Divine Impassibility

In this volume, Richard Creel sets forth a thesis that offers a "third way" to approach divine impassibility. Defining impassibility as "imperviousness to causal influence from external factors," Creel sketches a path between Aquinas and Hartshorne, by asserting that once this definition is accepted, one must still distinguish the various respects in which God is or is not impassible. Virtually no one would dispute that the divine nature is impassible. God will never cease to be God, no matter what happens in creation. With respect to the divine knowledge and will, however, there are…