The Doctrine of Divine Impassibility

The matter of how an omnipotent God could possibly also suffer is certainly one of the most difficult conundrums that the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation presents. The Christian description of this suffering is that it was in virtue of his human Nature, not the divine Nature itself, rather the latter remains impassable. This is what, as we will argue, makes it possible to hold the apparently contradictory views in simultaneity. Fr. Thomas White summarizes the Church’s official position in the teaching of the Council of Chalcedon:

“Correctly understood, then, the Chalcedonian doctrine of the suffering of Christ teaches us the following: First, in Christ, it is God who suffers and God who is crucified. Second, this suffering is that of the person of the Son. It is truly God the Son who suffers. Third, the Son suffers in virtue of his human nature, in his human body and soul, in his spiritual and sensate faculties as man, Fourth, the Son does not suffer, but remains impassable, in his divine nature, in which he is one with the Father and the Holy Spirit.” (TNM, p303)

Fr. White also adds:

“God did assuredly suffer in Christ and indeed one may rightly affirm that God was crucified, died, and was buried. These attributes however, pertain to God the Son alone, in virtue of his human Nature (…) thus the traditional adage stands “One of the Trinity suffered (…) thus insofar as he is human the Son of God truly suffers personally, but insofar as he is God (…) he also remains impassable in his divine Nature…” (TNM, 302)

The Divine Substance cannot Suffer Harm

We can define “Suffering” as a state of anything less than perfect satisfaction. Being omnipotent, nothing can induce a change in God from his state of perfect beatitude or “blessedness”. All possibility, consideration and concept of suffering is excluded and alien to this state. This is the reason, for example, that God does not even hate or get angry in a literal sense. Hate and anger have negative effects of spiritual disquiet upon the subject and are states of mental suffering- the suffering of enduring negativity. Being omnipotent, nothing can induce in God a movement to a less-than-perfect state of mental satisfaction.

Suffering is ontologically impossible in the divine Essence. God enjoys perfect bliss and beatitude. Any change in that state would be a change in God. As an analogy, take a collection of bytes, say a million of them to represent the intellect of God, in the way that they function as the “intellect” of a computer, and since God is pure intellect, to represent the Essence of God himself. Bytes have the advantage of being binary, and so let us assume all the bytes are switched to “1” for “happy”. In order for God to suffer, some of those bytes would have switch to “0” for “not happy”. Indeed we can already see that if we take “happy” to be the divine Substance itself, then one might say that “not happy” represents a loss of divine substance. That is absurd and violates divine immutability, simplicity and also perfection. Those three are the reasons that there can be no suffering in the divine Essence itself which remains necessarily impassible. Just to clarify, immutability is violated because we have a different substance, simplicity is violated because a part of God is lost, and perfection, because the latter state is “less than” the former state of perfection. The reason that the divine Essence cannot suffer is because it cannot be harmed, it is invincible in every possible sense of the word.

Impassibility is not different from invincibility, like a warrior who cannot be defeated or even wounded or hurt, which is omnipotence. Scripture attests to immutability in Mal.3:6 and Jam.1:17. Aquinas states that immutability is essential because of the unchanging nature of God’s love. Fr. White writes: “Aquinas notes: agere sequitur esse: action follows upon being (SCG,I,c.43). If God is able to be morally constant and is free in the perfection of his goodness from any possibility of evil this can only be in virtue of what he is immutably in his mysterious divine nature (…) God can be loving in an enduring way only because he is eternally unchanged in his perfection as one who loves.” (TNM,299)

Fr. White makes a beautiful elaboration of the implication of the immutability of God, taking off from Aquinas’ “no real relation” discussion in STI,q.13,a.7 in which he writes:

“Since therefore God is outside the whole order of creation, and all creatures are ordered to Him, and not conversely, it is manifest that creatures are really related to God Himself; whereas in God there is no real relation to creatures, but a relation only in idea, inasmuch as creatures are referred to Him.”

This is why God is immutable, nothing external to him can inflict negative or positive impact. Nothing negative because he is incorruptible and nothing positive, of course, because he is perfect. Nothing “different” because he is the same God (in case anyone advocates for the possibility of a “value neutral” change, which I do not). Fr. White is then able to state:

“he alone can act freely to save his creatures as one motivated uniquely by divine wisdom and love, without any augmentation of his goodness (…)he gives life, grace, and salvation all as purely gratuitous gifts, that express his plenitude of eternal love, and such gifts are never occasions for his own ontological amelioration in any way. Likewise, God can eb present to his creation in perfect wisdom and love in a way that no creature can, because he is the very source of its being, more interior to creatures than they are to themselves. Indeed it is only because God is immutably perfect in the order of being that he alone can be present in this way, in the inmost heart of creaturely being. Consequently only a God who is immutable love can be present as perfect love to all that is, that is to say, as the very cause of its being (…)one who can reach down into the very roots of reality and can re-create all things (quoting Rev.21:5)” (TNM, 301)

SIX Explanations of the Paradox of Christ’s Suffering

Having just described the invincibility of the Divine Essence, it is our task now to explain how in spite of this God, in some sense did experience suffering. We saw in the previous section just how simple it is to prove divine impassability, it really is non-negotiable. This makes the paradox of the suffering of Christ all the more difficult to explain, and this is the task ahead.

1st Reply- Divine Impassibility is Invincibility of the Divine Nature

The Objection to Suffering in a single Nature

We can define human suffering as a state of less-than-perfect physical and mental integrity (the loss of physical integrity mental disquiet), or the state in which one is assailed by negative emotions and sensations, states. In the Passion and Cross of Christ, the Divine Person in some manner genuinely experienced both such states, meaning he suffered like a human. This suffering, as we have already seen stated in Church documents, is “in virtue of the human nature”. The obvious objection to this is that injury irrespective of its bodily location is still experienced by the person. When I say “my arm is suffering” or “my head hurts”, what I really mean is that I am personally experiencing the injury to those parts rather than the parts experiencing the injury apart from my person. This then is the difficulty- how can it be that God’s experience of suffering does not corrode the divine impassibility? The answer is simply going to be that it is because it does not corrode the divine Nature. The only claim that divine impassability makes is that the divine nature is invincible. As we stated before it would have to be, for the three persons share the same nature. If the suffering of the Son entailed the loss of invincibility of the divine nature itself, that would mean that the Father and Holy Spirit were suffering too for that time, which is obviously unacceptable.

The philosophical tenet of divine impassability is not something that binds God so as to prevent him from effecting an extraordinary state of affairs not envisaged by the tenet itself or that lies outside its scope. The tenet of divine impassability falls out of a basic belief in monotheism and divine omnipotence rather than something that is specifically trinitarian. This is why the “lights out” analogy described in the previous section does not necessarily apply to the trinitarian state.

Thus divine impassability refers to the invincibility of the divine substance, while in the Passion and Death of Christ, the Divine Essence (or Nature) was able to experience the harm sustained by the human nature instead. Although the invincible divine nature is not harmed, it personalizes an experience of harm that is extraneous to it. Thus divine impassability or immutability are not violated, and the question is really reduced one of “how”. How come the experience of extraneous suffering does not corrode the divine substance, as we might like to think it would in humans.

The doctrine of divine impassibility would seem to require that the Son, for a limited time, allow that his entire experience be derived solely from the Human Nature. That is, in the words of Paul, the Son of God “did not cling” to the transcendent experience of himself but rather “emptied himself” of it for a time. It is also the aspect of voluntariness that allows this act of God to be coherent- God does not cease to be the Divine experience, he voluntarily deprives himself of the consciousness of it for a time. When God “personalizes” two natures, it is not as though his experience is divided between the two, rather God experiences both fully. Under “ordinary” circumstances, the eternal perspective of the Son being superior to the human one by nature, it is the primary perspective. However one might say that being the owner of both experiences, the Son might “extraordinarily” choose to bring one to the fore and make it primary, rather than the other.

2nd Reply- Trinitarian Substance makes this Possible

The root of the explanation to the paradoxes of a God that suffers while not ceasing to be impassable, or become creature without ceasing to be creator, certainly lies in the paradox of the trinitarian nature of a God who is able to be three without ceasing to be one. This is the paradox that enables us to speak of God in not one but two senses- with reference to person and substance. If that means anything, then it would mean that those things that are said of the one are not necessarily applicable to the other, either that, or the personal distinctions are illusory or metaphorical, which is unacceptable. Thus we will say in manner of explanation that God is creator in the sense of his Substance which is one, while he became creature in person, which is one of three. Similarly that he is impassable in the sense of the substance which is one, and yet became passable in person which is one of three. So we can already see that we are beginning to offset the possibility of a contradiction here because we are not ascribing contrary states to God “at the same time and in the same sense”, as is required by the definition of contradictions. In fact the sense of “time” in eternity could not be further removed from the temporality of suffering, meaning that the sense in which God is impassable could not be further removed from the sense in which he does suffer.

Now in a hypothetical “Unitarian” scenario (an impossibility- separate article), any criticism of divine suffering would be unassailable. For example were Zeus to became a man and suffer, it would be hard to know in what sense he could preserve a semblance of impassibility. To state that Zeus were not really suffering “in his essence” but somewhere would make no sense because there’s nothing else to say about Zeus. Zeus exhausts “the essence of Zeus” completely. Zeus is identical to his person. There is nothing else for suffering to act upon apart from the Zeus-ness of the essence.

In the trinitarian formulation however, the Son is not solely “who/what-God-is” nor does the Son exhaust all of “who/what God is”. The Incarnation is predicated primarily of the person rather than of the Essence. There are three that identify with the divine identity in the trinitarian formulation, not one. Since it is the Receiving of the substance which personifies the Son, the suffering is also personified in this same mode of being begotten and receiving rather than in the mode of begetting which is the Father. Trinitarian belief is not the belief in three insubstantial “personal” entities plus a fourth substantial entity which they subscribe to. Were this the case then when the substance in stricken, as with Zeus, all the three (or one, or however many) would share in the same experience. Rather than this image of three layers of clingfilm over a spherical ball, the Trinity is a substance that itself is personal, and that three times. Each person is not the other and it is this very “not-ness” that makes the Incarnation possible. This means that what it means for Jesus to suffer is not what it means for the Father to suffer. This was a useful discussion to have because it deepens our understanding of the Trinity itself.

3rd Reply- Suffering for Love is Joy

God would suffer no loss of justice in suffering for the sake of others. A human who laid down their life in order to ensure the safety and security of their children might well die with the most radiant smile on their face. A free and willing expression of love would cause no negation of perfect Justice and Mercy. The apex example of this sort of duality in suffering is fittingly given in the spiritual life itself- a mature Christian believer that has joy in his heavenly calling and at the same time sadness in his earthly existence- the first is essential and the state of his eternal soul, while the second is accidental to it and instrumental.

As we already stated, even in that state of diminished perception of the Beatific Vision that God enjoys of himself, Jesus is yet aware of Beatitude. The beatitude of God consists not primarily in the joy of not suffering, rather it is a positive beatitude, and it consists in the Joy of his own goodness. As a result, when God suffers for love it should, as we have alluded to before, constitute no decrease in that Joy, rather it is the expression of God’s goodness “it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Lk12:32). This seems an apt analogy for God being capable of experiencing the fulness of deity while suffering in his human Nature. God suffers no decrease in beatitude even in suffering. The Gospels are suffused with the notion of being joyous in sufferings and even “because” of those sufferings (Phil.4:4, Acts 5:41)

4th Reply- It’s the same Problem as the Incarnation

If it were possible that God could take on weak flesh, then although we might not be able to wrap our head around it fully, it should also be the case that he be able to suffer. If not, then he should not be able to genuinely “take on flesh” in the first place. Having done so, the suffering is entailed. Or in corollary, if God cannot suffer, then neither can he take on human flesh. In the final analysis, the explanation of the problem is the same as that of the Incarnation itself- God personalizes also the human nature. The only manner in which God can possibly suffer is in a created nature, to say that he did so in the divine Nature is oxymoronic. God made human experiences his own, and thus also the experience of human suffering, although it continues to not be “essential” to him.

This indeed strikes to the heart of the great mystery of the Incarnation itself, that although united, there is no mixing of natures, so also, no “mixing” of experiences- the human experience of suffering does not corrode the divine experience of beatitude, just like the human nature does not corrode the divine one. Consider also that in a broader sense, this is true of everything that we ascribe to the human nature of God. God has a human will, he is born and dies undergoes the human process of growth, all of which are isolated to his human nature not divine. God does not experience the occurrence of these in divine essence itself. Nestorianism would hold that it was a human person experienced the human sufferings of Christ. However orthodoxy states that it is the same Divine Person that experiences that which is not essential to God. He is able to make it his own experience, because he is God. Can God create a rock that crushes him under his weight? He can, by becoming man himself. So also we say that God had a personal experience of death, and yet not in his divine Nature. God can personalize suffering and non-suffering to himself simultaneously. God is not to be taken as “an entity experiencing beatitude” such that non-beatitude would constitute a negation of it’s own prior experience. Rather there is Beatitude which makes also non-beatitude its own. The Second Person of the Holy Trinity is Simple, just like the other two Persons, and like them, he is his own intellectual Being. That intellect is the knowledge of his own Beatitude to which is added the knowledge of non-beatitude as his own, non-competitively.

I think this is what ultimately resolves the problem, without having to introduce any new concepts not already present in classical Thomism. It is the realization that the question “can God suffer” is the same as the God “can God be non-God?” and presents the same challenge. Were God an entity that were having a particular experience, then it would certainly be contradictory for him to be having contradictory experiences. However because he is the experience himself, he can have a second experience while not ceasing to be the first- he can have a human nature while not ceasing to be God. God is himself unending joy and the source of all happiness rather a thing that is being pleasurably acted upon extraneously. It was God’s good pleasure that the unending divine joy also experience a temporary human suffering. This brings no decrease in “divine joy”, rather the addition of human suffering. Suffering is categorically “other” than God, therefore there is no role that suffering can play in the divine Essence, because the one is temporal and subject to causality, which the other is not- yet God makes temporality his own. This does not involve a contradiction any more than God now being both eternal and temporal involves a contradiction.

So we can state that the Divine Person of the Son experiences the human Nature, which is in a sense to state he experiences creation as creation experiences it. That experience entails imperfections like pain and emotional anguish, for example the sorrow for the suffering of loved ones, as is exhibited at times in the Gospels.

5th reply- Different Experiential Categories

Consider also that “experience” is a temporal term, and this is why we are experiencing quite a lot of difficulty attempting to equivocate between the experience of God and man. God in himself is a timeless experience, whereas the “experience of being human” is one in time. So the union in the Incarnation is first and foremost a union between eternity and temporality- Personal Eternity individuating temporality. So when we ask the question “who is experiencing humanity”, that “who” is not primarily a temporal experience. So to state that the “who” that is God now has a temporal experience is to add a second category non-competitively to the first. What it is to be human became the experience of God, with all it’s temporality intact.

The human experience and the divine beatitude are qualitatively different, and to an infinite extent; the two are only analogously compared, and even called “nature”. Thus the suffering of the human nature in a sense cannot be experienced “in the divine essence” because those two are non-related terms. Yet in some manner, God made human suffering his own, and suffered the vicissitudes of time. All suffering is necessarily a temporal phenomenon, the experience of temporality itself is the window to this suffering, which is constituted by the progression of one moment following on from the next and the entity that is bound to those moments and the changes that are wrought by their passage. Personalizing the reason for things being passable is the only manner by which he may suffer them.

6th Reply- God’s Suffering is primarily a Mercy for us

The anchor of faith in all of this is that God undertakes to experience suffering voluntarily (Jn,10:18). This is important because it means that the divine substance has not disappeared or gone out of existence. Even in suffering, it is right there as it always was. Thus once again, the “lights out” analogy is not applicable. If God is an intellectual substance, then God is the experience of God, and any diminishing of that experience would imply some loss of substance of God himself. However in our case the glory is right there as it always was, it is simply not being accessed, so this is a crucial difference. God undergoes suffering as a mercy in order to make his loving tenderness known to his creatures. The Incarnation of Christ is not to do with the Nature of God rather it is to do with the realm of possibility regarding his ability. God really decided that for all eternity heretofore, there would exist a glorified Christ that were really human and really God, not as something that God required, but a sign of his covenant with humans and his desire for their union with him, so much so that he he became united as one of them eternally. Christ truly represents for all eternity God’s plan in creating.

Who will we see in Heaven? Well for all of the duration of the Biblical narrative, whenever God has been seen, when God has chosen to reveal himself as something living, it has been in human form (except for the Holy Spirit appearing as a dove). Thanks to the Incarnation, God actually has a human form that we will see. Think about this- our options for “seeing” God are either that we see something formless or with a form. But if we are to see a form what could be more appropriate than that of a man? Truly God has raised one of his creatures to the pinnacle of creation and crowned him with this honor, that he himself will take the one form by which he can be “seen” by all manner of creatures. Shall we also ask how we shall we see the Father and the Holy Spirit? Perhaps we will see all Three like the three men that Abraham saw by the oaks of Mamre. Now that the One has taken forever a human form, perhaps it is true that the Three have undertaken that this is the eternal form under which they will heretofore appear to all creatures. That’s really as much as I can say, with the recognition that this is purely conjectural on my part.

Conclusion- explaining Miracles

In summary, the explanation of just how God manages to perform a miracle is going to be difficult and the explanation of just how God manages to be God is also going to be just as difficult. Therefore one must allow that the explanation might not completely satisfy. No one’s ever tried to explain how God exists without cause nor has anyone every tried to explain how God might create from nothing, nor has anyone ever tried to explain a miracle. That’s the whole point, these things are inexplicable, and so perhaps it is quite important that we do not expect perhaps the greatest miracle of them all to have a satisfying explanation. However I hope that in this article we have at the very least been able to explain what exactly the miracle is in the first place.