Does God Suffer?

After the Holocaust, many theologians came to believe that God must suffer within his own nature, grieving alongside a wounded world. Thomas Weinandy, a Franciscan friar, thinks they are mistaken. He sets out to defend the older conviction, held by Christians for nearly two thousand years, that God is impassible and does not undergo states such as suffering.

He draws on scripture, the Church Fathers and Aquinas, and takes each modern objection in turn. His answer rests on the Incarnation: the Son of God, living a full human life, truly does suffer as man. The result is a demanding, carefully argued work of systematic theology. It will suit theology students, clergy and serious lay readers who want the classical case made thoroughly, and who are willing to have their assumptions about divine love tested.