Does God have emotion? An easy question, right? Certainly, if God’s Word tells us of God’s love, grief, anger, hatred, and so on, then of course God has emotion. And we must conclude from this that our emotion at least in some respects is analogous to his. But if we are not careful we can tend to understand those expressions as we experience them. So think more carefully: just what is “emotion” like for the God who is not contingent but transcendent, self-sufficient, eternal, omniscient, and sovereign?
Today we are pleased to talk with Dr. Rob Lister (associate professor of biblical and theological studies at Talbot School of Theology) about his God is Impassible and Impassioned (Crossway, 2012). The book’s title states the thesis, that God is both impassible (in the historic and carefully nuanced understanding of the term) and impassioned (again, in a carefully nuanced understanding of the term). The impassibility of God is a divine attribute with which relatively few Christians are familiar, and it is a topic few books are given to expound. It is a doctrine that has regained some attention in our generation, but even so, Dr. Lister’s book is something of an exception. And we were eager to talk with him about his work.
Books At a Glance (Fred Zaspel):
Just on a personal level, please tell our readers something about your own background and theological influences and perhaps what led you to pursue theological studies.
Lister:
I grew up in a Southern Baptist context. At home, I was nurtured in the gospel by my parents. I first learned a love of theology under the preaching of our pastor Conrad “Buster” Brown at East Cooper Baptist Church in Mt. Pleasant, SC. After college, I went to SBTS for my seminary and doctoral training. My first semester at Southern, I took Bruce Ware’s Intro to Systematic Theology course, and it caused my heart to sing all semester long. In time, he became a mentor as well as my doctoral supervisor. Consequently, his thinking has had the deepest impact on the thought reflected in this book. I was also richly nurtured as a theologian in training during this time through the opportunity to serve as an assistant to Dr. Al Mohler.
Books At a Glance:
What influences or factors led you to do doctoral work on impassibility?
Lister:
Bruce Ware suggested the topic to me during my doctoral studies, and it really grabbed my attention for two main reasons. 1) I found the topic laden with practical implications for the life of faith. 2) I also recognized that it would stretch me and help me grow as an aspiring systematician, because it would compel competence in multiple aspects of theological study.
Books At a Glance:
What is a good explanation of impassibility that doesn’t give the impression that God lacks emotion?
Lister:
I think the simplest way to state it is to say that God’s affections cannot be forced or manipulated from him involuntarily. His affections are perfect and they always accord with his will. That’s one of the ways that divine and human affection are unlike. Our emotions can be and often are expressed involuntarily. That is not the case with God. I realize that this sounds counter-intuitive to many people, yet it is critical to understand. In fact, a desire to address this potential confusion is one of the main reasons that I wrote the book. (See my answer to Q5 below for elaboration.)
Books At a Glance:
Why is it important for Christians to know about God’s impassibility? His impassionedness?
Lister:
These questions get to the heart of the practical value of this issue. Together, God’s impassibility and his impassionedness highlight the centrality of the Creator/creature distinction, and that in turn enriches the profound nature of the relationship with God that we are invited into through faith in Christ. In other words, we can too easily lapse into conceiving of relationship with God essentially along the lines of a relationship with a peer. When we keep the Creator/creature distinction at the forefront of our thinking, we will marvel all the more at the prospect of relationship with God.
Books At a Glance:
When you are teaching about God’s impassibility and impassionedness, what are some of the most difficult things for the average Christian to grasp?
Lister:
There is a fairly common tendency to interpret the language of divine affection in Scripture anthropocentrically. (This is true not only popularly speaking, but in much of the literature as well.) What I mean is that, we often tend to assume that since we know how affective language applies to us, we therefore have a kind of intuitive grasp on how the same terminology should apply to God. And the criterion we apply is the criterion of human experience. To qualify as “genuine” or “meaningful” affection then, we tend to assume that God’s affective engagement must correspond in virtually every aspect to our emotional experiences. What gets left out is the Creator/creature distinction, which provides an important hedge against interpreting such language as applying identically (or univocally) to God and humans. We have to pay attention not only to the language that is used, but also to the kind of being to whom the language is applied. God, the omniscient, perfectly holy, Triune Creator, is a different kind of being than we are, and that distinction matters when we seek to understand how the same affective terminology (e.g., love) applies to him and to us.
Books At a Glance:
There seems to be a renewed interest among younger Reformed writers in classical doctrines in theology proper. Why do you think this is? And what advice would you give in this regard?
Lister:
This is an exciting prospect to me. I tend to think that this renewed interest derives from the resurgent interest in Reformed theology more broadly, which is an unapologetically theocentric way of looking at Scripture and the world. My advice would simply be to “press on” in these pursuits. The theocentric perspective should be our anchor, and there are many riches to be discovered (or probably better–rediscovered) as we come to know and love God better.
Books At a Glance:
How do you feel about the way Roman Catholics and Protestants generally have explored traditional themes in theology proper over the last fifty years or so? Should Protestants lead more in this area than perhaps they have?
Lister:
In the recent literature there has been much more of a tendency within Protestantism to drift towards passibilism. Some of that derives from reading the Scriptures without sufficiently attending to the theocentric anchors of Scripture (the Creator/creature distinction, Trinity, etc.) and the resultant metaphysical implications of those doctrines. Also, it seems that at least some in the Protestant tradition have feared being tarred with the accusation of allowing Hellenistic philosophy to dominate their reading of Scripture. This fear it seems has led some to overact to the point of neglecting the metaphysical commitments that are actually supplied by Scripture. Catholic writers have largely done a better job of maintaining those commitments when it comes to this discussion. I do see some signs of movement in a healthy direction in some of the Protestant materials of late. My hope is that Protestant contributors to this discussion will continue their commitment to a rigorous exegesis of biblical texts, but do so alongside a commitment to the broader theological context that Scripture itself provides.
Books At a Glance:
What advice would you give pastors trying to preach on such “high” doctrines in theology proper and incarnational theology?
Lister:
These doctrines are at the heart of the faith. Without knowing God and the gospel of Jesus we lose Christianity. So we must not neglect to bring these doctrines into our preaching explicitly. We can preach these truths in the language of the people, and we can teach, not only the meaning, but also the import of these precious doctrines to our congregations. Moreover, it is good to know that the God who opens up relationship to me through faith in Christ isn’t easily tamed or mastered, but is one instead who graciously relates to us from the posture of transcendent majesty. That realization alone will actually help us see all the more how amazing grace truly is.
Books At a Glance:
Is there any further work related to this study that you would like to see taken up?
Lister:
That’s a good question. As I mentioned above, I desire to see a continued commitment to fusing the broad and narrow contexts of Scripture in our exegetical and theological work. In that respect, there are an abundance of key biblical passages to reflect on. I also think that there are some significant implications of divine impassibility/impassionedness for the nature of human emotional sanctification. Lastly, I think that some expanded discussion on the good news of divine impassibility in relation to the problem of evil would be very valuable. The problem of evil has occasioned the rejection of divine impassibility for many who write in this field. The assumption is that the only serviceable answer to the problem of evil is that of a suffering God. Taking up that challenge, in connection with an exposition of Christ’s incarnate suffering, has the potential to be a very helpful contribution to this issue.
Books At a Glance:
Thank you so much for your good work and for taking the time to speak to our readers.
Lister:
Thank you for the opportunity to participate in the good work you are doing here at “Books at a Glance.” Blessings on you and your readers.
