Document Type

Paper

Publication Date

Fall 2025

Abstract

The philosophical and theological problem of divine impassibility has received much attention in recent years. One way of articulating this problem in Christian theology is this: can one truthfully ascribe emotions to God? This paper responds in the affirmative. After explaining the problem of anthropomorphism leveled against religious language, I argue that analogy best accounts for human speech about God and effectively responds to this critique. Second, I outline a canonical-inductive approach to the Bible that takes seriously the unity of God’s self-disclosure. From these commitments, I argue that God’s emotions are not anthropopathic—“bottom-up” human projections. Instead, human emotions are imperfectly “theopathic”—a result of God’s “top-down” creation of and communication with humans bearing His image. Finally, I briefly defend my proposal against historical and theological critiques by exploring a theological model of God’s emotions that is consistent with the perfect, immutable, transcendent God worshiped by Christians throughout history.

Notes

Course: PHI 425, Philosophical and Theological Methods (Dr. Bradley Seeman)

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