The principles underlying divine immutability asserts that God cannot undergo real or intrinsic change in any respect. The doctrine of divine impassibility, asserts that nothing external can affect God, in particular, to cause him to feel negative emotions like grief, denoting that God could be impassible but mutable: for he could change in himself, but nothing else could change or affect Him. God therefore could be immutable but passible, for he could be changelessly aware of events outside himself, conceivably even caused to be aware of them by the events themselves, and due to them, changelessly feel such responsive emotions reminiscent of grief. Likewise, he would feel without change, and so perpetually feel. If temporal, such a God would grieve for us before, while and after we suffer. Nevertheless, what purpose would gratifying an impassible God really signify? If God himself was impassible, he could not encompass egoistic tendencies, and therefore would lack any need of fulfillment.

Does God therefore create suffering to increase our gratification for him? There is nothing counter-intuitive to this claim. It is standard theism to hold that God has full foreknowledge of what is to befall us; he sees our pain before we feel it, not just while we feel it, and so grieves it beforehand. There would be no difference in the quality of God’s grief before and while the pain or happiness occurs. For were there anything about it He did not know beforehand, the foreknowledge would not be full, and full knowledge beforehand should elicit the same reaction as full knowledge during. Likewise, it is standard theism to hold that God is cognitively perfect. If he is so and exists in time, He has a past to recall and so has perfect memory. If God perfectly remembers pain or happiness, it is as fresh for him years later as it was while it occurred and if he perfectly loves, perhaps he never gets over it. Therefore, we can make sense of unchanging grief; if God does grieve, it would be doubtless not to expect it from a God with full foreknowledge, cognitive perfection and a perfect affective nature. If He is timeless, an immutable but passible God would just timelessly suffer for us. The case would be just as if God were temporal, set aside that His knowledge would not be temporally located and so would not literally involve either foreknowledge or memory, Nietzsche (1886).

Paradoxically, why would we as humanity want to glorify God? Could not a divine deity, ineffectively impassible, intellectually superior be fulfilled without incognisant parasites worshiping His name. The only retort to this claim would be that as society rejoices in the admiration of such love from God, he feels joy as a whole from the second that formulation of happiness occurs, til the end of humanities existence. The glorification of God would be beneficial for society to prosper, in turn, gratifying Gods benevolence that we have been given the ability to feel pain, contentment and affection, Nietzsche (1888). Worshiping anything is the highest form of affection, an attribute God would likely recognise. God no doubt grieves for us. If He is timeless, an immutable but passible God would just timelessly suffer for our mistakes and our lack of adulation. Similarly, God is not indifferent to lack of worship, as it is encouraged throughout the bible. If God gained nothing out of gratification, then it would serve no purpose to worship Him. Correspondingly, God therefore must gain happiness from worship, unallied to the happiness Christians feel while worshiping Him.

Related posts:

  1. Proving the Concept that God is Evil. The three steps to proving the concept that God is evil: 1. If God exists then he is omniscient, omnipotent and is void of imperfection. 2. If God were omniscient, omnipotent and void of imperfection, the world would not contain...
  2. The Meaning of ‘Meaning’. When people deliberate over the meaning of life’s existence, often they are seeking to attain knowledge of how the existence of one of us over time employs a purpose. Beyond drawing the distinction between the life of an individual and...
  3. Vernon Howard Quotes American spiritual leader (1918 - 1992). The less life in a person, the more he will try to live off your life. Procrastination is illogical from every viewpoint. It is like the man who wanted to cross the stream, so...