Does God have feelings? What does his ‘impassibility’ mean?
“Impassibility” can, on first blush, be a bit of a strange, scary, or even off-putting word, especially ascribed to God! It might make us imagine God as distant, uncaring, even apathetic.
Thankfully, a description of God as impassible is in no way saying that God is uncaring—quite the opposite!
“Impassibility” literally means “without passion.” But it ought not be understood as synonymous with not having any feeling at all; rather, as Todd Billings describes in Rejoicing in Lament, passions are “disordered affections that could make (God’s) loving being and action ebb and flow.” When we think of “passion,” we should think not only of emotion, but of something like the Greek gods (or ourselves!) who, in the stories, sometimes act in impulsive, illogical ways.
The Westminster Confession helps us understand this in chapter 2, section 1: without any contradiction, it describes God as without passion, that is, impassible, and most loving, gracious, merciful—all in the same sentence! The two are not at odds. God’s impassibility means that he is and always will be fully loving, fully merciful, fully gracious. Again, as Billings describes, “God loves in fullness and has the appropriate relational, affective responses to creation. ... God’s affections are never distorted through sinful, disordered passions.”
Our Three Forms of Unity do not engage impassibility quite as specifically, but we, too, profess God’s unchangeability (immutability). In the Belgic Confession, we profess that “there is a single and simple spiritual being, whom we call God—eternal, incomprehensible, invisible, unchangeable, infinite, almighty; completely wise, just, and good, and the overflowing source of all good.” God’s impassibility flows from his immutability, which we confess here: God does not change, and as such, he could never be more or less loving, gracious, and merciful. Rather, he is love, goodness, and holiness.
Theologian Herman Bavinck similarly insists that God “is who he is, eternally transcendent over space and time and far exalted above every creature.” As such, he does not and cannot change. But his “immutability” ought “not be confused with monotonous sameness or rigid immobility.” Instead, God does what only God can do: without any change in and of himself, high and exalted above all else, God enters into relationship with us, his creatures, as the one who “is and remains the same.”
Impassibility, rather than professing an apathetic God, does just the opposite: it professes a God who is love in and of himself, and always acts fully as he is. As God says of himself: “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Ex. 34:6).
About the Author
Jessica Joustra (Ph.D., Fuller Theological Seminary, Vrije Universiteit) is associate professor of systematic theology at Calvin Theological Seminary, serving formerly as assistant professor of religion and theology and director of the Albert M. Wolters Centre for Christian Scholarship at Redeemer University in Ontario, Canada.