An interesting fact about the Patristic doctrine of apatheia is that not only is it a divine attribute, but human beings as well can attain it. So it doesn’t itself betoken timelessness (as is often thought). That is, it’s not the emotional counterpart of absolutely timeless immutability. The Fathers all agree that created being is by definition temporal though it may attain impassibility. So apatheia is compatible with temporality.

St. Symeon (10^th Cent.) writes: “Even in our age there are passionless ones who live in our midst, saints filled with the divine light. By removing all impurity and all passionate desires they have mortified their earthly body to such a degree that they never think of evil and do not seek to provoke it either on their own or goaded by others.” Then he said dispassionate saints “are those who possess dispassion, who prove that they ardently love it and are fervently loved by it” and are “kindled by a desire for it.” It’s interesting how he describes apatheia in terms of “ardent love” and “desire.” Maximus speaks of apatheia in the same manner—as a joy that is perfected in love—anything but an absence to or incapacity of feelings.

Let’s imagine apatheia to be analogous to the persistent heat of the Sun whose light and energies warm us. We might say the Sun (were it sentient) takes compassion upon our cold state and warms us. We feel the coldness leaving our bodies as the Sun warms us and we might (if simplistic) mistakenly think the Sun, by entering into our state to dispel our coldness, is actually sacrificing its light and warmth. But the Sun’s warming us doesn’t require it to ‘lose’ itself.

We’re told explicitly not to “worry” or “fear” or be “anxious about anything” in Scripture. That’s a huge swath of emotions Christians are said to be free of, so we can safely imagine God to be free of them. Many related emotions can be disregarded in God’s case—feelings of ‘shock’, ‘bewilderment’, ‘suspicion’, ‘hatred’ (the “will to harm” which is a failure of benevolence). We could list more—passions the attributing to God of which gains us nothing and which creates a host of problems. Never mind those.

I wonder if some object to God’s unsurpassable aesthetic satisfaction in the presence of human suffering because they believe it amounts to responding to suffering with laughter—which would indeed be grotesque. But apatheia was never sold as the belief that God parties atop our ruin, or that he finds our suffering humorous, or that he laughs at/with our crying. There’s nothing praiseworthy about somebody who upon hearing a friend has lost a loved one responds with laughter and offers a toast. If anything, apatheia is that self-sufficiency which is able to offer itself as perfectly appropriate presence precisely because doesn’t reach out to the suffering one in an attempt to address its own sense of well-being. It is truly disinterested, which makes its other-interestedness truly benevolent by virtue of not needing the other to meet its own needs.

Several passages take on new significance. Consider—

Acts 5.41: “Then they left the presence of the council rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name” (and so many others like it).

1Pet 1.8: “…and you [in your trials and sufferings] are filled with a joy unspeakable and full of glory….” (lit. “a joy unutterable and ‘having been gloried’” [interesting use of the perfect tense!]).

I’ve mentioned Paul’s (“we do not grieve as those who have no hope”) and Rom. 8 (i.e., the relative meaninglessness of present suffering to that glory which though it SHALL BE ours (the future tense of which Jeff won't let us forget but which is entirely beside the point in God's case) nevertheless obtains presently in/as God and so must presently be relatively meaningless to God).

The language of ‘transcendence’ is used in the prefix ‘hyper’ in several passages:

Phil. 4.7: “…and God’s peace which passes all understanding will guard/keep your hearts and minds” (lit. “and God’s peace which transcends/supersedes [hyperekhousa] ‘every nous’ [viz., every ‘mental state’] shall keep our hearts and ‘apprehensions’ [our ‘noemata’] in Christ.” Yeah, apatheia is just an infection of pagan Greek philosophy.

Eph. 3.17: “and to know the love of Christ that passes [that ‘transcends’, hyperballousin] knowledge….”

2Cor 7.4: “I am filled with comfort; I am overjoyed in all our afflictions” (lit. “I have been filled full to consolation; I am being-over-exceeded [middle voice; hyperperisseoumai] to the joy on every affliction.” The idea suggests being “transcended by joy” in the midst of suffering. What a thought, that I am transcended by joy.

Mat. 5.13: “When people mock and persecute you, be happy! Be very happy!” How, if the EXPERIENCE of joy cannot transcend suffering (i.e., if I can’t subjectively transcend my suffering); if the "felt quality of our experience" is just the difference of all our reasons to suffer minus all our reasons to rejoice and exult?

James 1 of course: “Count it all joy when you fall into various trails, etc.” Yes, but HOW? What’s it mean to DO THIS COUNTING subjectively? This counting is not an abstract proposition. One 'experiences' the math of transcendence. But when we offer up examples, concrete testimonies (Ignatius, Richard Wurmbradt, others), I get the idea that some dismiss them because they don't constitute a proper "argument" and our reading of the text shouldn't be read in light of such experience.

2Cor 6.10: “…as sorrowing, yet rejoicing.”

von Balthasar: “In Paul, ‘rejoice’, ‘glory’, and ‘boast’, often mean the same thing: it is something he can do even when afflicted because the chain of inner dispositions he describes not only reaches to the ‘hope of glory’ but actually renders this glory present in the Spirit.”

von Balthasar: “With the prospect of the Cross before him, casting its shadow in advance, Jesus—almost unbelievably—demands that his loving disciples embrace his coming Passion with joy: ‘If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I go to the Father’” (Jo. 14.28).

Like I said, it’s all about ‘perspective’.

Just thinking out loud.

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 5/3/2012 4:39:51 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Tom) : 5/5/2012 9:00:20 AM (GMT-5)

And then, to add to D’s 2 Q’s, (3) what would have to be true about God if he's the source of transcending joy?

I was wondering how we are to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice if both situations present themselves to us simultaneously AND if our own internal sense of well-being (i.e., our total felt quality of life) is diminished by the weeping and increased by the rejoicing (as hard-core passibilists argue), then wouldn’t it follow where we’re processing multiple instances of suffering and rejoicing (all of which enter into us and determine our total felt quality of life) that (a) our total felt quality of life (our experienced sense of well-being) would be just the experienced difference of reasons to suffer minus reasons to rejoice, and that (b) so long as we have any reasons to rejoice (and those reasons are increasing our overall sense of well-being), we would by definition be unable to weep with those who weep as intensely/genuinely as we would had we fewer reasons to rejoice? And likewise, (c) so long as we have any reasons to weep (and those reasons are diminishing our over-all sense of well-being), we would by definition be unable to rejoice with those who rejoice as intensely/genuinely as we would had we fewer reasons to weep. God would be the ultimate instantiation of this math. But it would remain true even of his own experience and of our knowledge of his experience of us (!)—viz., that God could be happier in and about our happiness were there less suffering in the world. Likewise, he’d be sadder about, say, the Holocaust, had there been less instances of joy elsewhere in the world in the 1940’s. God’s own sense of well-being (as with us) would be MERELY the difference of the two.

Of course, one could legitimately ask a passibilist Christian by what means his instances of joy (a daughter’s birthday, the marriage of a son, a promotion at his job, etc.) are not eviscerated by the overwhelming suffering of those in hell, or all the actual instances of child abuse that occur while his daughter is blowing out her birthday candles? Within the limitations of a finite pathos, happiness comes at the expense of those who weep (assuming our weeping with them is meant to MEAN something TO them in their suffering), and weeping with those who weep comes at the expense of those who rejoice (on the assumption that our rejoicing with them is meant to increase overall joy).

God would have to say (i.e., we would have to admit it was the case objectively speaking) to the one rejoicing in America (for whatever legitimate reason), “I could be happier about your good fortune right now, but unfortunately my emotional resources are maxed out by the Holocaust.” But we’d have to equally admit that were God to express the flip side of this he’d have to say to the Jewish mother in Auschwitz on her way to the gas chambers, “I feel extremely bad for you, but I COULD FEEL WORSE were it not for the emotional investment I’m making right now in rejoicing in a little girl’s birthday party somewhere else in the world.”

The math of finite passibilism gives us a God whose emotional experiences of our joys and our sorrows are NEVER what they COULD BE given passibilism's logic of perfection. God never sorrows as much or as intensely as he could for Aushwitz. And he never rejoices as much or as intensely as he could with those who rejoice. As well, within the constraints of passibilism’s own logic, God always fails to perfectly evaluate precisely what THIS particular instance of suffering or goodness is because competing demands forbid him the depth of emotional response that any particular instance of suffering or goodness makes available, which begs the question—what IS THERE in/about the concrete experience of God which is undetermined by the world that can serve as the measure by which God evaluates the relative aesthetic value of the world’s events? If the total felt quality of God’s experience (God’s felt sense of well-being) is just the difference of all reasons to rejoice minus all reasons to sorrow, then there’s no concrete aesthetic divine experience per se which can serve as the measure by which God responds appropriately to suffering or joy.

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 5/9/2012 3:45:29 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (One Love) : 5/9/2012 2:35:01 PM (GMT-5)

This Mother's Day a group of mothers are refusing to celebrate Mother's Day to stand in solidarity with all those mothers who who die in childbirth each year due to complications. They've gotten a LOT of negative comments.

After all, I can't celebrate HERE if I'm grieving over THERE!

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 5/9/2012 3:18:42 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Similitude) : 5/9/2012 7:57:45 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Similitude) : 5/9/2012 8:14:03 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Tom) : 5/9/2012 9:10:37 PM (GMT-5)

This IAS Joy, given divine futurepacing, would 1) highlight God's own knowledge of his benevolence and competence and 2) explain why it's impossible to remove God's equanimity at any time.

This would be YOUR version of "apatheia."

Well, Jeff?

Post Edited (One Love) : 5/10/2012 3:40:25 AM (GMT-5)

Orthodoxy says that apatheia (as we agree on it now) is grounded in the uncreated, eternal triune self-relationality of God in the Father, Son, and Spirit.

But it's not like your perspective isn't valid.  It would seem to be another dimension of God's PRESENT glory.  Remember, EUR works because of WHO God is with respect to WHAT/WHO Creation is.  In other words, the FUTURE of God's ultimate victory was known from the jump because God KNOWS Who God is...and what that entails. 

Post Edited (One Love) : 5/10/2012 8:38:02 AM (GMT-5)

I think that creation could have been a pure gain for God in terms of novelty, alone, had it remained sinless. But given libertarian possibilities, that was never a given. So God, in His competence renders creation worth it, whether or not it turned out to be as satisfying as a sinless creation WOULD have been to Him. This way, sin means what we think it means, intuitively.

Post Edited (Similitude) : 5/10/2012 8:56:06 AM (GMT-5)

This gets a bit frustrating. Jeff, you often insist that God be thought of and talked about strictly within the confines of human categories and analogies derived from human experience. And to a certain extent I champion that approach myself. Otherwise we cast ourselves into utter agnosticism re: God, right? I get that. But when you talk about God not being subject to warrants (which can only mean warrants of OUR thinking and experience or the warrant of a logic to which we subject God), and that God stands outside all these and grounds them, you’re talking the language of classical transcendence (or let’s just say the Eastern Fathers) who argued God and World are not both equally subsumed under a single category of being that grounds our language about God.

This is the language of transcendence and apophaticism. But you don’t maintain it consistently. On the one hand much of your argumentation proceeds upon the assumption that God is subject to our categories and that’s why, for example, ‘love’ and ‘freedom’ have to mean in God’s case what they mean in our case, otherwise we can’t speak of God as love at all. And that’s a good conversation to have. But then you seem to exempt yourself from this when you say that no one feeling in God can diminish the extent to which he experiences another feeling—unlike us. I’m wondering what a priori reasons you have for thinking this about God. See what I mean? Looks to me like you pulled that one out of a hat JUST to escape the objectionable aspects of the math I brought up.

And you’ve repeatedly said, “But if that’s the case with apatheia then I have NO IDEA what the Bible means because I have no analogy in my experience to make sense of THAT….” But one could respond to your idea that no one feeling in God can diminish the extent to which he experiences another feeling with, “Well, if it’s the case, then I have NO IDEA what you’re talking about because we have no basis in our experience for such affective bifurcation.” Like you said, such affective bifurcation is entirely unlike us, so what about us tells you God would have this psychic power?

But let’s go which that thought for the sake of argument. If in God’s case no one feeling can diminish the extent to which he experiences another feeling, then God's being unimprovably happy (i.e., naturally experiences an acme of intensity with respect to pleasure, as D and I are arguing) cannot threaten anything you value with respect to his experiencing the world’s pain. So the only questions now are—

(a) What are God’s sources of joy/pleasure? and

(b) Are there any sources of pleasure for God that are arguably sources of an unimprovable/unincreassable joy?

Are God’s sources of pleasure exclusively created sources of pleasure (i.e., does God derive all his aesthetic pleasure from creation)? Or does God have any uncreated sources of joy (i.e., does God derive aesthetic pleasure from God’s own self)? And is God a source of pleasure to Godself? What would answering ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to this entail?

If God derives joy from self-contemplation, then no suffering he encounters in the world would diminish the extent to which he experiences THIS joy. This much Greg argues in T&P too. It simply IS his thesis (which for whatever reason you still fail to appreciate) that there are a priori reasons for concluding that necessary (divine) existence is a source of pleasure to itself essentially.

We agree God exists necessarily and that much about God is necessary. I’m hoping we agree that God is inherently beautiful, the most beautiful thing imaginable. So it wouldn’t be difficult (Greg does it, but never mind reproducing his arguments here) to defend the claim that God’s own unimprovable beauty is a source of unimprovable delight to God. And if this were the case, you’d agree that nothing God experiences in the world in the way of suffering would diminish the extent to which God experiences this pleasure. This is the basic scaffolding for what the Fathers believed regarding the plenitude of God’s own being.

Whether and how SOME pleasures not only are not diminished by pain (which you agree to in God’s case) but are also such that they render pain ‘incomparably meaningless’ is a different issue. How would such incomparability be experienced? Wouldn’t it suggest a kind of swallowing up of pain in pleasure? Now we’re talking apatheia. I sense problems in your view that God is fully joyful in his experience of goodness and fully pain-ridden in his experience of sorrow and suffering as if these experiences are not integrated into a single matrix/manifold or aesthetic index. You’ve got God experiencing joy over here and experiencing sorrow over there and neither experience is integrated into the other in a single affective ‘whole’ in God. There’s no integrity throughout. That’s how you suggest you escape the problematic math of passibilism. But I’m not sure you haven’t created bigger problems for yourself by compartmentalizing God’s emotional life into experiences that aren’t integrated into a single sense of well-being that enfolds all God’s experience. I could suggest that you’re being grossly inconsistent—insisting at times that what we say about God be grounded in our own experience while suggesting here a model of God that has no parallel whatsoever in human experience.

So though we might agree that the world’s suffering cannot diminish the extent to which (if any) God derives pleasure from Godself, we’d definitely disagree on the nature of this pleasure (its essentially triune constitution, its necessity, its acme). You may not even grant that the necessary God is irreducibly and unimprovably beautiful. I don’t know. But if you did grant this, you may think God himself is MORE beautiful on account of having created than he would be had he never created, in which case you’d deny that God’s essential beauties generate an umimprovable pleasure. Again, I don’t know where you are on these things. I don’t think the world improves upon the beauty that God is (and which he is to himself). You may also not agree that God perfectly knows Godself and so perceives his own beauty, and that this self-knowledge grounds an unimprovable experience of pleasure (unimprovable in the sense that since the beauties of God’s own necessary self-sufficiency obtain necessarily and are perfectly perceived, no beauty that God is would be hidden from God’s own view; hence, whatever pleasures are derivable from the beatific vision would obtain in God necessarily and would remain both undiminishable and unimprovable).

Point is, what do you care whether or not the pleasure God derives from Godself is maxed out (as it were) in an acme of satisfaction if you agree that no experience of the world’s suffering can diminish the extent to which God enjoys Godself anyhow? If the world can’t diminish the pleasure God gets from Godself, what would it matter if this pleasure is unimprovable? The only question would be—Is God a source of pleasure to Godself and if so, would this pleasure be improvable? It could only be improvable if the source itself (in this case God’s own inherent beauty) or God’s perception of the source . For in this instance God is the source of pleasure under consideration.

J: God has apatheia sans creation because nothing is at risk in that SOFA. But now, given libertarian freedom, sympathetic feeling can go either way IN THE SHORT TERM. But God still has teleological apatheia because of His competence to render creation worth it to His Beloved and, therefore, Himself.

T: On the one hand you agree that no worldly suffering can diminish the extent to which God enjoys pleasure. But now you’re limiting God’s sans creational apatheia to God’s sans creational experience, as if once God creates, his sans creational pleasure IS at risk. And once the world goes awry the extent to which God enjoys the same sans creational pleasure (generated by God's enjoyment of his own necessary self-existence, to which the world contributes nada) is gone. God has to wait until creation is entirely won and all sin eradicated before he can get back to his pre-creational enjoyment. Which is it, Jeff? If as you said earlier the extent to which God experiences one emotion is not diminished by any other emotion, then the extent to which God enjoys himself sans creation is not "at risk" by other emotions relative to his relating to the worldl (going with your approach). God wouldn’t have to wait for the world’s glorification before he could have his sans creational delight restored to him by the world’s completion. HOW you want to ‘fit’ God’s present sufferings into THIS constant is up to you, but I don’t see you’re being consistent at all. But this is where we are MOST different, because D and I view God's abiding sans creational joy as that competency which grounds the certain success of God's purposes for creation. As Doestoyevsky said, "Beauty shall save the world."

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 5/10/2012 7:39:34 PM (GMT-5)