Friday, June 18, 2010

Does God Suffer?

One of my great privileges over the past year has been to study with a brilliant new member of the seminary faculty. He appeared for the last quarter of my second year to teach a class on Christology. I'd already taken the course, but a friend mentioned one night that I might want to visit the new guy's class which I ended up doing almost every week following. He was teaching not only the subject at hand, but also how to evaluate various theological approaches. Finally! ~ I felt that I was getting that for which I had gone to seminary: the opportunity to begin to learn to think like a theologian.

I did an independent study with this professor the next (this past winter) quarter on the subjects of sin, grace, and freedom. I'm sure that I was a consistent disappointment to him, in that my complete lack of background in philosophy meant that the readings were virtually incomprehensible to me, but I did struggle through them. And then I audited his course on Stanley Hauerwas and took his course on Miroslav Volf. In the end, I was able to graduate with the sense that I had learned a tiny bit about Reformation and contemporary theology and a tiny bit about how to approach my own future study, and had found a friend with whom I could continue the conversation.

I had a question for him last week, and in response he sent me a paper he'd written in grad school. The overall question has to do with God's emotional life, but I thought we'd start with the question within the question: Does God suffer? It's been a topic of significant debate during the past century, and is for obvious reasons of great interest to me.

What do you think? Does God suffer? Does it matter to you whether or not God does? Are you comforted or reassured one way or the other? Does the question bother you? Go for it ~

(Cross-posted from my other place.)

13 comments:

  1. yes, God suffers. And I think that's a totally biblical and orthodox statement. When the creation is groaning, when people are hurting, when we lose the kingdom vision *again*...
    I'm pretty sure it's Moltman who talks about God the Creator knowing the depths of suffering and pain as Jesus is crucified...

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  2. The Hebrew scriptures, I believe, show a God who suffers. IMHO, it is the influence of Greek philosophy that brings an impassive God to Christianity. I believe God, like a parent, suffers as God sees the choices God's children make. I believe God suffers as God sees what happens to God's children. (I gave up theology and focus on what scripture says. IMHO, we ventured too far away from what scripture teaches to what the philosophers say.)

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  3. I'm no theologian, but to me its more important to believe that God understands than that God suffers. Hope that makes some sense.

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  4. I think God suffers. In the Hebrew texts we hear God suffering through the words of the prophets. In the Christian texts we hear God's suffering through the life and death of Jesus. I think God intentionally expresses God's suffering through us, through human voices. Because I think that I also think that God is present with us, so that God knows our suffering.

    Of course I often wonder just how that is actually true in my life, or yours, or that others. But nonetheless the "how" is something I can't answer. All I can lean into is what I beleive and think....and well, what God has been for me in the past. Or in otherwords, my faith, fragile as it is.

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  5. Jung wrote some interesting thoughts on this ... and I will butcher it here by paraphrasing: God is Everything, and as Everything God isn't differentiated. So God doesn't feel partial things like good or bad, pain or joy, but all things, all the time.

    So, God manifests creatures (Mankind) who come out of the Whole into unique beings who ARE differentiated and thus feel what it is that they are designed and destined to feel.

    Truly living our personal lives gives God the best chance possible to achieve a kind of "knowing" that Everything can't feel otherwise... because Everything can't differentiate out a single experience.

    Yet, by being so completely 'in me' God is able to experience what I experience .... and that would include suffering.

    So, that's where I go with this. :)

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  6. a layperson's perspective...I believe that God suffers when we do (as a parent does with a child). And yes, that gives me comfort.

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  7. What an interesting question. I do believe that God is where suffering is, whether that presence is felt or not, and that if we want to be like God, we must also be where suffering is. But whether that means that God suffers ... hmmm ... I want to say yes.

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  8. Robin, thanks for asking the question. I tend to agree with the commenter who said that verification of God's suffering comes out in the words of the prophets and the psalms. I suffer watching the world's misery, and know God must feel at least some of the same, regardless of how the story turns out in the end. Logic tells me it's got to be as tough for Him to watch others suffer as it is for us. What do the "experts" say??

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  9. Robin, I believe God suffers, because God is love. And love suffers, love is vulnerable. When the one we love suffers, we suffer.

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  10. if God doesn't get sad when we suffer, I'm done with the dude (apologies on the gender). imagining God suffering in the midst of my memories of trauma got us to a new relationship

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  11. The best book on the suffering of God I've ever read is one by Alan Lewis - "Between cross and resurrection a theology of holy Saturday". He talks about the death of Christ as a rupture in the life of the Godhead. he also explores how belief in a God who has experienced suffering and death can bring hope in the midst of our pain and losses.

    Lewis himself was suffering from terminal cancer when he wrote the book and it was edited and published after his death.

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  12. Danny, that's interesting; I just wrote to someone a few days ago mentioning how much of my life is lived in a Holy Saturday place.

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  13. Hi Robin... the book is good on explaining what Holy Saturday means for a triune God and therefore for us. I have a couple of posts on my blog if you are interested. I was fascinated by Lewis's theology when I was studying and I wrote an essay and seminar paper on his theology of Holy Saturday. If you click the Alan lewis link you will find them there.

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