Yet More on Impassibility

We can know the Father by scripture.  And we can know the Father by creation. Or, some say, we can know the Father by the careful application of Greek philosophy.  Which of these should we take as reliable? 

At the very least all would agree, I'm sure, on scripture.  So let's consider scripture, limiting ourselves for the moment to the words of our Lord:

And whoever sees me sees him who sent me. (John 12:45) 

If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” (John 14:7) 

Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? (John 14:9)

Jesus is teaching that if you see him you have seen the father.  If you know him, you know the Father.  It is hard for me to imagine that what Jesus implies is this: but only if you ignore my explicit and manifest human nature and concentrate metaphysically and philosophically only on my divine nature.

No, the clear teaching here is that if they see and know the incarnate Christ standing before them, then they would know the Father. I ask you: Was the incarnate Christ impassible? Would you describe him as such? Does scripture portray him as something of a stoic? If your only knowledge of the Father came from the words and life of Jesus (not a bad source), and those words said, repeatedly: the Father is like me!, would you ever have developed the (modern) concept of an impassible God? Personally, I don't think so.

If the Father is like the God of the modern scholastics who distort the doctrine of Impassibility, then Jesus should be sending us the opposite message. He should be saying: if you know me that’s great, but sadly it reveals nothing about the true nature of the Father. He's nothing like me.

I am dismayed by the book-of-the-month scholarship (or lack thereof) of the modern philosopher theologians. One book I read some time ago was  God Without Passions, by Renihan.  In that book the writer quoted an early church anathema from an early council:

 If anyone says and [or] believes, that the Son of God, as God, suffered [ in place of this: that Christ cannot be born], let him be anathema. 

Fair enough, if rather gratuitous. This particular council has indeed condemned to eternal damnation anyone who claims (as I do, and as Martin Luther and many others have) that Christ suffered in his divine nature.  Now, what council was this? Was it Nicea? Constantinople?   Ephesus?  Chalcedon? No, it was none of these. It was not an ecumenical council at all, but a local council, the First Council of Toledo (Spain.) It was called to address a Gnostic-like heresy (Priscillianism). It does have one claim to fame; it is (I read) the first council to use the title “pope” for the Bishop of Rome.

It placed many other anathemas, including

If anyone follows the sect of Priscillian in these errors or publicly professes it) so that he makes a change in the saving act of baptism contrary to the chair of Holy Peter, let him be anathema.] 

(Emphasis added.) I am curious if a Reformed Baptist making an argument from authority by quoting the first anathema I listed, would agree with the second.  Not just the part about Priscillianism, but also the part about baptism. Or perhaps we are just cherry picking?

I believe there is a very real and orthodox sense in which God is Impassible. I don't believe the modern philosopher theologians have accurately rediscovered it from antiquity. (Their view is Aristotelian and Thomist, not early church.) I believe their over reliance on unfalsifiable Greek philosophy has created a gross distortion.

But even in that, I can agree to  disagree with my brothers and sisters in Christ over the details of Impassibility, and have (and enjoy) iron-sharpening-iron discussions.¹ What I can't agree with is when, in their arrogance, they elevate the doctrine beyond ultimately unknowable (though potentially edifying) speculation into  the realm of critical doctrine.

It is not critical. Only the Gospel is critical. The uncountable number of saints before us who heard nothing of the Doctrine of Divine Impassibility attest to its utter lack of criticality. (Do you think the repentant thief grasped that the "ontological" trumped the "descriptive?")

I will try to set this doctrine aside for a bit, but I have been hearing a great deal of it (rightly taught, I'm happy to say!) in Sunday School.

I'll leave you  with a quote to ponder:

“We Christians should know that if God is not in the scale to give it weight, we, on our side, sink to the ground. I mean it this way: if it cannot be said that God died for us, but only a man, we are lost; but if God’s death and a dead God lie in the balance, His side goes down and ours goes up like a light and empty scale. Yet He can also readily go up again, or leap out of the scale! But He could not sit on the scale unless He became a man like us, so that it could be called God’s dying, God’s martyrdom, God’s blood, and God’s death. For God in His own nature cannot die; but now that God and man are united in one person, it is called God’s death when the man dies who is one substance or one person with God.” (Martin Luther)

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¹ The modern scholastics do not seem to favor traditional iron-sharpening-iron methodology. As discussed in the previous post on ARBCA, their approach is more akin to "my way or the highway."