Personhood of God

God is a God of personal love. He is not some abstract idea, completely distant or absolutely other. Instead, God is a person who is intimately involved with the world, continually concerned for the wellbeing of His beloved. A person is “otherness in communion and communion with otherness”. Scripture does not characterize God as pure act, as the Greeks would say, but in terms of relationship. It is an “I” and “Thou” relationship, as Marin Buber would describe it. Personhood necessitates the freedom to love. Love and personhood are meticulously connected to one another. Love is not freedom from the other but freedom for the other. Because God is love, he is active in time, involved and concerned for the objects of his love. Personality requires passibility. To be a person is to participate in the emotions and sufferings of the other. Maldwyn Hughes states that, “It is of the very nature of love to suffer when its object suffers loss, whether inflicted by itself or others”. Therefore, God is passible, capable of experiencing emotion and suffering, because his personhood is love.

Traditional theology understood God’s love as pure action, he is unconditionally pouring out love, but is unaffected by the ones he loves. God knows about man’s suffering, but does not identify himself with suffering. Richard Creel contends that perfect love is impassible stating, “The greatest lover may be one who never suffers for his beloved because it is not possible or necessary for him to do so.” I would argue a love that is incapable of suffering is not love. Scripture does not define love in terms of impassibility, but passibility. What is the paramount depiction of love in the Bible? It is dying, to suffer for the sake of another. Romans 15:13 directly states, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends”. Likewise, Christ, who is the very image of God, expresses his perfect love by dying for mankind. “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). Jurgen Moltmann argues that, “A God who cannot suffer is poorer than any man. For a God who is incapable of suffering is a being who cannot be involved. Suffering and injustice do not affect him. And because he is so completely insensitive, he cannot be affected or shaken by anything. He cannot weep, for he has no tears. But the one who cannot suffer cannot love either. So he is also a loveless being”. One has true love when he is open to suffering. Therefore, based on the definition of Scripture, Love is not impassible, incapable of suffering, but passible, capable of suffering.