Thinking Through Feeling: God, Emotion and Passibility

Front Cover
Bloomsbury Publishing USA, Oct 6, 2011 - Religion - 240 pages
Contemporary debates on God's emotionality are divided between two extremes. Impassibilists deny God's emotionality on the basis of God's omniscience, omnipotence and incorporeality. Passibilists seem to break with tradition by affirming divine emotionality, often focusing on the idea that God suffers with us.

Contemporary philosophy of emotion reflects this divide. Some philosophers argue that emotions are voluntary and intelligent mental events, making them potentially compatible with omniscience and omnipotence. Others claim that emotions are involuntary and basically physiological, rendering them inconsistent with traditional divine attributes.

Thinking Through Feeling: God, Emotion and Passibility creates a three-way conversation between the debate in theology, contemporary philosophy of emotion, and pre-modern (particularly Augustinian and Thomist) conceptions of human affective experience. It also provides an exploration of the intelligence and value of the emotions of compassion, anger and jealousy.
 

Contents

Acknowledgements
Historical and Contemporary Perspectives
Passiones and Affectiones in Augustine and Aquinas
Emotion Intelligence and Divine Omniscience
Compassion
Anger
Jealousy
Overview of Chapters 3 to 6
Emotion Will and Divine Omnipotence
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2011)

Anastasia Philippa Scrutton is Frederick J. Crosson Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy of Religion, University of Notre Dame, USA.

Bibliographic information