Does God Suffer?

Holy Trinity (1577-79) by El Greco

DOES GOD SUFFER?

Christians profess that God suffered in the person of Jesus Christ, but in doing so they often neglect to deal with an implicit issue, which is whether the Father and the Holy Spirit suffered together with the Son.

Isn’t God one? Shouldn’t the suffering of the Son also be the suffering of the Father and of the Holy Spirit?

Is the suffering of Jesus Christ unique to the only begotten Son of God?

Related question, “How is it possible for the Son of God to suffer in the first place?—God being God, he should not suffer at all.”

Thomas Weinandy, O.F.M. Cap. in a highly developed theological piece deals with the question of whether it is possible for God to suffer at all.

“From the dawn of the Patristic period Christian theology has held as axiomatic that God is impassible—that is, He does not undergo emotional changes of state, and so cannot suffer. Toward the end of the nineteenth century a sea change began to occur within Christian theology such that at present many, if not most, Christian theologians hold as axiomatic that God is passible, that He does undergo emotional changes of states, and so can suffer. Historically this change was inaugurated by such Anglican theologians as Andrew M. Fairbairn and Bertrand R. Brasnett. Within contemporary Protestant theology some of the better known theologians who espouse the passibility of God are Karl Barth, Richard Bauckham, James Cone, Paul Fiddes, Robert Jenson, Eberhard Jüngel, Kazoh Kitamori, Jung Young Lee, John Macquarrie, Jürgen Moltmann, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Richard Swinburne, Alan Torrance, Thomas F. Torrance, Keith Ward, and Nicholas Wolterstorff.

“Among Catholic theologians, while they may differ as to the exact manner and extent of God’s passibility, one nonetheless finds a strange mix of theological bedfellows. They include, among others, Raniero Cantalamessa, Jean Galot, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Roger Haight, Elizabeth Johnson, Hans Küng, Michael Sarot, and Jon Sobrino. Of course one must add the host of Process Theologians who, following the lead of Albert North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne, hold, by the very character of their philosophical position, that God is by nature passible and so can suffer. This theological shift has been so overwhelming, so thorough, and has been achieved with such unquestioned assurance that Ronald Goetz has simply, and in a sense rightly, dubbed it the ‘new orthodoxy.’”

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2001/11/does-god-suffer

—Thomas Weinandy, O.F.M. Cap., “Does God Suffer?” First Things, November 2001

Weinandy cogently argues that God does not suffer because he is impassible, and he is impassible because he is perfect. He is “utter goodness.”

“Negatively, God is immutable in the sense that He does not change as do creatures, but He does not change for positive reasons as well. God’s immutability radically affirms and profoundly intensifies the absolute perfection and utter goodness of God, who, as Creator, is the one who truly lives and exists. Because God’s love is unchangeably perfect and so cannot diminish, He is then the eternally living God who is unreservedly dynamic in His goodness, love, and perfection.

“… God is impassible because His love is perfectly in act (‘God is love’) and no further self-constituting act could make Him more loving. God is absolutely impassible because He is absolutely passionate in His love.”

No, God does not suffer at all. On the other hand,

“He who is impassible as God was truly passible as man. As Cyril of Alexandria poignantly put it: ‘The Impassible suffers.’ However, since it was the Son of God who suffered, did He not equally experience such suffering within His divinity? No, for suffering is caused by the loss of some good, and while as man the Son was deprived of His human well-being and life, He was not deprived of any divine perfection or good. Moreover, to hold that the Son suffered as God would mean that He experienced our human suffering in a mitigated divine manner, and thus that He did not truly experience authentic human suffering. God in the end would not truly experience suffering and death as men experience suffering and death. Ironically, those who advocate a suffering God, having locked suffering within God’s divine nature, have actually locked God out of human suffering.”

So, yes, the Son of God suffered in his human nature, even as he did not suffer at all in his Divine nature.

When Jesus undergoes the Passion, is it only the Son who suffers or do the Father and the Holy Spirit also suffer?

Because it is only the humanity of Jesus that suffers, it is only the Son who suffers, because it is only the Son who is both God and man in what has been termed the hypostatic union.

“The hypostatic union is the term used to describe how God the Son, Jesus Christ, took on a human nature, yet remained fully God at the same time. Jesus always had been God (John 8:58, 10:30), but at the incarnation Jesus became a human being (John 1:14). The addition of the human nature to the divine nature is Jesus, the God-man. This is the hypostatic union, Jesus Christ, one Person, fully God and fully man.

“Jesus’ two natures, human and divine, are inseparable. Jesus will forever be the God-man, fully God and fully human, two distinct natures in one Person. Jesus’ humanity and divinity are not mixed, but are united without loss of separate identity. Jesus sometimes operated with the limitations of humanity (John 4:6, 19:28) and other times in the power of His deity (John 11:43; Matthew 14:18-21). In both, Jesus’ actions were from His one Person.

“…The doctrine of the hypostatic union is an attempt to explain how Jesus could be both God and man at the same time. It is ultimately, though, a doctrine we are incapable of fully understanding. It is impossible for us to fully understand how God works.”

https://www.gotquestions.org/hypostatic-union.html                   

—“What is the hypostatic union?” Got Questions

Elsewhere,

“To be sure, God died on the Cross, but it was a human death and thus only the divine person Jesus suffered, not the Father or the Holy Spirit. The divine persons in the Holy Trinity are necessarily invulnerable to suffering in the divine nature they each wholly possess as one God. If it were otherwise, they would not be omnipotent divine persons and thus not God, because they would be vulnerable to an external cause greater than they.”

https://www.catholic.com/qa/the-heresy-of-patripassianism

—Tom Nash, “The Heresy of Patripassianism,” Catholic Answers

In the same article, the belief that the Father suffered as the Son when the Son died on the cross is cited as a historical heresy, Patripassianism.

“Patripassianism is a heresy. As Jimmy Akin explains in this article [‘Sabellianism’], it derives from the heretic Sabellius, who believed there was only divine person who expressed himself in three divine modes. Thus the terms ‘Modalism’ and ‘Sabellianism.’ From this heresy stemmed another heresy, namely, that the Father suffered on the Cross in the mode of Jesus Christ. As Jimmy explains [block quote]:

“It was further recognized that if the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were all ‘modes’ of a single divine Person, it followed that the Father, being the same Person as the Son, suffered and died on the cross, and so in the West this heresy became known as ‘Patripassianism.’ It was further recognized that if the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were all “modes” of a single divine Person, it followed that the Father, being the same Person as the Son, suffered and died on the cross, and so in the West this heresy became known as ‘Patripassianism.’”

Going back to our question, “Does God suffer?”

No, God does not suffer. On the other hand, the only begotten Son of God, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, suffered in his human nature. His Divine nature did not suffer.