Origen and St. Gregory the Wonderworker as representatives of old church passibilism

Despite antagonism between the Christian message and pagan antiquity, certain philosophical ideas penetrated into the theology of the fathers and teachers of the ancient Church, later shaping a certain development of Christian dogmatic consciousness. In particular, the idea of Divine impassibility accepted almost unanimously met resistance in the modern and contemporary times not only among the intellectual philosophical elite of Europe, but also in the church theological consciousness. The impassibility adopted from Stoicism and other philosophical strands of antiquity came into contrast to the Living God of the Scripture. To counter pagan intellectuals, Christian writers of antiquity attempted to justify the too anthropomorphic God of the Bible by using allegorical and pedagogical methods of interpreting texts that speak of Divine pathos. An impassible God could not be caught out in being changeable; he was devoid of any sorrow. God is the bliss not darkened by anything that is determined by his nature. Some church writers and holy fathers did not agree with this philosophical maxim in all points. For example, Origen and his disciple St. Gregory the Wonderworker mention Divine suffering (compassion) not in the context of the later Christological discourse of the two natures, but describing it as the basis and cause of God’s Incarnation. Despite his firm position on Divine impassibility, in one of his homilies, Origen speaks of suffering in the intra-trinitarian interpersonal being. In the spirit of modern personalism, St. Gregory asserts the superiority of God’s will and freedom over any form of natural determinacy. Both of these thinkers can with some reservation be called the forerunners of the modern theology of Divine suffering.