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Does God Have Emotions?

Discussion in 'Baptist Theology & Bible Study' started by DHK, Aug 22, 2008.

  1. TCGreek

    TCGreek New Member

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    This is a classic either/or fallacy.

    We say God is Spirit.
    So Are we.
    Our clay bodies are only shells, housing the real us, which are spirit-beings.

    Let's not forget that.

    So if that's the case, our emotions are not real either.
     
  2. russell55

    russell55 New Member

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    Well, it does say he has qualities or affections that in human being are called emotions. Scripture tells us God is grieved or angry or joyous or delighting or hating, so I don't think it's wrong to talk about God having feelings or emotions. But of course, he has them in a way that transcends our own experience with emotions as finite, changeable beings.

    Ours do, because we are changeable and finite. But how do you know God can't have the kind of emotions that an unchangeable, infinite being would have. Emotions that are constant and perfect. Perhaps he has eternal infinite love, love that doesn't grow or diminish, because it is infinite, but love that is eternally revealed among the members of the Godhead and in time revealed to human beings. Perhaps he has infinite wrath against sin—it doesn't grow or diminish—which he expresses (or not) as he decides.

    But doesn't creation reveal its creator? Aren't human beings made in God's image? Aren't we analogous in some ways to him, so that qualities we have are little pale (and since the fall, marred) shadows of qualities God has? So that we have them like God, but in the way finite, changeable creatures would have those qualities.

    Self-sacrificing is not love. It's an action that comes from love. God loved, and so he sent his son.
    For us, love wafts and wanes, so that we don't always feel it. But then we don't have perfect, constant love. Our emotions are only shadows of the kind of affections God has.



    Ours can be, but how do you know that's the only way emotions or feelings can be had? We have lots of things that are like God—we have wills, for instance, and the ability to think. But we have neither of those things in the same way God does. We are, in those ways, a little like God, but he is not, in those ways, like us. He has those things on a whole other realm than we do. Our wills change and our minds change, but his cannot because he is immutable. But that doesn't mean he doesn't really have a will or a mind, does it?

    Why can't he have emotions, just emotions that are way above and beyond our emotions? Emotions that are not peckish or fitful, ebbing and flowing. Emotions without mood swings. Emotions that come from his own purposeful, voluntary choice. Emotions that are always in his control. Emotions that he never has against his will.


    But the scripture uses emotional language to describe God. It is undoubtedly anthropopathic language, but that doesn't mean the language isn't meant to communicate something to us. What does it mean when it says God delights in something? How do we know it's not a feeling that our delight is a small shadow of? Our delight comes and goes, but does that mean that the kind of perfect, constant delight God would have isn't true delight and isn't an emotion, just the kind of emotion a perfect, eternal, Spirit would have?
     
  3. russell55

    russell55 New Member

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    No, he's constantly all of those things in a perfect, complete way. He doesn't change, but he reveals different emotions in time according to his will.

    No, nothing external can make him change. That's why the confessions say God is impassable--he doesn't have passions. But when they said that they were defining passions as something that is drawn out of a person against their will. When they said that God was impassable, they didn't mean to suggest that God has no feelings or emotions.

    Yes, we do filter them through our emotions and come to wrong conclusions about them. That's a mistake. But it's also a mistake to strip anthropomorphisms of any meaning whatsoever. If scripture says God has the emotions of joy, sorrow, wrath, then he does, but necessarily, as an immutable being, in ways that are different than we do.
     
  4. donnA

    donnA Active Member

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    The bible says God is love.
     
  5. donnA

    donnA Active Member

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    I think we probably shouldn't define God based solely on our human understanding, I think God is more then we can possibly understand, which means whether or not His has emotions means something a little different then it means for humans having emotions. We can never fully understand God. And remember nothing is impossible with God, emotions or not.
     
  6. TCGreek

    TCGreek New Member

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    When the dust is settled, I'll have to agree with you.
     
  7. DHK

    DHK <b>Moderator</b>

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    Here are some of the factors that I thought that I should consider.
    What is an emotion?
    As far as the KJV is concerned the word "emotion(s)" is not found in the Bible.
    The only verse that has the word "feeling" in it is:

    Hebrews 4:15 For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the "feeling of our infirmities"; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.

    Not to question the omniscience of God, but it appears that the author of the book of Hebrews is saying that Christ had to experience experientially what God had never been able to experience--the emotions of man. God became man. As man now God could "feel" pain, hunger, thirst, as well as joy, sadness, etc. Now He is able to truly sympathize with us, having gone through all that we have gone through, and yet remained sinless at the same time.

    Does this verse suggest in some way that God did not have the feelings of man previous to Jesus Christ?
     
  8. Benjamin

    Benjamin Well-Known Member
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    I believe in a sense it does; the Word being the vehicle which God does interact with us within time, and time having a beginning with creation. The Word, and if you will “Wisdom” of God was in the beginning, so I would not think of this in the sense that God did not have feelings “previous” to Jesus Christ as He was/is God in Divine Nature from eternity.

    I don’t hold to the “Classical” theological view or “interpretation” of God’s foreknowledge as something set in stone. I believe God’s Nature does not change, but does not necessarily mean that God’s mind doesn’t change, not in the sense that God can learn, but in the sense that all things within time are not determined and He interacts within time with His creatures as a truth factor. (No Marcia, that does not make me an Open Theist, I am not, Grr... ;) )

    Along that, I believe that God does have something similar to what we would call emotions, but that they are perfect emotions, just as His Love is perfect love.

    I agree with this from russel55:

     
    #28 Benjamin, Aug 23, 2008
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 23, 2008
  9. TCGreek

    TCGreek New Member

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    True.

    Put another way, something must have already existed to be couched in another form.
     
  10. russell55

    russell55 New Member

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    Christ was able to "sympathize with our weaknesses" because he was tempted like we are. And yes, Christ experienced human emotions, which are different than God's emotions, since God is not like us.

    God's emotions are settled attitudes to things in his creation, while ours come and go. His emotions are always rational, while ours are often irrational. God is never overcome or blinded by his feelings, and we are.

    But just because God's emotions are not like ours are doesn't mean they're not emotions. Scripture tells us God delights some things and hates others. It uses word of emotion to describe God's attitudes or affections. God chose that language of emotion because it's the best way to describe to us something about God.

    So instead of saying God doesn't have emotions at all, I'd think it'd be better to say God doesn't have emotions that are like our emotions and that it's impossible for us, finite like we are, to understand exactly what those emotions are like.
     
  11. webdog

    webdog Active Member
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    I think the shortest verse in the Bible shows God has emotions.
     
  12. Aaron

    Aaron Member
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    It doesn't say we have emotions either.

    Our emotions are the unreliable ones, proceeding, as they do, from corrupt hearts.

    My point was that accepting the fact of spirit with a mind is no more "difficult" than accepting the fact that a spirit has a heart (emotions).

    Forget Merriam-Webster, and go to the Scriptures to develop your ontology.

    Spurgeon has a good piece that might help: http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/articles/impassib.htm
     
  13. Aaron

    Aaron Member
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    You statement not only questions God's omniscience, it denies it altogether to suggest that there was something that God did not completely and wholly understand.

    No, the reason that Christ "had" to be touched with the feeling of our infirmities was so that WE might have confidence in the fact that He does understand. In warfare, only the Captains that have suffered as those under their command can win the hearts of their troops.
     
  14. DHK

    DHK <b>Moderator</b>

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    From the link you gave, I like this explanation that was given:
     
  15. Gold Dragon

    Gold Dragon Well-Known Member

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    I googled an interesting article on this topic by a lecturer at the Reformed Theological College in Australia on whether verses about God's emotions should be interpreted literally or figuratively.

    Agree or disagree, I think there are some excellent insights in this article.
     
    #35 Gold Dragon, Aug 23, 2008
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 23, 2008
  16. Marcia

    Marcia Active Member

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    I have to really strongly disagree that we are spirit beings! We are not spirit beings; we are body/mind/soul unities. Angels are spirit beings.

    Our bodies are not only shells; they were created by God and will be resurrected as was the body of Jesus. This is one of the main differences between Christianity and Eastern religions, Gnostic beliefs, New Age, the Mormons and others -- that our body is part of who we are and we will eventually have a body forever (albeit in a glorified state). Those other religions all downgrade the body or make it an illusion or temporary.
     
  17. Marcia

    Marcia Active Member

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    Your statements are the closest to what I think (along with DHK). I think it's partly a semantic thing - I think of God's love, wrath, mercy, etc. as His attributes - part of His nature and who he is, and not emotions. It's okay that I don't use the word "emotions" to describe this because the Bible doesn't.

    I also liked the excerpt from Spurgeon that was posted.
     
  18. SaggyWoman

    SaggyWoman Active Member

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  19. Aaron

    Aaron Member
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    No, TC is dead on.
     
  20. TCGreek

    TCGreek New Member

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    Marcia,

    Neither does my statement deny the fact of our earthen bodies.

    Do we cease to exist when physical death occurs? No at all! We just not in our earthen vessels.

    Paul seems to agree with what I'm arguing:

    "For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands." (2 Cor 5:1, TNIV, emphasis added)

    Paul refers to the body as the "earthly tent we live in." Notice the difference: 1. the earthly tent; and 2. We live in.

    Paul makes a clear distinction.
     
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