FC Articles
Is God angry? No He is not!

"We have several Buddhas around the house, but I don't necessarily believe in that either. But if I'm going to have a god, I'm going to have a smiling god..." Chuck Jones

God is not angry

Is God angry? Is the Creator of the Universe full of wrath? A careless reading of Scripture may give such an impression but nothing is further from the truth. All the "wrath" Scriptures, "and they are many", can be seen in two ways; literally or allegorically. I argue for the latter interpretation. I am not alone in this. I am standing on the shoulders of giants in the faith. The best church fathers have historically argued the same thing as they understood the difference between the "higher" teachings of the Scriptures ( like "God is Love" ) as opposed to the "lower" teachings ( like "God is angry" ). As the revelation of Christ becomes more real in the hearts of believers, the "lesser" Scriptures are supposed to decrease ( and vanish away ) while the "higher" Scriptures increase "from glory to glory".

Fundamentalist Christians who make a big deal about interpreting Scripture literally would do themselves a great favour if they followed the advice by the great Christian scholar George MacDonald ( 1824-1905 ):

"Let no one persuade you that there is in Him a little darkness, because of something He has said which His creature interprets into darkness... Neither let your cowardly conscience receive any word as light because another calls it light, while it looks to you dark. Say either the thing is not what it seems, or God never said or did it. But of all evils, to misinterpret what God does, and then say the thing as interpreted must be right because God does it, is of the devil" ( George MacDonald, "Light", source: "The inescapable Love of God", by Thomas Talbott, ch.2, "Religion without fear" )

Thomas Talbott has this to say to those Christians who demand from their fellow brothers and sisters to adopt "dark" images of God because they are "taught in the Bible":

"But why should anyone accept the authority of the Bible, or of some text within it, regardless of what the text teaches? Why should I accept the authority of Jesus or Paul, for example, regardless of what they say? If I exhibit such slavish devotion as that, then I ultimately demean the very authority I am seeking to honor; I say in effect that I would believe the Bible even if it were filled with bald faced lies. Many who accept the Bible as a religious authority do so because, as they see it, they have found within it something worthy of human belief; something that inspires the soul and elevates the mind; something that, though it may shatter their preconceptions on occasion, always does so in the lofty way Jesus does when he teaches that we must love our enemies as well as our friends (see Matthew 5:44). If Christians are entitled to regard a text as authoritative for such reasons as these, do they not also have a responsibility to question a text whose teaching! seems morally repugnant or unworthy of human belief? Such questioning need not, of course, imply an outright rejection of the text in question. But it will rest upon an implicit disjuction: Either we have misunderstood the text in question, or its teaching is not an infallible revelation from God"

He adds: "Lest some Christians should consider such questioning impious, I would also point out that certain texts in the New Testament itself seem to endorse this very kind of questioning. In I John 4:1 we read: "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world." The injunction here seems to apply far beyond the immediate context in which it appears; it seems to apply to every spirit, every supposed prophet, every sacred text, and even to the letter of I John itself. Must we not test all of these things, with whatever reason is available to us, to see whether they really are from God? False prophets and demonic spirits will always, I want to suggest, reveal their true character in the end; they will do so, as many recent cult leaders have illustrated, by asking that we set aside our own better judgment and submit to an untested authority of some kind. The one thing they will ! not (and cannot) allow is independent judgment. They will therefore rail against "autonomous human reason" and appeal to mystery and to the limits of our own understanding in an effort to prevent us from assessing some matter which, even given our limited understanding, we are quite competent to assess" (Testing the Spirits, by T. Talbott) 

Elsewhere Talbott writes: 

"When religious people emphasize the limits of human reason, moreover, they sometimes draw the wrong moral. They may begin with some true observations about the finite character of our human minds, the historically conditioned character of much of our reasoning, the lofty and mysterious character of God, or perhaps even the corrupting power of moral evil or sin. But instead of concluding, as they should, that a loving God, who understands our limitations better than we do, would never require more of human reason than it can deliver, they draw a very different moral: namely, that we must set aside our critical faculties altogether and blindly accept some proposition which, according to the best judgment we can muster at the time, seems unworthy of human belief or perhaps even morally repugnant. In an effort to get us to accept such a proposition, they may also identify a humble submission to God with an uncritical submission to some tradition or some sacred text that! either endorses, or appears to endorse, the proposition in question. But only a false prophet, I want to suggest, would ask us to accept some proposition, however true, despite the fact that it seems to us, for whatever reason, to be unworthy of human belief"

"A false prophet is someone who speaks falsely in the name of God, and here I shall be concerned with a particular kind of false prophet: one who, more often than not, comes in the name of orthodoxy. The false prophets I have in mind are those who use the Bible (or some other sacred text) as a weapon of fear, or as part of an assault upon reason and good sense. At one time or another, they have appealed to the Bible in defense of slavery, racism, the exploitation of women, the burning at the stake of young women (charged with witchcraft), the murder of heretics, and even protracted torture. We find it easy today, perhaps, to appreciate the specious character of at least some of these appeals. But we can also imagine how easily such appeals might confuse a simple peasant farmer who believes fervently that he must bow before the Scriptures. There is perhaps no better way to confuse him and to persuade him to ignore his own conscience than to spout Scripture at him. For if! God says something, he will reason, then it must be true, however morally repugnant or logically absurd it may appear to us as fallible human beings. Or, as a bumper sticker I once saw put it: "God said it. I believe it. That settles it." If you can get someone to accept the first statement, the rest is inevitable" (Concerning False Prophets and the Abuse of Revelation by Thomas Talbott) 

Fundamentalist Christians forget the fact that the Bible is full of anthropomorphisms in regard to God's dealings with men. God is no more "angry" than He is "asleep" or "ignorant" or "foolish". Just like God does not really hate anyone ( instead "he loves His enemies" ) so He does not really feel wrath. The Divine being is not subject to the passion of anger ( or hate ). He is in complete control of His Universe. He knows the end from the beginning and nothing can thwart His will. He issues various dispensations as instruments to bring about the completion of His great plan. 

As many theologians point out one of these dispensations appears to be "the judgment". When evil will cease to exist so will judgment. Several of the great church fathers (esp. the Alexandrian & Cappadocian fathers), have pointed out that, to the recipient of judgment, God appears angry, but such is not literally the case. In fact the apparent "wrath" of God is one of the greatest proofs of His love towards His creation. God is "angry" because He cares to correct the sinner!

The emotion of anger ( wrath ) is ultimately unworthy of God. Like many other things the Scriptural accounts regarding wrath may be seen as a divine accommodation to imperfect mankind. In actual fact however God is not angry. 

God knew before He created mankind that evil would emerge "because of freedom". The injustices that would follow would require a dispensation of judgments for the sake of those humans that would cry out for His help. The judgements are nothing else than the unpleasant consequences of our actions, both collectively and individually, due to the universal law of cause and effect, which in biblical language is expressed as "you reap what you sow", "your own sins/transgressions will rebuke/correct you", etc.

I repeat that to the one undergoing judgment sure enough God appears angry, since He often permits the law of cause and effect to teach all those necessary hard lessons about "the meaning of life". 

Even the suffering Job felt that God was angry with him even though quite the opposite was actually true. God's chosen nation Israel experienced His apparent wrath to the fullest and yet they were reassured: 

"For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee. In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the LORD thy Redeemer" ( Isaiah 54: 7,8 )

The prophet Isaiah understood that it is not in God's paternal nature to be really angry when he appealed to Him to show mercy even though His people were utterly sinful:

"But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousness are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. And there is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee: for thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast consumed us, because of our iniquities. But now, O LORD, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand. Be not wroth very sore, O LORD, neither remember iniquity for ever: behold, see, we beseech thee, we are all thy people" ( Isaiah: 64: 6-9 )

Anger rests in the bosom of fools

God cannot be literally angry. That would translate to a fatal flaw in His nature. It would make Him a fool. 

The wise author of Ecclesiastes taught: "Anger resteth in the bosom of fools" 
( Ecclesiastes 7: 9 )

Fundamentalist Christians require God to be literal angry "forever", even beyond the consummation when God will be all in all. This cannot be possible. As problematic as it may be at several places, Scripture makes it abundantly clear that "the wrath of God", however we interpret it, is a temporary dispensation. We could perhaps say that God is presently "angry" with sin. A time will come however when there will be no more sin. Scripture declares repeatedly that Jesus came to put an end to sin! A time will come when God will no longer be "angry":

"I will not contend forever, neither will I be always wroth; for the spirit should fail before me, and the souls which I have made" ( Isaiah 57: 16 )

"The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy. He will not always hide; neither will He keep His anger forever." ( Psalms 103:8,9 )

If doctrines of demons ( like "God is a God of wrath", "eternal punishment", "God hates his enemies", etc ) are true than the above Scriptures ( and a host of other similar ones ) are false and must be removed from the Bible. Noteworthy is the "biblical" reason given why the wrath of God must eventually end: "for the spirit should fail before me, and the souls which I have made". At another part Scripture also declares: "Many a time turned he his anger away, and did not stir up all his wrath. For he remembered that they were but flesh" ( Psalms 78: 38, 39 ). 

God cannot be really angry because: "The LORD will not cast off forever. But though He cause grief, yet will He have compassion according to the multitude of His mercies, for He doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men." ( Lamentations: 3: 31-33 ). It is obvious that anger does not "rest in the bosom" of God. The Almighty is not a fool. He knows that the sinners cannot bear His wrath forever. In the Genesis "sacred myth" we read that when "Cain" was banished after he killed his brother he cried out to God that such punishment was "too much" for him "to bear". We further read that God alleviated it by making a special provision for Cain's protection in his exile. Would such a God be subject to passions like vengeance, hate and wrath? No He will no do such a thing because he remembers that we are but flesh! The apparent wrath of God is to be completed:

"I saw in heaven another great and marvellous sign: seven angels with the seven last plagues- last, because with them God's wrath is completed" ( Revelation 15: 1 NIV )

The "wrath" of God is to be completed with the symbolic seventh "plague" which refers to the final overthrow of Babylon the great and the destruction of the Antichrist powers on earth as His kingdom of righteousness is established upon the face of the earth:

"And the seventh poured out his bowl upon the air; and there came forth a great voice out of the temple, from the throne, saying, It is done…and Babylon the great was remembered in the sight of God, to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath" ( Revelation 16: 17-21 )

"And I saw the heaven opened; and behold, a white horse, and he that sat thereon called Faithful and True; and in righteousness he doth judge and make war…And out of his mouth proceedeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness of the wrath of God, the Almighty" ( Revelation 19: 11- 16 )

If the "wrath" of God is to be completed, it follows that ( at least eventually ) God will no longer be angry! The fundamentalist Christian will argue that this Scripture refers only to God's wrath on earth and not to God's endless wrath in hell. This cop-out only illustrates the general truth that "anything can be proven by the Bible". All Christians, including fundamentalists, interpret the Bible any way it suits their belief system. I am not ashamed to confess that I do the same. I interpret all Scripture in a way that suits my own belief system. I interpret all Scripture in a way that suits my belief that God is totally good, totally love and totally light, with no darkness at all. But that's me. Every interpretation of Scripture is subjective, whether we acknowledge it or not. 

I believe that the so-called "wrath" of God will be completed. This will happen when there will no longer be any evil in His Universe. God will lovingly oppose evil for as long as it continues to exist in His creatures. Sin resides in the base animal nature of man. This "beast" nature was called "flesh/carnal nature" by St. Paul. We inherited the beast nature from our biological animal past. (See: The Vertical Order, The Horizontal Order, "The Scandal Of Joshua Ben Adam- Part 2 (Essay 1B)" by Robert Brinsmead)

God will "destroy" the sinners by destroying their "beast" nature so that they may live to Him in the spirit, as spiritual men. Jesus destroyed the worse of sinners; Saul of Tarsus by transforming him into St. Paul! 

It can perhaps be said that the divine opposition to everything carnal is expressed as apparent "wrath". It is unpleasant to its recipients but it is ultimately beneficial. Many fundamentalist Christians believe correctly in one of their brain hemispheres that evil will cease to exist at the consummation of God's plan, but in their other brain hemispheres they believe that God's wrath will somehow continue to exist endlessly! 

They never stop to think: where will such eternal opposition/wrath be directed if there is no more evil or "sin" in the Universe? For wrath to continue endlessly, so must sin and evil. If sin and evil are to continue endlessly then we have a problem: Satan/evil wins and God/good loses!

The "Wrath of God" is just a figure of speech

What are we then to say about wrath? How does it fit in the whole context of Biblical revelation? The answer is simple. The concept of divine "wrath" is a figure of speech, and an outdated one for that matter! 

The Presbyterian scholar Macknight wrote the following on the figurative sense of the word wrath in reference to God:  "Having in the Scriptures these and many other examples of bold metaphors, the natural effect of the poverty of the ancient language of the Hebrews, why should we be either surprised or offended with the bold figurative language in which the Hebrews expressed their conceptions of the Divine nature and government? Theirs was not a philosophical language, but the primitive speech of an uncultivated race of men, who, by words and phrases taken from objects of sense, endeavoured to express their notions of matters which cannot be distinctly conceived by the human mind, and far less expressed in human language. Wherefore they injure the Hebrews who affirm that they believed the Deity to have a body, consisting of members of the human body, because in their sacred writings, the eyes, the ears, the hands and the feet of God are spoken of; and because he is represented as acting with these members after the manner of men. "'The voice of the Lord walking in the garden.'--Gen. iii:8. 'The Lord is a man of war' 'Thy right hand O Lord, hath dashed,' etc.; 'The blast of thy nostrils.'--Exod. xv:3-6-8. 'Smoke out of his nostrils;' 'Fire out of his mouth;' 'Darkness under his feet;' 'He rode' and 'Did fly.'--Psa. xviii:8,9,10"

He added: 

"In like manner they injure the Hebrews who affirm they thought God was moved by anger, jealousy, hatred, revenge, grief, and other human passions, because in their Scriptures it is said: 'It repented the Lord' 'It grieved him.'--Gen. vi:6. 'A jealous God.'--Ex.xx:5. 'The wrath of the Lord.'--Num. xi:33. 'I hate."--Prov. viii:13. 'The indignation of the Lord' 'His fury'--Isa. xxxiv:2. 'God is jealous' 'Revengeth and is furious' 'Will take vengeance' and 'He reserveth wrath.'--Nahum i:2.
"They also injure the Hebrews who affirm that they believe the Deity subject to human infirmity, because it is said: 'God rested.'--Gen. ii:2. 'The Lord smelled.'--Gen. viii:21. 'I will go down and see,' and 'if not, I will know.'--Gen. xviii:21. 'He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh' 'Shall have them in derision.'--Psa. ii:4. 'The Lord awaked,' etc.--Psa. lxxviii:65"

"These and the like expressions are highly metaphorical, and imply nothing more but that in the divine mind and conduct (to human perceptions) there is somewhat analogous to, and resembling the sensible objects and the human affections, on which these metaphorical expressions are founded. If from the passages of Scripture in which the members of the human body are ascribed to the Deity, it is inferred that the ancient Hebrews believed the Deity hath a body of the same form with the human body, we must conclude they believed the Deity to be a tree, with spreading branches and leaves which afforded an agreeable shade; and a great fowl, with feathers and wings; and even a rock. because he is so called.--Deut. xxxii:15; Psa. xvii:8; xviii:2-31; xci:4." (Macknight on the Epistles, Essay viii: Sec.I. - quoted by J. W. Hanson, D.D. in Bible Threatenings Explained;)

Again I can no better express the metaphorical meaning of concepts like divine "wrath" than the following comments once made by a great scholar, Prof. Stuart:

"It is impossible to unite, with the idea of complete perfection, the idea of anger in the sense in which we cherish that passion; for with us it is a source of misery, as well as sin. To neither of these effects of anger can we properly suppose the Divine Being to be exposed. His anger, then, can be only that feeling or affection in him which moves him to look on sin with disapprobation and to punish it when connected with impenitence. We must not, even in imagination, connect this in the remotest manner with revenge; which is only and always a malignant passion. But vengeance, even among men, is seldom sought for against those whom we know to be perfectly impotent, in respect to thwarting any of our designs and purposes. Now, as all men and all creation can never endanger any one interest (if I may so speak) of the Divine Being, or defeat a single purpose; so we cannot even imagine a motive for revenge on ordinary grounds. Still less can we suppose the case to be of this nature, when we reflect that God is infinite in wisdom, power and goodness. This constrains us to understand the anger and indignation of God as anthropopathic, i.e., speaking of God after the manner of men. It would be quite as well (nay, much better ) to say that when the Bible attributes hands, eyes, arm, etc., to God, the words which it employs should be literally understood, as to say that when it attributes anger and vengeance to him it is to be literally understood. But if we so construe the Scriptures in this latter case, we represent God as a malignant being, and class him among the demons; whereas by attributing to him hands, eyes, etc., we only represent him to be like men." (ibid)

The concept of "the wrath of God" as a pedagogical lie. The "higher" tradition of the Eastern Orthodox Church rejects completely the notion of an angry God

The literal interpretation of "wrath" Scriptures is a western phenomenon. Eastern Christianity reflects a much higher ( and healthier ) spirituality as it traditionally interprets the Scriptures in a very liberal way. Greek Orthodox theologian A. Kalomiros, is typical of the prevailing Orthodox attitude towards Bible interpretation as explains how all those "wrath" Scriptures are nothing but figures of speeches, designed to "discourage the immature from sinning". Even though, like a good Greek Orthodox that he is, he teaches the doctrine of eternal hell ( perhaps as a pedagogical lie ), Dr. Kalomiros admits that God cannot be possibly angry, despite all those "wrath" Scriptures. He then appeals to the testimony of patristic literature:

"In his discourse entitled, "That God is not the Cause of Evil", ( op. cit. 7, 94-96 ) Saint Basil the Great writes the following: "But one may say, if God is not responsible for evil things, why is it said in the book of Isaiah, 'I am He that prepared light and Who formed darkness, Who makes peace and Who creates evils' (45:7)." And again, "There came down evils from the Lord upon the gates of Jerusalem" (Mich. 1:12). And, "Shall there be evil in the city which the Lord hath not wrought?" (Amos 3:6). And in the great Ode of Moses, "Behold, I am and there is no god beside Me. I will slay, and I will make to live; I will smite, and I will heal" (Deut. 32:39). But none of these citations, to him who understands the deeper meaning of the Holy Scriptures, casts any blame on God, as if He were the cause of evils and their creator, for He Who said, "I am the One Who makes light and darkness," shows Himself as the Creator of the universe, not that He is the creator of any evil.... "He creates evils," that means, "He fashions them again and brings them to a be! terment, so that they leave their evilness, to take on the nature of good. Saint Basil in the same discourse gives the explanation of these expressions of the Holy Scriptures: "It is because fear," says he, "edifies simpler people," and this is true not only for simple people but for all of us. After our fall, we need fear in order to do any profitable thing and any good to ourselves or to others. In order to understand the Holy Scriptures, say the Fathers, we must have in mind their purpose which is to save us, and to bring us little by little to an understanding of our Creator God and of our wretched condition. But the same Holy Scriptures in other places explain to us more accurately who is the real cause of our evils. In Jeremias 2:17, 19 we read: "Hath not thy forsaking Me brought these things upon thee? saith the Lord thy God.... Thine apostasy shall chastise thee and thy wickedness shall reprove thee; know then, and see that thy forsaking Me hath been bitter to thee, saith the Lord thy God." ( THE RIVER OF FIRE, by ALEXANDRE KALOMIROS, Copyright 1980 St. Nectarios Press )

The demonic nature of a god of wrath

Compared to the loving God of the East, the "god" of the west is an angry ogre. Dr Kalomiros is spot on when he writes: 

"The "God" of the West is an offended and angry God, full of wrath for the disobedience of men, who desires in His destructive passion to torment all humanity unto eternity for their sins, unless He receives an infinite satisfaction for His offended pride. What is the Western dogma of salvation? Did not God kill God in order to satisfy His pride, which the Westerners euphemistically call justice? And is it not by this infinite satisfaction that He deigns to accept the salvation of some of us?" 

"What is salvation for Western theology? Is it not salvation from the wrath of God? Do you see, then, that Western theology teaches that our real danger and our real enemy is our Creator and God? Salvation, for Westerners, is to be saved from the hands of God! How can one love such a God? How can we have faith in someone we detest? Faith in its deeper essence is a product of love, therefore, it would be our desire that one who threatens us not even exist, especially when this threat is eternal"

"Even if there exists a means of escaping the eternal wrath of this omnipotent but wicked Being (the death of His Son in our stead), it would be much better if this Being did not exist. This was the most logical conclusion of the mind and of the heart of the Western peoples, because even eternal Paradise would be abhorrent with such a cruel God. Thus was atheisrn born, and this is why the West was its birthplace. Atheism was unknown in Eastern Christianity until Western theology was introduced there, too. Atheism is the consequence of Western theology" ( THE RIVER OF FIRE, by ALEXANDRE KALOMIROS, Copyright 1980 St. Nectarios Press )

Here is a classic example of what happens when Western preachers take the Biblical metaphors literally:

"So that, thus it is that natural men are held in the hand of God, over the pit of hell; they have deserved the fiery pit, and are already sentenced to it; and God is dreadfully provoked, his anger is as great towards them as to those that are actually suffering the executions of the fierceness of his wrath in hell, and they have done nothing in the least to appease or abate that anger, neither is God in the least bound by any promise to hold them up one moment; the devil is waiting for them, hell is gaping for them, the flames gather and flash about them, and would fain lay hold on them, and swallow them up; In short, they have no refuge, nothing to take hold of; all that preserves them every moment is the mere arbitrary will, and uncovenanted, unobliged forbearance of an incensed God" 

"The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment…it is the wrath of the infinite God. If it were only the wrath of man, though it were of the most potent prince, it would be comparatively little to be regarded. The wrath of kings is very much dreaded, especially of absolute monarchs, who have the possessions and lives of their subjects wholly in their power, to be disposed of at their mere will. The subject that very much en! rages an arbitrary prince, is liable to suffer the most extreme torments that human art can invent, or human power can inflict. But the greatest earthly potentates in their greatest majesty and strength, and when clothed in their greatest terrors, are but feeble, despicable worms of the dust, in comparison of the great and almighty Creator and King of heaven and earth. It is but little that they can do, when most enraged, and when they have exerted the utmost of their fury…The wrath of the great King of kings, is as much more terrible than theirs, as his majesty is greater"

 "Consider this, you that are here present, that yet remain in an unregenerate state. That God will execute the fierceness of his anger, implies, that he will inflict wrath without any pity. When God beholds the ineffable extremity of your case, and sees your torment to be so fastly disproportioned to your strength, and sees how your poor soul is crushed, and sinks down, as it were, into an infinite gloom; he will have no compassion upon you, he will not forbear the executions of his wrath, or in the least lighten his hand; there shall be no moderation or mercy, nor will God then at all stay his rough wind; he will have no regard to your welfare…Nothing shall be withheld, because it is so hard for you to bear. Now God stands ready to pity you; this is a day of mercy; you may cry now with some encouragement of obtaining mercy. But when once the day of mercy is past, your most lamentable and dolorous cries and shrieks will be in vain; you will be wholly lost and thrown away of God, as to any regard to your welfare. God will have no other use to put you to, but to suffer misery; you shall be continued in being to no other end; for you will be a vessel of wrath fitted to destruction; and there will be no other use of this vessel, but to be filled full of wrath. God will be so far from pitying you when you cry to him, that it is said he will only "laugh and mock," If you cry to God to pity you, he will be so far from pitying you in your doleful case, or showing you the least regard or favour, that instead of that, he will only tread you under foot. And though he will know that you cannot bear the weight of omnipotence treading upon you, yet he will not regard that, but he will crush you under his feet without mercy; he will crush out your blood, and make it fly, and it shall be sprinkled on his garments, so as to stain all his raiment. He will not only hate you, but he will have you in the utmost contempt: no place shall be thought fit for you, ! but under his feet to be trodden down as the mire of the streets"

"You shall be tormented in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb; and when you shall be in this state of suffering, the glorious inhabitants of heaven shall go forth and look on the awful spectacle, that they may see what the wrath and fierceness of the Almighty is; and when they have seen it, they will fall down and adore that great power and majesty. It would be dreadful to suffer this fierceness and wrath of Almighty God one moment; but you must suffer it to all eternity. There will be no end to this exquisite horrible misery. When you look forward, you shall see a long for ever, a boundless duration before you, which will swallow up your thoughts, and amaze your soul; and you will absolutely despair of ever having any deliverance, any end, any mitigation, any rest at all. You will know certainly that you must wear out long ages, millions of millions of ages, in wrestling and conflicting with this almighty merciless vengeance; and then when you have so done, when so many ages have actually been spent by you in this manner, you will know that all is but a point to what remains. So that your punishment will indeed be infinite. Oh, who can express what the state of a soul in such circumstances is! All that we can possibly say about it, gives but a very feeble, faint representation of it; it is inexpressible and inconceivable! le: For "who knows the power of God's anger?" 

"How dreadful is the state of those that are daily and hourly in the danger of this great wrath and infinite misery! But this is the dismal case of every soul in this congregation that has not been born again, however moral and strict, sober and religious, they may otherwise be. Oh that you would consider it, whether you be young or old! There is reason to think, that there are many in this congregation now hearing this discourse, that will actually be the subjects of this very misery to all eternity" ( Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, by Jonathan Edwards, Enfield, Connecticut July 8, 1741 )

Any wonder Jonathan Edward's sermons caused nightmares, depression and mania? The caricature of God that literalist preachers make is the ugliest demon god possible. How can you possibly love a God who "holds you ( and everyone you know ) over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked"? I purposely quoted a large portion of Jonathan Edward's famous sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" in order to make the point clear on what sort of god is ( consciously or unconsciously ) believed and worshipped by fundamentalist Christians. This awful demon of fundamentalist Christianity has nothing to do with the true God of love as described by the higher Biblical tradition: 

"THE LORD WILL NOT CAST OFF FOREVER. But though He cause grief, yet will He have compassion according to the multitude of His mercies, for He doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men." ( Lamentations: 3: 31-33 )

"A bruised reed shall He ( Christ ) not break, and smoking flax shall He not quench, till He send forth judgment unto victory" ( Matthew 12: 20 )

No, "wrath" is a metaphor. It is not an actual attribute of God. If wrath was an actual attribute of God why would Christians be told to "put off anger" (Colossians 3: 8 ), and to "put away all wrath, anger and malice" (Ephesians 4: 31 )? 

The testimony of early church fathers

All the enlightened fathers in the first centuries of Christianity understood the metaphorical meaning of the "wrath" Scriptures. The great historian/bible scholar J.W. Hanson, researched and published towards the end of the 19th Century a huge amount of quotations from the writings of those ancient church fathers who held a healthy view of God ( see: Universalism The Prevailing Doctrine Of The Christian Church During Its First Five Hundred Years by J.W. HANSON, D. D). The common theme is that "God is not really angry, but such Scriptures that speak of His wrath are mere figures of speech, not to be taken literally". Lets have a look at some of these quotes.

One of the first apostolic fathers; Clement of Rome ( A.D. 85 ) who was bishop and author of epistles, wrote: 

"Let us reflect how free from wrath He is towards all his creatures" 

Another Clement, the great Alexandrine father and scholar wrote: 

"The divine nature is not angry but is at the farthest from it, for it is an excellent artifice to frighten in order that we may not sin… Nothing is hated by God…" and "God is good on his own account, and just also on ours, and he is just because he is good, * * * for before he became Creator he was God. He was good. And therefore he wished to be Creator and Father. And the nature of that love was the source of righteousness; the cause too of his lightning up his sun, and sending down his own son. * * * The feeling of anger (if it is proper to call his admonition anger) is full of love to man, God condescending to emotion on man's account" (Paed. I, 10. Strom. I, 27.) 

The father of systematic theology Origen also wrote: 

"When thou hearest of the wrath of God, believe not that this wrath and indignation are passions of God; they are condescension's of language designed to convert and improve the child…So God is described as angry, and says that he is indignant, in order that thou mayest convert and be improved, while in fact he is not angry." 

Hanson explains: "Origen severely condemns those who cherish unworthy thoughts of God, regarding him, he says, as possessing a disposition that would be a slander on a wicked savage. He insists that the purpose of all punishment, by a good God, must be medicinal." 

Gregory of Nazianzus, also known as Saint Gregory the theologian, ( born A.D. 330 ) wrote: 

"When you read in Scripture of God's being angry, or threatening a sword against the wicked…understand this rightly, and not wrongly…how then are these metaphors used? Figuratively. In what way? With a view to terrifying minds of the simpler sort." ( Hanson, 500 years )

Elsewhere Saint Gregory the Theologian wrote "For according to our own comprehension, we have given names from our own attributes to those of God." ( St. Gregory the Theologian Fifth Theological Oration 22 (PG 36. 15 7). source: RIVER OF FIRE ) 

The prophet Isaiah thundered to his sinning countrymen: "My anger will not cease, I will burn them" ( Isaiah 1:24 ). Basil the Great ( born in Caesarea, A.D. 329 ) commented thus on those words: "And why is this? In order that I may purify." ( Hanson 500 years)

Gregory of Nyssa ( A.D. 335-390 ) wrote that "God himself is not really seen in wrath" and that God's threats about judgment were given to us so that: "through fear we may be trained to avoid evil; but by those who are more intelligent it is believed to be a medicine" ( Hanson 500 years)

Saint Isaac the Syrian wrote: "Very often many things are said by the Holy Scriptures and in it many names are used not in a literal sense... those who have a mind understand this" (Homily 83, p. 317, source: RIVER OF FIRE )

Saint John Damascene explained that what in the Holy Scriptures "is said of God as if He had a body, is said symbolically... [it contains] some hidden meaning, which through things corresponding to our nature, teaches us things which exceed our nature." ( St. John Damascene, op. cit. 1.11. source: RIVER OF FIRE )

All the above examples ( and many more like them ) illustrate that according to the testimony of all those great Greek fathers of the ancient church, God is not angry. On the other side, we had those Latin fathers like Tertullian who adopted a completely different picture of God, as one who is literally angry and as a ruthless judge who cannot wait to torture forever millions of fallible creatures. Unfortunately, the Latin picture of a vindictive God prevailed in western Christianity and passed on from medieval Catholicism to modern Protestantism and Christian Fundamentalism.

These testimonies are more than enough to establish the true meaning of all those "wrath" passages in Scripture as being metaphorical ( anthropomorphisms ) without blackening God's character. If only our modern day ""Tertullians" and "Jonathan Edwards'" would consult the writings of the more learned Greek fathers!

For further study on the topic of "wrath of God" I highly recommend the following links:

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God!, by Gary Amirault
 

Angry Gods and Lonely people, by W. Krossa:   

Have we missed the point on the 'Wrath of God'? THESIS: Rather than being a character trait of our heavenly Father, The 'Wrath of God' is a manifestation of Satan, by Andrew Moore

GOD IS LOVE by J. Preston Eby (excerpt from Savior of the World Series) God's Love is FAR greater than what is taught in the typical Christian Church. Find out HOW much greater!