Does God dwell in eternal bliss?

[DougL]

I have learned from theology that God is eternally blissful in his triune being, needing nothing and nobody. Creation is only an expression of God’s love, not need. This idea seems kind of Greek.

More Semitic in flavor, Jesus suffered even though he was God. Jesus mourned the death of Lazarus. He mourned the sinfulness of Jerusalem. He was offended by the hypocrites and the profiteers. He seems to have been hurt and offended in more than his humanity. Did Jesus embody and express the suffering of God responding to sinners? Certainy the Old Testament often portrays the Lord as humbly tolerating Israel’s sins, imploring them to repent. Often, like Jesus, his prophets suffer because of the people’s sins.

When I was a child I learned that my sin offended God, that it was like driving another thorn into Jesus’ head.

As a father, I am hurt by the wrongdoing of my own children. It’s an anguish to watch someone you love do things that harm themselves and others.

So I’m looking for wisdom on this issue. I find a suffering God easier to relate to in many ways, but I think a blissful God is more philosophically consistent with God’s attributes. Maybe someone can link me to a definitive answer on this. Thank you.

 

[Della]

It is certainly true that God is complete in himself and needs no one to live in eternal bliss, however, because God chose to extend his love to his creatures he has allowed himself to be moved by our actions. It is we who do not show proper love and respect for God by committing offenses against him. He revealed himself to us in the person of his Son, who assumed his human nature in order to draw us back to union with God–to show us the love that God wishes us to share with him. Does that help or have I missed the point of your question?

 

[Joanna]

As God the Father, God cannot suffer, however, in the Person of Jesus, who is God and always united to the Father and the Holy Spirit, God, who has taken on Himself a human nature, can, has and does suffer. It’s one of those things that is a paradox. Just as the Trinity is impossible for us to truly grasp so is this a Mystery.

 

[RobedWithLight]

DougL:

So I’m looking for wisdom on this issue. I find a suffering God easier to relate to in many ways, but I think a blissful God is more philosophically consistent with God’s attributes. Maybe someone can link me to a definitive answer on this. Thank you.

The idea of a suffering God is philosophically and logically untenable. Suffering results from being deprived of some perfection. If God** really** suffers, that means He has been deprived of some perfection that He has, hence He would then be less that perfectly good.

As such a suffering God would mean that He Himself has become enmeshed in the evil which causes suffering. Humanity would then be without hope of release from this suffering, because their creator likewise suffers. Divine justice would never be able to repair the damage done by this evil in creation, because the Divine judge is likewise caught in it. Love would then be merely the equal of evil, instead of its superior. He, despite His power, would be reduced to the status of a cosmic policeman trying to impose order upon a chaotic universe, instead of its Transcendent, All-powerful, all loving Creator. A God enmeshed in suffering and the evil that causes it would be trapped, like the rest of creation. This is why I hold that God, in Himself, in His very nature is impassible, that is, He does not undergo some changes in emotional states, and hence He truly cannot suffer.

Gerry

 

[JimG]

RobedWithLight:

This is why I hold that God, in Himself, in His very nature is impassible, that is, He does not undergo some changes in emotional states, and hence He truly cannot suffer.All that is true in respect to God’s essential nature, which is complete perfection. But God the Son also took upon himself a human nature, and in that nature, he experienced suffering, for it is the person who suffers, not the nature. Otherwise, you would come close to saying the the suffering of Jesus was merely an illusion, or that He was not truly human as well as truly God, both of which are heresies.

 

[DougL]

Gerry wrote: “The idea of a suffering God is philosophically and logically untenable. Suffering results from being deprived of some perfection. If God really suffers, that means He has been deprived of some perfection that He has, hence He would then be less that perfectly good.”

Thank you, Gerry. What you wrote is a good example of what I’ve always read, and it makes perfect sense philosophically. But no one has really answered my question about how God is “displeased” by the sins of humankind. This is a staple theme of the OT, and in the NT, Jesus, the very image and substance of the Father, suffered. The Holy Spirit too is said to be “grieved” in a passage or two. And the Holy Spirit groans in travail like a woman in labor until the full redemption of this fallen world be accomplished.

Surely someone has an insight into this problem that in Scripture God seems to suffer. So far no one has illuminated this question for me. I’m not trying to be difficult, and I won’t fall away from orthodoxy while I search for wisdom on this issue. Thank you.

 

[davidv]

DougL:

As a father, I am hurt by the wrongdoing of my own children. It’s an anguish to watch someone you love do things that harm themselves and others.

But no one has really answered my question about how God is “displeased” by the sins of humankind.

It seems to me that the answer to your question in the last post was written by you in your first post. We have been invited to become adopted sons and daughters of God. If we refuse his original offer, God’s “suffering” must be a lot that you would feel if you gave your child some gift that they picked up and immediately through in the trash.
If, on the other hand, we’ve accepted His original offer, then sin, it must feel to God like you described in the quote above when your child does something wrong.
In Christ,
David

 

[RobedWithLight]

JimG:

All that is true in respect to God’s essential nature, which is complete perfection. But God the Son also took upon himself a human nature, and in that nature, he experienced suffering, for it is the person who suffers, not the nature. Otherwise, you would come close to saying the the suffering of Jesus was merely an illusion, or that He was not truly human as well as truly God, both of which are heresies.

I agree, which is why I qualified my statement as ***In His very nature, ***He is impassible.

God taking upon himself human nature, as the Incarnate Son, while retaining his personhood, to be one with us in all things except sin, is something extraordinarily unique in the whole history of the universe, which made possible the Passion and the Resurrection, because God’s omnipotence, coupled with His great mercy did make it possible for Him to assume flesh and bones, to show His great love and effect the rescue of His creation.

Gerry

 

[RobedWithLight]

DougL:

But no one has really answered my question about how God is “displeased” by the sins of humankind. This is a staple theme of the OT, and in the NT, Jesus, the very image and substance of the Father, suffered. The Holy Spirit too is said to be “grieved” in a passage or two. And the Holy Spirit groans in travail like a woman in labor until the full redemption of this fallen world be accomplished.
Surely someone has an insight into this problem that in Scripture God seems to suffer. So far no one has illuminated this question for me. I’m not trying to be difficult, and I won’t fall away from orthodoxy while I search for wisdom on this issue. Thank you.

There is no conflict with God’s immutability (unchangingness), and impassibility on the one hand, and scripture’s references about God being “displeased” over the sins of mankind. In the first place, such statements about God being “grieved” or displeased are said to be “Anthropathetic”, language intended to make God more intelligible to us by using terms which are understandable on the basis of everyday human experience.

In the same token, we say that God “sees” us. Do we likewise say God can suffer from astigmatism or cataracts because “sees” implies that God has “eyes” in the same way man has eyes ?

Displeasure, on the part of God should not be taken to mean that God is “displeased” in the same way man is “displeased”, since at most the terms “displeased” can only be spoken of in an analogous sense, not in the same sense of God and man.

God is perfectly good and holy, and therefore acts of evil committed by man is abhorrent to His nature, not because He can be affected by it, but because it simply is incompatible with his goodness. God’s frequent commands to men to repent and mend their ways throughout the Old Testament testifies to his unchanging and unchangeable holiness in contrast to man.

Gerry

 

[DougL]

Anthropathetic they may be, but Scripture passages that describe God suffering because of human sin seem no less true. God is beyond our ken, but Jesus humanized a suffering (later joyful) God in the parable of the prodigal son. We, after all, are made in God’s image; Jesus in more ways than one presents God in man’s image. I like Jesus’ presentation of the Father in the parable; I like Jesus’ representation of the love of God in his own suffering Person.

For catechesis of both children and adults, I prefer describing God as personally involved with our moral choices, grieved or pleased with them according as we choose sin or virtue.

At the same time, I’m also fine with the God who lives in constant bliss. I’m happy for God. God deserves that. But to stress that blissful God risks giving people the idea that God doesn’t really care about us because he’s perpetually on a high.

The anthropathetic God also helps give heart to evangelism. People are perishing for lack of Christ. If God is happy about that, why should I care? Of course God is not happy about those who perish. He wills that all come to salvation.

Jesus was the Man of Sorrows. Mary is known by the title Our Lady of Sorrows, and in many apparitions (I think) she cries because so many are hostile to God’s mercy. Mary, Queen of Heaven and Earth, is fully connected to the heart and will of God.

Not to take this too far astray, but remember Fatima, how Mary asked the children to pray and sacrifice to “console” Jesus. Lots of old-time saints talk about consoling God in his rejections.

Yet for all this teaching about a God who loves us to the point of suffering, there is still the philososophic need to say that God is perfectly blissful forever and we can’t disturb God. Am I to conclude that this is one of our Christian mysteries, paradoxes, or anomolies? Both are true?

 

[Teresa9]

God in Himself is Bliss. To live in Heaven with God is Bliss, but through sin we are bereft of that eternal bliss, therefore to redeem us to eternal bliss, God Himself in Christ Jesus joined our suffering in our humanity and in suffering healed for all eternity humanities seperation from God our Father, such is His love, such is mercy and such is the Bliss of Him. This Bliss is Love.

We are CREATURES He has created out of love to make a share with Him in eternal bliss that is love, when we as His creatures sin, it offends His very heart, God is more sensitive than any of our hearts. Sin is subordinate, wilful rejection of the will of God, which is to the detriment of our lives, the whole of humanity, the world, heaven and God Himself and the Holy Trinity. We in effect sin against love, the eternal bliss of love for eternity.

God doesn’t need us, but He LOVES us as His creatures, we are His sons and daughters. Heaven rejoices over God’s creatures and equally Heaven is offended and saddened when sin causes sacrilege and outrage to this eternal bliss that is love. In creating us God knows our most initmate selves, in sharing in our humanity he knows our joys and our difficulties, in indwelling us in our souls He joins in our humanity and raises us to His supernatural self, so that we may make a share in His Divinity, as He has shared in our humanity.This is also Bliss for God, to love His creatures and Bliss is also for Him when we love Him.

God doesn’t need us for His eternal and infinite bliss, but now He has created us we are part of His eternal bliss and it is His utmost desire and bliss that we love and make a share in His eternal bliss, which is love as He is our Father. It then follows that when we reject His love and mercy, there is sadness and sorrow in heaven until the end of the world as we know it, when eternal happiness and bliss will be had for those who love God as their Father, and Jesus as their brother and King and the Holy Spirit as our guide and counsellor, Mary as our Mother and our brothers and sisters as ourselves. In love is always the very act of sorrow. God possesses human qualities and it’s sufferings in the very Sacred Heart of Jesus, our Father has indeed shared in our humanity.

God Bless you and much love and peace to you xx

 

[Teresa9]

cont. Who can know all God our Father’s ways? Who can know all His infinite wisdom, but God alone? It is right to seek our Father and right to come to know Him, but until we see Him, we will never know all of His ways.