The problem of the Pain of God is for me a perennial one, for wherever in the Anglican Communion God calls me to minister (with few exceptions) I have been and shall be called upon to assent to the proposition that God is ‘without body, parts or passions’ (Article I of the XXXIX Articles of Religion). My difficulty is simply that, although I am content to admit that God is incorporeus et impartibilis without any qualifications at all, I cannot admit that He is impassibilis without making so many qualifications that the admission almost dies of them. I suspect furthermore that those who are obliged to give general assent to the Westminster Confession of Faith may have a similar difficulty with Chapter II, Section I, which contains the same proposition. The scriptural warrant for it is said to be found in Acts 14.15, where Paul and Barnabas cry to the people of Lystra, ‘Men, why are you doing this? We also are men, of like nature with you, and bring you good news, that you should turn from these vain things to a living God who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them.’ In its context, I understand this verse to imply that God, unlike Zeus and Hermes, is neither fickle nor whimsical, but constant and free to achieve His purpose. As the Greek Fathers would say, He is both autokinetos and tautokinetos.