Gerety’s Hammer Misses the Mark: A Rejoinder to Sean Gerety’s “Irrational Baptists”

Posted by deangonzales on June 9, 2009
76 Comments

I recently posted a brief article entitled, “God Makes a Wish: That Each and Every Sinner Might Be Saved.” The article was basically an exposition of Deuteronomy 5:29, a text that portrays God as wishing for the saving good of those who never experience that good. Such a conclusion, as the late Reformed theologian John Murray noted, supports the doctrine of the free and well-meant offer of the gospel (see Murray’s The Free Offer of the Gospel). Of course, I recognize that not every Calvinist will agree with my conclusions. Some concede that God commands all men everywhere to repent but deny that God in any sense desires their compliance with that command. The reader will find this documented in my footnotes and evidenced in the lengthy and cordial exchange I have with Ben Maas in the comment section following the post. A few disagree with my exegesis and view of the well-meant offer quite strongly. One such critic is Sean Gerety, the administrator of the blog “God’s Hammer.” Gerety feels that my article is massively heterodox and hopelessly irrational. Not surprisingly, he entitles his critique, “Irrational Baptists.” In it, he calls me a “misologist” (hater of reason) and a “paradox monger.” He also asserts, on the basis of my interpretation of Deuteronomy 5:29, “[Dr. Gonzales] believes in salvation by works as well.”

I’d like to thank Mr. Gerety for considering my post important enough to critique. I’m also glad that he included links so that his readers can read my post(s). Hopefully, they’ll read all the footnotes and all my comments where I clarify and expand on my arguments. By reading the footnotes and my comments, many questions (accusations?) Sean raises in his critique will be addressed. While I don’t mind being critiqued and certainly don’t claim to have impeccable logic, I find Gerety’s criticisms shamefully imbalanced, misinformed, and short on brotherly kindness. Of course, I don’t mind the fact that he feels quite zealous to protect the logical coherence of God’s revelation (a conviction I share), and I’m not totally opposed to his use of satire and sarcasm (I’ve used it sometimes). But it seems to me he’s placed quite a negative and, in my estimation, distorted spin on my position, drawing a number of false conclusions. Accordingly, I offer the following rejoinder in the hope that readers like Sean Gerety might read my article and understand my position in a better light.

Am I an Irrational Baptist?

As noted above, Gerety portrays me and my position as if I’m advocating “irrationalism” in the fullest sense of that term. He labels me a hater of reason when in fact I employ rational argumentation throughout my post, footnotes, and comments (note my use of “if … then,” “because of” “therefore,” “consequently,” “accordingly,” etc.). Once again, I don’t claim that my reasoning is flawless and welcome any of you to interact with my on my blog. It’s called Tabletalk because I welcome healthy discussion (even disagreement). But I don’t think I deserve the epithet “irrationalist” or “misologist.”

Consider, for example, the fact that I challenged the logical coherence of the minority report’s logical caveat against the majority report (comment #40). I made Sean aware of my caveat before he posted this critique and asked him to address it (which, for some reason, he didn’t do). The minority report reasons as follows:

Desire suggests a want or lack in the one who desires which can be fulfilled only by the gratifying of the desire. This is incompatible with the self-sufficiency of God. Desire is something weaker than the firm determination of the will. No such weak wishing can properly be ascribed to God whose will is firmly fixed and fixes all things.

Now let’s arrange their argument in the form of a syllogism:

Major premise: “Desire suggests a want or lack in the one who desires which can be fulfilled only by the gratifying of the desire.”
Minor premise: “This is incompatible with the self-sufficiency of God.”
Conclusion: Therefore, “No such weak wishing can properly be ascribed to God …”

Why should the logical syllogism above confine itself with “weak wishing”? It would seem that the all-sufficient God who needs nothing could not, according to the logic above, desire anything. He’s perfectly sufficient and does not need a world or human beings or a fall or the cross, etc (see Acts 17:24-25). Consistency of logic would seem to demand that God couldn’t desire anything except himself. Yet God created the world because He freely desired to create the world and all therein. That fact doesn’t seem to fit well with the minority report’s logic. For that reason, I question the first premise. In the realm of human experience, “desire” may suggest a “lack” in the one who desires which can be fulfilled only by the gratifying of the desire. But desire doesn’t suggest such a “want” or “lack” in the experience of all-sufficient deity. God desires, whether less strongly or more strongly, certain objectives outside himself simply because he is free to so without any constraint. For this reason, I do not find the minority report’s logic cogent. I may be incorrect, but it would be helpful if someone would graciously point out where I’m mistaken.¹

Gerety also believes it’s irrational to infer an indicative from an imperative. In my article, I asserted that at a preceptive level God did not desire Adam and Eve to partake of the tree, which I deduced from God’s prohibition against eating the fruit in Genesis 2:16-16 . My reasoning went something like this:

Major premise: In Genesis 2:16-17, God says to Adam, “You shall not eat of the tree of knowledge” (imperative).
Minor premise: By inference, God commanded Adam not to eat from the tree of knowledge (indicative).
Minor premise: The Bible and common sense make a connection between issuing a command to another to comply with one’s will and having a desire that the recipient of such a command comply with one’s will.
Conclusion: God did not desire (preceptively) Adam and Eve to eat from the tree.

Gerety misapplies a citation from Luther who chides Erasmus for inferring ability (indicative) from an imperative and suggests, in the words of Luther, that I’m more stupid than “schoolboys on street corners.” He also notes,

Dr. Elihu Carranza (who wrote the workbook for Gordon Clark’s, Logic) rightly observes that propositions are alone “the premises and conclusions of arguments” simply because only propositions can be either true or false. He goes on to note that commands, questions (with the exception of rhetorical questions which are intended as propositions) and exhortations “are neither true nor false.” So, how Gonzales thinks he can infer a desire or anything else from a command is indeed a mystery?

Well, I’m not sure why it’s still a mystery especially when I provided Gerety with a lengthy explanation before he posted his critique. I agree with Dr. Carranza that imperative commands, “Do this,” or prohibition, “Don’t do this,” are in themselves neither intrinsically true or false. But that God prohibited Adam from eating from the Tree is a true proposition. From this demonstrably true proposition, we may infer the following true proposition: God desired Adam to refrain from eating from the Tree.

To substantiate my conclusion, I first highlighted God’s imperative to King Saul in 1 Samuel 15:3: “Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.” Then I noted how the prophet Saul infers from this command the indicative: “Has the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams” (15:22) (emphasis added).

Furthermore and in order to assure Gerety that I was by no means assuming some kind of Arminian notion of libertarianism, I provided some citations from reputable Reformed scholars who agree that God’s preceptive will may be described in terms of “wish” or “desire.” John Calvin, for example, writes,

What I have said of the precepts, abundantly suffices to confound your blasphemies. For though God gives no pretended commands, but seriously declares what he wishes and approves [Latin: vult et probat.]; yet it is in one way, that he wills the obedience of his elect whom he efficaciously bends to compliance; and in another that of the reprobate whom he warns by the external word, but does not see good to draw to himself. Contumacy and depravity are equally natural to all, so that none is ready and willing to assume the yoke (emphasis added).²

Zacharias Ursinus remarks,

There are four classes of things concerning which men give commandment. These are, first, divine precepts, which God desires, that men should propose unto themselves for their observance, not, however, in their own name, but by the authority of God himself, as being the ministers and messengers, and not the authors of these precepts (emphasis added).³

Heinrich Heppe cites the Reformed theologian Abrahamus Heidanus, who asserts,

(I) Strictly speaking there is but a single will of God called beneplaciti, whereby God determines by Himself what He wills to do in and concerning the creature. The second is but the sign and indication by which He shows what He wishes creatures to do. But He does not wish them to make His beneplacitum universal; but only the things which He reveals to them, Dt. 29. 29 (emphasis added).⁴

Apparently, my use of logic, Scripture, and the insights of other Reformed theologians were to no avail. Mr. Gerety insists that I’m still an irrationalist and misologist.

Am I an Irreverent Baptist?

Gerety not only accuses me of irrationalism but crass irreverence. In particular, he complains about the picture of a birthday cake with candles that appears on my post. He writes,

This image alone is disturbing. Dr. Gonzales paints a picture for us of the Sovereign Lord God of heaven and earth shutting His eyes while making a wish and blowing out the candles on His celestial birthday cake, hoping against hope that His divine and holy birthday wish might come true.

When Sean expressed his disturbance with this picture prior to his critique, I assured him that the picture was only intended, like most analogies, to convey one point–the idea of expressing a wish. I pointed out to Sean that when Moses pictures God as a “Rock,” we’re not so dull as to think Moses is describing God as dense. When Calvin describes God as a nurse lisping “goo-goo, gah-gahs,” were not so juvenile as to attribute feminine gender and irrationality to God. I might add that when Sean portrays the Bible as “God’s Hammer” (the title of his website), I’m not tempted to impute sacrilege to Sean for reducing the Holy Scriptures to an ordinary hand-tool. Accordingly, when I display a picture of a birthday cake with candles, most readers will recall the idea of “expressing a wish,” which is precisely what God does in Deuteronomy 5:29. But not one reader of my post, except Sean, made a univocal comparison between God expressing a wish and a human child expressing a wish. But lest such readers like Sean should be tempted to draw such an absurd conclusion and bring God down to the level of a child, I begin the post with these important words of qualification:

When you and I make a wish, we can’t be certain it will come true. But when God makes a wish, he has both the power and prerogative to effect its fulfillment. “Our God is in the heavens,” declares the psalmist, “he does all that he pleases” (Ps. 115:3).

As it turns out, Mr. Gerety was the only reader of my post who ascribed an irreverence to me on account of the picture, and he continues to do so even after I provided him with the necessary qualifications above.

Do I Believe in Salvation by Works?

Gerety also infers from my interpretation of Deuteronomy 5:29 that “Dr. Gonzales] believes in salvation by works.” I found this “good and necessary consequence” quite remarkable, especially since the seminary of which I am academic dean affirms,

We believe that salvation always has been and always will be through faith alone in Christ alone by grace alone. We believe that this central message of Scripture has been most clearly and accurately expounded in the Reformed Confessions of Faith

When Ben Maas challenged Mr. Gerety’s (uncharitable) inference, the latter justified his accusation by asserting, “I was just tracing out where Gonzales’ handling of the verse necessarily leads. Dr. Gonzales may not believe in salvation by works, but his interpretation of Deut. 5:29 requires it.” So here Gerety equivocates. One minute he says, “Gonzales believes in salvation by works,” and the next, “Gonzales may not … but his interpretation of Deut. 5:29 requires it.” I wonder why Sean didn’t have the brotherly courteousy to share his concern with me before making such a remarkable accusation. If he had, I would have pointed out that Matthew Henry’s soteriological reading of Deuteronomy 5:29, which I quoted, corresponded with mine.⁵ I also would have pointed him to footnote #4 of my post, which reads,

Expositors like John Gill seem to reject Henry’s application of this text to salvation of sinners. Writes Gill, “These words do not express God’s desire of [the Israelites'] eternal salvation, but only of their temporal good and welfare, and that of their posterity; for their eternal salvation was not to be obtained by works of righteousness done by them, but their fear or worship of God, or by their constant universal obedience to his commands. They were saved by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, even as we. Their fear of God, and obedience to his will issued indeed in their temporal prosperity …” (For the Cause of God and Truth (reprint, Sovereign Grace Book Club, n.d.), sec. III, 4 [p. 5]. I agree with Gill that all men are saved by grace apart from works, I also agree that the blessing in view in the text had more immediate reference to their temporal prosperity in the Land of Canaan. Nevertheless, I also hold that God intended the people of the Old Covenant to look beyond its types and shadows of the Old Covenant to the eternal realities represented by such. Hence, their was both a temporal rest and an eternal rest (Heb. 4:1-10) envisioned in the blessing. In this way, the Mosaic covenant was not merely an administration of law but a “covenant of the promise” (Eph. 2:12). Moreover, “the fear” God desired from the Israelites in the text is nothing less than a “circumcised heart,” that is, regeneration and conversion. This God commanded of them (Deut. 10:16). But ultimately, it was an inward work only God’s grace could produce (Deut. 30:6; Jer. 32:39-40; Ezek. 36:26). Accordingly, since what God desires from the Israelites is ultimately regeneration and conversion and since such a heart-change is both the evidence of justifying faith and also a condition for eternal life (John 3:3, 5, 7; Heb. 12:14), I see no reason to confine the purview of this text to mere outward obedience and temporal prosperity. Strangely, in another place where Gill comments on this text, he seems to acknowledge that the “fear of God” in view is regeneration and conversion, and he locates the scope of the text within the scope of the covenant of grace: “that they would fear me; which is not naturally in the heart of man, is a gift of God, a part of the covenant of grace, is implanted in regeneration, and is no inconsiderable branch of it” (emphasis added).An Exposition of the Old Testament (William Hill Collingridge, 1852), 718. And though John Calvin, like Gill, interprets God’s wish anthropopathically (see below), he, nevertheless, did not limit the purview of the passage to the Israelites’ temporal blessing but applies the passage to his congregants as follows: “And so it is a very profitable warning for us when we see in this text how God wills that we should do the things that he commands us to the intent it might go well with us. Whereby we see that if we receive the doctrine with humility and desire to obey it, the end thereof cannot bee but happy so as we shall be sure of our salvation…. On the other side, let us rejoice inasmuch as we see how he procures our salvation and intends the furtherance thereof, as oft as his word is preached unto us” (emphasis added). Sermons on Deuteronomy (facsimile edition), trans. Arthur Golding (reprint, Banner of Truth, 1987), 261. [Note: Since I'm citing from a facsimile edition translated in 1583, I took liberty to update the spelling and punctuation for the modern reader.]

So, like Matthew Henry, John Calvin, and John Gill (in his commentary), I believe that the scope of this passage is not limited to outward obedience or temporal promises but has a part in “the covenant of grace,” assumes “regeneration,” and alludes ultimately to what the Promised Land prefigured, namely, soteriological blessing. Perhaps it would be helpful for my readers to know that in my doctoral dissertation I seek to refute the serious error (found in the NPP) that conflates faith and obedience in justification.

Can I Still Be Counted a Reformed Baptist?

There are other important issues I suggested Mr. Gerety should address before writing his critique. But he failed to address a number of these issues, which makes me wonder whether he was really interested in a rational and gentlemanly debate or whether he was just interested in winning an argument and painting his opponent in the absolutely worst light. For example, he represents Calvin’s and Gill’s view of divine emotivity and anthropopathisms as if they represent a monolithic Reformed consensus. “This is all Calvinism 101,” Gerety tells Ben Maas, “something one would have hoped even the dean of a purportedly ‘Reformed’ seminary would know.”

In response, let me point out first that the “anthropopathic” hermeneutic has been employed by Jewish Rabbis, the Early Church Fathers, and the Medieval Schoolmen long before Calvin or the Reformed stepped on the scene. So it is not a distinctively “Reformed” or “Calvinist” hermeneutic. Second, every Reformed interpreter (myself included) agrees that there is discorrespondence between divine and human emotivity. The real question in debate is “How much discorrespondence is there?” I demonstrate in my essay “There Is No Pain, You Are Misreading”: Is God “Comfortably Numb”? that not all Reformed scholars have agreed. There is, in other words, a considerable Reformed dissent from the approach that posits such a huge discorrespondence between divine and human emotivity so as to render God incapable of inward feeling vis-à-vis his creation. Charles Hodge, James Petrigru Boyce, Benjamin Warfield, and others think some older Reformed divines went too far in pressing discorrespondence. Robert Reymond, for example, has this to say about the question of divine emotivity as it relates to the WCF’s assertion, “God is … without body, parts, or passions” (II, 1):

Whenever divine impassibility is interpreted to mean that God is impervious to human pain or incapable of empathizing with human grief it must be roundly denounced and rejected. When the Confession of Faith declares that God is “without body, parts, or passions” it should be interpreted to mean that God has no bodily passions such as hunger or the human drive for sexual fulfillment.⁶

Of course, I’m aware (sadly) that Reymond doesn’t accept Murray’s (and my) interpretation of Deuteronomy 5:29 or the well-meant offer. But his general view of divine emotivity corresponds nicely with mine. Like Reymond, I affirm that God does not have human body, parts, or passions. Conversely, I also affirm, with Reymond, that God enters time and space and that within the matrix of human history God is able to respond emotively to states of affairs and events without threat to his transcendence, sovereignty, or immutability.

Moreover, I find that those Reformed divines who employ the hermeneutic of “anthropopathism” are not always completely consistent in their applications. When God wishes for the obedience and blessing of those who never experience such blessing (Deut. 5:29), John Gill takes great pains to urge the reader not to interpret the statement literally but “after the manner of men.” God’s “wish” is reduced to a kind of non-emotive approbation of obedience in the abstract or, in the case of Calvin, a kind of indicative rebuke against superficial devotion. However, when John Gill comes to David’s great sin, which God decreed but which God also censured, he writes,

But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord…. the murder of her husband, which he was accessory to, as well as the death of many others, and the marriage of her under such circumstances, were all displeasing to God, and of such an heinous nature, that his pure eyes could not look upon with approbation.⁷

Where’s the anthropopathic qualifier Gill found so necessary to insert in Deuteronomy 5:29?! After all, did David do exactly as God decretively desired? Why then does Gill feel at liberty to describe God as “displeased” when according to Gill’s system God must in reality feel nothing but pleasure towards all that happens? Or does Gill expect his readers to interpret his own comments anthropopathically too?

Calvin also equivocates. On the one hand, he wants to relegate God’s grief in Genesis 6:6 to a mere accommodation and render it void of any genuine emotive content. On the other hand, he wants the text to highlight (really not figuratively) “God’s hatred and detestation of sin” and to serve as a warning to his readers: “unless we wish to provoke God, and to put him to grief, let us learn to abhor and to flee from sin.” Wait a minute, Dr. Calvin. You just said that God couldn’t really feel anger or grief. Yet, after cautioning your readers against predicating any genuine emotivity to God, you turn around and insist that through such “figures of speech” we’re supposed to ascribe “hatred” and “detestation” to God—both of which are emotive in nature! Moreover, you want you readers to flee from sin lest they “provoke” God and “put him to grief.” I thought you just told us that God is untouchable? If God is only happy, how can he hate, detest, be provoked, and put to grief? Can’t have it both ways. For these reasons, I agree with Charles Hodge who asserts that emotivity is an essential part of a moral being. A God who is apathetic towards sin—whether in the abstract or whether considered in terms of concrete particulars—cannot also be holy, just, good, and true.

Am I a Heretical Baptist?

After reading Gerety’s post (and presumably mine), one of his readers even charges me with teaching Open Theism! I found that quite amazingly naïve and seriously mistaken. And yet, to demonstrate my willingness to be accountable, I invited Mr. Gerety and any of his concerned readers who suspect me of Open Theism, Romanism, or Arminianism after reading through my posts on the well-meant offer and divine emotivity (with all the footnotes and comments) to contact the board members of my seminary and file a complaint. Or, if they simply have questions that need clarification, I encouraged them to post those questions under the appropriate posts on the seminary blog. I will do my best to clarify any ambiguity or correct any misstatement I might make in a post.

The best part of Gerety’s post is the lengthy comment left by Ben Maas. As noted above, Ben debated my position on the well-meant offer on the RBS Tabletalk forum. Like Gerety, Ben does not find all of my arguments persuasive. Unlike Gerety, Ben understands my position and does not misrepresent me. Mr. Gerety and I can agree on one thing. As Gerety put it in a brief comment left on my blog (linking to this post): “Praise God that there are men like Ben Maas.” Gerety is thankful that Ben doesn’t bow the knee to an irrational God. I join him in this. Yet I’m also thankful that a guy like Ben Maas has not condescended to Gerety’s level of argumentation, which, in my humble estimation, is neither the best display of logic nor of Christian charity.

For these reasons, I believe Gerety’s “hammer” missed the mark. I trust he’ll use more caution in the future lest he cause damage to himself and to others.

Bob Gonzales, Dean
Reformed Baptist Seminary

1. Some might suggest that the minority report is only referring to non-determined desires in the major premise. I would respond, first, by noting that even decretive desires are not-yet-fulfilled desires in their pre-creation state. In human experience, not-yet-fulfilled often denote a prior state of need, lack, or want. So I don’t see how the insertion of “non-determined” or “weak wishing” rescues the major premise. Here is how I would construct the syllogism: major premise-Scripture predicates desires of God that are actuated in history (because decreed) and also desires of God that are not actuated in history (because not decreed); minor premise-Scripture portrays God as independent of creation and as completely self-sufficient; conclusion-Desire predicated of God, whether determined (decretive) or non-determined (preceptive), cannot, by the very nature of the case, suggest a want or lack that can be fulfilled only by the gratifying of the desire since God is by nature independent or self-sufficient. A more common argument goes something like this: God desires certain states of affairs. God is absolutely sovereign. Therefore, all God’s desires must come to futurition. I fail to see, however, why God must actuate every state of affairs that he might find intrinsically good and desirable. For my fuller response, see comment #40 of my post. [↩]
2. John Calvin, Secret Providence, trans., by James Lillie, Article 7, John Calvin’s reply. [↩]
3. Zacharias Ursinus, The Commentary of Dr. Zacharias Ursinus on the Heidelberg Catechism, trans., G.W. Willard (Phillpsburg N.J.: P&R, 1994), 519-520. [↩]
4. Heirnich Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1978), 87. [↩]
5. Writes Henry, “The God of heaven is truly and earnestly desirous of the welfare and salvation of poor sinners. He has given abundant proof that he is so: he gives us time and space to repent, by his mercies invites us to repentance, and waits to be gracious; he has sent his Son to redeem us, published a general offer of pardon and life, promised his Spirit to those that pray for him, and has said and sworn that he has no pleasure in the ruin of sinners.” Commentary on the Whole Bible (reprint, Fleming H. Revell Co., n.d.), 749. [↩]
6. A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith, 179. [↩]
7. John Gill, An Exposition of the Old Testament, en loc. [↩]

Does God Have Feelings? Twelve Theses on Divine Emotivity and Impassibility

Posted by deangonzales on February 25, 2009
10 Comments

Recently, I posted an essay entitled “There Is No Pain, You Are Misreading”: Is God “Comfortably Numb”? which addresses the question, Does God have feelings? The series focuses on the relationship of divine emotivity (i.e., emotions predicated of God in the Bible) to the doctrine of God’s transcendence, sovereignty, and immutability. I received a number of comments on the posts, some public and some private, most positive. One such response came from a young college student named Ben Maas. Ben is a member of First Presbyterian Church, Ada, Ohio, and is currently pursuing a double major in Pharmacy and Philosophy at Ohio Northern University. I was particularly impressed with Ben’s reflections on the subject not merely because Ben generally agreed with my position ☺ but, more importantly, because of their clarity and cogency (at least in my estimation). Initially, I thought of asking Ben to append his extended reflections as a “comment” to one of my posts. However, since Ben’s reflections not only agreed with the thrust of my argument but in some ways complemented and advanced my case, I asked Ben permission to upload his reflections as a separate post on the RBS Tabletalk blog. He humbly and graciously agreed. I’ve interspersed a few of my own comments by way of footnote to clarify or expand on something Ben says. So, I invite you to read Ben’s “twelve theses” on the relationship of divine emotivity and divine impassibility below. And feel free to comment if you wish.

Your servant,
Bob Gonzales

Twelve Theses on the Relationship of Divine Emotivity and Impassibility

1.    To say that God is unchangeable and therefore He cannot have different emotions at different points in time is to beg the question, for the debate involves demarcating exactly what part of Him is changeable and what part is unchangeable. Seeing as He acts differently at different points in time (e.g. God created the universe only once) it is clearly unacceptable to assume a completely unified immutability in God. There has to be some aspect of change.

2.    To say that God would contradict Himself if He willed Himself to have emotions (because He would be bound to His decree and therefore “have no choice” in His actions) is to introduce awkward extra-biblical assumptions and is self-refuting, for He has clearly bound Himself to His decree in terms of His actions. His volitions are clearly examples of consequential necessities and, therefore, we cannot say a priori that emotions cannot reside in the same category. Just as God has “no choice” not to do something if He has decreed to do that thing, so also He can decree Himself to have emotions.

3.    That God is forever blessed and ultimately pleased with all of creation and providence does not preclude the notion that He may be proximately displeased with specific aspects (e.g. Gen. 6:6). If one objects that this is a contradiction, i.e., for God to be eternally blessed yet displeased, or for God to be angry towards one part of creation and pleased towards another simultaneously, then I respond to him that he is not properly treating the distinctions previously set forth. (1) To say He is ultimately pleased with a course of events as a whole is not to say He is proximately pleased at every point in time during those events. For instance, I can look at a person’s injury or surgery and be displeased or grieved, even if I possess the certain knowledge that the injury or surgery will ultimately improve them. In fact, even if I were in God’s role and organized that entire situation providentially, I would still be proximately displeased at that point, but not universally displeased. (2) The propositions would be contradictory only if God acted differently in the exact same circumstances, i.e., towards the same object and at the same time and in the same place. That is never claimed for those with a more nuanced view of impassibility (e.g. Dr. Gonzales and me). Lastly, God acts differently at the same time in different places towards different objects, and no one grants that as a contradiction. He can likewise will internal emotions at different times toward different objects. No one can deny that God is complex in a sense: just as it sounds almost absurd that God may listen to every believer’s prayers occurring simultaneously, so also He can have specific emotional dispositions towards different people at the same time. This is not a contradiction.

4.    The explanation that all emotional descriptions of God in Scripture are anthropopathic and purely volitional does not cover many passages, namely, the ones that describe only God’s internal state (again Gen. 6:6). If it is true that love, grief, joy, etc., are not emotional in the archetypal form, then it makes no sense to speak of these apart from specific actions at any point. Genesis 6:6 and other verses clearly speak only of God’s internal state, and consequently they cannot be interpreted as solely external or volitional.[1]

5.    That some humans are overly emotional and can wrongly act off their emotions does not preclude that God may properly use emotions.

6.    It is possible even as humans to will one’s own emotion (e.g. getting “pumped up” before an athletic event) and consequently such a concept cannot be viewed as impossible. And even if it were impossible for humans, it could not be deemed a divine impossibility.[2]

7.    It is possible to affirm impassibility, i.e. that God is not internally affected by His creation, and divine emotivity, i.e. that God brings about His own emotional/internal changes. It is improper to assume that imputing any emotion to God requires the kind of interpersonal relationship advanced by process theology, open theism, or pantheism as a logical consequence.

8.    Emotions such as anger, love, joy, etc., when predicated of humans, always seem to convey both an internal reaction and an external action (God’s reaction is not involuntary as ours would be, however; see point #11).  This is evident from the light of nature, and if we have no reason in Scripture to interpret God’s love and grief differently from the concepts that immediately appear in our minds, then that is how they should be interpreted. To do otherwise – to affirm a narrow kind of impassibility that precludes genuine emotions – would be to eisegete, not protect the Creator-creature distinction.

9.    To argue that the stance of the more nuanced impassibility (advanced by Dr. Gonzales and some of the other Reformed writers he cited) is arguing ectypically, from creature to Creator (and therefore idolatrously), is to assert another awkward extra-biblical assumption. If we cannot legitimately argue from effect to cause, especially when Scripture itself has not warranted interpreting God’s emotions anthropopathically,[3] then we run into a horde of interpreting problems. If Scripture tells us that we are made in the image of God, and if it does not tell us of a stark difference between divine and human emotions (in that the former does not entail any internal motions), and if the words for various emotions are used to describe God (e.g. love, joy, anger), then the plain reading of the text demands an emotive reading of God. Done with the proper understanding of God, and without any absurd presuppositions, such as ones leading to process theology and open theism, we can understand God properly. If one seriously objects that this is arguing ectypically, then my response is merely that it is the best we’ve got – what else would be base our interpretations off of but the obvious meaning, especially when no other Scripture demands that it be interpreted otherwise? If that is idolatrous, I have no idea how to possibly avoid it, or how inserting an extra-biblical principle is better, assuming a kind of strict or absolute impassibility is not proven in other Scripture.

10.    Stemming from #9, it follows that a specific hermeneutic that denies a literal interpretation is allowed (perhaps mandated) if other Scripture warrants it. Therefore, those holding to my view of impassibility will not be obliged to believe that God actually repented of His actions at any point in the Bible when this is mentioned, for we know that omniscience explicitly denies this.

11.    I have always thought of immutability in terms of an equation which God has Himself ordained: A+B=C, wherein A=God’s holy and immutable character, B=a human action, and C=God’s reaction to the human action. Seeing as God ordains every single aspect of this equation, He is still entirely sovereign over this and therefore not passible as humans are. He never meets a legitimate action that prompts an involuntary reaction from Him. He is in control of all ends and means. This equation also understands immutability properly in that there are specific changeable and unchangeable aspects of God.

12.    Many emotions, anger and love especially, demand an internal and emotion aspect to them. This is plain from the light of nature. It is simply unimaginable to conceive of the King of universe who purportedly hates sin to have a smile on His face (forgive the second commandment transgression) while executing unspeakably painful judgments upon those who have profaned His name and broken His law so egregiously. It is preposterous to speak of the heinousness of sin vis-à-vis God’s emotional (i.e., inward) immutability, as it essentially makes God look as if He does not care about sin. In other words, while many who affirm a strict or absolute impassibility may claim that they also do not want an impersonal god or a god who is “comfortably numb,” those descriptors do perfectly describe such a god. Love is inconceivable as a mere external action. In fact, Paul describes one of the most externally loving acts in the world, laying down one’s life, as being done in vain if not done with love (1 Cor. 13:3). How, then, can love be a merely volitional quality if it can be a completely different entity based on an internal aspect? This difference between Creator and creature in strict impassibility seems to be far too much and approaches deism.

Ben Maas
Ada, Ohio

[1] Indeed, a careful reading of the verse following Genesis 6:6 reveals that God’s inward response to the proliferation of human sin is not identical to his portended external response but is, rather, the basis for that external response: “So the LORD said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth– men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air– for I am grieved that I have made them [emphasis added]” (6:7, NIV). Bob G.
[2] As I noted in Part 3, footnote 2, Jonathan Edwards argues, I think cogently, that emotions (or “affections” as he calls them) are in fact an aspect of the volitional faculty. See A Treatise on Religious Affections (1746; reprint, Banner of Truth, 1961), 24-27. Moreover, John Frame shows the connection between the mind and the emotions—emotive responses being intertwined with cognitive evaluations of events or states of affairs. The Doctrine of God (Presbyterian & Reformed, 2002), 509-12, 528-29, 608-11. Hence, we should not view the mind, will, and emotions as compartmentalized psychological faculties but as interrelated aspects or perspectival descriptions of what the Bible frequently calls “the heart.” Bob G.
[3] I don’t object to the use of the term “anthropopathic” in describing the Scriptures ascription of emotions to God provided that the term is used to indicate correspondence (not univocacy) with human emotivity and not used to construe divine and human emotivity as absolutely discorrespondent. Indeed, even in the case of “anthropomorphic” language, the emphasis is on correspondence not discorrespondence: “He who planted the ear, does he not hear? He who formed the eye, does he not see?” (Psalm 94:3, ESV). Bob G.

“There Is No Pain, You Are Misreading”: Is God “Comfortably Numb”? Part 2

Posted by deangonzales on February 4, 2009
10 Comments

According to Genesis 6:6, God felt emotional pain as he assessed the proliferation of human sin and misery on the earth. But as we noted in Part 1 of this series, some classical and Reformed Bible scholars caution the reader against reading emotions predicated of God literally. “Certainly,” writes John Calvin, “God is not sorrowful or sad; but remains for ever like himself in his celestial and happy repose.”¹ Emotions attributed to God in Scripture should be interpreted figuratively as “anthropopathisms,” by which God accommodates himself to our understanding.² When the reader inquires after the referent to which these figures of speech point, he learns that the internal emotions ascribed to God actually refer to outward actions usually associated as the effect of such emotions. In the words of Francis Turretin, the emotivity ascribed to God in Genesis 6:6 refers “not to affection and internal grief, but to the effect and external work…. It must be understood not pathetically (pathetikos), but energetically (energetikos).”³ This line of reasoning may account (at least partly) for a statement found in the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Savoy Declaration, and the Second London Baptist Confession, all of which affirm that God is “without body, parts, or passions [emphasis added]” (II, 2). Moreover, this interpretation of emotions ascribed to God is commonly linked to the doctrine of divine impassibility, which, in turn, is related to God’s immutability.

It should be noted that this view of divine impassibility does not leave us with an immobile God. That is, these theologians do not portray God as if he were in an “eternally frozen pose.”⁴  Unfortunately, some classic theologians have employed illustrations that may have prompted such caricatures. Thomas Aquinas, for example, sought to account for apparent changes ascribed to God in relationship to creation or humanity by means of a fixed stone pillar. When the Scriptures ascribe changes in God’s attitude, disposition, or affections toward us, they are not literally ascribing change to God but changes in us that place us in a different relationship to the fixed stone pillar.⁵ Such an illustration is infelicitous since it leaves one with the impression that God is immobile. Aquinas and other classic theologians clearly deny this and affirm that God is active. Perhaps we would do better to liken God to a bar magnet. Get on his “right side,” and he finds you “attractive,” which the Scriptures might describe with such emotive terms as love, pleasure, or peace. Get on his “wrong side,” and he finds you “repulsive,” which the Scriptures might describe in terms of anger, wrath, or hatred. But this illustration, like Aquinas’s stone pillar, still leaves us with a God that seems less than personal and who is emotively detached from this world.

Not surprisingly, some Reformed theologians have expressed dissatisfaction with the classic treatment of divine emotivity sketched above. For instance, the great Princeton systematician, Charles Hodge, remarks,

The schoolmen, and often the philosophical theologians, tell us that there is no feeling in God. This, they say, would imply passivity, or susceptibility of impression from without, which it is assumed is incompatible with the nature of God…. Here again we have to choose between a mere philosophical speculation and the clear testimony of the Bible, and of our own moral and religious nature. Love of necessity involves feeling, and if there be no feeling in God, there can be no love…. The philosophical objection against ascribing feeling to God, bears, as we have seen, with equal force against the ascription to Him of knowledge or will. If that objection be valid, He becomes to us simply an unknown cause, what men of science call force; that to which all phenomena are to be referred, but of which we know nothing. We must adhere to the truth in its Scriptural form, or we lose it altogether. We must believe that God is love in the sense in which that word comes home to every human heart.⁶

One of Hodge’s students and the first president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, James Petigru Boyce, agreed with this mentor. Writes Boyce,

The immutability thus set forth in the Scriptures and implied in the simplicity and absolute perfection of God is not, however, to be so understood as to deny in him some real ground for the Scripture statements of emotional feeling in the exercise of joy, pity, longsuffering and mercy, or of anger, wrath and avenging justice. We could as well deny some real ground for the attributes of love, justice and truth which are at the basis of these emotions.⁷

Similarly, Benjamin B. Warfield employs his eloquence in favor of a theology that gives full place to divine emotivity. In a sermon entitled, “Imitating the Incarnation,” Warfield exclaims,

We have a God who is capable of self-sacrifice for us…. Now herein is a wonderful thing. Men tell us that God is, by very necessity of His own nature, incapable of passion, incapable of being moved by inducement from without; that he dwells in holy calm and unchangeable blessedness, untouched by human sufferings or human sorrows for ever,–haunting

The lucid interspace of world and world,
Where never creeps a cloud, nor moves a wind,
Nor ever falls the least white star of snow,
Nor ever lowest roll of thunder moans,
Nor sound of human sorrow mounts to mar
His sacred, everlasting calm.

Let us bless God that it is not true. God can feel; God does love. We have Scriptural warrant for believing, as it has been perhaps somewhat inadequately but not misleadingly phrased, that moral heroism has a place within the sphere of the divine nature: we have Scriptural warrant for believing that, like the hero of Zurich, God has reached out loving arms and gathered to his own bosom that forest of spears which otherwise had pierced ours. But is not this gross anthropomorphism? We are careless of names: it is the truth of God. And we decline to yield up the God of the Bible and the God of our hearts to any philosophical abstraction. We have and we must have an ethical God; a God whom we can love, in whom we can trust.⁸

More recently, Gregory Nichols, one of our own systematic theology professors, has averred,

We must not deny either God’s infinite joy and blessedness or his incessant grief over human sin. Someone may object that these texts must contain a figure of speech, since God can’t really feel sensations of anguish. If so, why does Scripture ascribe this feeling to God? What truth does it actually tell us about him? All such objections fly in the face of the clear and emphatic teaching of Scripture.⁹

Other Reformed theologians such as Oliver Buswell, Robert Reymond, John Frame, and Michael Horton have added their voices to these witnesses. They note that some theologians have pressed the concept of impassibility so far as to deny even that God responds emotively. But they reject that view as unbiblical, noting that Scripture writers ascribe many attitudes to God that are generally regarded as emotions.¹⁰

As these examples, not all Reformed theologians have embraced the treatment of divine impassibility that precludes the attribution of genuine emotional responses to God. In the next part in our series, we’ll argue, with the help of others, that it’s possible to affirm God is both impassible (viewed from one perspective) and also passible (viewed from another perspective). That is, it’s possible to affirm the proposition “God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable [emphasis added] in his being, power, wisdom, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth” while simultaneously affirming that God genuinely responds emotively to events in the world (including human sin and misery).

Dr. Bob Gonzales, Dean
Reformed Baptist Seminary

1. Commentaries on the First Book of Moses Called Genesis, trans. John King (Reprint, Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2003), 1:249. [↩]
2. Ibid.; See also Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, ed. John T. McNeill (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960), 1:227 [Book I, 17.13]. [↩]
3. Institutes of Elenctic Theology, trans. George Musgrave Giger, ed. James T. Dennison, Jr. (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1992), 1:206. [↩]
4. This phrase is used by J. I. Packer, “God,” in New Dictionary of Theology, ed. Sinclair Ferguson and David Wright (Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 1998), 276. [↩]
5. Summa Theologica (New York: McGraw-Hill Company, 1964), 1a.13.7. [↩]
6. Systematic Theology (Reprint, Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1989), 1:428-29. [↩]
7. Abstract of Systematic Theology (1887; reprint, Hanford, CA: den Dulk Foundation, n.d.), 74. [↩]
8. “Imitating the Incarnation,” in The Person and Work of Christ (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1950), 570-71. [↩]
9. “The Emotivity of God,” Reformed Baptist Theological Review 1:2 (July 2004): 125. [↩]
10. J. Oliver Buswell, A Systematic Theology of the Christian Religion (Grand Rapid: Zondervan, 1962), 1:57; Robert Reymond, A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1998), 181-82; John Frame, The Doctrine of God (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2002), 608-11; Michael Horton, Lord and Servant: A Covenant Christology (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2005), 28, 52. [↩]