SciELO - Scientific Electronic Library Online

 
vol.33 número1The impact of evangelical revivals on global mission: The case of North American evangelicals in Brazil in the nineteenth and twentieth centuriesTitus 3:3 as self-vilification: A rhetorical option índice de autoresíndice de assuntospesquisa de artigos
Home Pagelista alfabética de periódicos  

Serviços Personalizados

Artigo

Indicadores

Links relacionados

  • Em processo de indexaçãoCitado por Google
  • Em processo de indexaçãoSimilares em Google

Compartilhar


Verbum et Ecclesia

versão On-line ISSN 2074-7705
versão impressa ISSN 1609-9982

Verbum Eccles. (Online) vol.33 no.1 Pretoria  2012

http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/ve.v33i1.700 

ORIGINAL RESEARCH

 

What is it like to be a god? A philosophical clarification of instances of divine suffering in the Psalter

 

 

Jaco W. Gericke

School of Basic Sciences, Faculty of Humanities, North-West University, South Africa

Correspondence

 

 


ABSTRACT

There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce. (Mark Twain)
In philosophy of religion, there is a long history of belief that divine reality is immutable, although this has changed recently. In this article, the author takes a closer look at what some texts in the Psalms assumed about what it feels like for a god to suffer mentally. By paying attention to what is presupposed in language about negative divine emotions, the nature of mental anguish in the life of a deity is elucidated from examples in the text in which Yhwh is said to have states of mind involving anger, hate, compassion, jealousy and grief.


 

 

“Full text available only in PDF format”

 

 

References

Ben Zeev, A., 2000, The Subtlety of Emotions, MIT Press, Cambridge.         [ Links ]

Brueggemann, W., 1997, Old Testament Theology: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy, Fortress Press, Minneapolis.         [ Links ]

De Sousa, R., 2010, 'Emotion', in E.N. Zalta, The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, viewed 27 July 2011, from http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2010/entries/emotion/ Fretheim, T.E., 1984, The Suffering of God, Fortress Press, Minneapolis.         [ Links ]

Gavrilyuk, P.L., 2006, The Suffering of the Impassible God: The Dialectics of Patristic Thought, Oxford University Press, Oxford.         [ Links ]

Hughes, P.M., 2001, 'Anger,' Encyclopaedia of Ethics, Vol I, 2nd edn., pp. 67-71, Routledge Press, New York.         [ Links ]

Miles, J., 1995, God: A Biography, Alfred Knopf, New York.         [ Links ]

Konstan, D., 2001, Pity Transformed, Duckworth, London.         [ Links ]

Pinnock, C., Price, R., Sanders, J., Hasker, W. & Basinger, D., 1994, The Openness of God, InterVarsity, Downers Grove.         [ Links ]

Nagel, T., 1974, 'What Is it Like to Be a Bat?', Philosophical Review, 435-50. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2183914        [ Links ]

Nietzsche, F., 1954, The Antichrist, Penguin, London.         [ Links ]

Nietzsche, F., 1968, The Will to Power: In Science, Nature, Society and Art, Random House, New York.         [ Links ]

Reber, A.S., 2001, The Penguin Dictionary of Psychology, Penguin Books Ltd., London.         [ Links ]

Royzman, E.B., Drake, C., Jackson, P., 2005, 'From Plato to Putnam: Four ways to think about hate,' in R.J. Sternberg, The Psychology of Hate, pp. 3-35, American Psychological Association (APA), Washington D.C.         [ Links ]

Sommer, B.D., 2009, The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.         [ Links ]

Tarico, V., 2011, 'God's Emotions: Why the Biblical God Is Hopelessly Human,' in J.W. Loftus, The End of Christianity, pp. 155-178, Prometheus Press, New York.         [ Links ]

Tortchinov, E., 1998 'Cybil, Attis and the Mysteries of the "Suffering Gods" - A Transpersonal Interpretation,' International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 17(2), 149-159.         [ Links ]

Trakakis, N., 2007, 'Meta-Philosophy of Religion', Ars Disputandi 7, 1-47.         [ Links ]

Weinandy, T.G., 2000, Does God Suffer? University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame.         [ Links ]

 

 

Creative Commons License Todo o conteúdo deste periódico, exceto onde está identificado, está licenciado sob uma Licença Creative Commons