Question 18 · God and the Trinity

Does God change, suffer, or learn?

What the sources show

Ignatius of Antioch c. 110Suffered in flesh

From Ignatius on, writers hold two things together: God cannot suffer or change, and the Son, for our sake, became able to suffer and truly suffered in his flesh. ¹²

Praxeas and his followers, as Tertullian reports c. 213 · Tertullian c. 213

When Praxeas taught that the Father suffered on the cross, Tertullian answered that the Father cannot even suffer with another, and that the Son suffered as man, not in the nature in which he is God. ³⁴

The answers given:

ApostolicBefore NicaeaNicaea and afterMiddle AgesReformation to today

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Apostolic Fathers

30–150

110c. AD

Suffered in flesh

Ignatius of Antioch d. c. 110 ADLetter to Polycarp 3.2

Wait for him who is above time, the timeless, the invisible, who for our sake became visible; the intangible, the impassible, who for our sake became passible; who for our sake endured in every way.

The pattern of later teaching in one line: the impassible God became able to suffer, for us.

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110c. AD

Suffered in flesh

Ignatius of Antioch d. c. 110 ADLetter to the Ephesians 7.2

There is one physician, both fleshly and spiritual, born and unborn, God in man, true life in death, both from Mary and from God, first able to suffer and then beyond suffering: Jesus Christ our Lord.

A poem-like confession in pairs: what Christ is as man and as God.

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Before Nicaea

150–325

213c. AD

Impassible

Tertullian c. 155–c. 220 ADAgainst Praxeas 29.5–6

Fearing open blasphemy against the Father, they hope to lessen it this way, granting now that the Father and Son are two: the Son suffers, the Father suffers with him. Fools in this too! For what is "to suffer with" but to suffer with another? If the Father is impassible, he is also unable to suffer with; or if he can suffer with, he can suffer.

Praxeas taught that the Father himself was born and suffered (Patripassianism). Tertullian answers that the Son suffered as man, not as God.

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213c. AD

Father suffered

Praxeas and his followers, as Tertullian reportsAgainst Praxeas 29.5–6

They hope to lessen the blasphemy this way, granting now that the Father and Son are two: the Son suffers, the Father suffers with him.

The later form of the view that the Father suffered on the cross. Tertullian calls it blasphemy.

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Nicaea to Chalcedon

325–451

430c. AD

Suffered in flesh

Cyril of Alexandria c. 376–444 ADThird Letter to Nestorius Anathema 12

If anyone does not confess that the Word of God suffered in the flesh and was crucified in the flesh, and tasted death in the flesh, and became the firstborn from the dead (Colossians 1:18), inasmuch as he is life and the giver of life as God: let him be anathema.

The last of the Twelve Anathemas Cyril attached to his Third Letter to Nestorius (430), received at Ephesus (431): the impassible Word truly suffered, in the flesh. Quoted in the old Latin version printed by Denzinger; the Greek opens 'If anyone does not confess that the Word of God suffered in the flesh'.

Full English of this work is being translated · Source text

Witnesses not in the library yet

These writers also matter for this question. Their texts will join the timeline above once they are translated.

260
Gregory Thaumaturgus, To Theopompus, on God's impassibility
A whole treatise on whether God can suffer. Survives in Syriac.

How this page was made

Every early quote was read in its Greek or Latin and translated for this page by Claude (Opus 5.5) on 13 October 2026. Each line names the printed edition it was read from. A quote marked indirect does not state the answer outright; read its note. A writer's silence is never counted as an answer.