IMPOSSIBLE IMPASSIBLE GOD

The first time I heard and read about “Impassibility” as supposedly God’s attribute, it boggled my mind that someone would even come up with such an idea. The Westminster Confession of Faith states that God is “without body, parts, or passions, immutable.”

God does not have passion or emotion? The Bible is replete with passages that describe God showing passion or emotion. They’re aplenty that you will not miss running into them even by reading the Good Book cursorily.

One reason given for thinking that God is impassible is the thought that He is immutable, meaning He cannot change. If He feels emotions, then He changes. If He changes, then He is neither immutable nor impassible. If He is neither, he is not perfect.

It is amazing to me that men erect a Box and try to fit God into it forcibly. This Box is made up of what they conjure up God to be and make those their unbending parameters in telling us what God must be like. Scriptural passages are then explained away to fit their definition.

Do you see the flaw here? Man comes up with what he thinks God should be, then, interpret the Scriptures based on it, instead of the other way around. The Scriptures should shape our concept of God. It is through the Holy Book that He had chosen to reveal Himself to man. Any view not consistent with what the Holy Writ reveals should be cast aside.

So what do the Scriptures say? (As a side note, this question should be asked every time a view is presented to us. Somewhere here, I talk about the Berean Christian mindset.) Accounts of God grieving, relenting/repenting, rejoicing, getting angry, sorrowing, loving, etc. abound.

“Ahh! You are referring to anthropomorphisms,” they’ll quickly say. “You don’t believe that God has arms, wings, and feathers, do you,” their rejoinder further continues.
I admit there are figures of speech in the Bible, but they are there to convey truths about God such as:

Strong arm of the Lord = God is mighty and able to bring about deliverance
Under His wings = God’s protection and provision of security and comfort
God is Rock = He provides security and stability

Now tell me. If grieving, rejoicing, relenting, sorrowing, and loving (these are better referred to as anthropopathism) are not what they are literally, what are we to understand of these ascriptions to God?

If we remove God’s ability to express attributes of personality we run into greater problems. We ended up with an impersonal God unable to relate to us and a static being unable to interact with us, why? because expressions of personality and interactivity are violations of Impassibility and Immutability the way these attributes are presented to us by their proponents.

Do I believe in Immutability? If you mean that God never changes in terms of His love, wisdom, justice, and mercy, and how these attributes intertwine in their operations to achieve God’s noblest goals, I say YES. But to say that God is devoid of passion, and He is beyond the reach of our sufferings and hardships, NO. I reject such notions about God for it appears that the God of the Bible reveals Himself differently.