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The Impassibility of God and the Problem of Evil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

Kenneth Surin
Kenneth Surin
Affiliation:
The Village College, Linton, Cambridge CBI 6JB
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Extract

According to a certain strand in the orthodox Christian theist tradition, God's impassibility is engendered by his immutable nature. For if God cannot change then he cannot experience pain or sorrow. This fundamental principle was appropriated from Plato, who maintained that a being who is perfect can experience neither sadness, pain, nor sorrow. Some modern Christian theists, however, concede that this is perhaps the most questionable aspect of certain forms of orthodox Christian theism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , April 1982 , pp. 97 - 115
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1982

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References

page 97 note 1 For such a concession see Owen, H. P., Concepts of Deity (London: Macmillan, 1971), p. 24CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The strand of Christian theism that I am referring to derives mainly from the tradition that stems from St. Thomas Aquinas. An alternative tradition, represented by (among others) Jürgen Moltmann, James H. Cone, Kazoh Kitamori and Geddes MacGregor, is discussed lucidly in McWilliams, Warren, ‘Divine Suffering in Contemporary Theology’, Scottish journal of Theology, 33 (1980), pp. 35–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The approach adopted in this paper aligns itself with that of the alternative tradition.

page 97 note 2 God and Timelessness (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970), p. 128.Google Scholar

page 98 note 3 See, for example, Owen, op. cit, pp. 24–5.

page 99 note 4 The Crucified God (London: SCM, 1974), pp. 214–215Google Scholar. Moltmann's book is a profound, but somewhat elusive, attempt to make the theology of the cross the central point of the Christian faith, and to work out the implications of this theology of the cross for the Christian understanding of God. Its great merit is that it does not gloss over the seemingly intractable difficulties posed by the so-called ‘problem of evil’. See McWilliams, op. cit., pp. 36–9 for a discussion of Moltmann.

page 99 note 5 Power and Innocence (London: Souvenir Press, 1974), p. 50.Google Scholar

page 100 note 6 A similar point of view is expressed in Ford, Lewis, ‘Divine Persuasion and The Triumph of the Good’, in Brown, D., James, R. E. and Reeves, G. (eds), Process Philosophy and Christian Thought (New York: Bobbs-Merill, 1971) pp. 287–304.Google Scholar

page 101 note 7 Thus A. N. Whitehead charges that if God really were like this, then this conception of God makes him into a tyrant. See his Religion in the Making (Cambridge: University Press, 1926), pp. 55 and 74–5Google Scholar; and Adventures of Ideas (Cambridge: University Press, 1933), p. 218Google Scholar. A more polemical critique of this ‘theological sadism’ is to be found in Soelle, Dorothee, Suffering (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1975), pp. 9–32.Google Scholar

page 101 note 8 Hartshorne, C., A Natural Theology for our Time (La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1967), p. 75Google Scholar. A similar argument is used by Moltmann, op. cit., p. 222.

page 102 note 9 This objection to the objection we have been considering was put to me in discussion by Professor John Hick. According to Hick, we are forced into an anthropormorphized conception of God's love as a solution to the ‘problem’ of evil when we overlook this larger canvas of total history which culminates in eternal joy. Given this larger canvas, we can admit that God does not have to love the victims of evil in the way that human beings do in order to escape the charge that he is a tyrant.

page 102 note 10 This is the view of Professor Hick again expressed in discussion.

page 103 note 11 op. cit, p. 149.

page 103 note 12 By this Weil meant a form of suffering that is not mere pain and suffering. See her Waiting on God (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1951).Google Scholar

page 103 note 13 Evil and The God of Love (London: Macmillan, 1966), pp. 371–372.Google Scholar

page 104 note 14 This, in outline, is the position on theodicy taken by proponents of the ‘evolutionary optimism’, which derives from Teilhard de Chardin's thought. On this optimism see Cowburn, John, Shadows and the Dark: the Problems of Suffering and Evil (London: SCM, 1979), ch. 3Google Scholar. It also corresponds roughly to the view of process theists on theodicy. For the view of process theists see the works of Whitehead, Hartshorne and Lewis Ford cited in this essay.

page 104 note 15 The perspective of the ‘inverted’ theodicist opens from human freedom, and that of the eschatologist from the unfolding of God's redemptive purpose in total history. An ‘inverted’ theodicy, as we see it, is one which attempts to give a rationale for the existence of evil and suffering, not merely in terms of the alleged ‘soul-making’ qualites of the world, but in terms of the notion of creaturely freedom. Essentially, it seeks not so much to justify the ways of God in relation to the world, as to exculpate him by saying that evil and suffering are the consequence of man's misusing of his freedom.

page 105 note 16 For the view that such a trinitarian theology is needed, see Moltmann, op. cit, pp. 255–6.

page 107 note 17 Proponents of the ‘free-will defence’ give the notion of freedom a very strong underpinning by arguing that ‘freedom, including moral freedom, is an essential element in what we know as personal as distinct from non-personal life’ (Hick, op. cit, p. 302). We seem to be implying here that the protest atheist ‘hands back his ticket’ because the suffering and freedom in the universe are not worth the joy that is meant to be a recompense for earthly suffering when we attain to the eternal life. The question arises: how can it be known that they are not worth it? We would say, in reply, that the question of knowing this does not, or should not, even arise for the protest atheist, because for him it would be wrong even to look for a reward in a post-mortem existence, let alone to try and ascertain its worth. The ground of this refusal is ultimately the sense of moral outrage, the sheer injustice, felt by the protest atheist.

page 107 note 18 Hick, p. 311.

page 107 note 19 Hick, p. 313.

page 108 note 20 Or, to pursue our avian analogy: why do we have to bestow on the bird the freedom of its cage? Why not give it freedom simpliciter?

page 108 note 21 The Destiny of Man (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1937), p. 45.Google Scholar

page 109 note 22 op. cit, p. 32.

page 109 note 23 A truly impassible God, it would seem, can be on the side of neither victim nor executioner.

page 110 note 24 As Berdyaev points out, op. cit., p. 42.

page 110 note 25 Soelle, p. 109.

page 111 note 26 A writer like John Cowburn goes so far as to say that the true nature of evil is a mystery even to God. op. cit., ch. 8.

page 111 note 27 The story is quoted in Soelle, p. 145; and Moltmann, p. 273–4.

page 113 note 28 Proslogion, trans. Charlesworth, M. J. as St. Anselm's Proslogion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), ch. 8.Google Scholar

page 113 note 29 On this point, and its relation to the views of Augustine, Anselm and Aquinas, see Mozley, J. K., The Impassibility of God (Cambridge: University Press, 1926), pp. 104–117.Google Scholar

page 114 note 30 See their respective works, ‘Substance in Christology — a cross-bench view’, in Sykes, S. W. and Clayton, J. P. (eds), Christ, Faith and History (Cambridge: University Press, 1972), pp. 279–300Google Scholar; and Divine Transcendence and the Reality of God (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1975)Google Scholar. I argue for this position more fully in my forthcoming papers, ‘AtonementandChristology’, Neve Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie (1982); and ‘Christ, Tragedy and the Avoidance of Love: a phenomenology of the Atonement’.

page 114 note 31 Soelle, p. 86.