Divine Impassibility: An Essay in Philosophical Theology

by Richard E. Creel

In this volume, Richard Creel sets forth a thesis that offers a third way to approach divine impassibility. Defining impassibility as imperviousness to causal influence from external factors, Creel sketches a path between Aquinas and Hartshorne, by asserting that once this definition is accepted, one must still distinguish the various respects in which God is or is not impassible. Virtually no one would dispute that the divine nature is impassible. God will never cease to be God, no matter what happens in creation. With respect to the divine knowledge and will, however, there are conflicting views. Creel claims that God's will is impassible because God knows everything that can be accomplished by divine power. Yet, unlike Aquinas, Creel believes that God has this knowledge in virtue of a 'plenum' of possibilities eternally coexistent with the divine being. The absolute is not simply God, but rather God plus the 'plenum' Creel suggests that God's knowledge is passible with respect to the contingent future actions of creatures. God knows these actions, therefore, not in their presentiality from all eternity, as Aquinas would hold, but only as they happen and become actual. God's will, however, remains immediately impassible because the divine will is ordered to possibilities, not actualities. God never has to wait until after we do something in order to decide his response to it. He has eternally decided his response to all that we might do. Ultimately God's feelings remain impassible, no matter what concrete decisions human beings make, because the basic intent of the divine plan for us is always we exercise our freedom to choose for or against God. God is impassible with respect to the divine nature, divine will, and divine feelings; but God is passible with respect to the divine knowledge of future contingent events.

Genres: Theology

250 pages, Paperback

First published November 27, 1985

About the author

Richard E. Creel taught Philosophy and Religion at Ithaca College, New York, for 30 years. During this time he served as Chair of his Department and President of the New York State Philosophical Association.

Creel published numerous articles in philosophy journals and five books: Philosophy of Religion: The Basics (2013), Love of Jesus: The Heart of Christianity (2010), Thinking Philosophically: An Introduction to Critical Reflection and Rational Dialogue (Blackwell, 2001), Divine Impassibility: An Essay in Philosophical Theology (1986), and Religion & Doubt: Toward a Faith of Your Own (1991, 1st edition 1977).

After retirement, Creel was designated an Emeritus Professor for outstanding contributions.

Reviews

[Brent · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very thought provoking book by Creel. His philosophical theology is robust, as he splits God's potential for impassibility in four ways: nature, will, knowledge, and emotion. He argues that God is impassible in nature (uncontroversial), will (rejecting Edwards' determinism and Molinism [how does God know which world is actualized given the infinite number of free creaturely decision and counter factuals?] opting instead for atemporality but that God has determined how he would will in an infinite number of situations given the logical possibilities of free creaturely decisions. Creel calls these God's presponses), emotion (God's eternal happiness is not increased or decreased by creaturely decisions, but merely contributes to a different type of God's happiness, hence God is emotionally impassible since those who choose Him do what they freely decide to do and those who don't also choose what they freely want to do, and this is God's highest ideal, giving all those what they freely decide to do, etc.

He argues, however, that God is passible in knowledge, because God can only know actualities of free creaturely decisions, hence God's knowledge of the future is as exhaustive as it can be in the libertarian schema of free will, namely, God does not know future actions of His creatures because He cannot. The most interesting part of Creel was his rejection of creation ex nihilo. He postulates what he calls the plenum as God's co-eternal passive work place allowing God to act upon it actualizing possibilities. Creel argues this avoids both reifying nothing, or falling into pantheism. I am going to have to wrestle with these issues more.