Folia Theologica et Canonica 4. 26/18 (2015)
SACRA THEOLOGIA - László Perendy, God’s impassibility and His compassio in Chrisin the patristic tradition
GOD’S IMPASSIBILITY AND HIS COMPASSICI IN CHRIST... 65 Olympus to the God of Christians. This way they prepared the ground to assert about God only the emotions which are really worthy of him. So impassibility for the apologists meant that God cannot be subject to his own emotions, but he completely rules his actions, and any sentiment which could be reproachable morally is far from him.15 Pagan critics, like e.g., emperor Julian16, accused the Christians of inconsistency: while they ridicule the emotions of the gods of Olympus, they accept the anthropomorphic characteristics of the God of the Bible, e.g., they do not deny that in certain cases God makes his creatures feel his anger. This way Julian joins the Stoic view, proclaimed also by Seneca17, that the emotion of anger is completely alien to the world of gods, because it would make it impossible for them to pass a sober judgement. In Marcion’s view18 the vileness of the god of the Old Testament is demonstrated also by his cruelty and his blind anger. This idea was criticised already by Irenaeus and Tertullian. Irenaeus19 proves that whenever the Old Testament is talking about God’s anger, it always demonstrates that God is right when he bursts out into indignation over man's rebellion and sins. Tertullian2" mentions God’s emotions connected to his juridical tasks as iudiciarius sensus, whose final end is the education and salvation of man. So the Christian authors admitted that there exists a kind of anger which is blinding. However, this kind of anger cannot be stated about God. Lactantius’ De ira Dei treats this question in detail, and he distinguishes between rightful and wrongful anger.21 The latter one, of course, cannot be maintained about God. Contesting the view of the Stoa, together with Justin, Theophilus, and Cyprian, he regards divine anger as an efficient means to express the condemnation of sin.22 Also the leading personalities of the monastic movement (Cassianus23, Euag- rius24, and Augustine25) treat this question. In accordance with Cyril of Alexandria26 they also emphasize that God’s impassibility is completely compatible with some emotions, e.g., with his anger. In their view exactly the insistence on divine impassibility makes it possible for apophatic theology to attribute 15 Gavrilyuk, P. L., The Suffering of the Impassible God, 48-51. 16 See Cyril of Alexandria, Contra lulianum, 17IE. 17 De officiis, III. 102. 18 See Irenaeus, Adversus haereses, I. 27, 2. 19 Irenaeus, Adversus haereses, I. 27; III. 40, 1. 20 Adversus Marcionem, II. 17. 21 De ira Dei, 17. 22 Gavrilyuk, P. L., The Suffering of the Impassible God, 51-56. 23 Institutiones, VIII. 4, 3. 24 Praktikos, 81. 25 Enarrationes in Psalmos, II. 4; De civitate Dei, 15, 25; Contra Faustum, 22, 18. 26 In loannem, 12, 6; In Lucám, 1.
