The answer
Prof. Maximos Aghiorgoussis says “He is not a blind ‘supernatural force;’ nor is He the God of the philosophers, ‘the prime mover that moves everything but remains itself unmoved’ (Aristotle); nor the immaterial ideal form (Plato). He is God manifest as a Person, Creator and Manager of the world, and especially of human beings. He is a compassionate Father to His sons and daughters, who enters into a covenant with them as their God, and they become His chosen people.”
Although the early theologians of Alexandria spoke of God's immutability and transcendence above human emotions,393 they often spoke of His true Fatherhood, experienced through a love that cannot be expressed in human language, as if He had human feelings and emotions. The scholar Origen says “The Father himself too—the God of the universe—who is ‘long-suffering and very merciful’ and one who pities—does he not suffer in some way? Or are you unaware that when he manages human affairs, he suffers human passion? For ‘the Lord your God sustained’ your ways, ‘just as if a man were to sustain his own son’ (Deut. 1:31).”394
Fr. Tadros Yacoub Malaty
Notes
393 Origen, De Principiis (On First Principles) 2.4.4 (ANF 4:277–278) and Homilies on Numbers, trans., Thomas P. Scheck, (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic, 2009) Homily 16.3: p. 92.
394 Origen of Alexandria: Exegetical Works on Ezekiel. the Fourteen Homilies and the Greek Fragments of the Homilies, Commentaries and Scholia. Text and Translation, trans., Mischa Hooker, ed., Roger Pearse, (Ipswich: Chieftan Publishing, 2014) Homily 6.6: p. 195.