Emotions of God

[Canuckster1127]

I've just read through the entire thread and if one thing is evident it is that those of us participating in this thread have emotions.

Arguments like this remind me of the theological conundrum of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. There is anthropomorphisizing God on the one hand and then there is the logical extension of reason out to the point where God becomes more a celestial Spock who now can have no emotions.

The reality as i see it is that God created us in His image and as we experience emotions, to some extent, it appears to me to be reasonable that that element of our existence is a reflection of God. Whether that is mutable or immutable, is certainly an interesting theory to bandy about, but the reality is that there are elements of god's nature that are not completely knowable by us. And, as I think has been pointed out, one need only look to the incarnation to see that Christ, who was fully God entered into our humanity and both experiences and models emotions and while I see that as part and parcel of Phil 2:5-11 and the emptying of Christ to enter into those elements of our humanity, I for one am delighted that God knows what elements of his immutable nature align with those elements of us that experience emotions. For us, those emotions are physically based. For God, He has revealed Himself to us both as having emotions in the OT and NT, and most importantly in the person of Jesus Christ who both reflects the nature of God and the physical characteristics we have in that regard.

Neither I nor anyone else on this thread will be able to adequately explain that seeming contradiction to the complete reconciliation and to attempt to do so and then to denegrate or diminish those who don't agree or see things in quite the same way is more akin to sophistry and the reduction of God to a form and a context that appears to me to elevate the approach to rather than the person of God. I'm quite sure that's not the intent of any here.

I'd ask each however to examine their own hearts and look back over this thread and ask if not only the content, but also the attitudes displayed are the type of representation that will draw people unto God. I've been here, in the past on my own so I'm not trying to say I'm above it either. But I'll say this: reading this thread just leaves me somewhat sad and if God has emotions, I wonder if He doesn't feel the same way.

blessings.

bart

[ageofknowledge]

Yes but you don't rely only on linear thinking as you inflexibly progress a premise as unchanging into all possible environments. I mean we don't even do that in chemstry. In chemistry, we acknowledge that compounds can change as elements come and go affected by environmental conditions they encounter (such as temperature) and their interactions with each other and new elements they may encounter. We also acknowledge that non linear thinking can be useful when approaching our complex multilayered reality which presents dilemma type situations of equally valid premises.

As a result you wouldn't make the error of assuming that because God told people not to steal a government taxing its populace to provide for their common welfare and defense is violating that commandment.

[Gman]

Neither I nor anyone else on this thread will be able to adequately explain that seeming contradiction to the complete reconciliation and to attempt to do so and then to denegrate or diminish those who don't agree or see things in quite the same way is more akin to sophistry and the reduction of God to a form and a context that appears to me to elevate the approach to rather than the person of God. I'm quite sure that's not the intent of any here.

Thank you Bart for your input.. Well said (as usual).

Blessings.

[zoegirl]

I've just read through the entire thread and if one thing is evident it is that those of us participating in this thread have emotions.

Arguments like this remind me of the theological conundrum of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. There is anthropomorphisizing God on the one hand and then there is the logical extension of reason out to the point where God becomes more a celestial Spock who now can have no emotions.

The reality as i see it is that God created us in His image and as we experience emotions, to some extent, it appears to me to be reasonable that that element of our existence is a reflection of God. Whether that is mutable or immutable, is certainly an interesting theory to bandy about, but the reality is that there are elements of god's nature that are not completely knowable by us. And, as I think has been pointed out, one need only look to the incarnation to see that Christ, who was fully God entered into our humanity and both experiences and models emotions and while I see that as part and parcel of Phil 2:5-11 and the emptying of Christ to enter into those elements of our humanity, I for one am delighted that God knows what elements of his immutable nature align with those elements of us that experience emotions. For us, those emotions are physically based. For God, He has revealed Himself to us both as having emotions in the OT and NT, and most importantly in the person of Jesus Christ who both reflects the nature of God and the physical characteristics we have in that regard.

Neither I nor anyone else on this thread will be able to adequately explain that seeming contradiction to the complete reconciliation and to attempt to do so and then to denegrate or diminish those who don't agree or see things in quite the same way is more akin to sophistry and the reduction of God to a form and a context that appears to me to elevate the approach to rather than the person of God. I'm quite sure that's not the intent of any here.

I'd ask each however to examine their own hearts and look back over this thread and ask if not only the content, but also the attitudes displayed are the type of representation that will draw people unto God. I've been here, in the past on my own so I'm not trying to say I'm above it either. But I'll say this: reading this thread just leaves me somewhat sad and if God has emotions, I wonder if He doesn't feel the same way.

blessings.

bart

bart,

As usual, you have said exactly what needs saying. I have been sitting back listening/reading everyone's responses and there's something that I agree with you, BW, and Jac. Certainly, knowing jac, heresy is something that would never come to mind.

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I can certainly see why people would be concerned with the idea of god having emotions , potentially leading to an idea of a *capricious* God, a god of whims and subject to emotions. Unfortunatley, I wonder if that idea is born from our fallen, finite nature. Our own capricious emotions so often lead us in this temporal life that it is an enigma to imagine having emotions in an infinite non-temporal state.

But I'm not sure that I owuld go so far as to say they the mention of them in scripture is merely anthropomorphic. Insofar that God certainly is *pleased* by things and *displeased* by others, He certainly has emotions. Certainly some unemotional God wouldn't even be pleased by our behavior...to the point of saying "well done, good and faithful servant".

Given that we are a mere image, I think there are both meaningful conclusions and limits to our conclusions. Being an image of something, we bear some of those same characteristics. Being *only* an image, we cannot grasp the full measure of hte nature of God.

However, I certainly agree with jac that we cannot compromise on God's unchanging being.

It seems that we have gone a few pages insisting on one or both and I just don't think it has to be one or the other.

[Jac3510]

Zoe,

I agree with a lot of what you wrote. Perhaps some of this is my fault for being unclear, but if you look at my first response to this entire issue, I tried to explain what I meant by the statement that God doesn't have emotions. I'll say it again here. He doesn't have emotions in the sense that humans have them. Rather, He has something to which our human emotions are analogous. It's amazing to me that no one ever asked me what the nature of that analogous thing is, because I don't think it's such a difficult concept to grasp.

Again, I thought that would be clear when I also argued that God's intellect and will are not "intellect" and "will" in the same sense that we have them; nor is His personhood. But, obviously, I believe God is a Person who has an intellect and will! I would argue, however, that God does not have any of those things in precisely the same sense that I am arguing that He doesn't have emotions. He has, rather, something to which our understanding of those terms is analogous.

As for what those things are, it's another discussion, but the bottom line is that something is "good" to the extent that it conforms with God's nature; and that statement can be reduced to something being "good" to the extent that it has being (since God is pure being--pure actuality). As I'm sure you know, evil actually has no being. It is a privation. It all get's rather detailed, but you then get into discussions on the various virtues, how they relate to God's nature and being and such, and the bottom line is that God is "pleased" (to use that word) when we live according to those things, because it is only when we live in that manner that we live most "fully", using that word almost literally, since to live fully is to live without privation. Theologically, this is evident in the word "sin" itself, which means, fundamentally, "to miss the mark."

Going back to my first post, how we live--our position to God--determines how we perceive His being, and that perception comes across to us in certain ways. And we describe certain aspects of that by human emotions, which God gave us expressly for the purpose of understanding that moral relationship.

Bottom line: when I keep saying that God has no emotions, I am not saying that He has nothing that corresponds to our emotions. I'm saying that it robs God of His transcendance (among many other things!) to assert that He experiences "love" or "hate" or "joy" or "sadness" in the same sense that a mere human being does. And, as an aside, all this is with reference to His divine nature. Obviously, the entire conversation changes when we consider the Incarnation.

Anyway, just wanted to offer a bit more clarity.

[cslewislover]

I found this essay online and it is obviously relevant to this discussion, and has some background and related information that helps flush the issue out. The entire essay is too long to post here, so I included the beginning and the end; to see the entire essay, go here: http://www2.franciscan.edu/plee/doesgodhaveemotions.htm

DOES GOD HAVE EMOTIONS?
by Patrick Lee

In the last several decades process philosophers and theologians have vigorously criticized the traditional Christian beliefs that God is immutable and completely self-sufficient. The view of process philosophers and theologians is that God suffers along with his “creatures,” that he does not create from nothing, that he depends in several ways on his “creatures,” and that he is fulfilled or deprived by the success or failure of the world.[1] Recently, other thinkers, who reject the label of process philosophers or theologians, and who prefer to be called “open theists,” have also proposed such arguments.[2]

Process theologians and Open theists argue that Scripture reveals that God is a person, that He knows and loves us, that He responds to our prayers, is pleased or displeased with us, and that he invites us to enter a personal relationship with Him. But these points, it is objected, imply that God changes, and that what we do affects God. So, we must concede, contrary to classical theism (the argument continues), that God changes and is affected by our actions.[3]

I will argue, on the contrary, that God is indeed immutable, and that God is not dependent, for any perfection or fulfillment in himself, on his creatures. To hold otherwise, as the likes of Augustine, Anselm and Aquinas have made abundantly clear, is to deny (in effect) that God is God, to fall away from theism itself. Thus, I will argue that classical theism has much more to say in its defense than is usually admitted by its detractors. God is indeed personal, and knows and loves us, but we simply cannot assume that what is true of human persons, knowledge and love (which involve change and dependence) is true of the divine persons and knowledge and love. To make that assumption, as process and open theists blithely do, is to compromise God's transcendence.

I will examine the following points: first, the fundamental truth that God is the Creator, and what that entails; second, two views on divine impassibility; and, finally, a more detailed look at a key claim of the second view (on divine impassibility), namely, that even after revelation what God is in himself remains unknown, though revelation does tell us about God through the personal relationship we are invited to enter with him.

When we ask, does God have emotions? the most straightforward, correct answer is, Yes, because he became man. Jesus is both God and man, fully divine and fully human. So, Jesus has human emotions: joys, desires, fears, sadnesses, and so on. The Christian faith holds that Jesus is one divine person but with two natures, human and divine.[4] I do not wish here to examine in detail this central dogma (since I will concentrate on the question of whether God has emotions in his divine nature), but briefly the following should be said. A person is an intelligent and free subject of actions, a morally responsible agent.[5] A nature is the intrinsic source of characteristic actions, that by which or with which one acts. In Christ, the one who acts is God himself, so he is a divine person. But Christ can act by his divine nature or by his human nature (or by both). Thus, after the Incarnation, literally, God does suffer as we suffer, he does have emotions as we have emotions, since it is the person who has the emotions, even though he has these emotions by his human nature.
. . . .


So, does God have emotions or spiritual affections or not? I have presented two views that I think have some plausibility. On both views the doctrines that God does not change and that God is not perfected by creatures are retained. According to the first view, God really is affected by what we do and suffer, although he is not changed and he is not perfected by his relations with creatures. He is in his being different from what he would have been had we acted or suffered differently--for his knowledge and will are different from what they would have been had we acted differently--though he does not change and is not perfected by the actions of creatures. On this first view there are emotions in God, though of a very different sort than what we normally conceive.

However, the second view seems to me more probably correct. According to the second view, one does not simply deny that there might be in God (in his divine nature) something like emotion. If the question, are there emotions in God, means: Do our concepts of various emotions present to our minds aspects of what God is? then (according to the second view) the answer is, No. But we should remember that this is equally true of other concepts, such as our concepts of knowledge and willing. On the other hand, if one means (when one asks whether God has emotions), can one truly and literally, not just in an improper or metaphorical sense, say that God is pleased with us or is angry with us? the answer is, Yes, in the relational sense explained above. That is, it is true to say that we are related to God as one who pleases is related to the one who is pleased, and that God has what is necessary to be related to in this way. We are related to God as one who elicits anger is related to the one who is angry, and God is in his own being what is necessary to be the term of this relation. Each of these predications indirectly tells us something about God. When we learn through Scripture, through the teaching and liturgy of the Church, and through our own meditation and prayer, how God is calling us to relate to him, then we learn ever more about the transcendent being to whom it is possible and appropriate to relate to in this way. * * *

I'd ask each however to examine their own hearts and look back over this thread and ask if not only the content, but also the attitudes displayed are the type of representation that will draw people unto God. I've been here, in the past on my own so I'm not trying to say I'm above it either. But I'll say this: reading this thread just leaves me somewhat sad and if God has emotions, I wonder if He doesn't feel the same way.

Thanks Bart. I had not posted much, but it's obvious that the other mods took a good deal of their time to post what they had, and much thought was put into those posts. They are just as relevant and engaged as anyone else's posts. One reason I posted the beginning of the above essay is because I have heard pastors use the related issue of whether God needs us or not, in relation to what we do for him. That aspect comes up frequently, to me - it's something I've dwelt on and wondered about, and it is related to works.