Other Definitions
impassibility (dict)
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ImpassibilityImpassibility (from Latin in-, "not", passibilis, "able to suffer, experience emotion") describes the theological doctrine that God does not experience pain or pleasure from the actions of another being. Some theologies often portray God as a magnified human being subject to many (or all) human emotions and imperfections: for example, in the Hebrew Bible Yahweh is portrayed as experiencing anger, jealousy, and disappointment, and in Greek myths Zeus is portrayed as experiencing lust. Ancient Greek philosophers like Aristotle and Plato challenged these ideas and introduced the concept of God as a perfect, omniscient, timeless, and unchanging being not subject to human emotion (which represents change and imperfection). The concept of impassibility was developed by medieval theologians like Anselm and continues to be in tension with more emotionally satisfying concepts of God.
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