1/10. The doctrine of Divine impassibility is an essential attribute of God as confessed by the church for 2000 years. It is common ground for RC's & Protestants just like Chalcedonian Xology. It has not been marginal or esp. controversial - at least not until very recently.

2/10. The West. Conf. of Faith was written only 373 yrs. ago & it was written in Eng. So you would think it would easily comprehensible to theologians today. But you would be wrong. The WCF says that God is w/o "body, parts or passions." But many today don't know what that means.

3/10. Prior to the 19th C. 'passions' & 'affections' were 2 terms with totally diff. meanings. The affections were movements of the soul & under rational control, eg. when the bride & groom say "I do" in a wedding ceremony.

4/10. The passions, OTOH, were excitations of the body & not under rational control, eg. the lust feeling adultery. Once you know this, it makes perfect sense that the WCF would deny passion in God. Since God is immaterial, he couldn’t have passions; only a corporeal being could.

5/10. With the rise of secular psychology in the 19-20 C. we see the word "emotion" used instead of the 2 earlier terms & this has become common. The reason why this is the case is the materialistic metaphysics that form the conceptual framework for the mod. discipline of psych.

6/10. Modern materialists don’t believe in a soul, so what use would they have for a word like “affections”? (Now it means something like “feelings.”) “Emotions” are biological states caused by the physiological changes in the organism.

7/10. In a materialist metaphysical framework, this word is applied to all of what used to be divided into affections & passions. But applying the word “emotions” to God is confused. We need to recover the word ‘affections’ and our belief in the reality of the soul.

8/10. That will entail rejecting modern materialist metaphysics & embracing Xian metaphysics. Then we can talk about the possible sense in which ‘affections’ might be applied to God. Even ‘affections’ is applied to God only analogically.

9/10. We experience the actions of God as love, mercy etc. but that does not mean God is a being in time expressing affections like us. The rationally governed affections of the soul are the best analogy we have between human experience & what is revealed in Scrip. as God's love.

10/10. When we attribute love or mercy to God we are saying that love & mercy characterize his being. He is love. He is mercy. He is goodness. He is wisdom. To the extent we understand these things we do so by comparing human traits to that which is revealed in the bib. gospel.