Theological Primer: Impassibility and the Incarnation
The impassibility of God means that God does not and cannot suffer; that is, he is not moved by something that would cause him to change. Steven Duby has helpfully summarized, “In general, the term ‘passion’ signifies being acted upon by an agent or receiving something from an agent in such a way that the recipient or patient is somehow conformed to or shaped by the act of the agent.”¹ This agent-patient category of passion is both the classical understanding and the reason the Church has confessed God as without passions. God, as the source of good and highest perfection, cannot be acted upon, and therefore, be conformed to something he is not. For such to be the case would invariably constitute a God not only capable of change, but one who is placed under and is forged by change. It is easy to see, then, why the Church has seen this doctrine as an outworking of God’s immutability: that God does not experience or undergo change. As Paul Helm explains, “God cannot change or be changed, and a fortiori God cannot be changed by being affected. So that impassibility is a kind of immutability.”² But what does this mean for our Christology?
First, we know that God cannot change, cannot experience passions, cannot undergo suffering; and therefore, we know that the Son of God as God did not undergo suffering or change in the incarnation.
Second, we know that Jesus Christ did suffer in his human nature. As Anselm wrote, “[W]hen we say that God suffered any humiliation or weakness, we do not understand this of the loftiness of his impassible nature, but of the infirmity of the human substance which he took.”³ While his divine nature remained free from change, suffering, and the like, his human nature underwent hunger, emotions, tiredness, and even death.
Third, we know, however, that—since what can be said of one nature can be said of the whole person—Jesus Christ, the one person who was and is both God and Man, as to his person, did in fact suffer. It is Christ Jesus, the person, who died for sinners; not merely a nature, but a person.
How then do we express God’s redemptive work in Christ, as God, in light of the doctrine of God’s impassibility? If Jesus Christ as person is said to have suffered and died, then do we say that Jesus Christ as God suffered and died? How might the church confess Lord Jesus Christ as her suffering savior and not just a portion of Him as such? Steven Duby is again helpful in pointing us to three creedal and confessional realities of Christ’s redemptive work:
It is the Son’s deity which “secures the infinite dignity of his person and thus the infinite worth and efficacy of his redemptive suffering. As Paul put it in Acts 20:28, God bought the church with his own blood, which underscores the inestimable price paid in the Son’s vicarious death.”⁴ The Heidelberg Catechism answers the question of the mediator’s necessary divinity by saying much of the same under question 17: “So that the mediator, by the power of his divinity, might bear the weight of God’s wrath in his humanity and earn for us and restore to us righteousness and life.”⁵ That is, while the Son of God does not suffer according to his divinity, the Son does offer up his life voluntarily by the authority of his divinity. Why is this important? Duby notes, “The person (not a nature as such) performs the act. And Christ does operate according to his deity in his atoning work even though he does not suffer according to his deity in this work.”⁶
Because of the union of Christ’s two natures, “[H]e is able to bear the weight of his human suffering.”⁷ The union of Christ’s two natures commends to us a way of confessing Christ as one person without confusing the two natures. The one person who is suffering as man sustains that suffering and ends it as God (John 10:17-18). Turretin confesses in pastoral tones, “Who but God could bear the unbearable (abastakton) weight of wrath and not be crushed by it?”⁸ When the Westminster Divines sought to express the necessity of the mediator’s divinity, they too confessed, “It was requisite that the Mediator should be God, that he might sustain and keep the human nature from sinking under the infinite wrath of God, and the power of death.”⁹
Because Christ as God is impassible, “[H]e overcomes death and brings us life. Because Christ as God is unharmed and undiminished in his divine life and immortality, he can do as he promised in John 10:18 and take his life up once again.”¹⁰ Here we see the importance of confessing God’s impassibility for the sake of the Gospel. It is precisely because Christ as God does not undergo any change or suffering that we can have hope that he will raise us to glory just as he too was resurrected. As God proclaims in Malachi 3:2, “I the LORD do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.” This God, who does not change, could not be consumed in the suffering of the cross. Therefore, the children of God will not be consumed on the day of judgement.
How then do we express God’s redemptive work in Christ as God in light of the doctrine of God’s impassibility? By confessing Lord Jesus Christ both as God and as Man—the one person—as our savior who, as God and man, acted in redemption to purchase his Church “which he obtained with his own blood” (Acts 20:28). We have a whole savior who is truly God and truly man, without change and without sin, who redeems us to the end because he remains what he was and, for us, remains what he is—in the incarnation, in the suffering, in the resurrection and ascension, and in glory. As Cyril of Alexandria confessed, “He suffered impassibly, because he did not humble himself in such a way as to be merely like us, rather, as I have said before, he reserved to his own nature its superiority over all these things.”¹¹
Why does this matter? If we worship a god who can undergo suffering, then our hope is lost, for our sins would cause such suffering. Our sins would give such a god every reason to revoke his grace. If we are saved by merely a human nature of Christ then we have no hope for a personal salvation, a savior who died for us. However, we worship a God who is impassible, yet who took on passible flesh that he (the person) might suffer in the flesh for our sake, and undergo that suffering with infinite dignity, bear infinite wrath, and overcome the finality of death by his divinity. Why should pastors care to preach this? Because it is the only hope of man. Does the impassibility of God commend to us a God who is distant and detached from our suffering? No, because the impassible God took on flesh and he, Jesus Christ, suffered in our place.
Greystone Resources
Calvinism is popular today in certain evangelical circles, but what do we mean by the term? There are some misunderstandings about Reformed theology that need to be corrected. This course shows how the scholastic method that was used by several generations of reformers can aid students of theology in their quest to know and promote theological truth. We focus on the way the reformers viewed Scripture as a source of knowledge of God, the doctrine of the Trinity, the place of good works in the Christian life, and covenant theology. We also note how these reformers managed diverse views within ecclesiastical harmony, content to leave some questions unanswered.
In this Greystone micro-course, leading trinitarian theologian Fred Sanders explains that in Christian theology, worship, and life we must confess the doctrines of the Trinity and of salvation as "closely related, mutually illuminating, and strictly ordered. When the two doctrines are left unconnected, both suffer. The doctrine of the Trinity begins to seem altogether irrelevant to salvation history and Christian experience, while soteriology meanwhile becomes naturalized, losing its transcendent reference. If they are connected too tightly, on the other hand, human salvation seems inherent to the divine reality itself." In this micro-course Dr. Sanders explains and explores this deep relationship by expounding the doctrine of eternal processions and temporal missions, ultimately showing how a right theology of God determines a proper and well-ordered--rather than disordered--grasp of the gospel, including the atonement, Christology, pneumatology, and the Church.
The doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son is a central element of the classical doctrine of the Trinity. However, due to the Enlightenment rejection of medieval ontology, historical-critical exegesis, and heterodox views of eternity and time, the doctrine was cast aside by modernist theologians as so much metaphysical speculation. Even among otherwise conservative Protestants, confidence in the doctrine has significantly eroded as historicizing currents washed ashore. This course will attempt to retrieve the doctrine of eternal generation for today by considering (1) its scriptural basis, (2) its development in the history of theology, and (3) its contemporary retrieval versus Eternal Functional Subordination (EFS).
Navigating like expert guides through the great trinitarian texts and theologians of the Christian tradition, Fred Sanders and Ryan Hurd have illuminated and dazzled many with their clear, edifying, and inspiring remarks. This Greystone Reading Room will consider Franciscus Junius's disputation "On the Persons of the Father and the Son." and Amandus Polanus’ "18 Axioms on the Trinity." Combining scholarly insight with accessible explanation, Sanders and Hurd pull old and new treasures out for display and delight. In doing so, they exemplify in their own way the purpose of the Greystone Reading Room. The Trinity is at the heart of Christian worship, faith, and life. This opportunity for regular and faithful direction into the wealth of the Christian and especially the Reformed tradition is a cause for rejoicing.
Biblical References
“Can a man be profitable to God, Though he who is wise may be profitable to himself? Is it any pleasure to the Almighty that you are righteous? Or is it gain to Him that you make your ways blameless?”
Job 22:2-3“For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.”
Malachi 3:6“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men…And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
John 1:1–4, 14“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”
Philippians 2:7–8“Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.”
Hebrews 2:14–18.“Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”
Hebrews 4:14–16.“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.”
James. 1:17
“Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin.”
1 Peter 4:1
Historical References
Creedal
“He is of the same essence (homousios) as the Father according to his deity, and the same one is of the same essence (homousios) with us according to his humanity, like us in all things except sin. He was begotten before the ages from the Father according to his deity, but in the last days for us and our salvation, the same one was born of the Virgin Mary, the bearer of God (Theotokos), according to his humanity.”
Chalcedonian Definition“He is God from the essence of the Father, begotten before time...equal to the Father as regards divinity, less than the Father as regards humanity. This is the catholic faith: one cannot be saved without believing it firmly and faithfully."
The Athanasian Creed
Patristic
There is one physician, both fleshly and spiritual begotten and unbegotten, come in flesh, God, in death, true life, both of Mary and of God. first passible and then impassible, Jesus Christ, our Lord.”
Ignatius of Antioch, Ephesians 7.2“Wait expectantly for him [Christ] who is above time: the Eternal, the Invisible, who for our sake became visible; the Intangible, the Unsuffering, who for our sake suffered, who for our sake endured in every way.”
Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp 3.2“The [Gnostics] endow God with human affections and emotions. However, if they had known the Scriptures, and had been taught by the truth, they would have known beyond doubt that God is not like men. His thoughts are not like the thoughts of men. For the Father of all is at a vast distance from those dispositions and passions that operate among men.”
Irenaeus, Against HeresiesHe was in it, which thus suffered; suffered not, because the Word, being by Nature God, is impassible. And while He, the incorporeal, was in the passible Body, the Body had in it the impassible Word, which was destroying the infirmities inherent in the Body. But this He did, and so it was, in order that Himself taking what was ours and offering it as a sacrifice, He might do away with it, and conversely might invest us with what was His.”
Athanasius, Letter 59
“As man he was baptized, but he absolved sins as God; he needed no purifying rites himself–his purpose was to hallow water. As man he was put to the test, but as God he came through victorious–yes, bids us be of good cheer, because he has conquered the world. He hungered–yet he fed thousands. He is indeed ‘living, heavenly bread.’ He thirsted–yet he exclaimed: ‘Whosoever thirsts, let him come to me and drink.’ Indeed he promised that believers would become fountains. He was tired–yet he is the ‘rest’ of the weary and the burdened. He was overcome by heavy sleep–yet he goes lightly over the sea, rebukes winds, and relieves the drowning Peter. He pays tax–yet uses a fish to do it; indeed he is emperor over those who demand the tax. He is called a ‘Samaritan, demonically possessed’–but he rescues the man who came down from Jerusalem and fell among thieves. Yes, he is recognized by demons, drives out demons, drowns deep a legion of spirits, and sees the prince of demons falling like lightning. He is stoned, yet not hit; he prays, yet he hears prayer. He weeps, yet he puts an end to weeping. He asks where Lazarus is laid–he was man; yet he raises Lazarus–he was God. He is sold, and cheap was the price–thirty pieces of silver; yet he buys back the world at the mighty cost of his own blood. A sheep, he is led to the slaughter–yet he shepherds Israel and now the whole world as well. A lamb, he is dumb–yet he is ‘Word,’ proclaimed by ‘the voice of one crying in the wilderness.’ He is weakened, wounded–yet he cures every disease and every weakness. He is brought up to the tree and nailed to it–yet by the tree of life he restores us. Yes, he saves even a thief crucified with him; he wraps all the visible world in darkness. He is given vinegar to drink, gall to eat–and who is he? Why, one who turned water into wine, who took away the taste of bitterness, who is all sweetness and desire. He surrenders his life, yet he has power to take it again. Yes, the veil is rent, for things of heaven are being revealed, rocks split, and dead men have an earlier awakening. He dies, but he vivifies and by death destroys death. He is buried, yet he rises again. He goes down to Hades, yet he leads souls up, ascends to heaven, and will come to judge quick and dead, and to probe discussions like these. If the first set of expressions starts you going astray, the second set takes your error away.”
Gregory Nazianzus, Oration 29.20 (220, 222);“He died according to the assumption of our nature, and did not die according to the substance of eternal life; and He suffered according to the assumption of the body, that the truth of the assumption of the body might be believed, and He did not suffer according to the impassible divinity of the Word which is entirely without pain…Therefore, He was immortal in death, impassible in His Passion.”
Ambrose, see De Incarnationis Dominicae Sacramento 34–39
“If, while proclaiming His passion, you by no means recognize that which is passible, you have disproved the love of God, you have denied your own salvation….Rightly, then, did His flesh suffer according to its nature, and the nature of the Word was not changed by this suffering of the body; for our resurrection is in truth, and thus Christ's Passion is proclaimed in truth.”
Ambrose, see De Incarnationis Dominicae Sacramento 44–45
“Man’s maker was made man, that He, Ruler of the stars, might nurse at His mother’s breast; that the Bread might hunger, the Fountain thirst, the Light sleep, the Way be tired on its journey; that the Truth might be accused of false witness, the Teacher be beaten with whips, the Foundation be suspended on wood; that Strength might grow weak; that the Healer might be wounded; that Life might die.”
Augustine, Sermon 191.1
“We maintain that because of the intimacy he had with his own flesh, he even suffered its infirmities; he retained the impassibility of his own nature, in so far as he was not only man but the selfsame was also God by nature. And in so far as the body with his very own, so too were the natural and innocent passions of the body, as well as those sufferings inflicted on him by the arrogance of others. He suffered impassibly, because he did not humble himself in such a way as to be merely like us, rather, as I have said before, he reserved to his own nature its superiority over all these things. But if we say that he passed over into the nature of flesh by some change or transformation of his own nature, then we cannot possibly avoid confessing, even if we wanted to, that this ineffable and divine nature was passible.”
Cyril of Alexandria, Scholia on the Incarnation
“Thus we say that he also suffered and rose again, not that the Word of God suffered in his own nature, or received blows, or was pierced, or received the other wounds, for the divine cannot suffer since it is incorporeal. But since his own body, which had been born, suffered these things, he himself is said to have suffered them for our sake. For he was the one, incapable of suffering, in the body which suffered. In the same fashion, we also think of his death. For the Word of God is immortal by nature and incorruptible, being both life and life-giving. But because by the grace of God his own body tasted death for all, as Paul says,6 he himself is said to have suffered death for our sake. As far as the nature of the Word was concerned, he did not experience death, for it would be madness to say or think that, but, as I said, his flesh tasted death. This, too, when his flesh was resuscitated, it is again called his Resurrection; not as if he fell into corruption, God forbid, but that his body rose again.”
Cyril of Alexandria, Letter to Nestorius 3.4–5
“He became man neither in appearance nor introduced into the flesh according to a transformation and conversion, since the Word of God is unchangeable and always possesses what is his, since he himself is the maker of all ages…Who is living, existing, and co-eternal with God. Just as he remains perfect in divinity, is perfect in humanity.”
Cyril of Alexandria, Christological Dialogue on the Incarnation
“We believe in the One Who comes from the root of Jesse; Who is the seed of David; Who is born of a woman in the flesh; Who, as a man like us was under the law, but as God is above us, over and above the law; Who for us and with us was among the dead; Who, above us, is Himself Life-giving and Life. Again, we believe He is truly the Son of God, neither stripping away the human element by the Divinity, nor undressing the Word of His humanity after the ineffable union, but confessing One and the Same Son Who from two realities was ineffably made manifest as One out of both according to the clear union from above, of course, not under a change of nature. The benefit that will be accrued to those who believe this way, the disciple of Christ makes it known by saying; ‘Whoever confesses that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, God abides in him and he in God.’”
Cyril of Alexandria, Christological Dialogue on the Incarnation
Confessional
“There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions.”
39 Articles, Article I“The Son, which is the Word of the Father, begotten from everlasting of the Father, the very and eternal God, and of one substance with the Father, took Man's nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin, of her substance: so that two whole and perfect Natures, that is to say, the Godhead and Manhood, were joined together in one Person, never to be divided, whereof is one Christ, very God, and very Man; who truly suffered, was crucified, dead, and buried, to reconcile his Father to us, and to be a sacrifice, not only for original guilt, but also for actual sins of men.”
39 Articles, Article II“The Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, being very and eternal God, of one substance and equal with the Father, did, when the fullness of time was come, take upon Him man's nature, with all the essential properties, and common infirmities thereof, yet without sin; being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, in the womb of the virgin Mary, of her substance. So that two whole, perfect, and distinct natures, the Godhead and the manhood, were inseparably joined together in one person, without conversion, composition, or confusion. Which person is very God, and very man, yet one Christ, the only Mediator between God and man.”
WCF, VIII.II“The Son of God, the second person in the Holy Trinity, being very and eternal God, the brightness of the Father’s glory, of one substance and equal with him who made the world, who upholdeth and governeth all things he hath made, did, when the fullness of time was come, take upon him f man’s nature, with all the essential properties and common infirmities thereof, g yet without sin; being conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary, the Holy Spirit coming down upon her: and the power of the Most High overshadowing her; h and so was made of a woman of the tribe of Judah, of the seed of Abraham and David according to the Scriptures; so that two whole, perfect, and distinct natures were inseparably joined together in one person, without conversion, composition, or confusion; which person is very God and very man, yet one i Christ, the only mediator between God and man.”
2LCF, VIII.II“We believe that by being thus conceived the person of the Son has been inseparably united and joined together with human nature, in such a way that there are not two Sons of God, nor two persons, but two natures united in a single person, with each nature retaining its own distinct properties. Thus his divine nature has always remained uncreated, “without beginning of days or end of life” (Heb 7:3), filling heaven and earth. His human nature has not lost its properties but continues to have those of a creature— it has a beginning of days; it is of a finite nature and retains all that belongs to a real body. And even though he, by his resurrection, gave it immortality, that nonetheless did not change the reality of his human nature; for our salvation and resurrection depend also on the reality of his body. But these two natures are so united together in one person that they are not even separated by his death. So then, what he committed to his Father when he died was a real human spirit which left his body. But meanwhile his divine nature remained united with his human nature even when he was lying in the grave; and his deity never ceased to be in him, just as it was in him when he was a little child, though for a while it did not show itself as such. These are the reasons why we confess him to be true God and true man— true God in order to conquer death by his power, and true man that he might die for us in the weakness of his flesh.”
Belgic Confession, Article 19
“Q. Why must he [the mediator] also be true God?
A. So that, by the power of his divinity, he might bear in his humanity the weight of God’s wrath, and earn for us and restore to us righteousness and life.”
Heidelberg Catechism, 17
Steven Duby, Jesus and the God of Classical Theism (Ada, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2022), 325.
Paul Helm, “The Impossibility of Divine Passibility,” in The Power and Weakness of God: Impassibility and Orthodoxy, ed. Nigel M. de S. Cameron (Edinburgh: Rutherford, 1989), 120.
Saint Anselm, Cur Deus Homo, trans. Sidney Norton Deane (Fort Worth, TX: RDMc Publishing, 2005), 15.
Duby, Jesus and the God of Classical Theism, 372.
Heidelberg Q. 17.
Duby, Jesus and the God of Classical Theism, 373.
Ibid.
Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology 3 vols., trans. George Musgrave Giger, ed. James T. Dennison, Jr. (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1997), 2:381.
WLC Q. 38.
Duby, Jesus and the God of Classical Theism, 373
John McGuckin, St. Cyril of Alexandria: The Christological Controversy: Its History, Theology, and Texts (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2004), 333.