9 - Impassible compassion? From divine pathos to divine patience

Summary

O Lord … thou art compassionate in terms of our experience, and not compassionate in terms of thy being … When thou beholdest us in our wretchedness, we experience the effect of compassion, but thou dost not experience the feeling.

(Anselm)

The impassibility of God cannot … mean that it is impossible for Him really to feel compassion. … [the innermost being of God] is not closed but open to feel the distress of man. God cannot be moved from outside, but from inside His own being He shares it in sympathetic communion.

(Barth)

Divine compassion is the goodness God directs to suffering others. Anselm and Barth express this truth in two apparently contradictory ways, the one denying any emotional content (i.e., feeling) to the divine compassion, the other affirming it, at least in qualified fashion. Is God unmoved (Anselm), moved (relational theists and panentheists), or self-moved (Barth) by human suffering?

The compassion of God is a recurring theme at several nodal points in the scriptural account (e.g., Ex. 34:6–7). As the contrasting quotes from Anselm and Barth attest, compassion resembles both action and passion. It therefore serves as an excellent test case with which to sum up our case for remythologizing theology. Accordingly, this chapter contrasts a remythologized conceptual elaboration of divine compassion as a form of communicative action with the kenotic-relational ontotheological version that currently prevails in the theological marketplace.

According to Luke 1:78, Jesus is the splanghna theou: the “compassion of God.”