Paul Gavrilyuk, professor of historical theology at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, has written at length on the complex nature of divine impassibility. His most noteworthy contribution is
The Suffering of the Impassible God: The Dialectics of Patristic Thought, which I highly recommend. Among other things, he notes that the common accusation that the early church uncritically adopted the Greek philosophical concept of divine impassibility is simply not true to the historical record. I could go on, but my point in this post is to share an analogy he used in his book to draw out some of the variant meanings of suffering & compassion.
Consider the case of a house on fire. Several people are unable to exit the building and cry aloud desperately for help. Firemen have been called, but for some reason they do not come. A crowd is gathering around the house. Some stare at the house with a mixture of anxiety, fear, and curiosity. Some attempt to visualize as vividly as possible what the people who are in the house must be going through. These members of the crowd burst into tears, yell, tear their hair; in short, they are greatly emotionally affected. One of them has already had a fit and lies unconscious. Another has become mad and predicts the end of the world. Yet another person decides literally to suffer with those who are in the house and commits suicide by burning himself. Panic grows. A certain man from the crowd, without going through all the emotional pangs that those standing near him are experiencing, being motivated only by his conviction that the people will surely die if there is no one to help them, gets into the house and, at great risk to his own safety, rescues them. If it is asked, who out of al the people that were present at the scene manifested genuine compassion, the answer is obvious. (p. 10)
This issue of divine impassibility has been at the heart of the current phase of my doctoral thesis. It has been one of the most difficult questions to pursue, but it's drawn me back, once again, to be in awe and worship of the God who would stop at nothing to rescue us from sin and death.
Paul Gavrilyuk, professor of historical theology at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, has written at length on the complex nature of divine impassibility. His most noteworthy contribution is The Suffering of the Impassible God: The Dialectics of Patristic Thought, which I highly recommend. Among other things, he notes that the common accusation that the early church uncritically adopted the Greek philosophical concept of divine impassibility is simply not true to the historical record. I could go on, but my point in this post is to share an analogy he used in his book to draw out some of the variant meanings of suffering & compassion.