traditional views on the suffering god

impassibility

God was seen as impassible. Early church argues for divine impassibility
- Classical theism affirms that God cannot suffer because God is impassible

Classical theism affirms that god is timeless and immutable
- Because God cannot undergo a change or alteration of His emotional state, he cannot suffer

god as creator

Working from the common assumption that the Creator is not the creation, and thus not subject to entropy, destruction, coercion, or death, it was affirmed that God cannot suffer.

- Rather than affirming God is ignorant or unconcerned, they were affirming that the creator cannot be manipulated by outside forces and therefore cannot suffer

catholicism

• Catholic theology has traditionally insisted that God cannot suffer

• Christ suffered on the cross as man and not as God

• If God the creator can suffer, then it would seem that he is passive to the action of something he creates

• It is not necessary for God to suffer, because no necessity can compel God, for this would be repugnant of his omnipotence Aquinas and Anselm argue that it is possible for an impassible God to love without being affected by the situation at hand

anselm

• According to the doctrine of impassibility, God is invulnerable to suffering.

• Nothing can act upon him; he is in no way passive.

• The therefore does not feel emotions, since emotions are states that one undergoes rather than actions one performs

• His beliefs on God’s impassibility were shaped by the platonic-augustinian tradition of which he was a part.

• Augustine took from the platonists the idea that the greatest beings are stable, uniform, and unchanging.

• For anselm, then, it is obvious that a being who is in no way passive, who cannot experience anything of which he is not himself the origin, is better and greater than any being who can be acted upon by something outside himself. So God, being that than which nothing greater can be thought, is impassible

probs w these ideas

If God is incapable of suffering, then God cannot be involved with us.
To love means to experience the pain and suffering of the people you care for

- You cannot feel empathy for them if you do not understand their experience