The Spirit as a Relational Person Who Feels

It’s obvious to many believers that God is personal, relational, and experiences emotions. Christian, Jewish, and Muslim scriptures routinely describe deity in this way.^[1] These abilities and attributes also seem required if the Spirit is loving, because lovers are persons who act and feel in relationships. It makes sense, therefore, for this systematic theology of love to claim the Spirit is a relational and personal Actor who feels.

Many people are surprised to learn that leading theologians of yesteryear denied God has the attributes or abilities that writers of scripture assume describe God. Some contemporary theologians also deny them. They worry that imagining God in these ways leads to projecting human features and foibles upon the divine. It’s little surprise, therefore, that these theologians do not write books, as I do, called A Systematic Theology of Love.

In this chapter, I defend claims about God that are obvious to most believers but rejected by leading systematic theologians. But one of my primary claims is novel. I argue that God has an essence-experience binate. This means that the living Spirit’s experience changes moment by moment in relations with creatures, but the divine nature is unchanging. Because of this essence-experience binate, the living Lover of all relates, feels, and acts as a changing person. But unlike creatures, the Spirit whose essence is unchanging cannot be tempted to harm and never does evil when feeling negative emotions.

Non-Relational Theologians

To begin exploring what it means to say God is a Person who relates and feels emotions, let’s look briefly at a few theologians who oppose these ideas. Thomas Aquinas rejects the idea God is relational, as one example, if “relational” is understood as creatures and/or creation influencing God. “A relation of God to creatures is not a reality in God,” says Aquinas bluntly.^[2] Instead, relations are “ascribed to God only in our understanding.”^[3] In other words, we perceive the Spirit as relational, but God actually isn’t.

If Aquinas is right, numerous biblical statements are false. People can’t bless God, for instance, although the Psalmist repeatedly urges them to do so (e.g., Ps. 103). A non-relational God can’t respond to us by forgiving sin, although this idea seems central to scripture and Christian piety (e.g., 1 Jn. 1:9). If Aquinas is right, the covenants God makes with creation and the Spirit’s reactions when humans break them are illusions (e.g., Gen. 9:11; Ex. 19:5; Deut. 7:9, 31:8; 2 Chron. 7:14; Is. 54:10; Ps. 103:17-18; Heb. 9:15). And so on.^[4]

The theologian Anselm takes a similar approach. He rejects divine relations and feelings when he explores God’s compassion. “How are you a compassionate God and, at the same time, passionless?” he asks in prayer. “If you are passionless, you do not feel sympathy. And if you do not feel sympathy, your heart is not retched from sympathy for the wretched. But this is to be compassionate.” In these lines, Anselm is admitting that compassion requires feelings and relational influence. “But you don’t have either passion or sympathy,” he concludes, “so how can we call you compassionate?”

Anselm answers his own question: “When you behold us in our wretchedness, God, we experience the effect of compassion. But you do not experience the feeling of compassion. Therefore, you are both compassionate because you do save the wretched and spare those who sin against you, and also not compassionate, because you are affected by no sympathies for wretchedness.”^[5] Anselm believes, in other words, creatures cannot affect God, and the Spirit cannot feel emotional responses. We may think God is compassionate, says Anselm, but that’s not the truth of the matter.

The Jewish theologian Maimonides agrees with Aquinas and Anselm. He applies these ideas to feelings. “[God] is not affected by external influences, and therefore does not possess any quality resulting from emotion,” says Maimonides. He asks rhetorically, “How could a relation be imagined between a creature and God, who has nothing in common with any other being? …Consequently, there is no relation between Him and any other being.^[6]”

Notice that Maimonides assumes the Creator is entirely unlike creatures. God cannot relate with or feel responses, because Maimonides thinks God is immaterial, unaffected, and timeless.^[7] None of what Maimonides says here fits the common view of God in Hebrew and Greek scriptures, however. And these ideas oppose the fundamental elements of love.

The Spirit is Relational

The claims of Aquinas, Anselm, and Maimonides point to what’s at stake when we say the Spirit is a relational person who feels. These theologians believe creatures can’t affect God. In terms of love, they say divine love is only outgoing benevolence with no mutual relationship whereby deity is influenced. God gives to creatures but never receives from them.

By contrast, this systematic theology says the fundamental elements required for love includes giving and receiving in real relations. This applies to creatures and Creator. For the Spirit to relate with creatures, therefore, means She influences them, and they influence Her. God is “passible,” to use the classic term. The Spirit is affected, receives, suffers, responds, feels, rejoices, is vulnerable, reconciles, and emotes in relations with others.

The Spirit’s love is outgoing benevolence and receptive empathy. These dimensions of the divine life only make sense if we believe the Spirit engages in real relations with creation, in the sense of mutual influence.^[8] A Spirit both empathetic and benevolent can actually be compassionate. This deity feels and reacts to creatures — including those who suffer — to promote their well-being.

To say the Spirit relates with creatures is to make claims about causation. God exerts causal influence upon others, and others exert causal influence upon God. By “causation,” I don’t mean creatures control God or that God controls them. Instead, I mean causation in terms of having a real affect, in the sense of influence. The Spirit who loves exerts efficient causation, to use Aristotelean categories, not just formal or final causation.^[9] But never sufficient causation.

The Bible

The Bible is packed with passages depicting God as relational. And the Spirit who loves often responds emotionally.^[10] Here’s a small sample of the many passages one could cite:

– The Lord regrets that he made humans, and “his heart was deeply troubled” (Gen. 6:6).

– God “hears” the cries of Israel and is “concerned about their suffering” (Ex. 3:7).

– God “hears the groaning of the sons of Israel” and remembers the covenant (Ex. 6:5).

– God self-identifies as a “jealous God” and “unswervingly loyal” (Ex. 20:5, 6).

– God encounters a stiff-necked people, has anger that “burns.” But God “relents” and does not bring disaster (Ex. 32:9-14).

– Being “a compassionate God,” God will “not forget the covenant with your fathers” (Dt. 4:31).

– God “remembers his covenant” and “relents according to the greatness of his lovingkindness” (Ps. 106:45).

– “My lovingkindness will not be removed from you, and my covenant of peace will not be shaken,” says the Lord of compassion (Is. 54:10).

– God feels sorrow about the disaster brought on Judah (Jer. 42:10).

– God is “jealous” and “takes pity” on the people (Joel 2:18).

– God “has compassion” for Israel (Hosea 11:8-9).

– God takes “great delight” and “rejoices” (Zeph. 3:17).

– God gets “extremely angry” when the nations make disasters worse (Zech. 1:15).

– Paul warns readers to “not grieve the Holy Spirit of God” (Eph. 4:30), which implies that creaturely action can sadden God.

– James says, “The Lord is full of compassion and is merciful” (5:11).

Jesus envisions the Spirit as relational too. He says God is an Abba (Father) who responds to children, and Abba’s responding is intimately relational (Mk 14:36). In a story about a wayward son, Jesus describes God as a forgiving father who “felt compassion” for a lost son (Lk. 15:20).^[11] In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus encourages his listeners to imitate the Spirit’s relational love: “be compassionate as God is compassionate” (Lk. 6:36).^[12]

Relational Forms of Love

These passages and others indicate that the Spirit’s giving-and-receiving love takes many forms. Let me mention three briefly. First, the Spirit expresses agape by responding to sin with forgiveness and healing. These activities assume interactive relationship. Often, God is angry or disappointed when creatures hurt one another or creation more generally. The Spirit experiences negative emotions and yet responds with agape. Deity repays evil with good, and we should do the same (Lk. 6:27-31, Rm. 12:21, 1 Thess. 5:15, 1 Pt. 3:9).

God also expresses giving-and-receiving philia love with creatures (Ex. 33:12; 2 Chr. 20:7; Is. 41:8; Jas. 2:2; Js. 2:23; 2 Tim. 3:2; Tit. 3:4). Because the Spirit who loves is relational, God enjoys friendships and engages in covenant. As the Psalmist puts it, “The friendship of the Lord is for those who honor him, and he makes his covenant known to them” (Ps. 25:14). And this friendship includes warm feelings of divine affection and fellowship (Dt. 10:15).

The Spirit’s relationality is evident in divine eros too, as God evaluates and values creatures (2 Tm. 4:8; Jn. 12:43; Hb. 1:9). God sees that creation is good (Gen. 1), for instance, and responds with feelings of pleasure. God loves the world so much that the Spirit gives Jesus so that those who believe might have eternal life (Jn. 3:16). Eros, as I will argue in future chapters, is also a major force in God’s creating.

(The previous is a portion of seven of the systematic theology of love I’m writing. Find the full chapter on my Substack account. Free subscribers get a portion of the chapter; paid subscribers get the entire chapter. In addition, paid subscribers [only $8 a month] will be mentioned in the published book’s acknowledgements and get a signed copy. Consider subscribing!)