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| Copyright: May I Walk in Your Truth |
Theodicy, the
justification if God’s goodness in the face of evil, is a question that every
religious believer and theologian must consider and grapple with. There are many
responses which seek to explain the problem of evil, for example, to blame it on human freedom and to turn it into a question of anthropodicy or to see evil
as something which helps to make us who we are, known as soul-making theodicy.
The existence of suffering poses a threat in how one understands God, how is
one to speak of God? As Metz has observed theology cannot remain untouched by
the history of suffering. It cannot be silent to suffering or presume that it
is innocent, one’s words need to be carefully considered.[1] Following Metz, many theologians
have reconsidered the classical understanding of God, particularly the
attribute of divine impassibility. Jesus is understood as the visible sign of
the invisible, pointing to who God is in the immanent sense. It is easy to look
at the suffering of Jesus and to understand that this shows that God suffers
with us. Proponents of passibility will point out that this shows a God who is
moved and open to the suffering of humanity and that He loves His people. They
contrast their understanding with the classical impassible God. Their God as He
is moved by people, which they argue means that active solidarity is possible
as God can be a co-suffer. An impassible God, they argue, is one that is very
passive, who watches humanity from eternity.
Those who argue for a
passible God are not a single viewpoint, there are a variety of perspectives of
how exactly they understand passibility, for example, to what extent a God who suffers
helps the theodicy question. However, for the purpose of this piece, I will
focus on Jurgen Moltmann’s understanding of divine passibility. Moltmann views
the crucifixion as the central event which shows who God is, that God is in
solidarity with “the godforsaken,” who are the victims of history. The crucifixion
is understood an intra-trinitarian event, where the Father has abandoned the
Son as He dies on the cross and therefore, Christ suffers as He dies, and the
Father also suffers. They have become part of the godforsaken and there is a
gulf between the Father and Son, their relationship has been destroyed which is
overcome by their love, the Holy Spirit, who is reaching out towards the
godforsaken.[2]
Rather than an understanding of God where humanity is divinised, that Christ
became poor so that we may be rich, but for Moltmann, the incarnation is Christ
becomes poor so that we can recognise God in “despised humanity.”[3] It appears that the main
purpose of the incarnation for Moltmann is to show that God is on the side of
the oppressed and is involved in their protest and the work against injustice. A
part of the reconsideration of how one understands God is the rejection of Chalcedonian
Christology. This rejection is because of a variety reasons, for example, it is perceived that
due to the influence of Hellenistic philosophy that it is unbiblical and
because of what it potentially implies about God. The two natures of Christ is
not seen as being a solution but instead continued to malign the human body of
Christ without being docetic, although Moltmann would argue that Chalcedon came
close to Docetism, as it maintained that Jesus only appeared to die and suffer
because they only attributed these to His humanity. Moltmann argues that it
overlooks the suffering of Christ, that in Christ there is greater unity than
the Council of Chalcedon declared.[4] It does not recognise that
when Christ dies is not just the death of his human nature but also that God
dies, which cannot occur if the divine is understood as impassible and that it
is maintained that Christ’s divinity is unaffected. Moltmann instead argues
that Christ “suffered in his special divine pain.”[5]
In Moltmann’s theology,
there are many aspects which one could explore and critique, for example,
whether to accept divine impassibility, however, I want to focus on his rejection
of Chalcedonian Christology. But first, lets briefly give an overview of what
was decided at the Chalcedon and Ephesus. The conflict broke out due to the
title of Theotokos (God-bearer) to the Virgin Mary. There was the question of
whether it could be said that she gave birth to Jesus’ divinity. Nestorius by
rejecting the title of Theotokos (at least on its own), had wanted to protect
Jesus from any suggestion that His two nature were mixed. This would also
protect God from the suggestion that God was subject to time or changed as the title
Theotokos could be understood to suggest. Cyril of Alexandria, however,
disagreed and argued that Christ had one nature, although he understood nature in
a different sense to Nestorius. The Alexandrian understanding referred to a
concrete entity rather than the Antiochene meaning that Nestorius used which
referred to a collection of characteristics. Cyril understood the difference
between the two meaning and when using the Antiochene meaning of nature was
happy to say that Christ had two distinct natures. But he maintained that there
was never a time when Christ was only human which the rejection of the title
Theotokos suggested. In the two councils which followed their dispute, the
title Theotokos was affirmed, which meant that whatever could be said of Jesus the
human was equally applicable to His divinity as Christ has two natures in the
Antiochene sense but Chalcedon stressed that Christ is one person, one single
subject. The principle of communicatio idiomatum was
established, which meant that the human attributes can be used in connection to
Christ’s divinity and vice versa as Christ is one person. In the incarnation,
the humanity was added to the Son without taking anything away or mixing
anything together.
Critics of Chalcedon,
including Moltmann, argue that Chalcedon conceded too much to Nestorius, that
it continued to conceive of Christ in dualistic terms. A model like Moltmann,
it is argued means that there is greater unity as he does not split Christ in
two, the suffering Christ is the suffering God. But this overlooks the great
potential of communicatio idiomatum and Chalcedonian Christology where one
can say that Christ is both passible and impassible. The 4th century
liturgical manual Apostolic Constitutions said that “the impassible was nailed
to the cross.”[6]
From a Chalcedonian perspective, there is nothing technically wrong in saying
that God suffered because natures are not persons. Therefore, while Christ did
not suffer in His divinity but in His human nature, it did occur to Christ who
is a single subject. It only becomes dualistic if one mistakes nature for
person. One’s nature does not act, which means that one is unable to assert
that one’s nature, but it is by one’s nature that one is able to act. It is the
person who acts, according to their nature. Therefore, it is by Christ’s
humanity that He suffers but it is one person of Christ who suffers.[7]
As many theologians, for
example, St. Augustine of Hippo, have recognised that due to Christ’s role as
mediator, it is necessary that He is both divine and human.[8] The divinity of Christ often
receives the most attention, but the humanity plays an important role and from
my reading of Moltmann, he does not recognise that the humanity of Christ in a
Chalcedonian model has the potential for radical solidarity. For those who propose
a suffering God, in order to pre-emptively reject the criticism that it
suggests God can be changed by something outside Himself and therefore, God is
no different to the rest of creation and imperfect, they will usually argue
that divine suffering is different to human suffering as it is freely chosen by
God so to protect His perfection. But this approach is an unnecessary step.
While a suffering God is meant to be in solidarity with the victims of history,
but with an interpretation of the passion like Moltmann's, it is easy to lose
sight of the human suffering as the entire Trinity suffers in a divine way. But
with Chalcedon, Christ’s suffering is not something different to our suffering. Christ
through the incarnation, by taking on humanity takes on the totality of human
suffering and gives voice to human suffering “precisely as human pain
and as our pain.”[9] This seems to me to be a greater
form of solidarity than proposed by passibilists, because they only propose a
God who suffers but it is not clear that their Christ shares in our suffering. Moltmann
does not do anything with Christ’s humanity in his interpretation of the
crucifixion, which raises the question apart from showing solidarity and being
the visible sign of the invisible, what was the point of Christ becoming human
specifically? The Chalcedon Christ who is homoousios with humanity is in
greater unity with humanity and their suffering, and in a much more meaningful way, one
can say that Christ is a co-suffer with humanity.
One of the important
aspects when considering the question of whether Christ’s life reveals a
passible God is to consider whether Christ’s life is simply a reflection of
God. The idea that if Christ suffers then this must reflect something about who
God seems prima facie a sound assumption, but it needs reflection otherwise
there is the danger of a simplistic reading of Christ’s life and what it
reveals about God. Moltmann argues that with the crucifixion God, both the Father
and the Son die, not just Christ in His humanity. But in approaching Christ in
this manner, Moltmann, in fact, collapses the distinction between the immanent
and economic Trinity, by making the crucifixion a Trinitarian event. It
suggests that what occurs on earth is simply a repetition of what happens above.[10] Apart from being reminiscent
to some heresies, it overlooks that some of what Christ says while reflecting
God, does not do this in a straightforward way. Christ’s cry on the cross, “My
God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” With Moltmann, it expresses Christ’s
literal abandonment by God. But if one follows figures like Aquinas, Christ’s
cry is not on His personal behalf, but it expresses the pain of humanity. Christ’s
words do not reflect His bodily pain, rather He gives voices to the pain of
others. Rather than Chalcedonian Christology encouraging a view of God that lacks
solidarity with His people, it has greater solidarity to the victims of
history.
[1] Johann Baptist Metz, “Suffering
Unto God,” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 20, No. 4, Symposium on
"God" (Summer, 1994): 611.
[2] Richard Bauckham, “'Only the
Suffering God Can help'. Divine Passibility in Modern Theology,” Themelios,
9.3 (April 1984): 11.
[3] Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God: The Cross as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology (London: SCM Press, 2015), 220.
[4] Ibid., 238-242.
[5] James Keating and Thomas Joseph
White, ed. Divine Impassibility and the Mystery of Human Suffering (Cambridge:
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009), 42
[6] Ibid., 129.
[7] Ibid., 282-283.
[8] Augustine. Confessions. Translated by Henry Chadwick. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2008.
219.
[9] Rowan Williams, Christ the
Heart of Creation (London: Bloomsbury, 2018), 92.
[10] James Keating and Thomas Joseph White, ed. Divine Impassibility and the Mystery of Human Suffering, 297.
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