It’s Advent, and I’ve been thinking about the Incarnation (no surprise there).  I am less concerned with the “how” of the Incarnation and more concerned with the “why.” My faith in the sovereignty of God means that I believe that God could have invented all manner of possible solutions to the problem of sin (not that we humans have intellect sufficient to speculate very effectively about what those infinite possibilities might be).

Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that the Incarnation tells us something about the nature, purpose and personality of God. What I find in exploring these issues is one of the most profound aspects of my faith, one I’d like to share with you.

Let’s begin with the question of God’s “passibility.” This is often defined as “the ability of God to suffer,” but this is not entirely correct. The truer definition of passibility is “the ability of God to be affected by some force or influence external to God’s self.” In plainer terms: can something make God be or feel a certain thing or do a certain thing?

The question is important because it presupposes a problem: If God is “passible” there is something in the universe that is more powerful than God because it can overcome God in some way, challenging God’s sovereignty. On the other hand, if God is “impassible” and cannot be affected by any external thing, can God feel sympathy with us? Does God “feel” anything, since feelings are responses caused (at least sometimes) by external forces?

This is perhaps the most fundamental question of theology–can God be both sovereign and good? If the answer is yes, then the basic nature of existence should be one of hope. If not, despair. All aspects of theology are influenced by the answer to this question. In theodicy, the question of evil only exists in such a troublesome state if God is both good and all-powerful. If not, we have an easy explanation for the existence of evil. The meaning of scripture, of the working out of salvation, of the Incarnation, all of these turn on this answer.

Let me propose that there actually is no problem in the question of passibility, though what the solution tells us is nothing short of amazing in its furtherance of the understanding of our God. We affirm that God is sovereign over all things and cannot be unwillingly affected by something external to God’s self. But if God cannot allow God’s self to be affected by some external factor, than God would not be sovereign, for God could not overcome God’s self. The God who cannot self determine is not impassible.

So, it does not follow that the all-powerful God is not good or cannot feel–God has chosen to be good and God has chosen to feel, to be affected by God’s Creation. To be in active and meaningful relationship with all of Creation.

The theologian Thomas Jay Oord has very convincingly argued exactly this–that God is impassible but has affirmatively chosen to suffer with us. For me, though, the realization of this came from G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy:

“Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete. Christianity alone felt that God, to be wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king. Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator…But in the terrific tale of the Passion there is a distinct emotional suggestion that the author of all things (in some unthinkable way) went not only through agony, but through doubt. It is written, ‘Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.’ No; but the Lord the God may tempt Himself; and it seems as if this was what happened in Gethsemane. In a garden, Satan tempted man; and in a garden God tempted God. He passed in some superhuman manenr through our human horror of pessimism. When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God….”

The Incarnation and the crucifixion represent God’s choice about so many aspects of existence. Much has been written about its meaning as God’s choice to redeem humanity (I, personally, favor Karl Barth for this investigation and discussion), but I think that far too little has been put to paper (or screen as the case may be) about what the Incarnation says about God’s justice.

In the Incarnation we see God’s choice of (semi-)passibility as one of the few answers to the problem of evil that we humans can actually understand: No matter what suffering God has allowed to befall humanity, no matter why this suffering has been allowed (which we are ultimately incapable of explaining), God is so just as to not allow God’s creation to suffer anything that God will not suffer with us in the most personal and intimate of ways.

In Christ’s birth, we see God’s choice to be with us, not just physically, but existentially. How amazing is it that the God of all Creation willingly suffers with us for us. God is all-powerful; God has chosen to be good to infinite extents we cannot possibly imagine.

I invite you to keep this in your heart as we await the Christ child.