Folia Theologica et Canonica 4. 26/18 (2015)

SACRA THEOLOGIA - László Perendy, God’s impassibility and His compassio in Chrisin the patristic tradition

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LASZLO PERENDY

Christian fathers took over this conviction from the philosophers without any criticism; 3rd: the idea of impassibility rendered it impossible to accept any biblical account in which emotions are connected to God, or any narrative which says that God entered human history; 4,h: the notion of impassibility cannot be reconciled to the idea that God as revealed in Jesus Christ showed any emotions; 5th: this fundamental incompatibility was recognized only by a small minority of theologians. Gavrilyuk gives a name to this concept based on Harnack’s ideas. He calls it the ‘Fall of Theology’, and he undertakes the task of contravening all these five statements.4

First of all we can establish: it is not true that the whole of Greek philosophy accepted the thesis of divine impassibility. This can be supported by the accounts of two philosophers of antiquity. Cicero (B.C. 106—43 ) in his De natura deorum (1.1. 2-3; 1. 2. 5) explicitly states that in this question there is no agreement among the various philosophical schools. About 250 years later Sextus Empiricus (A.D. 160-210) in his Outlines of Pyrrhonism (1. 151 ) gives witness that as late as his epoch philosophers had not come to an understanding in the question of the existence of divine providence. Three main trends can be mentioned: the Epicurean, the Stoic, and the Middle Platonic. None of these philosophical schools could avoid the inteipretation of the deeds of Greek gods, narrated in the myths. Platonism developed a system which entered into competition with the world of myths. The Stoics strove after preserving the myths, but at the same time they reinterpreted them by applying the allegorical method extensively. The followers of Epicurus accepted the traditional view that gods have an immortal body, but at the same time they stated that the happiness of the gods mainly consists in the fact that no external factor influences them: no effect from the world outside them can cause them either happiness or grief.

As to the various opinions of the Greek philosophical schools about dealing with human passions, we have to mention also the Peripatetics, who stood for the idea of petpionádeia, which concept means the moderation of passions. All kinds of nádri are morally neutral as long as they can be kept within borders and are controlled by reason. In opposition to them, the early Stoics held the opinion that all kinds of ná6t] are irrational and unnatural disorder, so first they have to be curtailed, and then they have to be eradicated completely. They regarded their school as a kind of hospital, in which human beings can be cured from the four main diseases, which are the following: anxiety (Àvnrj), pleasure (fjdovfl), fear (tpoßog). and desire (êmdvpia). So - in contrast to the followers of Aristotle - the final end for the Stoics was not pezpionáBeia, but ánáBeia. We also have to remark that the church fathers were indeed aware of the divergences in the opinions of the philosophical schools, which is shown e.g. by one work of Saint Jerome (Adversus Pelagianos; Prologue 1).

4 Gavrilyuk, P. L., The Suffering of the Impassible God, 5.