Friday, March 18, 2022

William G. T. Shedd on the Emotions and Wrath of God being "Pure"

  

Now when the emotion of anger in a most pure spirit like God comes into contact with moral evil, there is harmony between the feeling and its object. It is a righteous feeling spent upon a wicked thing. When God hates what is hateful and is angry at that which merits wrath, the true nature and fitness of things is observed, and he feels in himself that inward satisfaction which is the substance of happiness. Anger and hatred are associated in our minds with unhappiness, because we behold their exercise only in a sinful sphere and in an illegitimate manner. In an apostate world, the proper and fitting coincidence between emotions and their objects has been disturbed and destroyed by sin. A sinner hates the holiness which he ought to love and loves the sin which he ought to hate. The anger in his heart is selfish and passionate, not legitimate and calm. The love in his heart is illicit; and hence in Scripture it is denominated “lust” or “concupiscence” (epithymia). In a sinful world, the true relations and correlations are reversed. Love and hatred are expended upon exactly the wrong objects. But when these feelings are contemplated within the sphere of the holy and the eternal; when they are beheld in God, a most pure spirit, without body, parts, or passions, and exercised only upon are beheld in God, a most pure spirit, without body, parts, or passions, and exercised only upon their appropriate and deserving objects; when the wrath falls only upon the sin and uncleanness of hell and burns up nothing but filth in its pure celestial flame; then the emotion is not merely right and legitimate, but it is beautiful with an august beauty and no source of pain either to the divine mind or to any minds in sympathy with it. (William G. T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology: Complete and Unabridged, Volumes 1-3 [Reformed Retrieval, 2021], 124)