Can God have feelings?

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tonyrey said:
You have a most peculiar notion of God… 🙂
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Here is another example of God being angry which is an emotion:

Jeremiah
7:18 The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger.
7:19 Do they provoke me to anger? saith the LORD: do they not provoke themselves to the confusion of their own faces?

Here is a verse talking about God being jealous which is an emotion:

Exodus
20:5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God…
 
BlueShadow123 said:
Here is another example of God being angry which is an emotion:
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Technically anger is not an emotion. Aquinas defined it as “energy directed at percieved injustice”. It is a desire to correct what we percieve as an injustice.

God’s perception is complete and unerring, so any act He takes to correct an injustice is, by definition, anger.

Humans often associate an emotion with it (like we do with Love), but anger, like Love, is not an emotion.
 
BlueShadow123 said:
Here is another example of God being angry which is an emotion:

Jeremiah7:18 The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger.
7:19 Do they provoke me to anger? saith the LORD: do they not provoke themselves to the confusion of their own faces?
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Why stop there?

[20] Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, my anger and my wrath will be poured out on this place, upon man and beast, upon the trees of the field and the fruit of the ground; it will** burn and not be quenched."**

So now God has an emotion called “anger and wrath” that burns and can be poured. Perhaps we should conjecture (against the clear and consistant teaching of the Catholic Church) that based on those three verses, God has emotion, and his emotion is hot magma*, or some other unquenchable flaming pourable substance.

*originaly I wrote “hot lava” but no true fan of Austin Powers ever passed up an opportunity to say the word “magma.”

Magma.
 
God definitely has emotions. And yes, anger is an emotion. Ask any psychiatrist or psychologist.

But okay then, you can think what you’d like.
 
BlueShadow123 said:
God definitely has emotions. And yes, anger is an emotion. Ask any psychiatrist or psychologist.

But okay then, you can think what you’d like.
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The author was using anger to denote the nature of his action, not what he actually felt.
 
BlueShadow123 said:
Here is another example of God being angry which is an emotion:

Jeremiah
7:18 The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger.
7:19 Do they provoke me to anger? saith the LORD: do they not provoke themselves to the confusion of their own faces?

Here is a verse talking about God being jealous which is an emotion:

Exodus
20:5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God…
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Not that I expect a logical answer, i have to ask, we know that God is love, the bible states this, so how can a loving God be so angry as to kill people, even sinners?

if the author was truly expressing in literal terms God’s “anger” as an emotion, then wouldn’t it be more appropriate to write about how “sad” God was that people made Him so “angry” because God “loved” them so much?

Hosea speaks of God commanding the bellies of pregnant women to be slashed open. How can an “emotional” [loving] God do such a thing?

As others have said, you’re mistaking the method of allocating emotion to a non-emotional being to better the audiences’ understanding of said being. It’d be like saying the “Wind was angry” or “the sea was bitterly cold”
 
vera_dicere said:
Not that I expect a logical answer, i have to ask, we know that God is love, the bible states this, so how can a loving God be so angry as to kill people, even sinners?

if the author was truly expressing in literal terms God’s “anger” as an emotion, then wouldn’t it be more appropriate to write about how “sad” God was that people made Him so “angry” because God “loved” them so much?

Hosea speaks of God commanding the bellies of pregnant women to be slashed open. How can an “emotional” [loving] God do such a thing?

As others have said, you’re mistaking the method of allocating emotion to a non-emotional being to better the audiences’ understanding of said being. It’d be like saying the “Wind was angry” or “the sea was bitterly cold”
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Then perhaps I am wrong. We will have to see once we are dead.
 
vera_dicere said:
Not that I expect a logical answer, i have to ask, we know that God is love, the bible states this, so how can a loving God be so angry as to kill people, even sinners?
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Love is dangerous. Ask any bear cub and try to outrun the mamma.
 
The next question that begs asking is “Can God have thoughts?”
The answer has to be NO, because the word “thoughts” itself implies a “chain of thoughts”, something which comes and goes. This is against the constancy and immutability of God. If at all he has one thought, it must be I AM.
 
BlueShadow123 said:
If angels didn’t have emotions, then Gods favorite angel, lucifer would not have gotten angry or jealous.
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Satan didn’t “get angry”. He was, however, jealous, but jealousy is not an emotion. It is the consequence of pride applied to another object which viewed to have over-rated goodness.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, there are plenty of passages in teh Scriptures which attribute human physical aspects to God even though God is immaterial. This is a stylistic convention designed to help us understand God, and is called anthropomorpic language. The sacred authors never actually thought that God had a “right arm” “head” or that god “repented” or was “angry” these are all things which are true of men and hence the sacred authors use them because we are familiar with them.
 
Ohh I’m plenty sure he has emotions. But why bother debating about it? Well find out when we’re dead.
 
vera_dicere said:
Hosea speaks of God commanding the bellies of pregnant women to be slashed open. How can an “emotional” [loving] God do such a thing?
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Do you believe every statement in the Old Testament is literally true?
 
tonyrey said:
Katholish;7384949:
An emotion is a physical reaction in the body.
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Not necessarily. Thoughts can produce emotions.
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Thoughts can cause an emotion, but they are not the emotion itself. Thoughts can cause a physical reaction in the body. Regardless of what cases the emotion, an emotion is entirely a physical thing. However, not only can thoughts affect emotions, but emotions can effect and affect thoughts.
 
Katholish said:
Thoughts can cause an emotion, but they are not the emotion itself. Thoughts can cause a physical reaction in the body.
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True.
Regardless of what cases the emotion, an emotion is entirely a physical thing.
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Emotions have an abstract element. Awe, gratitude, sorrow and love can exist in a person without a body.
 
Emotions have an abstract element. Awe, gratitude, sorrow and love can exist in a person without a body.
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Love and sorrow can be appetivie passions in man, i.e. emotions, but they can also exist as intellectual notions, in which sense they are not emotions. Thus, God and the angels can love, but they cannot have emotions. Love in this abstrsct sense is simply the recognition and appreciatation of a perceived good. Sorrow likewise is the perception of a good from which one is excluded.

St. Thomas lists 11 passions/emotions, awe and gratitude not being among them (though awe would probably be classified under love or joy).
 
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