on pain and suffering
It bothers me that we're able to talk freely within reformed circles about the possibility that God can suffer. This has been bothering me in a serious way for over a year now, but sometimes it attacks me with more urgency than other times. It strikes me as being a deeply misguided and irreverent way of speaking and thinking - in fact, as being actually wrong.
One reason why I think so is because of who God actually is. Up to now, it's been accepted that the view expressed for example in sections 2.1 and 2.2 of the Westminster Confession (summarised in my last entry) is an accurate way of stating the fundamental truths about the God who we profess to believe and worship. The fact that the Confession says this obviously doesn't make it accurate, but it's a starting point, and anyone who diverges from it while still claiming to be reformed in their theology has a bit of explaining to do: someone who believes in a mutable and vulnerable deity clearly does not believe in a God who is unchangeable and absolute in his being, glory, blessedness, and perfection, as the Confession (and, as I believe, the Bible) presents him to us.
Another reason why I disagree with the view that God is capable of suffering is because of the nature of suffering. In a perfect world, there would (obviously) be no suffering ... but we live in a fallen world, where sin and misery are facts of life, and where misery is caused by sin. But God is holy: he doesn't sin: so he has no reason to suffer. So even if he was not the infinite, eternal, and unchangeable I AM, he would have no reason to suffer, because he is holy and sinless.
The final reason which I'll give just now for why I do not believe that God is capable of suffering is, because of who Christ Jesus is. He is fully God (God the eternal Son) and he is fully man, and yet he is one person: a divine person who took to himself a human nature. It was only because he was man as well as God that it was possible for this person to be born, to be made under the law, to obey the law, and to take the place of sinners under the law. (God is the Law-Giver, he does not obey.) It was only because he was man as well as God that he could suffer - as God, he was still just as infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, glory, blessedness, and perfection, as he ever had been as the Eternal Son of God in eternal harmony with the Father and with the Holy Spirit. He did not cease to be what he always had been, when he became something which he had never been before. There is no reason, even while we acknowledge and believe in the sufferings which Christ Jesus underwent on the cross for his people, to attribute these sufferings to either of the other persons of the Godhead, or even to his own divine nature, because he is God and man in two distinct natures - inseparably joined, but joined without conversion, composition, or confusion.
This post is long enough now that it's well past time for me to stop writing ... not but that there's more that could be said (as ever), but that's got at least something off my chest. Till next time.
One reason why I think so is because of who God actually is. Up to now, it's been accepted that the view expressed for example in sections 2.1 and 2.2 of the Westminster Confession (summarised in my last entry) is an accurate way of stating the fundamental truths about the God who we profess to believe and worship. The fact that the Confession says this obviously doesn't make it accurate, but it's a starting point, and anyone who diverges from it while still claiming to be reformed in their theology has a bit of explaining to do: someone who believes in a mutable and vulnerable deity clearly does not believe in a God who is unchangeable and absolute in his being, glory, blessedness, and perfection, as the Confession (and, as I believe, the Bible) presents him to us.
Another reason why I disagree with the view that God is capable of suffering is because of the nature of suffering. In a perfect world, there would (obviously) be no suffering ... but we live in a fallen world, where sin and misery are facts of life, and where misery is caused by sin. But God is holy: he doesn't sin: so he has no reason to suffer. So even if he was not the infinite, eternal, and unchangeable I AM, he would have no reason to suffer, because he is holy and sinless.
The final reason which I'll give just now for why I do not believe that God is capable of suffering is, because of who Christ Jesus is. He is fully God (God the eternal Son) and he is fully man, and yet he is one person: a divine person who took to himself a human nature. It was only because he was man as well as God that it was possible for this person to be born, to be made under the law, to obey the law, and to take the place of sinners under the law. (God is the Law-Giver, he does not obey.) It was only because he was man as well as God that he could suffer - as God, he was still just as infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, glory, blessedness, and perfection, as he ever had been as the Eternal Son of God in eternal harmony with the Father and with the Holy Spirit. He did not cease to be what he always had been, when he became something which he had never been before. There is no reason, even while we acknowledge and believe in the sufferings which Christ Jesus underwent on the cross for his people, to attribute these sufferings to either of the other persons of the Godhead, or even to his own divine nature, because he is God and man in two distinct natures - inseparably joined, but joined without conversion, composition, or confusion.
This post is long enough now that it's well past time for me to stop writing ... not but that there's more that could be said (as ever), but that's got at least something off my chest. Till next time.
posted by cath at
11:23 pm
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