Wednesday, November 20, 2019

Fran Ferder on the Emotions of Jesus


Commenting on the reality of Jesus’ emotions, one Catholic author wrote:

Jesus and Human Emotion

The stories about Jesus show that he was able to express his feelings with an unashamed, unembarrassed freedom. The author of Hebrews describes Jesus as having the same human experience that all people have. Part of that experience was the ability to feel and to feel deeply. Jesus experienced a full range of human emotion:

He felt sorry (Lk 7:13)
Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand (Mk 1:41, NAB)
“How often I have longed” (Lk 13:34)
And sadness came over him (Mt 26:37)
Then, grieved . . . he looked angrily round (Mk 3:5)
He . . . summoned those he wanted (Mk 3:13)
He was indignant (Mk 10:14)
Filled with joy (Lk 10:21)
He shed tears (Lk 19:41-42)
“I have longed” (Lk 22:15)
“I have loved you” (Jn 15:9)
He was astonished (Mt 8:10)

Jesus was filled with an almost inexpressible zeal to accomplish his mission: “I have come to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were blazing already!” (Lk 12:49). One can feel he yearning in those words, the ache moving through every muscle of his body. Jesus knew the pain and disappointment of rejection, the agony of sadness. He experienced the king of intense longing that pulls at the heart and gnaws in the stomach. At times it moved him to tears, wet and salty expressions of feeling. He churned with anger, struggled with impatience, and cherished times of joy and excitement. His pule quickened with compassion, and his face mellowed in tenderness. He knew love.

It was not an emotionally frozen Messiah who gathered together a small band of followers and called them friends. It was not a sterile God keeping a proper distance who wandered over the Galilean countryside with women and men together. It was not an over-controlled Redeemer who begged for companionship and perspired in agony during his last hours. Jesus did not feel for effect. He felt because feeling is human and being fully human is not incompatible with being divine. (Fran Ferder, Words Made Flesh: Scripture, Psychology and Human Communication [Notre Dame, Ind.: Ave Maria Press, 1986], 51-52, emphasis added)

Latter-day Saint theology allows for the dynamic relationship between Jesus being fully human and experiencing true emotions while also affirming His deity and personal pre-existence. On this, see, for e.g.:


Daniel C. Peterson, On the Motif of the Weeping God in Moses 7 (cf. Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, Jacob A. Rennaker and David J. Larsen, Revisiting the Forgotten Voices of Weeping in Moses 7: A Comparison with Ancient Texts)

Indeed, even those from traditions that hold dogmatically to immutability and divine simplicity are recognizing that God’s emotions (not simply those Jesus experienced in his human nature as part of the Incarnation) are not anthropomorphisms but are genuine, real emotions. For a book-length study, see: