It seems to me that in theodicy many people prevent “consequences” as an example [...]]]> This is another brief thought. As I was thinking about politics I also considered some of the questions that come up in theodicy. In politics, many of us look for protection from risk, from the consequences of our own actions.

It seems to me that in theodicy many people prevent “consequences” as an example of an evil universe. The idea seems to be that a “good” universe is one in which everyone is comfortable and never has to do any suffering no matter what. The universe as created, of course, includes many, many consequences.

We should at least divide these between consequences of our own actions, and consequences of the actions of others. If my actions bring consequences for me, that’s one thing. When those consequences begin to hurt my wife, my children, or my grandchildren, that’s another matter. But in reality, it’s hard to imagine an arrangement of the universe that distinguishes those things.

It may be that we really do live in the best possible universe–if people are allowed meaningful choices.

First, despite our best efforts to find logical explanations, in general people use case by case explanations pretty readily. They may believe that one [...]]]> As a follow-up to my notes on God’s Problem, I would like to comment briefly on how a diversity of explanations do coexist, and how they might justifiably do so.

First, despite our best efforts to find logical explanations, in general people use case by case explanations pretty readily. They may believe that one person suffers because of their own sin, another is under the attack of the enemy, and yet another is having his faith tested. Simultaneously, they may look strictly to a future divine intervention to resolve the problem.

Second, I would ask if the problem of suffering is actually a single problem. There is no necessity that all suffering be explained in a similar fashion. It is quite rational, I think, and frequently done, to divide suffering from natural disasters or non-moral causes as one issue while suffering because of wrong moral choices of others or because of evil is quite another matter.

This will even work its way into the creation-evolution debates because of the question of whether physical death predates human sin. Old earth creationists and theistic evolutionists both have to answer this question if they are to claim compatibility with Christian theology. Young earth creationists maintain that both groups are out of bounds on that very issue.

My observation is that any explanation of suffering fails at some point, or at least fails to satisfy.

1. There is no explanation–suffering just happens.
   This may well be right, though I think there are some reasons why we live in a universe that is so designed as to allow suffering. The problem for this one is that it is ultimately unsatisfying for a great many people. They just can’t accept it.
2. Suffering as a punishment for sin.
   This one works for some, though it tends to lead to vindictiveness and to erode love for one’s neighbor. Consider the implications of those who believe HIV/AIDS is a judgment on gays and lesbians. The view is corrosive. (Note that this isn’t a valid argument against it being true, though I think there are such valid arguments. The main problem here is that one will inevitably encounter someone who is clearly undergoing undeserved suffering under this view, and that tends to shake one up. Then the question becomes not only why good people suffer, but why God would discriminate between one bad person and another. For example, why would HIV/AIDS be created to punish gays, while somewhat lesser STDs punish promiscuous heterosexuals? (Please note that the question is based on a false premise and I’m aware of that. It is one of the questions, however, that tends to shake one’s faith in the basic premise, as it should.) Alternatively, why would a hurricane hit New Orleans one year, but a relatively quite area of coastline another? Is there supposed to be a correlation between the evil and the response?
3. Suffering as a test of faith.
   Suffering does test one’s faith and many other things, but the question is whether a God who intentionally puts one into such a test is in accordance with a “loving” God. We can, as I have noted, adjust our view of what “loving” means, but that has its own risks. I tend to think that our faith is tested, but that God here operates in terms of parameters, not precise direction.
4. Blessing and cursing.
   This is simply a variation on punishment for sin. An additional problem here is that my sin may harm many, and my good deeds may benefit many. I may cause undeserved suffering or undeserved blessing. If I manage the family finances badly, more people suffer than me. One is reminded of Abraham’s question about destroying the innocent with the guilty (Gen. 18).

All of these views have various difficulties, but I think few people adhere strictly to just one. I do think that many tend to claim just one even if they don’t use it consistently. The bottom line here is a very human one–most of us can’t stand not to have an answer. If we see someone else suffer, and we don’t have an explanation that either excludes us from a similar result, or at least limits our liability, life can be too difficult to face.

I still do not have a good explanation. At the root of the way I understand this, however, is the notion that God creates a universe and then largely lets it function. He may intervene in order to have communion with his creatures, but he does not routinely alter the course of cause and effect in the physical world^*.

Now I get to return Ehrman’s book to the library, and go back to cogitation. I hope you have enjoyed the journey.

^*For this reason I tend to reject the idea of some that toward the “end times” (whenever they may be) we have massive healing and so forth.

I have previously noted that Bart Ehrman’s books are much more controversial on their jackets than on their pages (see notes on The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot and [...]]]> Ehrman, Bart D. God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question-Why We Suffer. New York: HarperCollins, 2008. ISBN: 978-0-06-117397-4. 294 pp.

I have previously noted that Bart Ehrman’s books are much more controversial on their jackets than on their pages (see notes on The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot and Response to Misquoting Jesus). This is not to say that there is nothing controversial. Rather, well-known issues are stated in a stark and controversial way.

This book is no exception to this prior experience. I was both amused and annoyed that my copy from the library had been “annotated” by some previous user. That always annoys me, because defacing library books is vandalism and I don’t like it. But the form it took is interesting.

On the title page the words “fails to” are crossed out of the subtitle, and and “s” is added to “answer” to that it says “How the Bible Answers Our Most Important Question.” Then there is a note that says simply “sin, In the 1st Book Genesis 3.” Of course, as any competent scholar would, Ehrman covers the role of sin in human suffering according to various Biblical authors.

In the conclusion he also notes how people are divided between two groups. Those who announce their answer as though it was conclusive and obvious, as this annotator did, and those who really don’t want to discuss the topic at all.

I have thought a great deal about the problem of suffering and am willing to talk about it a great deal, but I don’t actually think I have any very good answers. It was interesting to me that neither Ehrman nor I will give a definitive answer, but we have a certain amount of affinity for similar answers. The bottom line for me is simply, “That’s the way the universe works.”

Of course there is also suffering caused by human evil, so the “sin” solution is certainly a part of suffering. But any of these leaves one with the question of just how God fits in. And there I would differ with Ehrman considerably. The problem of suffering itself is one thing; one can even ask the question why we should not suffer. The problem of suffering when one also believes in a “good” God is another matter entirely.

And that’s why the book is titled “God’s Problem.” On one level this is simply a summary of how the various Bible writers answer the question of why we suffer. On another, it is Dr. Ehrman’s journey in dealing with the fact that we do suffer and the implications of that fact for our understanding of God. Some may dislike the idea of mixing one’s personal experience with a book of scholarship, even a popular one. I would disagree. I think the personal reflections, however much they differ from my own, enhance the book and help one to connect the various scriptural responses to real life.

Let me look at these two levels separately. It was interesting to read this book nearly simultaneously with Bruce Waltke’s An Old Testament Theology. The books differ a great deal in size, intended audience, style, and the level of presentation, yet they very clearly illustrate a significant divide in Biblical scholarship. Do we look try to see the scriptures as ultimately unified, and thus reconcile apparent differences theologically or do we lay out those difficulties as starkly as possible?

That question outlines extremes. There are many variations along the way, including a kind of unity in diversity. I like to refer to the unity of a large river system, rather than that of a carefully delineated pathway. But Waltke approaches the Bible as a unity to be brought into subjection to his christology, while Ehrman sees the Bible as many individual schools of thought and tends to demarcate these schools rather strictly.

As an outline, I’m rather happy with Ehrman’s work. He points out what the major positions are. I think there could be some more work done on seeing how those positions might coexist. For example, the view that suffering is a punishment for sin can co-exist with the apocalyptic view that sees suffering as something inflicted by evil forces. I know people in real life who will respond with either of these options according to the circumstances. They don’t always have any logic other than whether they feel that a particular person is deserving of “discipline” or is demonstrating strength as they face the forces of evil.

Scholars tend to try to keep things more logically disciplined than that, which is probably a good attitude for a scholar to have. But it can get in the way of describing real people who are quite frequently a great deal messier.

In particular, I question some of Ehrman’s work on Job. I think he takes a view on Job that would require the final redactor to be some sort of idiot. See my notes on this on my Participatory Bible Study Blog.

Those who would be very critical of Ehrman’s approach, however, should consider the almost casual way theologians often try to brush aside such objections. I did not include this topic in my notes on his book, but Waltke brushes aside major issues in this fashion, particularly when talking about genocide in Joshua.

There he dismisses the problem by suggesting that those who were willing to repent and convert, such as Rahab were subject to destruction, while those in Israel who failed to maintain the standards, such as Achan, were also destroyed. Many people, myself included, would not see a “convert or die” approach as substantially more acceptable than genocide. In fact, any theory of inspiration that does not take adequate account of human failings and ideas runs aground on this problem. If God in fact said “kill them all, even babies” and intended this as a good thing, then God is monstrous. It is possible that God allowed them to think that, because that was what they were inclined to do. It is sufficiently difficult to explain God allowing such a thing, much less explaining why he would positively demand it.

Yet of course the text says that God did just that. For me, that is a strong sign of how the Bible deals with people, still steeped in the culture and moral standards of the time, struggling with what God would have them to do. This is an aspect of the problem that Ehrman only touches on as part of the punishment for sin view.

As for Ehrman, just as I noted in my review of his book Misquoting Jesus, I think he responds largely to a fairly conservative evangelical view of Biblical inspiration, such as would be espoused by Waltke. I don’t mean that a bit of adjustment in one’s view of inspiration solves all the problems. Hardly! But it does make the discussion much more interesting and offer more avenues for a solution.

And this is where we come to the more personal issue. While I did not go on to get a doctoral degree, nor have I written such popular books, I really empathize with Ehrman’s experience. I came out of seminary with a “this can’t be” kind of feeling, and departed the faith at that point. Twelve years later I came back, but to a much more liberal theology. I came to the realization that I did believe in God, however much I might prefer not to, and thus I would have to deal more with my concept of God.

I’m not trying to present my position as the better option, though obviously I prefer it since it’s mine! But if I’m to believe that the physical universe reveals its creator, then I have to be willing to adjust either the adjectives I use in referring to God or the meanings of those adjectives. In general, it may be more honest to use different adjectives.

That’s why I have written that God is more interested in freedom than comfort. Ehrman discusses the “freedom of the will” explanation for suffering, though he correctly points out that the Bible isn’t that much concerned with such an explanation, and also that it fails to deal with natural disasters that are chosen by nobody. At the same time the Bible does address this issue from the direction of responsibility. Sin comes through one man and thus death (Romans 5:12). But the Bible tends to lay responsibility without really acknowledging freedom, something that puts Paul into contortions in chapter 9, from which he extracts himself (if one is generous) by breaking into a bit of doxology.

By freedom, however, I mean something more than freedom of choice. Rather, God constrains the universe within laws rather than directing particulars. God didn’t want Hurricane Ike to destroy so many homes on the gulf coast; he wanted each hurricane to behave as hurricanes do. If you want to see God as loving, you also have to see him as willing to allow hurricanes to be hurricanes.

Is that a solution? All I can say is that it works for me, but I know plenty of people, my wife being one, who do not find that very satisfying. I found it interesting that Dr. Ehrman and his wife also differ, more profoundly than I do with my wife, on the very issues involved.

The bottom line here is that I deeply appreciate this effort to discuss such a difficult problem, and to relate it to one’s personal struggle. I disagree substantially with the conclusions, but largely because I start with different premises. My belief in God, with the kernel being “ground of all being” (Tillich) is fundamental, while my concept of God is more flexible. I’m much less likely to say, “I see that my old concept of God won’t fit with the suffering in the world, so there must not be a God” than to say, “My concept of God doesn’t fit with the suffering in the world, so I must have misunderstood God.”

That difference is personal and experiential at root, I think, and would be very hard to reconcile. It lies way too far outside the realm of “mostly certain” knowledge. In the meantime, you could do worse than to read this book and see how it helps you think about the problem of suffering.

Hitchens’ argument is essentially that God has [...]]]> Mike, at The Creation of an Evolutionist, calls attention to an article by Dinesh D’Souza on Townhall.com, in which D’Souza replies to an argument by Christopher Hitchens. Mike says this is worth thinking about, and I agree, but I’ve got some bones to pick with D’Souza’s approach.

Hitchens’ argument is essentially that God has been absent for 98% of human history. According to this argument, humanity has been around for 100,000 years, while Christian history, which is apparently the only part of concern in this argument, has lasted only 5,000 years. Thus, man is unredeemed for 95% of human history. One hardly knows where to start in discussing this abuse of math and logic.

Here’s the quote:

Here’s what Hitchens said. Homo sapiens has been on the planet for a long time, let’s say 100,000 years. Apparently for 95,000 years God sat idly by, watching and perhaps enjoying man’s horrible condition. After all, cave-man’s plight was a miserable one: infant mortality, brutal massacres, horrible toothaches, and an early death. Evidently God didn’t really care.

Then, a few thousand years ago, God said, “It’s time to get involved.” Even so God did not intervene in one of the civilized parts of the world. He didn’t bother with China or Egypt or India. Rather, he decided to get his message to a group of nomadic people in the middle of nowhere. It took another thousand years or more for this message to get to places like India and China.

(Note that the move from 5% to 2% seems to happen in the time the message takes to spread.)

We are assuming that because Jesus came at one particular time, and because what we count as the Christian Bible was initiated at a particular time, God must have been inactive before that time. But there is no particular reason to believe that. One also would assume, on this basis, that the massive destruction we can inflict today, and indeed have inflicted is a better indication of God’s absence than the misery of life as a caveman.

Human misery is an issue for Christian apologetics, but the argument against Christianity is really not strengthened by this particular argument. Since I have been blogging on theodicy for some time, and am not nearly finished, I’m going to leave that issue aside at the moment. Whatever arguments apply to things like the holocaust will likely apply to the misery of cavemen.

D’Souza justifiably attacks the numbers. He has discovered that only 2% of the 105 billion people who have ever been born were born in the time before Jesus came to earth. I haven’t checked those statistics, but let’s assume that they are essentially correct. D’Souza has put the math in perspective, a worthy accomplishment, but he hasn’t really answered the underlying problem. As one commenter on the article points out, if God can ignore 2% of the population, how can he know that he isn’t part of a 2% that God is ignoring now?

D’Souza’s other argument, that human prehistory and the sudden explosion of civilization are much more of a problem for atheists, deserves a separate response. It is not an area that interests me nearly as much.

There seem to be several assumptions regarding revelation and salvation on which this argument is based. The ones I noticed off-hand are:

1. Revelation has only occurred in the written scriptures of Judaism and Christianity
   While many Christians may believe that, a substantial number of Christian theologians do not. C. S. Lewis, surely not a liberal leader, held that God revealed himself many times, and that myths in pagan religions bore truth that led toward the eventual truth about Jesus. Accepting the Bible as God’s revelation does not require that one deny that God spoke to other people, even to cavemen.
2. Redemption only occurred in that same period
   I would not expect Hitchens, an atheist, to be concerned with this issue, but Christians surely should. The death of Jesus was efficacious for people who lived prior to his death, and even prior to the first written prophecy. If this is a critique of Christianity, Christian understandings on this issue should rule.
3. Absence of records means actual absence
   We really have now idea how God might have related to cavemen. Amongst those who care about such things, there are debates about just when the image of God came to be. Personally, I’m not that interested, though if I were to argue, I would suggest that God’s image is not a binary thing. Those who look toward their creator, however fumbling that effort, are manifesting some aspect of the image of God. My own efforts to seek out God may well not be sufficiently different from the earliest caveman to even notice.

D’Souza has place the numbers in context very effectively. As stated, the argument appears to suggest that God didn’t care about 95-98% of the people who ever lived, whereas we’re talking about 2%. But is this a good answer for a Christian? I think it simply buys into the assumptions of D’Souza’s debate opponent. Theodicy will continue to fail, I think, as long as we make the assumption that God’s “care” involves making us all comfortable. There’s a harsh reality in there that many Christian apologists don’t want to have front and center–God lets people reap what they so for the most part.

Christian theology teaches that God cares about everyone, but it also teaches that he does not resolve everyone’s problems. He doesn’t prevent all wars, death, disease, or suffering. Why that should be is another subject. But whether it happens to 2%, 5%, or 95% is not the issue.

I recall a sociology class I took in my first year of college. The professor was a communist. No, not a liberal I accused of being a communist. He was a self-proclaimed communist. In a discussion I brought up Solzhenitsyn’s figure of 66 million dead as a result of communism in Russia. (I’m working from memory here. Solzhenitsyn was citing a statistician who calculated the figure.)

“I think you’re wrong about that,” he said. “The cost in lives was only about 40 million.”

I was fairly stunned. Using “only” and “40 million” together with reference to people killed was pretty astonishing. The reduction of the estimate by 26 million didn’t make Russian communism look any better to me. Similarly, reducing the number of people ignored by God to 2% or 5% of human doesn’t help me here at all.

What does help me is that I don’t believe God ignored them, any more than he ignored those 66 million people in Russia or 6 to 10 million in World War II. In all cases, the problem remains the same: Why doesn’t God make it better? It’s a good question, or better it’s one that will certainly be asked, and it remains the same despite the numbers.

[Note that I leave this here even though someone is sure to note that I have not responded to the more basic issue of why God allows any of the things I've cited. I'm addressing those in the posts in my theodicy category, and will continue to do so over time.]

What is the particular problem that is raised that Stegosaurus had a million or so years in the sun but now is no [...]]]> Mark responded to my post Dealing with the Theological Implications of Evolution, and in turn poses a question to me, well summarized in the last sentence of his last paragraph:

What is the particular problem that is raised that Stegosaurus had a million or so years in the sun but now is no longer?

Which reminds me that I get in the most trouble for the things I don’t say in a post. That question needs to be put into the context of the point I was trying to address in the post. Some Christians respond to evolution by saying that it doesn’t really make any difference. Genesis tells us that God created; evolution tells us how God created.

Depending on your audience, that will mean substantially different things. In some ways I regret growing up and essentially completing my formal education as a young earth creationist. There are so many lines of inquiry I would have pursued. I don’t mean things that would have advanced knowledge generally, but that could have advanced my knowledge.

At the same time, I understand how young earth creationists think, and telling them that evolution doesn’t make any difference is quite futile. You see a substantial part of the young earth creationist background involves an understanding of the fall. I’m not saying that every young earth creationist feels this way, but I personally haven’t encountered one who doesn’t.

The fall of humanity happened at a specific historical point. There was no sin in the world before that, and there was sin afterward. The physical world suffered as a result of sin, and was, in fact, dramatically altered because physical death was introduced at that point. (Never mind how an ecology would function without death.) In the particular form in which I learned it, the deteriorating ages of the patriarchs in Genesis 5 & 11 indicates the deterioration of the very fabric of the universe, or at least of life, so that people became less and less long-lived as they separated from God.

In that context, to say that evolution makes no difference theologically is nonsense. Evolution makes all the difference in the world. If God used evolution as his tool to create the world, not only is the chronology different, but the connection between sin and physical death is broken. There might be some deterioration of the world after sin, though no evidence of this is available, but the direct connection cannot exist.

For people who hold the young earth creationist viewpoint, at least in the form I grew up with, evolution is a devastating blow to all they hold dear. If the fall did not cause deterioration, then how can redemption cause recreation? Remember here that they believe this does involve the physical world, all of creation (Romans 8:22). Everything from God’s personal care of everyone, to redemption, and finally to the life hereafter and the new creation falls under their system if evolution is true. The theological impact is massive.

I would add a side note on the “gap theory” or “ruin and restoration creationism” which holds that the earth is very old, the same age as that held by mainstream science and by old earth creationists, yet that sin was brought to earth before the creation that occurred in Genesis 1. In their view sin caused death, but did so before Adam was created. Adam then participated in that death at the fall. For them successive extinction events can become successive acts of destruction by God intended to wipe out or punish evil. Evolution is still devastating to their theology and they would reject it vigorously.

One other odd view is Bill Dembski’s view that death was introduced prospectively, i.e. God knew that evil would occur and dealt with it before the fact. Adam was thus responsible, even though he sinned much later. I blogged about it a bit here, and Dembski’s article can be found here. (Note that he has revised this several times, so quotes from it in any earlier articles may be wrong. I’ve tried to note the date, but I think I forgot a few times. I always used the version that was online as of the date I posted.)

Old earth creationists and theistic evolutionists are in essentially the same place on this. Death must be seen as a natural part of the way the universe is designed, and death becomes God’s tool. I would say that the issue is even harder for old earth creationists. Let me digress for a moment to explain why.

I’m not much impressed with the common argument that God didn’t create evil; God created Satan, who then rebelled. In other words, I don’t feel the separation between God taking action directly, God creating someone who has the option to take an action, or God creating a process that has that same effect. If God created Satan knowing he would do evil (a requirement if one accepts foreknowledge, which in the traditional sense I do not), then God is equally responsible. If God creates a world in which the holocaust can occur, he can’t evade responsibility. In scripture, I don’t see any great effort to avoid God’s responsibility for whatever happened. That seems to be mostly a later effort.

Let me illustrate. Supposing I have responsibility for a group of children, and I let them loose in a room full of valuable but fragile items. I don’t set any parameters, but simply tell them to play and then I run off. I don’t come back, observe, and most importantly intervene when their play gets lively and the valuable items are broken.

If the owner of the valuables comes to me and charges me with responsible, will he except the excuse that the children did it? I suspect not. I put the children there. I didn’t instruct them properly. I didn’t monitor them, and I didn’t intervene to stop them. I think most people would regard me as responsible for the breakage.

In the same way I regard God as responsible for the universe. I think I have warrant to believe that God regards God as responsible for the universe.

But the fact is that in my experience most people do not agree with me with regard to God. They do find “the devil did it” to exonerate God in some sense. In that context, I think the old earth creationists have a bit of a problem. As a theistic evolutionist I believe that God so ordered the universe that there would be processes that would bring about life and allow it to diversify. I must accept that God is thereby responsible for such things as scarcity of resources; no diversification would occur if there was no selective survival.

The old earth creationist, it seems to me, must see God as creating an incomplete process. Variation and natural selections works some, but appears to be defective. Thus God allows the process to work and then steps in and creates greater variations from time to time. So God is not merely using a tool that is part of the fabric of the universe; he is also getting involved on a day to day (or more likely age to age or period to period basis. I think if they were consistent the same people who accept a devil based theodicy should regard this as God with dirty hands.

I must restate, however, that I think theistic evolutions and old earth creationists are in the same boat on this one, and that evolution does not make a theological difference on this one point. But that is only true between old earth creationists and theistic evolutionists. Young earth creationists or ruin and restoration creationists would see it somewhat differently.

The weakness of the first option, in my view, is that evolution does have implications for theology. Mass extinctions don’t go well with the idea that God created the world, put it in the care of humanity, and expected humanity to exercise responsible dominion over it. I’m not saying the two notions can’t be reconciled, but one has to stop at thing, at the very least.

The weakness of the second option is the same as for those who draw philosophical implications from evolutionary theory. What is may not be the same as what ought to be. What we observe may not be a sufficient sample of God’s activity to allow us to extrapolate large amounts about his character.

My inclination, nonetheless, is to the second option. Evolutionary theory has profoundly influenced elements of my theology, including my views of death, of the directness of God’s care and intervention, of the nature of the fall, and even of redemption. I don’t say they are altered to the point of being unrecognizable, though a critic or two might say so, but I don’t think the same thing about them as I did when I was a young earth creationist.

Is cautious iconoclasm an oxymoron? Perhaps. Some people claim my self identification as a “passionate moderate” is as well. What good is language if you can’t play with it? (Don’t answer that!)

Steve Martin posts about the problem of death as God’s tool for Christian theology. Let me note that Steve’s blog is a great source of information on theological controversies related to evolution and a great source for theistic evolutionists or evolutionary creationists.

But I have a bit of a problem with something he quotes. He’s blogging on the book Paradigms on Pilgrimage, which I must surely get my hands on. Here I’m just responding to the single point, represented by this quote, which is Martin’s summary:

It is not primarily evolutionary mechanisms like genetic mutations, or even natural selection, which is the problem. It is in fact, the limited amount of resources available to God’s creatures.

(You can read more extended quotes in the post cited above.)

I’m afraid I really don’t get this one. It’s a nice way of talking around the point, but the fact is that if there wasn’t a differential in the rates of survival, new mutations would not become fixed in the population. (Perhaps some of my more scientifically inclined readers can correct me on this.) Yes, it is the variation that allows creatures to survive changing environments, but it is the limitation of resources, and the changing environments that cause one set of characteristics to persist rather than another.

In other words, death is a tool, whether inflicted by falling logs, lack of food, or changing environment. You can name the tool something else, but the same thing still occurs. If God was as concerned with the death of creatures as I believed he was when I was a young earth creationist (sparrows falling, though note that the scriptures just say God sees, not that he prevents), then he could not use this mechanism.

It seems dangerous to me to try to brush past the implications, and on first glance this looks like an effort to do so, or at least an attempt to frame the issue in a more favorable light. The wording sounds nicer, but the creatures are still dying, and evolution would not occur if they didn’t. Similarly, I think, one could look at a hurricane as the cause of new life, and in fact such “disasters” have a role to play in the environment. But looking at them that way doesn’t cause them to leave less death behind.

One basic way of stating the entry point for Christian theodicy is that there are three key things we believe about [...]]]> Theodicy is a relatively interesting thing, and I’m really going to discuss a popular aberration, so those of you who have real backgrounds in theology can tune out, or critique me for oversimplifications.

One basic way of stating the entry point for Christian theodicy is that there are three key things we believe about God and the world: 1) He is good, 2) He is all-powerful, and 3) Evil exists. These three cannot be reconciled as normally defined, and thus much ink is spilled in trying to work with them. No, that’s not the whole of theodicy, nor does it always have to be stated that way, or derived from this irreconcilable (or more commonly inconsistent) triad.

In popular discussions the details are often bypassed, and we get a simple argument against the existence of God because there is evil. “I don’t believe in God because so many people suffer,” someone announces. Believers often fail to look behind the statement in response.

The argument from suffering really doesn’t go to the existence of God as such, but rather to the nature of God. I recall having this discussion in a philosophy of religion class in which I said simply, “What if God is evil?” I think now I would use “indifferent” as an example, but I used evil. “That would be too horrible to contemplate,” said one of my fellow students. But the fact is that “too horrible to contemplate” does nothing to establish that something isn’t true.

This particular form of theodicy has to occur within a framework of religious views. The triad is only inconsistent because Christians believe that God is both good and omniscient. One possible way to reconcile these is by simply saying that God isn’t one thing or the other. For example, a dualist has no difficulty reconciling these points. God is good, but he isn’t all-powerful. He’s in conflict with an evil power.

I encountered this the other day in discussing the book of Joshua. How can I question the command to kill all the Canaanites if it is a command given by God? It’s a good question. Is there some standard of good that is above God, and if so who made it? If God is the creator of everything, doesn’t he get to say what’s good? There’s a whole new can of worms! But the more direct question here is how do you reconcile God’s action here as recorded in scripture with God’s actions or statements elsewhere in scripture?

That’s why it’s so important not to interpret scripture based on any narrow selection of passages. For example, what do I learn about God by reading Ezekiel 18:32 (for I have no pleasure in the death of anyone) and then comparing it to God’s action in the flood when God is sorry he made humanity and decided to wipe them all out except for eight people and start over. You may say that they were all wicked and deserved to die, which is indeed what the story says, but the action still seems extreme.

If we turn then to Job, whose children are killed along with many of his servants, because God allows the adversary (the satan, but don’t read a Christian concept of “Devil” here) suggests that Job can’t take it. They may not be 100% innocent, yet the only reason given in the story for them to die is to help God prove a point.

I’m not going to dig into these stories much right now, but this leads me to a point I feel I can discuss with more confidence than a philosophical question. How does one reconcile Biblical statements, stories, and their implications in such a way as to present God as just and good? Can this be done? When I’ve looked at a few incidents, I’m going to return to the question of whether evolution actually presents a more serious issue for theodicy than do many standard Biblical stories.

In conclusion let me give one warning. As Christians we need to beware of answering one objection to God’s justice by making God look bad in another way. For example, if one suggests that God was simply carrying out justice in the flood because everyone other than Noah and his family was irredeemably evil, we should also ask why God didn’t intervene in a more successful way earlier. When dealing with a classroom, for example, I found that when one intervenes early, one will have greater success, whereas if one ignores a problem long enough, one loses control of the classroom. Is it not possible here to answer God’s justice problem by portraying God as inept?

I like these two sentences particularly well:

Suppose instead that he made the [...]]]> PamBG quotes a letter that using some wonderful phraseology with regard to the process of creation, but also related to theodicy. I can’t access the letter itself due to a subscription requirement, but the part Pam quotes is quite good.

I like these two sentences particularly well:

Suppose instead that he made the world make itself.

. . .

Be the incarnation suggests that, in Jesus, God knew by experience, not just observation, what it was to be rejected, and hunted down; . . .

Yes!