If God Doesn’t Regret, Then What about Scripture Which Says He Does?

In a few passages of holy Scripture, we read that God regrets having done something. Regret, according to Thomas, is a certain sadness for something previously done by oneself. Thus, the reading of these passages is that God feels sorry for having done something evil–as e.g., when he is said to regret that he made the men who have wrought such destruction upon the earth (Gen. 6).

Today, many people take these sayings literally–or, to speak better, they understand them as somehow speaking properly, positing something in God. However, because God’s works are perfect (Deut. 32:4), no divine work can be regretted by God. This is why we instead read that God rather “treasures all which are, and despises nothing which he made” (Wisd. 11:24). Accordingly, no matter that holy Scripture says that God regrets, in reality he nowise does.

This leaves us with two options in handling these passages. The first option would be that these sayings, which admittedly are quite few, are false–and obviously some have held this position. But for the rest of us, the second option is that these sayings were just metaphors and need to be interpreted. Taking this latter line, how then must we interpret such sayings in holy Scripture?

STEP 1: LOOK FOR THE WORK

Initially, the fathers can guide us on interpreting divine passions generally speaking. They almost all agree that whenever we confront “God being impassioned with X” sayings in holy Scripture (where X = some passion), our first and most frequent interpretation is going to be passion put for work: i.e., the divine passion which was uttered by the prophet was only put in place of some creaturely state of affairs or happening–such a happening being considered as a divine work. Thus e.g., God being angered must be interpreted only as e.g., someone suffering pain as due punishment for his sin.

This pattern of interpreting is so universal among the fathers that it carries over into the medievals as well. There, we find the scholastic “rule of thumb,” divine passions are said non secundum affectum, sed secundum effectum. Hence e.g., Anselm in his Proslogion c 8 says that God sympathizing with our pain must not be interpreted as if it posited something in divine will, but only as positing something among us creatures, namely a divine work: e.g., our being saved, our being spared, etc.

Following this and applying it to divine regret, we can conclude that whenever we confront a passage saying that God regrets having done X, we are going to need to identify what creaturely happening is in view, broadly speaking.

STEP 2: LOOK FOR A CERTAIN WORK

Continuing and more precisely, the fathers also guide us as to what sort of creaturely happening we ought to look out for, in order to interpret divine passions. Namely, even before we ever get to God and holy Scripture, we need to determine what creaturely works are unique to the passion in question (or to such an impassioned man): i.e., what works (at least) tend to arise from this principle of man’s being. These creaturely works are going to be similar to the actual divine work which we hope to locate; and thus if we identify the former beforehand, we will be prepared to find the divine work and so actually interpret the metaphor. Hence e.g., among (creaturely) works which are unique to the passion anger, is punishing someone for an offense against oneself. Accordingly, when it comes to anger of God, we are to be on the lookout for concrete divine punishments for transgressions of divine law.