This is not about something I know that you don’t. This is mainly an encouragement to study theology. I don’t want you to be afraid to study theology, or be discouraged from it.
I subscribe to a lot of doctrines. I’m Reformed — which means there are a lot of boxes I have to check. At any given time I might describe myself as a reformed baptist, a Calvinist, a postmillennialist, a cessationist, a covenantalist, a preterist, a presuppositionalist, or a credobaptist. Those are just the titles; I haven’t even mentioned issues relating to eternal functional subordination of the Son; the regulative principle; positive and moral law; dichotomy opposed to trichotomy or monism; whether the earth is young or old; whether or not hell is eternal; egalitarianism vs. complimentarianism; or issues relating to theonomy and what portion of God’s Law still applies today. That’s just to name a few. I hope if some of those words are foreign to you that you’ll keep in mind that those are lower priorities when it comes to biblical doctrine. It seems like all those words might cover the entire gambit of theology, but in reality there are some issues that transcend them all.
There are two areas of theology I’ve always been terrified to explore because it’s so easy to make mistakes; It’s easy to commit heresy. I don’t mean “heresy” in the way we jokingly refer to non-Calvinists on Facebook. I mean “heresy” in the historical sense. Somewhere, a long time ago, a group of very smart Christians and representatives from the Church as a whole got together and declared that what you’re saying is wrong, unbiblical, and unchristian. That’s heavy. They deemed that the words you’re saying are at odds with the Word of God.
Trinitarianism and Christology have always scared the wits out of me. Trinitarianism is the study of the triune God existing as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; one God in three persons. Christology is the theology of Christ, the second person of the Trinity. It scares me to get into this stuff because history is densely scattered with heresy relating to these subjects. They were the biggest issues of the early Church.
There are two things I want to get across to you in this article: a truth about the incarnation of Christ as it relates to divine impassibility (don’t worry, I’ll explain that), and an encouragement to study the deep things of theology that make you uncomfortable and force you to think.
The issue of divine impassibility keeps coming up everywhere I look. I’m seeing it in books, blogs, magazines, and theological journals. It seems lately that everywhere I turn I see the doctrine of divine impassibility. I would be a fool not to study this doctrine more thoroughly given the ubiquitous nature of it.
I want to recommend the book Confessing the Impassible God, edited by Ronald S. Baines and Richard C. Barcellos. I won’t be directly quoting it anywhere, but the concepts presented in it will influence me throughout, so I want to formally cite and recommend it here. (Be sure to follow the link at the bottom and get it!)
Here’s the basic idea: God can’t change. It’s called immutability, because He can’t be changed or mutated. Because He can’t change, He can’t be affected by outside influences. He knows everything, so He can’t be made aware of something that changes His mood. By His very nature, He is perfectly angry at unrighteousness all the time, so He doesn’t get angry with you; He’s already angry at sin before you do it. He manifests Himself differently at different times and to different people, which is why He is portrayed as angry or joyful at different times in the Bible. He doesn’t stop being joyful when He’s angry. He can’t change from one thing to another because of something that we did, or for any other reason. In this sense, it is impossible for God to suffer. God is not affected.
Jesus suffered in His human nature, but not in His divine nature. His deity was not affected by the suffering He endured. The Trinity was not affected by it either. Sometimes we say things like “God died,” or “God suffered,” but it’s not precisely accurate language to employ. If God suffered He would have to have perfect suffering. God is eternal, so His suffering would have to be eternal and unending. God knows what suffering is like because He formed the nerves in your body that make you feel suffering, but not because He has actually suffered. If it were possible for the Trinity to feel suffering, then the incarnation was unnecessary. Jesus didn’t need to come and die for our sins if He could suffer for them from Heaven. He had to become a human so that He could do humanly things that His deity couldn’t do — like dying and suffering.
Jesus’ deity didn’t die; His human nature did. If His deity had died, the Trinity as a whole would have died, and the universe would have ceased to exist. We know that’s not what happened. He rose from the dead, victorious, defeating sin and death for us. So His human nature died, while His divine nature stayed eternally alive.
I, by no means, have this all figured out. This is actually something that I’m deeply researching as we speak. I still have a lot of questions and I still have a lot to learn. I haven’t even scratched the surface in this post, but these are some of the things I’ve learned so far. The main reason I’m writing this is to encourage you to study heavy theological topics you aren’t used to studying. It will be overwhelming at first, but it’s worth the time and effort. If you’re not quite ready for Confessing the Impassible God, then let me recommend The Deep Things of God by Fred Sanders, and Experiencing the Trinity by Joe Thorn. If you haven’t sweat over doctrine, it’s about time.