As a student of classical theology, the fact that God is “without body, parts, or passions”1 has been impressed upon me rather thoroughly and consistently over the last several years. Though I had long been aware of a doctrine of divine impassibility, only gradually over this period have I come to grasp just how deep and radical the claim is compared to modern theological instincts.
I do not write at present to defend the classical doctrine or explain it beyond a quick sketch. For that, you should probably head over to Ryan Hurd, from whom I learned most of this. Instead, my focus is more on an unexpected direction that I’ve found “God has no passions (including wrath)” to take.
The traditional answer to the obvious question, “If God does not have feelings, why does the Bible use feelings to describe God?” translates unexpectedly well from its medieval Latin origins into English. We would say feelings are said of God not from affect but from effect, i.e. not because God is affected by something, which would be impossible, but because of the effect He brings about among us. For example, if the Bible says that God regretted something, the point isn’t that God felt bad about what He did, as thought it had been a bad choice or turned out differently than He planned. Such a thing never happens to God. The point is that He is doing stuff like a regretful man. A man full of regret may tear down something he has built or start something new and radically different from what He did before. Similarly, God, not because of a bad feeling but because of His wise and sovereign plan, sometimes puts a violent end to one thing and starts up something else completely unexpected. God is not really having a fit of regret over what He has done, but, for example, the difference between making the world and destroying everything in the Flood is so extreme that the best comparison to describe it is how people act when they do regret what they’ve done.
The same has traditionally been applied to anger. The classic position holds that God is not actually angry, as though His pulse could race, His face redden, and a fire in His bones set Him into a frenzy of attack. Instead, God resembles an angry man because angry men tend to punish the people around them harshly―indeed people rarely in this life punish very severely without being angry. To the same effect, God also inflicts serious punishments on the wicked and painful discipline on His children. If we call God angry or speak of His wrath, the point is that He is punishing someone, or about to do so, and it has nothing at all to do with God’s “feelings.”2
I promised I wouldn’t spend a lot of time explaining, so I’ll stop there for now. I want to move on to an interesting observation I’ve made since getting all this settled in my head. See, there are plenty of people out there who discover “God is impassible, and therefore does not really have wrath” and proceed to mutate that into “Because God has no wrath, He will not painfully punish.” You see this in various blogs and books of a more liberal or progressive bent, explaining that God is not angry, and therefore your sufferings are not a punishment, God never ordered anyone to be executed, and there is no such thing as hell, or other similar conclusions.
But in a sense, this is almost exactly the opposite of the classic position on divine impassibility. The “liberal” take can reduce to something like, “God is not angry, and His wrath is only in your feelings or your mind.” The traditional take puts the explanation for God’s wrath out there in the real world, even if not within God Himself. The Bible says God is angry, and though this doesn’t mean God actually has anger, it does mean there are real punishments coming. If it were not for such punishments, there would be no reason to call God “angry” at all. Since the Bible does speak constantly and intensely about God’s wrath, it follows that we have to be aware of punishment as a constant and intense feature of living a sinful life in a sinful world. To make the contrast simpler:
Some reason, “God is not angry, therefore He is not going to punish.”
The traditional position is, “God is not angry, therefore if the Bible says He is, this is a warning that He is going to punish.”
This contrast being made, I did not in fact take up this writing as a polemic against “the libs,” either. Rather, I have been putting my attention increasingly on the positive end of this: the Bible warns against God’s wrath so much because He does in fact punish. As a son of God by grace, I know the punishments to which I am liable are not so much penal (as Christ has already satisfied for that, praise be to Him) but are instead God’s fatherly chastisement, which Scripture reminds us is not3 “joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.”
Yet it is precisely in such disciplinary contexts that some of the most charged and violent descriptions of God’s wrath in the entire Bible emerge. God threatens Israel with the most severe horrors and announces curses that sound more frightening than the ravings of a raging drunk before reminding her that He will restore her, bringing her back under His fatherly care. God is our Father, and it is from a loving will, not from fiery feelings, that He will at times take us out back to the woodshed and ruin our whole day.
On one hand, this understanding comes with the consolation and assurance that God does these things only for our good, and not, as we sinful parents may often do, out of petty frustration, aggravation, or a blown fuse. God does not take out violent emotions upon us as men too often do. On the other hand, there is a sense in which God’s pure loving will in such punishments is more frightening than anger would be. C. S. Lewis, discussing in A Grief Observed the possibility of an evil god, makes a very closely related point:
The terrible thing is that a perfectly good God is in this matter [of extreme suffering] hardly less formidable than a Cosmic Sadist. The more we believe that God hurts only to heal, the less we can believe that there is any use in begging for tenderness. A cruel man might be bribed—might grow tired of his vile sport—might have a temporary fit of mercy, as alcoholics have fits of sobriety. But suppose that what you are up against is a surgeon whose intentions are wholly good. The kinder and more conscientious he is, the more inexorably he will go on cutting. If he yielded to your entreaties, if he stopped before the operation was complete, all the pain up to that point would have been useless.
This, then, is what has hit home to me as of late. Despite the many therapeutic needs out there to remind people that God is not hateful, cruel, grumpy, or indeed even angry, we run the risk of running into another ditch of either separating the hand of God from the consequences of our sin, or else separating our sins from their consequences. Being honest and biblical about a wrath-free God means reckoning with the fact that we are constantly guilty of innumerable sins, and that God’s hand upholds the entire order of suffering and pain that these bring upon us. The loving God will not rest if we are at rest with our sin. He drives the entire universe to chastise and correct us, using however much pain it may require to do the job.
To be aware of this means being aware of our own sufferings and realizing how many of them are probably, whether directly by consequence or indirectly by Providential wisdom, afflicting us on account of our own sins and our need to repent of them. From the other side, it means we should fear to sin, lest future pains befall us. As I sit and pray to a God who I recognize does not “have wrath,” I am reminded that the Bible paints Him in anger because His paddlings hurt like heck, and He would rather spare me that pain, so I had better repent of my sins. If the whole truth about God’s wrath in the Bible lies in God’s punishments, and it talks an awful lot about God’s wrath, I should take care, not from the servile fear of a grouchy God, but from the healthy fear of the loving Father and the strong, sometimes excruciating measures He will take to work all things for my good.
Westminster Confession of Faith 2.1.
Sometimes people imagine that this kind of talking applies only to God, but in fact we do this with ordinary people, too. We may speak of a judge’s wrath or even a video game player’s wrath, not actually meaning to say anything at all about how they feel but only about what they are going to do to someone, namely, to give them pain. If I tell my sons that they will feel my wrath during Super Smash Bros, I intend only to tell them that they are going to suffer a great defeat at my hands, and not that I will be angry with them during the game. But observe that I’m not joking: what I’m intending to say about my impending victory is entirely serious, i.e. I believe it to be true and expect them to respond the same way. I am, however, still communicating that solid and serious truth using a light and entertaining metaphor, saying “wrath” as a substitute for the acts whereby I will gain victory over them and inflict upon them a certain injury, namely defeat.
Hebrews 12:11.