What Kind of God Are You?

In my last post, I mentioned my dreadful situation of watching my son choke and my response to the situation. That experience also got me thinking about the nature of God. Depending on your theological persuasion, there are a number of emotions that God does or does not experience. Or if you’re an Aristotelian, you’re inclined to say that God is pure thought, so to speak of God and emotion at all is to venture into the realm of metaphor. Generally speaking, there are two schools of thought on this issue (that’s being reductionistic, of course, but the other views seem to be varying degrees of the following two):

The God of Neoplatonic thought, and Calvinism in many respects,(and what is often viewed as orthodox) has a limited scope of feelings. This God may (metaphorically) experience love, joy, peace, anger, righteous indignation, and desire justice. That may even be going too far; perhaps God IS these things (e.g., “God is Love”), but to say he experiences these things would be to place him in the realm of time. But this God certainly does not experience fear, panic, the pressure of taking risks, courage, doubt, the feeling of second-guessing himself, or the sheer delight of surprise. On the other hand, the God of Open Theism and other related views says that God experiences all of these feelings.

There are people—smart and contemplative people, I might add—on both sides. And they don’t take a side due to some shallow shot at proof-texting. Each position can present reasonable and convincing arguments for their case. And each position caters to a certain list of Scripture passages for support (or a certain method of interpretation of Scripture).

The Calvinist resorts to verses that support God’s omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, immutability, impassibility (does not feel emotion), foreknowledge, and timelessness (terms which have come from Greek philosophy, I might point out). They cite, “For I am the Lord, I change not” (Mal. 3:6), “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to me” (Ps. 139:16), “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son…And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified” (Rom. 8:29-30), “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world” (Eph. 1:4), or “From one man he made every nation of men…and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live” (Acts 17:26).

The Open Theist resorts to verses that support God experiencing emotion (and Christ’s humanity), not knowing what will happen due to human freedom, and working in tandem with man to bring about his goals for the world (e.g., such as prayer changing God’s mind). They cite, “But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. ‘O Lord,’ he said, ‘why should your anger burn against your people…’ Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened” (Ex. 32:11-14), “The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz went to him and said, ‘This is what the LORD says: … you are going to die; you will not recover.’ Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the LORD…Then the word of the LORD came to Isaiah: … ‘This is what the LORD, the God of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will add fifteen years to your life” (Isa. 38:1-5), “I thought that after she [Israel] had done all this she would return to me but she did not” (Jer. 3:7), “The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth” (Gen 6:6), and “When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened” (Jonah 3:10).

My concern is not which position is “right.” If there was a definitive conclusion, one would think that the Holy Spirit would have told us by now or that God would have been a bit clearer in his directions.

I am more interested in the psychology between why someone chooses one over the other. Both positions are concerned with preserving something they consider central to God’s character. The Calvinist wants to preserve God’s sovereignty; the Open Theist wants to prevent God from being the cause of evil. The Calvinist wants to preserve God’s transcendence and sing, “How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out” (Rom. 11:33); the Open Theist wants to preserve God’s immanence, to have a “high priest” who is able to “sympathize with our weaknesses” (Heb. 4:15). We could say, both positions are often argued for out of the best of intentions.

Since Scriptural support can be found for both (and both sides could easily appeal to the Holy Spirit to claim they’ve got it right!), I’m convinced that the majority of people fall down on one side of the spectrum or the other, in the end, because it is the position that provides them the greatest sense of security, hope, or sense of justice (that is, unless they just blindly accept one since its been taught them…). Actually, most people probably hold to the synthesis of the two positions (e.g., I know many professing Calvinists who sincerely believe in the power of prayer), not realizing that, to many philosophers and theologians, they are mutually exclusive. Ironically then, the nature of God’s emotions (or lack thereof) is decided on by emotion! One person finds security in a God who is cool in the face of evil and suffering and death because he is orchestrating it all and knows how it will pan out. Another finds security in a God who creates space for true human freedom. One finds refuge in God’s constancy; the other finds peace in a God who understands the roller coaster that constitutes human existence.

So I ask myself, thinking about the feeling of panic—an urgency that motivated me to action and was fueled with love and deep concern—I experienced when my child was choking, do I want a God who is sovereign but impassible in my time of need or a God who “panics” for the sake of his people? If God is Father, if I’m to learn how to be a good father by looking to the Father (there's another metaphor), what kind of God is helpful for me in this situation? How do I pray to a God who doesn’t understand the feeling of panic when his child is in danger—or can’t share with me in the delight of surprise, for that matter (just think about it, isn't the delight of surprise one of the greatest things about life?)?

On the other hand, the God I am now describing is starting to sound a little like Santa Claus, there at my beck and call, or at the very least, a tamed God who I can comprehend and fits within certain parameters and expectations (which is bordering on idolatry). Then again, the God of metaphysics is pretty tame (i.e., predictable).

With all these meandering ramblings, I end this post and return to my fussing child. I wonder how God feels about fussy children (he has lots of them!).