C
Contrabass101
Guest
This was brought up in Church History today.
St. Thomas Aquinas makes an argument, that since God must be unchangeable, because he is perfect and any change would be eith for better (in which case he was imperfect at first) or worse (in which case he would cease to be perfect), God can not be subject to passions, such as pity, anger etc.
In this, he rely a lot on Aristotle and the Hellenistic view of God, that it is unfitting for God to be passionate and dynamic. Rather, God should be static and constant. This is not solely Greek, as also the OT confirms that God is the same “yesterday, today and forever”. And intuitively, there seems to be a lot to it.
But many Christians have rebelled against this thought, claiming that God becomes intollerable, if he is not affected by the suffering of the millions killed in concentration camps or trenches. Aquinas is charged with being too philosophical, hair-splitting and hellenizing. Indeed the OT-God seems to be almost anthropomorphic in comparison. Further, prayer seems to become futile if we accept this point of view.
While I do think that Aquinas’ view is suspicuously Aritotelian, I think there’s a lot to be said for his positition. I also like Thomas Aquinas very much, and admire him a great deal.
Personally I have a feeling that the mystrey of the Incarnation is the key to understand this problem, but I’d like to hear some other (name removed by moderator)ut.
St. Thomas Aquinas makes an argument, that since God must be unchangeable, because he is perfect and any change would be eith for better (in which case he was imperfect at first) or worse (in which case he would cease to be perfect), God can not be subject to passions, such as pity, anger etc.
In this, he rely a lot on Aristotle and the Hellenistic view of God, that it is unfitting for God to be passionate and dynamic. Rather, God should be static and constant. This is not solely Greek, as also the OT confirms that God is the same “yesterday, today and forever”. And intuitively, there seems to be a lot to it.
But many Christians have rebelled against this thought, claiming that God becomes intollerable, if he is not affected by the suffering of the millions killed in concentration camps or trenches. Aquinas is charged with being too philosophical, hair-splitting and hellenizing. Indeed the OT-God seems to be almost anthropomorphic in comparison. Further, prayer seems to become futile if we accept this point of view.
While I do think that Aquinas’ view is suspicuously Aritotelian, I think there’s a lot to be said for his positition. I also like Thomas Aquinas very much, and admire him a great deal.
Personally I have a feeling that the mystrey of the Incarnation is the key to understand this problem, but I’d like to hear some other (name removed by moderator)ut.
- CB