I recently posted a note asking why we feel comfortable talking about the joy of the Lord but uncomfortable discussing the sadness\sorrow\grief of the Lord and I was pointed your way. In your conclusion, you stated that " every creaturely perfection is pre-had by God." If I am interpreting that correctly, humanity's joy is a reflection of God's joy and God has perfect joy which we share in through the imago Dei but in an imperfect (mis-shapened and contained) manner. I hope I am correct so far, as joy would not be a metaphorical statement where God's rockness is one.
If I am following, then God's creatures can share in the passions\emotions of God if God has these emotions in perfection. Sadness\Sorrow\Grief are usually spoken about in theological traditions is that these are deficits or lackings and not perfections, thus not part of the creature's perfection and not pre-had by God. The logic would be that sadness is caused by a loss of the good, and the loss of a good is sin or sin-adjacent.
Finally we make it my question, do you think that sadness\sorrow\grief are creaturely perfections pre-had by God? Augustine and Luther, in very different ways, would say that sadness only exists in God over sin\sinfulness while Calvin would be more welcoming to the idea in my reading. Aquinas only fully speaks of sadness when discussing the daughter of sloth but I believe that to be a different type of sadness then I am interested in.
You did touch on it (with the bushel over the light analogy), but why anger and rock are the same kind of predicates is a really important topic to address. I think most people’s (unlike Leithart who more consistently applies his position) intuition is that rockness belongs to something non-living, whereas anger is in living beings (and many would also distinguish between the anger of a man and a bear)—God is living, and so living predicates like anger etc. are therefore categorically different than those non-living predicates.
Definitely an important point to establish clearly. And in a certain mode, our passions versus substantial forms do fall into different categories; however, when something from either is usurped in divinis, this makes no difference given what each category actually is. By contrast, our simple perfections are a different story, and as you know, where the very positivity of positive theology rises or falls!
I recently posted a note asking why we feel comfortable talking about the joy of the Lord but uncomfortable discussing the sadness\sorrow\grief of the Lord and I was pointed your way. In your conclusion, you stated that " every creaturely perfection is pre-had by God." If I am interpreting that correctly, humanity's joy is a reflection of God's joy and God has perfect joy which we share in through the imago Dei but in an imperfect (mis-shapened and contained) manner. I hope I am correct so far, as joy would not be a metaphorical statement where God's rockness is one.
If I am following, then God's creatures can share in the passions\emotions of God if God has these emotions in perfection. Sadness\Sorrow\Grief are usually spoken about in theological traditions is that these are deficits or lackings and not perfections, thus not part of the creature's perfection and not pre-had by God. The logic would be that sadness is caused by a loss of the good, and the loss of a good is sin or sin-adjacent.
Finally we make it my question, do you think that sadness\sorrow\grief are creaturely perfections pre-had by God? Augustine and Luther, in very different ways, would say that sadness only exists in God over sin\sinfulness while Calvin would be more welcoming to the idea in my reading. Aquinas only fully speaks of sadness when discussing the daughter of sloth but I believe that to be a different type of sadness then I am interested in.
You did touch on it (with the bushel over the light analogy), but why anger and rock are the same kind of predicates is a really important topic to address. I think most people’s (unlike Leithart who more consistently applies his position) intuition is that rockness belongs to something non-living, whereas anger is in living beings (and many would also distinguish between the anger of a man and a bear)—God is living, and so living predicates like anger etc. are therefore categorically different than those non-living predicates.
Definitely an important point to establish clearly. And in a certain mode, our passions versus substantial forms do fall into different categories; however, when something from either is usurped in divinis, this makes no difference given what each category actually is. By contrast, our simple perfections are a different story, and as you know, where the very positivity of positive theology rises or falls!