God does not partially love His people and partially hold disdain for them. No, God is always acting in all that He is, and all that God is is directed towards us as a bottomless fountain of joy and love and favor. Why? Because just as it pleased the Lord to pour out his wrath (Deuteronomy 28:63), so “it pleased the Lord to crush” His Son (Isaiah 53:10) so that it might please the Lord to save sinners.

God is eternal, unchanging, all-knowing, blessed, and sovereign. Yet Scripture describes him apparently changing his mind, regretting, and grieving (Gen. 6:6, 1 Sam. 15:11, Eph. 4:30). How are we to make sense of this? Don’t these texts undermine all that God is? And if they do, then shouldn’t we reevaluate our doctrine of God? The answer, paradoxically, lies in the doctrine that God’s emotions don’t change. Yet far from handwaving these texts, this doctrine, rightly understood, actually deepens their gravity.

In my last article, we established that God is simple—without parts, fully himself in all that he is. Not only that, but God’s action is simple—he always acts in all that he is. But we can press further still. If God’s being is without parts and his action is undivided, then his affection must also be simple: God feels—enjoys, delights in, loves, glories in, and burns for—all that He is. The intensity of God’s affection is as unfathomable as his being, and it is fully engaged in everything he does. Come with me as we plumb the depths of what this means.

All that God Is

If all of God is affectionally active in every moment, and every action, what does Scripture reveal about who God is? What affections does God have in Himself independent of any relation to creation? Divine simplicity teaches us that these two things are really the same question: what God is in himself is identical with his affection in and toward himself.

Scripture testifies that God is good, holy (Isa. 6:3; Rev. 4:8), loving—indeed, that he is love itself (1 Jn. 4:8, 16)—infinite (Ps. 147:5), omnipotent (Rev. 19:6), eternal (1 Tim. 1:17), and unchanging (Mal. 3:6)—among many other things. Likewise, Scripture testifies that God has strong, burning affections. God is said to “rejoice” (Jer. 32:41), “love” (John 17:26; 1 Jn. 4:8), and even “sing” for joy (Zeph. 3:17). In many cases, there is a direct parallel between Scripture’s testimony to God’s attributes and its description of his affections. For example, God loves (Jn. 3:16, 17:26) because he is love (1 Jn. 4:8). He rejoices because in himself, he is the fullness of joy.

Scripture teaches that God delights in himself: he delights in his glory (Isa. 48:11; Ezek. 39:25), the members of the Trinity delight in one another, and Scripture especially teaches that the Father delights in the Son (John 17:24; Col. 1:13). So God experiences infinite joy, because he is infinite joy. Yet God’s affection, considered in himself, doesn’t stop merely at attributes that correspond to human emotions. Because God acts with his whole being, his affection also encompasses his whole being. This means that if God is holy (and he is), then he experiences holiness as an affection. We don’t think of holiness as an emotion, but there’s a sense where it is in God. Because he is holy, joyful love, he feels holy, joyful love. These affections aren’t different from one another—God doesn’t have one affection of holiness and a separate one of love. Instead, they are different ways of referring to his single undivided affection. Just as God’s being is simple, not made up of parts, so his affection is singular, reflecting all that he is. As in the diagram [here], God in himself is without division, but he reveals distinct attributes and affections to us, so that we can know him.

Each attribute God reveals of himself can also be considered as an affection God possesses within himself. God “feels”—that is, he possesses the affection of—All that He Is. What this means is that if we can say that God is something, we can also say that He has eternally felt that very thing. So, in the same way that we ascribe attributes to God, we can ascribe affections to God. Each of God’s revealed attributes—and affections—describes not a quality in God distinct from the others, but a truth about who God is in his simple, undivided nature (God in Himself). And in the same way that we can say that God feels holy, joyful, omnipotent love because he is holy, joyful, and omnipotent love, we can also state the inverse. Because God feels zealous holy love, He is zealous holy love. That’s because God is, inseparably, all that is in Him, and all that is in Him He is. God is identical with His attributes, because He has no parts—He is all that He is. And because God is all that He is actively, He also feels all that He is affectionally. Because God’s being is undivided, his affections are identical with his attributes.¹

Absolute and Relative Affections

All this is well and good, but Scripture also says that God hates sin. Would we be right in saying that God’s being is the fullness of hatred? Certainly not! How are we to parse the difference?

The key is that some of God’s attributes (and affections) would be true of God whether or not anything else existed, and some only apply to God in relation to something other than himself. Even if he had never created the world, God would still experience love because he still is love. Similarly, in himself God is holy, omnipotent, eternal, and unchanging. Other attributes like wrath, mercy, and grace are secondary to God’s being and are true only of his relationship to other things. For instance, wrath and hatred are God’s holiness considered in relationship to sinful creatures and sin.² Similarly, mercy and grace are not inherent in God in himself since both express a relationship between God’s goodness and love and undeserving objects.³ Within the Trinity, there are no undeserving objects of God’s love and goodness—he is infinitely worthy of his own love and delight. But when, by virtue of the work of Christ, God makes creatures an object of his own goodness in a way they don’t deserve, that is grace. Theologians therefore refer to attributes like love, holiness, and omnipotence as “primary” or “absolute” divine attributes, because they are true of God’s nature itself, while attributes like wrath and mercy are “secondary” or “relative” divine attributes, because they express a relation between God and creatures.

In the same way, some of the emotional language the Bible applies to God is absolute, and some is relative. Just as God’s attributes can be absolute or relative, so his affections are absolute or relative. When John says that the Father loved the Son before the foundation of the world, this is absolute—this affection directly corresponds to an absolute attribute, and is not an expression of that attribute in relation. But God’s compassion and hatred are clearly relative. Within himself, there are none for God to take pity on or be angry with. God’s internal love and goodness, expressed relatively in the attribute of mercy, are also expressed relatively in the affection of compassion. Compassion, like hatred, expresses a relation between God and creatures. But before diving deeper into the relations between God’s affections and his creatures, we need to dig deeper into what God’s affections are, and how they differ from creaturely emotions.

Emotions, Passions, & Affections

What exactly does it mean that God “feels” all that He is? The careful reader will notice that while I’ve consistently referred to God’s affections, I’ve never used the word emotion, even though emotion is a much more common English word. Additionally, when I’ve said that God “feels” something, I frequently put “feels” in scare quotes. Why is that? Well, it’s because God does not experience emotions the way human beings do.

Emotions

“Emotion” is a fairly general and imprecise word in normal conversation. But its technical meaning is as follows:

[An emotion is a] complex reaction pattern, involving experiential, behavioral, and physiological elements, by which an individual attempts to deal with a personally significant matter or event.⁴

This definition stresses several factors:

1. Emotions are reactions to some stimuli (whether internal or external)
2. Emotions are temporary—they involve a change in the person experiencing the emotion,
3. Emotions are experienced physically and mentally.

There are serious problems with ascribing these things to God. To start with, he is unchangeable (Mal. 3:6), and emotions involve a change in one’s experience. He is eternal, transcending time, and emotions involve a reaction to things within time. Finally, God is incorporeal (John 4:24); he doesn’t have a physical body, and emotions involve a bodily experience.

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