God’s Affective Love

Abstract

Much of the difference between advocates of divine impassibility and divine passibility centres upon the supposed value of suffering in compassion. Proponents of divine impassibility typically maintain that because suffering is not intrinsically valuable, compassionate suffering need not be predicated to God. Supporters of divine passibility are perhaps unanimous in the affirmation of an opposing conclusion. For them, suffering-compassion is a way in which God identifies with His creatures deeply, a manner of identification that is valuable in itself, notwithstanding the negativity of the suffering involved. In this chapter, a defence of this passibilist value claim is presented. Additionally, as a secondary aim, this chapter underscores one value-based reason for expanding the value account of God’s love defended in Chapter 2 to include a comprehensive set of divine emotions.