"Not only are joy, kindness, and generosity truly contained within the fully actualized love of God, but also compassion, mercy, grief, and even anger are also truly subsumed within his perfect love. ... While some facets of love within human beings entail suffering, such as compassion and grief, they are subsumed and contained within the perfectly actualized love of God, but now devoid of the suffering which would render his love less than perfectly actualized. While compassion is defined as 'suffering with,' the heart of compassion is the love expressed within the suffering and not the suffering itself. Thus God is perfectly compassionate not because he 'suffers with' those who suffer, but because his love fully and freely embraces those who suffer. 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."
Thomas Weinandy, Does God Suffer?, p.164
3 comments:
St. John Chrysostom would probably like all of that quotation. Or most of it. Certainly he would agree with the idea that God does not suffer because if God suffers then He cannot offer all of himself and his love to us when we suffer. :)
Weinandy devotes a chapter to a survey of the Fathers on the impassable Father. Not surprisingly, they are unanimous in their opinion that the Father does not suffer. Using Thomistic metaphysics, Weinandy explains that an impassable Father is fully actualized to love us completely because He does not suffer.
Most excellent; perhaps I shall read Weinandy's book!
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