At Wittenham Clumps, Oxfordshire, in the dead of winter... The doctrine of the impassability of God has been something of an embarassment for modern theology. For Anglicans, it stands very prominently at the head of the 39 Articles: God is 'without body, parts or passions'. The suspicion is that this is yet another piece of Greek metaphysics entering into the doctrine of God, a metaphysics that should be scoured from its surface immediately and forthwith.
Not so fast, says David Bentley Hart:
...I should observe that the widespread impatience among theologians with the language of divine impassability, always fortified by the prejudice that such a doctrine represents an unreflective 'hellenization' of the gospel, has too often served to obscure the real question at issue, the doctrinal concerns that the teaching of divine impassablity answers, and the real philosophical revision - utterly consistent with itself and Scripture - that the teaching underwent in the hands of the greatest of the patristic theologians... p. 158
Which is to say, the 'oh, its Greek' accusation is far too simplistic. The doctrine protects us from imagining God as somehow dependent or interdependent on the creation. The absence of creation (says Hart) would no way alter God as God... Hart especially has a go here at the Teutonic Hegelianism of Moltmann, Juengel, Pannenberg and co. God, he says, does not require creation to fecundate his being or to determine his personality.
9 comments:
But, since God (who is God regardless) has chosen to create, and love, and redeem, and judge a host of others in creation, isn't one of the key critiques of Moltmann and others that the doctrine should remain unaffected by this choice?
Yes, any critique of impassibility needs to be more careful than simply, 'it's all too Greek', and likewise, any critique of such critiques needs to rise above 'it's all too German'. The genetic fallacy cuts both ways.
Not that Hart would ever be guilty of such things... being an American and all.
Oh yeah, my summary of Hart gives a skewed impression: I think his critique/defence is much more than deutschophobia
Actually, Ben, I think this is Hart's point. The logic is this: the immanent trinity is the economic trinity, and vice versa (thanks Rahner); however, this does NOT mean that God is reducible to the 'absolute spirit' of history, as some have taken it.
"fecundate" ?!?
You have to read Hart to see the English language do things it has never done before. It discovers words it never knew it had.
Trust the topic of impassibility to draw seven comments, all in the course of breakfast.
Am I alone in detecting an adolescent quality to the rush to criticise this doctrine, beyond the "Greek is bad" slogan?
Hegel the teenager.
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