Did the Passion affect God?

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Brassring

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As I prayed the Rosary this morning, pondering the sorrowful mysteries, I began wonder: Was God changed in any way by the experience of Christ’s Passion? Human beings are altered forever by traumatic events. Such events give us new perspective, and can make us more sullen and angry, or more sympathetic.

We know Jesus is of a dual nature, both fully divine and fully human. We can observe a certain difference between the way the old testament expresses God and the way the new testament expresses God. We know Jesus suffered horrible pain, anguish and humiliation during His passion. Did God gain new perspective during His suffering?

We know that God is infinite, and being infinite there should be no experience that would be new to God. But, is God’s infinite nature potential, or substantive?

For example, I have decent manual dexterity and reasonable intelligence. I have the capacity to learn to play the guitar. That is not the same thing as saying that I know how to play the guitar.

I know that God always understood suffering, but prior to the Passion, had God ever suffered?

I also know I’m speaking chronologically of God, who exists outside of time and space, but for the sake of argument let’s discuss this chronologically.

Was God different before the Passion than after?
 
Brassring said:
As I prayed the Rosary this morning, pondering the sorrowful mysteries, I began wonder: Was God changed in any way by the experience of Christ’s Passion? Human beings are altered forever by traumatic events. Such events give us new perspective, and can make us more sullen and angry, or more sympathetic.

We know Jesus is of a dual nature, both fully divine and fully human. We can observe a certain difference between the way the old testament expresses God and the way the new testament expresses God. We know Jesus suffered horrible pain, anguish and humiliation during His passion. Did God gain new perspective during His suffering?

We know that God is infinite, and being infinite there should be no experience that would be new to God. But, is God’s infinite nature potential, or substantive?

For example, I have decent manual dexterity and reasonable intelligence. I have the capacity to learn to play the guitar. That is not the same thing as saying that I know how to play the guitar.

I know that God always understood suffering, but prior to the Passion, had God ever suffered?

I also know I’m speaking chronologically of God, who exists outside of time and space, but for the sake of argument let’s discuss this chronologically.

Was God different before the Passion than after?
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There is nothing potential in God, and there is absolutely no change in God. The dogma of the divine immutability states that God’s immutability is absolute.

So, no, the Passion did not change God. Of course, as man, Jesus, the Second Person of the Trinity, did experience and undergo change, including the change of his body in growth and development, to suffering and death, to his glorification. But all of this change took place in his human nature. It would be impossible for God, as God, to “learn” anything.

It’s impossible to discuss this “chronologically” (as we would accommodate, for example when discussing the Trinity) since any discussion of immutability automatically precludes movement.
 
The Father pours his whole being into the Son, and the Son pours his whole being into the Father, and this is reciprocal Love (known as the Holy Spirit),
When the Son became man, a man now poured his whole being into the Father (and his material being into us, in the Eucharist).

So, the passion is the first instance of a human pouring his whole being into God, and thereby dying. And in reciprocal Love, the Father gives his whole being into the Son, including his human body, including into his Body and Blood which we have taken into us.

It is Justice, giving what is due to his Father, his whole being; and it is reciprocal justice of Love, when the Father does likewise and there is his resurrection (and ours, who have eaten his flesh and drunk his blood). Now we, in Faith, pour our whole being into God, serving him and receiving His life from him…
 
I’ve always interpreted God being “outside of time” to mean that he experiences every moment that ever was and ever will be as the same moment, always, so there is no before or after, there just is. So the passion is happening, and has already happened and will happen again…

I don’t know if that’s just gobbledygook or if it’s true or if I’m even intelligent enough to have these kinds of discussions 😃
 
This is a question people have been debating for many years. I would have to agree with porthos in saying that no, God did not change during the passion. God is impervious to any force of change, but this does not deny suffering on the cross. Jesus suffering is a property of His humanity, not His divinity. We must remember that when a person suffers, it is the person who suffers and not his nature. God implicated Himself though in suffering when He took on a human nature.

I think what you may be asking though is did God the Father suffer? If that is the case, I would have to say no, because God the father did not take on human nature like God the Son did.
 
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