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Divine Passibility in Light of Two Pictures of Intercession

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 April 2013

Timothy Wiarda
Timothy Wiarda*
Affiliation:
Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, Mill Valley, CA 94941-3197, USAtimothywiarda@ggbts.edu
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Abstract

The New Testament's two pictures of divine intercession, that of the risen Christ interceding at the right hand of God (Rom 8:34; Heb 7:25) and that of the Holy Spirit interceding from within believers’ hearts (Rom 8:26–7), offer additional perspective on the difficult issue of how God comes in touch with human suffering. Romans 8:26–7 connects the Spirit's intercession with the experience of human suffering, and through its reference to groaning implies that the Spirit communicates something of the believer's felt experience of weakness to God. Hebrews links Christ's high priestly work, including his intercessory activity, with his experience of struggle, thereby implying that he brings the needs of weak and pressured believers to God with an empathy born of direct experience of suffering. These scriptural pictures open a fruitful path for theological reflection, suggesting that God comes to know human suffering not simply by unmediated divine knowledge, or even by the bare fact of the divine Son's incarnation, but also in a mediated fashion, through complementary actions of Christ and the Spirit best described as acts of intercession.

Applying a model of thought which emphasises the intercessory activities of Christ and the Spirit to the problem of divine passibility has a number of advantages. First, it coheres well with New Testament patterns for describing the roles of Father, Son and Holy Spirit: Christ's intercession is rooted in his incarnation and distinctive redemptive mission, while the Spirit's intercession emerges from his redemptive indwelling. Second, its picture of God knowing human suffering through the mediated process of intercession suggests that God maintains his freedom and holiness even as he gets in touch with human suffering. Third, the intercession model may shed additional light on how the sufferings of the incarnate Son touch or otherwise relate to the Father. Fourth, the Bible's pictures of divine intercession suggest that God is brought in touch with two dimensions of human suffering: the objective reality of human affliction (mediated through Christ's intercession) and the subjective experiences of afflicted people (mediated through the Spirit's intercession). Finally, these scriptural pictures of intercession orient our thoughts about the question of passibility in a pastoral direction.

Keywords

Holy SpiritimpassibilityintercessionpassibilitysufferingTrinity

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 66 , Issue 2 , May 2013 , pp. 159 - 173
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 2013

IntroductionFootnote 1

Scripture presents us with two pictures of divine intercession, that of the risen Christ interceding for believers from his position at God's right handFootnote 2 and that of the Holy Spirit who intercedes with groans from his place within believers’ hearts.Footnote 3 I want to explore what these intriguing pictures may contribute to our understanding of how God comes in touch with human suffering. It is well known that logical tensions exist between the idea that God is affected by human pain and the traditional concepts of divine transcendence and perfection. Christian theologians seek to resolve these tensions in various ways. Can a model of thought emphasising the intercessory activities of Christ and the Spirit complement (or perhaps in some cases stand as an alternative to) other ways of resolving these tensions?

The basic elements of such a model can be outlined briefly. It begins with the observation that both the picture of Christ's intercession found in the epistle to the Hebrews and that of the Spirit's intercession in Romans link the activity of interceding to the experience of human suffering. According to Hebrews, an ongoing ministry of intercession is part of Christ's work as our high priest, and one of the factors which enables Christ to serve in this capacity is his prior experience of human suffering. The model I wish to explore grows from the thought that, if Christ's suffering is a precondition to his intercessory activity, then perhaps this activity includes bringing something of that painful experience to God. The New Testament's single reference to the Holy Spirit's intercession also connects suffering with the act of interceding. The Spirit is said to intercede ‘with groans’. This suggests, first, that the indwelling Spirit comes in touch with the felt experience of suffering believers and, second, that the Spirit's God-ward communication carries something of that experience to God. If it is correct to understand the intercessory activities of Christ and the Spirit along these lines, and if the two resulting pictures are then viewed together, they suggest that God comes to know human suffering not simply by unmediated divine knowledge, or even by the bare fact of the divine Son's incarnation, but also in a mediated fashion, through complementary actions of Christ and the Spirit which are best described as acts of intercession.

I have used words like ‘perhaps’ and ‘suggests’. The exegetical strengths and weaknesses of the composite picture outlined above do need to be carefully assessed if it is to serve as a starting point for further theological reflection. To what extent do the relevant texts in Hebrews and Romans support or encourage the thought that the intercessory acts of Christ and the Spirit communicate elements of human suffering to God, and this in a way which goes beyond the simple imparting of information?

Exegetical starting points

The intercession of the Spirit in Romans 8:26–7

I have examined Paul's depiction of the Spirit's intercession at some length in another article. I will only summarise my findings here.Footnote 4 While Paul's primary aim in Romans 8:26–7 is simply to encourage believers by assuring them that the Spirit communicates with God on their behalf and that God receives everything the Spirit communicates, a significant supplementary aspect of his teaching is that the believers’ felt experience of weakness and suffering forms part of what the interceding Spirit brings to God. This becomes evident as we consider five features of this text and its context.

First, Paul portrays the Spirit's intercession as an activity which helps Christians, especially in their felt experience of weakness. The ‘weakness’ which occasions the Spirit's intercession includes – perhaps even consists largely of – the believers’ groan-accompanied feelings of suffering which Paul has described in the immediately preceding paragraphs (8:18–25).

Second, Paul presents the Spirit's intercession primarily as something that takes place between the Spirit and God. ‘Intercession’ is communication that one party (in this case the Spirit) undertakes on behalf of another (the believers).Footnote 5 That Paul uses this particular term indicates that he is doing more than simply describing the believers’ own Spirit-inspired prayer life; his emphasis lies instead on the Spirit's praying. Paul is thus, first and foremost, telling his readers something about God.Footnote 6

Third, Paul implies that the Spirit's activity includes bringing something of the believers’ felt experience of weakness to God. He pictures the Spirit interceding ‘with groans’.Footnote 7 Groaning is an emotive kind of communication; rather than simply conveying a message, it typically expresses painful feelings. Paul's choice of language here thus suggests, first, that what the Spirit communicates is not limited to mere conceptual content and, second, that it includes an element of felt suffering.

Fourth, though he does not directly refer to it in this passage, the concept of the Spirit indwelling believers may be seen to lie in the background of Paul's teaching about the Spirit's intercession. Paul regularly depicts the Spirit as being in direct touch with the inner person, and therefore the inner experience, of believers.Footnote 8 This would explain how the believers’ own inward groanings, described just a few verses earlier, can become the basis for the Spirit's groaning in intercession.Footnote 9

Fifth, Paul depicts the Spirit's intercession as part of the process through which God searches the hearts of believers. He describes God as one who searches hearts, he indicates that it is God's desire that the Spirit should intercede for believers, and he affirms that God knows the Spirit's mind. In this context, ‘the Spirit's mind’ must refer to that which the Spirit seeks to communicate. All this implies that the Spirit's intercession enables God to know believers, and especially their experience of weakness, in a deeper way, or perhaps a different way, than he would apart from this intercession.

In summary, a number of elements in Romans 8:26–7 and its context support the thought that Paul pictures the Spirit as a bridge or mediating channel between the heart experience of suffering believers and God.

Suffering, sympathy, and intercession in Hebrews

Hebrews mentions Christ's intercession just once, in 7:25.Footnote 10 It presents this activity as an aspect of Christ's high priestly role, however, and this latter topic is treated at length in several passages throughout the epistle. Our task is to determine whether what Hebrews says about Christ's intercession and priestly ministry supports the idea that this includes bringing elements of human suffering to God. To form an opinion about this we must answer two preliminary questions. First, does the epistle picture Christ's intercession functioning in a broad way which involves bringing believers help in all kinds of situations in which they are pressured and needy, or does it instead depict a more narrowly focused activity which deals primarily with their need for forgiveness and acceptance by God?

If Hebrews presents Christ's intercession as narrowly focused on the problem of human sin, it becomes harder to suppose that the epistle also connects it to the problem of human suffering. This would in turn make it difficult to suppose that the intercessory activity described in Hebrews 7:25 includes communicating or conveying such suffering to God. But if Hebrews depicts an intercession which functions more broadly, we can easily see this as an activity directed in part towards the problems of human weakness, struggle and suffering. This by itself would not prove that Christ's intercession includes the actual communication of suffering to God, of course, but it would be a step towards reaching such a conclusion.

Hebrews 7:25 simply says Jesus is able to save those who come to God through him because he always lives to intercede for them. The exact focus of his intercessory activity is left open. Nevertheless, since Jesus’ intercession forms part of his priestly ministry, we can gain clues about it from the epistle's overall teaching about Jesus’ role as high priest. When we survey the epistle's larger picture we find reason to affirm that, in addition to dealing with issues relating to sin and access to God, Jesus’ priestly service also includes meeting a wider range of human need. Certainly Hebrews does place a heavy emphasis on Christ's work of securing forgiveness and making people holy and acceptable to God. We should especially note 7:26–7 in this regard, since these verses immediately follow the reference to Jesus’ intercession. They mention his sacrifice for sins and list high priestly qualities (‘holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, and exalted over the heavens’) which seem especially relevant for a ministry of making people acceptable to God.Footnote 11 Nevertheless, Hebrews also includes several references to a wider role for Jesus as high priest. This includes helping those who are tempted (2:18), sympathising with weaknesses and supplying help in times of need (4:15–16), dealing gently with the ignorant and straying (5:2),Footnote 12 and generally displaying mercy (2:17; 4:16).Footnote 13 The description of the beneficiaries of Jesus’ intercession as ‘those who approach God through him’ (7:25) may lend additional support to the thought that his intercessory activity takes up a variety of human needs; it seems to picture believers bringing their needs and requests to Jesus, who then brings these requests before God on their behalf.Footnote 14 There is thus good reason to suppose that one aspect of Jesus’ intercession is to bring all kinds of needs before God – a conclusion with which a good number of commentators concur.Footnote 15

The second preliminary question is whether Hebrews shows Christ's intercession to be rooted in his own experience of human suffering, in the sense that these sufferings impact and enable it. Once again, we have to look at what is said about Jesus’ priestly ministry as a whole in order to determine what is true of his intercession. When we do this we discover that human experience, and especially the experience of suffering, is indeed depicted as a major factor qualifying Jesus to serve as our high priest. He had to be ‘made like his brothers in all things’ (2:17). This included suffering, temptation and death (2:10–18; 4:15) – and even an experience which might be described as groaning. Though Hebrews does not use the same vocabulary Paul employs when he depicts the interrelated groanings of creation, believers, and the interceding Spirit in Romans, it does portray Jesus praying ‘with strong cries and tears’ (5:7).Footnote 16

Jesus had to enter the realm of human experience in the first place simply in order to die as a sacrifice for sins; this purpose receives particular emphasis in 2:14–17. But Hebrews also connects Jesus’ experience of suffering and temptation to his ongoing priestly ministry: his suffering enables him to help those who are being tempted (2:18) and to sympathise with their weaknesses (4:15). It was through suffering that Jesus ‘learned obedience’, was ‘made perfect’, and so came to be designated high priest (2:10; 5:7–10).Footnote 17

The overall picture of Jesus’ priestly ministry in Hebrews thus allows us to affirm that his intercession does include bringing the needs of weak and pressured believers to God, and that this ministry is enabled by Jesus’ own experience of human suffering. But does the epistle allow us to say that Jesus does more than just offer sympathetic appeals on our behalf? Can we take the additional step of affirming that he also communicates or conveys to God something of the actual human suffering he himself tasted through having become like us? Nothing in Hebrews would speak against this additional thought – though it must be acknowledged that Hebrews does not directly express this idea.

The suggestion that Jesus’ intercession includes communicating human suffering to God thus depends on a step of theological construction which moves beyond exegesis or biblical theology strictly conceived. Nevertheless, this suggestion is both sparked by and coherent with New Testament teaching. Two things within the New Testament at least prepare our minds for such a thought. One is the connection Hebrews itself makes between Jesus’ historical experience of suffering and his ongoing high priestly ministry. The other is Paul's picture of the Holy Spirit interceding with groans, which suggests a link between divine intercession and the communication of human suffering. Is it legitimate to let Paul's portrayal of the Spirit's intercession in Romans inform our understanding of Jesus’ intercession in Hebrews? The idea should not be quickly dismissed. New Testament teaching as a whole invites us to consider parallels between the works of the Spirit and the works of Christ. In John 14:16–18, for example, the Holy Spirit is described as ‘another Paraclete’ whose role in some ways corresponds to that of Christ. In Galatians 4:4–6 a statement about God sending the Spirit into human hearts parallels a statement about God sending his Son into the world.Footnote 18 If New Testament writings explicitly call attention to correspondences between the works of Christ and the Spirit in various other areas, we might well surmise that there is also a correspondence between Jesus’ intercessory activity and that of the Spirit with respect to this element of communicating suffering. This suggestion demands careful consideration, particularly if we are concerned to pursue the kind of theological exegesis which views Romans, Hebrews, and other New Testament writings as part of a unified canon of scripture.Footnote 19

Intercession and the question of divine passibility

Not every element of the model outlined at the beginning of this article can claim the status of explicit scriptural teaching. Nevertheless, the New Testament pictures of Christ and the Spirit interceding establish a trajectory which suggests a suitable path for further theological reflection. That the Spirit conveys at least some elements of the believer's experience of suffering to God is a defensible interpretation of Paul's words in Romans 8. And, according to Hebrews, the incarnate risen Christ brings the needs of believers to God with an empathy born of direct experience of human suffering. Scripture takes us this far. If as theologians we wish to probe still further into the complex issues surrounding God's passibility, why not do so along these existing lines?

What happens if we add these pictures of divine intercession to the mix of exegetical, theological and philosophical factors which must be taken into account when the question of divine possibility is discussed? Let us consider some of the theological characteristics and implications of this intercession model.

This model coheres well with New Testament patterns for describing the roles of Father, Son and Holy Spirit

The intercessions of Christ and the Spirit find their places within the richly trinitarian structure of redemption depicted in the New Testament. The New Testament portrays God redeeming humanity through mediatory works of the Son and the Spirit, works which are complementary yet distinct.Footnote 20 God sent his Son into the world, born of a woman, born under law; if Christ's intercession includes the communication of human suffering to God, this can be seen as appropriately rooted in the Son's incarnation and forming part of his distinctive redemptive mission. God sends the Spirit into the hearts of believers; the Spirit's groaning intercession emerges from and forms part of this redemptive indwelling.

One common approach to divine passibility is to affirm that God is touched by human suffering simply because capacity to suffer is part of his nature. Whether this affirmation is based on biblical texts portraying God's wide-ranging emotional involvement with his people,Footnote 21 or on the philosophical-theological contention that a God who enters into personal relationships with people must be genuinely affected by human responses and situations,Footnote 22 the triune nature of God forms no necessary part of the argument. Another approach is specifically Christocentric, emphasising that suffering enters God's experience through the sufferings of the incarnate Son.Footnote 23 Yet another influential approach highlights not only the pain of the Son, but also that of God the Father which comes through the act of abandoning his Son to suffer for the sake of humanity.Footnote 24 Although each of these perspectives has its strengths, a model emphasising the intercession of Christ and the Spirit can claim to be more fully trinitarian.Footnote 25 First, it includes the Holy Spirit in the process through which God comes to know human suffering and second, it pictures Father, Son and Spirit in roles specifically highlighted in scripture, emphasising both the Son's incarnation and the Spirit's indwelling.

With its picture of God knowing human suffering through a process of mediation, the intercession model suggests that God maintains his freedom and holiness even as he gets in touch with human suffering

A major challenge for any theology which affirms divine passibility is that the thought of God being touched by suffering seems to compromise his transcendent holiness and perfection.Footnote 26 Traditional orthodoxy has therefore by and large rejected the concept of divine passibility, insisting that God does not suffer or otherwise undergo emotional changes of state.Footnote 27 We thus seem to be presented with two unattractive options: a holy, unchanging God who remains untouched by human grief and a less than perfect God who knows our sufferings.

Might a model whose central picture is intercession help us face this challenge? On the one hand, scripture points to God's full reception of all that Christ and the Spirit bring to him in intercession. The author of Hebrews does this by stressing the position from which Christ intercedes, the very right hand of God,Footnote 28 while Paul implies similar full reception through his emphasis on God knowing the mind of the Spirit.Footnote 29 On the other hand, what God receives comes to him through a mediator. Intercession implies both a distance between human sufferers and God which must be overcome and a mediating party who bridges the gap, so that what comes to God comes to him indirectly. The whole concept of one person of the Godhead interceding with another takes us into a realm we cannot fully understand, of course. Nevertheless, this scriptural picture highlights both God's distance from and connection with human suffering.Footnote 30 It suggests that God knows human suffering even while remaining apart from it.

Such a picture does not solve the apparent logical dilemma of how a holy and perfect God can be in touch with human suffering. But it does encourage us to affirm two things at the same time: God is indeed holy, and he knows our struggles in a way which goes beyond mere conceptual understanding.

The intercession model offers additional perspective on a specific question in incarnational and trinitarian theology, how the sufferings of the incarnate Son touch or otherwise relate to the Father

The issue of how Christ's sufferings relate to his two natures and personal unity as the divine Logos has received a good deal of attention within the Christian theological tradition.Footnote 31 The related question of how the Son's suffering is to be related to God the Father has also been discussed, but with results which are less clear. On the one hand there has been a general rejection of patripassianism.Footnote 32 On the other, the concept of perichoresis seems widely accepted, together with the principle that opera trinitas ad extra indivisa sunt. Between what theologians commonly affirm and commonly deny, however, lies some conceptual territory which remains vague. Perhaps this is as it should be, given the limits of both human understanding and scriptural testimony with respect to the Trinity. Nevertheless, the scripture-given pictures of divine intercession may offer additional brief glimpses into this little known area. First, the image of the Son and the Spirit praying to the Father may offer a more concrete way of envisaging at least one aspect of what the rather abstract concept of perichoresis involves. Second, to the extent that these pictures of intercession do shed partial light on the coinherence of the divine Persons, they present this as a matter of personal action which involves both intentional giving and intentional receiving. Third, these pictures support the thought that elements of personal distinction are not erased in the sharing which characterises perichoresis; the picture of Christ interceding, for example, implies that the Son's experience of suffering remains distinctly his own even as he communicates it to the Father.

The Bible's pictures of divine intercession suggest that God is brought into touch with two dimensions of human suffering: the objective reality of human affliction (mediated through Christ's intercession) and the subjective experiences of afflicted people (mediated through the Spirit's intercession)

Reflection on New Testament patterns for the roles of Christ and the Spirit leads to an observation about the precise nature of their respective intercessory activities. The model we are considering does not depict two completely identical acts of intercession growing out of identical ways of coming into contact with human suffering. Christ experienced suffering through living out one particular human life. His sufferings were thus like ours in every way, yet entirely his own, the result of his particular historical experiences. The situation differs with respect to the indwelling Spirit. The Spirit does not live out a suffering-laden human life of the Spirit's own, but instead comes in touch with the actual subjective feelings of suffering believers of all times and places. Christ knows the full experience of suffering exactly like mine; the Spirit knows something of my own personal suffering. In the case of Christ we might say the emphasis falls on the objective reality of his connection with human suffering; in the case of the Spirit, on the intimacy of this connection.Footnote 33

The intercession model orientates our thoughts about divine passibility/impassibility in a pastoral direction

Apologetic and theoretically orientated interests drive much of the modern discussion of divine passibility. Theologians feel they must respond to the charge that God is indifferent to the sufferings of his creation, or that they must describe God in a way which makes it possible to understand how he can love and enter into genuine personal relationships.Footnote 34 The intercession model may make a contribution with respect to these concerns as well, but it finds its primary inspiration in New Testament passages which are more pastorally directed. As far as we know, neither Paul nor the author of Hebrews was particularly concerned to defend God with respect to the fact of human sufferingFootnote 35 or to show that God's capacity to suffer establishes the conditions which make it possible for him to love. Instead, these writers aimed to encourage and comfort struggling believers. If Paul pictures groaning to form part of the Spirit's intercession, and if the author of Hebrews shows Christ to have been prepared for priestly ministry by the experience of suffering, it is to add force to their message of encouragement: God cares for believers and understands their struggles. The author of Hebrews in particular is explicit in calling his readers’ attention to the connection between the reality of Christ's experience of suffering and the quality of his sympathetic care for them (Heb 2.17–18; 4.15–16). An approach to divine passibility developed from such passages should be particularly well suited to contributing to pastorally motivated theology today.

The intercession model obliges us to deal theologically with the question of how the Spirit comes in touch with human suffering

It is easy to see how the incarnate Christ experienced human suffering. But the model we are examining also pictures the non-incarnate Holy Spirit coming in touch with human suffering in some special way, such that the Spirit can then communicate something of this suffering to God the Father.Footnote 36 This leads to a question: how does the Spirit come to know human groaning? This must result from something more than simple divine capacity; otherwise, the Father would possess exactly the same knowledge as the Spirit by nature, and there would be no need for a distinctive ministry of the Spirit which brings the groans of believers to God.Footnote 37

In our discussion of Romans 8:26–7 it was argued that Paul's concept of the Spirit's indwelling undergirds his teaching about the Spirit's intercession.Footnote 38 If that is correct as a matter of exegesis, it pushes us to give more thought to the nature and theological implications of the Spirit's indwelling. This is a challenging task. I will just suggest a few avenues for exploration. First, Paul's writings contain hints that the Spirit does not come in contact with human experience simply because it is human, but because it pertains to Christ. The Spirit indwells believers because they are in Christ and form the body of Christ, and because the Spirit indwelt Jesus first.Footnote 39 Just before describing the groanings of believers and the Spirit, for example, Paul speaks of Christ's sufferings and of believers’ suffering with him (Romans 8:17). Second, the motif of the Spirit indwelling believers is part of a larger biblical theme relating to God's dwelling among his people. This includes the Old Testament's descriptions of tabernacle and temple, John's picture of the Word-become-flesh dwelling among people, and Revelation's depiction of the New Jerusalem where no temple is needed.Footnote 40 Seen from this larger perspective, the Spirit's indwelling represents a dramatic new stage in a trajectory of increasingly close connections between God and his people.Footnote 41 Furthermore, it both follows and depends upon the coming of Christ. If the Spirit's indwelling results in a special level of communion between God and humanity, therefore, this should not be seen as a simple function of the Spirit's divine nature but as a reality closely connected to the work of the incarnate Son.Footnote 42 Third, it is probably necessary to acknowledge an element of mystery about the Spirit's indwelling on any account of this doctrine. If the concept of indwelling has often been viewed as a relatively straightforward matter, this may only mean it has not received as much attention as it deserves.

References

1 An earlier form of this material was presented to the Christian Theological Research Fellowship at the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting, New Orleans, November 2009.

2 Rom 8:34; Heb 7:25. The Romans passage pictures a forensically directed activity in which Christ defends believers from accusation, while Hebrews, as we shall see, suggests a priestly activity covering a broader range of needs and situations. But both passages contain the same basic elements: an activity of intercession, Christ as the intercessor, and the right hand of God as the place from which he intercedes.

3 Rom 8:26–7.

4 ‘What God Knows When the Spirit Intercedes’, Bulletin for Biblical Research 7/2 (2007), pp. 297–311. This study interacts with scholarly literature on Rom 8:26–7 and presents a detailed exegetical defence of the view that the interceding Spirit brings elements of the felt experience of suffering believers to God.

5 ῾Yπɛρɛντυγχάνω (8.26); ἐντυγχάνω ὑπἐρ (8:27). In v. 26 Paul uses an intensifying pronoun (αὐτò τò πνɛμα ὑπɛρɛντυγχάνɛι), further highlighting this intercession as the Spirit's own activity. See Wiarda, ‘What God Knows’, p. 301.

6 A number of commentators understand the intercessory activity described in this passage to include the believers’ own address to God as well as that of the Spirit. Even if this is correct (which I think unlikely) it is important to see that Paul's primary emphasis lies on what the Spirit communicates to God. See Wiarda, ‘What God Knows’, p. 304.

7 Στɛναγμος. In 8:22–3 Paul uses the related verbs στɛνάζ ω and συστɛνάζ ω to describe the groaning of the creation and the believers.

8 E.g. Rom 5:5; 8:9–11, 15–16; 2 Cor 1:22; Gal 4:6. 1 Cor 2:10–11 provides an especially important illustration of a way of thinking conducive to the idea of the Spirit's being in touch with what lies within the hearts of believers. See Wiarda, ‘What God Knows’, p. 307.

9 An alternative explanation for the Spirit's groaning might look to the Spirit's connection to Jesus and his suffering; in this regard we might note the reference to Christ's suffering in 8:17. But the reference to the believers’ suffering in 8:18–25, including specific mention of their groaning, favours seeing their experience of suffering as the key factor leading the Spirit to groan.

10 Though 9:14, which speaks of Christ appearing before God on our behalf, might also be seen as a picture of intercession.

11 Other passages emphasising Christ's priestly role of dealing with human sins and making people holy and acceptable to God include 2:11, 14–15, 17; 6:19–20; 9:7, 11–14; and 10:19–20. The Hebrew text of Isa 53:12 also speaks of intercession specifically on behalf of transgressors; this may lie in the background of Heb 7:25, although the reference to intercession does not appear in the LXX.

12 This last text describes the role of human high priests, but the context shows this to be part of Jesus’ high priestly ministry as well.

13 The use of the word ‘intercede’ (ἐντυγχάνω) in ancient Jewish and Christian literature also provides clues to its sense in Heb 7:25. Craig Koester is able to cite a number of texts in which it is used to describe a plea for forgiveness, but also a number in which it describes a plea for assistance (Hebrews: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New York: Doubleday, 2001), p. 366). He also observes that a few passages in Hebrews mention suffering due to persecution as if such suffering were a genuine threat to the epistle's original audience (p. 361). Harold Attridge cites 2 Macc 15:12 as a text picturing prayer on behalf of God's people as a function of priests (Hebrews (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1989), p. 211). Though not using the same verb as Heb 7:25, this passage describes a dream in which Judas Maccabaeus sees the former high priest Onias praying (κατεύχομαι) for the Jewish community as they are threatened by enemies.

14 ‘For a person to approach God “through” Jesus means that he or she lodges a request with Jesus, trusting that he will bring it before God for a favorable response’ (Koester, Hebrews, p. 365).

15 E.g. Attridge, Hebrews; Bruce, F. F., The Epistle to the Hebrews, rev. edn (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988)Google Scholar; Koester, Hebrews. Ellingworth, P. seems cautiously to affirm this view The Epistle to the Hebrews (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), p. 392Google Scholar. Looking to the wider New Testament, Jesus’ prayers for Peter in Luke 22:33–4 and for his disciples in John 17 would supply examples of this pattern of wide-ranging intercession during the period of Jesus’ earthly mission. John 14:16 speaks of Jesus praying for his disciples in the future (which seems to mean after his resurrection and exaltation), asking the Father to send them the Spirit.

16 In light of what we have seen of the Spirit's intercession, this picture of Jesus’ praying with cries and tears is suggestive. The loud cries and tears are conceptually close to groaning even if the vocabulary differs, and they accompany an act of prayer. In this instance Jesus is praying for himself rather than interceding for others, of course. But may not this depiction of Jesus praying for himself inform or in some ways parallel the epistle's portrayal of his prayer for others?

17 Though some commentators see the connection between Jesus’ suffering and his being made perfect in 2:10 and 5:9 as simply a matter of temporal sequence (first he suffered, then he was exalted), others argue that the author is saying that Jesus’ experience of suffering helped make him perfectly suited to carry out his priestly office. Attridge speaks of ‘a vocational process by which he is made complete or fit for office’ (Hebrews, p. 86; see also Bruce, Hebrews, p. 132). This latter interpretation is supported by the comment in 2:10 that Jesus was made perfect ‘through suffering’ (διὰ παθημάτων), which implies more than simple temporal sequence, and by the emphasis in 5:8 on Jesus’ learning from what he suffered.

18 ᾽Eξαπέστɛιλɛν ὁ θɛὸς τὸν υἱον αὐτο (4:4); ἐξαπέστɛιλɛν ὁ θɛὸς τὸ πνɛμα το υἱο αὐτο (4:6).

19 We should also observe that Paul himself refers to Jesus’ intercession in Rom 8:34, just a few verses after his reference to the intercession of the Spirit. Though Rom 8:34 seems to picture a more judicially orientated activity, the fact that Paul uses the same verb to describe the Spirit's intercession and Christ's implies that he saw parallels between the two activities.

20 Though the redemptive works of the Son and the Spirit are complementary, they are not equally balanced. The Spirit's work in believers depends on the Son's prior and foundational work for believers (e.g. Gal 4:4–6; Eph 1:3–14). And though distinct, these works are not separable. We could as easily speak of a single, multifaceted redemptive work.

21 Heschel, Abraham, The Prophets (New York: Harper & Row, 1962)Google Scholar has been influential here; see the discussion in Bauckham, Richard, ‘“Only the Suffering God Can Help”: Divine Possibility in Modern Theology’, Themelios 9 (1984), pp. 9–10.Google Scholar A recent article by Schlimm, Matthew, ‘Different Perspectives on Divine Pathos: An Examination of Hermeneutics in Biblical Theology’, CBQ 69 (2007), pp. 673–94Google Scholar, offers a helpful comparison of Heschel's approach to the language of divine affectivity in the Hebrew prophets with that of two more recent Old Testament theologians, Fretheim, Terence, The Suffering God: An Old Testament Perspective (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984)Google Scholar, and Brueggemann, Walter, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997).Google Scholar Paul Gavrilyuk cites a line of patristic theologians who understood biblical references to God's feelings as pointing to actual emotion in God, although in a qualified sense differing from human emotional reactions: The Suffering of the Impassible God: The Dialectics of Patristic Thought (Oxford: OUP, 2004), pp. 58–63.

22 See e.g. Fiddes, Paul, The Creative Suffering of God (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988), pp. 16–19.Google Scholar

23 See Fiddes, Creative Suffering, pp. 25–31. Mozley, J. K. cites nineteenth- and early twentieth-century theologians who link the atonement with divine passibility: The Impassibility of God: A Survey of Christian Thought (Cambridge: CUP, 1926), pp. 142–66Google Scholar.

24 Noted exponents of this theme include Moltmann, Jürgen, The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology (New York: Harper & Row, 1974)Google Scholar and Kitamori, Kazoh, Theology of the Pain of God, 5th edn (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2005), p. 47Google Scholar. Kitamori also speaks of a divine suffering which arises out of the tension between God's love and his wrath: Theology, p. 21.

25 God's passibility has sometimes been related to the doctrine of the Trinity in other ways. E.g. some have proposed that God is impassible with respect to his essence (the ‘immanent Trinity’) but passible with respect to his activities in the created world (the ‘economic Trinity’). See Fiddes, Creative Suffering, pp. 112ff. Moltmann connects the Spirit with what happens between the Father and the Son on the cross, and thus describes his approach as trinitarian, but what he says about the Spirit's role in this regard seems conceptually thin and not closely related to scriptural testimony. He says, ‘What proceeds from this event between Father and Son is the Spirit’ (Crucified God, p. 244); and ‘whatever proceeds from the event between the Father and the Son must be understood as the spirit of surrender of the Father and the Son, as the spirit which creates love for forsaken men’ (p. 245). Somewhat clearer is the statement based on Heb 9:14 in The Trinity and the Kingdom (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981): ‘The surrender through the Father and the offering of the Son take place “through the Spirit”. The Holy Spirit is therefore the link in the separation’ (p. 82).

26 The concept of divine passibility also raises logical challenges with respect to God's attributes of omniscience and omnipresence. See Simoni, Henry, ‘Divine Passibility and the Problem of Radical Particularity: Does God Feel Your Pain?’, Religious Studies 33 (1997), pp. 327–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 For a strong recent statement of the traditional view, see Weinandy, Thomas, ‘Does God Suffer?’ First Things 117 (2001), pp. 35–41Google Scholar. He argues that biblical language which appears to speak of God's grief or changing emotions must be understood as a way of depicting the changes which occur in the way people respond to God; God himself remains unchanging and impassible in his passionate love and perfect goodness. See also his comment on 1 Sam 15:11, 35: ‘Thus the statement that God does not change his mind is an expression of God's total otherness, and the statement that God does change his mind expresses this unchangeable mind of God under circumstances which, under ordinary human conditions (if God were a man), would demand that a change of mind take place, but in actual fact need not, because God, as the Wholly Other, is constant in his love, forgiveness, righteousness and justice’: Does God Suffer? (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2000), p. 61. See as well Castelo, Daniel, ‘Moltmann's Dismissal of Divine Impassibility: Warranted?’, Scottish Journal of Theology 61 (2008), pp. 396–407CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Hart, David Bentley, ‘No Shadow of Turning: On Divine Impassibility’, Pro Ecclesia 11 (2002), pp. 184–206.Google Scholar

28 Heb 1:1–13; 7:26; 8:1; 10:12; 12:2. The writer also stresses Jesus’ entry into the holy place of the heavenly tabernacle (6:19–20; 8:2; 9:11–12, 24).

29 Rom 8:27; cf. 1 Cor 2:10–11.

30 The Old Testament tabernacle offers a somewhat similar symbol of God's holy separateness combined with his presence. The tabernacle is located in the very centre of the camp of Israel, yet is a restricted area with a holy place no one can enter.

31 See e.g. Gavrilyuk, Suffering; O'Keefe, John, ‘Kenosis or Impassibility: Cyril of Alexandria and Theodoret of Cyrus on the Problem of Divine Pathos’, in Livingstone, Elizabeth (ed.), Studia Patristica 32 (Leuven: Peeters, 1997), pp. 358–65.Google Scholar

32 Marcel Sarot defines ‘patrapassianism’ (as opposed to ‘theopaschitism’) as a term used for ‘those theological positions which fail to distinguish between God the Father and God the Son and therefore hold that in the sufferings of Jesus God simpliciter, and not God the Son, was involved’: ‘Patripassianism, Theopaschitism and the Suffering of God: Some Historical and Systematic Considerations’, Religious Studies 26 (1990), p. 372.

33 Theologians have sometimes raised a question about the universality of God's connection with human suffering: is God affected by every instance of human pain or is his knowledge of suffering limited to that experienced by Christ on the cross? (See e.g. Fiddes, Creative Suffering, pp. 3–11.) A distinctive intercessory activity on the part of the Spirit which grows out of the Spirit's indwelling of many believers in many times and places would seem to point in the direction of universality. On the other hand, however, the New Testament portrays the Spirit's indwelling and resulting intercession as realities which pertain exclusively to believers.

34 For discussion of both of these motivations, see Fiddes, Creative Suffering, pp. 16–25, 31–7, and Creel, Richard, Divine Impassibility (Cambridge: CUP, 1986), pp. 113–58.Google Scholar

35 This is not to say theodicy is absent from the New Testament (see e.g. Rom 3:5; 9:14), but that questions relating to God's own experience of suffering do not arise in this connection.

36 That the Father is the specific recipient of the Spirit's praying is shown by Romans 8:15, 31.

37 If knowing human suffering was simply part of God's nature, we would ultimately have to question whether even the incarnation of the Son is necessary in order for God to be in touch with human suffering. See Gavrilyuk's comment in Suffering, pp. 174–5.

38 See the earlier section of this article, p. 162 above. The intercession of the Spirit in Romans 8:26–7’. See the further discussion in Wiarda, ‘What does God Know’, pp. 307–8.

39 Rom 8:9–11, 14–17; 1 Cor 12:12–13; Gal 4:4–6; Mark 1:9–11 and 14:36.

40 Exod 29:43–6; Ps 84; John 1:14; 1 Cor 3:16; 6:15; Eph 2:21–2; Rev 21:3, 22.

41 Already in the Old Testament we find hints that God's special redemptive presence with his people Israel involves a heightened sensitivity to their suffering. Isa 63:7–14, which gives a particularly strong picture of God being moved by his people's suffering (although there is some uncertainty about the proper translation of v. 9), seems to link God's affectivity to the theme of his presence: ‘In all their distress he too was distressed, and the angel of his presence saved them’ (63:9, NIV; see also the reference to the Spirit's presence in v. 11). In 2 Chron 7:16 God speaks of the temple as a place of emotional involvement with his people: ‘My eyes and my heart will always be there’ (NIV).

42 Moltmann, by way of contrast, ties the Spirit's indwelling and co-suffering with believers and creation simply to God's capacity as Creator: ‘God the Creator, who has entered into his creation through his Spirit, himself holds created being in life (Ps. 104:30), and therefore also suffers with its sufferings’: God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Spirit of God (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985), p. 69.