A man caught in the rain does not stay that way if he has any sense about him. No one enjoys the feeling of wet clothing sticking to his skin while the winds of the storm shiver him from without. Only children enjoy playing in the rain. No, he will seek shelter from the storm.
And if he happens near a bridge, he will find under it a suitable refuge in which to patiently wait while the storm passes by. The man gets no wetter, not because the rain has ceased, but because he has changed his position in relation to the rain.
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He cannot act upon the storm in any real sense. He may leave the safety of the bridge and vainly try if he wishes, still, rain dancing will only leave him in a more discomfiting situation than before, and have as much effect on the rain as trying to nudge a mountain with his pinky finger. It is the rain’s prerogative, as if the rain had any intention, to act as it pleases. In this circumstance, it is only within the man’s ability to react or not react. The rain is the subject while the man is a mere object playing within the rain’s being.
Of God, the Doctors have staunchly noted, there are no passions. And yet, the psalmists and prophets would charge God with anger, sadness, and comedic euphoria. Are the writers of Holy Scripture and the theologians of the Church at odds with one another? Some would claim so: That Scripture is clear, God reacts in passionate empathy to the circumstances and choices of men. Else, how can God rightly be called loving?
I answer, He is like the rain. And contrary to the modern mind, which rejects impassibility as if it diminishes God’s love, I believe it alone provides a stable ground for our emotional life.
“For God, being good, is the cause of all good, subject neither to envy nor to any passion. For envy is far removed from the Divine nature, which is both passionless and only good.”1
—St. John of Damascus
Rain cannot properly be called wet, for “wet” is an attribute water gives to other things. Rain is not itself a wet object, but water in motion as droplets falling from the sky, wetting all it pitters and patters upon. Rain isn’t a wet thing. Rather, it is that thing which makes everything else wet.
Likewise, a man may say the bridge is dry to signify its protection from the rain, but he is not, in the strictest sense, talking about the bridge’s own condition. What matters is the dryness it creates in the midst of what would otherwise be wet. In truth, dryness is merely an absence of wetness. The bridge may be dry or dripping; that is not the point. Whether wet itself or not, beneath its span of wood or stone, it provides a measure of dryness. It is not simply a dry thing, but the thing that keeps those under it dry.
To merely call God loving is an understatement of enormous proportions. God is Love. He is that One by whom all true love is known and expressed. We call Him loving only by analogy, because He is not one loving being among others but Love itself. He is like an eternal rain, soaking everything it touches, drenching all things with Himself.
“Eternity is a perfect possession altogether of an endless life.”2
—Boethius
A man can only be said to be loving to the degree that God is in him and extends from him. God is love, or love belongs to His very being. Conversely, man’s love is derivative. Like the man made wet by the rain, he does not have the quality of wetness apart from something outside of him making him wet. The loving man does not create his own love but reflects the love poured on him by his Maker.
All of our emotions are responses to our human perception, whether conscious or instinctual, to this flow of God’s love. Our emotions are reactions to how we perceive God’s affection, either directly from God or indirectly through the reflections of other images of God.
Therefore, we also perceive these different emotions in God’s affection according to our circumstances. Yet this perception, while analogically true, is not ontologically so. In God Himself, there are no shifting moods. His anger is not a second feeling beside His love, but that same holy love encountered by the sinner as anger. His pleasure is that same love tasted by the righteous as God delighting in holiness. What we call His “sadness” is that same love’s settled and ardent opposition to the ruin of His creatures.
Again, the change is not in the rain, but in the position of man in relation to the rain. His affection is not independent of His simplicity. He is one, unchanging, eternal, “without body, parts, or passions.”3 The one simple divine affection is experienced diversely by creatures according to their state, such as favor to the contrite, and anger to the evil. He who dwells in love, dwells in God. But, he who is evil seeks to live in the absence of God’s love or contrary to His goodness. He has, so to speak, chosen to live under the bridge to spite his discomfort for the rain.
“For what else is that which is called evil but a removal of good?... So all things are good, since the maker of all things is supremely good. But since they are not supremely and unchangeably good like their creator, in them goodness can be decreased and increased. For good to be decreased is evil.”4
—St. Augustine of Hippo
Because we understand the world through our own limited experience, we instinctively imagine that God feels and reacts as we do. A God without reactive emotions or passions strikes us as a terrible prospect, as if He were uncaring or incapable of understanding the intensity of sorrow and joy. Nothing could be further from the truth.
To say that God is without passions is not to say that He is without affection. In us, passions imply multiplicity, change, reactivity, and fluctuation. The affection of God is real, but unlike our passions, it is single, eternal, proactive, and unchanging. He is the Lord. He changes not. What we call “feeling” in the Godhead is thus single, eternal, proactive, and unchanging.
The affection of God is far stronger, deeper, and more settled than our highest joys and deepest sorrows. What we feel cannot compare with the eternal reality of God’s limitless affection. This means that, far from God being unempathetic or “unfeeling,” the weight of His affection far surpasses any of our emotional understandings.
We are made in His image, though we are not Him. God has ontological power; man’s power is derivative of His. Whatever wisdom man has is only reflected light from Wisdom Himself, God. And, yes, man’s emotion is derivative as well, specifically of God’s affection. Just as our power and wisdom are dependent, reactive, and changing in relation to His power and wisdom, so our emotions are dependent, reactive, and changing in relation to His independent, proactive, and eternal affection.
“The Godhead is mind and word: for ‘in the beginning was the Word,’ and the followers of Paul ‘have the mind of Christ’ which ‘speaks’ in them: humanity too is not far removed from these: you see in yourself word and understanding, an imitation of the very Mind and Word. Again, God is love, and the fount of love: for this the great John declares, that ‘love is of God,’ and ‘God is love’: the Fashioner of our nature has made this to be our feature too.”5
—St. Gregory of Nyssa
Therefore, to best image God in our emotions, we must seek, through them, to reflect His affection. Because God’s love is immutable, our emotional life matures as it is ordered by that love into something stable, patient, and holy. God’s impassibility is not the enemy of human emotion; it is the pattern that our creaturely, reactive hearts are called to reflect.
The hope of glory is this: that we are perfectly united in Christ, and our perception of God’s affection, whether conscious or not, is so aligned with Reality Himself that we react emotionally in perfect concord with His eternal, proactive love, and our passions eternally mirror the steady affection of our Creator.
On that day, we shall become childlike once again, forever playing in the rain.
John Damascene, “An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith,” in St. Hilary of Poitiers, John of Damascus, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, trans. S. D. F. Salmond, vol. 9b, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1899), 1.
Stewart H. F. and Rand E. K., “Introduction,” in Boethius: The Theological Tractates and the Consolation of Philosophy, trans. H. F. Stewart and E. K. Rand (Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press; William Heinemann, 1918), 401.
Philip Schaff, “The Westminster Confession of Faith II.1,” The Creeds of Christendom, with a History and Critical Notes: The Evangelical Protestant Creeds, with Translations, vol. 3 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1882), 606.
Augustine of Hippo, “The Enchiridion on Faith, Hope, and Charity,” in On Christian Belief, ed. Boniface Ramsey, trans. Bruce Harbert, vol. I/8, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2005), 278.
Gregory of Nyssa, “On the Making of Man,” in Gregory of Nyssa: Dogmatic Treatises, Etc., ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, trans. Henry Austin Wilson, vol. 5, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1893), 391.
That last line. 🔥
I think I see what you're getting at here. I would change "derivative" to "created". I think I'm mostly on the same page though.
I'm also (definitely nit-picking here) not sure about the rain analogy. Rain is the description of water droplets falling. It's a state of being. Water is wet, and when that wet stuff is falling from the sky in droplet form we describe that state as rain.