Is God’s Anger Just A Figment of My Imagination?

A recent article came across my feed, and chronicled one person’s personal discovery of John Calvin’s total removal of anger from God, and Calvin’s attestation that our saying that he is angered only happened “because we imagine him to be so according to the perception of the flesh” (I quote from the English used). You can read the piece for yourself here.

I don’t want to speak to the issue of John Calvin here (what he did or didn’t mean), let alone impute something to the author which he might not hold (much less pick on him!). I truly found the piece merely a good occasion and prompt to handle a major issue (not to mention finally start my substack!). That issue is encapsulated by my titular question: Is God’s anger just a figment of my imagination?

Many people discover the traditional position on anger of God and experience feelings which are alarmingly close to a full-on deconversion experience. This is especially so when one is raised in a “fire and brimstone” culture where anger of God was overplayed either by others or by oneself and one’s own psychology. I greatly sympathize here, as I would classify myself as suffering from both problems (much as I appreciate my upbringing in other ways).

Many of us resonated so deeply with Brian Zahnd’s little book Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God, precisely because we grew up in the hands of a demon. And coming from that oppression, when you discover that no anger but only love is in God, the emotional response is relief. To the extent that one’s intellect was errant and e.g., emotions toward God thereupon were disordered, one can praise God for this discovery and enjoy its relief: perfect love does drive out fear (although beware not to exchange liberty for an excuse unto concupiscence!). For many, discovering the traditional position is just straightforwardly healing.

But and however (!), does all this mean that anger of God was just a figment of my imagination, as the article cited above seems to suggest (at least on a plausible reading)? Although I suspect me looking at Calvin’s Latin would somewhat mitigate things, the claim that we were just imagining it certainly occurs with frequency throughout tradition in ways which would make people uncomfortable–whether one is looking at e.g., Isaac the Syrian, or the heavenly Julian of Norwich. This prompts the understandable question: Was it just my imagination working in overdrive all along?

Certainly we can say that in a certain mode, there was a figment of your imagination, and indeed at least part of that image needs to be destroyed (*smash idols here*). People experience this in different ways (as the author seems to have in his own), and it has good grounds. One held a false judgment and then discovered that it was errant. Or likely what people are better attuned to, one discovered a true judgment and then faced it back to their imagination, whereupon their image was perceived as “off”—and so they switched out for a new one. Indeed, add to this the complexity of emotions which is produced by fully switching images (disordered fear of God exchanged for relief at his pure love), and you are starting to get a real recipe for deconverting.

All this seems very much to make anger of God just a figment, especially given the true judgment and reality of no anger in God. I want to point out, however, that confining it entirely to the dustbin of wanton images (where we put other childlike fantasies like Santa Claus) would be a pretty classic example of the pendulum swing.

Anger of God was not just a figment, no.

Rather, although your image was overblown and/or otherwise had problems, I would argue that it must still remain and for that matter really is grounded on reality. It corresponds, albeit at the level of image, perfectly well to facts.

To see this, recall that the traditional teaching on anger of God is as follows (in nuce). Properly speaking, when we are speaking of reality as it stands, there is no such thing in God: what is signified or meant by the word anger, has no presence at all in God. Zero. However, although there is no such thing, there are also many other and very real things besides those things which are (or in this case are not) in God: as for example, our sins; their due and coming punishment(s); the divine executors of justice like angels (or human judges); obviously divine justice; and then also God standing at the back of it all as the First Cause.

In theology, we parse everything very clearly and technically, and are working only at the level of judgments. We likewise utter propositions which correspond to those judgments as one-to-one as possible. We only ever speak properly and formally, as much as our conventional language can bear (and often it suffers strain!).

But what about in normal life?, which usually operates not in judgment-land, but at the level of images (or phantasm, for those who prefer the old words). Indeed, holy Scripture is almost entirely geared to produce images, for that is where most people “live” for their knowledge. From those images we abstract judgments (we are always beginning and ending in phantasm, after all; thank you Lonergan); those images cause e.g., emotions; they also ultimately guide our actions. And it is for this reason (inter alia) that holy Scripture commands us to picture to ourselves God as angered, for this picture rightly induces many judgments, like sin will be punished; it helps found our (even bodily) certainty about the truth of those judgments (sin, be ye sure!, will be punished); it induces many appropriate and even life-giving emotions, like fearing to sin and so be punished (who is able to avoid sin without fear of pain?); and it is conducive to many necessary and life-giving acts, like mortifying our members of unrighteousness (who is able to cut off his member without being powerfully propelled?).

What is more and also to the current point, this picture which we are given corresponds, albeit at the level of image, perfectly well to the facts. Indeed it precisely is those facts in picture. What are those facts? Again in sum, they are (inter alia) that when we sin, pain is induced and often punishment is executed, God upholding all this through his many and sundry ministers. Now how else should these facts be pictured besides an angered God, seeing that anger is the real principle in someone whence are executed punishments which are obliged offenses?

Using words to produce pictures which correspond to facts, pictures which principle knowledge, love, and action (insofar as pictures do), is something that Calvin understood surprisingly well how to do (rhetorician that he was). This is not to mention the ancient sages more usually called prophets, who did not feed people fantasies, but phantasiae. Anger of God was one of them.

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