At first glance, drawing a hard line between the Christian definition of God and Hellenic philosophy seems the right and logical thing to do. Most laity are apt to do just that. However, historically and philosophically, matters are not at all that simple. Let me try and explain as simply as I can. The Bible is not a book of metaphysics, tells us little about how God is built, for example. So, as the early church reached into the educated classes of the Greco-Roman world, the fathers began incorporating Hellenic metaphysics into theology, into their definition of God as he is in his own nature. They were heavily influenced by Hellenic schools of thought, such as provided by Parmenides, Zeno, Plato, which depreciated and de-valuated the world of time and change and relativity as a major illusion. Hence, the early church baptized as Christian Aristotle's Unmoved Mover. God, then, in the writings of the fathers, as well as the ensuing creeds and confessions, was defined as void of body, parts, passions, compassion, wholly immutable, wholly independent of creation, wholly immaterial, wholly simple, the epitome of the immutable and the immune. The fathers were well aware that this model of God seriously conflicts with the highly anthropomorphic imagery of God in the Bible, which describes God as having strong emotion and also subject to change, as we find in about 100 passages. However, these key biblical passages were written off as mere figures of speech which had nothing to do with actual nature of God. As Calvin once put it, these were simply God talking "baby talk" to us. Hence, in his sermons on God's wrath, Calvin was careful to warn the congregation that his sermons in no way meant that God was truly angry or subject to any other emotion. Centuries earlier, St. Anselm argued that God, in his own nature, is wholly without compassion, as God is passionless, without any emotion, to start with, and also incapable of experiencing any form of suffering. In recent years, especially since WWII, theologians have seriously questioned this classical model, on biblical and metaphysical grounds.