Synonyms are not exactly synonymous. For example, a woman might be described as pretty, beautiful, cute, adorable, gorgeous, attractive, lovely, appealing, good-looking, stunning, precious, delightful, enchanting, captivating, appealing, charming, glamorous, elegant, alluring, winsome, ravishing, heavenly, arresting, irresistible, gracious, exquisite, breath-taking, easy-on-the-eyes, hot, comely, fair, or pulchritudinous. These all mean the same; but they don't. Each has specific nuances, associations, allusions. Some are very close; others quite distinct.
This essay addresses anger and its synonym-analogues, especially wrath, as in Divine Wrath.
We will take anger as the generic, basic reality. It is an emotion we all know so well, naturally. It is a prime, basic emotion we understand intuitively and need not define in terms of other realities. It is simple. I will understand it as three intermingled moments: the feeling of being violated, that explodes in antagonistic energy, against the cause that is judged culpable by intention or at least negligence.
First, then, there is passivity, a vulnerability in being abused or harmed. Secondly, there is an intellectual judgment that this hurt was caused by an intentional agent, by an intelligent-willing actor, even if through negligence. Last there is an arousal of adversarial energy against the perceived aggressor. There cannot be real human anger without these three elements: a weakness and harm suffered, a judgement about guilt, and an explosion or hostile energy against that agent.
Can animals be angry? By this understanding, NO! They are incapable of the intellective judgement. They do demonstrate an animal analogue in the "fight response" whereby they attack what they instinctively sense as threatening. Human anger is in part such an emotive response, but it includes the intellectual aspect. Of course a child or an adult, overwhelmed with anxiety, might have diminished cognitive capacity and respond with unreflective animal-like rage. For example, we know cases wherein a combatant will "black out" and not remember what happened in the fight. Clearly, such is not anger in the human sense but in a subhuman, non-cognitive state.
We speak of "righteous anger" which is a true, rational or appropriate anger against injustice. This is Jesus in the temple. This our adage: "Be angry but sin not." Righteous anger is anger, but it is just and therefore virtuous. It can be directed, in prudence and restrain, to the common good. It can be gathered into a love that is wholesome, integral, active.
Outrage and indignation retain the strong sense of judgment, but in a less virtuous manner, implying a determination that is false, mistaken or unfounded and therefore less than just.
Most of the synonyms for anger, with the glaring exception of wrath, imply a more emotional and animal-like, less rational force, with the element of intellectual judgement diminished if not eliminated. "Mad" is associated with insanity and therefore irrationality. "Fury" calls to mind the ancient "furies" of ancient Greece which were deities of revenge and far from anger as justice. "Rage" implies a lack of control and therefore violent, irrational anger. Other synonyms suggest a lower level of anger, less violent, but no less rational, entailing a level of discomfort without suggestion of righteousness: annoyance, irritability, exasperation, displeasure, antagonism, enmity,, umbrage, resentment,
Can God be angry? By this understanding, NO! God is not passive or vulnerable. He cannot be hurt in that way. To ascribe such a limitation or imperfection to God would be an anthropomorphism: erroneously attributing to God a human imperfection.
"The Wrath of God" is a different reality, quite distinct from anger as passivity. This word comes to us almost exclusively from Scripture, that is, from Revelation. It is the divine analogue of human anger: similar within a greater dissimilarity. God is absolute perfection and Act; invulnerable to violation of abuse in Himself. In that sense, the Wrath of God is almost the opposite of human anger as passivity, vulnerability, weakness. God's Wrath is infinite power: overwhelming, invincible, almighty. It is, furthermore, a manifestation of His Holiness and Glory: the True and the Good and the Beautiful as infinite, eternal, uncompromised...and intolerant (absolutely) of sin, evil, impurity.
This non-human, Divine reality has been revealed to us through the centuries in God's dramatic history with Israel, her friends and enemies, and Jesus and his Church. The wrath of God is unbounded power in the utter annihilation of what is evil and sin. It is transcendent, eternal, non-historical even as it enters into history.
The human person is incapable, without divine intervention, of Wrath, just as the animal is incapable of righteous anger. We are capable, however, of the analogues of holy wrath. First, of course is righteous anger which attacks injustice in prudence and restrain. Secondly, is horror at evil; a disgust for sin; an uncompromising refusal to tolerate moral impurity and injustice.
As we are drawn closer to God through the sacraments, prayer, and holiness of life, we increase in virtue, including fiery righteousness and in our aversion to sin. We become, like our Blessed Mother and all the saints, a repellent, an antagonist, an absolute contradiction of sin.
Today, in the Church, we NEVER hear about God's Wrath! This is a big problem. It is because we know little or nothing of His Holiness and Glory. We dwell relentlessly in the secular, the horizontal, the this-worldly. So our piety has degenerated into a pity that is sentimental, saccharine, emasculated. The focus is upon mercy, but a mercy that is eviscerated of truth, justice, paternal demands, holiness and divine wrath. It is a mercy that is soft, enabling, ever-affirmative, undemanding, indulgent.
For the last two weeks (last of the liturgical year) the first mass readings have all been from the book of Revelation. They deal with the Wrath of God, destroying evil and sin. I have attended at least half a dozen parishes and listened to more priests than that. Only once was the first reading mentioned: the priest joked that it was too early to talk about the book of Revelation.
We live in apocalyptic times: evil is contagious, violence everywhere, polarization poisoning, war raging in eastern Europe, hunger widespread, deaths of despair, inflation, energy shortages, pandemics, and threat of nuclear war. We desperately need to hear about God's holiness; His Wrath for evil; His providential plan to create a new heaven and a new earth. We need to hear the book of Revelation; to ponder the Wrath of God; to be in awe of His Glory; to despise sin and evil; to draw close to a Mercy that is Holy and yes Wrathful.
Mary our Blessed Mother, alone of our race, was fully open to the Holy and perfectly adverse to sin. As we draw close to her son and the Trinity, within the Church, we do well to ponder the Wrath of God. To be in awe. To despise sin. To surrender to a Mercy that wrathful and annihilating of all sin.
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