Confession: I like reading
philosophy. I say this by way of confession because there’s been a lot of
philosophy through the years, secular and Christian, that’s left me feeling
dirty intellectually and theologically. Many writers have made greater commitments
to their own reasoning over against historical and (more importantly) biblical
orthodoxy. This makes me feel icky.
K. Scott Oliphint is
different. He’s not the only one, but reading Dr. Oliphint leaves me feeling
like I am better equipped to obey that specific part of the greatest
commandment than I was before I read him: “You shall love the Lord
your God with all...your mind” (Matthew 22:37//Mark 12:30//Luke 10:27). Dr.
Oliphint’s philosophy is pleasantly accessible (without avoiding the deep stuff)
and even doxological. I’m re-reading God with Us this Advent season and
thoroughly enjoying it.
Like I said, I like reading
philosophy. But I’m bad at doing it. I am neither a philosopher nor the son of
a philosopher, and am incapable of going past a pedestrian discussion of the
weather with a philosopher. But as I’ve been re-reading God with Us this
afternoon (and nursing a persistently annoying head cold with Echinacea tea), I
was reminded of a theory I once jotted down on paper but never submitted to the
imitation eternity that is the blogosphere (wow...the spell-checker recognized
“blogosphere” as a real word...sigh).
What jogged my memory was
Dr. Oliphint’s discussion of God’s immensity, immutability, and impassibility
(which occurs back-to-back on pgs. 79-88). When I say this his words “jogged my
memory,” it does not mean that anything I am about to say is an echo of his
words or would be endorsed by him (or any other real philosopher) in any way.
Disclaimer sufficiently made.
I affirm God’s immutability
and impassibility whole-heartedly. I have read some objections to this classic
doctrine, but have still returned to the ancient confessions of these
doctrines. God is unchangeable and is not impassioned (in the sense that He
reacts to events with emotions).
A few years ago I was
reading the account of the Flood and paused at the recording of God’s
“feelings” at that moment: “And the LORD was sorry that He had made man on
the earth, and it grieved Him to His heart” (Genesis 6:6). God does
not literally have a “heart” (neither do we, at least according to the
common way we refer to it), but this figure of speech (anthropomorphism and
even anthropopathism) adequately and powerfully conveys God’s attitude toward
what was going on in the world at the time: “...the wickedness of man was
great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was
only evil continually” (6:5).
We read this and
automatically interact with the facts based on our experience of things:
something happens, and we react emotionally to the occurrence of that
something. Is this what’s happening here with God? Did God wake up one day,
look down, see the wickedness of humanity, and change moods in response to this
wickedness? If so, God is not impassible.
What occurred to me a few
years ago was that God’s “emotions,” as revealed in Scripture, need to be
considered not in the context of an “emotional life” of God (which, in this
understanding, is analogous to our own “emotional life”), but as a function of
revelation.
God is always, unchangeably
grieved and wrathful towards wickedness. This attribute of God is not dependent
on His being exposed to wickedness. It isn’t that the day before God “saw
that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of
the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” all was well in the
“emotional life” of God, but the day He “saw” everything changed in His
divine “mood.” It’s that God is always grieved and wrathful against wickedness,
and when it arose to a certain level in the civilization of humanity, God revealed
this attribute of Himself through the subsequent events of His interaction with
Noah, the Flood, and through the scriptural revelation of all this in
the words of Moses we have recorded in Genesis. God’s mood didn’t change; He revealed
an unchanging attribute of Himself at a specific time (and at a specific point
in Scripture). He did not become; He revealed.
I believe the analogy for
God’s “emotional life” is not in our own experience of feelings, but in God’s
omnipresence (or, as Dr. Oliphint discusses it, God’s immensity or
immeasurability). God is not limited by space or confined in it in any way. Dr.
Oliphint mentions the following verses for this doctrine: Psalm 139:7-12;
Jeremiah 23:23-24; Acts 17:28 (pg. 81, footnote 74.). While God is not limited
by definite space as we are, He nonetheless allows His Presence to be revealed
covenantally in specific places: the Garden of Eden, the Tabernacle, the Temple Israel
I’d like to propose that His
“emotions” are the same way. The “feelings” we see Him manifesting at certain
points in Scripture are actually His constant, unchanging attributes revealed
at a certain point to describe His covenant relationship, either with unsaved
humanity (under the curse of the violated covenant of works) or saved humanity
(under the blessings of the covenant of grace in Jesus Christ). He manifests
His attributes as a function of revelation, not as a result of passion.
Well, I’d better stop before
I hurt myself or cause Dr. Oliphint to somewhere break out in a cold sweat
because his name’s been mentioned in the context of the philosophical ramblings
of a non-philosopher.
God’s “emotion” is a
function of revelation, not mutability or passibility.
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