Reason number four why Michael Horton believes “the extremes of ‘Stoic’ detachment and ‘Hegelian’ dependence” should be avoided regarding the impassibility of God:
Fourth, a Christian doctrine of God must supplement causal with communicative analogies that are more in keeping with Scripture’s own testimony to God’s performative speech. Although traditional Christian theology has sharply distinguished its views from Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover, I agree with Vanhoozer that communicative categories offer a better way of speaking about God’s interaction with the world. Vanhoozer makes this point by comparing God’s impassibility to Jesus’ impeccability (inability to sin):
Jesus was sinless yet subject to real temptation in the same way that an invincible army is subject to attack. Something similar, I believe, may be said for divine impassibility…. God feels the force of his people’s suffering: “I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of this taskmasters; I know their sufferings” (Ex 3:7). Yet as Jesus feels the force of temptation without sinning, so God feels the force of the human experience without suffering change in his being, will or knowledge. Impassibility means not that God is unfeeling but that God is never overcome or overwhelmed by passion…. God genuinely relates to human persons via his communicative action, but nothing humans do conditions or affects God’s communicative initiatives and God’s communicative acts.
[Vanhoozer, First Theology, p 93]Evil and sin are also comprehended in God’s eternal decree; therefore, not even these can be said to condition God’s will or acts.
Horton, The Christian Faith (pp 251-252)
And who says theology is not practical!?