Historical background: how empathy changed the debate

Before the turn of the twentieth century, there arose a particular debate over the doctrine of God. Theologians began to affirm that God suffered in the divine nature itself. The traditional doctrine of impassibility was being called into question on a scale that had not been seen before within Christian theology. In the year 1900, the theologian Marshall Randles was troubled by this affirmation of divine suffering. In his book-length defence of divine impassibility, Randles tried to downplay this new affirmation of divine suffering by describing it as a passing mood that ‘will probably turn out to be one of those temporary reactions which come and go’.Footnote ¹ Given the long track record of divine impassibility, Randles’ prediction would seem like a safe bet. However, Randles’ prediction turned out to be deeply mistaken. Far from a passing mood, the doctrine of divine passibility eventually came to be declared as the new orthodoxy within twentieth-century Christian theology. Randles’ treatise in the year 1900 was one of the last gasps of classical theism before an onslaught of theologians came out rejecting the doctrine of divine impassibility.

What changed? As Jennifer Herdt explains, empathy became a major factor. Up to the twentieth century, empathy became widely recognized as essential for living a morally good life. Twentieth-century theologians began to affirm that a morally perfect God must literally be an empathetic God.Footnote ² This was new because the classical tradition denied that God literally has empathy for His creatures. As patristic and medieval theologians understood, empathy involves being moved to feel a certain way by something else, and an impassible God cannot be moved or influenced by anything outside Himself. Thus, the classical tradition explicitly denies that the impassible God can literally have empathy, compassion, or mercy.Footnote ³ This will be explained in detail in the next section. What is important to note at this point is that divine empathy is a watershed issue that divides passibility and impassibility. The affirmation of divine empathy played a major role in the rise of passibility during the twentieth century.

In 1924, a theologian in Indiana named Francis McConnell defended the notion of divine suffering on biblical and moral grounds. In McConnell's eyes, the doctrine of God needed to be reformulated in light of the incarnation. McConnell proclaims that a Christlike God is a God of suffering empathy.Footnote ⁴ In 1928, a Scottish theologian named Bertrand Brasnett also defended the suffering empathy of God. Brasnett declares that we might be jealous of an impassible God who possesses undisturbed bliss. Yet Brasnett says that this is not a God that anyone can worship. In the eyes of this Scotsman, only a suffering God of empathy can spark the fires of worship.Footnote ⁵

In the midst of this rising tide of divine passibility in the 1920s, the English theologian Arthur W. Pink was deeply alarmed, stating:

The contrast between Pink and theologians like McConnell and Brasnett is striking. The Englishman wishes us to believe that only an impassible God can be worthy of worship, whereas a Scotsman and a Hoosier heed us to follow the suffering God of empathy. Shortly after their works were published, process theism became established and started expanding the scope of God's empathy in dramatic ways. Process theism claimed that God feels everything that creation feels, but with a greater intensity than what any individual creature can feel.Footnote ⁷ Over the next 100 years, Christian theologians overwhelmingly followed the path of divine passibility.Footnote ⁸ The suffering God of empathy played a major role in competing theological systems such as process theism, eco-feminism, liberation theology, and open theism. Divine passibility has even been affirmed among contemporary Calvinists, Arminians, and Molinists. In more recent years, Linda Zagzebski has developed this claim into a distinct divine attribute called omnisubjectivity. Omnisubjectivity is the perfect power or capacity to have total empathy with all creaturely conscious states.Footnote ⁹

Nearly 100 years later, we find ourselves at a new turning point in theology. Various theologians today have begun new defences of divine impassibility.Footnote ¹⁰ This renewed interest in defending classical attributes like impassibility shows no sign of slowing down. With the recent publication of books like Divine Impassibility: Four Views of God's Emotions and Suffering, I think it is safe to say that this is not going to be a passing mood.Footnote ¹¹ This debate over impassibility and passibility is something on which the next generation of theologians will be asked to take a stand.

I ask readers to consider the following questions. Do you want to follow an Englishman, and affirm divine impassibility? Or do you want to follow a Hoosier and a Scotsman, and affirm divine empathy and passibility? As a theologian from Indiana working in Scotland, I shall be defending the empathetic God of divine passibility from a specific problem that has not been fully addressed in the literature. In the next section, I shall define the terms of the debate before turning to the objection.

Defining the debate

On a shallow understanding of the debate between impassibility and passibility, one will often see debates over whether or not God can suffer, and over whether or not God can have emotions. It is true that impassibility says that God cannot suffer, and that passibility affirms that God can suffer. However, it is false that either conception of God lacks emotions. Both sides affirm that God has emotions.Footnote ¹² I will start by defining an emotion, and then define impassibility and passibility.

For the purposes of this article, I shall define an emotion as a felt evaluation of a situation. An emotion is a mental state with two components: cognitive and affective.Footnote ¹³ An emotion has a cognitive component in that an emotion is always about something, or it mentally represents the world as being a certain way. An emotion is affective in that there is something that it is like to have an emotion. Your evaluation of the situation feels a particular way. When you have an emotion like happiness or sadness, you are happy or sad because of something in the world. You are evaluating something in your situation as being a proper object of happiness or sadness, and your evaluation feels a particular way depending on the content of the emotion.Footnote ¹⁴

With this definition of emotion in hand, consider the traditional definition of impassibility. Jacobus Arminius writes that:

There are three essential claims that make up the traditional doctrine of impassibility. The first essential claim is that the impassible God cannot suffer. The ‘cannot’ here is quite strong. It implies that it is broadly logically, or metaphysically, impossible for God to suffer.Footnote ¹⁶ Second, underlying this notion is the assumption that God cannot be moved, or acted upon, by anything ad extra to the divine nature. Again, the ‘cannot’ is quite strong. It implies that it is broadly logically, or metaphysically, impossible for God to be moved, influenced, or acted upon, by anything outside God.Footnote ¹⁷ As Paul Helm explains, it is not merely that God chooses not to be changed, but rather ‘God cannot be changed from without.’Footnote ¹⁸ This is why the contemporary proponent of impassibility, James E. Dolezal, says: ‘Our sins, be they ever so many, have no effect on God.’Footnote ¹⁹ The third essential claim is that God lacks passions. Impassibility quite literally means ‘no passions’. Yet this third claim needs to be nuanced in order to avoid mistakenly claiming that the impassible God lacks emotions. As the impassibilist William Shedd affirms, God has emotions though He lacks passions.Footnote ²⁰

This will strike many contemporary readers as confusing. How can the impassible God lack passion, and yet have emotion? As Anastasia Scrutton explains, part of the confusion is that our modern term ‘emotion’ covers a wide range of affective states, and the classical tradition would have divided some of these affective states into different categories.Footnote ²¹ Some of these affective states that we now call emotions would be considered passions, and thus denied of the impassible God. Other affective states that we now call emotions would be affirmed of the impassible God. Given this, one will need to know how to discern which affective states, or emotions, can be literally predicated of the impassible God.

Elsewhere, I identify three inconsistency criteria that classical theists have historically used to discern which emotions the impassible God can literally have. Impassibility claims that God cannot literally have any emotion that is inconsistent with God's perfect rationality, perfect moral goodness, and perfect happiness.Footnote ²² When trying to discern which emotions God can have, impassibility will use these three criteria to develop an answer. Here is an example. An emotion like sadness will be ruled out because it conflicts with God's perfect happiness.Footnote ²³ Of course, as Brian Davies points out, it is important to remember that the impassible God cannot be moved or influenced by anything external to God.Footnote ²⁴ So God's emotions will be entirely about Himself. The classical tradition is quite clear on this point. God's emotion of happiness is grounded entirely in His own appreciation of His excellent nature.Footnote ²⁵

With this definition of impassibility in hand, we can turn to consider divine passibility. Divine passibility can be thought of as involving three essential claims that parallel impassibility. The first essential claim of passibility is that God can suffer. It is metaphysically possible that God suffers. This is grounded in the second essential claim that it is metaphysically possible for God to be moved, influenced, or acted upon by things external to the divine nature. The third essential claim is that God can have a wide range of emotions. Which emotions? Much like impassibility, passibilists affirm that God cannot literally have any emotion that is inconsistent with God's perfect rationality and perfect moral goodness. Unlike impassibility, passibilists claim that God can have all sorts of emotions that conflict with perfect happiness.Footnote ²⁶

With these definitions of impassibility and passibility before us, I now wish to turn to a key sticking point in the debate – empathy. Can God literally have empathy? As discussed in the previous section, the classical tradition has overwhelmingly denied that God literally has empathy.Footnote ²⁷ Contemporary proponents of the traditional doctrine of impassibility have carried on denying that God can literally have empathy.Footnote ²⁸ As I mentioned before, Brasnett and McConnell defended their versions of divine passibility in part on the basis of empathy being a moral perfection. As I shall discuss shortly, Zagzebski's case against impassibility focuses on divine empathy being a perfection. Hence, divine empathy is a watershed issue that divides passibility and impassibility. In order to understand this sticking point, I will need to define empathy.

What is empathy? Empathy is an epistemic state that one achieves. In particular, empathy is a kind of experiential knowledge of other persons. This epistemic state involves both cognitive and affective features. This epistemic state is distinct from the disposition, power, or capacity that one has to achieve a state of empathy. Empathy is achieved when one is consciously aware of how another person feels, and what it is like for them to feel that way.Footnote ²⁹ To be more precise, I will use someone named Sally and her son Ben to help define empathy.

Condition (i) is typically taken to be the cognitive component of empathy. One can be aware that another person is having an emotion like anger, and yet fail to empathize with that person. Simply being aware that a person is having an emotion is not the same as understanding what it is like for them to have that emotion. For example, psychopaths can be relatively good at consciously grasping that other people are having particular emotions. Yet it is widely held that psychopaths are not great with the affective component of empathy, among other things.Footnote ³⁰

Condition (ii) is the affective component of empathy. It explains that Sally has an understanding of the phenomenology of certain emotions. She understands what it is like to have certain kinds of affects that go along with particular emotions. However, condition (ii) by itself does not give Sally empathy because she can have a grasp of the phenomenology of an emotion without empathizing with anyone. For example, Sally can know what it is like to be sad without being aware of anyone else being sad.

Condition (iii) is what ties the first two conditions together in order to achieve empathy. It explains that Sally understands what it is like for Ben to have his emotion. Notice that condition (iii) says that Sally comes to this understanding ‘on the right basis’. By ‘right basis’ I am referring to the justification Sally has for understanding Ben. I have left this intentionally vague because there are multiple theories of what would justify Sally's empathy. However, most accounts insist that Ben must play a causal or explanatory role in Sally's achieving a state of empathy with Ben. Something about Ben is what explains Sally's empathy. For example, one might think that the justification involves Sally perceiving that Ben is having an emotion like sadness. Since Sally personally knows what it is like to be sad, she is able to make an inference to what it is like for Ben to be sad. Other accounts of justification might deny that Sally makes an inference, but instead say that she achieves empathy in a properly basic way through her emotional evaluation of Ben.

Before moving forward, it is important to nuance this account of empathy in order to avoid common confusions that people often have about the nature of empathy. To start, it must be noted that an empath is consciously aware that she is trying on a copy of the other individual's perspective. Empathy is a way of acquiring an emotion like that of another person. The acquired emotion is not identical to the emotion of the other person, but it is similar enough to help the empath understand what the other person is experiencing.Footnote ³¹

Further, empathy does not entail that the empath's perspective becomes identical to the perspective of the other person. When Sally empathizes with Ben, she comes to know that this is how Ben feels. Sally does not lose her own awareness of herself in the process of empathizing. She will have her own perspective on, and her own evaluative judgments about, the conscious states with which she is empathizing. In fact, the range of responses open to an empath are wide ranging because what one does with that empathetic knowledge depends on various factors, such as the empath's moral character. For example, as Martha Nussbaum points out, one can have empathy for an individual without any sort of compassionate response towards that individual.Footnote ³² This will be discussed further in a later section.

In the case of humans, exercising one's capacity to empathize with another person can involve effort, and can be cognitively taxing if one is not well practised at being empathetic.Footnote ³³ Also, in the case of humans, the accuracy of our empathy is often less than ideal.Footnote ³⁴ However, in the case of an omnisubjective God, Zagzebski suggests that God's empathy will have perfect accuracy, and it will not be cognitively taxing. That is just an entailment from God's perfect total empathy.Footnote ³⁵

Why can't the impassible God have empathy? Zagzebski notes that omnisubjectivity, or perfect empathy, is incompatible with impassibility.Footnote ³⁶ There are at least two reasons why this is the case.

First, condition (iii) of empathy prevents the impassible God from having empathy because it involves the empath being moved or caused by the person with whom she is empathizing. An impassible God is a being who is not moved by anything external.Footnote ³⁷ Proponents of impassibility, such as Davies, maintain that God cannot literally have empathy or compassion precisely because God cannot be moved, caused, or influenced by things that are external to God.Footnote ³⁸ An omnisubjective God, however, is moved to some extent by creation. In order for God to have empathic knowledge of some other person, God's knowledge must be grounded in, and derived from that person. In other words, God's empathic knowledge involves God having an empathic perceptual experience of another person. The passibilist is not merely saying that God understands what it is like to be Sally in some abstract sense that does not involve any emotional engagement with Sally, if such a sense there be. Instead, the passibilist is claiming that God has a deep emotional engagement with Sally, and that there are certain things that God simply cannot know about Sally without actually empathically experiencing her. This is because empathic knowledge, like experiential knowledge in general, is a form of knowledge by acquaintance.Footnote ³⁹ One cannot have such knowledge without being acquainted with the world in some way. Hence, God is moved by the world that He has created.

Second, an impassible God cannot literally have empathy with a creature because empathy involves suffering to some extent, and an impassible God cannot experience anything other than perfect, undisturbed bliss.Footnote ⁴⁰ According to Zagzebski, ‘A person cannot empathize with an emotion or a sensation without feeling the emotion or sensation because a copy of an emotion is an emotion, and a copy of a sensation is a sensation.’Footnote ⁴¹ Any copy of a creature's emotional suffering will be emotional suffering. As Zagzebski puts it, ‘a perfect copy of pain is surely ruled out by impassibility, as is a copy of every other sensation or emotion, whether positive or negative. A perfectly empathic being is affected by what is outside of him.’Footnote ⁴² A perfect copy of a creature's emotional suffering would quite obviously disturb God's perfect bliss. It does not seem coherent to say that an impassible God is experiencing perfect, undisrupted happiness whilst also experiencing a perfect representation of emotional suffering, turmoil, and pain. Hence, an omnisubjective God cannot be an impassible God.

Divine empathy and the problem of creepy emotions

Given that empathy is a watershed issue for the impassibility/passibility debate, I would like to consider an argument against divine empathy. If there is something objectionable about God having empathy, then the passibilist will be in trouble. What I shall consider is one of the more colourful objections in the history of philosophical theology. I shall call it the Problem of Creepy Emotions. Here are two ways in which one might initially state the Problem of Creepy Emotions.

First, an impassibilist might point out that divine passibility gives God some inappropriate emotions. Recall that process theists will say that God shares all of the feelings of all others even more fully than we do.Footnote ⁴³ Without any nuance, this claim could lead to some pretty obvious objections. Richard Creel comically points out how this leads to inappropriate emotions. Creel asks: does that mean that God feels horny?Footnote ⁴⁴ Now, I doubt that Creel will say that there is something morally wrong with feeling horny per se. It really depends upon the context. Yet, there seems to be something creepy about an omnipresent, omniscient, horny God, especially given that the process theist takes the world to be God's body. To be sure, other theists do not affirm that the universe is God's body as the process theist does. Yet one might still think that something has gone wrong here with passibility. It seems like an omnisubjective God will have some inappropriate emotions.

There is a second way in which one might initially state the Problem of Creepy Emotions. The passibilist Keith Ward points out that some emotions are wicked.Footnote ⁴⁵ Some emotions are subject to moral correction. I have in mind emotions like ‘taking pleasure in torture’. Does God have this emotion? I should hope not. The passibilist says that God cannot have emotions that are incompatible with His perfect goodness. But then how can God be omnisubjective if He does not have this wicked emotion?

Before considering this, it is best to explore the objection in more detail, and clarify exactly where the problem is supposed to be for divine passibility. In Creel's version of the objection, he says that God cannot take joy in all that creatures enjoy, or sorrow in all that creatures sorrow in. Here, Creel is responding to a statement from Charles Hartshorne, who says that God takes joy in all our joys, and sorrows in all of our sorrows. Creel explains that such a view is too simple because such a God ‘must rejoice with the sadist while the sadist tortures his victim, and grieve with the sadist when his victim dies and can no longer be tormented. But surely God is no more obligated than we are to share in the joys and sorrows of a demented mind.’Footnote ⁴⁶ Creel claims that a person can be mistaken over what she should take joy in or sorrow over. This is because a person can misevaluate the circumstances. In the case of the sadist, Creel thinks that the sadist's delight in torture is a deeply mistaken emotional judgment. Creel says that God cannot be subject to such a mistaken emotional evaluative judgment so as to take joy in what the sadist takes joy in.Footnote ⁴⁷

I believe that Creel is offering an overly simplistic view of divine empathy, and then putting this simplistic view in the mouth of the passibilist. The simplistic view of divine empathy can be stated as follows:

With the Simplistic Divine Empathy thesis clearly stated, it is possible to develop the two initial worries of the general Problem of Creepy Emotions into more specific arguments. Call the first developed argument the Problem of Emotional Agreement. Consider the case of the sadist. The force behind the sadist example is to attack condition (b) of the Simplistic Divine Empathy thesis. According to Creel, if God did share in the joy of the sadist, God would not be just.Footnote ⁴⁸ One can argue that a God who is morally perfect cannot have the same emotional evaluation as the sadist. As stated before, the passibilist agrees that God cannot have an emotion that is inconsistent with God's moral perfection. Thus, the passibilist should reject (b).

Call the second developed argument the Problem of Mere Feeling. This argument attacks condition (a) of the Simplistic Divine Empathy thesis. Creel offers the examples of feeling stupid or feeling horny. An impassibilist like Creel might argue that there is something unseemly about God feeling the emotion of horniness, or something irrational about God feeling stupid. Since the passibilist agrees that God cannot have an emotion that is inconsistent with God's perfect rationality, she should deny that God feels stupid. Hence, the passibilist should deny (a).

With these two arguments combined, the passibilist should reject conditions (a) and (b) of the Simplistic Divine Empathy thesis. It might seem that there is no empathy left for the passible God. How is the passibilist going to avoid the Problem of Emotional Agreement and the Problem of Mere Feeling? In what follows, I shall offer two options for the passibilist to avoid God having creepy or immoral emotions.

The Zagzebski option

Zagzebski is aware of the moral objections to divine empathy. She writes, ‘Omnisubjectivity would be a problem if (a) some conscious states are immoral and (b) even the representation of such states in the consciousness of a perfectly empathic being is immoral.’Footnote ⁴⁹ Yet, Zagzebski is unpersuaded that omnisubjectivity falls foul of the moral objections.

With regard to what I have called The Problem of Emotional Agreement, Zagzebski has an easy reply: God's empathy with His creatures does not entail that God agrees with the evaluative judgments of His creatures. In other words, Zagzebski rejects condition (b) of the Simplistic Divine Empathy thesis that Creel is assuming in The Problem of Emotional Agreement. In fact, I don't know of any passibilist who accepts condition (b). A passibilist can grant Creel that it would be wrong for God to agree with certain emotional states that creatures have. However, Zagzebski can say that nothing about omnisubjectivity entails that God must always agree with the evaluative judgments of His creatures.

As discussed before, empathy involves a person consciously acquiring a copy of another person's emotion. The empath never gives up her own perspective when empathizing with another person. When you try on someone else's emotional shoes, your own shoes are not far behind. When God empathizes with Sally through a direct acquaintance with Sally, God is always aware that His empathic copy of Sally's conscious states is a copy of Sally's conscious states. God never takes these copies to be His own perspective on the world. He always understands them to be how Sally is, or what it is like to be Sally from Sally's own perspective.Footnote ⁵⁰

The Problem of Emotional Agreement assumes that empathy entails that the empath agrees with the other person. Yet empathy has no such entailment. In the act of empathizing with Sally, God will have His own emotional reaction to Sally's conscious states. In fact, empathy is often taken to be a prerequisite to sound moral judgments. Without perfect empathy, God cannot properly agree or disagree with a human person's emotional perspective on the world. As Zagzebski explains, ‘God must empathize perfectly with a person's conscious states in order to judge the person with complete accuracy and fairness.’Footnote ⁵¹ Far from entailing agreement, empathy presupposes that disagreement is possible.

Return to the example of the sadist in The Problem of Emotional Agreement. A passibilist like Zagzebski could say something like the following:

That is how a passibilist like Zagzebski can get out of The Problem of Emotional Agreement. What about The Problem of Mere Feeling? Zagzebski's response is that the Problem of Mere Feeling is implausible because it ignores the fact that an empath can disagree with the person with whom she is empathizing. As discussed above, there is a distinction between achieving the epistemic state of empathy and responding to that empathic knowledge. One can respond to what one has learned through empathy in any number of ways.

Zagzebski asks us to imagine empathizing with the character Daniel Plainview from the movie There Will Be Blood. As she explains, you can empathize with Daniel, and come to understand what it is like to be filled with greed and hatred. Yet, according to Zagzebski, in empathizing with Daniel you will probably have a reaction of revulsion towards Daniel's emotional state. If you come to agree with Daniel, then you have made the wrong judgment. As she explains, making an incorrect judgment on an empathic state is not a problem for empathy, but rather a problem with the person who is doing the empathizing.Footnote ⁵²

Of course, someone might complain that this does not fully address the Problem of Mere Feeling. Zagzebski admits that her position will not satisfy someone who thinks that there are intrinsically immoral emotions, and that consciously representing them is itself intrinsically immoral, yet she finds the objection implausible from a Christian perspective.Footnote ⁵³ As Chad McIntosh explains, Zagzebski's response to this problem is quite explicitly to ‘get over it’.Footnote ⁵⁴ As Zagzebski understands the objection, if God has too close contact with His creatures by empathizing with them, God would no longer be perfect. As Zagzebski comments, ‘On this view God would be contaminated by his own creatures if he really grasped what it is like to have their bad feelings.’Footnote ⁵⁵ She thinks that such contamination is just implausible from a Christian perspective because it offers a rather frail view of divine perfection.

Zagzebski states that not only is the objection implausible, but it is also out of step with Christian theological doctrines such as grace, providence, and sanctification.Footnote ⁵⁶ She says little by way of explicating this, but she thinks that God's love is premised on having a complete understanding of His creatures. Thus, she suggests that, ‘Sanctification may involve a breaking down of the barriers between human life and divine life so that, when a human being shares in the divine life, God also shares in our own lives.’Footnote ⁵⁷

Given that Zagzebski offers no further details, perhaps it is best to leave her suggestion as a possible way for the passibilist to develop a response to the Problem of Mere Feeling. In the next section, I shall consider a different way for the passibilist to respond to the Problem of Mere Feeling.

The maximal God option

Perhaps one is not convinced by Zagzebski's way out of the Problem of Mere Feeling because one still feels that there is something creepy about an omnipresent being understanding what it is like to be horny, or understanding what it is like to be filled with hatred towards one's enemies. To be fair, the omnisubjective God does not agree with every emotional perspective of His creatures, but He does have a perfect grasp of the affects and sensations of these emotions.Footnote ⁵⁸ To clarify, though, the passible God knows what it is like for His creatures to be horny, and knows what it is like for His creatures to hate their enemies.Footnote ⁵⁹ It is not that God is horny simpliciter, as condition (a) of the Simplistic Divine Empathy thesis might suggest. However, if a passibilist is still put off by this qualification, she can say that there is something incoherent with omnisubjectivity because it violates God's perfect moral goodness and rationality. Instead, the passibilist can adopt a weaker thesis about God's maximal knowledge. In order to understand this, I need to introduce a few different concepts.

Zagzebski is working from the framework of perfect being theology. In several places, she argues that omnisubjectivity is a property that it is better to have than not to have. The ‘better to have than not to have’ is a standard premise in perfect being arguments. However, there is an ambiguity in perfect being theology. There are two different ways of understanding God's perfection.

Perfect being theology starts by defining God as the greatest metaphysically possible being.Footnote ⁶⁰ In order for God to be the greatest metaphysically possible being, God must possess all of the possible great-making properties, and enjoy these great-making properties to the greatest consistently possible degree of intensity.Footnote ⁶¹ Most of the discussion within perfect being theology takes place over determining which properties are the great-making properties, and whether or not those great-making properties are coherent. Great-making properties are properties that it is better to have than not to have. They are properties that make its possessor intrinsically great, and not merely great relative to some circumstance.

Yujin Nagasawa points out that perfect being theologians often assume something he calls the Omni-God thesis.Footnote ⁶² On the Omni-God thesis, God's perfections are properties like omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence. In this case, the intensity of the great-making properties is interpreted as meaning all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good. Nagasawa points out that perfect being theology need not be committed to the Omni-God thesis. Instead, one can affirm the Maximal God thesis, which says that God has the maximally consistent set of power, knowledge, and goodness.Footnote ⁶³ The Maximal God thesis is, in principle, consistent with the Omni-God thesis because it may turn out that the maximally consistent set of power, knowledge, and goodness is omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence. However, the Maximal God thesis is a weaker claim than the Omni-God thesis because it might turn out that an attribute like omniscience or omnipotence is not metaphysically possible because it contains some incoherence within the concept.

Here is the payoff for the passibilist. A passibilist might say that the concept of omnisubjectivity is incoherent because it is inconsistent with God's moral perfection or rationality. She might say that God cannot have a perfect grasp of all conscious states of creatures because the possession of certain conscious states is irrational, immoral, or perhaps just creepy. Yet, she can maintain the claim that God has maximal empathy, even if she denies that God is omnisubjective. In this case, the passibilist would be saying that God has empathy to a degree of intensity that is maximally consistent with God's moral and rational perfection.

There seem to be several ways to develop this line of thought to avoid the Problem of Mere Feeling. One way is to exploit the difference between the cognitive and affective dimensions of empathy. This is because the affective component of empathy is what is driving the Problem of Mere Feeling. No one is saying that there is some problem with God knowing that His creatures have a particular emotion. Rather, the focus of the Problem of Mere Feeling is on the affective component of empathy. On this strategy, one can say that God has a deep cognitive grasp of all creaturely conscious states, yet God does not have the affect of all of the emotions of His creatures to the full range of intensity, and in some cases God might not have any affect at all. God has a perfect understanding of His creatures’ evaluative judgments, but His grasp of the affects of their evaluations can only extend so far. God understands what it is like for His creatures to hate their enemies, yet the intensity of the affect of this hatred is not something that God can fully grasp. Perhaps this is because God's love prevents Him from fully understanding the intensity of hatred. In this way, one can say that God has the maximal degree of empathy and knowledge that is consistent with God's perfect moral character.

This seems to be the way that passibilists like Brasnett understand God's knowledge. According to Brasnett, ‘We may posit emotion and passion at the very centre of the divine being, provided always that the emotion is good and the passion righteous.’ For Brasnett, there is a wide range of conscious states with which God can empathize. However, there are pleasures in which creatures take joy that violate moral principles. Brasnett explains:

In positing that God has a complete intellectual apprehension of these creaturely emotional states, Brasnett seems to be saying that God fully grasps their evaluative judgments. Yet, Brasnett is denying that God has a grasp of the affect of these emotions because possessing the affect would be inconsistent with God's moral perfection. Brasnett affirms that God can have a grasp of the affect of a whole range of other emotions, just not any emotions that are immoral. It might be the case that Brasnett thinks God has no grasp of the affect of certain immoral emotions, though it is unclear from his writings. This option is available to the passibilist if she wants. What this gives the passibilist is a way to maintain that God does empathize with many, though not all, creaturely conscious states in varying degrees of intensity. Hence, nothing about the Problem of Mere Feeling should push the passibilist to deny divine empathy altogether.

Yet, one might worry that this limits God's knowledge. The passibilist Francis McConnell is not deterred by such worries because he thinks that there are moral limits on God's knowledge in the same way as there are logical limits to God's knowledge. With logical limits to God's knowledge, God cannot know < I am Sally > . This is because God knows that He is not Sally. McConnell claims that something similar is going on with God's knowledge and morality. He writes:

It might seem that McConnell has more in common with Zagzebski's account of omnisubjectivity. An omnisubjective God empathizes with individuals without always agreeing with their perspective. However, McConnell says that God ‘cannot know evil in the experience of friendly response to evil’. So one could interpret McConnell as saying something like the following: there is a knowledge of what it is like to hate one's enemies, and God doesn't fully understand what that is like. God might have a fairly deep grasp of those phenomenal conscious states, but He does not have His own first-person perspective of what it is like to hate one's enemies. In other words, it seems like McConnell could be denying that God has a perfect grasp of the affect of all conscious states in order to preserve God's moral perfection.

The passibilist Keith Ward makes a similar remark. He says:

Ward further comments:

Ward's comments seem to suggest that this limitation on God's empathic knowledge is not simply due to inconsistency with God's moral perfection. There are also cases where certain phenomenal conscious states would be inconsistent with God's perfect rationality. As Ward explains, ‘For instance, God knows that we suffer and what it is like for us to suffer. But God also knows that our sufferings can in some way and at some time be subsumed within a greater whole in which we will find an overwhelming happiness.’Footnote ⁶⁸ Much like Zagzebski, Ward maintains that God's empathy does not negate God's own perspective. When God empathizes with a creature, God does not lose sight of His own perspective and what He knows. Hence, God will not always agree with the emotional judgment of the creature with whom He is empathizing.

Consider an emotion like hopelessness. God can empathize with a creature who is feeling hopeless. God will feel the suffering of this creature, but it will not cause God to lose hope because God also knows His own master plan for creation. As Ward explains, God's empathetic knowledge is always associated with His own response of either condemnation or approval. As such, there will be gradations in God's experiential knowledge, and in the intensity of God's feelings.Footnote ⁶⁹ In the case of hopelessness, God has some grasp of the intensity of the affect of hopelessness, but it does not cause God to have the emotion of hopelessness, nor does it cause God to feel utterly hopeless.

Ultimately, in response to the Problem of Mere Feeling, the passibilist who affirms the Maximal God thesis has a basic strategy for avoiding this problem. She can say that God has a perfect grasp of the evaluative judgments of creatures, but His grasp of the affects of creaturely emotions comes in varying degrees. In the case of immoral emotions, the intensity of the affect for God will be quite low, and perhaps in some cases non-existent. In the case of emotions like hopelessness, the intensity of the affect for God is higher, but not so high that God comes to experience hopelessness Himself. According to this version of passibility, this is what maximal empathy looks like.