According to a certain strand in the orthodox Christian tradition, God's impassibility is an implication of the divine immutability. For if God cannot change then he cannot ‘experience’ pain or sorrow. This fundamental principle was appropriated from Plato, who maintained that a being who is perfect can experience neither sadness, pain, nor sorrow. Some modern Christian philosophers and theologians, however, concede that this is perhaps the most questionable aspect of certain forms of orthodox Christian theism.

The following ‘facts’ are alleged to imply the impassibility of deity:

(1) God, it is said, has no direct experience of sorrow and pain. Whatever experience he has of them is the result of his ‘imaginative response’ to the sufferings of his creatures. Nothing in God can cause him to feel pain, for the following reasons. God cannot feel physical pain because he is incorporeal; he cannot experience fear because he is omnipotent; he cannot know the pain of loneliness because he is wholly self-sufficient; and he cannot experience the pain of guilt because he is morally perfect. Neither can he know any mental pain, if he lives up to Nelson Pike's description of an atemporal being: