A Note on Divine Impassibility
By Deacon Douglas McManaman
If God is pure act of existing (ipsum esse subsistens), as any good Thomist would contend, then it is difficult to understand how God could suffer, not to mention how God can change. Change proceeds from potentiality to actuality, but there is no potentiality in God. From the same angle, it is argued that God cannot suffer, because suffering implies passivity, which is an accidental mode of being and thus implies potentiality.
It seems to me, however, that the problem with this reasoning is just that–it is reasoning pure and simple. What God has chosen to reveal about himself transcends the grasp of reason. We insist that God is the unutterable mystery, the utterly incomprehensible, the ineffable, and the gulf between human reason and the mystery of the incomprehensible God is unbridgeable from our end–only God can bridge that gap, which he does via divine revelation.
When certain modern theologians and philosophers speak of God as subject to change and evolution, it is very difficult for someone like me to get a handle on what it is they mean and how such a contention can be true, raised as I was on classical metaphysics. However, I think there is a way to come to some appreciation for this particular perspective, and the way to get there is by focusing on the nature of love, and not the philosophy of being. Allow me to explain.
A person who is completely indifferent to the well-being of another human person is not moved by his or her suffering. We may not be completely indifferent to the well-being of another, only relatively so, in which case our sorrow at the news of their demise is relative and proportioned inversely to that indifference: the greater the indifference, the less we are moved by their suffering. Conversely, the more we love somebody, the more we have invested ourselves in them. In doing so, we have made ourselves vulnerable. This is what it means to genuinely love another–it means to love that person as another “self”, so that what happens to that person happens to me, or is felt by me. The more perfect that love, the more perfect will be my identification with them, and so their happiness becomes my happiness, and their unhappiness becomes my own unhappiness. Hence, love is always risky. If I am averse to risk, my love will be very limited. The greater my love, the greater my willingness to throw caution to the wind and risk everything for the beloved.
When I choose to love another, I choose to make myself not only vulnerable to suffering, but subject to change. I actually introduce new potentialities into my life. In this way, one could say that I render myself more imperfect, in so far as imperfection implies potentiality. For example, in choosing to love another as another self, I am now larger, which means I am no longer just one, but two, and three, and four, and so on, depending on how many I choose to love as another “me”. My happiness is now subject to change. Their increase in well-being and happiness becomes my own, just as any sorrow that comes to them as a result of any harm that befalls them becomes my own sorrow. My life is much less stable as a result, that is, it is more open to fluctuation, instability and change. To the extent that the person I love is left in a state of “not yet”, to that extent I am “not yet”. If the person I choose to love is left permanently deprived, unrealized, or destroyed, then I am permanently unrealized, deprived, and my life is to a certain extent destroyed–just consider the state of a mother whose child has been destroyed. Does she ever recover completely? The only way we can avoid this is to separate ourselves from the one we love so that his or her sorrow is no longer ours. But if I have become them through love, then I have freely made myself subject to the changes that they are bound to undergo.
Now, from one angle, it is true that I cannot love someone I need. For love to be genuine, I have to love that person for his or her sake, not for my sake, that is, not for the sake of my needs–this is nothing more than self-love. However, to freely choose to love another for his or her own sake, not for my sake, is to freely choose to create the conditions in which I now need that person’s completeness in order to achieve my own. The difference between the former and the latter is that the latter is a gift, while the former is not.
All this is just the nature of love. In other words, if love is joyful, it is also painful, and the greater the love, the greater the pain in store for me.
Now, the central text for this discussion here is found in 1 John, chapter 4: “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love” (v. 7-8). Reason can establish that whatever exists in God is identical to his act of existing, so indeed, God is love without measure. God is absolute love. But now we are in a quandary; for love without the ability to change, without the will to identify with the beloved, and thus without the ability to suffer, is simply not love. If God loves more than any of us, then God suffers more than any of us, and if love involves a free decision to render oneself vulnerable to change and instability, such that the beloved’s growth in perfection becomes my own growth in perfection, then the God who is Love Itself is a God who, by his own will, is subject to change. In fact, one would have to say that such a God needs us, because genuine love creates the conditions in which the lover needs the beloved’s completeness in order to be complete.
The passion and death of Christ is the visible manifestation of the interior suffering of God who is Love, and his need for water–”I thirst” (Jn 19, 28) – is a manifestation of the divine need–for our love and the love of all that was created through him and for him (Col 1, 16). And so it may not be a matter of choosing between the philosophy of being and divine revelation. Rather, it is divine revelation that reveals something of the darkness that reason encounters when it tries to pierce the veil that limits it. The light of reason is darkness compared to the light of divine revelation. To settle upon the light of reason and leave divine revelation aside is to settle upon darkness. God is Love, and so God is a never ending source of surprises. Those who have an aversion to surprises will be drawn to what is controllable, manageable, comprehensible, and stable–an evolving universe, an evolving world, and an evolving Church will only make them anxious.