Anger is a power emotion, the “fight” of the fight or flight due, associated with the general activation syndrome. It is well known that anger is a dangerous emotion, for unlike its usefulness in confronting a lion or a bear in which is gives one focused vision and increased strength, when it comes to human enemies that is useless unless one is locked in physical combat. Without that expenditure of energy anger, including in its less outward forms such as resentment or smoldering rage, is both psychologically habituating (think of a person who frequently explodes in anger) and physically damaging (as one psychologist quipped, “Anger is like sticking a knife in yourself and expecting the other person to bleed”). Long-term anger raises blood pressure with concomitant physiological damage and damages various organ systems. But the bad news does not end there.

Anger is found among the seven deathly sins (either as anger or wrath) and it is one of the most common sins that find their way into the confessional. It is relationally destructive, of course, but also destructive of our relationship with God. But what about “righteous anger” or “just anger” or “justified anger” (to mention three ways it may be characterized)?

In the Hebrew Scriptures one might see some justification for that concept, for some of the heroes act under the impulse of anger, such as David coming to pay back Nabal for Nabal’s insults in the face of David’s protection of the man and his property or some of the feats of Samson which one could view as empowered by anger as much as by the “Spirit of the Lord.” Then there are the Psalms in which a Psalmist says that he hates the Lord’s enemies “with a perfect hatred” (or “total hatred”) or otherwise hates the evil person and will at least chase them from his sight. Psalms, of course, express human feelings and may be read as simply “letting it all hang out” and speaking to God honestly, yet at least in the eyes of the Psalmist at times this anger seems to be noted as a mark of righteousness.

Christians, however, privilege the New Testament where the presence of Jesus gives one a new model. In the most provoking of circumstances, such as the cross, he does not lash out with anger but prays that God will forgive those crucifying him. And this is typical of his life. In Mark 3:5 Jesus “looked around at them with anger” (RSV) but does not express that anger. He is grieved inwardly, but what he does outwardly is heal the man with the dried up hand. One may want to read anger into some of his prophetic denunciations, “You brood of vipers,” but we have no outward action and no voice tone. Perhaps we are reading in what we would be expressing in saying that. Could it be that he was actually sad? After all, on approaching Jerusalem and later on his way to the cross he weeps over or tells the women wailing at his fate to weep over Jerusalem. Anger is often read into the cleansing of the Temple, although N. T. Wright cites it as a prophetic demonstration in the Temple in which the sacrifices are briefly interrupted as a sign of the coming destruction of the Temple. He has a whip in John’s account, but then he needs that to get the cattle moving. Send the cattle rushing out of the temple and their owners will follow pell-mell after them. It never says he his a human being, and it is only the tables of the money changers that are overthrown (which effectively stopped their changing money into Temple coinage and their confronting him since they were too busy looking for their money). Be it as it may, the terms for anger are not used.

What Jesus says about anger fits with this. “every one who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment and whoever insults his brother shall be liable to the counsel and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ she be liable to the hell of fire.” Notice that he is not concerned with inward feelings, which we can redirect but not prevent, but with outward expressions, in this case attacks on the honor of the “brother.” Jesus does not portray himself as angry in parables (with an exception noted below). In the parable of the two sons the older brother is angry but the father is angry with neither son but receives the one with open arms and entreats the other to join the party.

The one exception in the New Testament is that God is said to be angry (often using the expressing “wrath”, thumos not orgē). While over the generations we have realized that God cannot get angry for he has no body and anger as he know it is a physiological response, the expression does describe God’s judgment in both Old and New Testaments. When it comes to judgment, especially final judgment, one confronts the total otherness of God to one’s evil, his total opposition. But then God is what humans are not: just. James 4:11-12 makes it clear that there is quite a difference between humans and God in relationship to judgment. God does judge justly (both rewarding and punishing) and humans sin when they do it (they are getting into God’s “seat”, taking the place of God, and that does not get good press in the Scriptures. The only humans in the New Testament who are given authority to judge are the representatives of Jesus, i.e. the Twelve and then Paul and his delegates. We would say that they act in persona Christi, that is, in the person of Christ through the authority he has given them and in the power of the Spirit. And generally this is in formal contexts where they are acting or to act ex officio.

So the expression of anger in the New Testament is to be avoided, but remember that this is the expression, what people outside can experience, not the feelings, the physiological-psychological response to perceived threats that one might confront. The feelings just are; the expression and even the rumination on the feelings or the hurt engendering the feeling we can deal with. And the way to deal with them is not brute suppression (for the feelings are still in there wrecking havoc) but handing them over to the true judge. I teach the use of the Jesus Prayer connected to our breathing (4 counts in and 6 counts out), “Lord Jesus Christ . . . have mercy on me,” and on the “have mercy on me” to as vividly as one can picture yourself handing the trigger incident or incidents or the person or the situation as a whole over to Jesus. “You are the judge of all the earth,” one is implicitly saying, “you have the capability and authority to take this and deal with it rightly. Please do.” Obviously that breath-prayer needs to be repeated multiple times before you come back to inner peace. And the process will need to be repeated when the memory crops up in one’s mind, perhaps for a year or two if the situation was serious (and that usually means, serious to you). But it does work. There are other phrases one can use in the breath-prayer or one might pray what is called the “Chaplet of Divine Mercy” for the someone who has offended you or others. As I write this I frequently do that with respect to the conflict in the Ukraine (where I have former students) and in Palestine. And I do one or the other with respect to political candidates (it seems that especially in the last few years anger over politicians or politics stoked by news media is especially common in the confessional – better to get rid of it there than to let it destroy one’s soul). The point is that feelings just are and can be redirected, defused, or otherwise deal with other than ruminating on or expressing the anger. That is what the New Testament would desire.

So what does the rest of the New Testament other than Jesus himself say about anger? First, anger is a vice and occurs in vice lists (2 Cor 12:20: “perhaps there may be quarreling, jealousy, anger, selfishness, slander, gossip, conceit, and disorder”; Gal 5:20: “idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit,”; Col 3:8 “But now put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and foul talk from your mouth.” Eph 4:31 “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, with all malice.” Second, it is contrary to prayer, 1 Timothy 2:8 “I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling.” Third, we should be careful in child raising not to provoke it in others, for it transmits down the generations: Eph 6:4 “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger.” Fourth, we should deal with the emotion quickly, for while we cannot stop that energy from arising within us, we can release it to Jesus without letting it out in our behavior. That is how I understand Eph 4:26, “Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger.” It is when we willingly express it, directing it at others that we sin, but just bottling it up is neither good for our health nor for the ultimate control of anger. Dealing with it is important. That is what Evagrius of Pontus indicated in On Thoughts and Talking Back.

In other words, the New Testament has a good deal to say about human anger and it is consistent over Jesus, Paul, and James. It is a vice to be dealt with just as Jesus deal with his feelings or passions as a human being and acted in grace and mercy even during his passion. There is no righteous anger in the New Testament as James says (Jas 1:20) “for the anger of man does not work the righteousness of God.” And with that the Church in the patristic period would heartily agree.