Can God Suffer?
Can God Suffer?
Christian theology throws up many fascinating questions. Some of them are interesting in themselves. Others are interesting because they open up wider issues. A question which belongs to both of these categories is this: can God be said to suffer? If God can be said to suffer, a point of contact is immediately established between God and the pain of the human world. God cannot then be thought of as being immune from the suffering of the creation. The implications of this for reflecting upon the problem of evil and suffering would be considerable.
But the question is also of interest in another respect. It invites us to consider why so many writers have an inbuilt aversion to thinking and speaking about “a suffering God.” To explore this point, we may consider the historical background to early Christian theology. Although Christianity had its origins in Palestine, it rapidly expanded into other areas of the eastern Mediterranean world, such as modern-day Turkey and Egypt, establishing strongholds in cities such as Antioch and Alexandria. In the course of doing so, it came into contact with Hellenistic culture and Greek ways of thinking.
This naturally raises an interesting question. Did the Christian theologians who worked in this Hellenistic cultural environment inadvertently incorporate some characteristically Greek ideas into their thought? In other words, did a basically Palestinian gospel become distorted by being refracted through a Hellenistic prism? Particular attention was focused on the introduction of metaphysical terms into theology. Some scholars regarded this as the imposition of a static Greek way of thinking upon a dynamic semitic worldview. The result, they argued, was a distortion of the gospel.
Since the time of the Enlightenment, this question has been taken with considerable seriousness. A movement of major importance in this respect is known as the “history of dogma” movement (a working translation of the somewhat formidable German term Dogmengeschichte). Writers such as Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930) believed that atleast some classical Greek ideas had inappropriately found their way into Christian theology. One of these, in the view of some scholars, is the idea of a God who lies beyond suffering. In what follows, we shall explore the classical pagan idea of the apatheia or “impassibility” of God – the view according to which God lies beyond all human emotions and pain.
The Classical View: The Impassibility of God
The notion of perfection dominates the classical understanding of God, as it is expressed in the Platonic dialogues, such as The Republic. To be perfect is to be unchanging and self-sufficient. It is therefore impossible for such a perfect being to be affected or changed by anything outside itself. Furthermore, perfection was understood in very static terms, as we noted when considering Spinoza's approach to divine perfection (see p. 179). If God is perfect, change in any direction is an impossibility. If God changes, this either represents a move away from perfection (in which case, God is no longer perfect) or a move toward perfection (in which case, God was not perfect in the past). Aristotle, echoing such ideas, declared that “change would be change for the worse,” and thus excluded his divine being from change and suffering.
This understanding passed into Christian theology at an early stage. Philo of Alexandria (c.25 bc–c.ad 50), a Hellenistic Jew whose writings were much admired by early Christian writers, wrote a treatise entitled That God is Unchangeable, which vigorously defended the impassibility of God. Biblical passages that seemed to speak of God suffering were, he argued, to be treated as metaphors and not to be allowed their full literal weight. To allow that God changes was to deny the divine perfection. “What greater impiety could there be than to suppose that the Unchangeable changes?” asked Philo. It seemed to be an unanswerable question.
For Philo, God could not be allowed to suffer, or undergo anything which could be spoken of as “passion.” The medieval writer Anselm of Canterbury (c.1033–1109), influenced by this idea, argued that God was compassionate in terms of our experience, but not in terms of the divine being itself. In his Proslogion, Anselm stated that the language of love and compassion is to be treated as purely figurative when used in relation to God. We could say that we experience God as compassionate; this does not, however, mean that God is compassionate.
You are truly compassionate in terms of our experience. Yet you are not so in terms of your own. For when you see us in our misery, we experience the effect of compassion; you, however, do not experience this feeling. Therefore you are compassionate, in that you save the miserable and spare those who sin against you; and you are not compassionate, in that you are not affected by any sympathy for misery.
Thomas Aquinas (c.1225–74) developed a similar approach when reflecting on the love of God for sinners. Love implies vulnerability and, potentially, that God could be affected by our sorrows, or moved by our misery. Yet, while Aquinas had no difficulty in speaking about God being merciful or loving, he was clear that these referred to the being of God, not to God's experience or feelings: “Mercy is especially to be attributed to God, provided that it is considered as an effect, not as a feeling of suffering. [...] It does not belong to God to grieve over the misery of others.”
Now many readers will feel that there is an obvious difficulty here. The gospels make it clear that Jesus Christ was deeply moved by the suffering of others. Furthermore, Christ himself suffered and died on the cross. Traditional Christian theology declared that Jesus Christ was God incarnate. So if Christ is God, and Christ suffered, it surely follows that God suffered in Christ. (The issue in question is the “communication of attributes,” to be discussed at pp. 223–4.) Not so, declared most (though not all) patristic writers, who seem to have been decisively influenced by pagan ideas about the perfection and impassibility of God. For these writers, Christ suffered only in his human nature and not in his divine nature. God thus did not experience human suffering, and remained unaffected by this aspect of the world.
Yet, while the idea of an impassible God achieved considerable influence during the patristic and medieval periods, there were protests against these developments. Martin Luther's (1483–1546) “theology of the cross,” which emerged during the period 1518–19, speaks explicitly of a suffering and crucified God. In the Heidelberg Disputation (1518), Luther contrasted two rival ways of thinking about God. A “theology of glory” perceives God's glory, power, and wisdom in creation. A “theology of the cross” discerns God hidden in the suffering and humiliation of the cross of Christ. Luther deliberately uses the provocative and perhaps puzzling phrase “a crucified God” speaking of the manner in which God shares in the sufferings of the crucified Christ.
The English writer Charles Wesley (1707–88) also saw the incarnation as making it possible to speak of the suffering of God. In one of his hymns, Wesley uses a dramatic turn of phrase to express his belief that the incarnation brings God directly into contact with the experience of suffering and death: “Impassive He suffers; Immortal He dies.”
The Twentieth Century: A Paradigm Shift?
By the end of the twentieth century, many had concluded that there had been a paradigm shift in western theological thinking about the idea of a suffering God. What was once seen as heretical seemed to have become the new orthodoxy. So what pressures led to the rediscovery of the idea of a suffering God? Three can be identified, all focusing on the period immediately after the First World War. These three factors, taken together, gave rise to widespread skepticism concerning traditional ideas about the impassibility of God, classically expressed in the patristic idea of the divine apatheia.
The first factor was the rise of protest atheism. The sheer horror of the First World War made a deep impact upon western theological reflection. The suffering of the period led to a widespread perception that liberal Protestantism was fatally compromised by its optimistic views of human nature. It is no accident that dialectical theology arose in the aftermath of this trauma. Another significant response was the movement known as “protest atheism,” which raised a serious moral protest against belief in God. How could anyone believe in a God who was above such suffering and pain in the world?
Traces of such ideas can be found in Fyodor Dostoevsky's (1821–81) classic nineteenth-century novel The Brothers Karamazov (1880). The ideas were developed more fully in the twentieth century, often using Dostoevsky's character Ivan Karamazov as a model. Karamazov's rebellion against God (or, perhaps more accurately, against the idea of God) has its origins in his refusal to accept that the suffering of an innocent child could ever be justified. Albert Camus (1913–60) developed such ideas in his novel The Rebel (1951), which expressed Karamazov's protest in terms of a “metaphysical rebellion.” Jürgen Moltmann (born 1926) saw in this protest against a detached, indifferent, and invulnerable God “the only serious atheism.” This intensely moral form of atheism demanded a credible theological response – which Moltmann believed had to lie in the form of a theology of a suffering God.
The second factor was the rediscovery of Luther. In 1883 – the celebration of the 400th anniversary of Luther's birth – the Weimar edition of Luther's works was launched. The resulting availability of Luther's works (many of which were hitherto unpublished) led to a resurgence in Luther scholarship, especially in German theological circles. Scholars such as Karl Holl (1866–1926) opened the way for a new interest in the reformer during the 1920s. The result was a perceptible quickening of interest in many of Luther's ideas, especially the “theology of the cross.” Luther's ideas about a “God who is hidden in suffering” became available at almost exactly the moment when they would achieve maximum resonance with the cultural mood.
The third factor was the growing impact of the “history of dogma” movement. Although this movement reached its climax in the closing days of the nineteenth century, it took some while for the implications of its program to percolate into Christian theology as a whole. By the time the First World War had ended, there was a generalawareness that numerous Greek ideas (such as the impassibility of God) had found their way into Christian theology. Sustained attention was given to eliminating these ideas. Protest atheism created a climate in which it was apologetically necessary to speak of a suffering God. The “history of dogma” movement declared that Christian thinking had taken a wrong turn in the patristic period, and that this could be successfully reversed. Christian declarations that God was above suffering, or invulnerable, were now realized to be inauthentic. It was time to recover the authentically Christian idea of the suffering of God in Christ.
In A Theology of the Pain of God (1946), the Japanese writer Kazoh Kitamori (1916–98) argued that true love was rooted in pain. “God is the wounded Lord, having pain in himself.” God is able to give meaning and dignity to human suffering on account of the fact that he also is in pain, and suffers. Like Moltmann, Kitamori draws heavily upon Luther's “theology of the cross,” seeing this as having a special relevance to Japan in the aftermath of its defeat in the Second World War and the nuclear annihilation of the populations of two of its cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Other influences could also be noted that have helped to create a new receptivity toward the idea of a suffering God. The rise of “process thought” (see pp. 193–4) gave a new impetus to speaking of God as “a fellow sufferer who understands” (A. N. Whitehead). Yet many who welcomed this insight were hesitant over the theological framework that engendered it. Process thought's emphasis upon the primacy of creativity seemed inconsistent with much traditional Christian thinking concerning the transcendence of God. An acceptable alternative was to ground the notion of God as a fellow sufferer in the self-limitation of God, especially in the cross of Christ.
Fresh studies of the Old Testament – such as Abraham Heschel's (1907–72) God of the Prophets (1930) and T. E. Fretheim's Suffering of God (1984) – drew attention to the manner in which the Old Testament often portrayed God as sharing in the pathos of Israel. God is hurt and moved by the suffering of God's people. If classical theism could not accommodate that insight, it was argued, then so much the worse for it.
Finally, the notion of “love” itself has been the subject of considerable discussion in the twentieth century. Theologians rooted in the classical tradition – such as Anselm and Aquinas – defined love in terms of expressions and demonstrations of care and goodwill toward others. It is thus perfectly possible to speak of God “loving impassibly” – that is, loving someone without being emotionally affected by that person's situation. Yet the new interest in the problem has raised questions over this notion of love. Can one really speak of “love” unless there is some mutual sharing of suffering and feelings? Surely “love” implies the lover's intense awareness of the suffering of the beloved, and thus some form of sharing in the beloved's distress? Such considerations have undermined the intuitive plausibility (yet not, interestingly, the intellectual credibility) of an impassible God.
Probably the most important recent discussion of the suffering of God stems from the German theologian Jürgen Moltmann, to whom we now turn.
A Suffering God: Jürgen Moltmann (Born 1926)
In the late twentieth century, it became “the new orthodoxy” to speak of a suffering God. Moltmann's Crucified God (1972) is widely regarded as the most significant and influential work to have expounded this idea, and has been the subject of intense discussion.
In The Crucified God (1972), Moltmann argued that the cross is both the foundation and the criterion of true Christian theology. The passion of Christ, and especially his cry of Godforsakenness – “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15: 34) – stands at the center of Christian thinking. The cross must be seen as an event between the Father and the Son, in which the Father suffers the death of his Son in order to redeem sinful humanity.
Moltmann argues that a God who cannot suffer is a deficient, not a perfect, God. Stressing that Godcannot be forced to change or undergo suffering, Moltmann declares that God willed to undergo suffering. The suffering of God is the direct consequence of the divine decision to suffer and of the divine willingness to suffer:
A God who cannot suffer is poorer than any human. For a God who is incapable of suffering is a being who cannot be involved. Suffering and injustice do not affect him. And because he is so completely insensitive, he cannot be affected or shaken by anything. He cannot weep, for he has no tears. But the one who cannot suffer cannot love either. So he is also a loveless being.
Moltmann here brings together a number of the considerations we noted earlier, including the idea that love involves the lover participating in the sufferings of the beloved.
The idea of a suffering God might at first sight seem to be heretical in the eyes of Christian orthodoxy. The patristic period identified two unacceptable views relating to the suffering of God: “patripassianism” and “theopaschitism.” The former was regarded as a heresy and the latter as a potentially misleading doctrine. They merit brief discussion before we proceed further.
Patripassianism arose during the third century and was associated with writers such as Noetus, Praxeas, and Sabellius. It centered on the belief that the Father suffered as the Son. In other words, the suffering of Christ on the cross is to be regarded as the suffering of the Father. According to these writers, the only distinction within the Godhead was a succession of modes or operations. In other words, Father, Son, and Spirit were just different modes of being, or expressions, of the same basic divine entity. This form of modalism, often known as Sabellianism, will be explored further in relation to the doctrine of the Trinity (see p. 309).
Theopaschitism arose during the sixth century and was linked with writers such as John Maxentius. The basic slogan associated with the movement was “one of the Trinity was crucified.” The formula can be interpreted in a perfectly orthodox sense (it reappears as Martin Luther's celebrated formula “the crucified God”) and was defended as such by Leontius of Byzantium (c.500–c.543). However, it was regarded as potentially misleading and confusing by more cautious writers, including Pope Hormisdas (450–523), and the formula gradually fell into disuse.
The doctrine of a suffering God rehabilitates theopaschitism and interprets the relationship between the suffering of God and of Christ in such a way that it avoids the patripassian difficulty. For example, Kitamori distinguishes the ways in which Father and Son suffer. “God the Father who hid himself in the death of God the Son is God in pain. Therefore the pain of God is neither merely the pain of God the Son, nor merely the pain of God the Father, but the pain of two persons who are essentially one.” Perhaps the most sophisticated statement of this doctrine is to be found in Moltmann's Crucified God.
Moltmann argues that the Father and the Son suffer – but they experience that suffering in different manners. The Son suffers the pain and death of the cross; the Father gives up the Son and suffers his loss. Although both Father and Son are involved in the cross, their involvement is not identical (the patripassian position) but distinct. “In the passion of the Son, the Father himself suffers the pains of abandonment. In the death of the Son, death comes upon God himself, and the Father suffers the death of his Son in his love for forsaken man.”
Moltmann's confident assertion that “death comes upon God” naturally leads us to consider whether God can be thought of as having died – or, even more radically, as being dead.
The Death of God?
If God can suffer, can God also die? Or is God now dead? These questions demand consideration as part of any discussion of the suffering of God in Christ. Hymns, as much as theology textbooks, bear witness to the beliefs of Christianity. A number of significant hymns of the Christian church make reference to the death of God, exulting in the paradox that the immortal God should die on the cross. Perhaps the most celebrated example isCharles Wesley's eighteenth-century hymn “And Can It Be?,” which includes the following lines:
Amazing love! how can it be
That thou, my God, shouldst die for me?
These lines express the idea of Jesus Christ, the immortal God incarnate, giving himself up to death as an expression of love and commitment. This thought is also expressed elsewhere in that same hymn, as here:
'Tis mystery all! th'immortal dies!
Who can explore his strange design?
But how, one wonders, can one speak of God “dying”? For a few weeks in 1966, theology hit the national headlines in the United States. Time magazine ran an edition declaring that God was dead. Three relatively obscure writers, having little in common – Paul van Buren (1924–98), William Hamilton (1924–2012), and Thomas J. J. Altizer (born 1927) – were suddenly declared to be the prophets of a radical new movement, characterized by its godless theology. In fact, these writers had quite different interests and agendas. The “death of God” was really a creation of the media.
Slogans such as “God is dead” and “the death of God” suddenly became of national interest. In its issue of February 16, 1966, Christian Century magazine provided a satirical application form for its readers to join the “God-Is-Dead-Club.” Puzzling new terms began to appear in the learned journals: “theothanasia,” “theothanatology,” and “theothanatopsis” became ephemeral buzz-words before happily lapsing into fully merited obscurity.
Two quite distinct lines of interpretation may be discerned lying behind the slogan “the death of God.”
The first line of interpretation is the belief, especially linked with the nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), that human civilization has reached a stage at which it may dispense with the notion of God. The crisis of faith in the west, especially western Europe, which developed during the nineteenth century, finally matured. Nietzsche's declaration (in The Happy Science, 1882) that “God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him!” expresses the general cultural atmosphere which finds no place for God. A similar notion was characteristic of the 1960s' “Death of God” movement, as can be seen from these words of William Hamilton, one of the theologians associated with this movement:
We are not talking about the absence of the experience of God, but about the experience of the absence of God. [...] The death of God must be affirmed; the confidence with which we thought we could speak of God is gone. [...] There remains a sense of not having, of not believing, of having lost, not just the idols or the gods of religion but God himself. And this is an experience that is not peculiar to a neurotic few, nor is it private or inward. Death of God is a public event in our history.
Similarly, in his Secular Meaning of the Gospel (1963), Paul van Buren, arguing that the word “God” had ceased to have any meaning, sought to ascertain how the gospel might be stated in purely atheological terms. Belief in a transcendent God was replaced by commitment to a “Jesus-ethic,” centered on respect for the lifestyle of Jesus. Thomas J. J. Altizer's Gospel of Christian Atheism (1966) refocused the question by suggesting that, while it was no longer acceptable to talk about Jesus being God, one could still talk about God being Jesus – thus giving a moral authority to Jesus's words and deeds, even if belief in a God was no longer to be retained.
Although subsequent predictions of the total secularization of western society remain conspicuously unfulfilled, the “death of God” motif seems to capture the atmosphere of an important moment in western cultural history. The subsequent revival of the fortunes of God in American religion and society left this movement looking curiously out of touch with reality.
The second line of interpretation is the totally distinct belief that Jesus Christ has such a high profile of identification with God that one can speak of God “dying” in Christ. Just as God suffersin Christ, so one can speak of God experiencing death or “perishability” (Eberhard Jüngel) in the same manner. This approach is considerably less interesting culturally, although it is probably much more significant theologically. Partly in reaction to developments in the United States, especially the widespread circulation given to the slogan “God is dead,” Jüngel wrote a paper entitled “The Death of the Living God” (1968), in which he argued that, through the death of Christ, God becomes involved in “perishability.” Jüngel, who developed these ideas at greater length in God as the Mystery of the World (1977), thus sees the theme of “the death of God” as an important affirmation of God's self-identification with the transitory world of suffering.
Developing related ideas in his Crucified God, Moltmann spoke (a little cryptically, it must be said) of “death in God.” God identifies with all who suffer and die, and thus shares in human suffering and death. These aspects of human history are thereby taken up into the history of God. “To recognize God in the cross of Christ [...] means to recognize the cross, inextricable suffering, death and hopeless rejection in God.” Moltmann makes this point using a poignant episode from a famous passage in the novel Night (1956), by Elie Wiesel (born 1928), describing an execution at Auschwitz. As a crowd watches three people die by hanging, someone asks, “Where is God?” Moltmann uses this episode to make the point that, through the cross of Christ, God tastes and is affected by death. God knows what death is like.