Speculative theology’s completion requires an original passivity in God.

Evidence

If in the final analysis, these arguments represent the only possible account of speculative theology, then we would have to admit that speculative theology’s ability to reach completion requires either an inconsistency or an absence of thought. The Hegelian idea of parousia – God’s absolute presence-to-self – could in fact only be sustained by admitting into God an original passivity: the possibility of His submission to the same constitutive negativity that marks all subjectivity. This would be an unacknowledged radicalization of Origen, who had already written: ‘God the Father himself is not impassible!’ — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 644

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: does Malabou read this passivity as the seed of plasticity itself — the affinity between God and the negativity that enables him to receive form as well as give it?
• XREF: Origen’s ‘God the Father is not impassible’ connects to the patristic theopaschite debates and to process theology’s suffering God. — connects to: Thinking the negation of negation requires passing through the death of God — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 156; Hegel’s God of absolute presence requires an original passivity foreshadowed by Origen — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 645; God’s alienation is at once receptivity and spontaneity, receiving the form He gives — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 647

Broader Connections

• Hegel’s God of absolute presence requires an original passivity foreshadowed by Origen #corroborates (1.00) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 645
• Thinking the negation of negation requires passing through the death of God #expands (0.75) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 156
• God’s alienation is at once receptivity and spontaneity, receiving the form He gives #qualifies (0.75) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 647