God and Anger

Nonnullos audivimus hunc animae perniciosum morbum ita excusare tentantes, ut eum detestabiliore interpretatione Scripturarum extenuare gestirent, dicentes non esse noxium, si delinquentibus fratribus irascamur; siquidem, inquiunt, ipse Deus contra eos qui eum, vel scire nolunt, vel scientes contemnunt, furere atque irasci dicatur, ut ibi: Et iratus est furore Dominus in populum suum; vel cum orat Propheta, dicens: Domine, ne in furore tuo arguas me, neque in ira tua corripias me; non intelligentes quod dum hominibus occasionem pestiferi vitii volunt concedere, immensitati divinae ac fonti totius puritatis injuriam carnalis passionis admisceant. Si enim haec cum dicuntur de Deo, carnali et pingui secundum litteram significatione percipienda sunt; ergo et dormit, cum dicitur, Exsurge, quare obdormis, Domine? De quo alibi dicitu, Ecce non dormitabit neque dormiet, qui custodit Israel; et stat, ac sedet, cum dicit, Coelum mihi est sedes, terra autem scabellum pedum meorum, qui metitur coelum palmo, et terram pugillo concludit; et crapulatur a vino, cum dicitur, Et exsurrexit sicut dormiens Dominus potens crapulatus a vino qui solus habet immortalitatem, et lucem habitat inaccessibilem; ut praetermittam ignorationem, et oblivionem, quae de ipso legimus in Scripturis sanctis frequenter inserta, deinde lineamenta membrorum, quae tamquam de homine figurali et composito describuntur, capillis scilicet, capite et naribus, oculis ac facie, manibus ac branchiss, digitis, utero pedibusque; quae omnia secundum vilem litterae sonum si voluerimus admittere, Deum lineamentis membrorum et corporea figura compositum, quod dictu quoque nefas est, quodque absit a nobis, necesse est aestimari.  Sanctus Ioannes Cassianus, De Coenobiorum Institutis, Lib VIII

We have heard some attempting to excuse anger, that most pernicious disease of the soul, by striving to extenuate it by a detestable interpretation of Scripture, saying that it is not a wrong if we are angry with erring brothers, since, they say, God Himself is said to rage and to be angry with those who are unwilling to know Him, or with those who knowing Him spurn Him, as here: 'And the Lord was angered with a fury against His own people',1 or where the Prophet prays, saying, 'O Lord, rebuke me not in your fury, nor in your anger chasten me.'2 But they do not understand that while they want to grant to men an occasion for a most pestilent vice, they are mixing in with the Divine Depth and Font of all Purity a fault of human passion. If indeed when these things are said of God they are to be grasped literally with a carnal and brutish signification, then also God sleeps, for it is said, 'Rise up, why do you sleep, O Lord?'3  And yet it is said elsewhere of Him: 'Behold he will neither slumber nor sleep who guards Israel.' 4 And He also stands and sits, since He says, ' Heaven is my seat, and earth the footstool for my feet'5  He indeed who 'Measures out the heaven with his hand, and holds the earth in his fist.'6  And He is 'drunk with wine'7 for it is said, 'The Lord awoke like a sleeper, a mighty man drunk with wine' 7 He indeed who 'alone has immortality and dwells in inaccessible light',8 which is to pass over the ignorance and the forgetfulness of which we often read in passages of Holy Scripture, and also the outline of His limbs which are spoken of as arranged and ordered like those of a man, that is, with hair, head, nostrils, eyes, face, hands, arms, fingers, belly and feet; for if we wish to admit all this according to the base literal sense it is necessary to think of God with the outline of limbs and composed of a bodily form, which indeed is wicked just to speak of and may such a thought  be far from us. Saint John Cassian, Institutes of the Coenobia, Book 8 1 Ps 105. 40  2 Ps 6.2  3 Ps 43.23 4 Ps 120.4 5 Is 66.1  6 Is 40.12  7 Ps 77.65  7 Ps 77.65 8 1 Tim 6.16