It is a search, that of the true meaning of the “wrath of God,” that occupied the Fathers of the Church right from the first centuries and that it is important to review today, seeing how the expression continues to give scandal. And we will say more: this apparently anthropomorphic expression is perhaps the one that contains at its core the densest load of mystery and that helps us to penetrate most deeply into the divine transcendence.” One must therefore accept things as they are: anger is one of the attitudes of the biblical God. And yet love is also found in the Old Testament, and anger is found in the New. Today it appears unbearable to a Simone Weil, who, as Marcion once did, contrasted the New Testament God of love with the angry God of the Old. The Alexandrian Jews were already blushing over it in front of the Greek philosophers, and were striving to attenuate its significance. “Few other expressions grate more on bashful modern ears. There wrote in this regard, in his 1953 “Essay on the mystery of history,” the brilliant Jesuit theologian Jean Daniélou, whom Paul VI made a cardinal: And today as well, it is almost universally a taboo concept. Because already for the philosophical thought of Jesus’ time, for Seneca and Cicero, the “wrath of God” was something unthinkable and unutterable. It is rare, extremely rare for the “wrath of God” to be evoked in the words of the current pope, which are rather an unending downpour of divine mercy.Īnd instead this time he has ventured out onto this terrain that is arduous not only for him, but for the humanity of every time. It is where he says that “in people’s justified anger, the Church sees the reflection of the wrath of God.” While the world’s attention is riveted by the ordeal of Cardinal George Pell (in the photo), one must not leave by the wayside a surprising passage from the speech with which Francis concluded the summit of February 21-24 on sexual abuse against minors. Strangely enough at the close of the farcial Abuse Summit it was Pope Francis who brought up the subject of God’s Wrath. The Wrath of God is an unpopular topic in contemporary times, where God tends to be thought of as a Super Genie or a Friend who is constantly giving us thumbs up.