'God Without Passions' by Samuel D. Renihan

God without Passions: The Majesty of God's Unshakeable Perfection,

by Samuel D. Renihan, Broken Wharfe, 2024, 86pp

Throwing in 'I am passionate about...' has become a hackneyed phrase in Uni personal statements, CVs and job interviews. Beyond the worlds of study and work, someone might say, their real passion in life is for hang gliding, foreign travel, or whatever. In other words, we consider 'passion' to be a highly commendable thing. Someone who professed to lack any sort of driving passion would strike us as rather dull. Depressed, even. 

A book with the title God Without Passions might sound rather off-putting, then. Who'd be interested in a remote, passionless deity? But passions weren't always viewed quite so positively. That struck me only recently when reading John Aaron's Thomas Charles of Bala (Banner of Truth Trust, 2022). Charles lived from 1755-1814. In his day passions tended to be viewed with some suspicion. You wouldn't necessarily admit to harbouring them in a job application.  

Chapter 4 of Aaron's  biography details the preacher's pursuit of and eventual marriage to Sally Jones. When a young man Charles was based in Milbourne Port, Somerset and his beloved Sally in Bala, North Wales. Their long distance courtship was largely conducted by letter. In their correspondence Sally played hard to get and was forever second guessing the purity of her own and Charles's motivation for getting married. What if their budding romance were simply a matter of blind passion, she wondered?  In one of his letters Charles acknowledged, "Passions are unsteady things; they are no sooner excited but they subdue again, and cannot be depended upon." (p. 61). 

With that in mind it is little wonder that the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, 1689 states, 'God is... a most pure spirit,  invisible, without body, parts, or passions' (Chapter 2:1). The Particular Baptists were not being idiosyncratic on this point. They were simply echoing the theological consensus of Reformed Catholic theology. That consensus is beginning to break down in the world of contemporary Evangelicalism (see here). In fact the doctrine of divine impassibility has become the subject of passionately argued debate. 

Renihan doesn't approach the impassibility of God with theological daggers drawn. His approach is irenic, lucid and pastorally motivated. The writer accepts that Scripture itself often speaks of God in terms of a human seeming emotions. In Genesis it is said that prior to the Flood 'the Lord was sorry that he had made man... and it grieved him to his heart' (Genesis 6:6).  In Ezekiel 6:9 the Lord complains about Israel, 'I have been broken over their whoring heart that has departed from me'. 

What are we to make of such language? For a start it is qualified in the pages of Scripture itself. The Lord's statement, 'I regret I have made Saul king' (1 Samuel 15:11) should not be taken at face value. Why? Because of the words we find in the very same chapter, 'the Glory of Israel will not lie or have regret, for he is not a man, that he should have regret.' (1 Samuel 15:29). How may we reconcile these two sayings of the Lord? Well, we need to recognise that in the Scriptures God speaks of himself in accommodated language that is accessible to us, given our human limitations. We often have regrets about decisions we made and opt for a different course of action when things don't work out as we planned. God's plans always work out, including the raising up and removal of Saul. Divine 'regrets', then are merely apparent, signalling the outworking of his eternal decree in this world of time. 

When we confess that God is 'without passions' one thing we are saying is that he is not affected by anything that happens outside of his own being. Nothing can therefore upset God's eternal blessedness or disturb his peace. Human beings are not like that. As Renihan points out, we are creatures of affections and passions. In our affections we are attracted by what we consider good and repelled by what we see as bad. We may be cheered by the kind words of a friend. We may be hurt by the cruel barbs of an enemy. Passions may be defined as twisted affections. They are characterised by undue intensity, or even irrationality. Taken in that sense says Renihan, 'to love is an affection, to lust is a passion; to be angry is an affection, but to rage is a passion'. (p. 21). 

You can see why Sally Jones and Thomas Charles wanted to avoid being motivated to marry merely by blind passion. And clearly, passions so defined cannot be attributed to an eternal and unchanging God. Neither can affections for that matter, for as we have said God is not affected by anything outside of himself. But does that mean when the Bible speaks of the love of God, or the wrath of God, that the Scriptures are merely playing with words? Certainly not. God loves and we love, but while love in humans may be analogous to the  love of God, we don't love as God loves. God is love in the fulness of his infinite, eternal and unchanging being. Similarly with the wrath of God. Unlike us, he isn't provoked into fits of raging fury. Divine anger is the expression of God's unalterable justice when faced with sin.

God's love, justice and faithfulness and so on are not passions or affections, then. They are divine perfections, of which our human equivalents are a shadowy likeness. But in the incarnate Son of God we have one who was both impassible according to his divine nature and who possessed a full range of human feelings, yet without sin. While the Son could not suffer and die as God, he did suffer and die in our place as Man. Because the two natures are united in the person of Christ, we do not say that his human nature was given as a sacrifice for sin. Rather we confess with Paul, 'the Son of God loved me and gave himself for me' (Galatians 2:20). 

Confessing that God is 'without passions' is of great pastoral worth. If the love of God was an affection like ours, his affection might change if the object of his affections changed. But God does not love as we do, because he was attracted to what was good in us. Neither is his love a flash in the pan passion. God loves us with an everlasting love that flows to us from the depths of his being. He loves us even as sinners, which is why he sent his Son to save us by his blood. He loves us as his children, wayward and fickle though we are. It is precisely because God is impassible that Paul can assure suffering saints, 'nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord'. (Romans 8:39). 

We can therefore trust God to keep his promises and rest in his faithfulness, 

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. (Lamentations 3:22-23). 

Samuel Renihan has produced a most helpful introduction to the doctrine of divine impassibility. He wrestles with the biblical text sensitively and draws upon the theological wisdom of the past to illuminate his accessible study. The publisher Broken Wharfe is to be congratulated for making this handsome volume available. Now going for only £4.50.  

Entitled

Who would be a politician, especially today? Our political leaders are forever trying to balance the competing demands of different sectors of society. If they tax the mega-rich to boost the public purse, the wealthy up-sticks and head for low tax regimes like Monaco. An estimated 16,500 dollar millionaires are expected to do exactly that this year. Meanwhile, eight million people are claiming universal credit benefits, with almost half the claimants not even required to look for work. It doesn’t add up, which is why the national debt is skyrocketing. 

Writing in The Times, columnist Matthew Syed argues that a sense of entitlement is holding our country back. It's not just about disappearing millionaires and the ever-growing number of  benefit claimants. As Syed points out, we all know that more new homes need to be built so young adults can get on the property ladder. However,  nimbies are quick to protest if their view of green fields and rolling hills is threatened by a new housing estate. Syed’s prescription for the ‘entitlement epidemic’ is a healthy dose of patriotism. But I wonder whether love for good old Blighty is a strong enough force to make a difference.

In his Letter to the Philippians the apostle Paul urged his readers, “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” Very fine principle. But a sense of entitlement is hard to shift. People are often quicker to demand their rights than fulfil their responsibilities to others. If ever anyone was entitled to anything it was Jesus. Paul describes him as ‘being in the form of God’, resplendent with divine majesty. Yet he was willing to stoop from the heights of heavenly glory to ‘take the form of a servant’, coming into the world as man. More than that, Jesus came to suffer and die on the cross to save his people from sin.

Those who believe in Jesus are called to imitate his attitude by giving due consideration to the interests of others. That applies to the way Christians relate to society, as well as their fellow believers. We should not only insist on our own right to freedom of speech, but also the right of those who may disagree with us. If we can work, we must work and pay our taxes so that decent public services may be provided for the benefit of all. The Christian vision of life helps us move the dial from self-interested entitlement to a pursuit of the common good.

* For various local magazines