The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (1085 page)

Immortality
:

see
AFTERLIFE
.

 
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Immortality, Chinese
:

see
HSIEN
;
CH'ANG-SHENG PU-SSU
.

 
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Impassibility of God
.

The belief that because God is immutable, unchanging, and unchangeable, he cannot suffer or be affected by what happens in, e.g., his creation. This view has dominated Christian theology for most of its history. However, this is far removed from the biblical picture of God as one who feels and responds, and who can hardly be unaffected by the crucifixion of Jesus, if Jesus is indeed the Son of the Father.
Process theology
reversed this emphasis by insisting that becoming is a necessary condition of being. Others have retained the traditional emphasis on the unchanging/unchangeable nature of God, but have insisted that change, suffering, petition, intercession, etc., are consequential to God and evoke response, but to and from one whose nature it is to make such response without his own nature changing.

 
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Impermanence
(in Buddhism)
:

see
ANICCA
.

 
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(Lat., ‘let it be printed’). The permission granted in
Roman Catholicism
by the appropriate authority for the approved publication of certain religious works.
Canon law
no longer requires any book on a religious subject to seek the imprimatur, but it encourages such books to be submitted for approval (cf.
haskamah
in Judaism). The imprimatur requires the prior
nihil obstat
(‘nothing obstructs’) of the officially appointed censor before it can be issued.

 
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Imputation
.

The reckoning of qualities of one person as belonging to another. Traditional
Protestant
theology emphasizes the imputation of
Adam's
guilt at the
Fall
to the whole human race, and in particular God's imputation of
Christ's
righteousness to believers who have no righteousness of their own.

 
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