Love and Impassibility

I am reading a theological paper, one which is up for submission to an Honour’s degree at George Whitfield College, and I find the entire paper interesting: it is dealing with the last words of Jesus on the Cross. In the discussion, there are aspects of the Trinitarian God and suffering.

            Towards the end, I picked up this segment:

“Love and Impassibility

Love cannot be impassible, so Moltmann says. The being that loves must suffer, for to love is to suffer. Human love necessitates human suffering. The passion of love is self-giving. So for God to be love is for God to love as humans love and thus suffer as humans suffer. The absolute immutable love of God the Father for God the Son and visa versa moves God to suffer and die on the cross. The goal of God's love is relationship with his creatures, but to love sinners is to invite suffering and death. Moltmann takes this line of argument. For him, suffering is love. In order to love you must suffer. In this scheme God cannot be transcendent in a Greek philosophical theological way. God must be more human. “But a man can suffer because he can love, even as a Narcissus, and he always suffers only to the degree that he loves. If he kills all love in himself, he no longer suffers. He becomes apathetic.”

There was the connection between love and suffering which struck me. It is true; in human love there is an aspect of sacrificial love, of bearing each other’s burdens, in giving without any expectation of being paid back. Love brings a deep joy of being able to give of oneself. Being a recipient of love, spurs the mutual reaction, and so it bounces dialectically from one to the other. It may seem trivial, but the expression 'love hurts' has some validity to it.