But even legitimate anger may readily pass into a sin. Passions beyond the control of the rational self can hardly be justified, whatever the cause. Self-control is a cardinal Christian virtue. Hence the apostolic caution of Eph 4-'*, ' Be ye angry and sin not,' i.e. if angry, as one may rightly be, do not allow the passion to become an evil by its excess. The wrath against which the warning
is given seems indicated by the following clause — ' let not the sun go down on your Trapopyta-fj.6s ' ( ' a noun which differs from op-yT] in denoting, not the disposition of anger, or anger in a lasting mood, but exasperation, sudden violent anger' [Salmond]). There is no reference to deliberate indignation on a matter of principle, such as the resentment which, the author of Ecce Homo claims, was felt by Jesus towards the Pharisees to the end of His life.
2. Divine anger. — JSIost minds must have felt the objection expressed by Origen, Augustine, and the Neo-Platonist theologians generally, that A\e cannot treat the Supreme as a magnified man and attribute to Him such perturbation of mind as is suggested to us by the term ' anger.' But we may allow — and must do so unless we are prepared to deny personality in God— that the quality, which we find expressed under human conditions as the righteous anger of a good man, must exist in God, although in a form which we cannot adequately conceive, owing to our inability to realize absolute conditions, ^ye may be lielped to some extent by recognizing that beiiind the human agitations of personality in love, pity, indignation, etc., there are certain principles and attitudes which no more depend for their quality on the element of agita- tion than the existence of steam depends upon the appearance of white vapour which we ordinarily associate with it. This underlying quality we may attribute to the Deity, in whom life and per- sonality, here expressed only in finite and con- ditioned forms, have their perfect and unconditioned being (Lotze).
The objection that anger, unlike love, is un- worthy of the highest moral personality (Marcion) may be met by the answer that Divine love and anger are not two opposing principles, but ex- pressions of the one attitude towards contrary sets of human circumstances. The Divine anger is actually involved in the Divine love (Tertullian, Martensen, etc.). The one Lord whose name is Truth and Love is, because of this, a consuming flame to wrong (He lO^i 122«).
The idea of the ' Divine anger ' — this attitude of Deity towards certain courses of human life — is a justifiable inference from the intuitions of con- science, but another and an unsound argument played a part in the historical formation of the doc- trine. In the early stages of religious thougiit the conception of the wrath of God would naturally come to men's minds from contemplation of the ills of human life. The chieftain punished those with whom he was angry, either by direct action or by withholding his protection. Did not, then, physical calamities, pestilences, reverses of fortune, defeat in battle, indicate the displeasure of Deity (Jos 7, 2 S 21^ 24, etc.)? Such misfortune, when no ethical cause could be recognized, would en- courage the doctrine of unwitting and non-ethical offences {e.g. the violation of tabu) and of non- ethical propitiation. The ills of life — especially death — suggested later a world lying under a curse, due to Adam's sin. Against the popular doctrine that misfortune indicated Divine dis])leasure, the Book of Job is a protest. Human suffering has educative values, and does not necessarily indicate the disapproval of God (He 125'-).
Yet even in early times the idea of the Divine anger did not rest wholly on the facts of human suffering. Men realized that tiie world, as they found it, was not in harmony with their conceptions of the Highest, and thus in times of prosperity, which, according to this theory, would indicate God's contentment with His people, prophets such as Amos argued for coming doom. From the con- sciousness of the holiness of God it was inferred that there must be Divine displeasure.
The turning away of the Divine anger. — Two
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attitudes in regard to this problem appear among the Hebrews, even as early as the 8th cent. B.C. The prophets of that period ' do not recognize the need of any means of reconciliation with God after estrangement by sin other than repentance' (Hos 14-, Am 5-'-"\ Is l'^-", Mic 6«-8). On the other hand, while repentance Avas always insisted upon by Israel's religious teachers, there was a tendency to assert the need of supplementary' means in order to bring about the reconciliation of God and man. The conception may have origin- ated in the practice of oflering a propitiatory gift or leiral compensation to an outraged person (Gn 20'6 3213 ; cf. 1 S 26i9, 2 S 24i«'), or in the primitive view of sin as having a material exist- ence of its own which called for an appropriate ritual treatment beyond the mental change of repentance, or in the customs of Levitical ' sin- otlerings,' which, although originally made in view of ceremonial faults, for which ethical repentance was strictly impossible, must have come to suggest that, in addition to repentance, a sacrificial opera- tion was needful even in cases of moral trans- gression.