impassible
/ɪmˈpasɪb(ə)l
/adjective
1chiefly Theology Incapable of suffering or feeling pain: belief in an impassible God...
- Further, if the suffering of God in Christ affected God's divine nature it would mean that it was someone other than the eternal impassible Creator who was experiencing human suffering.
- So God, being that than which nothing greater can be thought, is wholly active; he is impassible.
- Aquinas accepted Aristotle's view that God cannot change and is impassible.
1.1 archaic Incapable of feeling or emotion.
Derivatives
impassibility
/ noun ...- True enough, the language of impassibility is deeply embedded in patristic theology going back to Ignatius of Antioch.
- What cogent defence can be offered for the (entirely biblical) doctrine of God's impassibility, in the face of open theism and unorthodox views on the Trinity?
- More materially, it is a guiding concern of his thinking to push out the envelope made by the teaching of divine impassibility.
impassibly
- Thus the Alexandrian school of Christology could say, in the language of paradox, ‘he suffered impassibly,’ and Gregory of Nazian-zus, long before Luther, could speak of ‘a God hanging on a cross.’
Origin
Middle English: via Old French from ecclesiastical Latin impassibilis, from Latin in- 'not' + passibilis (see passible).