January 2006, Article # 1
Can God Suffer?
Written by the Very Rev. John Breck

http://www.oca.org/CHRIST-life-print.asp?ID=98

. . . In reaction to this threat posed to Orthodox Trinitarian theology, the Church condemned "patripassionism" and affirmed that only the Son suffered and died on the Cross.

This is a conviction we must uphold today every bit as much as Orthodox theologians did in the third century. Yet it needs to be stated as well that in a particular sense, God the Father indeed "suffered" at the Crucifixion. A child will ask: "Why did God send His Son to die and not come Himself?" The question reflects a double misunderstanding. On the one hand, He who died on the Cross was indeed God: the eternal Son of the Father. Yet when the apostle Paul speaks of "God" and "Christ," he is referring respectively to the Father and the Son. Thus he can declare, "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself" (2 Cor 5:19). To answer the child’s question, it is enough to point out that no father could sacrifice his son without undergoing the same or even greater suffering than the son himself is called to bear. In other words, God the Father, in His infinite compassion and boundless love, endured a degree of personal suffering at the Crucifixion that was no less than the suffering borne by His Son, Jesus.

That subjective suffering, borne by each Person of the Holy Trinity, is not limited to the historical moment of the Cross. Like divine Love, divine suffering is a reality that characterizes God’s personal existence as He relates to the world He has made. Consequently, there is no human or cosmic suffering that is not part of God’s own personal experience. This is not "patripassionism." It is the simple Gospel truth that the triune God indeed shares in – He knows and drinks to the bitter dregs – the cup of our suffering, whatever its cause, however devastating to us it might be.

Can God suffer? Does God truly suffer in the suffering of mankind and of each individual bearer of His divine image? Preserving a thoroughly Trinitarian perspective on God’s existence, we can answer that question with a resounding "Yes!" "We see Jesus," the author of Hebrews declares (2:9), "who for a little while was made lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God [the Father] He might taste death for every one."

That tasting of death was not limited to the Cross. It involves His ongoing suffering in the life of every sparrow that falls to the ground, every victim of a natural disaster, and every tormented soul who contemplates suicide. Christ’s suffering – and with it, the suffering of God the Father – embraces the whole world and every particular life within it, including yours and mine. There is no true love without suffering. And God is and always will be the God of Love.