Emotions and the Divine Nature: Impassibility in the Greek Apologists and Irenaeus

J. Caleb Little, Cedarville UniversityFollow

Department/School of the Primary Author

Biblical and Theological Studies

Keywords

Impassibility, patristics

DOI

10.15385/jch.2016.1.1.4

Abstract

This paper explores the concept of impassibility in the early Greek apologists and Irenaeus. The paper focuses on impassibility as related to emotion in the divine nature, and individually examines Justin Martyr, Athenagoras and Irenaeus. This paper attempts to present a nuanced and faithful interpretation of impassibility in these fathers contra the assumption that impassibility equates to static emotionlessness. The author argues that the early Greek fathers used impassibility as an apophatic qualifier tied to God's immutability, virtuousness, and status as creator and further used impassibility to indicate that God was not overwhelmed by passions like the pagan and gnostic deities. This thesis is substantiated by briefly noting the lexical and philosophical backgrounds of the terms for impassibility used by the early Greek fathers and by an individual examination of each of the fathers mentioned above.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Disclaimer

DigitalCommons@Cedarville provides a publication platform for fully open access journals, which means that all articles are available on the Internet to all users immediately upon publication. However, the opinions and sentiments expressed by the authors of articles published in our journals do not necessarily indicate the endorsement or reflect the views of DigitalCommons@Cedarville, the Centennial Library, or Cedarville University and its employees. The authors are solely responsible for the content of their work. Please address questions to dc@cedarville.edu.

Rights

Recommended Citation

Little, J. Caleb (2016) "Emotions and the Divine Nature: Impassibility in the Greek Apologists and Irenaeus," Channels: Where Disciplines Meet: Vol. 1: No. 1, Article 4.
DOI: 10.15385/jch.2016.1.1.4
Available at: https://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/channels/vol1/iss1/4