Book Write-Up: Calvinism and the Problem of Evil

David E. Alexander and Daniel M. Johnson, ed.  Calvinism and the Problem of Evil.  Eugene: Pickwick Publications (an Imprint of Wipf and Stock), 2016.  See here to purchase the book.

Calvinism is a Christian belief system that holds that God, before the foundation of the world, predestined the specific individuals who would be saved and damned.  It thinks that people are so sinful that they are unable to repent and believe in Christ apart from God’s transforming grace, and that conversion is inevitable when God’s regenerating grace works on a person.  There are many Calvinists who also maintain that God foreordained everything that would happen.

The problem of evil is a philosophical problem that asks how evil can exist, if God is omnipotent and benevolent.  If God is both omnipotent and benevolent, would not God stop evil, which hurts so many people?

Many Christians address the problem of evil by appealing to libertarian free will.  The idea is that God allows people freely to make their own decisions, since they can only accept God authentically if that is the case.  Their version of free will is called “libertarian” because it presumes that people’s decisions are uncaused and that people were able to choose differently from the choice that they actually made; this, the idea goes, is why people are morally responsible.  Not only have many Christians appealed to libertarian free will to explain why God permits evil choices today, but they also believe that it is relevant to God allowing Adam and Eve to sin, in a sin that brought evil and chaos into the world.

Calvinism differs from this approach.  It tends to reject libertarian free will, embracing instead compatibilism, which holds that there are causes to (or, perhaps, influences on) the choices that people make.  Rather than regarding people as morally neutral and thus able to choose equally between good and evil, it holds that people have a propensity towards evil as a result of original sin, and yet that God can change the desires of those whom God elected unto salvation.

As David E. Alexander and Daniel M. Johnson state in their introduction to Calvinism and the Problem of Evil, Calvinism has been rather marginalized in Christian discussions of the problem of evil.  The reason is that many Christians think that Calvinism makes the problem of evil worse rather than solving it.  If Calvinism believes that God not only permitted, but foreordained, that evil should exist, does that not make God the author of evil?  Does Calvinism make people into robots rather than rational agents with choice?  Moreover, how can God send people to hell for something that they cannot control, namely, God’s decision to choose them for damnation rather than salvation?

This book interacts with these questions, and others.  In terms of another question with which the book interacts, there is the question of how Adam and Eve could sin, when God made them good.  Calvinists can understand how people born with original sin and a corrupt nature can sin: it is their nature.  But how could good people sin?

In this review, I will comment about each chapter.

Chapter 1, “Calvinism and the Problem of Evil: A Map of the Territory,” by Daniel M. Johnson, is lengthy, yet well-written and lucid.  Unlike some of the later essays, it tends to avoid arguments in which letters stand for concepts.  It lays out different Calvinist perspectives on such questions as how Adam and Eve could sin.  It said that God has a reason to damn at least some people as an object lesson of God’s justice, and the reaction that immediately occurred in my mind was: “But Calvinism does not just say that some people will be damned, but that a lot of people will be.  Why would God do that?”  A later essay in the book would address this question.

Chapter 2, “Molinist Gunslingers: God and the Authorship of Sin,” by Greg Welty, argues that Molinism has the same problem that many think Calvinism has.  Molinism holds that God foresaw different possible worlds and chose to create a world in which people freely sinned.  For Welty, one can accuse Molinism of presuming that God is the one who is responsible for sin, which is what critics of Calvinism say about Calvinism.  Welty perhaps could have made this point without all of the elaborate argumentation, but he still raises an interesting question, one that subsequent essays will raise, as well: Do non-Calvinist Christian beliefs run into the same problems that many think are inherent to Calvinism?  This chapter is also effective because it cites Scriptures in which God is portrayed as somehow causing, or being behind, people’s evil deeds, only God uses those deeds for a positive and just end.  The question that occurred in my mind was this: Even if there are cases of determinism or compatibilism in the Bible, does that mean that all decisions are foreordained or influenced by factors beyond the decider’s control?  Maybe God can use a person who has voluntarily become evil as a tool for God’s just purpose.

Chapter 3, “Theological Determinism and the ‘Authoring Sin’ Objection,” by Heath White, proposes that God foreordained evil but did not intend to do so.  This does not imply that evil was God’s accident, but rather that God had a just and righteous purpose in mind (God’s glorification and display of God’s righteous character), and God foresaw that a world that had evil would best achieve that purpose.  In my opinion, this model somewhat presents God as limited by the alternatives in front of God.  This chapter was rather helpful in concisely explaining the difference between supralapsarianism and infralapsarianism.

Chapter 4, “Not the Author of Evil: A Question of Providence, Not a Problem for Calvinism,” by James E. Bruce, concerns the thought of Francis Turretin (1623-1687).  According to Bruce, Turretin said that God acts on people, and yet people remain free and rational agents.  Like Welty, Bruce cites Scriptures in which God seems to cause certain people’s evil acts.  Of particular interest was Bruce’s discussion of Turretin’s interaction with Proverbs 21:1, which states that the king’s heart is like water in the hands of the LORD, who turns it wherever the LORD wills.  According to Turretin, God here is not tempting the king to sin, for that would be impossible: James 1:13, after all, emphatically denies that God tempts people to sin.  Rather, for Turretin, what is going on is that God is providing the king with righteous ideas knowing fully well that the king will use those ideas in wicked ways.  That view was new to me!

Chapter 5, “Orthodoxy, Theological Determinism, and the Problem of Evil,” by David E. Alexander, essentially argues that many Christian beliefs presume compatibilism or are more consistent with compatibilism than with libertarianism.  These are Christian beliefs that even non-Calvinist Christians hold.  They include such beliefs as original sin, the inspiration of Scripture, Christ’s sinlessness, and God’s sovereignty.  This is a legitimate point, yet questions can be asked.  Does God have to determine everything, to be sovereign?  Cannot God be sovereign over the big picture without controlling every little detail (even through secondary causes or means)?  Cannot God mitigate original sin and provide people with more ability to choose with prevenient grace, or common grace?  This chapter also addresses the topic of hell and proposes that God shows some love to people in hell by keeping them alive there.  This is a difficult concept for me, since they are being eternally tormented in hell.

Chapter 6, “Discrimination: Aspects of God’s Causal Activity,” by Paul Helm, likens God’s love for the elect to people legitimately loving their own family more than outsiders.  Helm seems to question whether a world in which there is absolute equality among people is even possible.  Helm also challenges the idea that Calvinists believe that God forces the elect to convert, or brainwashes them: it is rather a matter of enlightenment, of awakening.

Chapter 7, “On Grace and Free Will,” by Hugh J. McCann, is noteworthy because it recognizes and wrestles with different dimensions of human decisions.  On the one hand, we did not technically decide what the desires that influence our decisions would be: those desires are just there.  On the other hand, it does appear that our decisions are spontaneous and that we are active in making them.  McCann seemingly attempts to posit that determinism and compatibilism can co-exist with human free will.  Another noteworthy element of this chapter is that McCann rejects any idea that God deliberated prior to creation, for McCann believes that God knew what was correct and made what was correct, without really needing to deliberate.  That seems to differ from Heath White’s model (chapter 3) of God surveying various options, depending on how literally White took this model.

Chapter 8, “The First Sin: A Dilemma for Christian Determinists,” by Alexander R. Pruss, engages the question of how Adam and Eve could sin, being good.  This chapter is detailed and complex, but it is still useful because it interacts with options.  Pruss does appear to have a problem with Jonathan Edwards’ model, in which God somehow influences Adam and Eve to sin by withdrawing grace from them.  This shows that there is diversity among Calvinists.  (UPDATE: Actually, Pruss is a Catholic.)  Pruss also seems rather open to libertarian free will being something that Adam and Eve possessed.

Chapter 9, “Calvinism and the First Sin,” by James N. Anderson, also addresses how Adam and Eve could sin, being good.  Anderson relays a helpful analogy from Alfred Mele, in which an ordinarily self-controlled woman named Ann gives in to alcohol when she is pressured.  Anderson also elaborates on the authorial model of God’s providence, a model that was briefly mentioned by previous contributors, but which Anderson explained more fully.  In this model, God is likened to an author: a character is acting as he is acting because of what the author wrote, and yet the character is still acting according to his own free will.  In reading this, I thought of the show, Once Upon a Time, in which an author wrote what the characters did, and they did it, while acting freely.  Moreover, Anderson interacts with Molinism, the belief that God foresees but does not foreordain evil, and open theism, which denies that God even knows the future.  These are non-Calvinist views.  Anderson believes that divine foreknowledge is rather deterministic itself, for, if God foresees something, does that not make it inevitable?  (I one time debated this question with an Intervarsity sponsor, and his answer to the question was “no.”)  Anderson also holds that open theism presents God as a gambler.  To that, I ask this question: Can one legitimately believe that God does not know every detail of the future and yet still exercises sovereignty over the big picture?  God can control how God will act, after all, whether or not God entirely knows how we will act.

Chapter 10, “A Compatibicalvinist Demonstrative-Goods Defense,” by Christopher R. Green, explores interesting questions.  Green interacts with the question of whether God could have used nightmares to teach people about God’s righteousness and justice rather than actual evil.  He makes a point about animal suffering, contending that it may be an example of God showing God’s consistency and faithfulness through the regularity that exists in nature, which Jeremiah 33:20 states is the case with the day and the night.  (As an animal lover, I consider that to be a grisly way for God to demonstrate God’s nature; still, animal suffering is a theological problem.)  Green also talks about how God can use a person’s story for future generations, without that person’s knowledge, as God did with the characters in the Bible.  One’s participation in the divine drama, in which evil is a reality with which people deal, may show people what God is like and edify future generations.

Chapter 11, “Calvinism and the Problem of Hell,” by Matthew J. Hart, articulates the thoughts of Jonathan Edwards to argue that so many people are damned to hell to edify the glorified elect: to enhance their appreciation of their redemption, as they realize that they themselves could have been damned, apart from God’s grace.  To this, I ask whether glorified Christians will have any love for the people in hell.  Are we not on earth, after all, to learn to love others, and is that not more important than for us to relish our own advantages?  Hart also addresses the question of whether God is responsible to love everyone God brought into being and sustains, even the non-elect.  Hart invokes an analogy in which a capsule produces adult males.  Are the creators of the capsule required to love those adult males, to the same extent that they love their own families, even though they technically created the adult males?  Hart’s answer seems to be no, and he believes that this resembles God’s stance towards the non-elect.  This analogy made me question the effectiveness of analogies in explaining the Bible: Is a sci-fi analogy, like this one, a bit anachronistic?  Should not something on the radar of the biblical authors be cited, instead?

Chapter 12, “Calvinism, Self-Attestation, and Apathy toward Arguments from Evil,” by Anthony Bryson, challenges an idea held by some Calvinists that the Bible is self-attesting: that Christians know it is true because it is God’s word, period!  According to this view, to appeal to, say, reason or evidence to substantiate the Bible is to say that there are criteria for truth above God’s word, and this is wrong.  For Bryson, this belief influences some Calvinists to conclude that the problem of evil is not a significant problem.  If we know that God is real because the Bible is God’s word, after all, then the problem of evil cannot challenge God’s existence.  Bryson disputes this.  This chapter will be challenging and difficult for those who are unfamiliar with epistemological externalism and epistemological internalism.

Overall, this book does provide food for thought.  It explores and interacts with various possibilities.  A possible disadvantage is that the book was rather clinical and abstract in its discussion of evil, rather than acknowledging the real-life damage that evil brings.  Whether the book successfully makes the God of Calvinism look any better is a subjective judgment: I did not always think that it did.  A definite positive of the book, however, is that it shows how diverse Calvinism can be, and it highlighted some interpretations that were new to me.

I apologize for any unintentional distortions on my part in describing Calvinism or the views of these authors.
I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.

Book Write-Up: What Does the Bible Say About Suffering?

Brian Han Gregg.  What Does the Bible Say About Suffering?  Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2016.  See here to buy the book.

Brian Han Gregg has a Ph.D. from Notre Dame and teaches biblical studies at the University of Sioux Falls in South Dakota.

In What Does the Bible Say About Suffering?, Gregg discusses the Bible as it addresses the issue of human suffering.  Often in the book, Gregg prefers to interact in an in-depth manner with specific biblical passages rather than covering the topic of suffering in the Bible in a comprehensive sense.  Among the topics with which Gregg interacts are: God’s reward of the righteous and punishment of the wicked in the Hebrew Bible; Cain’s choice to do evil in the Book of Genesis; God using evil for good, as in the biblical story of Joseph; suffering as an attack by Satan, which occurs in the Book of Job and is mentioned in the New Testament; suffering as a test or as a means to assist people in their spiritual growth; suffering as a way for Christ to make himself known to others through us, amidst our weakness and vulnerability; God’s comfort of believers amidst their suffering, and their comfort of others; and Christ’s suffering acts of sacrificial service, which believers are to follow.  Gregg believes that all of these biblical interactions with suffering should be considered, and that to focus on one alone to the exclusion of the others disrupts the symphony that the Bible conveys.

Here are some thoughts about the book:

A.  Chapter 2 was excellent.  This chapter was about God rewarding the righteous and punishing the wicked.  Gregg astutely notes that this is a significant theme in the Hebrew Bible, but that the New Testament shifts reward and punishment more to the afterlife, or to the eschaton.  Gregg also effectively addresses a question: How can we tell if our suffering is God punishing us for our sins?  Gregg responds that God does not send us on a wild goose chase to identify some sin for which God is punishing us, but that God often tells people explicitly when God is punishing them for a sin.  This chapter was sensitive to problems and potential objections, and it was biblical.

B.  Chapter 2 was the strongest chapter in the book, and the chapter after that was all right.  In Chapter 3, Gregg shows how God reached out to Cain in love even after rejecting Cain’s sacrifice, and he briefly addresses thorny topics surrounding human free will (i.e., mental health issues).

C.  It was at the end of Chapter 5 that I began to be disappointed with the book.  Chapter 5 had good points: for example, Gregg argues that Satan in the Book of Job appears rather sinister, perhaps to argue against biblical scholars who regard Satan in the Book of Job merely as God’s prosecuting attorney.  Near the end of the book, Gregg was astutely discussing the weaknesses that can accompany blaming Satan for our suffering.  Then, Gregg was about to address a question: How can we tell if our suffering is from Satan?  I was expecting for Gregg to knock this question out of the park, as he did with the question in Chapter 2.  But he did not; my impression is that he felt that he could not, and that we really cannot make that determination, apart from God’s guidance.

D.  In the final chapter of the book, Gregg attempts to address the larger question of whether believers can identify the reason for their suffering.  Is it a test?  Is it punishment?  On page 164, he says, “There is no formula for discernment, but God has promised to lead his children through the valley.”  Gregg says that Scripture, the Holy Spirit, and insight from others can assist one in discernment.  There may be some wisdom to this, but it is not iron-clad.  The appeal to Scripture leaves us exactly where we started: Scripture has all these rationales for suffering, and believers want to know which rationale fits their situation.  Regarding the Holy Spirit, there are Christians who claim some pretty wacky things that they attribute to the Holy Spirit!  And insight from others can be helpful, but not necessarily: Gregg is aware of how unhelpfully Job’s friends advised Job!  My hope was that more of the book would be like Chapter 2, but it was not exactly.  Granted, no formula or criterion for religiously accounting for suffering is perfect, but the book would have been better had Gregg offered more guidelines.

E.  People who have already read a lot about theodicy or religious explanations of suffering may not find much that is new in Gregg’s book.  Gregg did well, though, to share stories about suffering, including his own.  And there were areas in which the book was edifying: when he talked about how his wife as a hospital chaplain “bore witness” to people’s pain (page 157), and how quadraplegic Joni Earickson Tada felt a deep need for Christ after her accident, a need that she did not feel before.

F.  Not long ago, I read the book Between Pain and Grace, by Gerald Peterman and Andrew Schmutzer, and something that I liked about that book was that it taught me things I did not know about the thought of Augustine and John Calvin.  Gregg’s book would have been better had it done something like that: peppered his insights with references to theologians.

G.  Gregg often felt a need to stress that God does not cause certain forms of suffering, but that God can use suffering for our benefit, or can bring good out of suffering.  Occasionally, Gregg’s insight was supportable by Scripture: for instance, God in the wilderness did not directly cause the Israelites’ harsh surroundings, but he used those surroundings for their spiritual benefit.  Often, though, Gregg did not really support this insight with Scripture.  The insight is understandable, for God would look horrible if he were to be deemed the cause of certain forms of suffering.  And yet, Gregg should have wrestled with Scriptures such as Exodus 4:11, which seems to say that God makes people deaf, mute, and blind.  Randy Alcorn, in his lengthy tome If God Is Good, actually interacts with this verse.

H.  Chapter 12 was all right: it talks about service, and how Jesus tried to “redirect” his disciples’ “ambition” for greatness rather than suppressing it (page 148).  That may qualify the biblical passages that exhort people to deny themselves, and it presents Jesus as one who realistically recognizes and acknowledges human egoism.  At the same time, on page 146, Gregg states that those who “looked not to [their] own interests but to the interests of others” “will partake of the glory of the resurrected Christ.”  Does that imply salvation by works?  Gregg most likely believes in salvation by grace, which means that people cannot earn their salvation.  Still, he should have addressed the question of how what he says on page 146 would relate to salvation by grace.

I.  In Chapter 13, Gregg wrestles with the enigmatic statement in Colossians 1:24 that Paul is completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions.  Gregg could have been more direct in saying what exactly was lacking in Christ’s afflictions.  Gregg does say that Paul can “bear [suffering] in the flesh in a way that the risen Jesus no longer can” (page 156), and Gregg does say beautiful things in his interpretation of that verse.  But, overall, I am still unclear about what Gregg thinks that Colossians 1:24 means.

J.  Gregg uses the word “symphony” more than once in this book.  After reading this book, how the Bible addresses suffering does not strike me as a harmonious symphony.  Rather, the Bible says different things about suffering, and people can take those different things in helpful and unhelpful directions, as Gregg shows.  I would not necessarily go to the other extreme and embrace Bart Ehrman’s view that the Bible is contradictory and discordant.  Still, after reading Gregg, I do wonder how many of these biblical ideas on suffering can fit together.  Something else to add: Gregg himself may not have been using the word “symphony” to imply harmony, as much as to argue that we should take everything in the Bible under consideration, as opposed to focusing on only one thing in the Bible.

I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.

Book Write-Up: Outlaw Christian

Jacqueline A. Bussie.  Outlaw Christian: Finding Authentic Faith by Breaking the “Rules.”  Nashville: Nelson Books, 2016.  See here to purchase the book.

Jacqueline A. Bussie teaches theology and religion at Concordia College.  In Outlaw Christian: Finding Authentic Faith by Breaking the “Rules,” Bussie challenges what she believes are myths: about God, suffering, and whether people can make a positive difference in the world.  Instead of embracing these myths, she advocates being an “Outlaw Christian.”

What is an “Outlaw Christian”?  Bussie is dissatisfied with a lot of the pat answers that Christians have given to the problem of evil, the question of why a good God allows evil and suffering.  She supports being honest with God and other people about pain.  The lament Psalms, the Book of Job, and Jesus’ cry of abandonment from the cross are cited as biblical justifications for her position.

Bussie also challenges the myth that people cannot successfully fight injustice or make a positive difference, as she refers readers to books that tell a different story, while sharing with readers what those books are about.  And, while Bussie struggles with thanking God for her food, when there are so many people in the world who are starving, she still advocates an attitude of appreciating the good things in life, and even seeing those things as gifts from God.

Here are some thoughts about the book:

A.  Bussie’s stories made the book effective.  She talks about how Holocaust survivor Elie Weisel had a negative image of God yet remained an observant Jew.  She relayed a Buddhist tale about a woman who lost someone and learned that her suffering was not unique, for everyone else had lost someone, too.  She shared about a horrible experience that her husband had, and his attempts to move past that.  And, since she is a teacher, she told stories about her teaching experiences: the insights that she gained from her students and imparted to them.  The book was honest, thoughtful, and eloquent.

B.  The book may appeal to people who, like me, get a little irritated when people spit out the theologically correct answer and high-five each other or pat themselves on the back after doing so.  In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with embracing these answers, as long as there is sensitivity to the fact that not everyone finds them convincing or helpful.

C.  A possible disadvantage to the book is that Bussie does not really offer a robust explanation as to why God permits suffering.  She does not wrestle with the Scriptural passages that offer an explanation for some forms of suffering: that God rewards and punishes, that God disciplines Christians to improve their character, or that suffering is part of God’s plan.  Bussie appears rather skeptical of those explanations, as they have been offered by Christians, but she never wrestles with biblical authors’ endorsement of them (at least not in this book).

D.  When Bussie does attempt to reconcile God’s existence with the reality of suffering, she says things that may be controversial.  Bussie seems to compare God with a parent who unintentionally hurt his or her child.  Elsewhere, Bussie says that our prayers to God can actually teach God something.  The book could have been better had it tried to develop these thoughts, or referred to theologians with similar ideas.

E.  At the same time, there is a part of me that can understand why Bussie may have chosen to take the route that she did.  Bussie is dissatisfied with a lot of the religious solutions that have been offered for the problem of evil, for she does not believe that those are good enough reasons for God to permit evil, considering how horrible evil is.  And, even though she offers some speculation of her own, she herself cannot find a solution that satisfies her.  Instead of trying to find an answer to the problem of evil, therefore, she does something else.  She acknowledges that evil exists and that the religious solutions that people have offered to explain its existence fall short.  She appears to embrace that she does not know why evil exists, and she turns her attention to the question of where people should go from there.

F.  I recently read another book on suffering and criticized it because, while it discussed the importance of lament, it failed to offer ways to incorporate lament into worship services.  Bussie actually did this, on some level, when she raised the possibility of using lament Psalms in worship services.  That is a good idea.  Worship services should not consist solely of lament, for they should also include rejoicing.  But there are plenty of Scriptures that express lament, and they should be incorporated into worship services as examples of the experiences that people have had in their relationship with God.

G.  Bussie stressed the importance of community.  For Bussie, community can be a place where people give and receive comfort, and community can be a force for societal improvement.  At the same time, she acknowledged that there is a dearth of community in the United States, especially in comparison with the Third World.  Bussie should have rigorously and specifically addressed the question of how community can be fostered in the United States, considering the importance that she places upon it.  She does mention insights that may intersect with that: how one can sit with someone in pain, for example.  Still, due to the dearth of community, many people may be unaware that someone is in pain.

I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher through BookLook Bloggers, in exchange for an honest review.

Book Write-Up: Why God Allows Us to Suffer

Kevin Tewes.  Answering Christianity’s Most Difficult Question—-Why God Allows Us to Suffer: The Definitive Solution to the Problem of Pain and the Problem of Evil.  Chapel Hill: Triune Publishing Group, 2015.  See here to purchase the book.

The “About the Author” section of this book states that Kevin Tewes is An “accomplished trial lawyer and former US Army officer,” who “deployed to Iraq in late 2006, just as a bloody sectarian conflict was enveloping the country.”  After Tewes observed numerous victims flooding into a military hospital, he felt challenged to address the problem of evil: the question of why an omnipotent, benevolent God allows suffering.

Tewes’ answer is that God chooses to allow us to impact and be impacted by others and thereby limits God’s intervention in the world.  Why does God want us to impact and to be impacted by others?  Tewes’ answer is that God wants us to give and receive love.  For Tewes, apparently, God wants us to impact and to be impacted by others positively, so God allows us to impact each other freely, even when that impact is negative.

This sounds somewhat like the Free Will Defense, the idea that God chooses not to prevent evil deeds because God respects human free will.  But Tewes strongly distances himself from the Free Will Defense.  For Tewes, apologists who appeal to free will act as if free will is of paramount importance, or a worthy end in itself.  Tewes, by contrast, emphasizes something else as more important: love.  Tewes seems to argue that, in this fallen world, an environment in which people freely impact and are impacted by others can be conducive to love.  Tewes appears to maintain that God, by intervening, would compromise that environment and God’s goal, and so God limits God’s intervention.

Tewes addresses the question of why God permits humans to do evil acts, but does Tewes address the problem of natural evil: hurricanes, or earthquakes?  Essentially, Tewes blames the Fall for natural evil.
One positive of the book is that, early on, it critiques popular and conventional solutions to the problem of evil, while interacting with such thinkers as atheists Bart Ehrman and John Loftus, liberal Christian philosopher John Hick, Simone Weil, and others.  Tewes rightly questions whether conventional solutions to the problem of evil are adequate in the face of how horrible evil can be.  Tewes questions the argument that God permits evil so that we can build our character or so disadvantaged people can be guinea pigs for other people’s moral development, as well as the Free Will Defense.  Tewes finds these solutions insufficient in light of the numerous people who were slaughtered in Iraq, or people who die soon after they are born.

Another positive to the book is that it presents God limiting Godself because God has higher ends in mind.  God is omnipotent, but God makes choices about when and how to use God’s power, in light of the reality that is in front of God, and God’s loving purposes.  Tewes may not go so far as to suggest that God wrestles with the options in front of God, but he does present something like that, and this makes God someone with whom one can identify.

The third positive is that Tewes continually reminds the reader of God’s love and grace.  For Tewes, we know that God loves us because God did not execute Adam and Eve right after their sin.  God still had a purpose for humanity.  A lot of Christians depict God as totally just: God has to punish each and every sin, otherwise there is moral anarchy, so God sent Jesus to be punished in our place, and those who believe are declared innocent.  Whether Tewes embraces that idea is unclear.  Tewes states that God’s punishment of sin after the Fall is an example of God’s justice, yet he states that God did not pour out God’s justice totally on Adam and Eve, since God allowed humanity to continue.  Does Tewes believe that God can be just, without being absolute in justice?  Does Jesus’ death on the cross mitigate God’s justice, on some level?  Tewes should have interacted with such questions.

On that note, a negative to the book is that so many questions are left unanswered.  Tewes argues that God chooses to limit God’s intervention, and yet the Bible often presents God intervening in the world.  How does Tewes account for that?  Is Tewes’ solution to the problem of evil how God generally works, and yet Tewes acknowledges that God can make exceptions to that?  How does God decide when to intervene?  Does God do anything other than letting nature take its course in God’s attempt to encourage people to love?  If so, what?  Tewes does not say.  The book would have been better had he said!

Tewes says that God may choose not to make God’s existence obvious to humanity because that can provide an opportunity for us to have faith.  But is that an adequate solution to this apparent problem?  God made Godself obvious to many people in the Bible, and that did not take away their opportunities to have faith.  They may have been surer than we are about God’s existence, but they still had to decide whether or not to trust God.  Tewes’ proposal here may have some merit, but it does not solve the problem entirely.

Tewes seems to argue that God made the world so God would have someone to love.  (This is my understanding of his argument, and I am open to correction.)  Many Christians would respond that God already had someone to love, even before creating humanity: the persons of the Trinity loved each other.  Tewes is aware of this argument, for, in a footnote, he tells the reader to forget for a moment the Trinity.  Forget the Trinity?  Tewes himself appears to believe in the Trinity, but he should have wrestled with how or whether the Trinity poses a possible challenge to his argument, rather than telling readers to forget that challenge.

There is finally the question of whether Tewes’ scenario is adequate in the face of how horrible evil is.  Tewes did well to critique other scenarios, but is his own scenario adequate?  Could God accomplish God’s goal without all of the horrible suffering in the world?  Is the suffering in this world overkill, in terms of God’s agenda?  Could God accomplish the same goals with less suffering—-not no suffering, but less suffering?  Even after reading this book, this question remains.

And could one make the case that the current state of the world actually discourages love, rather than enhancing it?  Life can bruise people and make them less willing to trust and to reach out to others.  Life probably encourages and discourages love, but Tewes’ book is rather one-sided, on this.

The book is well-written in terms of its prose.  In terms of its organization, it could be rather scattered, at times, and Tewes went on some unnecessary tangents (i.e., Descartes starts with a presupposition in his “I think therefore I am” argument).

I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher through Bookcrash, in exchange for an honest review.

Does God's Knowledge Mean God's Justice?

Is God right just because God knows more than we do?  That question entered my mind years ago when I was reading the Book of Job in the Bible.  And it entered my mind recently when I was going through two books in volume 1 of James Charlesworth’s Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: the Greek Apocalypse of Ezra and the Apocalypse of Sedrach.

Michael Stone in the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha dates the Greek Apocalypse of Ezra to the second-ninth centuries C.E., and S. Agourides dates the Apocalypse of Sedrach to the second-fifth centuries C.E.  The English translations that I will quote in this post are those in the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha.

In both the Greek Apocalypse of Ezra and the Apocalypse of Sedrach, the protagonists (Ezra and Sedrach, respectively) wrestle with God on such issues as hell and God’s judgment of sinners.  They question God’s fairness in these areas.  Both think that the animals are in a better position than humans, since at least animals do not suffer God’s judgment!  Ezra and Sedrach try to intercede for the sinners, that God might have mercy on them.

God sometimes offers an answer to their questions, but God also says that God knows more than they do, and so they are not particularly qualified to be in the discussion.  God says to Ezra in the Greek Apocalypse of Ezra 2:32: “Count the stars and the sand of the sea and if you will be able to count this, you will be able to argue the case with me.”  In Apocalypse of Sedrach 8, God asks Sedrach a variety of questions: How many people have been born?  How many people have died and will die?  How many hairs did the people have?  How many trees have there been in the world?  How many trees will fall and come to be?  How many leaves did the trees have?  How many drops of rain have fallen?  God also asks questions about the different waves and the winds at sea.  And, of course, Sedrach did not know the answers to these questions.  (Note: I draw some, but not all, of the language of the questions from the translation in the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha.)

The Greek Apocalypse of Ezra and the Apocalypse of Sedrach are probably basing these scenes on the Book of Job in the Hebrew Bible.  Throughout the Book of Job, Job is questioning God’s fairness, not only regarding Job’s own suffering after Job had tried to be righteous, but also concerning the perceived unfairness in the world.  In Job 21 and 24, Job wonders why oppressors get off scot-free; live long, happy, and prosperous lives; and die in a state of peace.  In Job 38-41, God confronts Job and essentially argues that God has been around longer than Job, made things the way that they are, can do more than Job can, and knows more than Job does.  God asks Job some questions about nature: for instance, does Job know when goats and deer give birth?  Job, of course, cannot answer God’s questions.

When I read Job 38-41 years ago, I had a problem with God’s argument.  So God has been around longer than Job has, made things the way that they are, can do things that Job cannot do, and knows more than Job does.  Does any of that necessarily mean that God is right?  Just because God made and runs the world a certain way, that does not necessarily mean it is the best way.  Might does not mean right.  And knowing a bunch of trivia about nature does not necessarily mean that one is right, moral, or just.  That was what was in my mind when I was going through the Greek Apocalypse of Ezra and the Apocalypse of Sedrach: God knowing all those details about life and nature does not mean that hell is just.

I might as well incorporate my church write-up into this post, since it is relevant to this topic.  The pastor at the church that I attended last Sunday was preaching about James 3:13-18, which contrasts two types of wisdom.  The wisdom from below leads to envy, strife, and self-glorification, whereas the wisdom from above is about purity, peace, gentleness, and mercy.  The pastor was saying that wisdom and intelligence are not necessarily the same thing, for a person can be intelligent and use his intelligence for evil ends.  What is important is the goal towards which one’s intelligence is being applied.

That said, how can God appeal to God’s intelligence as justification for God’s actions?  If intelligence by itself does not necessarily entail morality or wisdom, can God’s intelligence truly justify God’s actions?
One can make a case that we should not dismiss the value of God’s intelligence too quickly.  A person who knows more about a machine than I do is more competent to use that machine in a productive manner.  Similarly, one can say that God is more qualified to run the universe than humans beings are, since God knows more about it.  In addition, while Job could look around and see things in life that struck him as unfair or as just plain wrong, Job may have felt that, overall, the cosmos ran rather well.  The animals got fed.  The birds flew.  Job may have believed that there was some wisdom and order in the course of nature, so God could appeal to that in defending Godself before Job.  We, too, can point to strange and seemingly wrong details of life and nature, but nature does work for our benefit, on some level.

But perhaps there is another way to understand how God’s superior knowledge can justify God’s actions.  Maybe God’s point to Job, Ezra, and Sedrach is not that God knows more than they do, and thus God is right, and how dare they question God!  Maybe God’s point is that God has this intimate knowledge of God’s creation because God cares about it.  Job, Ezra, and Sedrach are questioning whether God cares and is truly good. God’s response may be that God knows God’s creation better than they do, so they cannot accuse God of not caring.  Like many of us, God intimately knows and pays attention to what is important to God.  To quote Matthew 10:29-31:

29 Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.
30 But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.
31 Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows. (KJV)

The point could be this: God’s knowledge is an indication of God’s love, so God was not being flippant when God constructed hell or does anything else that puzzles us.  God does these things for a reason.

The question would then be whether one can make a case for this interpretation from the Book of Job, the Greek Apocalypse of Ezra, and the Apocalypse of Sedrach.  In all honesty, it is ambiguous.  The Book of Job could lean in that direction, for God’s maintenance of the cosmos is arguably an act of love.  God could be saying to Job that God lovingly maintains nature, and thus Job is wrong to argue that God is unjust.  The Greek Apocalypse of Ezra is rather punitive.  So is the Apocalypse of Sedrach, and yet its opening chapter is about the beauties of love.

Still, seeing God’s knowledge as an act of love could help us better understand the way that God is: God is not one who bullies people with God’s knowledge, but one who knows because God cares.

Book Write-Up: If God Is Good, by Randy Alcorn

Randy Alcorn.  If God Is Good: Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil.  Colorado Springs: Multnomah, 2009.  See here to buy the book.

If God Is Good is about how Christians can interact with the problem of suffering.  This book is about 500 pages, so I doubt that I can do it justice in this one blog post (which is not to say that I will write any more blog posts about it).  But here are some thoughts:

A.  I thought that what Randy Alcorn said about hell somewhat undermined his points about suffering.  Alcorn believes that the Bible teaches eternal conscious torment in hell for non-believers after they die.  What’s more, appealing to Matthew 7:14, Alcorn argued that most people will end up in hell, since few find the way that leads to life.  In my opinion, that makes their suffering in this life rather pointless: they suffer in this life, then they go to hell and suffer eternally.  Alcorn may say that suffering in this life can encourage them to come to Christ: they can be reminded that life is short and that there are eternal matters to think about (so Alcorn applies Luke 13:3).  Maybe.  But most of them will not come to Christ, and God knows that, so does their suffering really serve much of a purpose?  What Alcorn says about hope and suffering building character in people that matters eternally does not really apply to most people, within his worldview.

B.  In light of (A.), Alcorn at one point says that we don’t suffer long, since life is short.  But, as he says elsewhere, that only applies to believers, in his theology.  It does not apply to most of humanity, who will be going to hell to suffer eternally.

C.  This is not to say that universalism (the idea that God will save everyone in the end) can be neatly reconciled with the reality of suffering.  Alcorn says that God may cause people to suffer to bring others to Christ, to make a difference in eternity.  Would that matter as much, if everyone is eventually saved in the end?

D.  There were a few times when I was reading Alcorn’s book and I said “Wait a minute.”  On page 105, Alcorn asks regarding skeptical biblical scholar Bart Ehrman: “What percentage of the royalties from Ehrman’s best-selling book has he earmarked for easing world suffering?”  That is a pretty presumptuous question.  I don’t know what the percentage is in terms of his royalties, but Ehrman does donate quite a bit of money to charity.

On page 132, Alcorn states: “As Americans reeled from the events of September 11, 2001, no one explained the terrorists’ actions from a naturalistic worldview…A naturalistic worldview just couldn’t account for such wickedness.”  What?  There were plenty of naturalistic explanations for what happened on 9/11: the terrorists hated us, so they flew planes into the World Trade Center.  Does one need to appeal to the supernatural to account for that?

E.  One can read what Alcorn says about suffering and conclude that evil is really good in disguise.  Evil, after all, serves a constructive purpose, according to Alcorn.  Why, then, should I not hurt somebody else?  Would I not be doing that person a favor by hurting him?  I would be giving that person opportunities to overcome adversity and build character, after all!

In my opinion, I have no right to put somebody else through suffering, for the simple reason that there are things that people should not have to endure, if I can help it.

Perhaps Alcorn can respond that I have no right to put people through suffering, but God knows how to do that properly.  God, after all, knows everything.  God knows what we need and what to give us.  We do not have that sort of perspective.  Perhaps.  Still, I think that Alcorn’s implication that evil is really good in disguise has troubling implications.

F.  To his credit, Alcorn is not afraid to be honest about what the Bible says.  Appealing to Exodus 4:11, Alcorn argues that God is the one who made people disabled.  According to Alcorn, that actually has given comfort to people who are disabled.  I can understand that, since it allows them to believe that their disability must have a purpose.

Alcorn says that there are passages in the Bible about God hating certain people (see, for example, Psalm 5:5).  True, but why should I assume that God only has hatred for them, without one ounce of love?  Plus, where exactly is Alcorn going with that observation?  Does God only hate extreme evil-doers, or does God regard all non-believers as workers of iniquity and hate them (since Romans 3 presents the human race as pretty bad)?  I do not think that the latter perspective would be helpful to me, as I try to love other people.

G.  A lot of what Alcorn says has been said before.  Still, I did enjoy this book.  I never felt that Alcorn was hastily dishing out pat-answers, for there was a weight in what he was saying.  Alcorn talked about his own suffering as a diabetic, and he shared stories about other people’s suffering.  In addition, there were times when Alcorn questioned traditional Christian views on evil.  For example, he questioned Augustine’s view that evil is merely a deficiency in goodness, for Alcorn thought that evil had to be much more than that, a negative force in its own right.  On how exactly evil originated, when God made everything good, Alcorn seems rather agnostic.

H.  To his credit, Alcorn was honest about tensions within the Bible.  For example, like Calvinists, he believes that God has to enable people to believe.  Yet, Alcorn also believes that God is being sincere in exhorting evil-doers to do good: that God is not playing games and telling them to do something that he knows they are incapable of doing.  At times, Alcorn admits that he does not know how these tensions hold together.  On one occasion, he seemed to be saying that free-will exists in some areas, but not as much in other areas.

I.  There were a lot of inspiring stories in the book.  My favorites were about when people were torturing Christians, and the torturers were so impressed with the Christians’ demeanor that they became Christians themselves—-sometimes subjecting themselves to the persecution that they inflicted on others.  I would not be surprised if such stories were true.  They make me think that there is something to Christianity!  Yet, they can also burden me, in a sense, since they can make me feel bad about not having that kind of effect on people: I always have to wear a smile, regardless of how I feel, since that will bring people to Christ!  That was why I appreciated Alcorn’s stories about people who hit rock bottom and needed God to sustain them.  For example, Joni Eareckson Tada is a quadraplegic, and she said that there are days when she says to God that she does not have a smile.  “Can I borrow yours?”, she aks God.

J.  I like something Alcorn says on pages 406-407: “Bertrand Russell claimed that no one could sit at the bedside of a dying child and still believe in God.  He was wrong—-countless people, including ones I spoke with while researching this book, have sat at the bedside of their own dying children and do still believe in God.”  That is a fairly effective, point, which Alcorn makes elsewhere, as when he talks about Holocaust survivors who have a deep faith.  Who are atheists to tell people what they should think and feel in response to their suffering?  At the same time, we should remember that there are people who draw opposite conclusions from suffering: they conclude from their own suffering that there is no God.

K.  Something that I wonder: how can experiencing intense physical pain help a person build character?  Perhaps it can make a person humbler and bring a person down to earth.  But how can people spiritually grow when they are experiencing distracting physical pain?  How can they set their mind on higher things when their mind is on how much they hurt, because they cannot get their mind off of their pain?

L.  Isaiah 65:17 states that, in the new heavens and the new earth, the former things will not be remembered.  I remembered Tim Keller saying that we will appreciate heaven more when we get there on account of our suffering on earth.  Randy Alcorn makes the same sort of point.  Is that inconsistent with Isaiah 65:17?  Why would God use suffering to build our character for eternity, when God will wipe our minds clean in the new heavens and the new earth, effectually wiping out anything we learned?  Alcorn addresses this question: he does not take the sentiment in Isaiah 65:17 overly literally, but he interprets it to mean that people will be comforted in the new heavens and the new earth.  Their suffering will become a thing of the past, a distant memory.  But Alcorn still believes that there is a connection, or continuity, between our experiences in this world and the world-to-come.  See here for how John Piper addresses the question.

M.   There are times when Alcorn seems to present suffering and challenges as necessary parts of life on earth.  Would we grow or be heroic without adversity, after all?  Alcorn also says that one reason evil exists is that God respects free will, for God wants people to love God genuinely.  At the same time, Alcorn presents suffering as a result of the Fall, meaning it was not a part of God’s original creation.  Alcorn states that suffering will not exist in God’s eschatological reign.  Alcorn also says that people will do what is right in God’s eschatological reign, which casts question on whether there will be genuine free will at that time, at least in the sense that people have it today (which entails the possibility of doing wrong).  To his credit, Alcorn is sensitive to this tension, and he acknowledges it.  But he did not sufficiently wrestle with it in this book, in my opinion.

N.  In some cases, I was intrigued by a view that Alcorn was trying to refute.  Alcorn was arguing against open theism, the idea that God does not know the future for certain.  Alcorn referred to a story about a woman who married a Christian man, and the man later left her for another woman.  The woman found comfort in open theism rather than the idea that God foresaw her suffering and permitted or orchestrated it for some good reason.  She particularly found comfort in the story of Saul in the Bible: God chose Saul to be king and had plans for him, but Saul forfeited that through his sins.  Alcorn made pretty effective arguments against open theism: Can we trust a God who does not fully know what will happen down the road?  Still, the view that he was refuting was intriguing to me.

I’ll stop here.

Book Write-Up: The Uncontrolling Love of God, by Thomas Jay Oord

Thomas Jay Oord.  The Uncontrolling Love of God: An Open and Relational Account of Providence.  Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2015.  See here to purchase the book.

If there is a loving, omnipotent God, why is there evil in the world?  Theologian Thomas Jay Oord finds many proposed answers to this question to be inadequate, or to be non-answers.  Some solutions posit that God sometimes interferes to stop evil, which invites the question of why God does not do so at all times.  Some solutions inadvertently trivialize evil by suggesting that God has a righteous purpose for permitting it; I agree with Oord, however, that it would have been better had certain human evils not occurred.  Then there is the appeal to mystery, which does not really advance the discussion.

Oord steps to the plate and offers his own solution, which is essentially a version of the free-will defense.  For Oord, God, out of the love that is a part of God’s nature, cannot compel or violate free will.  God can seek to persuade people and can call people to try to stop a problem, however.  Oord takes a similar approach towards natural evil: that God established regularities and randomness in nature, and that God lovingly allows things to unfold rather than seeking to compel.  Oord attempts to deal with the issue of miracles, and he presents a model of miracles that is reconcilable with his view of God’s loving non-compulsion.

Oord does provide food for thought.  Obviously, the problem of evil is a troubling issue for many who believe in God.  If God is loving and can step in to stop or prevent evil, and even does so on occasion, why does evil so often occur?  Some, such as Harold Kushner and, in a sense, Thomas Jay Oord go the route of saying that God cannot directly stop or prevent evil.  They would prefer to believe in a God who is limited in power, than to believe that God can stop evil and chooses not to do so.  This is understandable.  In addition, Oord’s model may resonate with those who would like to believe in God and evolution at the same time, since one can take Oord’s insight in the direction of saying that God allows evolution to unfold rather than micromanaging.

Oord’s model does not make God look that much better than the models that Oord rejects, however.  Why would it be loving for God to prioritize free will or freedom over safety and shalom?  I also question whether Oord’s model makes the problem of evil go away.  Oord believes that God can call people to step in and stop incidents of evil.  Does God consistently do this?  Does God do all that God can do to stop evil, within the parameters of the limitations in which Oord believes?  If a crime is being committed, for example, does God inform someone about this so that he or she can go to the scene and stop it?  I suppose that one can say that God may act in ways that we cannot see, but that does not sound too different from the appeal to mystery that Oord criticizes.  (I am open to saying that God’s approach is to educate people about why a crime is wrong and to encourage people and society to try to stop crime in general, as opposed to stepping in and trying to put out individual fires.  This may be where Oord is going, but that was not entirely clear.)

Oord’s interaction with Scripture has positives and negatives.  Oord argues that certain passages of Scripture make sense in light of open theism, the view that God does not know the future.  Oord presents examples in Scripture of God loving God’s enemies and cooperating with people rather than resorting to compulsion.  Oord’s serious wrestling with the issue of miracles also deserves favorable note: Oord notes examples in the Gospels in which people’s faith or lack thereof plays a role in whether miracles occur, which favors a model of cooperation rather than compulsion.  Oord also wrestles with nature miracles such as the parting of the Red Sea, and his effort does deserve commendation, whether or not one finds his argument convincing.

In terms of negatives, Oord does not wrestle with some of the passages that appear to contradict his position, passages that suggest that God takes a more active role in influencing events or in shaping people’s decisions.  Oord is aware of these passages because he refers to them in summarizing and critiquing various theistic views on God’s providence, free will, and the problem of evil.  Unfortunately, he does not present a way of interpreting them that accords with his model.  Oord also should have addressed how his model accords with heaven, or eschatology.  If God permits evil because God cannot do otherwise, does that mean that God will never step in to stop or prevent evil?  How would one reconcile that with biblical passages about God’s punishment of people and nations, either historically or in the eschaton?  Does God respecting free will or autonomy mean that evil has to exist, or can it be consistent with the existence of a perfect place that is free from evil, such as heaven?  Fruitful discussions about this can occur, so, even if I am not entirely satisfied with Oord’s solutions, I do respect what he says as a starting point.

There were also apparent contradictions in Oord’s book.  Is God intimately involved in nature, or does God maintain a hands-off approach and let nature unfold?  Does the non-human natural world have the agency to respond to God?  Oord seemed to go both ways on these questions.

I have been wrestling with how many stars to give this book, wavering between three and four.  I am settling on four because Oord does raise profound possibilities that can serve as a foundation for future discussion.  Plus, even if I do not treat Oord’s model as an absolute, there may be some truth in what he is saying.

I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.

Book Write-Up: How to Read Job

John H. Walton and Tremper Longman III.  How to Read Job.  Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2015.  See here to buy the book.

John H. Walton and Tremper Longman III are prolific scholars of the Hebrew Bible.  They are also evangelical Christians.  In How to Read Job, they discuss ways to understand features of the Book of Job, while also applying its theological and spiritual message.  The book familiarizes popular readers with academic insights into the Book of Job, yet it also has the pastoral concern of demonstrating how the Book of Job can address people’s concern about suffering.

The book interacts with a variety of questions: Was the Book of Job intended to be history, literary, or historical fiction?  Was there a real person named Job?  Who are the creatures Leviathan and Behemoth, and how do they function in the Book of Job, particularly in God’s speeches?  How does the Book of Job compare with other ancient Near Eastern stories about the righteous sufferer, or ancient Near Eastern theology in general?  Do God’s speeches to Job contain inaccuracies about nature, according to modern science, and, if so, how can Christians account for that theologically?  Did Job believe in an afterlife?  What did Job mean when he requested an intercessor, and was he asking for someone like Jesus?  Was ha-satan in the Book of Job the devil?  What spiritual lessons can we gain from the Book of Job, and can it help us deal with suffering?

The book largely takes a historical-critical perspective, while still maintaining that the book has relevance in Christian theology.  Like many critical scholars, but unlike a number of Christian interpreters, Walton and Longman maintain that ha-Satan in the Book of Job was not the devil, that Job did not believe in resurrection from the dead, and that the intercessor Job requested was not like Jesus.  At the same time, they do somewhat present the Book of Job as a step up from other ancient Near Eastern stories about the righteous sufferer, and ancient Near Eastern theology: the Book of Job, for example, presents morality as the way to please God, whereas the gods of the ancient Near East were primarily concerned with ritual, which supported them.  In terms of the New Testament, Walton and Longman believe that the New Testament offers more hope than the Book of Job by itself does, and yet they think that one can draw important lessons from the Book of Job by itself—-particularly lessons about the importance of disinterested righteousness, and how one should trust God’s wisdom.

There are many assets to this book.  Its historical-critical treatment of the Book of Job is one of them, and so are its interesting conclusions about what the text is saying: its interpretation of the significance of Leviathan and Behemoth in the Book of Job comes to mind.  Walton and Longman also find a way to interpret the speeches in the Book of Job in light of the narrative.  The narrative is about Job passing the test of staying faithful to God after losing everything, whereas the speeches focus on the argument between Job’s friends and Job: Job’s friends argue that Job must have done something wrong to deserve misfortune, while Job defends himself and questions God’s providence.  Many scholars argue that there are different sources in the Book of Job: the narrative, “Job the Impatient,” “Job the Patient,” the Elihu speeches, etc.  Walton and Longman, however, seem to approach the book more synchronically, and they maintain that the speeches are related to the narrative.  According to Walton and Longman, even though Job in the speeches challenges God, he stays in a relationship with God rather than abandoning it due to misfortune.  Moreover, Job does not take the easy way out by confessing sin to appease God and get his stuff back, for Job sincerely believe that he is righteous and does not deserve his misfortune, and he wants an audience with God.  For Walton and Longman, Job shows here that he is not just worshiping God to get blessings.  This argument struck me as a bit of a stretch, and Walton and Longman should have mentioned, at least briefly, the scholarly view that there are different sources in the Book of Job.  Still, this discussion, among others, did make the book interesting.

Another asset to the book is how Walton and Longman wrestle with the issue of suffering.  They tend to land on pat-answers (i.e., trust God because God is wise), yet one can tell that they are not entirely satisfied with a lot of pat-answers.  Their discussion on suffering is rather complex, in places, and that can be frustrating to those who want clarity or consistency, yet it may resonate with those who see suffering as too complex of an issue to be explained away glibly.  Some of the points that Walton and Longman make are intriguing: that God in the Bible created a world that included non-order so that humans would cooperate with God in ordering it; that simply blaming suffering on sin does not work as a viable explanation (and not only because it is rude and inconsiderate); and that certain forms of “comfort” (i.e., commiseration) do not entirely comfort, as important as they may be.  There were some issues that I wish Walton and Longman had addressed more.  Walton and Longman state, for example, that God does not micromanage the world.  Does that mean that praying for things (i.e., blessings, protection) is an exercise in futility?  Walton and Longman say that we should pray for things while remembering that God is still wise, and thus God knows best, but is praying for things inconsistent with saying that God does not micromanage?

There were other questions that I had in reading this book.  Walton and Longman argue that the point of God’s speeches is that God rules the world by wisdom, not by justice, even though justice fits somewhere into God’s wise rule of the world.  Walton and Longman did well to note that wisdom is a theme that appears throughout the Book of Job, but they did not really demonstrate how God’s speeches supported the point that they believed the speeches were making.  (They say in the bibliography, however, that their commentaries do this.)  Moreover, I was wondering what exactly God’s wise rule of the world entailed.  Is it ruling the world in a manner that benefits as many people as possible?  Is it ruling the world in a manner that is consistent with God’s long-term plan?

I suspect Walton and Longman are correct, overall, in their portrayal of ancient Near Eastern religion: that the gods were more concerned about ritual than morality, and that the gods were not really blamed for evil because they were not considered all-powerful, anyway.  Still, there were aspects of what Walton and Longman were saying that made me wonder if there was more to the story.  They say that one ancient Near Eastern view was that “God made us with evil inclinations and prone to suffer.”  Do not “evil inclinations,” however, imply that ancient Near Easterners were concerned about moral evil, not just ritual impropriety or negligence?  Walton and Longman should have wrestled with this some more.

I also have some reservations about the book’s argument that, even if God does not bless us (in this life and the next, and this is hypothetically-speaking), we should honor God because God is God.  I do not think that one should honor God out of a mercenary motivation, for right is right and wrong is wrong, regardless of what happens to me personally.  At the same time, I have problems with the idea that God deserves honor simply because God is God, as if God’s status is why God deserves honor.  Would God deserve honor, even if God were unrighteous?  Walton and Longman are clear that God is not unrighteous—-God, they claim, is wise and deserves trust.  Still, saying that God deserves honor simply for being God is slightly problematic, in my opinion.

Finally, overall, the approach of Walton and Longman to the relationship of Job to the New Testament was all right.  They said that certain perspectives in the Book of Job differed from the New Testament, and I appreciated their acknowledgement of diversity within the Bible and their commitment to letting the Book of Job be what it is, as opposed to forcing it into a Christian mold.  They did, however, seem to try to reconcile the Book of Job with James 5:11’s statement that Job was patient, or persevering, and that was interesting.  (As one lady told me, Job in the Book of Job does not look all that patient!)  Still, Walton and Longman should have addressed I Corinthians 3:19, which quotes Job 5:13.  Job 5:13 is from one of the speeches of Eliphaz, a friend of Job whom God criticized at the end of the book.  Why is the New Testament quoting as authoritative a speech of one of Job’s friends, whose words God rejected in the Book of Job?  This question deserves consideration.

I found the book to be a thoughtful exploration of the Book of Job and the question of suffering.  People would probably do well to read the Book of Job, or to read a summary of the Book of Job, before reading this book, since that would familiarize them with the topics that the book addresses.

I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.

Nick Peters' Interview with David Wood on the Problem of Evil

I listened to another Nick Peters’ podcast last night.  This one was from November 2, 2013.  It was with David Wood, and it concerned the problem of evil: the question of whether the existence of evil is compatible with the existence of an omnipotent, benevolent God.  Does the existence of evil mean that an omnipotent, benevolent God does not exist?

See here to listen to the podcast.

Here are some thoughts:

A.  I first heard about David Wood when I read Nabeel Qureshi’s Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus (for my review of that book, see here).  Not only was David Wood a significant character in Qureshi’s personal story, but so were Christian apologists Gary Habermas and Mike Licona (the latter is Peters’ father-in-law).  To be honest, I did not care for them that much when I read about them in Qureshi’s book.  They just seemed to me to be smug, overly self-assured about their beliefs, and arrogant.

I have come to like them a lot more, however, after listening to them in online interviews, and the reason is that they come across as much humbler than they do in Qureshi’s book: they are sharing their personal journeys, and they appear (to me at least) to understand why people might object to certain Christian apologetic spiels.  In a recent episode of the British radio program Unbelievable, Gary Habermas was talking with skeptical scholar James Crossley about Jesus’ resurrection, and Habermas said that, while he includes the early Christians’ visions of the risen Jesus in the minimal list of things that the vast majority of New Testament scholars agree are historical, he does not include the empty tomb traditions in that list.  (If only William Lane Craig showed that same humility in his debates!)  In Lotharlorraine’s interview with Mike Licona, Licona acknowledged that there are other ways to account for the empty tomb and Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances besides saying that Christianity is true; one could say that space aliens did it (and yet Licona does not believe that is the best explanation).  And, in the podcast that I heard last night, David Wood was saying that he does not find every theodicy he has heard convincing, and that he is aware that some may not believe that free will is a good enough reason for God to permit moral evil.  When Christian apologists acknowledge difficulties and qualify their positions, I tend to be more open to what they have to say—-maybe because that sort of approach makes them look more open or smarter, or it preserves my own choice in evaluating evidence and arguments, something that beating me over the head with the “obvious truth” does not do.  It also shows more respect to those who disagree, since it acknowledges their points rather than treating them as stupid.

B.  Wood wrote a Ph.D. dissertation for Fordham University entitled, “Surprised by suffering: Hume, Draper, and the Bayesian argument from evil” (see here).  He is no intellectual or academic slouch!

C.  I have to admit that I was asleep sometime between Wood’s narration of his own personal story, and his arguments regarding the problem of evil.  This is not because the podcast was boring: it was the middle of the night, and it was time for me to sleep.  When I woke up, Wood was questioning whether atheists, within their naturalistic worldview, really have the authority to offer moral objections to how God does things, or, more accurately, to say that certain theodicies do not work or are inadequate.  I think that Wood was making a similar point to what I have heard other Christian apologists say: that atheistic naturalism does not provide an adequate basis for the existence of morality or the trustworthiness of human reasoning, and so it cannot legitimately offer a moral objection when it comes to the problem of evil.

I do not want to get into the question of whether atheistic naturalism provides an adequate basis for those things, at least not in this particular post.  Let’s assume for a minute that Wood and many Christian apologists are correct that it does not.  Would that invalidate the problem of evil?  Well, part of me can see how it could, but part of me is rather skeptical.  The reason part of me is skeptical is that the problem of evil strikes me as rather hypothetical (this may not be the proper use of the term “hypothetical,” but bear with me): IF there is an omnipotent, benevolent God, as Christian theism says, then why does this God permit evil and suffering?  Are the omnipotence and benevolence of God—-the picture of God that many Christians embrace and advocate—-inconsistent with what we see in real life, namely, evil and suffering?  Obviously, the atheists asking this question do not think that this God exists; they are not morally challenging a God whom they think is real.  The problem of evil appears to be raising the question of whether Christian theism is internally inconsistent in some of its tenets, or the implications of some of its tenets, and if reality accords with what Christian theism says about God.  In my opinion, atheists can legitimately ask this question, whether or not their naturalism provides an adequate basis for a belief in morality or the adequacy of reason.  Atheists can question the existence of God, not necessarily on the basis of their own moral convictions or reason, but on the basis of what Christians themselves say about God’s nature, God’s attributes, and morality: is the world as it should be if Christians are correct about the existence of those things?  I hope that I am making sense here, and that what I am saying is not too muddled.

D.  Wood was saying that God may allow the world to be as it is because that can produce character in us.  Wood made clear that he is not looking at this so much at the individual level: he is not saying that suffering people are guinea pigs for the moral maturation of the well-off people, as the suffering people provide the well-off people with opportunities to show compassion and to help.  Rather, Wood is looking at the group level.  He is asking what kind of world would be more conducive towards human beings working together and building character.

I actually like Wood’s way of looking at this.  One can ask, as some atheists have, whether the pain and suffering that exist in this world are overkill, whether, if there were a God, this God could accomplish the job of building character in us without allowing pain and suffering to the extent that they exist.  This is a legitimate question.  Where it boils down to for me personally is that I believe in God, and, that being the case, I feel as if I have to account somehow for why God allows pain and suffering.  Just saying that God is higher than we are and we do not know the reason for suffering is not sufficient for me, for this sort of agnosticism can be used to justify all sorts of positions; it comes across as a cop-out.  Saying that God allows pain and suffering for our moral improvement at least provides a reason for the pain and suffering, a reason that I think is plausible, on some level.

E. Wood was contrasting the world as it is with the hedonistic world that he believes atheists think would exist if there were a God.  Wood seems to believe that the world as it is is preferable, in terms of us developing morally.  My understanding is, however, that many Christians would say that a hedonistic world is not out of the question for God.  Many Christians believe that life was good before the Fall of Adam and Eve.  Many Christians, along with Jews and Muslims, conceive of an eschatological paradise, or paradise in the afterlife.  This should be addressed by Christian apologists.  From an evolutionary standpoint, I have issues with the historicity of a literal Adam and Eve, and I can conceive of God making a world that falls short of our standard of perfection, since such a world would allow us to grow and to develop morally.  Can I envision an eschatological paradise?  Yes, in a sense.  I believe that the world is as it is for a reason, because this is how it is supposed to be at this stage of history, but that God may have a legitimate reason for the world to be different in the future—-maybe because God will conclude that we no longer need to be in the school of suffering, or that we have learned lessons from it to teach our children and grandchildren.

F.  Wood was also saying that God is not obligated to help the world, since the world is in rebellion against God.  I am not entirely convinced by this: God commands us to love our enemies, so is it not reasonable to expect God to live up to the same standard?  Moreover, there are enough times in the Bible when God does help people, so God is not choosing to be entirely aloof from the world on account of its sins.  At the same time, I wonder if there is something to what Wood is saying.  Whether or not one believes in a literal, historical Fall, could our sins be one reason that we do not have the divine protection that we, as a world, may want?  I would rather not see God as overly punitive; at the same time, I can understand why God may choose not to honor sin.

Again, I do not think that Wood is looking at this on an individual level: I am suffering because God is punishing me for a sin that I personally committed.  Rather, Wood seems to be looking at the issue communally: we as a world have sinned, and God may be responding to that by becoming more aloof, by not extending the level of divine protection that we may like, or by allowing the consequences of our sins to play out.

G.  Wood made the interesting point that the problem of evil emerged with Epicurianism (at least that is my understanding of what Wood was saying).  Epicurus placed a high value on hedonism.  If we are not happy, does that cast questions on the existence of God, who is supposed to make us happy?  (My understanding is that Epicureans believed that the gods were aloof anyway, but Wood’s point seems to be that an emphasis on hedonism set the stage for the problem of evil to become a problem, in terms of leading people to question the existence of God.)  According to Wood, the apostle Paul did not wrestle with why a good God was allowing him to suffer.

I had to think some about Wood’s point here, in terms of the Bible.  I would say that, in an overall sense, Wood may be on to something.  Job and the Psalmist lamented about their sufferings, and maybe even went so far as to question God’s love and justice.  They did not conclude, however, that God did not exist.  At the same time, when Israel suffered, other nations would ask them, “Where is your god?”  Israel’s suffering reinforced in the other nations’ minds that Israel’s god was not as powerful.  (At least that was one take on it: other nations also believed that Israel was suffering because her own God was punishing her for her sins.)  That, in my opinion, may be a little closer to the problem of evil: casting question on the legitimacy of a religion, because the adherents to that religion are suffering.

Authenticity, Choice, and Free Will

For my blog post about church this morning, I would like to use as my starting-point the stanza of a song that we sang.  The song is entitled “All That I Am.”  The stanza goes as follows:

“All that I am for all that You are my Lord,
“All that I have for all that You are.
“You’re the pearl beyond price greater than life.
“All that I am for all that You are.”

This reminded me of something that I heard John MacArthur say in a sermon a while back: that true Christians exchange all that they are for all that Christ is.

It sort of rubs me the wrong way, to tell you the truth.  I believe that God made each of us unique.  Each of us is one of a kind.  God doesn’t want us to be Jesus-clones.  God wants us to be like Jesus in terms of Jesus’ love and compassion, yet to have our own personalities.  Why should we have to surrender all of what we are for all that God is?  What is wrong with all that we are?

I may be misinterpreting the stanza.  I know plenty of evangelicals and other Christians have said that God created us unique, with our own personalities, gifts, and ways to contribute.  I just get leery at this kind of surrender talk.  I am not sure what to do with it.

I recall M. Scott Peck’s book, People of the Lie, which was about evil.  Peck was talking about a woman he counseled whom he considered to be evil.  This woman was responding to the Christian line that we were created to glorify God and enjoy him forever, and she was baffled by it.  She wondered what room there was for her in that.  Peck seemed to be presenting her as a self-centered narcissist.  I think she was asking a good question.

Another hymn I think of is “Draw Me Nearer.”  It has a line about my will being lost in the will of God.  That turns me off, too.  Losing my will?  That sounds like me losing myself and becoming programmed by God!  Don’t many Christians like to say that God gave us free-will because God doesn’t want robots, but people who freely love him?

A thought has occurred to me more than once as of late.  Yesterday, this thought somewhat intensified, so I wrestled with it more than I usually do.  I was upset with God, and I wondered why I should pray.  I concluded that I should pray for others because I wanted to be a more caring, compassionate person, and that I should ask God to make me that.  But then I had a thought: do I want to be a Christian because I want to be caring or compassionate, or because God wants me to be caring and compassionate?  Who sets the agenda in my life: me or God?  Whom am I trying to please: myself or God?  Where I settled was to say that being caring and compassionate is a good thing—-for me and others—-so it is not just a matter of my personal preference.  I cannot deny that personal preference plays a role, though.  And, to be honest, I do not really feel bad about that.  Maybe my attitude makes me look like a consumer.  Oh well.

Worship can be a bit of a challenge for me.  I do not consider it to be as great of a challenge for me as, say, socializing in unstructured social situations.  The latter is like me as a handicapped person trying to walk.  Regarding worship, I am able to sing songs and to read prayers.  But I am required to get into a mood of getting outside myself and proclaiming that someone, God, is greater than I am.  The attention is going to God.  It is not that I think that I deserve worship.  I realize that there are people who are better in character and talent than I am, that I am far from being the greatest power of the universe, that I am powerless in many areas, that I am a blip in the vast history of the universe, and that there are beautiful and fearsome things in nature that can make me feel small.  Still, getting outside of myself and worshiping God can be difficult.  Yet, I think it is necessary, at least for me.

The pastor’s sermon was interesting.  The pastor was preaching about Mark 12:38-44, in which Jesus criticizes the teachers of the law who devoured widow’s houses, right before pointing out a poor widow who gave everything she had, as small as it was, to the Temple.  The pastor mentioned a variety of issues: how the early church gave to widows; how Jesus and his brother James (who, in James 1:27, saw caring for widows as part of the essence of true religion) may have had a special concern for widows because their mother Mary was one; how giving to the church pays the pastor to do the things that he does (i.e., preaching, counseling); how there are pastors who try to guilt people into giving by saying the people should be self-sacrificial, as Jesus was on the cross; and how the pastor gives to the church because it was a friend to him when he did not have too many friends.

This intersects with what I am talking about: certain moral standards being beyond ourselves, and yet we can authentically embrace them; caring about God and others, even as we and our self-interest do not vanish from the picture; giving as an expression of who we are and where we have been; having and expressing gratitude.  I guess what I long for is personal and spiritual authenticity: doing right out of who I am, out of my personality.  There is a place for doing right out of obligation or obedience to God’s commandments—-certainly one would do well to avoid doing wrong whether that feels authentic or not!  But there is something special about authenticity.  I have long rolled my eyes at the standard Christian explanation (or, rather, A Christian explanation) for why God permits moral evil: God gave us free-will because God doesn’t want us to be robots but beings who freely love him.  Even if that theodicy does not solve everything or make me feel totally better about God or the evil in the world, there is something to it, in my opinion; at the very least, I like its valuation of authenticity, choice, and free-will.

Ramblings on Countering Evil That God Permits

I am reading Brian Morley’s excellent book, Mapping Apologetics: Comparing Contemporary Approaches.  I will probably write and post my review of this book tomorrow.  Today, I want to use something from the book as a starting-point for this post.

On pages 278-279, in discussing the approach of Christian apologist Norman Geisler, Morley states the following:

“In his novel The Plague, Albert Camus (1913-1960) set up a dilemma in which one must either join the doctor and fight a plague that God sent on a sinful city, or join the priest and refuse to fight the plague since that would be fighting God.  The implied claim is that if humanitarianism is right, theism is wrong.  But Geisler says this is a false dichotomy in that the right solution may be to fight the plague as a way of working for God.  If the theist believed that stubborn human sin brought on the plague, then the only way to deal with it is to encourage repentance.  Part of that may be demonstrating love by fighting the plague.  Furthermore, there is no reason why we cannot lovingly help heal the wounds that were the result of sinful behavior.”

This made me think of a couple of things.  First of all, there was a debate between a Christian and an atheist that I heard a couple of weeks ago while I was sorting out my clothes for packing.  The Christian was David Marshall, and the atheist was Richard Carrier, both of whose thoughts I have discussed on this blog.  The debate was over the question of whether the Christian faith is reasonable.  The debate covered a variety of issues, but the one that I want to mention is Carrier’s question of why God and Jesus did not teach people in the ancient world sanitary habits, which would have reduced disease and allowed people to live longer.  When Jesus in Mark 7 was criticizing the Pharisees who believed in handwashing before meals for the purpose of ritual purity, why didn’t Jesus take the opportunity to tell people that washing one’s hands before meals is a good sanitary practice, even if it has no spiritual value?  I do not entirely remember David Marshall’s response—-I think Marshall said that the existence of evil in the world is not inconsistent with the existence of a loving God or the reasonableness of Christianity—-but I do recall Carrier’s response to Marshall.  Carrier asked why, if God permits evil for a good reason, humans should even try to alleviate it.  Marshall did not give an in-depth response to this question, but he seemed to think that Carrier was caricaturing or misrepresenting his position.

Second, I was thinking about my church’s prayer list.  After my church went through the Bible study When God’s People Pray, we have been receiving each week a list of people to pray for.  To be honest, I am not sure what exactly to pray.  Do I pray that every sick person on the list receive healing?  But some people on the list are really old, and no one can live forever, for death is a part of life.  At the same time, I do not want to be callous, for I recognize that the sick old people are valuable in the eyes of their friends and family.  What I have done is to pray for God’s blessing on each person on the list: if healing is appropriate, may God heal; if it is a person’s time to go, may God be with and prepare that person and his or her loved ones.  Even here, though, I have theological problems or questions.  Okay, so God knows bests and God does what is best.  But there are horrible things that happen in this world, and one reason that I pray is so that people on the list can experience good, not bad.  Sure, there are people in the world who go deaf and who have no money to buy a hearing aid under our ridiculous health care system, but I am still praying that one lady in my church will not go deaf.  If what happens is God’s good will, anyway, then what is the point of me praying and making certain requests?  I believe that part of prayer is hoping that God will intervene and bring good in someone’s life, even though it does not seem that good always happens in a lot of people’s lives.  I hope that my question is clear.  It is vaguely clear to myself!

In reading Morley recently, I was going through Morley’s discussion of apologist Richard Swinburne.  Swinburne was looking for reasons that evil and death exist in the world; so did Geisler, for that matter.  Both agreed that evil in the world presents us with opportunities to be good—-can we be merciful, if there is no sin to be merciful towards?  But Swinburne was also seeking to explain the existence of death.  He said that death allows a newer, younger generation to step forward and use its talents.  One can probably think of other reasons for death: it prevents overpopulation, which can be devastating when there are limited resources.  Of course, looking for valid reasons for death can arguably undercut certain versions of Christianity, particularly the type that says that death entered the world after the Fall of Adam and Eve.  If Adam and Eve had obeyed God and not sinned, would there be no death, and thus would there be an overpopulation of humans and animals, who would compete for limited resources?  I saw an atheist YouTube video that mockingly asked this question, with cartoons.  On the other hand, atheist biblical scholar Robert Price argued that, in Genesis 2, God does not want Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply, for God does not desire to compete with others for his pleasure garden, and God punishes Eve with pain in childbearing to reinforce that point.  That is intriguing, maybe possible, but many Christians do not go that route, specifically the ones who read Genesis 2 in juxtaposition with Genesis 1, in which God tells the man and the woman to be fruitful and multiply.

But let’s return to the topic of why Christians should try to alleviate suffering, if suffering serves some purpose in God’s plan.  I do not have any adequate answer to that, except to say that God may be permitting suffering to give us an opportunity to love and to be compassionate.  When we love—-and that can include pity, but also researching to cure disease and to soften the blow of natural disasters—-then we are obeying God and becoming what God wants us to be.  I don’t think that we will ever arrive at the point where there are no problems, but, even if we arrive at the point where there are fewer problems, we can look back at how things were before and appreciate where love has brought us—-at a point where fewer people suffer as they once did.

Granted, what I say above can be developed.  I was recently reading a blog post about how God’s heart is broken by things that happen in this world.  And yet, God supposedly permits these things for some benevolent purpose.  How can one be broken by evil in the world, and yet clinically look at it as fulfilling some grand purpose, as if evil is not really evil but is good in disguise?

Anyway, those are some ramblings.

UPDATE: This is not my official review, but I should probably mention that I received this book as a complimentary review copy from Intervarsity Press, in exchange for an honest review.