The Old Testament in the Light of Divine Pathos. Christian and Jewish Theology of the Suffering God in the 20th Century: Terence Fretheim and Abraham Heschel

Abstract

The article analyses the concept of the divine πάθος in the Old Testament and its interpretation in the Christian and Jewish theological tradition, in particular by two authors: Abraham Heschel and Terrence Fretheim. The aim of the study is to show how the biblical texts combine representations of God’s immutability and impassivity with descriptions of his emotional reactions such as anger, remorse, and compassion. Particular attention is paid to how the idea of God’s involvement in the events of the world (and Israel) was transformed under the influence of Hellenistic philosophy, combining it with the doctrine of divine impassivity (apatheia). The paper uses a systematic and comparative method in analysing approaches to describe the doctrine of divine πάθος as a biblical view of a living, dynamic and stasis God involved in world history, and the Greek ancient philosophical principle based on the idea of an immobile, self-sufficient and passionless Absolute. In the twentieth century, as can be seen in the article, the emphasis in Jewish and Christian theology shifts from metaphysics to narrative. In particular, the biblical method of a literal understanding of the text of Scripture has been utilised. The article emphasises the need to integrate the biblical narrative, which is a description of the divine πάθος, and the philosophical doctrine of impassibility, which is based on metaphysics. The interaction of biblical and philosophical narrative will help contemporary theology to form a more holistic doctrine of God that can account for the dynamic (rather than static) and personal nature of the biblical God.