My Concessions to the Biblicists

The Strongest Arguments for Passibilist Readings of Holy Scripture

The traditional position on divine passions is aggressive, and much more aggressive than usually admitted by people today interested in “Classical Theism.” And what is worse and more aggressive still, is the reading program (for lack of better terms) which is imposed by the traditional position, imposed upon holy Scripture.

I have always tried to be frank and rather open about this, not to be unnecessarily startling let alone scandalous, but because it is really that serious. This is why my students often hear me say something like:

You had better have plenty of science (scientia) already in mind, and philosophical demonstrations ready to hand, if you are going to be reading holy Scripture and doing what the traditional position requires to be done with it.

This especially applies to the various and sundry propositions God being variously impassioned (him being angered, him being merciful, etc.) which are found in holy Scripture.

And all this is also why (among other reasons) I have great sympathy for my biblicist friends who hold to the passibilist position and do so especially on scriptural grounds. They embody what I also advocate as the native posture toward holy Scripture:

You must do actual justice to the sacred page.

By the same token, the sacred page generates very strong arguments in favor of the passibilist reading. These arguments are often either ignored or waved away by “Classical Theists,” but I do try to both recognize and resolve them. The arguments I know of are the following—and as strong as I can put them (I would love others to add further arguments in the comment section below!).

1. First, these propositions (God being angered; him being merciful; etc.) are differentiated from other sayings which are metaphors, like God being a rock or having a hand. Unlike them, divine passions are not found infrequently, and more importantly, neither are they spoken of by using any conventional sign of metaphoricalness.

2. Second, these propositions are the same (ad litteram) as others which are understood properly, e.g., God being merciful is the same (again, ad litteram) as him being loving. If these propositions are both differentiated from metaphorical ones (God having a hand), and rendered the same as proper ones (God being loving), then they ought to be understood also properly–albeit perhaps removing the bodily aspect of e.g., having mercy.

3. Third, prophets hold up e.g., God being merciful for us to imitate, whereupon something in God must be being imitated (cf., Be ye merciful, just as your Father is merciful).

4. Fourth, no argument taken from holy Scripture can sufficiently conclude e.g., God not being angered, not being merciful, etc. More, no argument can make us even suspect that God not being angered, merciful are true.

5. Fifth, prophets use these propositions as principles of argument for many other conclusions, and furthermore these propositions must be understood properly in order to sufficiently argue such conclusions: e.g., God is angered, therefore he punishes does not conclude unless the premise is understood properly.

6. Sixth, prophets even use many other propositions to argue God being angered, being merciful, etc. as their conclusions.

For what it’s worth, I take all these arguments to be more or less good ones.

As a consquence, I am also forced to concede the point that saying e.g., “anger of God is just a metaphor for e.g., our being punished” has not done justice to the sacred page. There is more to the story. And I generally take the above arguments of my biblicist friends seriously, and also as rightly militating against this reductionist position (“it’s just a metaphor”) which says that there is no more to the story.

The rest of the story, unfortunately, will likely not be agreeable to my biblicist friends. But it does have the advantage of doing justice to the letters of holy Scripture, and also explaining why the above arguments really have teeth. I will be trying to give the whole story, in an upcoming lecture with The Davenant Institute: Lying Prophets or Loving Fathers?