The Problem With A God Who Does Not Suffer

One need not expend much time or energy to find it. We seem to inhabit a world all but inundated with suffering. Beyond the question of why God allows suffering is the question of whether God Himself experiences suffering.

In this paper, I will explore this question by examining two opposing views, those of Thomas Aquinas and Jürgen Moltmann. Finally, I will examine whether the two camps can be reconciled.

First, however, it is helpful to understand what is meant by Divine impassibility.

Divine Impassibility

The term Divine impassibility refers to the belief that God is immune to suffering. Put succinctly, Divine impassibility holds that God does not experience pain or passion. We tend to think of passion as referring to the excitement of lust or anger, but etymologically, passion is a type of pain or suffering caused by another.

The belief in a God that is both immutable and impassible is a uniquely biblical view that was foreign to the various pagan religions of the ancient world. Nevertheless, the claims of immutability and impassibility should in no way be interpreted as meaning that God is removed and distant. Rather, the God who has revealed Himself in human history is a personal God. 

Immutability means God is unchanging in character, will, and being. Impassibility, on the other hand, holds that God does not experience external influences or suffering (passions) that alter His inner state. Together, they describe an eternal, perfect Creator distinct from finite creatures, who provides security (His promises will not change) and grounds His unchanging love.

However, impassibility often sparks debate because it contrasts with certain biblical descriptions that suggest God experiences emotions analogous to those of humans. For example, Romans 1:18 implies a God that exhibits wrath.

While an impassible God is held within the Jewish tradition, the teaching was fully developed by the early Church fathers. Among the Church fathers, the most notable to develop the concept was Ignatius of Antioch. Ignatius saw God as utterly transcendent and distinct from creation, while maintaining that an impassible God could unite with human flesh without being corrupted or changed by it.

This is an important point, as it concerns the doctrine of the hypostatic union. When Catholicism speaks of God suffering, it is Christ in His human nature that suffers. The Divine nature of the Holy Trinity is not affected in any way.

Despite Divine impassibility being held and taught by the early Church, it would not be until the Fourth Council of Constantinople (869-870) that Divine impassibility became a doctrine of the Church.

Aquinas And Moltmann

In following Thomas Aquinas and the Church Fathers, Catholic theology has traditionally taught that God (again, in His Divine nature only) is immune to suffering. There are several reasons why this is so. First, suffering is (at least philosophically) a kind of change to the one who suffers. However, change is a property of time, and God exists outside of time. Therefore, God cannot suffer.

The second reason concerns the nature of change and of God. Since suffering is a change caused by pain, and pain is a kind of evil, and evil is a kind of privation, and since the Divine nature lacks no perfection of being, it is impossible for God to be made to suffer.

To see why, we must understand that for God to be the cause of existence – for God to be God – He must be “actus purus” or pure act. A thing is said to be pure act if it exhausts every perfection of being. In contrast, a thing exists in potency if it does not exhaust every perfection of being.

However, to suffer is to be “acted upon” (pati in Latin, the root word of “passion”), and to be acted on is to experience change. In the case of suffering, a change from a state of wholeness to a state of lack. This would suggest that if God could suffer, He would change from a state of “not-suffering” to “suffering,” implying He was either not perfect before or became less perfect after. Either way, God would cease to be God.

As indicated above, the argument that God is impassible owes much to the Church Fathers and to Thomas Aquinas. It is no surprise, therefore, that the impassibility of God has been the dominant position in Catholic theology for most of the Church’s history. That is not to say that the doctrine of Divine impassibility is unchallenged within Catholic theology.

Of those who question the impassibility of God, the most prominent is Jürgen Moltmann. Moltmann was a German Reformed theologian and professor of systematic theology at the University of Tübingen. In addition to Moltmann, Catholic voices, such as Jean Galot (professor emeritus of Christology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome), have expressed dissatisfaction with the doctrine of Divine Impassibility.

Moltmann’s position, as articulated in his book The Crucified God, is that suffering happens within the Trinity. He argues that the Father suffers the loss of the Son, and the Son suffers the abandonment of the Father. Still, the common thread for both Moltmann and Galot is the deeply biblical teaching that God is love.

If God is love, and love involves empathy (literally “feeling with”), can God truly love without being able to be affected by the beloved? Is not an impassible God a distant and uninterested one as well? Moreover, how does Catholic theology reconcile an impassible God with a God that loves?

First, we must provide a (theological) definition of love. Love is not an emotion, but an act of the will. In this case, the act of the will of a personal God. Such a claim distinguishes Him from the God of Aristotle (the unmoved mover) and from various deist formulations of God.

As an act of the will, love is constant and stable. In contrast, love as a property of emotion wavers and fluctuates. This consistency mirrors God’s faithfulness, which is critical for understanding the biblical covenants. Still, one may argue that a God whose love is willful rather than emotional fails to account for the human condition fully. After all, humans do not normally will themselves to love another.

However, when one realizes that “God so loved the world that He sent His only Son” into the world, then it is much easier to affirm the theological position that God is love.

Finally, it is necessary to distinguish between pain and suffering. Pain is a physical or emotional state resulting from a privation. Understood this way, God cannot be said to experience pain. Suffering, on the other hand, is the response one applies to pain. In this sense, suffering can be voluntary. Put another way, one can make oneself suffer. Thus, it can be argued that God chooses to suffer; He cannot be made to suffer.

One sees evidence of this willingness to enter into human suffering in Christ’s own words: “The Son of Man [Christ] did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:28).

Conclusion

The belief in an immutable and impassible God forms some of the foundational claims that Catholicism makes about God. These traits that have been predicated of God have not gone without criticism. The basis for the criticism is that impassibility clashes with the biblical teaching that God is love.

The paradox that is Divine impassibility stands at the heart of the mystery of God; of a God that cannot be caused to suffer but who, nevertheless, has entered into human history, has entered into our suffering, and has done so out of love.