Chapter 6 of The End of Christianity brings us to Valerie Tarico’s essay “God’s Emotions: Why the Biblical God Is Hopelessly Human”. While the argument of the essay is not altogether clear, it would appear that Tarico hopes to extend Jaco Gericke’s assault on the biblical portrayal of God by arguing that the presence of “human” emotions in the biblical picture of God is a mere human projection rooted in our own emotional lives.
Unfortunately, the actual argument to this end is not particularly clear. As a result, I am going to go out on a limb and attempt to articulate Tarico’s argument since she failed to do so.
(1) God is depicted in the Bible as having (human) emotions.
(2) The fact that God is depicted in the Bible as having (human) emotions means that Christians ought to believe God has (human) emotions.
(2a) God is a maximally competent author.
(2b) God is the (ultimate) author of scripture.
(2c) Many readers of the Bible have interpreted the Bible as teaching that God has (human) emotions.
(2d) A maximally competent author would not write something that he knew would be widely misunderstood.
(2e) Therefore, if a person believes God is the (ultimate) author of the Bible one must also believe that the Bible teaches that God has (human) emotions.
(3) If God exists he would not have (human) emotions.
(4) Therefore, the description of God in the Bible as having (human) emotions is incorrect.
(5) Therefore, God is not the (ultimate) author of the Bible.
(6) Therefore, the depiction of God in the Bible as having (human) emotions is the product of human authors alone.
(7) The most likely explanation of the depiction of God in the Bible as having (human) emotions is that the human authors were projecting their experience onto God.
Of course the argument could stop at (6). But Tarico not only seeks to undermine the biblical portrayal of God. She also seeks to provide an explanation of that portrayal in terms of a projection theory of religion.
Now before continuing let me reiterate that this is my very best attempt to reconstruct Tarico’s rather unclear reasoning. Let me also point out that I, as a reader (and a Christian one at that!) should not be forced to attempt to reconstruct the argument of the atheological essayist. I feel like a person who has ordered a chocolate cake from the bakery and received a cake with a center still of pudding, forcing me to fire up my own oven to complete the job. Articulating a clear argument is obviously the job of the essayist, and challenging an inchoate argument is the responsiblity of the editor. Neither task should be dropped in the lap of the poor reader. All that is to say that if Tarico doesn’t quite agree with my reconstruction of her half-baked argument, she can certainly correct me and present it in her own words. But for now this is what I’m working with.
With provisos out of the way, this review will proceed as follows. I will begin by mounting a critique of (2). After that I will pursue a deconstruction of (3). While I could certainly say more, together these two points will be the equivalent of blowing out the tires of the getaway car with a spike-belt. Without those two propositions Tarico’s argument will not get far.
Is a Christian obliged to believe God has (human) emotions?
In this section our focus is on critiquing the second step in the argument:
(2) The fact that God is depicted in the Bible as having (human) emotions means that Christians ought to believe God has (human) emotions.
As my summary makes clear, as best I can see (2) is supported by an argument. Tarico writes:
“Literalists say that the Bible was uniquely inspired or even dictated by God to the authors. In this case, claiming that in the Bible God’s emotions are simply metaphors makes God a bad writer. A good writer doesn’t use metaphors that he or she knows will be taken literally. Communication isn’t just about transmission–it is about knowing your audience. Today many, many Christians take the notion of God’s emotions literally, as have most of their spiritual ancestors. To say that God was communicating in metaphor through the Bible writers is to say that God needed communications training.” (161)
So let’s take a critical look at three of the steps in that supporting argument.
(2b) God is the (ultimate) author of scripture.
As we saw, Tarico assumes a doctrine of biblical inspiration which seems to be somewhere between verbal plenary inspiration and dictation (“the Bible was uniquely inspired or even dictated by God…”). In other words, her target is on the right wing of evangelical Christianity. Needless to say, the argument simply has no relevance to many other models of inspiration and biblical revelation (a point I already noted in response to Gericke).
(2c) Many readers of the Bible have interpreted the Bible as teaching that God has (human) emotions.
Let’s start by noting two things. The first thing is that not all opinions are the same. If you want to figure out how to navigate an impending financial crisis, you don’t gather random opinions in the street. Rather, you consult your financial advisor. If you want a medical diagnosis you likewise don’t turn to the street. Rather, you visit your doctor. The same goes in theology. So while it may sound elitist to say that we should weigh the opinion of the theologian on the nature of God more carefully than the layperson, it is no more controversial here than in economics or medicine. And the fact is that throughout Christian history most theologians have emphatically denied that God experiences emotions, human or otherwise. We need not delay ourselves here recounting their reasons for doing this. Instead, we can simply note that most of the weighty opinions throughout history of the church have affirmed that God is impassible.
(2d) A maximally competent author would not write something that he knew would be widely misunderstood.
This is the real biggie, however. For even if most theologians believed God is impassible, most laypeople have believed God is passible. If this is wrong, isn’t that a problem? Wouldn’t a maximally competent author ensure a correct reading of his own nature?
Unfortunately for Tarico, there is no reason to accept (2d) and there are good reasons not to. I’ll make a couple points toward establishing that claim.
To begin with, let’s note that according to the classical theologian who affirms divine impassibility, language that describes God in anthropomorphic, and more specifically anthropopathic terms, should be understood as a divine accommodation. God, we should remember, is first of all a maximally competent teacher. And the fact is that most laypeople are not equipped conceptually to understand the notion of impassibility (or how it is important for the divine aseity and omnibenevolence). Thus, believing the true statement “God has no emotions” would, ironically enough, lead to a bigger distortion in their overall understanding of God (e.g. by concluding “Then God doesn’t love me”) than the incorrect statement that he is passible. The fact is that most Christians do not need to understand concepts like aseity, actus purus, or divine conservation. They need to know that God is a loving heavenly Father who cares for them. Even if the projection of human emotion is, strictly speaking incorrect, it is sufficient for the purposes of God, the master instructor.
Let’s say more about this idea. Tarico avers, “A good writer doesn’t use metaphors that he or she knows will be taken literally.” I take it that Tarico’s point is not limited to metaphor but is rooted more generally in the proper interpretation of idiom. Hence, I’ll recast her statement more broadly as follows: “A good writer doesn’t use idioms that he or she knows will be taken literally.” Is this true?
No. Let’s say that mommy doesn’t want little Johnny to go near the stove and so she says “Stay away from the stove or it will burn your hand off.” Hyperbole, clearly. At least it is clearly hyperbole to us if not to Johnny. But mommy doesn’t really care at this point if Johnny does think it’ll burn his hand off, so long as he stays away from the stove. Does Tarico seriously think that mommy is inept to the degree that her son is liable to interpret the hyperbolic statement literally? Come on.
Here’s another example. Johnny’s pet gerbil dies. So daddy tells Johnny “Your gerbil is broken and can’t be fixed.” Daddy is drawing an analogy between objects of human artifice that break and an living creature that dies. Yet Johnny, with his very limited experience of the world may take it literally. Does this make daddy an incompetent communicator? Of course not.
Tarico seems to have a flat-footed view of successful communication as getting people to believe as many true propositions as possible as soon as possible. But as little Johnny’s parents know, successful communication is about much more than that.
Needless to say, a maximally competent writer or teacher is aware of the multi-dimensional nature of discourse and the many ends a speech act aims to achieve. That writer/teacher is also aware of the varying degrees of limitations evident in an extraordinarily diverse audience and thus the most effective way, on the whole, to communicate the most effective message (which isn’t necessarily a matter of getting the most people to believe the most true propositions as soon as possible) to the broadest number of people.
When all these factors are accounted for it becomes readily evident that there is no reason at all to accept (2d), and thus (2) falls.
What’s wrong with a little emotion?
Thus far we’ve blown one tire out. This argument won’t be able to get far now. Even so, I say we finish the job by blowing out proposition (3) as well.
(3) If God exists he would not have (human) emotions.
Here is the interesting thing. While most theologians have affirmed divine impassibility, in the twentieth century most theologians have sided with divine passibility (though, unfortunately, they often do so in ignorance of what the doctrine of divine impassibility actually affirms). But even as they accept that God has emotions, they do not accept that God simply has human emotion. Thus, in a strict sense (3) is correct. Nonetheless, in a deeper sense (3) is false, for there is not reason to think God wouldn’t have divine emotion. This is an important point I’ll have to come back to.
But before I do that, let’s consider Tarico’s argument. You see, she tries to define emotion in such a way that God cannot have emotions, so if we shall conclude the passibilist position is viable we shall first have to deal with this claim. Tarico defines emotions as follows:
“Emotions are evolved, functional feedback processes that serve the well-being of sentient, mobile animals, and social animals in particular.” (163, emphasis in original)
Based on this definition Tarico poses the following question:
“If I ask you whether God has a nose or a penis, what would you say? Most Christians would say probably not. A nose is for breathing and smelling. A penis is for sex and for peeing. God has no need of either. In the same way, I would argue that God has no need for emotions–intricate chemical reactions designed to activate and direct bodily responses to the external environment. As wonderful as emotions are, they are made of and for the fabric of this natural world.” (167)
In this, er, rather interesting passage, Tarico wants us to sense the tension between the concept of emotion (as she’s defined it) and the notion of God having emotions.
But there is a problem afoot. The problem is that Tarico did not really give us a proper definition of “emotions”. Rather, what she gave us is an explanation of the origin and function of emotion in human beings and other creatures. That’s well and good, but it is completely tendentious to define emotion in those terms.
Pace Tarico, here is a proper definition of “emotion”:
Emotion (definition): “an affective state of consciousness.”
It may be deeply problematic to think of God experiencing an “evolved, functional feedback process” but that’s because that is the type of emotion human beings have. God’s emotions, assuming he does have them (contrary to the impassibilists), are not like that. Nonetheless, both human and divine emotion would be “an effective state of consciousness”.
And so we see Tarico’s attempt to read human emotion up into the divine to be a completely spurious attempt to win an argument by definitional fiat.
In conclusion
Tarico really hopes that the Christian will find the only explanation for divine emotion to be natural projection. For example, she writes:
“You might think that if someone is omnipotent, then anger would be unnecessary. The force that created the universe has no need of it. For what? To make him more powerful? More able to focus? To break through inhibitions or fear? And yet it makes a lot of sense that we humans would expect God to get angry.” (169)
But the Christian is under absolutely no compunction to accept this claim. Does God have emotions? Christians disagree. An impassibilist can present a forceful case that God does not. And they can complement that with a powerful explanation of the nature of accommodation and anthopopathic language whilst defending God as a maximally effective communicator. Or, a Christian might accept passibility and embrace divine emotions, while recognizing that they are very different than human emotions. Either way, this is precisely what we would expect from a divine revelation: God coming down to our level to facilitate relationship with his creatures.
Tarico has give absolutely no reason to think projection is the preferred explanation of the biblical depiction of God. And in a book boldly aiming to make a positive case for the “end” of Christianity, that is precisely what she had to do.
