Posted on: January 10th, 2017 God: Beyond Emotion(s)
Sorry for the delayed response!
You wrote:
“Does God’s goodness require an emotive anger toward his enemies?
I am going to answer your questions in a very tight, stodgy, crusty, cold, dry way, rooted in medieval metaphysics (of the Thomistic sort), but I think this is a very helpful approach, b/c “shocks” us out of our modern, secular, western, individualistic assumptions, particularly our assumptions about God.
In other words, I am convinced that we need to hear about how ancient & medieval Christians thought about God, partly b/c it reminds us that our thinking is so often too small, too constricted, too much like the capitalist, technocratic, managerial world we live in.
So here we go.
As you yourself indicate in your question, you are asking a question about emotion, specifically about whether God has emotion(s), including the emotion of anger.
Guess where our English word “emotion” comes from? It comes from the Latin, ex-motus. (The “x” drops out b/c the Romans did not like certain kinds of consonants between vowels.) Ex-motus: a motion away, or a movement out of. At any rate, emotions are a kind of motion. And motion is a kind of change, specifically change in location. (I’m simplifying a bit, but, still, I think I’m speaking accurately for the purposes of this conversation.)
Now, for someone like Thomas Aquinas (and the vast majority of the tradition, including Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Hooker, de Luback & Balthassar would agree with him), it is very important to realize that God does not change. In my opinion this position is also utterly biblical.
Here is where it gets kind of dense, and difficult for us to wrap our minds around.
The reason God does not admit of any change or motion has to do with what change and motion are–they presuppose and “rely upon” time. And time, whatever it is, is a created thing. Hence, if God experiences or undergoes emotion, then God is a temporal being.
Plus, if you say that God changes, then (to the pre-modern mind) this implies a state in God which is less than perfect. And this is something we want to avoid thinking of or believing. The reason an acorn changes into an oak tree (so Aristotle, upon whom Thomas relies, would say) is that it lack perfection. Once it achieves its status as an oak tree, however, then it becomes “perfect” (or at least more perfect), b/c it has now achieved its God-given purpose, packed into nature, to become an oak tree.
Similarly, if you say that an elderly person’s muscles have atrophied–and this is a kind of change or motion opposite that of the oak tree, a kind of “devolution” away from “perfection”–then you imply that the person is “not perfect” in the opposite way of the acorn. You might say that that the acorn is “pre-perfection,” whereas the old person’s muscles are “post-perfection.” In both cases, the reality of change implies a lack of “perfection” in time. But this is not applicable to God: he is never “less than perfect” in this way.
(Note: the Greek word for “perfect” is teleotos, or something like that. This word is cognate with the word telos, which means, end or purpose, as in “The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.” My point here is that, when modern ppl like you & me think about “perfection,” we bring lots of assumptions which the pre-moderns did not share. For example, when I say “perfect” in the paragraph above, I am not implying anything like John Wesley’s supposed idea of “sinless perfection,” a state of sinlessness in man. That is not what we are talking about. Rather, we are talking about a state in which a being is “living into,” or achieving, its purpose. This is what the ancients & medeivals thought of as perfection.)
So … that is my attempt to show that God does not have emotion(s). Hope it makes sense.
Now, having said all of that, I do agree that the holiness of God requires that, since man has sinned and the fall has happened and there is evil and injustice, etc., in the world, God is absolutely in opposition to all of that. This is one reason (not the only reason) why the Bible (and the liturgy) speaks of the wrath of God. That is true. However, a) There must be some sense in which God does not have enemies: every creature that was made was made by him! b) This “wrath” cannot be essential to God. It is not true of God, in himself, or from all eternity, or apart from the creation of the world.
Also, this way of thinking allows us to see human emotion as a participation in something “bigger and greater” in God. Our emotions, joy, sadness, etc., are not the same thing as what happens in God, but they are analogous participations in the Triune Life of Father, Son, & Holy Spirit. Example: our experiences of pain are a faint, dim intimation of what the Father must “feel like” when the Son moves away from him in the Perichoretic Dance.
That’s it. God bless you today!
Peace,
Matt+
PS Yes, if we say that “God is anxious,” we must say that “God is anxiety himself,” which follows from the doctrine of divine simplicity. (The bulk of my email above is related to divine simplicity, but I’m attempting there to “break it down” a bit more for you.)
PSS Here’s a blog post about the term “emotivism” as well as emotion in general.
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