Divine Impassibility and the Crucifixion
3
ON DIVINE ATTRIBUTES
On Appraising Perfect Being Theology
Dr. Craig,
I first would like to thank you for your work. Although I am an agnostic with theistic leanings, I was first directed to your website by a persistent friend of mine who has gotten me to consider the deep questions of life. I find what you have to say about the existence of God clear and stimulating in helping me formulate my views on this most important of questions. That being said, I do take issue with one aspect of your theological views, as I am somewhat puzzled by your tacit endorsement of Anselmian perfect being theology (APBT), which attempts to describe God as “the greatest conceivable being” or “that which no greater can be conceived.” I have noticed that you use APBT quite a bit in your debates and publications to argue against the Islamic conception of God, defend the Divine Command Theory of ethics, and establish God as a necessary being. Nevertheless, in spite of its advantages, I am convinced that APBT is an untenable Christian theological doctrine for three reasons.
First, the concept of a greatest conceivable being which is central to APBT is inherently subjective, for what seems great to one person might not be great at all to another. To illustrate, consider a moral realist and an “enchanted” moral nihilist, who relishes the destruction of all objective moral value, duty, and accountability. To the moral realist, the property of being omnibenevolent might be conducive to being a greatest conceivable being. However, to the enchanted nihilist, omnibenevolence might be seen as a crutch which limits God’s omnipotence; hence, he does not think that omnibenevolence is a great-making property. Another example would be God’s being a concrete object rather than an abstract object. While most of us today agree that being concrete is greater than being abstract, for a follower of Platonism living 2,200 years ago, it would be the opposite. Thus, many of the intuitions people appeal to in order to justify their conception of God under APBT are unreliable because they conflict with one another and are largely shaped by the surrounding culture.
Second, even if the problem mentioned before can be answered, APBT makes theism impossible. One of the benefits of APBT is that it can be used to silence the atheist who thinks that he can conceive of a greater being than God. For if he is telling the truth, then that being would be God, not that to which he was originally referring. To see why this is problematic for theism, consider two people A and B, who both have conceptions of the greatest conceivable being. However, B has a greater imagination than A and conceives of a greater greatest conceivable being than A. Under APBT, B, by definition, has the correct conception of God. Now, suppose C enters the picture and has a greater imagination than either A or B. As such, his conception of God is the correct one under APBT, and A’s and B’s are false. This process can be repeated until we arrive at a being who has the greatest imagination possible. However, such a being is God Himself! Only God can correctly conceive of God under APBT! This makes theism impossible since in order to believe in x, one must first be able to conceive of x, which cannot happen since every human’s conception of God would be false.
Finally, APBT is not only problematic, but also contrary to what Christianity teaches. As Greg Bahnsen and others have pointed out, APBT undermines the glory and might of God by limiting His power and attributes to what we humans think of Him. If Christianity is really true, then God is not simply a being whose properties are contingent upon human cognition; rather, He, as the Creator of the world, is entirely independent in both existence and essence from what we as humans think of Him.
So, because of these problems, I believe that Christians should abandon APBT, regardless of its assets. Instead, they should move towards something akin to Plantinga’s maximally great being theology, which describes God by attributing to Him a set of clearly-defined properties. But what are your thoughts on this? Do you think that these problems with APBT can be surmounted?
Thanks,
Aditya
(country not specified)
Dr. Craig’s Response
To say that I tacitly endorse Anselmian Perfect Being Theology is an understatement, Aditya. I am an enthusiastic proponent. As I explain in Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, I see the conception of God as the greatest conceivable being as one of the guides for systematic theology’s formulation of the doctrine of God:
Two controls have tended to guide this inquiry into the divine nature: Scripture and Perfect Being Theology. For thinkers in the Judeo-Christian tradition, God’s self-revelation in Scripture is obviously paramount in understanding what God is like. In addition, the Anselmian conception of God as the greatest conceivable being or most perfect being has guided philosophical speculation on the raw data of Scripture, so that God’s biblical attributes are to be conceived in ways that would serve to exalt God’s greatness. Since the concept of God is underdetermined by the biblical data and since what constitutes a ‘great-making’ property is to some degree debatable, philosophers working within the Judeo-Christian tradition enjoy considerable latitude in formulating a philosophically coherent and biblically faithful doctrine of God.14
It seems to me that your questions evince some confusions about Perfect Being Theology and that once these are cleared up your misgivings will be allayed. Indeed, Perfect Being Theology includes among its advocates Alvin Plantinga, whose view you endorse. So let’s look at each of your three misgivings.
First, the concept of a greatest conceivable being is inherently subjective, for what seems great to one person might not be great at all to another. This objection seems to confuse God’s being the greatest conceivable being with our discerning what properties a greatest conceivable being must possess. I’ve already acknowledged a degree of play in the notion of a great-making property. For example, is it greater to be timeless or omnitemporal? The answer is not clear. But our uncertainty as to what properties the greatest conceivable being must have does nothing to invalidate the definition of “God” as “the greatest conceivable being.” Here Anselm’s intuition which you mention seems on target: there cannot by definition be anything greater than God.
INSIGHT
Note this important distinction. It also underscores how “conceivability” is not the same as “imaginability,” which Dr. Craig develops later on in his answer.
Now, you might think, “But what good is it defining God as the greatest conceivable being if we have no idea what such a being would be like?” The answer to that question will depend on what project you’re engaged in. If you’re doing systematic theology, then you have that other control, namely, Scripture, which supplies considerable information about God, for example, that He is eternal, almighty, good, personal, and so on. Perfect Being Theology will aid in the formulation of a doctrine of God by construing those attributes in as great a way as possible. On the other hand, if your project is natural theology, which makes no appeal to Scripture, then you will present arguments that God must have certain properties. Note that mere disagreement about whether a property is great-making does not imply that there is no objective truth about the matter. When we have a disagreement, then we may present arguments why we think it is greater to have some property than to lack it. The fact that some properties (like timelessness) are not clearly great-making does not imply that no properties are great-making or that the concept of a greatest conceivable being is wholly subjective.
Consider your two examples. First, is it greater to be omnibenevolent rather than not? If omnibenevolence really is a moral property, then it seems morally better to be all-loving than partially loving. The problem with your moral nihilist is that he denies that such a property as omnibenevolence has any moral value! That strikes me, along with most ethicists, as incredible, since love is one of the clearest examples of a moral virtue. On the nihilist’s view the concept of God, who is by definition a being worthy of worship, is incoherent. So the moral nihilist must be an atheist. If we believe that there are objective moral values, then we shall reject moral nihilism and along with it the nihilist’s claim that the concept of God is incoherent.
So suppose someone is not a moral nihilist and thinks that omnibenevolence is a moral property but denies that God has it because it infringes on His omnipotence (I can imagine a Muslim arguing in this way). In that case, one has two strategies to pursue in response. One would be to hold that any increase in power enjoyed by a non-omnibenevolent being is offset by such a being’s inferiority in moral worth and that on balance a being is greater if He is morally perfect even if unable to do certain (immoral) acts which a less than omnibenevolent being could do. The other strategy would be to show that omnipotence does not entail the ability to do just anything.15 In fact, I think Anselm and others argued plausibly that the ability to do evil acts actually evinces weakness not power. So there is no inconsistency between omnipotence and omnibenevolence.
Next, is it greater to be concrete rather than abstract? What you need to understand here is that the modern conception of abstract objects is quite different than the ancient conception. In the contemporary sense, abstract objects are essentially causally effete. They can’t do anything or cause anything. But for Plato and the ancients, the Forms were causally potent and affected the world. They were really more like concrete objects. Now, I take it to be clear that it is greater to be causally potent than impotent and that God, therefore, cannot be an abstract object in the modern sense. Moreover, God is personal and, therefore, cannot be an abstract object, since persons are concrete objects.
The point is that the attributes of God can be debated: there is no reason to think that we are utterly in the dark about the matter. Contrary to your claim, I think it is demonstrable that people’s conception of what a greatest conceivable being would be like has a core that has not varied much over history and culture since Anselm.
Second, APBT makes theism impossible, since only God can correctly conceive of God under APBT. Ironically, the medieval proponents of Perfect Being Theology would have heartily agreed that God alone has a perfect comprehension of His essence! In fact, that’s why Thomas Aquinas rejected Anselm’s ontological argument. But they would rightly respond that your conclusion that theism is impossible does not follow. First, it at most follows from your argument that theistic belief would not be warranted, not that theism would be false. Second, a partial grasp of God’s essential properties does not entail that one’s conception of God is false, but merely incomplete—especially if one is aware that one grasps only a glimmer of God’s greatness. Third, one can believe in x without being able to grasp x’s essence. For example, one could believe in God as the Creator and Designer of the universe.
But there is a more fundamental confusion underlying the second question, and that is the confusion of conceivability with imaginability. These are not the same. A thousand-sided polygon is unimaginable, but it is hardly inconceivable. Conceivability is taken to be co-extensive with metaphysical possibility. So the greatest conceivable being is the same thing as the greatest possible being. It is, as Plantinga says, a maximally great being, the greatest being possible. True, Plantinga does give content to this notion in terms of specific properties, but those properties are obviously chosen because he thinks of them as great-making properties, which a maximally great being cannot lack. Maximal greatness is doubtless not exhausted by the properties he mentions. His version of the ontological argument is based, in effect, on one of those incomplete, inadequate conceptions of God that you mention in this question.
Third, APBT undermines the glory and might of God by limiting His power and attributes to what we humans think of Him. The two confusions underlying the first two questions come together in this terribly misconceived objection. Of course, God “is entirely independent in both existence and essence from what we as humans think of Him.” To think otherwise is to confuse once again God’s being the greatest conceivable being with our discerning what properties a greatest conceivable being must possess. Moreover, the concept of the greatest conceivable being is not the same as the concept of the greatest imaginable being. No advocate of Perfect Being Theology thinks that God is “a being whose properties are contingent upon human cognition.” The very absurdity of such an allegation should have led you to suspect that something was very much amiss with the argument leading to such a conclusion.
So these objections are, I think, far from insurmountable. Notice that if you do think that Plantinga’s conception of God as a maximally great being is a metaphysically possible concept—as your advocating it for the task of Christian theology seems to suggest—then it follows that God exists.
In What Sense Is God a “Simple Being”?
Dear Dr. Craig,
I’ve been using On Guard to facilitate our adult Sunday school class. This is the second question that’s come up as I read and study the book. In the chapter on Fine-Tuning, you make the statement, “… God is a remarkably simple entity.” And, further, “a divine mind is startlingly simple.” I have to admit I’ve never thought of God as being “simple.” And the concept seems to be at odds with how I’ve always interpreted Scripture, where we read, for example, Paul’s rhetorical question in 1 Corinthians and Romans (quoting Isaiah), “Who has known the mind of God?”
I wonder if describing God as a “simple entity” isn’t perhaps an unnecessary attempt to align the steps of the Design or Cosmological arguments with Occam’s razor. At any rate, if you could shed any additional light on this, I’d greatly appreciate it. Thanks!
Tom
United States
Dr. Craig’s Response
The problem here, I’m sure, is that the word “simple” in English can mean “easy” or even “dumb,” so that to call God simple sounds rather like an insult. But “simple” can also mean “non-composite,” that is to say, not composed of parts, and this is the relevant sense here. An electron, for example, is a simple particle, whereas a proton is not, the latter being composed of quarks. The degree to which an entity is simple is the degree to which it is made up of potentially separable parts.
Far from being a misguided attempt to save the cosmological and design arguments, simplicity is one of the classic attributes of God! For example, the very first attribute of God, which is discussed by Thomas Aquinas following his five proofs of God’s existence, is God’s simplicity.16
Thomas upholds an extraordinarily strong doctrine of divine simplicity, arguing that God is utterly without composition of any sort. In my discussion of this divine attribute17, I reject Thomas’s very strong view in favor of a weaker form of divine simplicity. I see no reason, for example, to think that God’s essence and existence are the same.
Still, as a mind without a body, God is amazingly simple. Being immaterial, He has no physical parts. Therefore to postulate a pure Mind as the explanation of fine-tuning is the height of simplicity!
If you doubt this, then I invite you to explain the sense in which a pure mind is complex. What Richard Dawkins does is to confuse the mind itself with a mind’s thoughts. Certainly a mind’s thoughts can be complex, but a mind’s thoughts are not the mind itself (for a mind can cease to think its complex thoughts and contemplate something else instead).
So even if we accept the (erroneous) principle that an explanation, in order to be a good one, must be simpler than the thing to be explained, postulating a mind behind the universe, with all its variegated and contingent constants and quantities, does represent an advance in simplicity.
On Problems with “Reformed” Theology’s Conception of God and Creation
Dr. Craig,
I am troubled at the mass amount of Calvinists I see who are incredibly intelligent and trustworthy Christian leaders yet seem to stick their head in the sand when it comes to the problem of evil. If they don’t, then they tend to make God a self-contradicting being. Why do you think this is so?
I’m also personally troubled at how few leaders I see subscribing to Molinism. It seems to me that it answers the most questions and creates the least problems. I understand it can be complex, but I wouldn’t think we would just rest with the problem of evil not being satisfied. I don’t base what I believe on the beliefs of others, but we can’t ignore the influence others have in our lives, or the desire to have a home with others when it comes to these thoughts.
Anyway, I would enjoy your thoughts … as I always do.
Thanks,
Gordon
Dr. Craig’s Response
I think you’re right, Gordon, that a great many intelligent and godly Christian leaders are Reformed, or followers of John Calvin, in their theology. I’m currently participating in a four-views book on divine providence along with a pair of Reformed theologians. It is evident from their contributions that, despite the intellectual puzzles raised by the Reformed view, they both embrace it because they are convinced that it most faithfully represents the teaching of Scripture on the subject, Scripture being the only authoritative rule of faith.
Actually, I have no problem with certain classic statements of the Reformed view. For example, the Westminster Confession (Sect. III) declares that:
God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin; nor is violence offered to the will of creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.
Now, this is precisely what the Molinist believes! The Confession affirms God’s preordination of everything that comes to pass as well as the liberty and contingency of the creaturely will, so that God is not the author of sin. It is a tragedy that in rejecting middle knowledge Reformed divines have cut themselves off from the most perspicuous explanation of the coherence of this wonderful confession.
ACCEPTING A SOLUTION OR A MYSTERY
By rejecting a doctrine of divine providence based on God’s middle knowledge, Reformed theologians are simply self-confessedly left with a mystery. The great seventeenth-century Reformed theologian Francis Turretin held that a careful analysis of Scripture leads to two indubitable conclusions, both of which must be held in tension without compromising either one: that God on the one hand by His providence not only decreed, but most certainly secures, the event of all things, whether free or contingent; on the other hand, however, man is always free in acting and many effects are contingent. Although I cannot understand how these can be mutually connected together, yet (on account of ignorance of the mode) the thing itself is (which is certain from another source, i.e., from the Word) not either to be called in question or wholly denied.18
Here Turretin affirms without compromise both the sovereignty of God and human freedom and contingency; he just doesn’t know how to put them together. Molinism offers a solution. By rejecting that solution, the Reformed theologian is left with a mystery. There’s nothing wrong with mystery per se (the correct physical interpretation of quantum mechanics is a mystery!); the problem is that some Reformed theologians, like my two collaborators in the four-views book, try to resolve the mystery by holding to universal, divine, causal determinism and a compatibilist view of human freedom. According to this view, the way in which God sovereignly controls everything that happens is by causing it to happen, and freedom is reinterpreted to be consistent with being causally determined by factors outside oneself.
It is this view, which affirms universal determinism and compatibilism, that runs into the problems you mention. Making God the author of evil is just one of the problems this neo-Reformed view faces. At least five come immediately to mind:
1. UNIVERSAL, DIVINE, CAUSAL DETERMINISM CANNOT OFFER A COHERENT INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.
The classical Reformed divines recognized this. They acknowledge that the reconciliation of scriptural texts affirming human freedom and contingency with scriptural texts affirming divine sovereignty is inscrutable. D. A. Carson identifies nine streams of texts affirming human freedom: (1) People face a multitude of divine exhortations and commands, (2) people are said to obey, believe, and choose God, (3) people sin and rebel against God, (4) people’s sins are judged by God, (5) people are tested by God, (6) people receive divine rewards, (7) the elect are responsible to respond to God’s initiative, (8) prayers are not mere showpieces scripted by God, and (9) God literally pleads with sinners to repent and be saved.19 These passages rule out a deterministic understanding of divine providence, which would preclude human freedom. Determinists reconcile universal, divine, causal determinism with human freedom by re-interpreting freedom in compatibilist terms. Compatibilism entails determinism, so there’s no mystery here. The problem is that adopting compatibilism achieves reconciliation only at the expense of denying what various scriptural texts seem clearly to affirm: genuine indeterminacy and contingency.
2. UNIVERSAL CAUSAL DETERMINISM CANNOT BE RATIONALLY AFFIRMED.
There is a sort of dizzying, self-defeating character to determinism. For if one comes to believe that determinism is true, one has to believe that the reason he has come to believe it is simply that he was determined to do so. One has not in fact been able to weigh the arguments pro and con and freely make up one’s mind on that basis. The difference between the person who weighs the arguments for determinism and rejects them and the person who weighs them and accepts them is wholly that one was determined by causal factors outside himself to believe and the other not to believe. When you come to realize that your decision to believe in determinism was itself determined and that even your present realization of that fact right now is likewise determined, a sort of vertigo sets in, for everything that you think, even this very thought itself, is outside your control. Determinism could be true; but it is very hard to see how it could ever be rationally affirmed, since its affirmation undermines the rationality of its affirmation.
3. UNIVERSAL, DIVINE DETERMINISM MAKES GOD THE AUTHOR OF SIN AND PRECLUDES HUMAN RESPONSIBILITY.
In contrast to the Molinist view, on the deterministic view even the movement of the human will is caused by God. God moves people to choose evil, and they cannot do otherwise. God determines their choices and makes them do wrong. If it is evil to make another person do wrong, then on this view God is not only the cause of sin and evil, but becomes evil Himself, which is absurd. By the same token, all human responsibility for sin has been removed. For our choices are not really up to us: God causes us to make them. We cannot be responsible for our actions, for nothing we think or do is up to us.
4. UNIVERSAL, DIVINE DETERMINISM NULLIFIES HUMAN AGENCY.
Since our choices are not up to us but are caused by God, human beings cannot be said to be real agents. They are mere instruments by means of which God acts to produce some effect, much like a man using a stick to move a stone. Of course, secondary causes retain all their properties and powers as intermediate causes, as the Reformed divines remind us, just as a stick retains its properties and powers, which make it suitable for the purposes of the one who uses it. Reformed thinkers need not be occasionalists like Nicolas Malebranche, who held that God is the only cause there is. But these intermediate causes are not agents themselves but mere instrumental causes, for they have no power to initiate action. Hence, it’s dubious that on divine determinism there really is more than one agent in the world, namely, God. This conclusion not only flies in the face of our knowledge of ourselves as agents but also makes it inexplicable why God then treats us as agents, holding us responsible for what He caused us and used us to do.
5. UNIVERSAL, DIVINE DETERMINISM MAKES REALITY INTO A FARCE.
On the deterministic view, the whole world becomes a vain and empty spectacle. There are no free agents in rebellion against God, whom God seeks to win through His love, and no one who freely responds to that love and freely gives his love and praise to God in return. The whole spectacle is a charade whose only real actor is God Himself. Far from glorifying God, the deterministic view, I’m convinced, denigrates God for engaging in such a farcical charade. It is deeply insulting to God to think that He would create beings which are in every respect causally determined by Him and then treat them as though they were free agents, punishing them for the wrong actions He made them do or loving them as though they were freely responding agents. God would be like a child who sets up his toy soldiers and moves them about his play world, pretending that they are real persons whose every motion is not in fact of his own doing and pretending that they merit praise or blame. I’m certain that Reformed determinists, in contrast to classical Reformed divines, will bristle at such a comparison. But why it’s inapt for the doctrine of universal, divine, causal determinism is a mystery to me.
INFORMING THEOLOGIANS MAY INCREASE MOLINISM’S ACCEPTANCE
So why do so many intelligent and faithful Christian leaders buy into Calvinism? I think that the sort of Calvinism represented by the statement quoted above from the Westminster Confession is a fair summary of Scripture’s teaching and, therefore, should be believed. It’s only when one goes beyond it to try to resolve the mystery by embracing determinism and compatibilism that one gets into trouble. So insofar as these Christian leaders are content to remain with the mystery, I think theirs is a reasonable position. The vast majority of them have probably little understanding of Molinism and so are just insufficiently informed to make a decision.
A few years ago, I spoke at Westminster Seminary in San Diego on middle knowledge, and halfway through the Q&A period following my talk, one of the faculty said, “I’m embarrassed to say, Dr. Craig, that we aren’t even able to discuss this with you because we just are completely unfamiliar with what you’re talking about.” He was embarrassed that as a professional theologian he was so ignorant of these debates. By contrast, some theologians who belong to the Reformed tradition have moved toward Molinism. When I gave the Stob lectures at Calvin College and Seminary, I was shocked when the theologians at the seminary told me that they were all Molinists! I increasingly encounter people who are moving in the Molinist direction (both from the Calvinistic end and the open theist end of the spectrum!).
So don’t be too hard on our Calvinist brethren. Offer them something better, and hope that they will embrace it.
INSIGHT
As simple as this advice is, it may actually have a lot going for it, as Dr. Craig’s anecdote suggests. One way to further suggest “something better” is to consider whether the God and human relationship, let alone God and people of God relationship, is in fact livable if the Reformed assumption (universal, divine, causal determinism), is true. That is, what are the existential reasons for living a meaningful life entailed by that assumption? Is it compelling? Is it hopeful? Does it seem to reflect people’s experience (historically speaking, let alone your own experience) in relationship to God?
Divine Impassibility and the Crucifixion
Sir,
First of all, thank you very much for your lectures. Although I am a Muslim, they are very informative and helped me reason in my belief in God. (Even though sometimes, all that philosophy talk was too much for me!)
I have two questions:
1. In saying that God felt pain that mankind had sinned (and, therefore, sent Jesus as a lamb for their sins), or that Christ’s soul suffered, or that Christ cried out to God for help when He was on the Cross, are we not degrading God’s nature? Because if God is able to be hurt (not physically, but spiritually) by mankind, isn’t it a weakness of character and shows that we are able to harm Him? In fact, that would mean that when God created Adam, He created within Himself a weakness because the sons of Adam would cause Him grievance. At least, that is my understanding of it.
2. I know that you tend to answer questions based on theism and not specifically on Christianity, but please bear with me here. As I understand the Trinity, each part of the Trinity is fully God. Jesus had to die because He was devoid of any sins (because He was divine). So, when He was crucified, the part of Him that had to die was not merely His human body, but the sinless soul, in order for the sacrifice to mean anything. So, OK, He died and then was resurrected three days later. Does that mean that for that portion of three days, God had died? Because Jesus is fully God, right? Or, if He is not, does it mean that God was one-third less divine? And, if Jesus died (part of the triune), does that mean that part of God is not eternal?
Thank you very much for reading this (and possibly answering it).
Sincerely,
Mun
Canada
Dr. Craig’s Response
Having an avid interest in medieval Islamic philosophy and having chosen Islam as my side area of specialization in my doctoral work in theology, I very much enjoy talking with Muslims about these important questions, Mun. Thanks for writing! Your question will help Muslim readers of our website all around the world to understand better what Christians believe.
1. Since Muslims and Christians alike accept Genesis as God’s revealed Word, we all must deal with the question of what the text means when it says that when God saw the pervasive sin of mankind “it grieved Him to His heart” (Gen. 6:6). Is this to be taken literally, or is this just an anthropomorphic way of speaking of God (that is, speaking of God in human terms)? The biblical narrative is indisputably filled with anthropomorphic descriptions of God, describing Him as “seeing” and “hearing” things, and so on. But should we understand God to be literally without emotions?
The view that God is in no way affected by creatures is called the impassibility of God. This seems to be the view that you favor. God cannot suffer emotional pain. Divine impassibility was thought by medieval Christian theologians to be one of the attributes of God. So you would find many Christians historically who would agree with your view. But on the contemporary scene there are very few theologians who would defend such a doctrine. There seems to be no good reason for taking the biblical descriptions of God’s emotions non-literally. Far from seeing susceptibility to emotional pain as a weakness, most contemporary Christian philosophers and theologians would say quite the opposite: that it is a weakness for a person to be unmoved by human suffering and a strength to feel emotions, including pain, indignation, compassion, etc. In fact, think of the etymology of the word “compassion”: to suffer along with. As the greatest conceivable being, God must be compassionate and share our sorrows and joys. Impassibility is actually a weakness, whereas compassion redounds to God’s greatness.
INSIGHT
Reflect on the spirituality that might follow if God is impassible or not. If God is in no way affected by creatures, in what sense can we meaningfully experience God’s authentic compassion toward us? If we cannot receive this because He does not actually give it, why would we be compelled to give compassion to others? Theology affects our ethics. Consider this: If God’s compassion is a way for Him to enter into and share our suffering, it is evidence of how He is acquainted with us and knows how to wisely love even at our deepest point of need.
Alvin Plantinga speaks for many Christian thinkers when he writes:
As the Christian sees things, God does not stand idly by, cooly observing the suffering of his creatures. He enters into and shares our suffering. He endures the anguish of seeing his son, the second person of the Trinity, consigned to the bitterly cruel and shameful death of the cross. Some theologians claim that God cannot suffer. I believe they are wrong. God’s capacity for suffering, I believe, is proportional to his greatness; it exceeds our capacity for suffering in the same measure as his capacity for knowledge exceeds ours. Christ was prepared to endure the agonies of hell itself; and God, the Lord of the universe, was prepared to endure the suffering consequent upon his son’s humiliation and death. He was prepared to accept this suffering in order to overcome sin, and death, and the evils that afflict our world, and to confer on us a life more glorious than we can imagine. So we don’t know why God permits evil; we do know, however, that he was prepared to suffer on our behalf, to accept suffering of which we can form no conception.20
Defenders of divine impassibility will say that when Christ suffered on the cross, He did so only in His human nature, not in His divine nature. I find that Muslims frequently fail to understand that on the Christian view Christ has two natures: His divine nature which He has possessed from all eternity and His human nature which He assumed at the moment of Mary’s conceiving Jesus in her womb. Defenders of divine impassibility say that Christ’s human nature has both a human soul and a human body, and it was in these that He suffered, not in His divine nature, which was and is impassible. If you want to hold on to divine impassibility, Mun, you can take that route and be a Christian. But like Prof. Plantinga, I think God is greater if He is not impassible.
2. What I have just said bears on your second question, too. The Christian view is that Christ died in His human nature, that is to say, Christ’s human nature died. He obviously did not die in His divine nature. The person who was from all eternity the Second Person of the Trinity didn’t cease to exist between the crucifixion and resurrection. God is, after all, a necessary being and so cannot cease to exist.
In fact, neither did Christ’s human soul or body cease to exist. What is human death, after all? It is the separation of the soul from the body. It is not the annihilation of the soul. Persons who die are in an intermediate, unembodied state until the day of the resurrection, when their souls will be reunited with their renewed bodies.
So it’s a mistake to think either that one member of the Trinity was somehow deleted when Christ died or that Christ’s human soul ceased to exist when He died. What happened is that His soul was separated from His body. The difference between what happened to Christ’s human nature and what will happen to ours someday is that God the Father reunited Christ’s soul with His body in advance of the general resurrection and raised Jesus to glory and immortality as the harbinger and guarantor of our own resurrection.
14. Craig and Moreland, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, 501.
15. See, for example, Flint and Freddoso’s article “Maximal Power” in Dr. Craig’s anthology Philosophy of Religion: A Reader and Guide (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2002), 265–83.
16. See, for example, Aquinas’s Summa Theological, pt. 1, q. 3.
17. See the discussion in Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, 524–26.
18. See, for example, Turretin’s Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 1: 512.
19. See Carson’s Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility: Biblical Perspectives in Tension (Eugene, Oreg.: Wipf & Stock, 2002), 18–22.
20. Alvin Plantinga, “Self-Profile,” Alvin Plantinga, Jas. Tomberlin, ed. (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1985), 36.