A Contemporary Theological Discernment of Thomas Aquinas’s Impassible God

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to examine the traditional idea of impassible God through Thomas Aquinas’s thought on it, and reflect upon its meaning, statue and direction in contemporary theological discourses. To begin with, it briefly examines the biblical and philosophical foundation of God’s impassibility. On this basis, it intensively examines the idea of Aquinas’s impassible God in his masterpiece, Summa Theologica by focusing on the impassible God in His nature and as the Trinity. The next task of it is to reflect upon the meaning and status of Aquinas’s impassible God in the current theological discourse. For this, it selects some contemporary prominent theologians, and explores their stances on the impassibility/passibility of God in their comparison. In this process, it argues that a few theologians like Herbert McCabe and Thomas G. Weinandy uphold Aquinas’s impassible God whereas many others such as Karl Barth, Jürgen Moltmann, Hans Urs Von Balthasar, Dorothee Sölle and Alfred North Whitehead denounce it according to their own distinctive perspectives. On the one hand, it confirms through this argument that the traditional idea of Aquinas’s impassible God who is indifferent to the suffering of His Son and His creatures is not in the mainstream of contemporary theological discourses focusing on the suffering and loving God who cares for His creatures through His Son. On the other hand, it confirms that the idea of Aquinas’s impassible God cannot be easily ignored not only because it is still a large part of the traditional Christian legacy, but also because it is suggestive to those who can be tempted to define God within their theological frames, and carefully seeks to suggest a direction suitable to contemporary theological discussions on God’s passibility/impassibility, i.e., the passible impassibility of God who is paradoxically in a involving but transcending relationship with His creatures.