In a recent homily on the Biblical narrative of the Flood, Pope Francis challenged those gathered to have a heart like God’s, especially in the face of human suffering. The Holy Father said that “God the Father…is able to get angry and feel rage…suffering more than we do.” So common has this assertion that God suffers become that it is practically becoming an assumption. But upon closer inspection we come to find that there are a number of faith altering and faith destroying consequences that follow from this false view of God. Therefore, it merits further reflection why it is that God does not suffer.
The Need for Analogy
We must first admit that our language inevitably fails us when we attempt to speak about God. In fact, we can say nothing positive about Him. This is not because we are pessimists, but because we can only speak definitively about what He is not. He is omniscient because there is nothing He doesn’t know. He is omnipotent because there is nothing He can do, etc. To speak of what He is, is impossible because He transcends our categories. This linguistic limitation can be partially overcome once we allow for the use of analogy. For example, God reveals Himself as Father because His fatherhood is something like the human fatherhood that we are all familiar with.
The problem with this approach of analogy is that we often get it backwards. Properly speaking it is human fatherhood that is like God’s fatherhood. Keeping the primacy of God’s fatherhood in mind keeps us from assuming that it is just like human fatherhood and making God in our image instead of us in His. Human fatherhood is only true fatherhood to the extent that it images God’s fatherhood as St. Paul is wont to remind the Ephesians (c.f. Eph 3:15).
More closely related to the topic of God’s suffering is the dictum that God is love. To say that God is love is to say that God loves fully and for all eternity. He cannot love any more than He does because it is His nature to love. We speak of different “kinds” of love from God such as mercy, compassion, kindness, etc. but in God there is no distinction. He loves fully. We, however, cannot receive His love fully. “Whatever is received,” St. Thomas says, “is received according to the mode of the receiver.” To the sinner, God’s love is received as mercy. To the suffering His love is received as comfort. Yet, from God’s perspective it is a completely active and full love.
To say that God suffers with us reverses the analogy. The assumption is that because compassionate human love includes suffering, then Divine love must also. But the fact that it includes suffering does not mean that it must include suffering. It is the love that is given that makes it love, not the suffering. In fact you could remove the suffering, the love would still be love. In fact, it would be a purer love because there would be no need on the lover’s part to succor his own suffering. Instead it would be a completely free love with no compulsion towards self-interest. Rather than being somehow cold and indifferent, it is complete and free. So God, by not be able to suffer, actually loves us more than if He could suffer. To insist otherwise makes God love us less, the very thing that they think they are avoiding by positing that He must suffer. As Fr. Thomas Weinandy puts it, “what human beings cry out for in their suffering is not a God who suffers but a God who loves wholly and completely, something a suffering God could not do.” God is compassionate not because He suffers with but because He is able to fully embrace those who are suffering
Further Consequences of the Suffering God
If reversing the analogy was the worst part about this, then we might simply chalk it up as a misunderstanding. But the fact that it represents an attack on God’s nature eventually leads us into a theological pitfall that destroys our faith in God. God, in order to suffer must be capable of change. But we believe in a God who is immutable. His immutability comes about not because He can’t change, but because as the fullness of being there is nothing for Him to change into. No change would make Him more than He is because He is already “I AM WHO AM”, pure act. He fully alive. To posit that He can suffer is to posit that He can change and to posit that He can change is to say that He is not the one true God.
He must also be incapable of suffering, that is, impassible for a subtler reason as well. Suffering is caused by a lack of some good that ought to be there. If God, in Himself is lacking some good, then He is not All Good. If the suffering comes about because of the lack of some good in creation, then He becomes a part of creation itself and is no longer transcendent. As part of creation He is no longer Creator. Evil and suffering must be seen as having real existence (rather than a lack of some good) since nothing is immune to it. Our new God is the god of pantheism or process theology and an ontological dualism becomes the result.
The suffering God hypothesis ultimately means the destruction of the Christian God. If God is not free from suffering, then no one is. And if no one is, then there is no possibility of redemption. God simply becomes one being among many striving for perfection. If He cannot save Himself from evil, then how can He save anyone else? The Incarnation becomes totally incomprehensible. The God-Man cannot offer redemption, nor can He sanctify suffering. In truth, a suffering God need not stoop to our level because He is already there. The truth that He could love fully without suffering, yet still chose to add suffering carries the assurance of His total love for each one of us. If He could already suffer, then it looks like little more than masochism.
In short, ideas have consequences. Serious ideas have serious consequences. The idea of divine passibility has nothing but negative consequences. Therefore, despite its present popularity, the assertion that Divine suffering is possible must be wholly rejected in favor of the Traditional teaching of the Church so that the Faith may remain intact.