Does God Suffer?
The idea of the suffering God is a much debated theological subject. Many great theologians seem divided on the topic. After examining the Old and New Testament, as well as the origins of the church fathers on whether or not God suffers, my conclusion is that God does suffer.
The Origins of Impassibility: One of the reasons I believe that God sufferers is that as I examined the debate surrounding it, much of the reasoning behind the belief that He does not suffer seems to have been influenced by pagan ideas, “ The classical pagan idea of the apatheia or ‘impassibility’ of God - The view according to which God lies beyond all human emotions and pain.”[1] Some historians believe that the idea that God does not suffer has its origins in “Hellenistic culture and Greek ways of thinking.”[2] Aristotle‘s idea of a divine being, being perfect, meant that if that divine beings could experience suffering, then they would no longer be perfect: “This understanding passed into Christian theology at an early stage.”[3] The first century Jewish writer, Philo of Alexandria, influenced much of the early church Fathers. He believed, “God could not be allowed to suffer, or undergo anything which could be spoken of as “passion.”” [4] In addition, Thomas Aquinas, who adhered to the belief that God was compassionate and loving said that these emotions “referred to the being of God, not to God’s experience or feelings.”[5] I believe, like the great Protestant reformer, Martin Luther, writing about the theology of the cross, God “is hidden in suffering.” [6] In addition, people like Lazoh Kitamori in A Theology of the Pain of God,[7] “argued that true love was rooted in pain. ‘God is the wounded Lord, having pain in himself.’ God is able to give meaning and dignity to human suffering on account of the fact that he also is in pain, and suffers.”[8] Often the “Old Testament often portrayed God as sharing in the pathos of Israel. God is hurt and moved by the suffering of God’s people.”[9]
The idea of a loving God who implies that “Can one really speak of ‘love’ unless there is some mutual sharing of suffering and feelings? Surely ‘love’ implies the lover’s intense awareness of the suffering of the beloved, and thus some form of sharing in the beloved’s distress?”[10] Jurgen Moltmann (1926) have offered some profound insights on the discussion of the suffering God. In his book, The Crucified God (1972), he “argues that a God who cannot suffer is a deficient, not a perfect, God. Stressing that God cannot be forced to change or undergo suffering, Moltmann declares that God willed to undergo suffering.”[11]
“A God who cannot suffer is poorer than any human. For a God who is incapable of suffering is a being who cannot be involved. Suffering and injustice do not affect him. And because he is so completely insensitive, he cannot be affected or shaken by anything. He cannot weep, for he has no tears. But the one who cannot suffer cannot love either. So he is also a loveless being.”[12]
The Scriptures: Throughout the Old Testament, we see a God who responds to the cries of His people. He personally gets involved in His children’s lives: “God is personal in that He is shown to be One who enters into personal relations with people. He has communion with human beings from the day of man’s creation...He enters into covenant with people treating them as His partners.”[13] As such, He is the one who gets angry at the willful disobedience of the Israelites and has every reason to destroy them, but responds with forgiveness in response to Moses’ prayer. “It is important not to view God’s changelessness as that of hard, impersonal immobility. God is not like a statute, fixed and cold, but...He relates to people. He is not the ‘unmoved Mover’ but constantly moves upon and among men and nations...He freely involved Himself in the life of a fickle and inconstant people to work out His purpose, and in the Incarnation He plunged totally into the maelstrom of human events. God in His own changelessness has experienced all the vicissitudes of human existence. Isaiah 53:3 states that He was “despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.”
This is the God-far from immobile and distant-who does not change.”[14] Hebrews 4:15 speaks of God as One who shows empathy towards us, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” In addition, God is depicted as One who grieves over the rebellion of people: Psalm 78:40: “How often they rebelled against him in the wilderness and grieved him in the wasteland!” Judges 2:18 reveal to us a God who feels compassion for His suffering children who suffered oppression by evil rulers: “Whenever the Lord raised up judges for them, the Lord was with the judge, and he saved them for the hand of their enemies…For the Lord was moved to pity by their groaning.” Jesus took on the sins of mankind, suffering on the cross, I Peter 2:21 says “Christ suffered for you.”
“God is personal in that He is shown to be One who enters into personal relations with people. He has communion with human beings from the day of man’s creation...He enters into covenant with people treating them as His partners….Hence, any view of God that sees Him as an impersonal idea or absolute beyond human beings, or perhaps as some principle or law to which man is bound, badly misunderstands the identity of God. It would be hard to say which is father from the truth: God as disinterested Absolute with no trace of the personal about itself, or God as coercive law that constantly chafes mankind with its cold, impersonal restrictions.”[15]
Old Testament Scriptures: God gets angry: Deuteronomy 9:22 You also made the LORD angry at Taberah, at Massah and at Kibroth Hattaavah.
Romans 1:18: The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness,
COMPASSION: “Father of the fatherless and the protector of widows” (Ps. 68:5).
Deut 32:36-For the LORD will vindicate his people and have compassion on his servants, when he sees that their power is gone and there is none remaining, bond or free.
, (3) grief ; ), Genesis 6:6 The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. 6 The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.7 So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.
Psalm 78:40 How often they rebelled against him in the wilderness and grieved him in the wasteland!
jealousy (Exod 20:5; 34:14; Josh 24:19), (6) joy (Isa 62:5; Jer 32:41; Zeph 3:17), (7) laughter (Psa 2:4; 37:13; Prov 1:26), and (8) love (Jer 31:3; John 3:16; 1 John 4:8).
The Old Testament seems to give ample proof that He not only is passible but that He also indeed suffers. God revealed Himself to be a personal, loving, and compassionate God who has freely engaged Himself in, and so ensconced Himself within, human history. He mercifully heard the cry of His enslaved people in Egypt and determined to rescue them. Moreover, God revealed Himself, especially in the prophets, to be a God who grieved over the sins of His people. He was distressed by their unfaithfulness, and suffered over their sinful plight. So disheartened was God by their hard-heartedness that He actually became angry. However, “my heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not mortal; the Holy One in your midst and I will not come in wrath” (Hosea 11:8-9). Thus God in the Old Testament suffers on account of, with, and on behalf of His people. Ultimately it is the revelation of His love that demands that God suffer. Expressing the sentiment of many, Moltmann writes: “Were God incapable of suffering in any respect, and therefore in an absolute sense, then He would also be incapable of love.”
Moreover, the heart of the Christian kerygma is that the Son of God became man and lived an authentic human life. Within that human life the Son’s death on the cross stands as the consummate event. From the Incarnation and the cross theologians argue for God’s passibility on three interconnected levels. First, it is because God has always suffered with those He loved that He sent His Son into the world. The cross then expresses fully God’s eternal divine nature and thus is the paradigm of a suffering God. Second, while the Christian Christological tradition has always upheld the truth that the Son of God suffered as man, though not as God, contemporary theologians find such a distinction illogical and therefore unacceptable. If the Son of God actually became man, then He not only suffered as man but such suffering must have washed into His very divinity as well. Third, the Son, on the cross, did not then merely experience the abandonment of the Father as man but equally as God. Moreover, such abandonment simultaneously pertains to the Father’s own experience. The Father suffered the loss of His Son. Thus the suffering cry of dereliction was a cry being experienced within the very depths of God’s passible nature.
Isaiah 53:3-12 He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Surely He has borne our griefs And carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, And as a sheep before its shearers is silent, So He opened not His mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment, And who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; For the transgressions of My people He was stricken. And they made His grave with the wicked— But with the rich at His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor was any deceit in His mouth. Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, And the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand. He shall see the labor of His soul,and be satisfied. By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many, For He shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great, And He shall divide the spoil with the strong, Because He poured out His soul unto death, And He was numbered with the transgressors, And He bore the sin of many, And made intercession for the transgressors.
Hebrews 2:9-11 But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that He, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone. For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one, for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren,
Romans 8:17-18 and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him,that we may also be glorified together. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.
Philippians 2:5-11 Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Philippians 3:10-12 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.
[1] Christian Theology: An Introduction, Alister McGrath p. 182.
[2] McGrath p.181
[3] McGrath p.182.
[4] McGrath p.182.
[5] McGrath p.182.
[6] McGrath p. 183.
[7] McGrath p. 184,
[8] McGrath p. 184.
[9] McGrath p. 184.
[10] McGrath p. 184.
[11] McGrath p. 184-185
[12] McGrath p. 185.
[13] Renewal Theology: Systematic Theology from A Charismatic Perspective, Rodman Williams. p. 51
[14] Williams Vol. I. p. 59
[15] Williams p. 51