Embracing Vulnerability

Arguments in favor of divine impassibility take many forms, one of which is moral. This argument views emotional risk, vulnerability, suffering, and self-love as obstacles to moral perfection. In Embracing Vulnerability: Human and Divine, Roberto Sirvent challenges these mistaken assumptions about moral judgment. Through an analysis of Hebrew thought and modern philosophical accounts of love, justice, and emotion, Sirvent reveals a fundamental incompatibility between divine impassibility and the Imitation of God ethic (imitatio Dei). Sirvent shows that a God who is not emotionally vulnerable is a God unworthy of our imitation. But in what sense can we call divine impassibility immoral? To be sure, God's moral nature teaches humans what it means to live virtuously. But can human understandings of morality teach us something about God's moral character? If true, how should we go about judging God's moral character? Isn't it presumptuous to do so? After all, if we are going to challenge divine impassibility on moral grounds, what reason do we have to assume that God is bound to our standards of morality? Embracing Vulnerability: Human and Divine addresses these questions and many others. In the process, Sirvent argues for the importance of thinking morally about theology, inviting scholars in the fields of philosophical theology and Christian ethics to place their theological commitments under close moral scrutiny, and to consider how these commitments reflect and shape our understanding of the good life. ""Roberto Sirvent argues powerfully that the call to imitate God in our actions is incompatible with the idea of divine impassibility found in much Christian philosophy. By exploring the biblical roots of imitatio Dei he demonstrates that it implies a God who can suffer with his creation, as a number of modern theologians have argued. An impassible God is not worth imitating! An important contribution to an ongoing debate, unusual in combining both doctrinal and biblical expertise in a creative way."" --John Barton, Oriel and Laing Professor of the Interpretation of the Holy Scripture, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK ""A new and powerful argument for the passibility of God, as well as an incisive analysis of the concepts of divine love and compassion. A book of spiritual force and intellectual acuteness."" --Keith Ward, Regius Professor of Divinity emeritus, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK ""Admirably clear and accessible, Roberto Sirvent's Embracing Vulnerability elegantly marshals an impressive array of resources to demonstrate the dissonance between the doctrine of divine impassibility and the common Judeo-Christian conviction that human beings ought to imitate God. Ambitious in scope yet appropriately circumspect in its claims, the volume deftly delineates the ethical implications for Christians of their conception of God, and thereby calls Christians to think morally about their theology. An insightful and important argument."" --Frederick Simmons, Assistant Professor of Ethics, Yale Divinity School, New Haven, CT Roberto Sirvent is Associate Professor of Political and Social Ethics at Hope International University in Fullerton, California.