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The Impassibility of God

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

T. E. Pollard
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Extract

‘It becomes theologians to be cautious in accepting the gifts of the Greeks.’ It is the conviction of the present writer that Christian theology as a whole, and the doctrine of God in particular, have suffered because of the lack of caution which theologians in every age have shown in their too ready acceptance of the gifts which the Greeks have brought. Of no age is this more true than of that which witnessed the formalisation and systematisation of the Christian doctrine of the Godhead, namely, the second, third and fourth Christian centuries, during which ‘theologizing’ was for the most part in the hands of men who had been trained in the philosophical schools of the Hellenistic world, and who refused to do intellectually what Justin Martyr had refused to do literally, refused, that is, to doff the academic dress of the philosopher. But it is still true that philosophical theologians today, in their desire to interpret the Christian faith in modern philosophical terms, tend to be too ready to accept as gifts the presuppositions of some modern philosophical school, and in doing so to give away much that is vital to the faith which they are seeking to interpret.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 8 , Issue 4 , December 1955 , pp. 353 - 364
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1955

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References

page 353 note 1 Brabant, F. H., in Essays on the Trinity and the Incarnation (ed. Rawlinson, A. E. J.).Google Scholar

page 354 note 1 It is interesting to compare with Buber, Samuel Alexander, whose Jewish antipathy to the Greek cyclical view of history, and his instinct to look for a consummation, led him to think of even God as still awaiting finality. I am indebted to Professor E. P. Dickie for drawing my attention to this comparison.

page 355 note 1 Job 11.7. Of this text, with its implied answer in the negative, A. N. Whitehead, I think, remarks that it is good Hebrew but bad Greek.

page 357 note 1 I am indebted to the late Dr D. M. Baillie for this idea of the assumption of, rather than argument for, the divine impassibility in the Apostolic Fathers. It occurs in his lecture notes on the subject, which I have been privileged to read, and my thanks are due to his brother, Principal John Baillie for permission to use the idea here.

page 359 note 1 In his introduction to the volume Christology of the Later Fathers (Library of Christian Classics, Vol. III).

page 362 note 1 Tertullian, Athanasius, inter altos; the same attempted solution is found in Anselm, Cur Deus Homo, 1.8

page 362 note 2 In Apollinarianism.

page 363 note 1 The Suffering of God, in Essays and Addresses, Series II.

page 364 note 1 God Was in Christ, p. 200.