If God is an unchanging eternal God how can he feel anything?

Question

Feelings and emotions both require and are caused by changes.

Answer 1

Well when we say that God doesn't change, I don't think that means that he doesn't have emotions and doesn't feel empathy and sympathy. I think that we mean that his moral compass doesn't change. What God says is right and wrong still is right and wrong from Moses till now.

Answer 2

God is unchanging -
"""The idea here is that God does not change Her mind, does not regret decisions, cannot be affected by outside influences. And this idea does not come from the Bible.
Instead, the idea of God being immutable comes directly from Greek philosophy. By the time of Christ, many of the Greek philosophers had become strict monotheists – they rejected the old polytheistic pantheon and instead held that there was but a single God, who was the supreme being.
Accordingly, they described this philosopher’s God as embodying all their highest concepts, and these included the idea that God must be immutable (i.e. could not change in any way) and impassible (i.e. could not be affected by anything) – because, to them, change implied imperfection. That is, if God was perfect then any change would make God less perfect; if God was not perfect then God would not the the highest conceivable being and hence not be God.
Unfortunately, this idea crept into Christian thought early in the Church’s history and has done untold harm since. This is because the God actually described in the Bible is forever changing Her mind, regretting decisions, being influenced by human beings.
The Bible often talks of God as unchanging – the same yesterday, today and forever. However, this is talking quite clearly about God’s character, not God’s mind. That is, God’s attitudes and intentions are the same; God’s decisions are not. Indeed, even within the book of Samuel, even in this story of God regretting Her choice to make Saul king and tearing the kingdom away from him, we find Samuel declaring that “He is not a man that He should change His mind”. And yet we have heard of Moses causing God to turn aside from the course God had declared.
It’s not as simple as “God cannot change”. The Bible tells us of many occasions on which God changed Her mind, and we must take that seriously in our thinking about God."""

My point?? Well, yes God is "unchanging" because he is the same God yesterday, today, and tomorrow. But that doesn't refer to His "emotions" or "feelings"...

The concept is very hard to grasp and that is understandable because as humans... we're not meant to understand everything, it just is what it is!

Answer 3

Feelings and emotions are not caused by changes at all. They are the result of how your mind processes new information both consciously and unconsciously. Emotions on the other hand are only unconsciously a result of that information from our nervous system.

Those changes you are refering to are actually a result of the changing of the world around us and how we REACT. Therefore it's less of a change and more of an Effect.

Answer 4

You know, these "I'm lying, I'm telling the truth" questions are really stupid. They do nothing to advance any kind of debate (like there could be debate about god) and they tend to make you sound condescending and smug.

God or no god - concept, parable, whatever - is far too complex to break down to changing/unchanging, etc.

What is your reference, dude? Are you looking at the bible or are you looking at Lord of the Rings?

FP

Answer 5

Perhaps unchanging doesn't apply in exactly the manner you believe it does. God doesn't get sick, or age, or get tired like we humans do...that doesn't necessarily imply a lack of emotion, does it?

Answer 6

Because He is a Father. And BTW, if we're made in God's image - guess where feeling and emotion came from?!!

Answer 7

Emotions are mental states, so a god feeling emotions would be changing, yep.

It's not like the concept of God even makes sense to begin with, though.

Answer 8

God doesn't change. It's when changes are made by His creation, us, and in the world that His emotions are used.

Answer 9

Someone has probably misinformed you about what Christians mean by God being changeless; God's immutability refers to His essential character, not to His thoughts and emotions.

Answer 10

He has nerve endings as well as other body parts. Plus god changed his mind many times. An example is with the golden cow in Ex-32. Had not Moses told God to repent from his evil thoughts of wanting to kill all the Israelites, the bible would've been a different story today.