In coming to the balance between divine impassibility and divine emotion on the one hand, and in making proper distinction between divine emotion and human emotion on the other hand, we cannot go to the extremes of saying either that all human emotions are “disturbed feelings” or that divine emotions have no feeling at all. If divine emotions have absolutely no feeling attached to them, then there is little reason to attribute emotions to God, other than to say that Scripture is condescending to human sensibilities. . . . [if the traditional rationalizations are accepted] one must admit that the mere act of the reader discovering that God condescends to him as if he were “addressing a child” inevitably disqualifies this condescension as a device of divine pedagogy, for once the reader is allowed to go ‘behind the scenes’ and understand the real reason why Scripture attributes an “angry” disposition to God, the divine pedagogy that sought to use anger as a means to frighten him into obedience is compromised. Not only will the pedagogy be ineffective, but the reader will also consider it silly for Scripture to talk to him in such a childish manner since, as is evident from his discovery of the alleged anthropopathism, he is quite capable of distancing himself from a childlike mentality. In other words, both God and the reader will know that once the reader figures out that God’s anger is not real and was put in Scripture only to frighten hypothetically lesseraware people into submission, the depiction of divine anger in Scripture becomes childish in itself, and even duplicitous, for it is portrayed to the uneducated reader as real when in reality it is not real. In fact, under the Clement and Origen schema, the only thing that makes the depiction of divine anger effective in Scripture is the ignorance of the reader to believe that God actually gets angry at him!
One might also say that, by relying on depictions of divine anger that are not real, Scripture is engaging in a type of fantasy or fiction throughout its historical narratives, making it appear as if God is making decisions and performing actions based on an angry or compassionate disposition when, in fact, these emotive dispositions have absolutely nothing to do with the said actions. Consequently, the effort to condescend to human sensibilities has the opposite effect for the thinking reader, for the reader knows that every time he reads a pericope of Scripture that displays divine emotion as the cause for divine action, he must first place himself amongst the group of the theologically illiterate that has the tendency to ascribe real emotions to God; but then he is also expected to lift himself up to the position that Scripture includes divine emotions only to make it appear, for his human sensibilities, that a cause-and-effect relationship actually exists between God’s emotions and God’s actions. These convoluted results speak for themselves.
But the contortions are not finished. In another twist of ironies, he must simultaneously come to the position that, despite the fact that Scripture frequently portrays God as having emotions, behind it all, Scripture really doesn’t want him to think in that way at all! Logically, if God really doesn’t have emotions, his ultimate goal would be to have everyone come to the final conclusion that he has no emotion. But God is left with explaining the fact that he inspired Scripture over 1500 years and passed it down to generation upon generation, never telling his readers that it was all fiction for their spiritual benefit. It must also be answered why Scripture would need to speak in such an illiterate or fictitious manner if God believes the reader already has the capability to distinguish between an author who is merely condescending to human sensibilities and an author who writes things plainly and matter-of-factly. As such, creating fictitious impressions merely in order to condescend to human sensibilities would not only be superfluous, but very dangerous, for Scripture runs the risk of making itself appear duplicitous to its entire human audience. Simply put, why would Scripture take the risk of ascribing emotions to God if its ultimate goal was to rid that notion from the human reader so that he can have a better understanding of God? In fact, the whole basis for the position that God does not have emotions and that Scripture merely condescends to human sensibilities is that the reader is not only dull-witted but trapped in the mental incapacity of thinking that God has emotions. He is just a trusting soul who believes that everything Scripture says should be taken at face value, for he trusts that God would not lie to him. If God says he has emotions, then God has emotions. Hence, if God says he is angry, the reader is supposed to accept that specific Scriptural proposition as if it were a genuine truth of God’s character, for, as both Clement and Origen suggest to us, Scripture’s effort to create the “angry” image of God is for the express purpose of frightening the reader into submission. But then the authors turn the table 180 degrees and tells the reader that God really doesn’t have emotions and that God only made it appear in Scripture as such, and he did so precisely because he had his trusting reader in mind! In effect, God is made to appear as if he wants the reader to trust that he is Giving plain truth, but instead of writing scriptural narratives that are devoid of emotion (which would be the plain truth), God adds emotion even though he knows he has no emotion, and apparently has decided that this duplicity will have no effect on his reader’s trust in him or Scripture! The reader is left to think that God speaks out of both sides of his mouth.
Consequently, the whole hermeneutic that claims God spoke in a fictitious manner for human sensibilities is fraught with contradictions. Its attempt to save God from false impressions and human frailties only ends up making God the victim of both, and in an even worse way, for it leaves open the possibility that God has told a falsehood to his reader. The correct interpretation is to take Scripture at face value and accept that God has emotions of anger but is also immutable and impassible. In this sense, immutable does not mean that God cannot change his outlook from one position to another; and impassible does not mean that God cannot experience emotion. Rather, immutable means that God always does what is consistent with his divine essence and character. If it means that it is proper for him to show the emotion of anger in one instance or compassion in another, he will do so. Similarly, impassible means that God does not exhibit human emotion and its inevitable frailties, not that he cannot have divine emotion and exhibit them perfectly.
In conclusion, it is theologically proper to view God with a genuine emotive disposition towards good and evil. Most objections to emotive traits in the Godhead arise from a notion that emotions are inseparably tied to corporeality and/or unbridled passion. But there is a great difference between the corporeal sensations that result from emotion and the ontological existence of emotions themselves. Simply put, just as we ascribe the faculties of intelligence and will to God and angelic beings who do not have a corporeal body, so emotive faculties can exist in both God and angelic beings without physical sensation. Similar to intelligence and will, emotive response should be considered an essential characteristic of higher-order creatures, whereas lower order creatures are considered absent of emotions (e.g., plants, insects). The higher the level of being, the more sophisticated its intellectual, willful, and emotional characteristics. (Robert A. Sungenis, Not By Bread Alone: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for the Eucharistic Sacrifice [2d ed.; State Line, Pa.: Catholic Apologetics International Publishing, Inc., 2009], 337, 339-41)
