Charlie:
"Since God has no emotions or passions, this OP is a huge non sequitur. God's love is volitional. So when God saves the elect it is His willful decree to do so. Love, then, is a divine volition to save whom God will save. Romans 9:11-22."
Michael Schellman:
Charlie, how do you know that God has no emotions? Emotions are defined as "an affective state of consciousness in which joy, sorrow, fear, hate, or the like, is experienced, as distinguished from cognitive and volitional states of consciousness." I assume your objection to saying God has emotion is on the grounds that "God does not change". But the scriptures are very clear about the fact that God has different affective orientations to human actions and events. I would suggest that these do not represent changes in God but rather, changes in our relationship to him. God hates sin therefore, when we sin we experience a transition from God's favor and its associated affects, to his disfavor and its affects associated affects. God has not changed, we have. I agree with what David said about God never being disappointed or surprised. So I see how you might object to God having emotion (if you understand emotions as people getting a reaction out of God). I do not think that is what is happening. Though the doctrine of impassibility has a long tradition in church history, its origins are in Greek philosophy, not in scripture.
