You are right that God experienced passion in His human nature, but He does not and cannot experience passion in His divine nature. This is because He is eternal and unchanging.

His love of God the Father as expressed in obedience to God the Father appears to me to be a passion that transcended the emotion of the fear of death. I believe that passion is the right word for what occurred in the Garden and continued through the Crucifixion. If that is correct, then God the Son passionately loves God the Father, and based on what occurred, it would appear that God the Father passionately loves us. I believe this because the Church uses the word “passion” to describe what occurred on Thursday night and Friday, and that word must be applied to the Person undergoing that trial; and might reasonably be applied to how the Father loves us.

You noted “passions just like us” in your response. Our passions are fallen and are at least occasionally expressed in a fallen response. That issue did not occur with Jesus Who did not suffer from the fall. The fall not withstanding, we have a record of those who imitated their Lord in life and in death, and their passion for Him is why they are notable.

Grace is intended to perfect nature. I believe that the depth of what He did was so profound, and even pervasive, that we don’t know we are – on occasion – imitating Him albeit unknowingly.

I noted that Marines are trained to die in place. I believe that this is one of those ideas that is so profound and even pervasive that a particular military establishment with a brilliant record in its field of endeavour – knowingly or unknowingly – decided that there are times when it might require that command. In order to do so, one must love a person or an ideal so greatly that one is willing to die in place, no matter the fear that must be evident in the situation. One need not equate this with Our Lord, one might point to the Spartans as a similar ideal, but the Marines were formed long after the Spartans had ceased to be recognized for anything in a time when Our Lord was recognized. Proximity in time would seem to me to be a better indicator for this consideration.

Cordially,

dt

I’m having trouble understanding what you mean. Are you saying that God is subject to passions just like us because of the passion of Christ during the original Easter Triduum?

Passion is the right word. It is highly descriptive and is easily associated with the fact that He did not run away from what was to occur. Having been a Marine, we called it “die in place.” If things are going horribly wrong, it was expected so that others might prepare or escape. No love, no die in place.

That qualifying distinction helps a lot. Just so I am understanding correctly, is St. Thomas saying that love, joy and delight are not passions because they are not of the sensitive appetite, but since they are part of the intellective appetite they are nevertheless real, just not sensitive and complex like ours? If we cannot properly call them passions, then what do we call them? Do we have intellective appatites as well, and if so, is our love, joy and delights properly attributed to this appetite, therefore rendering them non-passions? Thanks for the comment.

Would you agree that even though the passions said of God are not the same kind as ours (in the sense of mood, i.e. God goes from a good mood to bad mood), they are nevertheless real, perhaps more real, and more certain than ours?

Yes, absolutely. I’m glad that came across despite my lack of articulation. It’s a difficult thought to express fully but that is the precise link I wanted to make between the “divine metaphor” and God’s immutability especially regarding the passions.

Bryan is right about the passions. You’ll find that the passage in the Summa he quoted is listed above (in part) in footnote number 7. Thanks for the clarification Bryan.

In any case, if the passions we see attributed to God in the scripture are not real in any way, then, since love is a passion

Love is not fundamentally a passion; only in us is love accompanied by passion, because we are material beings. But in angels and in God, love is without passion. Aquinas explains:

[A]cts of the sensitive appetite, inasmuch as they have annexed to them some bodily change, are called passions; whereas acts of the will are not so called. Love, therefore, and joy and delight are passions; in so far as they denote acts of the intellective appetite, they are not passions. It is in this latter sense that they are in God. Hence the Philosopher says (Ethic. vii): “God rejoices by an operation that is one and simple,” and for the same reason He loves without passion. (Summa Theologica I Q.20 ad 1.)

But with that qualification, the rest of your comment is correct.

In the peace of Christ,

- Bryan

I think we may pretty much agree, and the problem may only be misunderstanding on my part, or semantics, but consider the following for clarification:

Would you agree that even though the passions said of God are not the same kind as ours (in the sense of mood, i.e. God goes from a good mood to bad mood), they are nevertheless real, perhaps more real, and more certain than ours?

In any case, if the passions we see attributed to God in the scripture are not real in any way,then, since love is a passion, it cannot properly be attributed to God as a real passion. So, it would seem that the love of God is not really love, but is just portrayed that way for our limited human understanding. However, if God’s love is a real passion, then it must also be that his anger/wrath are real as well. For, since the love of God is for all that is good–principally himself, all that proceeds from himself, or is derived from him, and properly magnifies his Glory–then all that is bad and evil–those things which are not ordered toward him, the principal good, and do not magnify his Glory–God must necessarily hate, for he cannot love those things. Thus in this sense we can understand God to be immutable, because of the (intrinsic) unchanging nature of his will and disposition toward the Good (i.e. himself), yet his disposition toward us may change based on an intrinsic change in us, for we can be disposed to either good or evil intrisically, while God cannot. But this change in his disposition toward us in no way entails that he has changed intrinsically in respect to his will and ultimate disposition (i.e. toward himself, the good). In other words, that God is unchanging in his will and intrinsic disposition toward the good is the very reason he must necessarily change in his disposition toward us when we do evil, and this we should understand to be no less than a real anger (if his love is real love) and a real execution of that anger in judgment if it pleases him to pour out his wrath. It would rather make sense to say that a change in God’s disposition toward us is more like an accidental change by virtue of his immutable nature, but is nevertheless a real passionate change.

Furthermore, I think this helps establish your point above about penal atonement where the doctrine of imputation must be false because it entails an accidental change toward us without an intrisic change in us, thus necessarily causing an intrinsic change in God. For, if God is unchanging in his disposition toward the good, then for him to make an arbitrary change in his disposition toward us sinners, without an intrinsic change in us toward the good, would be in defiance of his own nature which must always and necessarily be disposed to the good.

Any change in God at all would entail that He is mutable because that’s what mutability means. The passions are not properly attributed to God in the sense that God is moved by passions as you and I are (e.g. that He sees something that makes Him angry or something happens that causes His “mood” to change). Passions are properly said of God because we find them in Scripture. However, they must be understood in the correct sense. Anger/wrath as spoken of God in scripture is not the same thing as anger/wrath spoken of men. Acts of the inellective appetite on the other hand (see footnote in the article) are properly attributed to God because they proceed from the will.

Sorry for the brevity I gotta go for now.

Tim,

Are you saying here that since God is immutable he is necessarily dispassioned, and that only our understanding of his having passions is only analogy–that they are not real passions? And, that a change in a passion (i.e. his disposition toward us) necessarily entails that he is mutable?