ABSTRACT
The English language does not help with an understanding of the traditional view of divine impassibility, held by the Christian Church Fathers, the medievals and the Reformers, and others, Jews such as Philo and Maimonides. All thought that such a view is an aspect of God's essence set forth in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. For impassible can easily be confused with impassable, and with dispassion, and even with impassivity. As a blurring of these distinctions may easily result in confusion and misunderstanding, it is worth briefly distinguishing them at the outset. Essential to the discussion of divine passibility and impassibility is the view that passions are episodes or events, expressions of dispositions that start and finish at times, lasting for various periods. God's impassibility is a central element in the 'grammar' of classical Christian theism. One of the major differences between the passibilist and impassibilist outlooks concerns the range of the divine purposes.
