Good morning, everybody. Let's get started. I thought we had a little more time, but Tempus Fugit. Let's continue our study of our confession of faith in chapter two, paragraph one, as we study our God and the doctrine of theology proper. And last week, we looked at divine immutability, that God does not change and cannot be changed. And this week, we're looking at what I would call a subset of immutability called divine impassibility, not impassability. That means you can't cross something. If you come to a raging river, it's impassable. You can't pass it with an A, passable. We're not talking about that. We're talking about impassible, impassable. which we will explain, but people often confuse and misspell divine impassibility as divine impassability, which is not what we're dealing with here. And this is in our confession of faith, when we say that God is without passions, and also it says who is immutable. So if God is immutable and without passions, what does that mean? What is the doctrine of divine impassibility? And as you may discern from the word itself, impassible, this is a negation. So divine impassibility is the negation or denial of all passion or possibility of passion in God. Now that just pushes the question back. What's passion? Impassibility is the negation of passion. We say that God is without passions. What are passions or what is a passion? And a passion, as you can discern to some degree from the word itself, it's a happening. It's an undergoing. It's something that happens to you. The word A passion, you can see, shares a root with passive. When you are passive, something is happening to you. A passion is an instance of something happening to you. It's a happening to you. We'll explain this as we continue. So a passion is when you are moved. A passion is a motion. You have been moved, and you can move in one of two directions. So a passion is a movement either where we are drawn. We are drawn towards something that we perceive as good. So we move towards what we think is good. That's a passion. That's a motion. That's a movement. Or the inverse, the opposite of this, is we may be moved away from or repulsed by something that we perceive as bad. So passions are going to be motions. They're motions towards attraction, towards what you think is good or you perceive to be good, and a rejection and a repulsion away from what we perceive as evil. So you're moving towards something or away from something, depending on whether you perceive it to be good or evil, or good or bad. These are the motions or the passions that we possess as humans, as creatures. And these are the movements or the motions, or sometimes we call them emotions, as other things move us. Other things move us away or toward what we perceive as good or bad. And because these motions are opposites, either towards something or away from something, good and bad, it gives us a list of opposites, pairs of opposites, which you have in your handout in this chart. So each level is a pair of opposites, love and hate. are passions, they are emotions or movements. Love is when you are drawn to something that you perceive as good. Hate is when you perceive something as bad and you are repulsed by it, you move away from it. Love causes good to be done to something that you perceive as good. Hate is when you lash out and you harm someone because you perceive them as evil. desire or attraction when it's the fellowship meal day and you're walking down the tables, you are perceiving things. And you are perceiving them as good or not so good. depending on your personal preferences. There's team mayo, and then there's team no, never mayo, and there's team pineapple on pizza, and then there's team never pineapple on pizza, and all kinds of things, spicy food good, spicy food bad. People have different preferences, and so as you walk by that table of food, for some things, you feel a desire and an attraction, and you put them on your plate. And then there's other things that you feel a repulsion, and you think, oh, I would never put that on my plate. Who brought this? And it's probably better we don't know who brought it. That food on the table is changing you. That food on the table is moving you. It's, you are quite really responding to it and acting in response to that food that you perceive as good or bad. And it happens, it's constantly changing. Maybe you perceive something as good and you put it on your plate, you sit down and you start eating it and then you think, oh no, this is not good. It looked good, I perceived it as good and I was attracted to it, but now that I taste it, I'm now perceiving it in a new way as bad And you think, is there any way for me to throw this away without anyone noticing? I don't want to waste food. I'll wait and see if there's lots of food left over and wait, now I'm just telling you what I would do. But what's the point is where we are constantly processing information and we're perceiving where we are understanding things, at least in our own perception, as good or bad, and we love them, or we hate them, or we desire them, or we are repulsed by them. Joy and sadness, you get good news, the Bruins won the big game, sports team wins, oh joy, sports team loses, oh no, sadness. Good or bad, you are moved by those things. hope or despair and trust and confidence, distrust and fear. Many of these things overlap. If you're in a battle and you see your champion go out on the field, it moves you to courage, it moves you to confidence. Let's go with him. I'll run, I'll go into the battlefield because this person is strong and they know how to fight and they know what to do. I'm moved by them. Or you see a little shepherd boy with some stones and a sling and everyone says, I am not going out onto the battlefield with that kid. No thanks. mercy and wrath, we see one person and we have pity on them and we help them. We see another person, we pour out vengeance or cruelty, perhaps even, onto someone we perceive as bad. So, these motions are relative to perceiving something as good or bad, and they depend on an external object or objects, things outside of us. When you walk into the sanctuary, you are analyzing the spread of people, and which people, and which pews, and where you want to sit, and this placement of lights and speakers, and you select, I want to sit here because this is what I think is good. and another person picks a different seat. They say, well, this is close to the exit. I can get out as fast as possible. People are perceiving things as good or bad, and they respond. The room is changing you. If you're walking down the fellowship meal line, and you see food that looks really good, and then someone sneezes on it, now it's not good. Your emotions, your passions, in all of them, things are happening to you. So let's develop this a little bit further. What is necessary for a passion to take place? What is necessary for a passion to happen to you? Well, it's very helpful to think in terms of an agent, someone who does something, and a patient, which is someone who receives the action of an agent. So a patient has the same root meaning as passive and passion. Pati is the root here. We might talk about something that's compatible. It has the same feeling. It has the same sensation. It has the same experience. Pati and passive and passion, they're all the same root meaning. So in a patient, is someone who is suffering, or not suffering in the sense of pain, but undergoing. A patient is receiving, undergoing, suffering the action of an agent. The agent operates, and the patient suffers or receives the action of an agent. So in order for a passion to take place, you must be capable of being a patient. There must be an agent that can operate on you. You have to be capable of being a patient. You must be capable of being moved or actualized by external forces. Remember that very technical word, actualized. You move from potentiality to actuality. Potentiality is that capacity to be or possibility to be. And actuality is being. It's realized being. And so when a passion happens, your potentiality to be moved in such and such a direction is actualized by an agent. An agent actualizes a patient. So you need to be capable, you need to have passive potency or passive potentiality that can be actualized by a patient, excuse me, by an agent. And when an agent actualizes your potentiality, that's a passion. So you need to be capable of being moved into a new state of being or out of your current state of being. You need to be capable of being actualized by external forces, by an agent. You need to be passable. You need to be passable, able to, passable, able to experience a passion, able to be acted upon. And to be a creature, to be us, is to be a patient of so many agents all the time. I already said, the air conditioning vents, and the lights, and the speakers, and other people, you're the patient of all of those things. Oh, it's too loud here. It's too quiet there. It's not comfortable enough here. The porridge is too hot. The porridge is too cold. The porridge is just right. All kinds of things are changing you. One of my favorite illustrations for impassibility, or rather for passability, is the Snickers commercial tagline, you're not you when you're hungry. You know, they show an ornery man or woman who's complaining and just awful to deal with, and then they give them a Snickers bar and they transform into a completely different, normal, well-balanced person. And they say, you're not you when you're hungry. We use that word hangry, you're hungry, angry. You know, what's wrong with you? I'm just hungry. Well, that's the way we are. A lack of food can really bother us and make us ornery and upset, or when food is delayed, we become more and more angry. You're not you when you're hungry. We have passions of the body, and we have passions of the soul. So my body is capable of being moved into various states and conditions as well as my soul is. So for example, when I become hungry, or when I become thirsty, or when I become tired, or when I start to sweat, or if I bleed, each of these would be a passion of the body as my bodily appetites or faculties are moved in a variety of ways. Towards hunger or away from hunger, as I don't eat or I do eat. Towards thirst, away from thirst, as I drink or I don't drink. Towards health or away from health, as I heal myself or as I'm hurt or harmed by other people. That's why we sometimes speak of the passion of our Lord, the things that Jesus suffered, not just in his body, but certainly in his body, on the cross and everything leading up to the cross. But there are also passions of the soul, which are really the ones that we've described in this list, this chart of love and hate and desire and repulsion. I'm moved to sadness. I'm moved to happiness. But there are passions of the body and passions of the soul. And it's important to say that passions are not necessarily sinful. They're just creaturely. It's a way of being as a creature. There's nothing wrong with loving. There's nothing wrong with being joyful or hopeful or being hungry or being thirsty or tired. Those aren't sins. They're just a creaturely way of existing and being. So if they're not sins, why do we negate them to be in God? Why do we say that God is impassable? Why do we negate passion in God? Here are some answers. Because God is, I am that I am. We have used the divine name time and time again, rightly so, to assert God's aseity, that he is of none. He is in and of himself. To assert God's simplicity. He is most pure spirit. He's pure, perfect being with no passive potency. God is just pure actuality, pure act. I am that I am is of himself all that he is perfectly and infinitely and eternally, and he cannot change or be changed. I Jehovah, I the Lord, change not. So if there's no passive potency in I am that I am, then I am that I am can never be the patient of an agent. There's no agent in the created world, and there's nothing other than the created world, there's no agent in the created world that could make God its patient, where they operate on God and change God and move God. God can never be the patient of an agent, because he's I am that I am. And if God can't be the patient of an agent because there's no potency in him for an agent to actualize, not to mention the fact that a created thing couldn't operate on its creator, then God is impassable. He has no passions, and he's incapable of passion. Now this raises big questions in people's mind, and rightly so, because there's more to explain. We have to remember that impassibility is just one half of the answer. That's the negation. So you start out with a negation of passion, but people then ask the question, so God doesn't have love? If love is a passion and God has no passions, God doesn't have love, I don't understand. This doesn't make sense. What we are negating is love as a passion in God, which leads us to an affirmation, that's the other half, the other side of this, where we say that God doesn't have passions, he has perfections. to love as a passion, as a motion, as a movement that you have been moved into, is to love in a way that you can be moved out of. If your love is a passion, and for all of us that's the case, our love is a passion, it's something we can be moved into, and it's something we can be moved out of. And so it is an imperfect way of loving. To love as a passion is an imperfect way of possessing love or exercising love, but God doesn't have passions. He has perfections. And so God's love is not something that he's moved to. Rather, God's love is his pure, perfect, infinite, simple being. The scriptures say God is love. And so we are loving, it's a quality that sometimes we show or possess, but we are not love. God is not loving, God is love. It's not a quality, it's not a state of being, it is God himself. That means that his love is not a passion that he has been moved to by perceiving some goodness in something, rather his love is a perfection, it is his very being. And since it is his very being, he can no more cease to be loving, or to be loved, than he can cease to be God. Because it's not a part of him, it's not a state of being, it's not emotion, it is his being. So the negation of passion in God clears away the being of God in our minds to then see more clearly the perfection of his love. So impassibility does not take away love from God, it rather more clearly shows the wondrous perfection of God's love. He's the most loving. And that's why our confession of faith later on in this chapter will describe God in this way. Most loving, we are loving, but God is, he is love itself. So God doesn't possess love and he can't be moved to love. His love is not a passion or emotion or an emotion. His love is rather a perfection. Here's a short quote from Edward Lee. He says, the attributes of God are everlasting, constant, and unchangeable, forever in him at one time as well as another. This may minister comfort to God's people. God's attributes are not mutable accidents, changeable properties that could be added or subtracted from God, but rather his attributes are his very essence, his being. His love and mercy are like unto himself, infinite, immutable, and eternal. Many people who have begun to learn about the doctrine of divine impassibility only hear the negation side, and they think they're losing. They think this doesn't make any sense. God does not have love or joy or hope or such things. We'd say he doesn't have those things as passions. Rather, he has perfections, and all these perfections are one simple perfection in God, which we perceive in different ways. But he's not losing anything. Rather, we are seeing more clearly the glory and the majesty of God. Now let's raise and answer some questions that take very seriously the scriptures. Because if you read through the scriptures, you're going to read God being described in the language of human emotion or human passion regularly throughout the whole Bible. And so for many people, or for some people, when they begin to learn about divine impassibility, it seems to have an immediate or inherent improbability. Impassibility seems very improbable at the start because God time and time again throughout the scriptures is described in the language of human passions. And so they would say, this seems to contradict with a very face value reading of the scriptures, and we need to take that seriously. If the scriptures say, no, this is the being of God, this is the way that God is, then we need to adjust our theology accordingly. And if the scriptures speak of God so many times in the language of human passions, how should we understand this? Can the doctrine of divine impassibility be reconciled with the passionate language that's used to describe God throughout the scriptures? So the first question or objection is this. but does not the Bible speak of God in the language of changing passions? And does not this Bible say that the spirit can be grieved? Can you move the spirit to grief? Paul says, and do not grieve the Holy Spirit. So let's read some verses. Numbers 25 and verse 11. Phinehas has turned back my wrath from the people of Israel so that I did not consume the people of Israel in my jealousy. So God is described as jealous for his people and going to destroy them, but his wrath was turned back. That would seem like God has been moved into different emotional states. Deuteronomy chapter nine verses seven through eight says, remember and do not forget how you provoked the Lord your God to wrath in the wilderness. So God can be provoked to wrath. It would seem that God has been moved to wrath as he perceives badness and is repulsed by something or moves away from it. From the day you came out of the land of Egypt until you came to this place, you have been rebellious against the Lord. Even at Horeb, you provoked the Lord to wrath, and the Lord was so angry with you that he was ready to destroy you. That sounds like, I'm gonna wring your little neck. Ephesians 4.30, and do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God. So the Holy Spirit can be grieved. People read these verses, and we could add many, many, many more to this list, and they say, I've gotta tell you, Pastor, your doctrine of divine impassibility seems to me inherently improbable based on these kinds of scriptures that read in a very straightforward way as describing God in emotional states or moving from one passion to another. How do we understand this and why has the church throughout its history which has had the same Bible all along, asserted and taught and confessed the doctrine of divine impassibility. Well, there's a very long quotation we're going to read through from Lancelot Andrews that answers all of these questions in a very excellent way. And so that's what I want to do for really the majority of our time and maybe pause and comment as we go. He's going to answer really all the questions. So he asks, Lancelot Andrews says, but I ask, can we grieve the spirit of God that is God? Can we grieve God? Can he be grieved? Indeed, they be two questions. So Lancelot says, if you ask the question, can we grieve God and can God be grieved, that's actually two different questions. First, can we? And secondly, can he? I should answer somewhat strangely but truly to say, we can and he cannot. For we may on our parts grieve, that is, do what in us lies to grieve him. We can do that which is grievous. and with him the endeavor, our effort, is all. And to do what we can is taken as having been done, though the effect follow not." So we can do that which is grievous, we can do that which grieves. This we can. In this effort to grieve God, we can so badly demean ourselves. As if it were possible by any means in the world that grief could be made to fall into the divine essence, we would do that. We should provoke it in him. We should even draw it from him. But let us thank the high, super-eminent perfection of his nature that is not capable of it. If it were, if God's essence, if God's being were capable of being grieved and moved to grief, or any way could be, we would put him to it. So if God could be grieved, we would grieve him. He continues. Now I find in the gospel from our Savior's own mouth, he that looks on a woman with lust after her has, on his part, committed adultery with her. The woman in the meanwhile, remaining chaste, has never once thinking of any such matter. Then, if the one party may be an adulterer, and the other, as I may say, not adultered, why not, in like sort, one grieve, and yet the other be not grieved? But God forbid it should lie in the power of flesh to work any grief in God, or that we should once admit this idea that the deity is subject to this or the like perturbations, to be perturbed, to be moved, to be provoked. So he's saying God forbid that we should think that flesh and creatures could make God be grieved or any like perturbation, in other words, move him to any passion, that we be, we are subject to them. And yet, both this passion of grief and diverse others, such as anger, repentance, jealousy, we read them ascribed to God in scripture. And yet, as ascribed in one place, so denied as flatly in another. One where it is said, it repented God, he had made Saul king. In the same place, by and by after, the strength of Israel is not as man that he can repent. One where God was touched with grief of heart, that's in Genesis six, right before the flood. Another, there is with him the fullness of all joy forever, which excludes all grief quite. How is it then? How are we to understand this? Thus. that when they are denied, that is to set out unto us the perfect steadiness of the divine nature, no ways obnoxious, that's the older meaning, it's older meaning is liable or susceptible, no ways liable to these, our imperfections. So he's saying that the scriptures tell us in certain places that if God is blessed forever, then it's impossible that he should experience grief. And if God says he does not repent, then he does not repent, because God's being is not liable or susceptible to these imperfections. He continues, because the question is, well, then why do the scriptures speak of God in this way? But when they are ascribed to God, it is for no other end, but even to speak in a human way for our infirmity or weakness, to speak to us our own language and in our own terms, so to work with us the better, to speak to us on a level that we may understand and using language that we can relate to because it matches our experience. He explains what this means. lightly men do nothing so seriously as when they do it in passion. So when someone really wants to do something, they do it in passion, nor indeed anything thoroughly at all, or as we say, home, to do something home, unless it be edged with some kind of affection. Consequently, such is our dull capacity. We never sufficiently take impression that God will do this or that to purpose, except he be represented unto us as we ourselves tend to be when we go through with a matter. When someone does something completely or thoroughly, they do it in a passionate way. So he's saying the scriptures describe God in passionate language to communicate the thoroughness and fullness of his actions. then he gives specific instances comparing man's passion and God described in this language. In punishing, we pay not home, we don't go all the way through with it, unless we be angry. When God then is to punish, he is presented unto us as angry, to note to us that he will proceed as effectually as if he were so indeed. Although, the implication, although he is not angry as a passion. We are not careful enough, we think, of that which we love, unless there be with our love some mixture of jealousy. When God then would show how cherry, or careful to preserve us, he is of the entireness of our love towards him, he is said to be a jealous God. He loves and he loves in a way that will not allow us to have other allegiances, and yet there's no jealousy properly so called in God. We alter not what once we have set down, but when we repent. When God then changes his course formerly held, he is made as if he did repent, though so to do were ever his purpose. This is what we said last week. that what God decrees from all eternity, we witness and experience in successive moments of time. So if God decreed to make Saul king and then to remove Saul from the kingship, it was not that God changed his mind or learned something, it's that God had decreed both to set up Saul and to tear down Saul's throne, but we experience it in time. And so it is said to be a repentance, but God has not repented. And so here, he's coming back to do not grieve the Holy Spirit. And so here, we withdraw not ourselves from whom we have conversed with before, but upon some grievance. When the Spirit of God then withdraws himself for a time and leaves us, he is brought in or described as grieved. For that, if it were otherwise delivered, it would not so affect us, nor make in us the impression that this way it does. so that grieve him not, that is, in direct terms, give him not cause to do that which in grief men tend to do, to withdraw himself and to forsake you. If ye do, believe this, he will certainly give you over, or as certainly give you over, as if he were grieved in earnest. This is from St. Augustine, Lancelot Andrews says. So he's saying that when we do that which is grievous to God, God is not thereby grieved, and yet God may hide his face from us in a way of fatherly discipline, which is what men do when they are grieved. But it's not that we have provoked and caused a grief in God. And God doesn't do that as a, I'm mad at you, response. Because we've grieved Him, it was His eternal purpose so to do. So Lancelot Andrews is showing us that God is described in the language of human passions to communicate with us in a way we can relate to and understand. But the scriptures also, we said this last week, the scriptures also describe the being of God, the nature of God, in certain ways that prevent us from reading these descriptions of God in emotional language as a one-to-one correlation with God. We would say, okay, God is described in the language of human emotion, but he does not have emotions and passions, he has perfections, and I need to read this in a way that keeps in mind and protects the majesty and indeed impassibility of God. And the more you learn to do that, the more familiar with it you become, and it doesn't confuse you anymore. It just takes some time because we read these things at such a surface level oftentimes. Well, if it says that God was provoked to wrath, then God was provoked to wrath. And if it says that God was so jealous, then he was so jealous. And people oftentimes feel resistant to the idea that, but in other passages, God has so described his nature that that can't be what's happening in him. And as Lancelot Andrews said... If we could, we would. If God's divine nature was susceptible to grief being cast into it by creatures, what would the sin of man all around the world be doing to God every day, all day, forever, so long as this earth persists? There'd be a constant pouring of grief into the essence of God, into the nature of God by man's horrendous acts and even thoughts. that God knows. He knows the desires and the intents of the heart, not to mention the things that we do or don't do that we ought to do. If all of this could grieve God, He would be grieved. But Lancelot Andrews reminds us, let us thank the eminent majesty of God that He is not susceptible. So if we ask the question, can we grieve God and can God be grieved? It's two different questions. And yes, we can, but no, He cannot. We can do that which is grievous. but God cannot be grieved. And that is a comfort to us. That is a comfort to God's people, that he doesn't deal with us like an angry, passable father. He deals with us as a wise and loving father. And his discipline and chastisement is not a response to us in the sense that God has had to come up with some kind of way to react to us, but rather it is what God has decreed should take place from before the foundation of the world. And we are experiencing changes, but God has not changed. Just as when the clouds fall, or the clouds cover the earth and the rain falls, and we are cold and wet, there is a sun shining above them all the while. And so what has changed is my experience of the sun, but the sun has not changed at all. So also when God disciplines his children, he has not ceased to love them. He's not stopped loving them. He's causing them to experience the hiding of his face and his chastisement. It is our experience that is changing. The unchanging God is changing us as we experience Him in different ways. If I experience His chastisement or His comfort, those are both different ways in which I experience the singular, simple perfection of God. Second question, ever so briefly, as we bring this to a conclusion. People will ask, rightly so, but doesn't Jesus weep? Didn't Jesus become angry at the Pharisees and the tax collectors and the people that turned the temple into a market? Didn't Jesus sweat and hunger and thirst and bleed and even die? Jesus seems very passable. We would say, absolutely, Jesus is man. Jesus is God incarnate, and according to his human nature, Jesus experienced all of those things, and the writer to the Hebrews calls Jesus a high priest who can sympathize. Let me just add this to the list. He can sympathize, which is really the same word as compatible. He can suffer with us, he can feel what we feel as a man according to his human nature. And so Jesus was the patient of many agents. Jesus experienced many passions in the body and in the soul. He's a high priest who can sympathize with our weaknesses. We might say he's compatible with us. But that's all according to his human nature, a true human nature, just like ours. Because passions are not necessarily sinful, they're just creaturely. And so that Jesus in taking a true human nature unto himself, or God the Son taking a true human nature unto himself, it is a passable human nature. And we have no reason to deny that. In fact, to deny that would be to deny a true incarnation. So we affirm the passability of Jesus' body and his soul, never overcome and yet certainly passable. And not to confuse you, but Jesus in the resurrection has so given us a body that the body will be impassable. not impassable in the sense of divine impassability, but a body that's not susceptible to decay, to wounds, or to any kind of harm. A body that cannot be acted upon to dissolve it, or decompose it, or decay it in any way, shape, or form. So there is maybe a lowercase I impassibility that the the resurrected body and soul will have a soul that cannot be moved to sinful desires a soul that that a body without any appetites that could be moved beyond the limits that God has set in body and soul our resurrected glorified nature will be impassable and Not that we will cease to be patients, but we will not be susceptible to certain agents anymore, which is a wonderful thing to consider. Never moved again to sorrow, never moved again to sin, never moved again to suffering in body or soul. That is an impassibility that we will experience when we enjoy, in the intermediate state, an impassable soul, and in the resurrected state, an impassable body and soul. So I would encourage you to reread this quotation from Lancelot Andrews because it condenses all of the arguments into one really nice quotation. That's why I gave it to you and read it with you. It's very helpful. And that concludes our lesson on divine impassibility.