by cyranorox » September 1st, 2010, 8:57 pm
The language of passions can be ambiguous: i mean what-is-suffered, what-is-received; opposed to actions. 'Compassion' is chiefly shared suffering, a choice, not intrinsically the emotion that goes with the act; paradoxically an active choice of a passive predicament.
As God has, but for the Incarnation, no passivity, he cannot have passions in that sense. That He has definite desires, views, and demands is not in question; that they are expressed to us in the language of emotion and feeling is also agreed. If you look at one strain of thought in the Fathers, particularly Isaac the Syrian, you find an understanding of God that does not imagine him angry or passionate. It's been a while since I spent time with the texts, but a good reinterpretation can be had in MacDonald - although I disagree with him [as does Isaac] on the issue of punishment. Our Uncle Origen also hold these views.
The man of apatheia is not subject to his passions; in a sense, that must mean he has them not. However, he can choose to feel, and ought to, warm, generous, charitable, or just emotions. The distinction is in the process. The passion is the man *being dragged* by the horse, not the horse itself, which is the energy or activity; you can keep him. Plato's black horse with hairy ears can get a trim and nowadays looks rather sleek in harness ;~>
I think others here are using 'passion' to cover some of the semantic territory that belongs properly [iirc]to 'energy' or feeling.
As for Pagan infiltration, again it's an old story; but the burden of proof must rest on the latecomers who claim to hold a normative content and then point out what they feel is extraneous. Withal, their innovations must also be scrutinized; I've pointed out the Pagan strain in medieval western thinking about soteriology.
The warp of Christian life is revelation and sacrament, But where should the woof come from? where but the substrate of bread and wine, dress and speech, thought and discourse, all brought into and through Christian community, principally from the Greeks and Jews. What God is, how the universe is set up, is in the Creed- error, pagan or otherwise, is locked out. What He did and said is recorded in the Gospels and elsewhere- this is a pure source and admits no additions, pagan or otherwise. BTW I don't think the Fathers had quite the 'Biblical' view; the Gospel view, certainly, and a deep knowledge of the OT, but that is not quite the same thing.
Apocatastasis Now!