Asked by Anonymous
Impassibility when you think about it, is really just applying His immutability (probably foreknowledge as well) towards His affections. What it means for Him to be impassible, is that in His essence He doesn’t have passions like men have passions. He doesn’t have mood swings, He’s not passive in His affections and nothing will surprise Him and give Him a sudden change of heart.
From a practical stand point… It doesn’t mean that He doesn’t love, but that His love is unchanging. He loves you infinitely at all times, and your actions do not have the power to make Him love you less. In fact, even if He were to love you less, lets say half as much for example, His love for you would be half of infinite, which is still infinite lol.
Also, because He already knows everything that you’ll ever do, nothing that you do will catch Him by surprise. If you commit some horrible sin, He won’t go from loving you, to hating you. He’ll instead discipline you out of His unchanging love. So that nothing you do can ever separate you from the love of God if you’re His child.
And He’s not a robot because He has a will.
Oh anddddd sorry if I responded to this slowly, tumblr app needs to step its game up.
The Father imposed His wrath due unto, and the Son underwent punishment for, either:
- All the sins of all men.
- All the sins of some men, or
- Some of the sins of all men.
In which case it may be said:
- That if the last be true, all men have some sins to answer for, and so, none are saved.
- That if the second be true, then Christ, in their stead suffered for all the sins of all the elect in the whole world, and this is the truth.
- But if the first be the case, why are not all men free from the punishment due unto their sins?
You answer, ‘Because of unbelief.’
- I ask, Is this unbelief a sin, or is it not?
- If it be, then Christ suffered the punishment due unto it, or He did not.
- If He did, why must that hinder them more than their other sins for which He died?
- If He did not, He did not die for all their sins!
- John Owen, ‘For Who Did Christ Die?’
I greatly longed to understand Paul’s Epistle to the Romans and nothing stood in the way but that one expression, “the justice of God,” because I took it to mean that justice whereby God is just and deals justly in punishing the unjust. My situation was that, although an impeccable monk, I stood before God as a sinner troubled in conscience, and I had no confidence that my merit would assuage him. Therefore I did not love a just and angry God, but rather hated and murmured against him. Yet I clung to the dear Paul and had a great yearning to know what he meant.
Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement that “the just shall live by his faith.” Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas before the “justice of God” had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This passage of Paul became to me a gate to heaven … .
If you have a true faith that Christ is your Savior, then at once you have a gracious God, for faith leads you in and opens up God’s heart and will, that you should see pure grace and overflowing love. This it is to behold God in faith that you should look upon his fatherly, friendly heart, in which there is no anger nor ungraciousness. He who sees God as angry does not see him rightly but looks only on a curtain, as if a dark cloud had been drawn across his face.
‘Tis quite excellent. Especially the Sola Scriptura one.
Asked by Anonymous
This answer has been brought to you by Mr. Dunn
Anselm’s atonement theory was revolutionary to its time because everyone else believed some lesser, more primitive version of the atonement (such as ransom theory, government theory, etc). Anselms view is biblical, but more needs to be added to it. Calvins view of penal substitution was actually a big product of Anselm. So, we dont need to fight it as much as we need to add to it.
