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Webster 1913 Edition


Theopathy

The-op′a-thy

,
Noun.
[Gr. [GREEK] God + [GREEK], [GREEK], to suffer, feel.]
Capacity for religious affections or worship.

Webster 1828 Edition


Theopathy

THEOP'ATHY

,
Noun.
[Gr. God, and passion.] Religious suffering; suffering for the purpose of subduing sinful propensities.

Definition 2024


theopathy

theopathy

English

Noun

theopathy (usually uncountable, plural theopathies)

  1. The capacity of a person to worship, or to experience a religious belief
    • 1902, William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature:
      Here language itself reflects the feeling that the divine pathos, the passion of the "pathetic God" who "yearned" to be known, presupposes as its correlate a theopathy in the human being whose God He is.
    • 2004, Andrew Brown (tr.), The Ark of Speech, Routledge, translation of L'arche de la parole by Jean-Louis Chrétien:
      A new characteristic can be added to the description of prayer: the manifestation of self to other through speech, an agonistic speech struggling for its truth, is an ordeal, an undergoing of God, a suffering of God, a theopathy.