Eyre Lines

In my last post, I linked to a talk by Catherine Malabou (“Emotional Life in a Neurobiological Age”). I discussed one aspect of her thesis, that political apathy could flow from a communal depressive state, one which was so deep as to prevent all emotion. I have personal experience of such a state, from which I recovered about two years ago. The post went on to argue for a social gospel and for involvement by the church in every way possible, voting and voting for positive action for the needy as well as taking such action  individually and as the body of believers.

It seems to me that there is another interesting avenue of theological speculation which can be pursued here.

I keep seeing articles “pushing back” at progressive ideas in theology at the moment; there is a series ongoing at Unsettled Christianity on this topic (Malleus Progressivorum). One of the items which keeps coming up is the orthodox concept (in the Westminster Confession and in the Catholic catechism) that God is impassible.

By this, the concept of the “unmoved mover” is invoked; impassibility means that God does not experience passions. It is linked to the concepts of immutability (changelessness) and aseity (self-sufficiency). As my link shows, however, the concept is criticized because it presents a God who does not feel anything like as we feel; to quote:- Although some take this to mean that God is “without emotions whether of joy, sorrow, pain or grief”, most interpret this as meaning that God is free from all attitudes “which reflect instability or lack of control.”

The trouble is that in operative terms, for God to have an emotion means that something we (or some other creatures) have done has changed God, and that goes not only to impassibility but also to immutability and aseity. The “most” of this statement are therefore clearly wrong; if you insist upon absolute impassibility, immutability and aseity, you must also insist that God is without emotion.

I note here that Jesus, who was and is God in Trinitarian theology, clearly felt emotions during the incarnation at least (and, I would argue from the scriptural evidence, between resurrection and ascension). Whatever your picture of the historical Jesus, I think it has to include the fact that he was passionate in what he said and did. Can it really be that the “Cosmic Christ” Jesus with whom we are left following the ascension (in conventional thinking) has lost all power to feel emotion, and thus so has the triune God?

I have criticized this aspect of conventional theology before; I cannot see how a God who is unmoved by the actions or condition of humans can be said to be loving, or compassionate, or, indeed, jealous or wrathful. Nor can I see that such a God would be likely to answer prayer, unless operating by a set of rules laid down for Godself (which was the eventual strategy by which I continued to function during some years of a total absence of emotions other than a pervading sense that “everything was wrong” and a persistent hypervigilant anxiety). I place the blame for this conception squarely on the theologian-philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas who drew their ideas more from Plato and Aristotle than from the text of the Bible; I do not think the God concept of the philosophers is the same God-concept as that of the Biblical writers, with the possible exception of the preamble to the Fourth Gospel and some moments in the Epistles.

My base position on this, however, is not drawn from scripture, is that this is not how I experience God; the God of my experience is compassion personified, pained by every pain suffered by any created thing and at least as passionate as was Jesus, who according to Colossians 2:9 (inter alia) was the locus of the indwelling of the fullness of God and according to Colossians 1:15 the “image of the invisible God”.

However, my experience is entirely subjective, and I cannot expect it to be considered authoritative for anyone else; besides, there is always the possibility that this may be a mistaken impression, despite arriving with overwhelming self-certification as true.

Could it be, I ask myself, that God is in fact now impassible, and that this is the result of severe depression? This would, I think, fit with the conclusions of Jack Miles, who (in “God, a Biography”) wrote what I consider the ultimate consideration of the Old Testament as a literary work with God as the hero, finding God’s character to have developed and changed through the text and ultimately withdrawing from personal intervention; the logic behind this could well be that God became depressed – and who could blame God for that, considering the historical wreckage outlined time and time again through the Hebrew Scriptures of what, in the beginning, God had seen as good – or even “very good”?

There has been for some time now a school of theology which proclaims “God is Dead”, following Nietzsche’s statement “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him”, though the concept originated with Hegel. I still remember the stir when my local vicar preached, in a service recorded for the BBC, on the topic (something which was one of the factors instrumental in my taking Christianity seriously as a potential language of description of the experience of God). Sadly, this was in the 1960’s and isn’t as far as I can tell accessible online. One of the things which is explained by this kind of thinking is, of course, the relative lack of action in the world of anything which might be called “God” compared with historical records. Peter Rollins, the most recent of this school, is inclined to say that God is “undead”, i.e. is dead but doesn’t yet know it…

There is also a recent book called “God is Unconscious”, which I haven’t yet read (so here’s another review). Only one of the two meanings is “literal” unconsciousness (the other is “having become part of the unconscious”, which resonates with Rollins’ thinking); literal unconsciousness would, however, provide another way of considering the silence of God which Jack Miles ends his book with.

I could, however, propose that God is neither dead nor unconscious, he is merely horribly, deeply depressed, and as such has become unable to display or to feel affect (emotion). Constrained by kenotic self-emptying and respect for the self-determination of God’s creation, there is perhaps nothing God can do beyond, perhaps, a subtle and almost subliminal insistence, as portrayed by Jack Caputo. When combined with a compassion and empathy elevated to God-like intensity, who would not be depressed? This would be another reason for the withdrawn character which Jack Miles finds developing during the course of scripture, at least until the New Testament (though I grant that my own conception of kenosis which I link to above is sufficient without the element of psychoanalysis).

Someone is no doubt going to say “That’s far too anthropomorphic, God cannot be expressed in such human terms”, possibly adding that it’s potentially blasphemous. Well, maybe – that would, after all, argue a God much like the God of the philosophers. But aren’t terms like “jealous” and “wrathful”, even “loving” or “good” also too anthropomorphic? Those are definitely terms used in the Bible, at least in the Hebrew Scriptures which form part of it, to describe God. Perhaps “depressed” is not too unreasonable an addition?

Perhaps, in our prayers, we should be expressing a little compassion towards God, some sympathy in this plight?

And, moved by it, we should do what we can to make creation (including the relationships of humans with each other) again something on which God can look and say “it is very good”.