How I know He has feelings is because He saved me. Nobody without feelings saves anybody.
He showed us how to live in union with Him (happy) by giving us the law, and He gave us a way to make things right with Him (the old sacrificial system, symbolizing the consequences of living apart from God, who is the source of true life) because keeping the law (perfection) is only possible for God (who is perfect), the old way foreshadowing and culminating in Jesus’ perfect sacrifice… the Message showing us He loves us no matter what. This love makes possible the closest friendship possible, one you can’t even come close to imagining before you actually experience it.
That’s just the emotion of love. There’s more, though they all spring from love.
And He’s still omnipotent… even with emotions… something to think about. How is it a contradiction to have emotions and yet be omnipotent? How can emotions be a weakness for God? They might be a weakness for beings as frail as we humans, but… that’s the point… for when we are weak (and not in denial about it)… that’s when we are open to allowing God’s strength to help us… then we are strong.
“However, God does not have intent. For God to have intent, it would have to have intentions towards something. God’s motivation towards that something would have to arise from something which it lacks. God is not deficient of anything, being absolutely infinite; therefore, God has no intent.”
– DeSpinozist
Here’s a few things to think about…
“God’s attention does not pass from thought to thought, for His knowledge embraces everything in a single spiritual co-intuition. For if God is simple, then His thoughts are not sequential but simultaneous. He does not know things inferentially but intuitively. On the contrary, if God is not simple, then He could think in temporal succession. And, as some have shown, if God is temporal, then He is also spatial. Indeed, such a God would even be material (which is contrary to Scripture, e.g., John 4:24). And if God is limited to the space/time world, then He could think no faster than the speed of light. Thus He would not even be able to know the whole universe at a given moment, to say nothing of having infallible knowledge of the future,”
(pp. 52-53, Geisler, “Chosen But Free”).
God does not will from a lack. All that He wills is already fulfilled from His perspective (beyond time). If He did not love, it would contradict His nature. He does not love from a lack, but from His perfection… and we are in turn to love likewise…
Some ask whether we love because the person is inherently lovable or deserving of or needful of love – or whether we love because we’ve got love to give. There is selfish giving (which isn’t really giving) and there is other-focused, selfless giving. Sometimes we do what we call “love” not out of ‘having love to give’ but out of a deficit (read Plato’s Symposium). Other times, the best times, we love because God gives us His love, and we’ve got plenty left over to share. A good analogy is the well of creativity. Some seem to have bottomless wells, others’ dry up easily. God’s well of creativity and love is infinite and one-and-the-same, and we draw from it when we walk with Him. His power (love, creativity) is perfected in our weakness (deficit) (2 Cor 12:9).
See my Lapis Lazuli thread, and this interesting article:
Ichthus77 