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LIBERTY BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
The Early Church Fathers' Use of πάθειαἀ
A glance at divine impassibility through Early Patristic lenses in light of recent criticisms.
Submitted to Dr. John Landers, in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the completion of the course
CHHI 610 – D01
Historical Development of Christian Theology
by
Brent Michael McCulley
March, 27, 2015

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Table of Contents
Introduction & Contemporary Voices 3
Scope & Thesis Statement 7
Recent Critics 9
Clarifying Terms 15
Entomological Fallacy 17
Ignatius of Antioch 18
Justin Martyr 21
Irenaeus of Lyons 25
Origen 29
Tertullian 33
Conclusion 37
Bibliography 40
Suggested Reading 43

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“'What is it all for?' Nekhlydov asked himself, but, more than ever, he felt that sensation of moral nausea turning
into physical nausea which always overcame him when he visited the prison; and he could find no answer to his
question.”1
—The Resurrection, Leo Tolstoy
Introduction & Contemporary Voices
The question of suffering in relation to God is indeed one of the most important
theological questions that can be raised.2
As theology is never done in a vacuum, so too has
suffering always shaped the way that we think about God. As the twentieth century catapulted to
an end, humanity found itself in the midst of warfare, ideology, death, technology, protest
atheism, political unrest and suffering—as it seemed to unanimously cry out “God is dead...[not
because of] the absence of the experience of God, but [because of] the experience of the absence
of God.”3
In light of protest atheism, and the post-Auschwitz mindset, the task was set out by
1 Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications Inc., 2004), 163.
2 Some would argue, however, that this is certainly not the case. The concept of suffering as it applies to
God and theology has only recently been flung to the forefront since the modern technological era (1900—). For
example, critiquing Moltmann, Daniel Castelo writes, “...at the forefront of Moltmann's theological project...[is] the
question of God and the question of suffering [which] are intimately linked, perhaps one and the same. Such a move
not only reflects the mood of the times in our Post-Holocaust context, but it also shows the degree to which suffering
has gained a foothold, perhaps a non-negotiable space, in theological reflection. Naturally, [however], the theme of
suffering has not always retained such an exalted position.” Daniel Castelo,“Moltmann's Dismissal of Divine
Impassibility: Warranted?” Scottish Journal of Theology 61 (2008): 397. While there is truth to Castelo's critique in
light of the changes brought about in the twentieth century, it is also true that whether on the forefront, or the back-
burner, the problem of suffering has always been on the minds in some way or other of the most acute theologians.
Consider for example, Calvin writing in the sixteenth century, “It has been said—and I admit that it's a perfectly
legitimate assessment—that the best thing is not to be born while the second best is to die early.” John Calvin,
Institutes of the Christian Religion (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., 2007), 3.9.4. Or even more
generally evil and suffering against theodicy which can be traced back to antiquity, perhaps wrongly attributed but
nevertheless, in Epicurus' thought. Hence, while it is true that suffering has taken on a whole new meaning in our
present day and age, we would be remiss if we dismissed suffering as a factor in the minds of the Ancients and Pre-
Moderns.
3 William Hamilton, “The Death of God Theologies Today,” in Radical Theology and the Death of God, by
Thomas J. J. Altizer and William Hamilton, (New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company Inc., 1966), 28. This entire
companion of collected scholarly journal articles by Altizer and Hamilton compiled together in The Death of God is
an excellent overarching example of the Death of God movement, their dialectical thought, and their intentions and
goals at the height of protest atheism in the 1950s and 60s.

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theologians to ameliorate our conception of God, and free ourselves from the shackles of
classical theism and especially the chains of Greek metaphysics which had long prevented us
from seeing the God of the Bible 'as He is.'
It is from this line of thought that compelled Jürgen Moltmann to construct a new
theologia crucis in step with Bonhoeffer's words that would ring out from the abysmal depths for
generations to come: “only the suffering God can help.” “It is the suffering of God in Christ,
rejected and killed in the absence of God, which qualifies Christian faith as faith.”4
Thus the
traditional understanding of God had been overthrown, and a new God who is both passible and
mutable had been constructed in various strains of theological thought, from new panentheistic
models to process and open theistic models. Hence, if theology is to begin to create, adept, and
reformulate its doctrines, the theologian need not worry himself with many of the classical
notions of God, because they have sufficiently been swept away as loaned Greek metaphysical
doctrines improper for our new models of God—or so the argument goes. But is this actually the
case, and is our dichotomous understanding of Greek metaphysics versus the God of the Bible
correct in all that it assumes? Or is it a mere caricature promulgated by various influential
theologians of the past, and simply accepted as proper historical theology by today's theologians?
What is more, the dichotomous understanding of impassibility has not remained in the academic
sphere, but has since trickled down from the universities into the minds of the masses, laity, and
ordinary church-goers, and has, as a consequence, shaped our understanding into a new dogma
that may very well rest on a false presupposition. Feeling the pressure as such, it has caused a
wide range of theologians and laypersons alike to simply dismiss divine impassibility as an
4 Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian
Theology (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1974), 37.

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outmoded doctrine of classical theism5
which merely was the consequence of the Early Church
Fathers' acceptance and passive capitulation to Greek metaphysics. Because of this hard
snowballing critique of impassibility by the growing camps of process theology and open theism,
from both academic and evangelical, many theologians striving to remain orthodox have sought
to reformulate their understanding of divine impassibility in light of God's immutability, or else
5 The scope of this paper will go no further than simply tracing the use and development of πάθειαἀ in the
minds of the Early Church Fathers, whereby I mean tracing the doctrine as it was used by the Early Patristics as a
foundation for the evolution and birth of Christian theology. By Early Christian Fathers, I will begin with Ignatius of
Antioch and go no further than Tertullian. For excellent impassibility discussions in light of the Christological
debates see John J. O'Keefe, “Impassible Suffering? Divine Passion and Fifth-Century Christology,” Theological
Studies 58 (1997): 38-60. Donald Fairbairn, “The One Person Who Is Jesus Christ: The Patristic Perspective,” in
Jesus In Trinitarian Perspective, ed. by Fred Sanders and Klaus Issler. 80-113. Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Co.,
2007. Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God, 135-171. Weinandy, Does God Suffer? 172-213. Hence this
paper will not undertake the usage of divine impassibility in the thought of Classical Theologians either, Anslem,
Aquinas, etc., or in later Reformation and Post-Reformation thought. The understanding of impassibility flowing
from an Aristotelian model of God, the indivisible primum movens, pure act, active intellect, etc., as it appeared in
Aristotle's thought (see especially, Aristotle, Metaphysics, Bk VII), and as it reappeared in Thomistic thought in his
Quinque viæ (See Summa Contra Gentiles, 1.13 and Summa Theologiæ, 1.2.3), does overwhelmingly seem to also
permeate the thought, whether merely accepted or expounded upon, of the Reformers but more specifically reformed
scholastic thought in Early and Late Orthodoxy. Whether “classical theism” was merely, uncritically accepted by the
aforesaid men as the framework with which to theologize upon is certainly not the purpose or scope of this paper.
But nevertheless, the point must be made clear, that the overwhelming material written by the Reformers, Early and
Late Orthodoxy—if divine impassibility is touched upon—shows a clear and consistent pattern of an appeal to God
as pure act, simple, unmoved mover etc. in an Aristotelian sense following the lead of Thomas Aquinas, in order to
justify an impassibilist reading of Scripture. Over and over again the Reformed theologians of early orthodoxy
(1565-1640) and high orthodoxy (1650-1700) constantly refer to any affection, attribution of emotion or passion
predicated on God as merely anthopathism. The hard distinction should be made clear: this line of Aristotelian
reasoning concerning impassibility as it was defined in this strong sense is seemingly absent in the minds of the
Early Fathers and is never appealed to; rather, divine πάθειαἀ is used in a variety of different ways by the Fathers,
but the way previously explained, as it was utilized by classical theologians of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, is never distinguished as such. This distinction will be further expounded upon and clarified later on in
this paper [see footnote 28]. That impassibility did seem to flow easily from classical theism into the minds of the
Reformers1
and Post-Reformation thought can be seen in the apparent non-controversial acceptance of the doctrine
as it appears in passing in various protestant confessions of faith. The Westminster Confession of Faith (1648) reads,
“There is but one only, living, and true God...a most pure Spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions.” Similar
statements to God's impassibility appear in the 42 Articles of the Church of England (1552), the 39 Articles of the
Church of England (1563), the Irish Articles (1615), the Savoy Declaration (1658) and the Second London Baptist
Confession of Faith (1677). For an excellent collected companion/reader of primary sources of Reformation, Early
Orthodoxy, Late Orthodoxy, and Particular Baptist thought concerning God's impassibility, see Samuel Renihan
(ed), God Without Passions: A Reader. Palmdale, CA: Reformed Baptist Academic Press, 2015. For important
documents of the Church throughout history, including a number of the aforesaid, see Henry Bettenson and Chris
Maunder (eds), Documents of the Christian Church. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
______________________
1 It is important to remember that for many of the Reformers, for example John Calvin, while the metaphysical
presuppositions may have been accepted as a woldview wherewith they were using to theologize upon, doesn't necessitate that they
even agreed or expounded upon these presuppositions. Calvin had little time for speculative metaphysics, and in his magisterial
Institutes of the Christian Religion, only a few pages of the thousand it comprises deals with theology proper or doctrine of God as He
is in His essence. This is in harmony with the earliest Reformed Confessions like the Belgic Confession (1561), the Heidelberg

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do away with the doctrine altogether.6
The point now should be made sufficiently clear: if our
conceptions of historical theology are built of false presuppositions, it may very well box current
theological discussion into an awkward corner that it may have been able to resist. That is to say,
if impassibility is merely a pagan Greek metaphysical doctrine that was uncritically adopted by
the Fathers, than our current theologizing is on the right track, and theology did well to wrest
itself of this burdensome and foreign doctrine. Nevertheless, if the dichotomy is not that simple,
Catechism (1563), and both Helvetic Confessions (1536, 1566). The theme of impassibility, alongside God as pure actuality, etc.,
however, appears more thoroughly and robustly in Reformed Scholasticism of later generations, where the influence of Aristotelian
thought is more predominant, especially in those off of the continent (Westminster Divines, etc.). I am indebted to Bruce L.
McCormack's preface in Engaging the Doctrine of God: Contemporary Protestant Perspectives (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic,
2008), 7-10, for some of these insights.
6 A couple examples: Theologian Richard Creel argues for God's impassibility in nature, will, and feelings,
but passibility in God's knowledge of future contingent events in his 1986 book, Divine Impassibility: An Essay in
Philosophical Theology. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2005. Evangelical theologian, John F. Feinberg
argues in 2001 theology proper tome, No One Like Him, that immutability should be redefined in a more nuanced
and less “strong” sense of the word, thereby allowing for changes in God's attitude and disposition towards His
creatures from which He ultimately uses as leverage to dismiss divine impassibility as unnecessary in being
attributed to a loving and caring God. “According to this attribute, which is often called divine impassibility, what a
creature thinks, says, or does cannot influence what God feels or does, for if it did, God would not be immutable (in
this strong sense of immutability [“the strong conception of immutability associated with classical theism of Anslem
and Aquinas says that God is utterly incapable of any change whatsoever...{hence} if absolutely immutable, he must
also be impassible, for change in emotions and being affected by his creatures' thoughts and actions are
changes”(pg.264)]) nor would he be independent of his creatures in this respect...[but] there seems to be no reason to
think something is wrong with God if he doesn't have this kind of independence. Moreover, there are reasons to
think that he doesn't have this sort of independence from us. If God hears and answers our prayers, and if he changes
his attitudes towards us when we repent of sin, for example, it seems that his mental and emotional states at any
given moment must to some extent be influenced by what we do. But, why is that a deficiency in God?” (pg 241).
“In light of this nuanced understanding of divine immutability, it is necessary to reject divine impassibility” (pg
277). No One Like Him. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2001. See pages 241-277 on Feinberg's discussion of
impassibility in light of immutability and divine aseity. It is important to note, that these two examples, together with
the growing contemporary theological literature critiquing divine impassibility—and also immutability—rely on a
rejection of the classical doctrine of God's atemporality, namely, that God is outside of time. Others, for example,
have done away with divine impassibility on the basis of their formulation of God's love for His creatures, and
indeed this seems to be the the foundation wherefrom most of the shots at divine impassibility are coming from.
Gary D. Badcock allows God's love as a seemingly emotional disposition or affection to be in constant quantitative
fluctuation on the basis of our obedience or disobedience, and thereby concludes that “God's love, like ours in the
Platonic conception, is based on a kind of need. If this is correct, than it naturally follows that the old doctrine of
divine impassibility, which is, after all, of Greek origin, is incompatible with the Old and New Testament conception
of the God who loves.” Gary D. Badcock, “The Concept of Love: Divine and Human,” in Nothing Greater, Nothing
Better: Theological Essays on the Love of God, ed. Kevin J. Vanhoozer, (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans
Publishing Company, 2001), 41. Ironically enough, Badcock dismisses impassibility as an antiquated notion of
Greek philosophy, but defines God's love as Plato defines love between and among human subjects in his Lysis and
Symposium, namely that it arises out of a need and desire to fulfill a lack in the other subject, and thereupon lifts this
all too Platonic doctrine of love upwards to God. It is here that we conclude that the dismissal of divine impassibility
revolving around contemporary theological discussion is not quite as simple as “unshackling Greek metaphysics”
from God, and obviously includes many more dynamic factors shaping the relevant dialogue.

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than we may very well be on the wrong track concerning our current conceptions of divine
impassibility. While all of the aforesaid may seem long-winded and not pertinent to the specific
scope at hand to be undertaken in this brief paper, the foundation and purpose must be made
clear. Not only because of the paramount theological significance of divine impassibility in light
of our current post-modern, geo-political climate, but the existential relevance (or lack thereof)
of the doctrine. It is for this reason why me must get the Fathers correct, and hence why a fresh
reading and new insight into the Fathers must be undertaken in order to track their theological
evolution, namely their conception of God in light of their usage and development of divine
πάθειαἀ 7
from the conceptual framework with which they were theologizing.
Scope & Thesis Statement
Theologian Henri A. Blocher in his essay God and the Cross remarked that “if
impassibility is to be 'saved,' it will [have to] be through a concept different from the usual
(mis)conception.8
It is with this condition in mind that helps the scope of this paper retain all the
7 I have endeavored to utilize Greek words as they actually are without transliterating them by typing them
out in Greek via a font typeset on my word processor, as this is my personal preference in reading Greek in an
academic setting. However, I have retained the English transliterations as they appeared in material I have cited in
quotations; some scholars make frequent use of both Greek and transliteration forms and I have retained in both
cases how they originally appeared in their works. If there is any inconsistency in flip-flopping back and forth
between the Greek words and their English transliterations, it is not on my part.
8 The usual (mis)conception[s] that he is speaking of here should be juxtaposed next to what he deems are
the two strong suits of “crucified God” theologies; namely, (1) that it warns us of the influence Greek philosophy
had on Christian theology, and (2) it recognizes God's pathos. The idea is that the usual “conception” of
impassibility is mutually exclusive vis-à-vis the two aforementioned tenants, and hence one side must be chosen
over the other. While this (mis)conception is perhaps more fitting for the scholastic, Aristotelian conception divine
impassibility as it was postulated on God, it is by no means a fitting conception in the minds of the Fathers, and is in
fact a false dichotomy. The majority of the Fathers did not see God's πάθειαἀ at odds with his love, care, and tender
guidance for His creatures. If we are to take Blocher's charges seriously, then one of these directions needs to be
reworked and re-framed: A vindication of the Fathers' use of divine impassibility, and not necessarily of the
scholastic understanding of impassibility, I believe, is the direction that will be able to reconcile God as both
impassible and impassioned. Henri A. Blocher, “God and the Cross,” in Engaging the Doctrine of God, ed. Bruce L.
McCormack, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 130. Considering the modern critiques, D. A. Carson
remarks of impassibility as follows: “It seems proper, then, to confess that God is impassible in the sense that he is
never so controlled by his 'passions' that the other perfections of his very being as God are somehow swept away or
in any sense jeopardized...God is impassible in the sense that he sustains no 'passion' over which he has no control,

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more focus; namely, that if a return to the Early Church Fathers can yield fresh insight in a
careful and nuanced understanding of how, why, and for what reason πάθεια was usedἀ
theologically in the works of the Early Patristics, we may be able to avoid false presuppositions
that would affect our current theological god-talk, much to our detriment. The goal of this paper,
therefore, is to refute the proposition that remains held seemingly unchallenged in the minds of
many contemporary theologians and laypersons alike that amounts to something roughly as
follows: the Early Church Fathers uncritically misappropriated the Greek metaphysical doctrine
of divine impassibility onto the Hebrew God of the Bible, thereby contributing to Christianity's
“fall” from true apostolic faith into false syncretistic Hellenized Christianity.9
Rather, we contend
that the Early Church Fathers' use of πάθεια–—which is not without some ambiguity,ἀ
inconsistency, and diversity from various thinkers—was postulated apophatically during an early
and volatile time in the development of Christian theology in order to (1) distinguish, demarcate,
preclude the One True God of the Christian faith from the gods of the pantheon and the God of
the philosophers, viz., the mutable God of the Stoics, the licentious, passionate and corporeal
gods of the Epicureans, and the unknowable and impersonal God of Platonism,10
and (2) to
no passion disconnected from all his other perfections.” D. A. Carson, “The Wrath of God,” in Engaging the
Doctrine of God, ed. Bruce L. McCormack, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 48. The dialogue has
begun to emerge in the past decade or so in a more nuance and robust way: See, for example, Rob Lister, God is
Impassible and Impassioned: Toward a Theory of Divine Emotion. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012.
9 Lest anyone think that the proposition that I intend, at a minimum, to shoot some holes in is merely a
straw man, I will show in the next section quotes from those who advocate such a theory as a foundation for some of
their theologizing. That theology “fell” from apostolic Christianity into “Hellenized Christianity” thereby poisoning
our doctrine of God, especially the doctrines of divine impassibility and immutability, is indeed a widely accepted
“fact” of historical theology held by not only those in the academy, but lay Christians alike, especially diverse free-
church strands that seem to always want to return to the “pure” apostolic Christian faith, many of which trace the
apex of the downfall of Christianity at the Edict of Milan (313) when Emperor Constantine decreed that Christianity
was no longer an illegal religion within the confines of the Roman Empire.
10 I understand that these classifications are extremely general, but nevertheless they are far more accurate,
albeit not perhaps specific and nuanced enough, than the prevailing thought that Greek philosophy had a unified
conception of deity (impassible, immutable, etc.) that was inherited by the Church Fathers as the Christian God. This
view could not be more false, and it is this view that we are contending against. To address the generalizations of the
three categories: first, we are aware that even the Stoics did not agree within each other, and later Stoic thought
differed from early Stoic thought. Consider for example later Stoics, like Marcus Aurelius, who often times seemed

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uphold firmly the creator/creature distinction through it as a linguistic safeguard. Lastly, I hope
that in showing the twain aforementioned points, I will be able to prove that in the minds of the
Early Fathers, this in no way excluded God's ability to love, but rather affirmed His ability to
love in a trustworthy way that was not feeble or deceptive like the gods of the Greek pantheon,
and neither did His impassibility exclude Him from loving like the impersonal God of the
Platonic philosophers.
Recent Critics
In his excellent work entitled The Suffering of the Impassible God: Dialectics of Patristic
Thought, theologian Paul Gavrilyuk contends with what he calls labels “Theology's Fall into
Hellenistic Philosophy.”11
A theory not only propounded by most contemporary theologians, but
one that is accepted as dogmatic truth and veritable historical theology.12
Simply put, the theory
to envision the pantheistic God as personal, whereas previous Stoics never spoke about God in this way. Some
depersonalized the Homeric gods of antiquity into personal forces of the κόσμος whereas others were loath to make
this philosophical move, and retained their allegorical cultic astronomy of the ancient gods. This distinction does not
affect the outcome of our present study. The Epicureans also did not agree within themselves, but the common
thread of noting that the gods not only sought out human pleasures anthropomorphically, but also were entirely
indifferent to the common weal of humanity must be stressed in contradistinction to the Christian conception. Lastly,
the strands within Platonism are extremely complex, from Early, to Middle, to Neo-Platonism. Of them, the only one
that is really relevant to our study is Middle Platonism (90 BC until the rise of Neo-Platonism in the third century),
since our survey of the Early Patristic Fathers will halt before the fourth century. There is no doubt that that Middle-
Platonism conceived of God as impersonal and unknowable, and in this sense he was completely isolated from the
created world, or transcendent. While some of the Fathers may have fallen into this trap to an extent, their use of
πάθειαἀ was not to convey a God was uncaring, aloof from creation, or unloving as we will see below. See
Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God, 21-46. Castelo, The Apathetic God, 40-46. For an excellent
treatment of the actual Platonic and Stoic conceptions of God, see John W. Cooper, Panentheism—The Other God of
the Philosophers: From Plato to the Present (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 30-63. For a good survey
of Platonic and Stoic thought as understood within the confines of shaping theology see Diogenes Allen and Eric
Springsted, Philosophy for Understanding Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007), 1-63.
11 Paul Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God: Dialectics of Patristic Thought (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2006), 1-20.
12 We do not intend to list a comprehensive scope of all those who advocate such a theory, but merely want
to demonstrate that this conception is not isolated, but indeed is accepted widely as a generally unchallenged
historical dogma in the evolution of theology by many theologians and laymen alike, who, for the most part, have
not critically questioned the truth value of such a presupposition. For an excellent list of those who advocate[d] such
a theory, see the appendix of Gavrilyuk's The Suffering of the Impassible God, pp. 176-179. Among the foremost and
most influential that Gavrilyuk seems to critically engage and interact with are as follows: A. J. H Hetchel's The

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states thus: Because the Early Church Fathers were held captive to the prevailing Greek
philosophical thought of their day, their theologizing was rooted in incorrect metaphysical
presuppositions from which blatant doctrinal errors were produced. Hence, a stark distinction is
drawn between the Hebrew God of passion and the Greek metaphysical God who is impassible,
and beyond all suffering. Moltmann writes: “From the time of Aristotle onwards, the
metaphysical principle which has been derived from this [conception of God] has been θεός
απαθής...as actus purus and pure causality, nothing can happen to God for him to suffer. As the
perfect being, he is without emotions. Anger, hate and envy are alien to him. Equally alien to him
are love, compassion, and mercy.”13
Another, from the pen of Rem B. Edwards, perhaps
dogmatically sums up this theory best: “All of these variations [impassibility, immutability] on
the theme of the unchangeableness of God originated in Greek philosophy. None of them
originated in the Biblical religion.”14
Prophets, Adolf von Harnack's Outlines of the History of Dogma, and Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God. For an
extremely comprehensive list—indeed, nothing short of exhaustive—of all those who have advocated a passible
God from the modern genesis of the doctrine in the late nineteenth century in the United Kingdom during the
English impassibilist debates all the way up to the twenty-first century see chapter one entitled “The God Who
Suffers” in Thomas G. Weinandy's exhaustive and scholarly par excellence work, Does God Suffer? (Notre Dame,
IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000), 1-26. Perhaps one quote cited by Weinandy will serve to exemplify the
tone of modern theology: “Men feel, and perhaps will feel increasingly, that a God who is not passible, who is
exempt from pain and suffering, is a God of little value to suffering humanity.” B. R. Brasnett, The Suffering of the
Impassible God (London: SPCK, 1928), 9. Quoted in Weinandy, Does God Suffer? 3. For a short, but critical and
fair, understanding of Hetchel's thought in The Prophets, see Weinandy, Does God Suffer? 64-68.
13 Moltmann, 268.
14 Rem B. Edwards, “The Pagan Dogma of the Absolute Unchangeableness of God,” Religious Studies 14
(September 1978): 305. Emphasis mine. Edwards continues, “Classical supernaturalism is not identical with Biblical
religion. It resulted from the fusion of the selected biblical motifs with Greek notions of divine perfection by Philo
and the early church fathers who followed his lead. Biblical religion presented God as interacting with nature and
human history,” (pp. 305, 306). Edwards espouses an ethical view of God's immutability, “God does not change
with respect to his goodness and righteousness”(306), in contrast to what he deems the Greek view of the
unchangeableness of God, which states that God cannot change ontologically, or ontological immutability. He also
states what seems to be the biggest σκάνδαλον for modern theologians wrestling with impassibility, viz., God's love
and interaction with the world as Creator. That God cannot both be love and impassible, we contend, is the biggest
misconception in understanding the Fathers. This, we hope, will be demonstrated below showing how the Early
Fathers spoke about God being both impassible and love. See Weinandy, Does God Suffer? 61-63 on the distinction
between God's ethical and ontological immutability. See also his treatment of God's love in light of God's
impassibility, 147-171. See Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God, 21, 22, who shows through primary
sources (Cicero, Sextus Empiricus) how there was absolutely no agreement among the philosophers on God's

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Proponents of this general theory, albeit many theologians vary on nuanced specific
distinctions of the theory, are far and wide and are within all regions of doctrinal and
denominational thought, as the theory has become commonplace in the minds of many
contemporary theologians:“Again and again modern theologians have found to their great
embarrassment that logical and linguistically it is not possible to dissociate the rites, creeds, and
dogmas of the Church from their Western form.”15
The predominance, acceptance, and popularity
of the doctrine can, perhaps, be traced back to the influence and popularity of Jürgen Moltmann,
of whom we just quoted, and his thesis in The Crucified God.16
Indeed, for Moltmann does seem
to encapsulate the spirit and fundamental presupposition that is held by those who propound and
theologize upon this theory. Moltmann's thesis of a suffering God is certainly built firmly upon
passions and immutability let alone the conception of God as a whole.
15 Thomas J. J. Altizer, “America and the Future of Theology,” in Radical Theology and the Death of God,
12. This claim is so ridiculously asinine, it almost does not deserve a response. Nevertheless, perhaps some
clarification on why Altizer—who here is a representative of all who hold to such a position, and they are far and
wide—is simply misguided in this redundant assertion. It is simply axiomatic that early Christianity elucidated
Christian theology and doctrine in Greek since Christianity was birthed in a geo-cultural climate where people spoke
Greek! Catholic theologian, Norman Tanner, of historical theology at Gregorian University in Rome is definitely
worth quoting here at length. He comments, “Christianity was born into the world of Greek culture. Greek was by
far the most widely used language of communication, especially in terms of cultural and intellectual discourse,
during and for long after the life of Jesus Christ...The early Christian church had the courage to recognize and act
upon this linguistic and cultural reality...It comes as no surprise, therefore, that Greek was the language of the first
seven ecumenical counsels. These councils from Nicea I in 325 to Nicea II in 787, were crucial to the development
—or perhaps to the clarification—of Christian doctrine during the first millennium. In the case, the Church had no
real option but to accept Greek since it was the only common language in the Eastern half of the (Roman) Empire
where all seven councils were held.” Norman Tanner, “Greek Metaphysics and the Language of the Early Church
Councils: Nicea I (325) to Nicea II (787), Gregorianum 90 (January 2009): 51. After surveying each ecumenical
council and the various extra-biblical words utilized by the Fathers in order to clarify or elucidate a theological
doctrine, Tanner concludes: “Acceptance of the lingua franca of the eastern Mediterranean world, allowed
Christianity rapidly to become a world religion, able to reach a very wide audience. Rather than being tied down or
enslaved by the language, the Christian church, at the highest level of ecumenical councils, was remarkably
inventive and creative. It forged from the Greek language a specifically Christian vocabulary” (Ibid., 57).
16 The modern origin and beginning of the acceptance of divine passibility can perhaps be traced to
England at the end of the nineteenth century during the English impassibility debates, although such passible
thought being predicated on God had been stirring for centuries. It would seem that at the height of the debate, in
order to deliver some clarification, J. K. Mozley was commissioned by the Church of England to write the history of
the doctrine of divine impassibility. The result was his ever so important 1926 work, The Impassibility of God: A
Survey of Christian Thought. Mozley's survey stands as the historical work par excellence in reference for tracing
the historical origin of the doctrine.

12. 12
the presupposition that the Patristics had succumbed to Greek philosophy and propounded
doctrines like impassibility which need to be done away with. For Moltmann, if the erroneous
Greek metaphysics are removed from our conception of God, we may thereupon be able to
construct a theology of the cross that is more accurate and tenable.17
It is perhaps in the spirit of protest atheism—and not biblical exegesis—that we must
view Moltmann's dismissal of divine impassibility, and indeed it may very well be the backdrop
wherewith we are compelled to engage new proposals of divine passibility given that we once
again affirm that theology is never done removed from a historical-geographical climate. It may
very well be, then, not so much that modern theologians have discovered the truth about
historical theology in the Early Patristics capitulation to Greek metaphysics as it is the modern
post-Auschwitz mindset that has behooved theologians to rework their theology proper and
Christology in order to ensure that God still is Emmanuel, God with us.18
After correlating the
17 “In the ancient world, early Christianity encountered apatheia as a metaphysical axiom and an ethical
ideal with irresistible force. On this concept were concentrated the worship of the divinity of God and the struggle
for man's freedom...Since Plato and Aristotle, the metaphysical and ethical perfection of God has been described as
apatheia.” Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1974), 267, 268. In
Moltmann's defense, he does not fall into the entomological fallacy which will be explored in the next section, as he
differentiates between what πάθειαἀ meant in the minds of many ancients, namely, freedom of man vis-à-vis the
external world, and not what it connotes in the minds of moderns, namely, one who is apathetic (p. 269).
Nevertheless, a few pages down the road, Moltmann seems to fall into his own trap when in referencing the climax
of Wiesel's Night—as the child lay suffering before death in the noose—he writes that if God was not suffering with
the child, it would prove God's indifference. A word that is more than synonymous with our modern conception of
apathy, that is, a state of indifference. “To speak here of an indifferent God would condemn men to indifference” (p.
274). That the Father's conceived of God as impassible in no way implied that their conception of God was of a
Being who was indifferent or apathetic. It is the aforesaid sentence that we will venture to prove in the next section.
Regardless, the force of Moltmann's argument relies on the supposition that Greek philosophical notions negatively
influenced early Patristic conceptions of God vis-à-vis divine impassibility.
18 This proposition is not new, and has been suggested before by others including Daniel Castelo who in
critiquing Moltmann writes, “One suspects a number of factors at work [in Moltmann's dismissal of divine
impassibility], including deeply personal ones.” Castelo,“Moltmann's Dismissal of Divine Impassibility:
Warranted?” 397. Castelo footnotes the aforesaid with: “As has often been noted, Moltmann converted to
Christianity as a prisoner of war in the Second World War; such a context cannot be overlooked when one moves to
consider Moltmann's theological inclinations.

13. 13
origin of the doctrine of the impassibility of God with Plato and Aristotle19
Moltmann's dialectic
goes on to show how that is to be the backdrop with which we may view the tragedies and
horrors of the twentieth century against, viz., the suffering of God (πάθος)20
and the suffering
with (συμπάθεια) men when he writes of the deep impact World War II had on our conception of
God, as he relays a story which precisely shows the pinnacle summation of an expressive
theologia crucis.21
“And so he remained for more than half an hour, lingering between life and
death, writhing before our eyes...Behind me I heard the same man asking: 'For God's sake, where
is God?” And from within me, I heard a voice answer: 'where He is? This is where—hanging
here from this gallows...'”22
It is from this spirit that gave rise to post-theodicy theologies, and it
19 Moltmann, The Crucified God, 267-270. “The apathetic theology of antiquity was accepted as a
preparation for the trinitarian theology of the love of God and of men” (pg. 270).
20 Ironically enough, it is important to note that the recent Zeitgeist movement has made the same exact
claims concerning Christianity adopting pagan conceptions of God, and have come to the exact opposite conclusion
concerning the Christian God, Jesus Christ, and his πάθος. Namely, that the conception of a God who suffers and
dies is pagan in origin, and therefore not-unique to Christianity. Both arguments, which rely more on ad hoc
speculation and emotional argumentation than facts, commit the genetic fallacy nevertheless. Gavrilyuk writes,
“Those who think that the adoption of the divine apatheia was the result of the Hellenization must reckon with the
no less prominent Hellenistic idea of the suffering and dying gods of the mysteries...The Fathers had to find an
adequate language to express the truth of divine revelation, carving out their distinctive account of divine agency in
the midst of passion and dispassion narratives of the Hellenistic world, and proposing their own understanding of the
divine passibility and impassibility.” The Suffering of the Impassible God, 36.
21 Ibid., 270-274.
22 Elie Wiesel, Night (New York: Hill and Wang, 2006), 65. I have here quoted Wiesel's account of the
story at it appears in the the 2006 Hill and Wang edition, newly translated from French to English translated by
Marion Wiesel. The account quoted by Moltmann in The Crucified God, pp.273-274, is actually Moltmann's own
summary of Wiesel's account; Moltmann cites the 1972 Fontana/Collins edition, pp. 76-77 as his source. Weinandy
quotes Sorot in relaying how it is misleading to reference Wiesel's story advocating a suffering God, especially since
Moltmann implies that the event happened at Auschwitz (a term representative of encapsulating the evils and
depravity mankind) when in fact the event happened in Buna. Moreover, Wiesel never advocated a God who “died
in the gallows...but [questioned] his faith in God, his concept of a loving, gentle, just God.” Marcel Sarot,
“Auschwitz, Morality, and the Suffering of God,” Modern Theology 7/2 (1991): 137. Quoted in Weinandy, 3,
footnote 10. That Wiesel relayed this event as the example that shifted his understanding, and called into question,
God as all-loving is wholly contrary to—and in fact can be used as ammunition against—Moltmann's project in the
Crucified God whose entire theological axiom hinges on the proposition: since God is love, he therefore must suffer
with us. The point of this footnote is then to show that the underlying motives for those who advocate a passible
God are, perhaps, not as visible, plain or perspicuous as many would claim. Indeed, many are emotionally charged,
as Gavrilyuk warns those who wish to step into the contemporary theological engagement that “rhetorical
allegations against divine impassibility will not help to further the discussion at all,” Gavrilyuk, 13.

14. 14
is in light of these historical events that Altizer can write unequivocally:
The theologian must exist outside of the Church: he can neither proclaim the Word, celebrate the
sacraments, nor rejoice in the presence of the Holy Spirit. Before contemporary theology can
become itself, it must first exist in silence. In the presence of a vocation of silence, theology must
cultivate the silence of death. To be sure, the death to which theology is called is the death of
God...Everything that theology has thus far become must now be negated.23
Among these things that must be dialectically negated is none other than the supposedly
awkward, obtuse and outmoded doctrine of impassibility which merely obfuscates our
understanding and conception of God in juxtaposition to the Incarnation.24
It may be, therefore,
not so much the task of modern theology to deal critically with the Fathers by showing how they
may have erred concerning the doctrine of divine impassibility, given their proclivities towards
Greek metaphysics, as it is to actually support the new task of constructing a God who is human,
all-too-human; indeed, a God who is like us, and who suffers like us. Hence, with one swoop of
his pen, Altizer unabashedly writes, “The Christian idea of God is obviously a product of the
fusion of the Bible with Greek ontology and in large measure the distinctiveness of the
“Christian God”derives from its Greek roots.”25
It is this “obviously” with which we vehemently
contend against, and it is this “obviously” with which we are extremely suspect. As Gavrilyuk
states, “The allegation that the Fathers were inconsistent is serious and, in my judgment, has not
23 Thomas J. J. Altizer, “America and the Future of Theology,” in Radical Theology and the Death of God,
15.
24 “To speak here of a God who could not suffer would make God a demon.” Moltmann, 274. For
Moltmann, God's inability to suffer-with humanity—indeed, in humanity's most evil, dark, and terrible moments of
history—would make God an indifferent God, an annihilating God, or even perhaps a demon. Therefore, because
God is love, he suffers with his creation.
25 Thomas J. J. Altizer, “America and the Future of Theology,” in Radical Theology and the Death of God,
12. When such sweeping claims are made, and they are ever and anon being made by contemporary theologians
without any textual support, all it conveys is a great example of the genetic fallacy. Whether the Patristics utilized
extra-biblical Greek philosophical terms—and they indeed did, for example, the Creeds and ecumenical counsels—
because of their current climate and conceptual framework with which they were working in or not has no bearing
on whether or not what the Fathers postulated about God is true.

15. 15
been addressed adequately.”26
It is from this mindset that we set out to track the development of
πάθεια in the minds of the Early Church Fathers, as we will attempt to hone in on a inclusive,ἀ
yet narrow, definition of how πάθεια was used by the Patristics by excluding from theἀ
definition how the Father's did not use it. This will be done by demonstrating how the Fathers
used πάθεια when they spoke about God, and how they didἀ not use it, when their references to
God being as being impassible are compared with all of their other affirmations of what God is
truly or what He is not apophatically.
Clarifying Terms
By way of clarification, it is important to make sure our terms are distinctly defined for
the purpose of this historical study in order to avoid unnecessary ambiguity. Concerning
impassibility, The Evangelical Dictionary of Theology defines it thus: “The doctrine [states] that
God is not capable of being acted upon or affected emotionally by anything in creation.
Passibility, Thomists argued, involves potentiality and potentiality involves change.”27
It is
precisely the first definition, and not the later conceived Thomistic form of impassibility
predicating God as pure actuality, that we will deal with here as we interact with the Early
Church Fathers.28
Perhaps we can narrow down our definition even more. Bray writes of the
26 Gavrilyuk, 14.
27 G. R. Lewis, “Impassibility of God,” in Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, ed. Walter A. Elwell,
(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2001), 598-599. Unfortunately, theological dictionaries are not even written
from a neural perspective, as the misconceived false dichotomy is postulated a few paragraphs down in the article by
Lewis when he states, “A biblically active, rather than a philosophically passive, view of God's other attributes
avoids the alleged antimony...God's immutability does not reduce the living, active, personal Lord of all to an
impersonal, static principle.” The misconceived notion that God cannot be both impassible and love will be
addressed as we explore the Early Church Fathers in the next section.
28 “Although Plato's intellectual successor in Athens cannot be neglected, Aristotle's influence among
Jewish and Christian thinkers became more pronounced at a later period.” Castelo, The Apathetic God, 44, footnote
9. “Divine impassibility makes its debut on the philosophical scene in the writings of Aristotle, twice with reference
to the opinion of Anaxagoras that the divine mind remains unmixed and in this narrow sense apathēs. Building upon
Anaxagoras' insight, the Stagirite [Aristotle] argued that since the Unmoved Mover cannot be moved by anything

16. 16
definition “απαθής may be translated either as 'passionless' (i.e. without any suffering in practice)
or as 'impassible' (i.e incapable of suffering in principle.) The slight difference in meaning
between the two English terms is not conveyed by the Greek, where either sense is possible.”29
It
will be the latter definition that will be explored as the thread running through the thought of the
Early Fathers and not the former, which is descriptive of the Stoic ideal of the impassible man.30
That the Stoics filled volumes debating the nature of pathos in humans is obvious; that “the
moral ideal of apatheia is never applied to God in the Stoic writings”31
is often missed, glossed
over, or equivocated.32
else, he remained impassible in the sense of not being acted upon. It should be noted that the early patristic
authorities show no awareness of this highly technical point of Aristotle's metaphysics.” Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of
the Impassible God, 34, 35. See also footnote 5 above.
29 Gerald Bray, The Doctrine of God: Contours of Christian Theology (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity
Press, 1993), 98.
30 For an overview of Stoic philosophy in relation πάθεια, and the later derived Stoic ideals of ε πάθειαἀ ὐ
and μετριοπάθεια, see Gavrilyuk The Suffering of the Impassible God, pp. 25-36. Certainly more Fathers were
influenced by the Stoic ideal of πάθειαἀ than others, Clement of Rome, for example. Nevertheless, the Stoic ideal,
although extremely complected and highly debated among the philosophers themselves, did not necessarily have a
direct bearing on their conception of God. That is to say, that the notion of πάθειαἀ was conceived in order to
control, moderate, or completely eradicate the sufferance or passions of human subjects. One example perhaps may
serve to demonstrate my point. In seeking to show inconsistencies in the Stoic conception of God, which was
described in by no means a consistent manner [The Eternal Flame, The Universe, The Blazing Fire, etc. See Marcus
Aurelius, Meditations. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1997, for a good primary example of the
general train of Stoic thought in the second century which would have been the Stoic ideals the Early Fathers would
have been familiar with], was seen by Justin Martyr as inconsistent since such a pan[en]theistic God implied
instability, change, and corruptibility. “And the philosophers called Stoics teach that even God Himself shall be
resolved into fire, and they that the world is to be formed anew by this revolution; but we understand that God, the
Creator of all things, is superior to the things that are to be changed” (Justin Martyr, Apologia, 1.20.). Emphasis
mine. All the quotations from the Early Church Fathers hereafter in this paper are from Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1.
tr. Marcus Dods and George Reith, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe. Buffalo, NY:
Christain Literature Publishing Co., 1885. In surveying the theological development of Tertullian as he refuted the
Marcionites, Mozley suggests Tertullian pinpointed the ethical ideal of πάθειαἀ was realized in God. Thus, while
there may have been some confusion in the general understanding of God as impassible, it is not because the Stoics
believed that God was, or that their writings even lend that way. Their focus was on the human subject. “According
to the moral philosophy of the Porch the ethical ideal which is realized in God, and may also be realized in the wise
man, involved so complete a control of the passions that the perfect balance of the moral nature is not subject to any
disturbance form the emotions.” Mozley, The Impassible God, 38.
31 Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God, 29.
32 The Stoic conception of God, in contradistinction to their conception of the ideal impassible man, was,
for the most part, impersonal, changing, the eternal fire, and “the soul of the world, the active force ever moulding
the passive material.” J. K. Mozley, The Impassibility of God (London: Cambridge University Press, 1926), 86.

17. 17
Etymological Fallacy
While one would think it self evident not to fall into such a sophomoric trap, often times
the argument against God's divine impassibility is built on a very apparent etymological fallacy.
Namely, that since our modern word apathy very clearly traces its linguistic origin to the Greek
πάθεια, that the latter connotes lack of interest, concern, or indifference since that is preciselyἀ
what the former definition means. However, apathy as a word was not used until the sixteenth
century, and it is simply foolish to impugn the integrity of the Fathers and their use of πάθειαἀ
with a modern understanding of apathy, when in fact these are two separate words. Gavrilyuk
writes, “It has become common to dismiss divine impassibility on superficial etymological
grounds. Patristic theology is falsely credited with a bleak view that God is apathetic, uncaring,
unconcerned about the world, emotionally withdrawn, and in this sense impassible.”33
The force of these claims are no more dubious than Nietzsche's philological claims when
he tries to trace the origin of God in the minds of primordial mankind by finding a linguistic link
in the German words for guilt (Schuld) and debts (Schulden).34
The only point that needs to be
made here is that if such a critical charge is going to be brought against the Fathers, one must not
merely throw an etymological fallacy against them, but actually show that they spoke of God as
Gavrilyuk rightly notes that “for the Stoics themselves, the issue whether this impersonal deity had emotions or not
would be largely irrelevant.” The Suffering of the Impassible God, 29.
33 Gavrilyuk, “God's Impassible Suffering in the Flesh,” in Divine Impassibility and the Mystery of Human
Suffering, ed. James F. Keating and Thomas Joseph White (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.,
2009), 135. This position is held by theologians from Moltmann to Hallman. The essential thesis is that God being
impassible inherently prevents Him from being a God of love.
34 “Have these genealogists of morals had even the remotest suspicion that, for example, the major moral
concept Schuld has its origin in the very material concept Schulden?” Friedrich Nietzsche, “On the Genealogy of
Morals,” in The Basic Writings of Nietzsche, ed. Walter Kaufmann (New York: The Modern Library, 2000), 2.4, pp.
498, 499. Nietzsche concludes, “The fear of the ancestor and his power, the consciousness of indebtedness to him
increases...and in the end the ancestor must necessarily be transfigured into a god,” 2.19, p. 525. The use of
Nietzsche to demonstrate how badly an etymological can lead us astray, we hope, was not to Nietzsche's detriment,
whom we hold a deep affinity for, and whom we highly respect.

18. 18
uncaring, indifferent, and unconcerned with His creation. With this as a precursor, we will now
turn to the Fathers themselves, and survey how they utilized πάθεια: what they meant, whatἀ
they did not mean, and for what reason and why they spoke about God as being impassible.
Ignatius of Antioch
Perhaps the earliest known Church Father to speak about God's impassibility was Ignatius
of Antioch (c. 35-107 AD) who, while en route to Rome pending his inevitable martyrdom,
penned a series of cyclical epistles written hastily, employing methods of task theology,
encouragement and exhortation. Ignatius' epistle are extremely important because they give us a
glimpse into the mind of an early second century bishop, before all the creeds and councils,
allowing us to better our understanding of the development of early Christian theology shortly
after the death of the apostles. What is important to note is that Ignatius' epistles are not
systematic by any means, and his theology is not reflective, but rather the seven authentic letters
that bear his name are exactly that, letters. Much like the Apostle Paul who wrote in epistolary
form for specific tasks and needs at hand, so too did Ignatius write his epistles, even modeling
his prose after Pauline epistles, often quoting or paraphrasing Paul in his own voice.35
It is only
through this lens that we can view Ignatius' epistles and glean some of his theological statements
and insights therein.
In his letter to Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, Ignatius writes, “Look for him who is above
all time, eternal and invisible, yet who became visible for our sakes; impalpable and impassible,
yet who became passible on our account; and who in every kind of way suffered for our sakes.”36
35 Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Ephesians, 18. c.f. 1 Cor 1:18.
36 Ignatius, To Polycarp, 3. “The thought clearly is that Christ in the incarnate state becomes voluntarily
subject to certain conditions which were wholly absent till then.” Mozley, The Impassibility of God, 8.

19. 19
One should not miss the apophatic terms that Ignatius readily makes use of. Such theological
statements resound of the Apostle Paul, for example, in his first letter to Timothy: “To the King
of the Ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever. Amen”37
Elsewhere
Ignatius writes to the Romans as they await his arrival for his forthcoming martyrdom: “Permit
me to be an imitator of the passion of my God.”38
That the Apostles frequently exhort us to suffer
as Christ suffered, and imitate him in his sufferings, is plainly seen throughout the New
Testament canon.39
That Ignatius here is not loath to utilize theopachite language is extremely
important to understand, given the nature of the worldview with which he was writing in.40
Not
only that, but the frequent use of communicatio idiomatum is more than noteworthy.41
While the
concept of the communication of idioms would not be hashed out as the tool whereby the natures
of Christ were elucidated until the Council of Chalcedon (451 AD), Ignatius, nevertheless, does
make frequent use of such statements. This should tell us that while he did not have a systematic
Christological formula, he knew very well that there was a distinct Creator/creature distinction,
37 1 Tim 1:17.
38 Ignatius, To the Romans, 6.
39 See 1 Pt 2:21; 4:1, 2 Cor 1:5-7; 11:28, Rom 8:17, 36, Phil 1:29; 3:10, etc.
40 See for example his epistle To the Smyrnaeans, 2, where Ignatius seems to be targeting the Docetists
who insisted that Christ only seemed to suffer in the flesh, but in fact as truly God and impassible was untouched by
suffering. “Now he suffered all these things for our sakes, that we might be saved. And He suffered truly, even as
also He truly raised up Himself, not as certain unbelievers maintain, that He only seemed to suffer, as they
themselves only seem to be [Christians].”This line of thinking in Platonic thought (see Plato's Timaeus) influenced
the Docetists understanding of the incarnation and of the passion of Christ; many of these distinctions were drawn
out by various schools of Christian Gnostics in subsequent generations who saw matter as truly evil, and hence,
Christ could not have truly became a man. In contrast to these subtle philosophical distinctions, it would appear that
Ignatius was interpreting the incarnation and passion not according to Platonic, Stoic, or Epicurean philosophy, but
according to the Rule of Faith, Apostolic tradition, and the Word. Whether his overtly theopaschite language was
only drawn out because of his opposition to Docetists is probably most plausible, but nevertheless, the fact that he
does seem to presuppose God as impassible and subsequently grounds all references to suffering in an incarnational
context is sufficiently clear. See Jonathan Bayes, “Divine πάθειαἀ in Ignatius of Antioch,” Studia patristica 21
(1989): 25-31.
41 “...having kindled your brotherly task by the blood of God.” Ignatius, To the Ephesians, 1.

20. 20
and yet that because Christ was God, it follows that God suffered and died for us. For the Middle
Platonist in the early first century, in example, the idea that God assumed human flesh and
suffered and died was utter foolishness42
but Ignatius has no problem ascribing both full deity to
Christ and full suffering and humanity to God in one powerful Christological statement as he
awaits his gruesome martyrdom: the passion of my God. This very concept simply “was
untenable within the Hellenistic metaphysical categories.”43
In writing to the Ephesians after warning them to watch out for false teachers and
deceivers, Ignatius writes, “There is one Physician who is possessed both of flesh and spirit
[Jesus Christ as God and Man, c.f. 1 Tim 2:5]; both made and not made [as the eternal Logos and
His existence as a Man]; God existing in flesh; true life in death; both of Mary and of God; first
passible and then impassible—even Jesus Christ our Lord.” As a bishop writing sporadically and
swiftly on his way towards his martyrdom, Ignatius' advanced Christology at such an early time,
before all of the ecumenical councils, should not be glossed over. His line of thought continually
makes profound contrasts with distinctions from the lesser to the greater in superlative fashion.
Both flesh and spirit, both made and not-made, of Mary and of God, passible and impassible, all
the while affirming but one subject, namely, the “One Physician.”44
From the extremely early date of Ignatius' epistles, and given the fact of the nature of his
letters, namely, that they were not written to expound, elucidate, or clarify anything that would
not have already been accepted as Christian orthodoxy as per the rule of faith, Ignatius'
42 1 Cor 1:23
43 Castelo, The Apathetic God, 47.
44 “Given the example of Ignatius at this early date, divine impassibility could be applied to God within a
christological framework in which God was 'passible' in the life, work, and death of Christ. Both before and after
these events, however, impassibility could be applied to the Son thereby affirming a transcendent element within a
christological framework.” Ibid., 49.

21. 21
references to God as impassible—especially in his epistle to Polycarp who was almost certainly
discipled by the Apostle John, his friend and himself bishop of Smyrna—are off-handed and
made not in theological context but in a doxalogical context. Ignatius therefore “proves that the
term 'impassible' was one that was in use by Christians long before any subsequent 'Hellenization
of Christianity' in formal Christian theological reflection could purportedly take place.”45
Ignatius therefore sees God truly as distinct from his creation—immortal, invisible, and
impassible—and yet this in no way prevents him from speaking about God's suffering which is
made possible through the incarnation where one subject, the Word, becomes Man: “first
passible then impassible.” Given Mozely's obvious sentiments concerning the impassibility
debate, he should be taken seriously when he concludes as follows: “Whatever may be true of
the Apologists, we cannot ascribe to Ignatius a Hellenization of Christianity.”46
Justin Martyr
Justin Martyr, dubbed one of the most influential and important apologists of the second
century, represents a different kind of approach to theology, one that is not present in early
Apostolic Fathers like Ignatius. Justin (100-165 AD) was born in Judea and was both a gentile by
birth and self-proclaimed pagan. He was initially attracted to Platonic philosophy but eventually
converted to Christianity, traveling about in the traditional philosophers attire much to the shock
of other Christians at the time. However, this was only too apropos since Justin's mission was to
go against heretics and show pagans that Christianity is the “True Philosophy”. Clearly Justin
was influenced by Stoic and Platonic thought, and this should be no surprise to us, as he himself
admits it as much, but this should not be seen as an overt capitulation of Christianity to “Greek
45 Castelo, The Apathetic God, 49.
46 Mozley, The Impassibility of God, 8.

22. 22
Philosophy.” Instead, Justin was simply enthusiastic to see traces of divine truth in the pagan
philosophies that he was able to use as an apologetic bridge in order to defend the Christian faith
in a robust manner.47
For example, in his First Apology, Justin is seen refuting what in his mind is
an untenable conception of God according to the Stoics. “Even the philosophers called Stoics
teach that even God Himself shall be resolved into fire, an they say that the world is to be formed
anew by this revolution; but we understand that God, the Creator of all things, is superior to the
things that are to be changed.”48
For whatever was held as common ground between Christianity
and pagan philosophies did not compromise what was unique to Christianity which Justin saw as
“a more divine teaching.”49
It is with this mindset that Justin should be properly understood; viz.,
not as one was not aiming to smash Platonic thought together with Christian doctrine in order to
form some sort of new hybrid philosophy, but as one who sought to earnestly defend the
Christian faith from heretics, and also seriously apologize for the faith in a winsome and
contextual manner. The question still remains, however: How did Justin speak of God in
reference to divine impassibility, and did he view this as a Platonic notion of God or one that was
in harmony with Scripture?
Justin's doctrine of God is certainly apophatic and is line with the traditional Platonic
understanding of God; namely, that he is ineffable, immutable and the like.50
Nevertheless, Justin
47 For example, in his defense of the Christian faith to the Roman Senate, “I confess that I both boast and
with all my strength strive to be found a Christian; not because the teachings of Plato are different from those of
Christ, but because they are not in all respects similar, as neither are those of the others, Stoics, and poets, and
historians. For each man spoke well in proportion to the share he had of the spermatic word (λόγος σπερματικός)”
Justin Martyr, Apology II, 13.
48 Justin Martyr, First Apology, 20. Emphasis mine.
49 Ibid.
50 See, for example, Plato's Timaeus: “The Father and Maker of this universe is past finding out.” Plato,
Gorgias and Timaeus (Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2003), 28.For the influence of the Timaeus, and
more generally Platonic thought on Christian theology see Diogenes Allen and Eric O. Springsted, Philosophy for
Understanding Theology (Louisville: John Knox University Press, 2007), 1-65.

23. 23
constantly went across Hellenistic metaphysical categories in order to uphold Christian doctrine
even in the face of opposition and the entire worldview he was writing in. While Justin certainly
spoke of God as being ineffable, “to the Father of all, who is unbegotten there is no name
given,”51
and spoke of God's names such as 'Lord, Master, etc.' as merely appellations derived
from God's works in relation to human subjects, Justin is not by any means succumbing to Greek
philosophy by saying as such. But on the contrary, he is doing exactly the opposite. Justin's
whole line of argument runs from the previous paragraph where he argues against the “named”
gods of the poets, historians and mythologists which weren't actually gods at all, but were the
disembodied spirits of the Nephilim (‫לםים‬ִ‫י‬‫פםי‬ִ‫י‬‫נ‬ְ or γίγαντες LXX, c.f. Gen 6) “who are those that are
called demons.”52
Nevertheless, humanity not knowing that they were merely angels ascribed to
them names of whatever the angels called themselves, and considered themselves gods, of which
are “Neptune and Pluto, and to the children again to these their offspring. For whatever name
each of the angels gad given to himself and his children, by that name they called them.”53
It is right after this sentence, and should be understood only in this context, that Justin
then declares that the Christian God has “no name,” in that He is not a mythological pagan deity
—neither an angel or a demon—of which were named by human kind, but He is in His own
category. Indeed, He is Yahweh in that “He will be who He will be” (‫ו ה‬ָ‫ ה‬‫ ה‬ֹ‫ָו‬‫םי‬ְ c.f. Ex 3:14). Hence,
we see how the usual proof-text from the work of Justin that shows his “bent towards Greek
metaphysics” in that he loved Platonic philosophy so much he refused to recognize God's
51 Justin Martyr, Second Apology, 6.
52 Ibid., 5.
53 Ibid.

24. 24
“name” is simply wrested from the context, as Justin is doing the exact opposite; that is to say,
refuting the pagan Greek and Roman named gods for the One True God who was not named by
humans but who simply the I Am That I Am. For Justin elsewhere speaks of God as the Father in
the most loving way throughout his works quite liberally, and in a way that would have more
than displeased Platonic philosophers.54
One more comment should be made about Justin's
understanding of God in contradistinction to Stoic thought. In his Dialogue with Trypho, Justin
has no problem predicating a passion on God, namely wrath, as a response to sin because God is
a God of justice.55
Justin speaks of God, therefore, as being impassible in context not to harmonize the
Christian God with Plato's God, but rather to contrast the One True God over all of the other
gods. Justin upholds a strong Creator/creature distinction in the face of an eclectic worldview.
We—who, out of every race of men, used to worship Bacchus the son of Semele, and Apollo, the
son of Latona (who in their loves with men did such things as it is shameful to even mention), and
Proserpine and Venus (who were maddened with love of Adonis, and whose mysteries you also
celebrate), or Aesculpius, or some one or other of those whoa re called gods—have now, through
Jesus Christ, learned to despise these, though we be threatened with death for it, and have
dedicated ourselves to the unbegotten and impassible God; of whom we are persuaded that never
was he goaded by lust of Antiope, or such other women...those who believe these things we pity,
and those who invented them we know to be devils.56
Justin contrasts the God who is immutable and impassible with the gods who are not only
mutable and passible, but who are licentious, selfish, and capricious deities who aren't actually
deities at all, but merely demons incurring the worship of mankind through offerings, incense,
and sacrifices and the like in contrast to the One True God who wants only our love offerings in
54 Justin Martyr, First Apology, 6, 8, 12, 15, 36, etc. Second Apology, 2, 10.
55 Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, 39.
56 Justin Martyr, First Apology, 25.

25. 25
forms of hymns of praise.57
“It is evident that Justin...in ascribing to God the attributed of
unchangeability, impassibility, unutterability, and unbegotteness, was stating what God is not,
rather than what he is. He was protecting the transcendent otherness of God by denying of him
those aspects—changeability, passibility—which would place him within the created order.”58
Justin conceived God, therefore, as wholly transcendent. Not at the behest of Platonism, but in
keeping in line with the Christian tradition, Justin affirms the generation and begotteness of the
λόγος as truly Jesus Christ who came into the world to share in our sufferings and heal
humankind's malediction. Hence, while Justin speaks of God as truly impassible, he has no
problem speaking about Jesus Christ as one who shares in our sufferings: “For next to God, we
worship and love the Word who is from the unbegotten and ineffable God, since also He became
man for our sakes, that becoming a partaker of our sufferings, He might also bring us healing.”59
Irenaeus of Lyons
No figure is as important in the Early Church at fighting off heresies than Irenaeus of
Lyons (130-202 AD). Born in Smyrna, Asia Minor (Turkey), under Polycarp's episcopate,
Irenaeus, unlike many of his contemporaries and those who preceded him, was raised up as a
Christian rather than converting to Christianity in adulthood.60
His main target seemed to be
fighting off what he saw as a deadly threat to Christian orthodoxy, namely Gnosticism. While
there were various schools of Gnostic thought in the second century, Irenaeus saw the strains of
thought permeating into Christian orthodoxy, something that he perceived as a grave danger to
57 Ibid., 13.
58 Weinandy, Does God Suffer?, 86.
59 Justin Martyr, Second Apology, 13.
60 Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, 3.3.4.

26. 26
the pure apostolic teachings of Christianity and the rule of faith that had been handed down to
him. In Irenaeus' mind, if anything had been infiltrated by pagan philosophy it was not the
Christian faith, but the deadly heresy of Christian Gnosticism.
Valentinian Gnosticism was an extremely complex system, filled with multiple layers of
generations, Æons, and Creators, until at the bottom rung was the material world. They argued
that at the top of the latter, there was God who was incomprehensible and impassible. So much
so that he was removed from all of the subsequent processions and generations. Irenaeus,
however, saw this is a problem and shows the flawed logic of the Gnostics in this regard. For
they regarded all subsequent generations being produced from the former's essence; however, if
they saw the world as being created by a passible Æon, it follows that he must have been
generated from one previously who is also passible, or else they must all be impassible.
“Whence, then, comes the passion of the youngest Æon, if the light of the Father is that from
which all other lights have been formed, and which is by nature impassible?”61
Irenaeus contrasts
their understanding by firmly upholding the Creator/creature distinction, presupposing that God
is impassible since He is unlike His creatures in that way, seeing that the Valentinians were all to
ready to ascribe to God “human behavior” due to “an illegitimate anthropomorphic behavior.62
Against this conception of God, Irenaeus asserts God's aseity, immutability, and
impassibility, proclaiming that God “does Himself stand in need of nothing,” and again, “is in
61 Ibid., 2.17.5. See also, 2.4.3.
62 Mozley, 19. “For fear, terror, passion, dissolution, and such like, may perhaps occur through the struggle
of contraries among such beings as we are, who are possessed of bodies; but among spiritual beings, and those that
have the light diffused among them, no such calamities can possibly happen. But these men appear to me to have
endowed their Æon with the [same sort of] passion as belongs to that character in the comic poet Menander, who
was himself deeply in love, but an object of hatred [to his beloved]. For those who have invented such opinions have
rather had an idea and mental conception of some unhappy lover among men, than of a spiritual and divine
substance.” Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, 2.18.5.

27. 27
need of nothing.63
Even we who are to offer ourselves up to God as the first-fruits do not do so
“as if He stood in need of them” like the pagan deities.64
Irenaeus makes these claims in
contradistinction to the Gnostics not as a speculative philosopher, but as a biblical theologian,
and his extensive quotation and versatile command of Scripture adequately shows thus.65
Speaking of the Son, then, Irenaeus does not see the Him as a contingent reality, but one of the
same essence—the eternal and invisible imprint of the Father.
The relation of the Divine Persons in the Godhead is not for Irenaeus dependent upon the need
and desire of God for self-revelation to that which lies outside the Godhead. When he says, 'the
Father is invisible of the Son, and the Son is the visible of the Father,' he is thinking of the
revelation of the unseen Father through the Word made visible at the Incarnation...[This] suggests
a relationship which eternally exists between the Divine Persons, and is in no way contingent.66
It is now with this mindset that we can understand Irenaeus when he speaks about God
concerning his doctrine of creation—unlike that of the Gnostics—where God remains impassible
and immutable, which establishes His transcendence as “absolutely ontologically distinct from
all else that exists, [but also], it establishes, as also found in the Bible, God's immediate
relationship to the created order.”67
Irenaeus writes
For the Father of all is at a vast distance from those affections and passions which operate among
men. He is a simple, uncompounded Being, without diverse members, and altogether like, and
equal to himself, since He is wholly understanding, and wholly spirit, and wholly thought, and
wholly intelligence, and wholly reason, and wholly hearing, and wholly seeing, and wholly light,
and the whole source of all that is good— even as the religious and pious are wont to speak
concerning God. He is, however, above [all] these properties, and therefore indescribable.68
63 Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, 4.17.1.
64 Ibid., 4.17.5.
65 Weinandy, Does God Change?, 90.
66 Mozley, 20.
67 Weinandy, 91. Castelo, The Apathetic God, 53.
68 Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 2.13.3-4a

28. 28
Irenaeus, therefore, upholds the biblical view of God against the Gnostics, and affirms the
biblical view of creation, thereby establishing for himself a robust platform of apophatic
qualifiers for God, a method of describing God not by what He is but by what He is not. This
method of apophatic theology was not new adoption by Irenaeus, but indeed appeared previously
in the writings of the Apostles.69
What is more is that this type of apophatic theology did not
appear in Greek philosophy systematically until Plotinus and his neoplatonic system in the third
century, and certainly was not used to describe the Stoic God or the Epicurean gods.70
God,
therefore, was seen as impassible for Irenaeus simple because he was unchangeable, total love,
perfection, all-wise, and sovereign, exercising his providence over all creation—things that made
God not like the other contrived gods of the philosophers, but things that Irenaeus believed made
Him unlike and superior to the aforesaid.71
Contrary to also Marcion's God(s), Irenaeus upheld
that God was wrathful because he exercised his justice, which was a positive attribute subsumed
under His Fatherly love for all mankind.72
It is in found in His perfect love which all of God's
positive attributes are subsumed under—attributes that are on display towards us as His
creatures.73
It is in this qualified sense that Irenaeus utilizes πάθεια in that he is not loath toἀ
predicate divine emotions on God, but the attacks from the Gnostics, and his rebuttal against
69 See 1 Tim 1:17; 6:16, Col 1:15, Js 1:17, etc.
70 Some people say that traces of this type of negative theology can be found in Plato's thought, as well as
the Neopythagoreans. Gavrilyuk writes, “In system of Plotinus, for example, the method of negation, the so-called
apophatic theology, was stretched to its logical limits. The supreme God of Plotinus, the One, lie beyond all rational
conceptualization, beyond negation and assertion of any qualities, even those taken from the intelligible world...here
Plotinus plunged head on into a centuries-old debate in Greek psychology, which by his time had become very
technical. The debate addressed the following series of questions: How is the soul united from the body? Do
passions arise from the body or from the soul?...There was no agreement among different philosophical schools on
these issues, which fact is also registered by the Fathers,” The Suffering of the Impassible God, 32, 33.
71 Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3.25.2, 3.
72 Ibid., 3.25.4.
73 Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God, 53, 54.

29. 29
Marcion, challenged him to clarify his thought and make use of such emotions predicated on
God. Namely, that while the analogy of such emotions on God were not improper, they were
qualified through the boundaries and lenses of impassibility whereby the True Creator and
Wholly Other God could be upheld, even be near and dear to His beloved creation. Lister
comments, “Used with such a descriptive value, the term impassible simply establishes the
boundary of the analogy between divine and human experience, when the same emotionally
colored terms are applied to both God and man.”74
We will let Weinandy conclude: “Because
God is the one who truly is, unlike the changing order of creation, he is impassibly flawless and
abidingly perfect in his passionate love. Irenaeus' view of God and his relationship to the created
order is then quite the 'antithesis' to that of Greek philosophy, his gnostic opponents having much
in common with it.”75
Origen of Alexandria
If there is one Patristic theologian that is pinpointed down as the example par excellence
of mingling Greek philosophy with Christian theology it is Origen of Alexandria (c. 185-254
AD). Indeed, Origen is to Christianity what Philo is to Judaism. There is no doubt that Origen
was extremely influenced by Greek philosophy, in especially Middle-Platonism and it can be
argued elements of Stoicism, but the question lies in Origen's use of these concepts, and his
purpose or end goal of his philosophizing. As the most prolific writer of all the Patristics pre-
Augustine, Origen had much to say, and to be sure, such a brief survey as this is inherently
restricted and hence will focus only on the portions of Origen that are relevant to this study.
74 Lister, God is Impassible and Impassioned, 69.
75 Weinandy, Does God Suffer?, 94, 95.

30. 30
Namely, Origen's understanding of divine impassibility, and the way he utilized such an
understanding in his approach to Christian theology.
Origen's conception of God indeed is rooted in his re-working of various Platonic
conceptions such as the Good, Mind, and our ability to use reason to apprehend certain things of
God through the revelation that is contained in the logoj.76
It is on this basis that Origen builds up
his theology by allowing our metal faculties, reason, and the image of God as a connection to
God; not that we are able to comprehend God in His fullness, since for Origen God is
incomprehensible, but that we are able to apprehend various reflections of His glory, just as we
are able to perceive the sun, the rays and the effects thereof, but are unable to stare at the sun in
its fullness.77
In his understanding of God's existence, Origen keeps in line with the Platonic
conception of God not as existing, but simply as existence himself, and hence he affirms that
God cannot be strictly said to participate in existence—since He is simply existence or being—
but rather is only participated in by His creation. For Origen, therefore, God is the source of all
things created, although Origen breaks with the Platonic understanding of metaphysical
emanation via necessity, and posits God's act of creation as a free and loving action, thereby
upholding God's transcendence without reducing God's essence into subsequent emanations as
does Middle Platonism.78
It is with this understanding that we can understand Origen's understanding of πάθεια asἀ
76 Origen, On First Principles, 1.2.4.
77 “The mind bears a certain relationship to God, of whom the mind itself is an intellectual image, and that
by means of this it may come to some knowledge of the nature of divinity, especially if it be purified and separated
from bodily matter.” Origen, On First Principles, 1.1.7.
78 Ibid., 2.3.

31. 31
it was predicated on God; viz., that it was in line with His conception of defining God as what
He was not in comparison to humans which are similar but also dissimilar. In surveying the
passionate emotions displayed by God, Origen writes, “On account of those expressions which
occur in the Old Testament, as when God is said to be angry or to repent, or when any other
human affection or passion is described, think that they are furnished with grounds for refuting
us, who maintain that God is altogether impassible, and is to be regarded as wholly free from all
affections of that kind...we do not take such expressions literally.”79
Origen holds firmly that God
is impassible in the sense that a perfect being cannot have a sequential reaction to something
outside of Himself, and thereupon change his state or disposition from that of happiness to that
of anger or wrath. Nevertheless, it is from this line of thinking that allows Origen to see God's
anger and wrath not merely as vacuous terms, but as words to express God's corrective justice
towards sinful humanity pedagogically to those who necessarily participate in God.80
As we have
seen in previous Fathers, Origen did not simply uncritically accept Greek philosophy into his
understanding of Christianity, but rather utilized it as the framework with which he found
himself in insofar as he was able to extrapolate, make sense of, and further probe into the
mysteries of Christian religion in juxtaposition to the pagan religions and philosophies . For
example, Origen refutes the Stoic understanding of an ephemeral, mutable, and ever changing
God, by claiming that the Christian God is superior in that He doesn't change.81
Moreover he
runs strongly against the grain of foundational Platonic doctrines of God which state that God is
unknowable in the strictest sense of the word, that He is transcendent insofar as He is only
79 Ibid., 2.4.4.
80 Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God, 56.
81 Weinandy, Does God Suffer?, 98.

32. 32
concerned with Himself at the pinnacle of all the necessary emanations that come from His
being. While Origen's Trinitarianism retains some of these themes, his understanding of God's
providence, fatherly care, and love is in such a way that he clearly re-works the Platonic
understanding of transcendence in order to also uphold the immanence and love of God towards
His creatures, even if he never entirely harmonized or systematized these two and holds seeming
paradoxes, but not contradictions.
He [λόγος] came down to earth in pity for human kind, he endured our passions and sufferings
before he suffered the cross, and he designed to assume our flesh...Thus God bears our ways, just
as the son of God bears our 'passions.' The Father himself is not impassible. If he is besought he
shows pity and compassion; he feels in some sort, the passion of love.82
What can be made of Origen's insistence on God being impassible, since He is unlike us, but
then insist that God does feel and love us, and hence in that sense is not impassible? While
scholars have criticized Origen for his inconsistencies, and have pointed the finger at the Platonic
grapple that held down his theology by not allowing Origen to simply say that God suffers in the
full sense of the word, it appears the matter is not so simple. Mozley rightly points out that
Origen “sees that such movements must be allowed for. And after all, however 'allegorical' the
statement, it must be an allegory representing something real. But he gives up the attempt to hold
together, or to show how a place may be found for, both the enduring blessedness of God in the
perfection of His nature and a moral interest of God in the world.”83
While Origen seems to be
trying to reconcile God as truly impassible, and God as truly passionate, he need not be deemed
inconsistent, and his references to God's passion—especially in incarnational references—do not
need to be declared unserious simply because of Origen's frequent use of the quadriga.84
82 Origen, Homily on Ezekiel, 6.6. Quoted in full in Mozley, The Impassibility of God, 60, 61.
83 Mozley, 63. Ultimately, Mozley states that Origen hid beneath the “spiritual interpretation” of Scripture,
which is insufficient for reconciling this discrepancy.
84 See Weinandy's understanding of Origen trying to reconcile the two in Does God Suffer?, 98-100.

33. 33
While it may be easy to rail a hefty critique against Origen, who is often cited as the
pinnacle of Christian theology's stumble into Greek philosophy, his positive contribution to our
understanding of God as impassible simply should be understood as Origen upholding with a
firm grip the Creator/creature distinction, as we have seen before. While Origen affirmed God as
being de facto impassible, he does not do so without qualification—qualifications that break
though in the diverse and startling portions of his theology. Weinandy hits the sum of the matter
concerning Origen as follows, and he is worth quoting at length:
Origen [in] attempting to make, maybe for the first time explicitly, the distinction [of
the]...impassibility of God and the passion of God. To say that God is impassible is to deny
emotional change of states within God. It is a negative way of upholding the absolute otherness of
God and of his radical perfection. Thus, while God does not undergo any passible change of
emotional states, yet, because of his immutable perfection, he is perfect in his passionate love for
humankind...The Father is 'not impassible,' not in the sense that he changes from not suffering to
suffering, but in the sense that, in his unchangeable love, he passionately grieves over his
people.85
According to Weidnandy's interpretation of Origen, then it is not his understanding of God as
πάθεια that prohibits God from Him being love. But on the contrary, it is preciously becauseἀ
God is impassible that allows His perfect, and immutable love to be exercised towards His
creatures in a passionate—within Himself—expressive outpouring towards humankind. While
this may perhaps be far-reaching to say affirmatively of Origen and his thought, it is apparent
that there was a struggle to harmonize God being impassible and being compassionate depending
on whom Origen was trying to refute. The point, nevertheless, should be made that Origen
definitely upheld God as being πάθεια—not in the Stoic sense, or in the Platonic sense that Godἀ
is aloof and unconcerned with His creation—but in order to ensure that God was kept free from
creaturely appellations. At the same time, he still allowed the freedom for God's compassionate
85 Ibid., 99, 100. See also Lister, God is Impassible and Impassioned, 75-78.

34. 34
and impassioned love to break through, via His transcendence and imminence, even if He did not
fully understand how this was to be harmonized.
Tertullian of Carthage
Moving from the East to the West, it is suitable to conclude by surveying the thought of
Tertullian (c. 155-c.240 AD), one of the great Latin Fathers of early Christian thought, in regards
to divine πάθεια. He is especially relevant not only as a contrast to Eastern voices such asἀ
Origen whom we just looked at, but also because of his influence in fighting off numerous
heresies, one of them including patripassianism which asserts that it was the Father suffering on
the cross, and not the Son, albeit this appeared in various forms. He writes against Praxeas, “they
[the patripassians, or as Tertullian calls them, the heretics] grant us so far that the Father and Son
are Two; adding that, since it is the Son indeed who suffers, the Father is only his fellow-
sufferer...Now if the the Father is incapable of suffering, He is incapable of suffering in company
with another.”86
It is clear that Tertullian upholds impassibility, especially against
patripassianism and, as we shall see, against Marcion. Nevertheless, the same tensions that we
saw in the thought of Origen seem to appear in Tertullian however different their approaches to
theology were. Hence, it will be beneficial to see how Tertullian conceived God, and why and in
what sense he utilized πάθεια in reference to God.ἀ
In wrestling with Marcion, who refused to recognize the Christian God with the wrathful
and angry God of the Old Testament, Tertullian developed for himself a system whereby he was
able to predicate all things that are spoken of God through the filter of God's goodness.
Therefore, when Marcion charged Tertullian in upholding an untenable conception of God
86 Tertullain, Against Praxeas, 1.

35. 35
because of His wrath, Tertullian countered by saying that such a God devoid of wrath would not
actually be a good God.87
“Now, if he is offended, he ought to be angry; if angry, he ought to
inflict punishment. For such infliction is the just fruit of anger.”88
Understood in this light,
therefore, Tertullian is able to speak about God in various emotionally colorful ways, even
passionate ones such as anger. Not in a passible sense, but filtered through divine impassibility
simply because God is goodness. Or put more simply, all expressions and emotions that are
conceived of God are because of, or rather an outpouring and expression of, His goodness vis-à-
vis His creatures. While Marcion charged Tertullian with creating a God of corporeality and
irrational passion—that is to say, a God that is too human—Tertullian seems to deflect this
charge once again by asserting that it is the contrary. Namely, that God in His immutable
goodness and impassibility allows therefore for such expressions of divine love or wrath in a
way that is unlike humans who are subject to irrational passions and subjective misjudgments.
Tertullian writes, “Even His severity then is good, because just: when the judge is good, that is
just. Other qualities likewise are good, by means of which the good work of a good severity runs
out its course, whether wrath, or jealousy, or sternness. For all these are as indispensable to
severity as severity is to justice.”89
Tertullian's thought is highly nuanced. Indeed, even a cursory reading of his work would,
to be sure, expose seeming inconsistencies in His thought. Forasmuch as he upholds God as
impassible, he nevertheless utilizes passibilist language, even theopaschite language in reference
to the Cross. Even still, there seems to be a brilliant harmony in Tertullian's thought concerning
87 Tertullian, Against Marcion, 1.26.
88 Ibid.
89 Ibid., 2.16.

36. 36
πάθεια. While utilizing the anthropomorphisms that occur in the Old Testament with highἀ
frequency, he thereupon uses them as a springboard to show the analogy such god-talk as
follows. Namely, anthropomorphic language as metaphorically didactic material apropos the
character of God vis-à-vis antropopathisms which albeit metaphorical still serve to explain and
show us a real truth about God and His emotional states, even through the lenses of
impassibility. In chapter sixteen of book two of Against Marcion, Tertullian explains the relation
of the two and is worth quoting at length to sufficiently clarify our point.
Fortunately, however, it is a part of the creed of Christians even to believe that God did die, and
yet that He is alive for evermore. Superlative is their folly, who prejudge divine things from
human; so that, because in man's corrupt condition there are found passions of this description,
therefore there must be deemed to exist in God also sensations of the same kind. Discriminate
between the natures, and assign to them their respective senses, which are as diverse as their
natures require, although they seem to have a community of designations. We read, indeed, of
God's right hand, and eyes, and feet: these must not, however, be compared with those of human
beings, because they are associated in one and the same name. Now, as great as shall be the
difference between the divine and the human body, although their members pass under identical
names, so great will also be the diversity between the divine and the human soul, notwithstanding
that their sensations are designated by the same names. These sensations in the human being are
rendered just as corrupt by the corruptibility of man's substance, as in God they are rendered
incorruptible by the incorruption of the divine essence.90
We see hence that Tertullian, even if he did not know how to explain his position more
thoroughly, approaches material concerning God and His nature quite carefully and prudently.
Not as Greek philosopher but as a theologian. The force of his argument against Marcion
therefore can be summed up by understanding God as goodness, and hence as goodness He
displays before our eyes what we perceive as various attributes which are merely extensions of
His goodness. Moreover, as a Perfect Being who is Goodness, He is free from all corruptibility,
partiality, and subjective irrational passions and hence is impassible. But nevertheless, because of
His goodness, He is passionate even if His passions are impassible passions beyond our
90 Ibid.

37. 37
understanding. Passionate through terms that are also used to designate passions of human beings
so that the analogy is understood by His creatures, but also passions that are qualitatively
different than His creatures' passions and limitations. Weinandy summarizes his conclusions of
Tertullian as follows:
While he [Tertullian] wishes to predicate them [passions] of God in some true manner, he
positively predicates them of God by rejecting false manners of prediction. This is another
example of attempting to state something positive about the nature of God, but doing so through
negation...[although] Tertullian does not clearly state what it means for God to possess them
[passions] in accordance with his nature, it does at least mean that he does not possess them in a
human manner, which does betoken change. Moreover, this is also why Tertullian can insist that,
despite God's seemingly differing emotional states, he is...ontologically immutable and
impassible.91
For Tertullian, therefore, the force of his understanding of God being both immutable and
impassible was not to reduce God down to an emotionless being, but on the contrary, he charged
Marcion with constructing an emotionless being, one devoid of justice, wrath and anger. It is
precisely divine impassibility that Tertullian postulates in light of God's goodness that enables
him to speak about God in a passionate manner, thereby understanding God as both emotionally
passionate yet also unlike His human creation, and therefore impassible.
Conclusion
What has hitherto been surveyed has brought us now to our conclusion, which is by no
means conclusive. Nevertheless, it is hoped that a few things have been sufficiently made clear
which are as follows. The brief examination in the beginning of the paper hoped to paint an
accurate, but by no means exhaustive, picture of the general direction and spirit held by modern
theology apropos of the Suffering God. We desired to choose the foremost representatives of this
position in order to ensure they were portrayed accurately, since this was the backdrop with
91 Weinandy, Does God Suffer?, 103.

38. 38
which we worked out our entire paper.
That the Fathers uncritically accepted Greek philosophy thereby ruining and tainting pure
apostolic Christianity has been at least shown to be an extremely incorrect, unpersuasive and
untenable notion held by numerous theologians and laypeople alike. Quite simply, if this paper
has shown anything, it is hoped that it served to show that the matter is much more convoluted
than holding to a simple either/or dichotomy which we believe to be a false one. This dichotomy
was hopefully shown to be a false one by screening, albeit too briefly, the diversity of positions
concerning God, the soul, and passions held in various schools of Greek philosophy, and
moreover the disagreement within the very schools themselves which makes the position simply
indefensible. It is therefore, quite frankly, disingenuous to rake the Fathers through anachronistic
misconceived judgments simply by stating that they accepted the impassible Greek God of
philosophy over the passionate Hebrew God of the Bible.
Second, we wished to show some of the incorrect notions held by those who do not
understand what impassibility means, first by showing what it does not mean; viz., the
entomological fallacy. This is postulated by scores of people far and wide as the supposed
cornerstone of their argument whereby they say God is unable to love because He is impassible,
which is synonymous in their eyes with God being apathetic. Clearly this is not the case simply
because of the inherent etymological fallacy that underlines this presupposition.
Third, we moved into a general and brief study of a selection, of what we hope was a
eclectic, of the Early Patristic Fathers insofar as we were able to see a diversity of thought,
theological approach, and methodology, all in light of their understanding of impassibility. Hence
we sought to see how these early Fathers—from the philosophical speculation of Greek thinkers