The thirty-nine articles starts out with an 'almost' word for word quote from the Augsburg confession.
Cranmer created a new triad, of 'body, parts and passions'. What was for Cranmer a stylistic addition, has now become on of the most controversial parts of classical theism!
In the world when everyone discussed their deities in terms of human form, the Mosaic prohibition against a graven image was enough to let everyone know that the anthropomorphic descriptions of God as having an eye, hand, etc were figures of speech.
The 'divine attributes' called into question by God suffering.
Transcendence.
Perfection. (/immutability)
Sovereignty.
It can be argued that suffering and feeling are not identical, so perhaps God could still have feelings.
aesthesis and pathos, as two different things. Yet, can these be distinguished in the NT? Ie, Hebrews use of aesthesis for Jesus in temptation.
What does sympathetic mean in that text? Not emotional, but it's because he's not their substitute, it means he can't feel their pain. So we shouldn't read that text as saying that the OT priest was an uncaring cad.
Ie, would a father cut his own finger to help a crying child know that he understands what the child is going through? Not the point of the text.
Using Abraham as an example in order to understand God's feelings is problematic in that Abraham's personal emotions are unknown to us. The purpose of the example is a case of faith trumping personal feeling.
With Absalom, it is difficult because Absalom wasn't like Jesus. Absalom wasn't a volunteer, and David was disapproving of the death.
Is there a confusion in Gerald's argument in that he is relating only to God the father in the thing?
Are we misunderstanding these things because we've shifted the definition of sympathy and hence the meaning of the text?
The impact of the Son's incarnation
How could the divine impassible God suffer as a part of creation? It's not surprising, therefore, that the two great 4th C heresies were related to this question: Arianism and Nestorianism.
To explain their Christology, the church created the concept of 'personhood'. As a person, Jesus was divine and not human.
The early church worked out that the only way the relation of the divine to the human could be explained is in personal terms. As a modern person, I'm more interested in the quality of the human relationship than in the compatibility of our respective beings.
Animals can certainly suffer and die, but do they have feelings? A controversial subject.
As a man, Jesus could suffer and die, which he came to do and why he came in the first place? Did Jesus acquire his ability to have feelings in the incarnation, or did he have them before? If before, then presumably the other members of the trinity have them as well. He would also express them in his divine person too, and so would the other members of the trinity.
Post chalcedon people wouldn't answer this way though. Doctrine of anhypostasia. So the divine second person of the trinity did not die on the cross?!?!?!?!
The Father can forgive me because of his son's sacrifice without having to experience that sacrifice himself. The Spirit, likewise, can do his work without needing to have experience what the incarnate son did.
The post-chalcedon fathers wouldn't have thought of the Son as having feelings towards the divine.
Emotions are present in human love because our relationships are imperfect. But God's love is realised. God's love is so perfectly realised that their love cannot be expressed within the God-head but outside of it. When it comes to personal relationships between God and man. God didn't have to become a man to relate to human beings, even if it did change the nature of it.
So, are the feelings of Jesus human feelings or divine?
Modern questions
A generation ago, people rejected the impassibility of God because of the horrors of the holocaust. Reshaped their view of God in the image of the cross. The purpose of the atoning sacrifice was pushed out of the picture.
If doctors and aid workers are suffering from the same thing that they're curing, they're not much good. God must have immunity to our problem in order to help us out of it. A suffering God would be of no help to us. Not just because he'd be powerless to deal with the problem of suffering, but also because that God's suffering would also be so far removed from our suffering as to have no applicability to us.
Can't blog this. Too heavy. Will try to provide reflections later after chatting with others.
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What humans want to know is that if God makes a difference in our lives, do we make a difference to his? We can't imagine having a relationship with an emotionally void being. If God is our father, we don't want him to resemble the Victorian pater familias, but a relational adult in whom we can confide.
Relationships demand feelings, which is the basis for the argument that God must have feelings.
Firstly, if there are feelings within God, they must exists at the level of the divine person. Yet they are unknowable to us.
Immutability and feelings are not the same issue, because we can have feelings without experiencing pain from an external source.
How does Jesus' personal relationship with us affect his personal relationship with the Father and the Holy Spirit?
Eternity is the issue. What could an emotion look like in eternity?
Questions:
Comment: You can define something without limiting it! The sign infinity is an example!
A: Well, I don't know about that. That is the issue, can you define something without limiting it?
Q: Do I understand you rightly in saying that the emotions are mutable and passable and so they are
A: Yes, so the question is in what sense is the analogy able to be extended to God. We aren't able to extend what we experience into the infinite.
We have an element of the divine, that makes it possible for us to have a relationship with God. To be a human person means to be more than just finite. After we die, I will be the same person, but not the same body. Personhood is the link to the infinite, and the image of God is linked to that.