I
have always heard that God is perfection without any lack. After the
Incarnation, when Jesus wept or had other emotions such as at the Agony
can we say the nature of God changed in the sense God was now lacking
perfect joy. Is Jesus as He exists now with human emotions able to feel
sorrow when He contemplates the abortions, wars, apostasy etc. In other
words can God right now ever be said to be sorrowful? Anne |
Dear Ann, Since
Christ was fully human as well as divine, he had to have emotion
because that is part of being a human being. Now in themselves the
emotions of joy and sadness, anger and sorrow are part of the equipment
that man needs to deal with life. Because he has a body, he has to have
feeling of pleasure and pain. These feelings become moral or immoral
according to how people deal with them. Now Christ dealt with them in a
perfect way. At the prospect of his crucifixion he felt sadness and
pain to the extent of even sweating blood, which is very extreme. But
the prospect of being crucifies is quite extreme, particular when one
know everything about it. At any rate, Christ is our model for feeling
the emotions of pleasure and pain, anger and sadness. Today Christ is
in his glorified body, which works differently that his body did on
earth. So he would not feel sadness or pain in the same way. He would
still approve or disapprove just as God does. But there is no human
feelings involves. Neither do angels have human feeling because they do
not have bodies. But the good angels can have joy while the bad angels
can have hate and sadness. At any rate strictly speaking God cannot be
sorrowful because he always was and always will be full of perfect
happiness. As you can see, the teaching of Christ being fully God and
fully man is a great mystery. Dr. Geraghty
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