Living like common people: emotion, will,and divine passibility

This paper explores the perennial objection to passibilism (conceivedas susceptibility to or capacity for emotion) that an omnipotent being could notexperience emotions because emotions are essentially passive and outside thesubject’s control. Examining this claim through the lens of some recent philosophyof emotion, I highlight some of the ways in which emotions can be chosen andcultivated, suggesting that emotions are not incompatible with divine omnipotence.Having concluded that divine omnipotence does not exclude emotional experiencein general, I go on to address an objection to the idea that God experiences theemotions involved in suffering in particular, suggesting one possible way of arguingthat God’s suffering is chosen while also maintaining the authenticity of divinesuffering