THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH AND THE PROBLEM OF A SUFFERING GOD

THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH AND THE PROBLEM OF A SUFFERING GOD 

by

Rev. David A. Fisher

One of the greatest hurdles that confronted the Fathers of the Church was how to reconcile the idea of a suffering God with the Greco-Roman philosophical tradition of divinity, where change and suffering are foreign and impossible to the Supreme Being. With the possible exception of the early Syriac Fathers, whose roots were more Semitic and biblical than Hellenistic, this problem involved a great re-working of the classical heritage.1 Platonic tradition, Aristotelians, Stoicism, and Epicureanism were all in agreement that God could not have anger, love, hatred, compassion, envy, or mercy, he did not change, and he did not suffer. 

The context for the Eastern Fathers is on the one hand the defense of their faith and on the other hand the expanding of the classical tradition through their own theological reflections. St. Ignatius of Antioch for example in his letter to the Ephesians reminds them that Jesus is God and Man, eternal God and born of Mary, and therefore is without suffering and has suffered. 

Another Apostolic Father, St. Irenaeus of Lyons affirms the Catholic Faith against the Gnosticism of his day: 

God is therefore one, as I have shown, the Father and Jesus Christ is one, Our Lord, who traveled through the whole order of salvation and gathered all things in himself. Man, too, one of God’s creatures belongs to this “all things”; thus he has also gathered all human beings in himself, and to do so the Invisible One became capable of suffering, and the Logos became man. He gathered all things in himself.2 

Melito of Sardis from the second half of the second century is the first to use the expression “deicide”, in which he was attempting to address the Christological question did God suffer in Christ or just the humanity of Jesus. He writes: 

The non-suffering one suffers and does not avenge himself, the immortal one dies and utters not a word, the heavenly one is buried and endured it. What can this new mystery be? The creature is astonished. Jesus’ resurrection re- solves this astonishment, for now the mystery is revealed: the invisible one be- comes visible, the inconceivable one becomes conceivable, the immeasurable one becomes measurable, the non-suffering one suffers, the immortal one dies, and the heavenly one is buried.3 

In the late third century Lactantius in his refutation of the Stoics even goes so far as to say God has passions, although they are particular to is divinity and not like human passions. He wants to make it clear that the removed passionless idea of God held by the pagans was incorrect, and that the Christian God was not so unaffected. 

Moving further ahead in the Patristic tradition to Gregory Thaumaturgus we find in his dialogue against a certain pagan named Theopompus, his use of the biblical tradition to attack the pagan Hellenistic view of divinity. Gregory writes: 

He passed through death without fear and thus demonstrated his immortality; he became the death of death, for death could not hold him prisoner. Without this battle, we would not really know that God is not defeated by suffering. Thus, God eliminated suffering and brought death low. Like a competitor, he won his crown by trial. His suffering was not subject to humiliation, but instead made manifest his godliness.4 

The pagan philosopher Census with his vehement attacks on Christianity lead Origen to refute him in eight books entitled Contra Celsus. In his response to Celsus, Origen “holds fast to the Christian paradox: Although God remains unchanging in his essence, nevertheless, by reason of his providence and plan of salvation, he descends to human affairs.”5  Origen believed that while the divine Logos was unchanging the human soul of Jesus was subject to the changes of his human body, this was a result of God’s infinite love for humanity, in that he became man. 

In his Homily on Ezekiel Origen addresses the question of the Father’s suffering: 

What sort of suffering was it that the Redeemer underwent for our sake? The suffering of love: and the Father himself, the Lord of all, who is longsuffering and rich in mercy (Psalm 102 [103]:8) and compassion – does he not suffer as well in some respect? Or do you not know that when he dealt with human affairs he underwent human suffering? For the Lord your God has taken your ways upon himself, just as a man carries his son (Dt. 1:31). God thus takes our ways upon himself, just as the Son of God bears our suffering. The Father himself is not without suffering. When one begs him, he has mercy and takes pity, he suf- fers in a sense from love, he places himself in a position that is impossible for him according to the greatness of his nature, and undergoes human suffering for our sake.6

Lastly, St. Athanasius justifies this paradox of the suffering God in relation to Scripture, in 1Corinthians 15:23 it states: “for that which passes away must be clothed with permanence and that which is mortal with immortality.” The paradox therefore is intimately bound to God’s saving action and the transformation of his human children; the mystery of the non-suffering God who suffers is bound up in the Incarnation, Cross, and Resurrection of Jesus. 

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Notes:

1 Cf. Brock, Sebastian, The Syriac Fathers on Prayer and the Spiritual Life, Cistercian Publications Inc., Kalamazoo, Michigan, 1987. pp. x-xi. “Although Syriac Christianity, like Latin Christianity, soon came under the very strong influence of Greek-speaking Christianity, its earliest literature is usually expressed in a manner much more characteristic of the Semitic – and biblical – world out of which it grew.”

2 St. Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, [SC 211, 312-15; FC 8/3, 200 – 203] 72 Melito of Sardis, On Soul and Body, fragment 13, [SC 123, 238f.] 

3 Melito of Sardis, On Soul and Body, fragment 13, [SC 123, 238f.] 

4 Figura, Michael, “The Suffering of God in Patristic Theology”, in Communio: International Catholic Review, vol. 30, Fall 2003. p. 375. 

5 Ibid. p. 377.

6 Origen, Homily on Ezekiel, 6.6: SC 352, 228 – 231.