Customer Reviews

Divine Impassibility and the Mystery of Human Suffering

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Every once in a while a really great book comes along. This collection of essays by leading Theologians on this very important theological question, is one of those books. All the essays are good. But some are just so clear and helpful. At least in my opinion. The essay by Bruce Marshall, should be read by every Christian who struggles with the question of Suffering and does God suffer with us? Is God Passible, to use the technical Theological phrasing? Like the lyrics to a popular song,.... "is God just a slob like us?" Though the writings of Great Theologians like Moltmann and Jungel, have helped Me a lot in my own journey. I think that the writers who take the God is Impassible view, (The Traditional view), are right. God does not suffer against his will, so to speak. God suffers in taking on Human nature in the incarnation of God, in Jesus Christ. Out of Love for us! God does not suffer passively as we do, except by choice in living a human life in this Truly messed up World! I think that Marshall, Weinandy and Hart, make their case. Though believe Me, I sympathize with the "God suffers in his own ontlogical being"! I have lived long enough now to have experienced some very sorrowful things personally, and I will admit to sort of shaking my fist at God, more than once. This is a concept that a person is likely to go back and forth on, I think. I would imagine that even the writers who wrote the Impassible essays in this volume, may sometimes emotionally feel the desire, that God should suffer "Against His will". Like we human beings suffer. Still there is an apologetic point in that God chose to suffer with us, as one of us, in the life and death of Jesus. But God did not have to do so. He was not obliged to suffer for us. However there are many Theologians and Philosophers who say that God made "Himself" morally just by suffering. A sort of pay back for Creating this World, that has turned out so badly, at least it often seems to have. Of course that view opens up so many other questions and enigmas, and I can't go there in this short review. Well, I have rambled on, I know. My thoughts on this are often all over the board. My heart is with the Passiblilist, but my mind has to side with the impassiblists. Anyways this is a very good book on Christian Theology. I recommend it highly. Thank You. Richard from Bradford PA

The trend amongst Catholics to re-write history in the most egregious fashion has been a great puzzlement to me. It did not exist so strongly in the past, which can be figured-out just by reading some of the old and excellent Church histories of the past. But it was clear to me that if this trend is as pronounced as it seemed to be that there had to be an underlying rationale bolstering it. That is just the way Catholic theology works. Well, EUREKA!!! I have found it. Thanks to a quite funny article in the National Catholic Reporter detailing the views of the Catholic Bishops chief theologian Weinandy. I will excerpt from this in this review because it is so colorful. He calls theologians a "curse". But it is in investigating his theological reflections that I found the mother load on what is prompting all this historical fabrication amongst Catholics. It has to do with this apparently vigorous and important debate amongst Catholics on "Divine Impassibility". The important and relevant part is Weinadny's riposte to another scholar (Jenson) and crucially the history-destroying conceptual ends he is willing to go to in order to accomplish his ends. Weinandy's view is amongst the most extreme intellectual reflections I have ever read. For all of Western history the reality of the world and history has been various things, but it has always at least been some sort of problem in its facticity to be dealt with. But not for Weinandy's unprecedented views. In fact for him the historical lives of human beings only have reality if they are relating to the mystery of the Trinity. This can only mean, logically, that anyone or anything that is not relating to the mystery of the Trinity has no reality at all. There is no other way to read this man's conclusions. This means also that historical events have no reality or even meaning if they do not serve the human need to find themselves in relation to the Trinity. Here is the mother load. The unprecendented and quite demented totalization of religious consciousness. It is a totalitarian religious doctrine, and it has little relation to the actual theological praxis of the actual theologians of the past who are being cited. The assumpptions of their culture precluded such a totalization. It is ironically and dark side of Enlightenement efficiency detached and unconscious in this man's digressions that allows for such am history destroying totalization. But at least now there is an explanation. And the fact that he is the head theologian for the Catholic Bishops and thus his thought has their imprimatur, says everything. Here is the article:


"Theologians can be a "curse and affliction upon the church," according to the U.S. bishops' top official on doctrine, if their work is not grounded in church teaching and an active faith life, and ends up promoting "doctrinal and moral error."
Capuchin Fr. Thomas Weinandy, executive director of the Secretariat for Doctrine at the U.S. bishops' conference, has warned of a "crisis" in Catholic theology, caused by theologians who "often appear to possess little reverence for the mysteries of the faith as traditionally understood and presently professed within the church."
Those remarks came in a May 26 address to the Academy of Catholic Theology in Washington, D.C., and were published in July in Origins, the official documentary service of the U.S. bishops.
Weinandy is the head of staff for the bishops' committee that recently issued a strong, and controversial, critique of a book on the Trinity by St. Joseph Sr. Elizabeth Johnson of Fordham University in New York. The bishops asserted that Johnson's 2007 book on the Trinity, Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God, "completely undermines the Gospel and the faith of those who believe in the Gospel."
Many U.S. theologians have rallied to Johnson's defense, including the administrative board of the Catholic Theological Society of America.
In his address, Weinandy did not mention Johnson or any other theologian. His analysis, however, would seem to form part of the background to the dispute over Johnson's work.
NCR - September 16, 2011
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The divine call to do theology, Weinandy said, is "one of the greatest honors that God can bestow upon a human being," but that honor implies a responsibility of "promoting, advancing and defending" philosophical and theological truth as taught by the church.
Too often, Weinandy said, theology degrades into an "intellectual game," based on "the fun of being cleverly and sophisticatedly entertaining, or the thrill and buzz that comes with academic sparring."
Weinandy stressed that theology should also be grounded in an active spiritual life, citing a 1990 instruction from the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that scientific research must be united with prayer.
Sometimes, Weinandy said, that doesn't seem to be the case.
"Theology may be the only academic pursuit where one can seemingly be considered a theologian without actually having to know the subject matter," he said. "It would appear at times that a theologian need not actually know God."
Weinandy, 65, holds a doctorate in historical theology from King's College in London and is a former professor of theology at Oxford University. He's served as the U.S. bishops' chief of staff for doctrinal issues since 2005.
In his May 26 address, Weinandy strongly defended the idea that a Catholic theologian should have a mandate, or license, from the local bishop. Such a mandate does not curb their freedom, he argued, but gives their vocation "a dignity and gravity that it truly deserves."
Weinandy devoted a section to "the present crisis within Catholic theology."
"Much of what passes for contemporary Catholic theology," he said, "often is not founded upon an assent of faith in the divine deposit of revelation as proclaimed in the sacred scriptures and developed within the living doctrinal and moral tradition of the church."
Instead, he said, much Catholic theology has become "an attempt by reason to pass judgment on the content of the faith as if it were of human origin," with theologians as "judges who stand above the faith and arbitrate what is to be believed and what is not."
That approach, Weinandy said, "sometimes undermines genuine faith within the body of Christ" and ends up leading people "into the darkness of error." It also, he said, "inevitably produces fragmentation within the church."
Weinandy acknowledged that over the centuries, the Catholic church has recognized different "schools" of theology.
Yet today, he said, "the church is experiencing not a debate among legitimate schools of theological thought, but a radical divide over the central tenets of the Catholic faith and the church's fundamental moral tradition."
"This is not simply an expression of a plurality of Catholic theologies," Weinandy said, "but the very disintegration of the Catholic faith itself."
Weinandy says there must be a distinction between binding church teaching and the opinions of theologians, yet "much of the present theological academy misunderstands, neglects or is simply unaware" of that difference.
The Academy of Catholic Theology held its first national conference in 2008, and according to its Web site, has roughly 80 members. Speaking on background, a prominent American theologian said the group was founded by colleagues who regard the Catholic Theological Society of America as "too anti-magisterium in tone and too one-sided in content.""

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