“Wanted a Good Man, Never Bargained for You”: Is God “Dazed and Confused”?

Does God have emotions? In the first installment in this series, we focused on the classical view of “impassibility,” which seems to treat emotions ascribed to God as metaphors for divine action. Emotions ascribed to God are not actual but are phenomenological. In this post, we’ll look at a contrary view that doesn’t merely affirm divine emotions but interprets them as practically equivalent to human emotions. If the classical view seems to leave God inwardly “unaffected” by human sin and misery and, as it were, “comfortably numb” in his celestial repose, this view portrays God as “dazed and confused.”

In Defense of Divine Impassibility

As I suggest in my first post and will try to demonstrate in two subsequent installments, I don’t think the classic view of God and emotions is beyond the need of refinement. However, before we dismiss the classical view, we should pause and explore some of the reasons that prompted such careful thinkers as Augustine, Anselm, Calvin, and Owen to reject a more literal reading of divine emotivity.

No Goose Bumps for God

One reason that gives these scholars pause is the fact that emotions as experi­enced by humans often include a physiological dimension. Sweaty palms, flushed face, rapid heartbeat, goose bumps and other physical phenomena frequently accompany human emotivity. Since God is an incorporeal Spirit (Rom. 1:20; Col. 1:15; 1 Tim. 1:17), theologians have correctly rejected any physiological dimension to divine emotivity. This also may have been part of the reason why many theologians call emotional ascriptions to God “anthro­popathisms” (i.e., human emotions ascribed to God that have a figurative not literal meaning) much like bodily ascriptions to God are called “anthropomor­phisms” (i.e., human body parts ascribed to God that have a figurative not lit­eral meaning

The Times They Are a Changin’ … but Not God!

But, as we’ve seen, the many classical theologians that reject a more literal reading of divine emotivity are motivated by more than a concern to protect God’s incorporeal nature. After all, with the exception of strict materialists, eve­ryone agrees that emotivity has a psychological as well as physical dimen­sion. If so, why can’t God experience the psychological aspect without the physical?

Enter the doctrines of divine transcendence, sovereignty and immu­tability. Emo­tions, affections, and passions are commonly understood as inward reactions and/or responses to outside stimuli.1 These inward reactions and/or responses entail psychological changes. Since, according to Scripture, God is unchangeable or immutable (Num. 23:19; 1 Sam. 15:29; Ps. 102:27; Mal. 3:6; James 1:16-18; Heb. 1:12; 13:8), how can we attribute psychological “changes” to an unchangeable Being?

Can’t Take God by Surprise

Moreover, the outside stimuli to which you and I respond (i.e., circum­stances or events that normally provoke emotive responses) are often beyond our con­trol. We have little or no control over the premature death of a family member that brings grief, the deceitful politician who provokes anger, or the surprise birthday party that prompts joy and gratitude. And some outward cir­cum­stances, which confront us, are so surprising and overwhelming that we have trouble controlling the emotional responses themselves. Many of us can recall the sibling or friend hiding behind the door whose “surprise” appearance and exclaimed “boo” sent us emotionally (not literally) “through the ceiling.”

Almighty God, however, stands transcendently above time and space (Gen. 1:1; Pss. 90:2; Isa. 40:25-28; 57:15; John 1:1; Acts 17:24-28; Rom. 1:20; 16:26; Col. 1:16-17; 1 Tim. 1:17; 2 Pet. 3:8). Furthermore, he is absolutely sovereign. He’s planned every event that has or ever will come to pass within the matrix of human his­tory. He actively controls every event and circumstance so that nothing can take him unawares or by surprise (Gen. 50:20; Job 23:13-14; Ps. 135:6; Prov. 16:33; Isa. 46:9-10; Dan. 4:34-35; Acts 4:27-28; Rom. 8:28-29; 9:19-20; Eph. 1:11). Since God is the supreme ruler and governor over all things, how can we attribute psycho­logical “reactions” and “responses” that would make him seemingly the “pawn” of outward circumstance and, therefore, vulnerable?

I suspect it was this latter concern—a concern to protect God’s transcen­dence, sovereignty, and immutability—that primarily has driven some classic theologi­ans to reject, minimize, or redefine divine emotivity. The concern to guard God’s non-material nature was secondary.2

The Attack Against Divine Impassibility

This suspicion is supported by the fact that the primary heresies to which classic theists have responded on the question of divine emotivity have affirmed the non-material nature of God. These would include Socini­anism, Pantheism, Panentheism or Process Theology, and, most recently, Open Theism. None of these views attribute to God a lit­eral human-like body (though Pan­theism and Panentheism closely iden­tify God with the material universe). They all, how­ever, to one degree or another, challenge God’s absolute transcen­dence, sovereignty and/or immutability. They have no hesitation, therefore, conceiv­ing of God as less than omnipotent and omniscient. He is, therefore, not absolutely sovereign over all events in creation. Accordingly, he is subject to external stimuli and genuine change.

Pinnock’s “Most Moved Mover”

For example, Clark Pinnock, an Open Theist, doesn’t hesitate to assert, “God does not control everything that hap­pens. Rather, he is open to receiving input from his creatures. In loving dia­logue, God invites us to participate with him to bring the future into being.”3 This line of reasoning, not surprisingly, exploits the biblical data on divine emo­tivity. “God is not cool and collected,” avers Pinnock, “but is deeply involved and can be wounded.”4 Indeed, Clark’s “Most Moved Mover”5 has all capacity in the world to feel sorrow and pain, making Him genuinely “vulnerable.”6

Boyd’s “God of the Possible”

Gregory Boyd, another Open Theist, and author of God of the Possible ((God of the Possible: Does God Ever Change His Mind? (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2000).)) concedes that God knows much of the future but argues that God hasn’t determined the future “exhaustively.”7 In creating humans with a “free will” (in the libertarian sense), God has, according to Boyd, necessarily self-limited his ability to know and control the future. “All things are possible for God,” Boyd would aver, but all things are not “certain.” Consequently, Boyd’s “God of the Possible” takes risks8, is shocked by the “unexpected,”9 and gets genuinely “frustrated” when things don’t go his way.10

Does Human Sin and Misery Make God Mad and Sad?

We return again to our interpretation of Genesis 6:6. If we follow the reasoning of some classic theists we have a God who thinks (6:5). a God who acts (6:7), but not a God who feels. “Certainly,” insists Calvin, “God is not sorrowful or sad; but remains for ever like himself in his celestial and happy repose.” God’s remorse and pain, says Calvin, are simply his mode of “accommodation.”

The “open” view, on the other hand, is eager to affirm real emotion capacity in the Godhead. Not only does Genesis 6:6 depict a God as “mad and sad,” but it portrays him as caught off guard, distraught, and, as a result, so “caught up in the matter” that he “will never be the same again.”11 If the classic view portrays the God of Genesis 6:6 as “comfortably numb,” the open view depicts him as “dazed and confused”:

Been dazed and confused and surprised that it’s true
Wanted a good man, never bargained for you
How did it happen? Must confess I don’t know
But sin’s taken over my world down below.

Men hurt and abuse and engage in all vice

Took risk when I made them, like rollin’ the dice

Don’t know where they’re goin’, only know just where they’ve been,

Gonna love you humans tho you frustrate my plan.

Once again, my satirical lyric is, admittedly, a bit hyperbolic and rhetorically over­stated.12 But it’s not far from the truth. Open theism has a tendency to interpret God’s emotions as virtually equivalent to human emotions. Instead of man being made in God’s image, we have something like God being made in man’s image.

Closing the Door on the Open View

When one considers the clear biblical affirmations of God’s non-material nature, transcendence, sovereignty, and immutability, together with the ancient and modern challenges to these doctrines, he can understand why a number of classic theists and Reformed theologians have felt constrained to dissuade the reader from interpreting divine emotivity too literally. After all, responses to external stimuli that entail psychological changes would seem to conflict with the biblical portrait of a sovereign God who has decreed the end from the beginning and who does not change.

It has seemed preferable to some, therefore, to inter­pose a great deal of dissimilarity between the referent we normally associate with emotional attributes and the referent to which such emotive attributions actually point when predicated of God. As a result, what you and I normally think of as emotions turn out to be quite different when applied to God. They refer, metaphorically, to divine actions (redemptive or punitive), which, in turn, spring from unchanging ethical virtues within the Godhead.

… But Not on Divine Emotivity

Is this the last word? Some Reformed theologians don’t think so. While basically affirming the classic doctrine of divine impassability, they believe there’s more correspondence between divine and human emotions than the classical view seems to allow. We’ll hear from some of these Reformed theologians in our next post.

B.G.

1. Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1998) defines “emotion” as “A moving of the mind or soul; excitement of the feelings, whether pleasing or painful; disturbance or agitation of mind caused by a specific exciting cause and manifested by some sensible effect on the body.” Some defi­nitions assume a strict dichotomy between the mind, will, and emotions. For example, one dictionary defines “emotion” as “an affective state of consciousness in which joy, sorrow, fear, hate, or the like, is experienced, as distinguished from cognitive and volitional states of consciousness” (Diction­ary.com Unabridged based on the Random House Dictionary, 2006). However, Jonathan Edwards does a fine job of demonstrating the connection between emotions (or “affections” as he calls them) and the will. A Treatise on Religious Affections (1746; reprint, Banner of Truth, 1961), 24-27. Moreover, John Frame shows the connection between the mind and the emotions–emotive responses being intertwined with cognitive evaluations of events or states of affairs. The Doctrine of God, 509-12, 528-29, 608-11. Recently, Matthew Elliott has published a monograph entitled Faithful Feelings: Rethinking Emotion in the New Testament (Kregel Academic, 2006) in which he demon­strates the cognitive element of emotions from the Scriptures. In any case, emotions are undoubt­edly responses or reactions that entail psychological changes in the way one feels. [↩]
2. It may be that classic theism’s apparent concern to guard the incorporeal nature of God was influ­enced not merely by Scripture but by Greek philosophy. The latter tended to have a negative view of the material altogether. The former certainly does not. [↩]
3. The Openness of God, ed. Clark H. Pinnock, Richard Rice, John Sanders, William Hasker, and David Basinger (Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 1994), 7. [↩]
4. Ibid., 118. [↩]
5. The title of Pinnock’s primary book on the subject: Most Moved Mover: A Theology of God’s Openness (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001). [↩]
6. Ibid., x, 93; cf. “An Interview with Clark Pinnock,” Modern Reformation (Nov-Dec, 1998), 37. [↩]
7. Ibid., 11-12, 15-17, 23-24, 53-87. [↩]
8. Ibid., 57-58. [↩]
9. Ibid., 59-62. [↩]
10. Ibid., 62-63. [↩]
11. So concludes Terence Fretheim when interpreting Genesis 6:6. Actually, I concur with some of the language Fretheim employs. For instance, he remarks, “The sinful response of humankind has indeed touched God; God is not apathetic. Even more, it [the text] indicates that God’s judgment is not a detached decision.” But Fretheim’s depiction gets a bit carried away and is couched within the overall framework of an “open theist” view of divine sovereignty, immutability, and transcendence. The Suffering of God: An Old Testament Perspective (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1984), 112. [↩]
12. I adapted and reworked the lyrics of Led Zeppelin’s “Dazed and Confused.” [↩]