Impassible Desire

4th-c. church father Gregory of Nyssa

A quotation from Gregory of Nyssa:

Our appetite, purified from all these things [the passions], will orient itself toward one single object of will, desire and love. It will not entirely abolish our natural impulses to these things, but it will reorient them toward participation in immaterial goods. For there will be an incessant love for true Beauty, a laudable desire for the treasures of Wisdom, the beautiful and noble love for glory that is achieved in the communion of God’s kingdom, a sublime passion that will never find satiety and will never be deluded, in its good desire, by the satiety of these objects. (from De mortuis)

In Pathways a few weeks ago, we discussed God's impassibility (that God is not subject to fluctuating or passing states of emotion), especially as it relates to his attributes of simplicity and wrath. One of the typical criticisms of impassibility is that God is a God of passionate love, and describing God as impassible (note the same root as passion, pass- from the Latin, passio) makes him not intensely loving—indeed, love itself—but cold and distant. I hope we dispelled that misconception pretty well in class, but it bears repeating that the doctrine of impassibility actually safeguards our understanding of God as a God of perfect love.

So—hang with me here—last week we began with the doctrine of the Trinity, and as we discussed the Father-Son language in the Gospel of John, somebody brought up that we are also called God's sons (and daughters) in Scripture. This is exactly right, and I had the (atypical) wherewithal to bring up the theological formulation, developed by the church fathers, that what Christ is by nature, we are by grace. This is the doctrine of our adoption. Jesus Christ, in his humanity and divinity, is the perfect image of our adoption into the life of the Trinity, which is characterized by perfect, impassible love. So, looking at Gregory's quote above, we see that God even imparts something of his impassible nature to us in our sanctification, especially in our state of complete eschatological purification. That is, by grace, we are able to love God perfectly.

So paradoxically, our desire for God will be impassible; it will, as Gregory says above, "orient itself toward one single object of will, desire and love." This is not a static, cold comprehension, but an "incessant love for true Beauty." An incessant love. How, if our love is perfected, will we continue to desire God incessantly? The answer lies in God's infinity and our finitude. That is a gulf that can never be breached. There is always more to God than we can contain. As the theologian Kyle Strobel says in a work in Jonathan Edwards: "In heaven the glorified saints are like containers that are always full but whose capacity is always growing."

Jesus Christ, who by nature loves the Father in perfect impassibility, enables, through the cross and resurrection, our participation in that same impassible love. It is the perfection of our nature by grace.

So much of theology, and the Christian life, rests on this balance between affirming the infinite difference between God and his creatures, on the one hand, and affirming our intimate union with him, on the other.

Heavy stuff, but very rich.