how we accommodate language (we “lisp”)[7] to our children when they are babies. While it may sound like gibberish, or very simple talk, we do this so we can communicate something true that we want them to understand or experience in our relationship that is suitable to their understanding.

So, what about those passages that do speak of God relenting and experiencing emotion? How are we to understand them? How are we going to interpret those passages?

Well, in contemplating these passages, for example, when God says he repents/regrets, we need to identify the common connection between divine repentance and human repentance. For man, repentance and regret are deeply emotional. But for God it’s not. And remember, repentance is a human response, not a divine one. God cannot sin; thus, he has nothing to repent of. However, there is a point that God is trying to convey to us, so that we do understand what his will is. Because focusing on the emotional element will not get us anywhere, for God does not have emotions, and God does not change like man does, we have to look at God’s actions in order to derive the key point of the passage.

Why actions over feelings and/or emotions? Because feelings and emotions are subjective. Paul’s demonstration of love as the superior way in First Corinthians 13 defines love by the proper action associated with it. We can say we love, but my concept of it and someone else’s concept may be completely different, so the action that must come from love, according to Scripture, objectively and correctly defines love, giving both of us the proper understanding of it. If I am patient with someone, and he is patient with me, we have a shared objective understanding of love because of the type of action that God designed to come from it. I am showing genuine love by being patient with someone. And that is not up for interpretation—it’s universal.

In the case of God repenting/regretting, the action from the repentance or the regretting is the definitive correlation that we must see and emphasize as the main point that God is revealing to us. And what action do we see when one repents/regrets? The person stops what he is doing, and he does something else. And that is what God is doing here, and he has done it before. For example, in Genesis we see that God created man, who became so wicked that God regretted making man, and then he destroyed mankind with a flood, only saving a handful for his later purposes. And then he makes man again. Did his plans change because of his regretful decision in making man? No. God’s plan is final. God says in Isaiah 46:10, “I declare the end from the beginning, and from long ago what is not yet done, saying: my plan will take place, and I will do all my will.” And so, while God’s plans are final, the manner of fulfilling those plans occur within and throughout the redemptive historical timeline.

Here is another aspect to consider. What if you were reading about how wicked the first batch of humans were and God did not show either approval or disapproval? And the same with Saul’s ungodly leadership. What if God just didn’t say anything? What would you then think about God? You would think that God is an uncaring, static, stone-face deity that seems to approve of wickedness, but then again maybe he doesn’t.

But what we do see, in the situation with Saul, is that God made him king, expressed disapproval and regret for installing him as king, and then he removed him, and then raised up David, a man after God’s own heart, to advance further God’s plan of bringing the True King through the blood line of David—which was God’s plan from before the foundation of the world.

You might be thinking: “Well, isn’t God still changing his mind?”

Let’s recall our interpretive principle that we established earlier.

God has an eternal nature (Ps. 90:2).
Numbers 23:19 tells us that God does not change his mind.
Psalm 121 says that God does not slumber or sleep.
We know that God is omniscient (Isa 40:12–14).
We know that he decrees the beginning from the end (Isa 46:10).

Such passages make up the control measure, which has priority over the passages that speak about God in figurative or anthropomorphic language. God’s intentions are made manifest, which were to demonstrate his holiness to his people, by letting them know that Saul’s actions were ungodly, regrettably so. And while Saul’s actions, which stem from his passible nature, caused him to lose his dynasty, God’s impassible nature ensures his plans and promises will prevail. And that is the difference between passible creatures, who let their emotions and experiences sinfully influence their thinking and the eternal, holy, good, righteous, and impassible God who cannot be swayed or persuaded to act contrary to his divine nature and will.

Conclusion

The intention of this post was to provide an interpretive tool to read Scripture in a consistent manner that retains the proper distinction between the Creator and creature, helping us avoid a 'passible' mistake. Hermeneutics begins with metaphysics, and the interpretive tool articulated here situates us with the proper metaphysical starting point to guide our interpretation in a coherent and cogent manner that retains the transcendence of God but reveals his immanent love to the world. 

~ Romans 11:36


___________________________________

[1] I am indebted to Samuel Renihan’s short introduction on impassibility, God without Passions: A Primer (Palmdale, CA: RBAP, 2015). I highly recommend starting with it if you are new to the topic. It is concise, biblically faithful, pastorally insightful, and is also formatted for group study. Chapter 1 provided a clear outline, passage selection, and helpful sections of exposition for my sermon, thus also this blog post. And, what was for me a water-shed book, I recommend getting,
Ronald S. Baines et al., eds., Confessing the Impassible God: The Biblical, Classical, & Confessional Doctrine of Divine Impassibility (Palmdale, CA: RBAP, 2015)[2] For a recent and accessible book, covering both sides of the debate, see, Robert J. Matz and A. Chadwick Thornhill, Divine Impassibility : Four Views of God’s Emotions and Suffering, Spectrum Multiview Books (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2019). There is much more to the discussion than what can be covered in this post, so I direct you to some the pertinent works within the debate: Terence E. Fretheim, The Suffering of God: An Old Testament Perspective (Fortress Press, 1984); Joseph M. Hallman, The Descent of God: Divine Suffering in History and Theology, (Fortress Press, 1991); Paul S. Fiddes, The Creative Suffering of God (Clarendon Press, 1992); Thomas Weinandy, O.F.M, Does God Suffer? (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000); Paul L. Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God: The Dialectics of Patristic Thought (Oxford University Press, 2006); Michael J. Dodds, The Unchanging God of Love: Thomas Aquinas and Contemporary Theology on Divine Immutability, Second Edition (Washington, D.C: The Catholic University of America Press, 2008); James F. Keating and Thomas Joseph White, eds., Divine Impassibility and the Mystery of Human Suffering (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009); Rob Lister, God Is Impassible and Impassioned: Toward a Theology of Divine Emotion, Reprint (Crossway, 2012); John C. Peckham, The Love of God: A Canonical Model (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015); Thomas Jay Oord, The Uncontrolling Love of God: An Open and Relational Account of Providence (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015); James E. Dolezal, All That Is in God: Evangelical Theology and the Challenge of Classical Christian Theism (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2017); Craig A. Carter, Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition: Recovering the Genius of Premodern Exegesis (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2018).
[3] The Christian Standard Bible, Logos Edition (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2017).
[4] Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, ed. Frederick William Danker, 3rd edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).
[5] D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1990), 225.
[6] Paul Helm, The Providence of God (IVP Academic, 1994), 51.
[7] Calvin’s famous term. John Calvin, Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960), 1.13.1.

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