Blackwell Reference Online

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The idea that God suffers with his creation has become prominent in modern Christian thought, challenging traditional concepts of an impassible God that were formulated in both the patristic and medieval periods. Four major motives may be identified for attributing suffering to God, the first being reflection upon the nature of love, drawing insights from modern psychology. While classical theists such as Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin were content to define love as an attitude and action of goodwill to another person, and so could affirm that God loves impassibly, much recent thought has insisted that love involves sharing of feelings and sympathy (for example Williams, 1968 ). For the one who loves, awareness of another's suffering thus means participation within it; as applied to God, this insight has been strengthened by Old Testament studies of the Israelite prophets and their portrayal of God's ‘pathos’ with and for his people ( Fretheim, 1984 ). A second reason for affirming divine suffering has been Christological, with particular attention to the presence of God in the cross of Jesus. The traditional view that God suffered ‘in the human nature’ of Christ effectively isolated suffering within the humanity of Christ, removing it from his divine nature and so from the inner being of God. By contrast, recent theologians have found a witness to divine passibility ... log in or subscribe to read full text