Divine Impassibility and Self-Limitation

I. Metaphysical and Ontological Discussion

The divine attributes of impassibility and immutability are deeply rooted in classical theism and evoke a rich tradition of metaphysical and ontological discourses. However, I suppose a brief overview of it for this paper will suffice. Impassibility, derived from the Latin impassibilis, traditionally denotes God’s immunity to suffering or emotional changes. This attribute is grounded in the belief that God transcends the vicissitudes and vulnerabilities inherent in the created order and underscores divine transcendence and perfection. And Immutability refers to God’s unchangeableness in essence, attributes, and will. This concept is also linked to the philosophical notion of perfection. A perfect being, it is argued, would not undergo change, for change implies imperfection. In their usage, both impassibility and immutability are used in a complementary sense—God cannot suffer because God cannot change.

The influence of Greek philosophy, especially that of Plato and Aristotle, is significant in shaping the early Christian understanding of God, especially the development of the understanding of God’s immutability and impassibility. Plato’s conception of the “Forms” as unchanging and eternal ideals and Aristotle’s concept of the “Unmoved Mover” as pure actuality are foundational in developing the metaphysical background for understanding these divine attributes. The Neoplatonist emphasis on the absolute transcendence and immutability of the One God is an undeniable influence in Christian articulations. Also, Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover, being perfect and complete in itself, necessitated the understanding that no essential change or modification is possible within God’s Being.

However, if the “Perfect Being” cannot undergo change as the change would imply an imperfection, how do we understand the nature of the immutable God interacting with a dynamic, ever-changing world? And can a God who is impassible truly empathize with human suffering? Moreover, this challenge is particularly acute in the context of the Incarnation Christology—of God entering into the temporal, ever-changing realm of human existence, where the unchangeable God is affirmed to have taken on human nature and has ostensibly undergone suffering and change. Therefore, both divine impassibility and divine suffering present a paradoxical interface between the transcendence and a personal, relational understanding of God, and theology has to grapple with this mystery in its articulation. Scriptural Basis

The notion of God’s impassibility is often inferred from Biblical texts emphasizing God’s perfection and completeness. For instance, in Psalm 102:26-27, the psalmist contrasts

the temporal nature of creation with the eternal, unchanging nature of God as he affirms that the “[heavens and earth] will perish, but you [YHWH] endure; they will all wear out like a garment… but you [YHWH] are the same, and your years have no end.” Similarly, James 1:17 speaks of God as the “Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change,” underscoring God’s constancy and perfection. The immutability of God is also pivotal in understanding God’s character. Malachi 3:6 declares, “For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, have not perished.” This verse not only speaks to God’s unchanging nature but also signifies the reliability of God’s faithful commitment to his promises and covenants. Hebrews 13:8 explicates this steadfast reliability of God in Christological terms by stating, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”

Theologians have often interpreted these texts to affirm God’s unchanging and unaffected nature. They are meant to affirm that God’s essence, will, knowledge, and divine decrees remain constant despite the changing nature of the world and human history. This immutability was not seen as a limitation but as an aspect of God’s divine perfection. Also, God’s unchanging nature is a source of comfort and assurance for believers, as it guarantees the steadfastness of God’s love, grace, and justice.

However, the Old Testament is full of anthropopathic representations of God’s dealings with his people. The OT talks about the sorrow or the affliction that God experiences in his relationship with the Israelites and the creation. Genesis 6:6 states that “the Lord was sorry that he had made humans on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart,” which expresses God’s deep disappointment over his creation and the consequent affliction he experiences. Also, Judges 10:16 talks about how the Lord “could no longer bear to see Israel suffer” as they were oppressed by their enemies. Isaiah 63:9 talks about God’s anguish toward the condition of the exiled Israelites: “In all their affliction he was afflicted.” Though the OT tests are often explained in an anthropomorphic sense, the import of these passages in

expressing God’s loving, vulnerable relationship toward his people cannot be merely explained away. Moreover, the Gospel accounts candidly portray the human limitations and passions that Jesus endured in his life on earth.

II. The Unchangeable God and Divine Impassibility

While the Hebrew representations of God are unabashedly full of God’s passions, the Early Church Fathers and Medieval theologians had to grapple with the Greek philosophical concept of the unchangeableness of God. They strived to strike a balance between the conception of an impassible, immutable God with the OT and the Gospel accounts portrayal of God as deeply involved in human history through suffering and change. In their attempt to articulate this paradox, we can see at least two strands of emphases: some of them stressed (or overstressed) the unchangeableness of God over God’s passions and attempted to confine God’s passion to Christ’s human nature, while some others relied on the conceptual possibility of attributing human experiences onto the divine nature. We will look at some of the theological conceptions of select theologians who broadly fall under the aforementioned criterion of prioritizing the unchangeableness of God while finding ways to understand the suffering of Christ.

III. Human Christ and Divine Christ

A. Athanasius

Athanasius’ understanding of divine impassibility is intricately linked to his defense of the full divinity of Christ against Arianism. His Christology cannot be understood apart from his soteriology, as for him, the central question is not only who Christ is but also what Christ’s incarnation achieves for humanity. In his writings Against the Arians and On the Incarnation, Athanasius posits that salvation involves the restoration of human beings to the divine likeness, which was marred by sin, and the Word (Logos) becoming flesh is essential for this restorative work. Athanasius argues that only someone who is fully divine can restore

humanity to the divine image, and only someone who is truly human can represent humanity and die in its place. Thus, by affirming the full divinity and humanity in Christ, Athanasius has to account for the suffering of God in Christ.

However, for Athanasius, the impassibility of God is a given; God cannot suffer because God is perfect and unchangeable. And suffering implies change, limitation, and a response to external forces, all of which are incompatible with the divine nature. The incarnation, for Athanasius, is the act by which the impassible Word assumes a passible human nature. He, therefore, concludes that the Logos does not suffer in his divine nature; rather, he suffers in and through the human nature he assumed. For Athanasius, the Word experiences human suffering without the divine nature itself being altered, and he avers that this is possible because the Word’s assumption of human nature is a voluntary act of condescension and love. Athanasius, thus, limits God’s passions to Christ’s human nature.

B. Augustine of Hippo

Augustine of Hippo also upheld the classical understanding of God as impassible. For him, impassibility meant that God does not experience emotional changes or physical suffering, as these are characteristics of temporal, created beings. In Confessions, he contends that any emotion ascribed to God is not to be understood as implying changeableness in God or any disturbance (perturbatio) within divine life. He interpreted God’s emotions, as described in Scripture, not as literal affective changes in God but as metaphorical expressions that describe God’s actions and attitudes in terms humans can understand.

Augustine explained that it was through Christ’s human nature that Christ experienced suffering and death. Augustine did not see the suffering of Christ as implicating the divine nature in change or suffering.³ Instead, he viewed the incarnation as the means through which the impassible God entered into the human condition to bring about redemption.⁴

C. Thomas Aquinas

In Summa Theologica, Aquinas articulates the immutability of God, arguing that God is altogether immutable. For him, divine impassibility means that God cannot suffer or be acted upon in any way. Using the Aristotelian metaphysics, Aquinas understands God as Actus Purus, or “Pure Act.”⁵ This term Pure Act denotes that God is the perfect realization of Being, without any potentiality. Since change implies moving from potentiality to actuality, a being that is pure actuality cannot change, and therefore, God cannot suffer (impassibility) or change (immutability) because suffering implies a kind of defect or lack, and God, being perfect, cannot lack anything.

However, in the later part of his Summa, Aquinas, while discussing the suffering of Christ, does acknowledge that Scripture speaks of God in terms that imply passions (like anger, sorrow, etc.).⁶ While denying that God experiences emotions as humans do, Aquinas agrees that God has love toward his creation. However, he conceives this love as of an intellectual nature and not as a psychological response. Also, he interprets the descriptions of God as expressing anger or sorrow in a metaphorical or anthropopathic sense, as they are the means to understand God’s actions from a human perspective. Thus, Aquinas tries to safeguard the integrity of God’s internal nature against all external stimuli.

IV. Communication of Properties

A. Gregory of Nazianzus

Gregory of Nazianzus also maintained the classical understanding of God as perfect and unchangeable. In his Five Theological Orations, especially Oration 29 and 31, Gregory articulated the nature of God, emphasizing God’s transcendence and unchangeableness. Gregory spoke of the impassibility of God as essential to divine perfection. He insisted that any talk of change in God can only be in terms of God’s actions, not his essence. By maintaining this distinction between actions (energeia) and essence, Gregory spoke of the dynamic nature of God’s interactions with the world while preserving the immutability of God’s divine nature. He famously stated in his Letter to Cledonius (Epistle 101), “That which He has not assumed He has not healed; but that which is united to His Godhead is also saved.” Thus, He also acknowledged the fullness of human and divine nature being present in Christ, which will necessitate the understanding of the Second Person in the Trinity suffering.

Gregory employed the concept of the hypostatic union—the unique union of divine and human natures in the person of Christ—to understand the impassible God’s suffering in the Person of Christ. He asserts that by assuming human nature, the Logos made possible the healing of that nature, including its capacity for suffering. Gregory maintained that while the divine and human natures in Christ remain distinct, they are united in one person, so the experiences of the human nature, including suffering and death, can be spoken of as experiences of the Person of the Son. Gregory’s understanding laid the groundwork for what would later be known as the communicatio idiomatum, the communication of properties, where the attributes of both natures are ascribed to the one person of Christ. Gregory thus attributed God’s suffering to the unified Person in Christ, albeit through the human nature.

B. Martin Luther

Luther’s education in nominalism, study of Augustine, and familiarity with medieval catechetics heavily influenced his inheritance of classical theism. He asserted that it is “fundamentally necessary and salutary for a Christian, to know that God foreknows nothing contingently, but that he foresees and purposes and does all things by his immutable, eternal, and infallible will.”⁷ For Luther, the Word of God was “immutable and insuperable.”⁸ In his Lectures on the book of Genesis, he described the Law of God as “the eternal and immutable decree of God concerning the worship of God and the love of one’s neighbor,”⁹ For Luther, the immutable nature of God’s Word was essential as it is through this unchanging Word that one’s faith is engendered and affirmed.¹⁰

In his “Heidelberg Disputation,” Luther introduces the theology of the cross (theologia crucis). Luther’s interpretation of the cross transcends mere theological symbolism. It touches upon the profound existential anxieties experienced by humans in the midst of suffering, fears of death, and eternal judgment.¹¹ The cross serves to dismantle our flawed preconceptions about our own self and clears the path for the emergence of an authentic theology that confronts and interprets these deep-seated human concerns.¹² His theology of the cross asserted that God reveals Himself most profoundly in the weakness and suffering of the cross. While God in his divine essence is impassible, God willingly enters into the human condition, including suffering, in the person of Jesus Christ.¹³

Luther further developed his understanding of the passions of Christ in the economy of salvation through the doctrine of communicatio idiomatum (the communication of properties) in his two great Christological disputations “The Word became Flesh” (1539) and “On the divinity and humanity of Christ” (1540). Luther elucidates the doctrine by stating that the properties of Christ’s human nature can be attributed to his divine nature and vice versa. Luther endeavors to portray God as One who is transcendent and unchangeable in essence, yet intimately involved in the human condition through the person of Jesus Christ. He remarks that Christ participated in the full extent of human experience, even to the point of suffering and death on the cross, which is the ultimate expression of God’s love and the primary locus of divine self-disclosure. Luther claims that because of the union of divine and human natures in Christ, it is appropriate to attribute characteristics of one nature to the entire person, even if those characteristics originate from the other nature. This means that, for Luther, we can speak of the Son of God as suffering and dying on the cross (attributes of His human nature) and the man Jesus as omnipotent and eternal (attributes of His divine nature).

3. John Calvin

For Calvin, God’s immutability is a cornerstone of divine perfection. In his Institutes of the Christian Religion (Book 1, Chapter 10), Calvin emphasizes that God is unchangeable in essence, will, and purpose. This immutability is contrasted with the variability and mutability of creation. He views God’s promises and covenants as expressions of this unchangeable nature. For Calvin, the reliability of God’s promises, such as the covenant of grace, hinges on the fact that God does not change. The attribute of immutability also plays a significant role in Calvin’s understanding of predestination and providence. God’s eternal decrees are unchanging, and his providential care for the world is consistent and reliable, reflecting God’s immutable nature.

Calvin’s conception of divine impassibility is tied to the idea that God is not subject to human passions or emotions. He asserts that God is beyond the vicissitudes and weaknesses that characterize human emotional life. However, Calvin does not deny that the Bible frequently attributes human emotions to God. He interprets these descriptions metaphorically, understanding them as accommodations to human understanding. When Scripture speaks of God as angry, grieved, or loving, it is speaking in human terms to make God’s actions and moral will comprehensible to us.

In his theology of incarnation, Calvin posits that Jesus Christ, within his human essence, underwent the entirety of human emotions and afflictions (Book 2, Chapters 12 and 16). Yet, Calvin strives to carefully navigate the relationship between Christ’s divine and human natures. While affirming that Christ, in his human nature, could suffer and die, he preserves the integrity of the divine nature as impassible by maintaining a clear distinction between the two natures in the person of Christ.¹⁴ Calvin articulates the relationship between Christ’s divine and human natures as “distinction and union,” maintaining that while these two natures are intimately united within the single Person of Christ, they remain distinct without any corruption of their individual integrity.¹⁵

This inseparable yet distinct union forms the basis for the hypostatic union, where Christ is fully recognized as both God and man.¹⁶ Consequently, Calvin concedes that the attribution of the properties of one nature to the other, the communicatio idiomatum, is “not without reason.”¹⁷ Nevertheless, he denies any direct transfer of attributes between the natures, upholding the complete integrity of both Christ’s divinity and humanity.¹⁸ Calvin’s nuanced approach to the communion of attributes through the doctrine of hypostatic union ensures that the properties of the two natures are justifiably and fittingly ascribed to the entire Person of Christ while the unique qualities of each nature are affirmed in their distinction.¹⁹

While the Lutheran’s exposition of the doctrine of communicatio idiomatum, especially in the context of the Eucharist, asserts a fuller exchange of attributes, endorsing the idea that Christ’s human nature can partake in divine attributes, such as omnipresence, Calvinists maintain a more distinct separation between the two natures, allowing no transfer of divine properties to the human nature except in the unity of the Person of Christ. This is in alignment with Calvin’s qualified acceptance of the communicatio idiomatum in terms of the profound union of the divine and human natures in the One Person of Christ.²⁰

V. The Suffering God and Divine Self-Limitation

The theological deliberations, as outlined in the previous section, in a general sense, prioritize the unchangeable nature of God while trying to understand the mystery of the Incarnation, where God has entered human existence through the very life, suffering, and death of Jesus Christ. As the event of the Incarnation is not merely a symbolic or metaphorical occurrence but a real and substantial union of divine and human natures in the One Person, theologians have strived to articulate this through the doctrine of two natures (divine nature being the predominant partner), the doctrine of the hypostatic union (distinction in unity), and the communion of properties (across the two natures on in the Person.) The challenge is to uphold the genuine humanity of Christ without compromising either the divine or human attributes.

A. Jürgen Moltmann

However, some contemporary theologians, such as Jürgen Moltmann, have found these early theological articulations inadequate in balancing this mystery of the transcendent God becoming fully enfleshed and embodied in the Incarnation. He questions the relevance of the classical doctrine of impassibility and immutability in depicting the Christian God and argues that a God who suffers is more consistent with the biblical testimony of a God who is deeply involved in the world and responsive to human suffering.²¹ In his book The Crucified God, Moltmann critiques the notion of the “impassibility of God” that was “cherished by the Greek Fathers… and by the medieval theologians.²² Moltmann alleges that the early Christian theologians’ emphasis on divine immutability and impassibility is an indication that “a mild docetism runs through the Christology of the ancient church.”²³ He contends that the idea of the “passion of the passionate God” is antithetical to Aristotelian metaphysics, as it specializes in God’s “essential apathy” rather than in his crucial identification with the suffering humanity.²⁴

Moltmann’s critique of the theologies that prioritize impassibility and immutability is rooted in his theology of the cross (theologia crucis). He argues that the traditional doctrine of two natures that seeks to “make a neat separation between the natures of Godhead and Manhood” should rather be understood in their “reciprocal relationship” constituting the personal union in the “God-man” Christ.²⁵ In contrast to the notions of God’s impassibility and immutability, Moltmann argues that God’s suffering is most profoundly revealed in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The cross, for Moltmann, is the central event in the life of God. It is the ultimate expression of God’s love, revealing God’s true nature.²⁶ He sees God’s suffering as an expression of divine love and solidarity with humanity.²⁷ A God who cannot suffer, according to Moltmann, is a God who cannot love.²⁸ For Moltmann, God’s nature understood through the event of the cross manifests God’s vulnerability and suffering, as in “crucified Christ,” God binds himself in solidarity with human suffering and abandonment.²⁹

Moltmann interprets the suffering and death of Jesus as not merely human experiences but as events that involve the very being of God.³⁰ According to him, the crucifixion is an event within the life of the Trinity, which means that the Father also experiences the Son’s suffering.³¹ On the Cross, Moltmann sees a correspondence between God’s ad intra and ad extra Trinitarian relations as he avers that God’s “outward acts correspond to inward suffering, and outward suffering corresponds to inward acts.”³² The cross is not just an act of God in the world but an event in which all the Persons of the Trinity participate.

In the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prayed to the Father to remove the cup of suffering but received no answer, and on the cross, Jesus cried through the words of Psalm 22:2, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Moltmann concludes that these instances signify Christ’s experience of abandonment as God the Father had forsaken God the Son to the “experience of hell and judgment.”³³ Jesus’ agony was more than “suffering in his human nature.”³⁴ Moltmann observes that Jesus was “not merely assailed by fear and suffering in his human nature, as scholastic tradition” portrays; rather, “He was assailed in his person, his very essence, in his relationship to the Father – in his divine sonship.”³⁵ The Son suffers a godforsaken death, and the Father suffers the Son’s death. On the cross, “the pain of the Father corresponds to the death of the Son… Here, the innermost life of the Trinity is at stake.”³⁶ The Father forsakes the Son “in order to become the Father of those who have been delivered up.”³⁷ Moltmann’s understanding of the Incarnation as having implications for the Trinitarian Being of God is based on his understanding of divine self-limitation.

Moltmann uses the Kabbalistic doctrine of zimsum (“contraction” or “self-limitation”) to understand the relationship between God and Creation.³⁸ He argues that while God is omnipresent, he is capable of self-limitation in order to create a domain for creatures to dwell. He argues that in Scripture, as recounted in Exodus 25:22, God demonstrates his ability to differentiate from his omnipresence by localizing his presence as the Shekinah glory within the Tabernacle.³⁹ He further states that the act of creation, which is analogous to God’s self-differentiation in the Shekinah, is effected through a divine contraction (zimsum) where God voluntarily recedes in his Being to create a space by a form of self-denial.⁴⁰ Moltmann observes that in this process of zimzum, God brings out Creation through a conscious “inward act” of “self-humiliation” and “self-limitation.”⁴¹

Moltmann applies the doctrine of zimzum to discuss the inner trinitarian reflection of the creation as “out of God and in God.”⁴² According to Moltmann, Creation is “a process of reflection to the inner relationship of the Trinity.”⁴³

… [I]t means that the Father, through an alteration of his love for the Son (that is to say through a contraction of the Spirit), and the Son, through an alteration in his response to the Father’s love (that is, through an inversion of the Spirit) have opened up the space, the time and the freedom for that “outwards” into which the Father utters himself creatively through the Son. For God himself this utterance means an emptying of himself – a self-determination for the purpose of a self-limitation.⁴⁴

For Moltmann, the event of creation itself is thus a self-limitation of God within the internal Trinitarian Being. Moltmann also claims that both the Father’s love for the Son and the Son’s response of obedience and surrender to the Father arise “out of the necessity” in God’s nature.⁴⁵ And thus, creation is not a Sovereign act of God; rather, it is a necessary act, integral to the very Being of God.⁴⁶

Moltmann extends the divine self-limitation in Creation to the event of the Cross. He conceives the Cross as the instance in the life of the Trinity where the Father, Son, and Spirit experience human alienation and suffering. He says, “The communicating love of the Father turns into infinite pain over the sacrifice of the Son,” and “the responding love of the Son

becomes infinite suffering over his repulsion and rejection by the Father.”⁴⁷ On the cross, the Spirit of God represents the Father and the Son in a “single surrendering movement.”⁴⁸

Moltmann thus conceives the Cross as the ad extra event in creation through which we understand the internal self-limitation of God ad intra in which all the three Persons of the Trinity partake. Moltmann, thus, by attributing the suffering in the Person of Jesus Christ to the Trinitarian Being of God, emphatically argues that the Triune God whom we worship is not a disconnected and apathetic God who is unable to share in the existential realities of humanity but the God who is fully present and participates as a co-suffer with us.

Moltmann’s theological quest to comprehend God as a co-sufferer in human affliction stems from his personal history as a German soldier during the Nazi era, where he had first hand experienced unparalleled human catastrophes. This unique sitz im leben informs his compelling portrayal of the Triune God’s immanence and participation in human realities. The Liberation theologians have greatly appropriated Moltmann’s conception of the Crucified God, making it relevant to the theological expressions of issues of social justice and emancipation of the poor and the marginalized.

However, Moltmann’s use of zimzum within his panentheistic worldview does raise some significant theological problems. If creation is a necessary act of God’s Being, how do we understand the ex nihilo creation that the Scripture affirms? Wolfhart Pannenberg criticizes Moltmann’s attempt to combine the Kabbalistic concept of zimsum with traditional theological explanations of creation. Pannenberg states that Moltmann’s use of zimsum is a “materially unfounded mystification.”⁴⁹ He finds Moltmann as confounding the creatio ex nihilo doctrine by making creation essential to God’s Being.

Also, the Kabbalistic myth of zimsum is a metaphorical extension of the notion of physical space, and it conceives “God as his own space—the container and its contents, so to speak.”⁵⁰ Moltmann envisions God as shrinking into himself in order to create a space within his Being for creatures.⁵¹ If “God is in everything and everything is in God” then how do we maintain the mystery of God’s transcendence and immanence in the world through this space myth? Also, Moltmann rejects “the distinction made by the early church between theology as the doctrine of God and economy as the doctrine of salvation.”⁵² He states, “Statements about the immanent Trinity must not contradict statements about the economic Trinity.”⁵³ Moltmann sees a direct correspondence between the immanent Trinity and the economic Trinity, and his assertions that the Triune God’s Being is involved in the experience of Christ’s suffering on the Cross would dissolve the distinction between God’s Being and his action in the word.

We can perceive that Moltmann’s theology is apparently influenced by his panentheistic worldview, which he derived from Process theology. Through this panentheistic framework, he conceives God as being affected by the events within creation. Though his “theology of hope” expounds on the eschatological redemption through Christ’s death and resurrection, his unconventional use and exposition of zimsum do create theological issues. While we uphold the merit of Moltmann’s presentation of God as a co-sufferer with humanity, we do recognize that his use of the Kabbalistic myth does confound the distinction between the Creator and the creation and the Immanent and Transcendent Reality of God’s Being. Therefore, while striving to understand the divine self-limitation in suffering, if we can identify an approach that steers us away from the Kabbalistic doctrine, it will be helpful. In this regard, we will turn to Torrance’s exposition on kenosis.

B. Thomas Torrance

Torrance’s kenotic theology also touches on the idea that God, in Christ, suffers with humanity. God’s self-limitation makes it possible for him to experience human suffering and death, thereby providing a profound solidarity with the human condition. Torrance writes, “Kenosis has to be understood as the utterly astonishing and incomprehensible act of God’s self-humiliation and self-abnegating love in which he freely made himself one within our actual existence in order to share the shame of our sin and guilt and through atoning sacrifice to effect our salvation.”⁵⁴ Torrance articulates that the Incarnation—the event of God becoming human—signifies God operating and existing within the limitations and conditions that are inalienably and fittingly human.⁵⁵ God, in Christ’s embodied existence, has willingly entered into the human existential realities.

However, Torrance cautions that the divine entry into the realm of space and time should not be viewed as a dissolution or complete fusion of divine Being into a human form.⁵⁶ Instead, it should be understood as a deliberate act of self-emptying (kenosis), in which the Son of God, while remaining unaltered in his divinity, voluntarily takes on human nature, embodying humanity in its fragility, impoverishment, and marginality.⁵⁷ The Son, while remaining fully God, chose to live a fully human life within the conditions of space and time, which entailed limitations on the exercise of his divine attributes.⁵⁸

Torrance challenges the traditional Greek philosophical understanding of space as a container (the notion also seen in Moltmann’s understanding of zimzum) in which objects are placed. Instead, he draws from the relational and dynamic view of space that emerges from modern physics, where space is not a neutral container but is determined by the relations and interactions of objects within it.⁵⁹ Torrance applies this relational and dynamic understanding of space to the incarnation, suggesting that in Christ, God enters into our space and time without being contained by it. Torrance extends the self-limitation of God in Christ within the spatiotemporal existence to the Trinitarian relations. He states, “[when] the Word [is] made flesh, he really is in himself; that he is in the internal relations of his transcendent being the very same Father, Son and Holy Spirit that he is in his revealing and saving activity in time and space toward mankind.”⁶⁰

Kenosis involves God’s deliberate choice to undergo humiliation and death as a means to pardon our sins.⁶¹ In this act of kenosis, God willingly enters into our existence, fully embracing the disgrace of our transgressions and culpability. Torrance avers that this self-emptying in Christ is an expression of Triune God’s love and desire for genuine fellowship with humanity.

For Torrance, the kenotic act is not only a revelation of God’s character but also an act of reconciliation.⁶² In the self-limitation of the Son, God enters into the brokenness of human life to heal, redeem, and reconcile humanity to Himself. He writes,

[R]esurrection tells us that the life and person of Jesus are not held under the tyrant forces of this world, that though he was born of woman and made under the law, Jesus Christ was not dominated and mastered by our fallen flesh and its judgment, but is triumphant over it all, in achieving his redeeming purpose of reconciling our humanity to fellowship with God.”⁶³

Torrance avers that despite God willingly taking on humanity’s shame, sin, and guilt, this act of incarnation does not diminish his transcendence and holiness, nor does it restrict his freedom.⁶⁴ And through the Sovereign act of divine self-limitation, God accomplishes the reconciliation of humanity to himself.

Torrance also infers a direct correspondence and coherence between God’s being and God’s actions. He states that since God is Triune, all his acts toward us cannot but be acts of the Trinity in Unity and of the Unity in Trinity.⁶⁵ For Torrance, the way God reveals himself in history (economically) is a true reflection of the internal relations of the Trinity (immanently). He remarks that the Economic Trinity reveals the Immanent Trinity (God-in Self), and God’s actions in the world are rooted in and are consistent with who God is in essence, as it constitutes God’s Self-Revelation.⁶⁶ However, by maintaining the priority of the immanent Trinity over the economic Trinity, Torrance avoids the tendency to subsume the former with the latter, a tendency identified within Moltmann’s conception.⁶⁷

Thus, while emphatically arguing for the aspects of self-negation and self-limitation in Christ’s enfleshment, Torrance also maintains the distinction between God’s transcendence and immanence. By maintaining the integrity of both natures while emphasizing the depth of God’s love and the profound implications for the Trinitarian Godhead in the incarnation within the bounds of space and time, Torrance provides a corrective to Moltmann’s confusion of categories (Creator–creation) and Being (Immanent and Economic Trinity) in the doctrine of zimsum.

VI. Conclusion

The theological exploration of divine impassibility and divine self-limitation reveals a dynamic exchange of ideas within Christian thought. The traditional emphasis on impassibility by early church fathers like Athanasius, Augustine, and Aquinas has been instrumental in shaping the classical understanding of God as unchangeable and unaffected by external events or emotions. This perspective, while safeguarding the divine transcendence and perfection, has confined the possibility of God’s sharing in human experiences to either anthropopathic representations or as privy only to Christ’s humanity. The communion of properties, as propounded by Gregory of Nazianzus and developed within the Reformation insights of Martin Luther, attempts a relational and participatory view of God’s interaction with creation. However, by construing the communion of properties across the two natures, a criticism arises whether this is in alignment with the Chalcedonian Christological distinctions of “without confusion, change, division, or separation.” Calvin’s qualified approach to the communicatio idiomatum refines the conversation by acknowledging the possibility of the communion of properties in relation to the unified Person of Jesus Christ and not across the two natures. This range of theological articulations thus represents a rich exchange of ideas in balancing divine impassibility and suffering.

However, in contemporary settings, Jürgen Moltmann and others challenge these traditional articulations of impassibility and immutability. By engaging with the Kabbalistic doctrine of zimzum, Moltmann offers a radical account of a self-limiting God within the Trinity. Moltmann understands the creation itself as an extension (or rather contraction) of God’s Being. He understands the Cross as the event where Christ demonstrates his kenotic love as he unreservedly experiences human misery and suffering, in which the very Being of the Triune God participates in this kenotic experience. However, Motlmann’s elucidations also result in the identification of Creation with the Creator and the blurring of the distinction between transcendence and the immanence of God.

Torrance, while avoiding the problem of confounding the immanence and the transcendence of God’s presence in Christ, explicates the self-emptying of the Son as a means through which God accomplishes the reconciliation and redemption of humanity in a Sovereign act of self-negation and self-humiliation. It is in the hypostatic union of the eternal Son with the human Jesus that this divine relationship is specifically actualized, and the suffering and death on the cross are personal experiences of God the Son encountered in the unified experiencing Subject, the Person of Jesus Christ. Torrance presents this act of kenosis as embodying God’s essential self-giving and self-emptying love, which inherently involves Triune God’s relationship with the “Other,” humanity, and creation. In this self-limiting experience of the Second Person of the Trinity, the Father, and the Spirit also participate in the experiences of humanity. And it is in this communion that humanity experiences God’s redemptive power in and through Christ and the Spirit.