Ritröð Guðfræðistofnunar - 01.09.2007, Blaðsíða 15

Christ’s passion as the revelation of God? Does God let Christ suffer for/
with us, or does God himself suffer for/with us in Christ?
The ability to identify God with the suffering Christ dwindles in pro-
portion to the importance given to the apathy axiom in the doctrine of
God. If God is incapable of suffering, then Christ’s passion can only viewed
as a human tragedy, and there is no redeeming Divine power in his passion.
If we want to say both, we end up in formulating paradoxes as f. e.
Bertrand Brasnett in his bookTHE SUFFERING OF THE IMPASSIBLE
GOD, London 1928.4 5
I think it would be more consistent, if we simply stopped making the
metaphysical axiom of God’s apathy our starting point in theology and
start from the biblical axiom of God’s Passion instead, so as to understand
Christ’s suffering as the PASSION OF THE PASSIONATE GOD. The
word PASSION has the double meaning of suffering and overwhelming
feeling and ardour, and the God of Israel is a God full of passion and com-
passion for the life of his people and for justice on his earth. Abraham
Heschel demonstrated convincingly the “Pathos of God” in his book on
the prophets of Israel against the apathetic Deity of the Greek philosoph-
ers.^
Why did the patristic theology hold fast to the apathy axiom (with the
exception of Origen and Maximus Confessor), although Christian devotion
adored at the same time the crucified Christ as God? We can see two rea-
sons:
1. God’s essential impassibility distinguishes the Deity from human
beings, which by destiny are subject to suffering, transience and
death,
2. Salvation is the deification of human beings by giving them a share
in eternal life. If we become immortal we shall also become im-
passible: apathy is divine nature and the fulfilment human salvation
in eternal life.
4. Cf. Also J. K. Mozley, The Impassibility of God. A Survey of Christian Thought, Cambridge
1926.
5. A. Heschel, The Prophets, New York 1962.
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