The Suffering of the Impassible God: The Dialectics of Patristic Thought

Abstract

Major reconsideration of the notion of divine impassibility in patristic thought. It is commonly claimed that patristic theology fell prey to the assumption of Hellenistic philosophy about the impassibility of God and departed from the allegedly biblical view, according to which God is passible. The author argues that this standard view misrepresents the tradition. For the fathers, the attribute of divine impassibility functioned in a restricted sense as an apophatic qualifier of divine emotions. Gavrilyuk construes the development of patristic thought as a series of dialectical turning points taken to safeguard the paradox of God's voluntary and salvific suffering in the incarnation.