The Problem of Evil Solved!

My letter to a speaker in our Sunday congregation, recently.

To Jimbo: 

I've heard that the most common asserted objection to Christian faith specifically, or Christian theism more generally, is the so-called "problem of evil".

I think Luke 13:1-5, which you were able to touch on in your sermon last Sunday, deals with this in "nail hit on head" fashion.

There are several Christian responses to the PoE, but most seem to be sought within the framing of the objector, which is typically in terms of some form of quasi-Aristotelian fantasy 'god as fairy god-father' figure.

This 'god' is characterized in a trio of metaphysical absolutes: omniscient, omnibenevolent , omnipotent, construed in homo-benevolent fashion (that's the fairy god-father piece). That is 'god has to do right by me on my terms'.

The abstractions that underlay this almost narcissistic view fail at the starting line because God reveals himself to us not in static absolutes, as the ancient Greek philosophers were inclined towards, but in terms of interaction ("I am who I am: Ex 3:14). Don't worry, this is not a take on 'process theology'; what I refer to is God's action in history in relation to us on the grand arc of salvation from Creation, through Christ to New Creation.

Outside this framing we are diverted to the 'god has to be nice to me' game. This is agnostic of the nature of God, man and the creation set out in the creation account (Genesis 1-3:8a), the fall, and God's resolving action to 'over-rectify' the fall (not that we know the possible path of history absent a fall).

By 'over-rectify' I mean that those in Christ are now destined not back to Adam's state, but to be adopted into Yahweh's family!! So, the problem's typical framing relies on the 'god of my invention' and not the Creator God of revelation!

God's rectification of the Fall's result comes by way of the Messiah intervening in this corrupt world--of our own making--to not scrap the world, and us, but to start again (part of the theology of the flood in contra-positive fashion). Nor will he accept who we are in our 'God-repudiating' state, ethically free individuals (part of our 'imageness-now-marred' nature), about whom the place of our congress with God has fallen with we its stewards (Romans 8:22).

Against this, God has sought to renew us within that fallen world with the fall-ness of the world itself exhibiting its state to we who share that state...as its stewards. The two are inseparable. And here we can respond to the horror show of the fall by either loving it or rejecting it in repentance, or die fixed in it (as Yeshua points out in the Luke passage). Thus we are born from above upon repentance and belief as the first phase of the great rectification his kingdom will bring. The first act of grace to us to counter the fall.

As those in God's image-marred (that is, everyone) we detect the uncongeniality of much that goes on in our world and ourselves, while unable to do much about it at cause, while, by God's grace we do have some ability to ameliorate the signs of fall, as history shows.

Nevertheless, we need Christ's 'rescue' to give us new life, the life of his kingdom, not our fallen world.

In short the fallen cosmos, full of 'not-god-ness' is constantly telling us all is not right (our 'not right' detector is still working), and while the creation bears witness to God, more so does Christ who brings the promise of his kingdom and the actuality of new life. Nevertheless while in this fallen cosmos we still suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (Hamlet), yet with hope!

This is the work, not of the 'fairy god-father god' but the God who loves, saves and restores while 'respecting' our choice in the creation made for us to know God in.

BTW, to Mr Atheist: how does rejecting God solve actual evil? It seems all you are left with is mute, uncomprehending despair with no out but the hope of oblivion. Yet for some reason you don't gallop to that end, you avoid it! Why?

 

How to teach apologetics.

This morning at the old ecclesiarium, the paid guy's talk was on Luke 13, among other things.

It was all OK as far as it went, but it didn't go far enough with a massive missed opportunity.

The passage that caught my thoughts was vss. 1-5, about the WHS disaster at Siloam where a tower collapsed killing 18 men.

The issue of the importance of repentance was picked up (oddly, as the congregation does have a Calvinistic tinge, alas) but the opportunity for a bit if apologetic training was missed. And every opportunity should  be taken to at least give people the means of fruitful discussion with others.

One of the most difficult (for most) questions non-believers put to Christians is the 'problem' of suffering in a world with a loving God. Of course most people here conceive god as a sort of fairy-godfather who should be nice to us then just get out of the way.

Yeshua puts his finger on the point: repent.

Our experience of a world where we have betrayed our imageness and turned our backs to God is a world in a spiral of death makes a point. It is not 'natural'. It is discordant with what we hope and how it should be.  So 'evil' (or for the godless 'inconvenience') is the great alarm bell that there is a cosmic fire in our world and we'd better act fast.

This is not 'condition normal' it is 'condition red -- emergency' and the only way out is to re-engage with the Creator by repentance to him (and for we post resurrection folks) belief in Christ.

Belief here means entire commitment!

God has acted and offered us the way out of this mess in the world he made for us to reflect his love in, but don't. Yet it remains our world which will be replaced by the New Creation populated by those who want out (or 'in') and are 'in Christ'.

Nothing else matters (apart from caring for the sick, the poor and the damaged, being kind and humble).

So, Yeshua is the solution of the massive and terminal 'problem' we experience. If we didn't experience it, how would we know there was a problem?

After explaining this in a kind discussion, with lots of questions. it might be apposite to ask the nonbeliever if their non-belief offers a better solution. Probably not.

 

The Messianic Arc

Why are Christians, New Testament people, so interested in Torah, indeed the whole Old Testament, the Tanakh?

Because it is the genealogy of the world!

And that of the world to come as it traces the great cosmic arc etched in history in the coming and accomplishment of Messiah and his New Creation.

 

"Behold, I make all things new". Revelation 21:5 

Why the West, late of Christian ethos, is easily led

Western chauvinistic arrogance both obsesses and drives the left to disdain Islam, the Islam of its own terms, and seeks to apply Western-left categories to it.

Thus its categories are wrong, its terms are wrong and its ethos is wrong when it comes to Islam: a complete failure to understand and without the humility to admit so.

It's complete misunderstanding is in a move of implicit hubristic cultural imperialism that produces a Westernized conception of Islam as merely another mystical irrelevance expressed in cute (!) dress habits, prayer get-togethers parties at Ramadan and a generally incomprehensible book.

In fact, the largely, but not exclusively left conception denies Islam's own internal systems of significance, reducing it to superficialities and narrow diagnostics of Western(-left) interest. Denigrating Islam as it does so.

OTOH those ware of Islam do take it seriously and in its own terms. They actually respect Islam and accept what it claims to drive its culture, ambitions and obsessions.

Great chain of redemption

Calvinists get all excited about Romans 29-30

²⁹ For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; ³⁰ and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.

 I know this is their wet-dream, but if only with the tendentious Calvinistic verse-picking at work.

Even while he tends to Arminianism, Clarke's commentary on this segment is more to the fact of the matter. I also read it with a Molinist tinge, but I nevertheless don't think 'Middle Knowledge" is either necessary or helpful as it seeks too much without providing enough.

Let's move slowly:

 

God knew there would be those who had faith in Christ.

Because God is creator and  made us in his image he knows what humans are like and capable of (although child sacrifice took him by surprise: Jeremiah 19:5) and the range of their dispositions and inclinations. The range of human thought, capability and motivations is for God is finite and tiny. We can present to God no conundrum.

We are constrained by the reality we are in, so God has no need of meticulous or even particular 'foreknowledge'. In whatever combination of options available to any person and between all persons no impediment can be given to God's achieving his objective. He doesn't need to 'look into the future' because for God's no-limit-ness the finite (but very large to us) set of possible outcomes for humanity are trivially differentiated for God. Also the challenge range in the set is always within God's much larger capability range with respect to Romans 8:28.

This is somewhat akin to an experienced parent confident of their formation of their children into adulthood because they know their children, they can with high reliability predict their children's responses to events and instruction and set up accordingly for success for the parental objectives.

That said, back to Romans 8

Let's work through the contentious opening moves in vv. 29-30.

For that God knew there would be people who would become faithful to Christ:

The destination of those people he established was that they will be conformed to Christ and so in the New Creation and in God's family.

How God will do that? He will have invited who those who are faithful and will justify and glorify them. So all who turn to Christ will have been those God has invited...but not all invited will necessarily accept the invitation, of course...God knows people!

Ephesians 1:13

This is the true order of salvation (what theologians like to latinize to impress as Ordo salutis). Note, the 'in Him' is the theme of this pericope: all of it is about the result of being 'in Christ'.

 ¹³ In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise...

There it is:

    Listened (attention)

    Believed (faith)

    Sealed with the Spirit (regeneration) 

 

Achievement badges.

In the diocesan newspaper there was a list of recent church worthies, both clergy-people and not, who had received a gong from the government. The equivalent to my mind of a primary school merit award or a boy-scout achievement medal.

Matthew 6:2-16 sprang to mind.

Why would one bother?

What is the point?

Does it aid the recipient in their humility, their growth in Christian maturity or the work of the gospel or making disciples?

No. It's just aligning with the powers of the world. 

I would be humiliated by such a bauble. 

Actually I did get a badge from the government once.

As a kid I was in a radio club run by the public-funded radio station. The government sent me the club badge. That's good enough for me! 

Why 4 Gospels?

Why not just one gospel?

The critical issue for any account of an event is evidence. The more witnesses the better. And better still if they have differing perspectives, that way you can be more sure that it is not a put-up job.

When police collect witness statements it gets very suspicious if they are the same, because everyone has a naturally different perspective. Same perspective points to collusion or fraud and raises the suspicion of just one witness giving a self-serving, and distorted report. This would probably be, in reality, an event in private and could be a complete fabrication

Such suspicion attaches to the Quran which was both 'revealed' in private and with circumstantial convenience, and the Book of Mormon, read by Joe Smith alone through magical glasses on gold tablets, which he did not and so probably could not produce!

Still, a sucker is born every minute...both these 'authors' had  predilections for multiple wives and violence, that would also attract the suckers!

Now think about the witnesses of a traffic accident where a number of reports are prepared by those who saw the event or attended the scene for the police to use.

The vehicle removal operative would have a report that was about vehicles and their condition, their place on the road and what had to be done to remove them.

The ambulance crew would talk about the conditions of the injured, perhaps how they were extricated from the cars, what immediate medical aid was given and the hospital(s) to which they were transported.

The on-lookers would give very different views depending on their location when the accident happened, their familiarity with cars and their degree of shock. If they knew the injured or  not would also be a factor.

The  police report from the GD police would provide one perspective, the technical report in evidence from Accident Investigation another.

All reports would differ, but al about the same accident with differing perspectives and purposes.

So the Gospels.

Mark gives a short action-filled account for the average Jewish disciple, let's say.

Luke is interested in fine detail for an educated Greek readership.

Matthew concentrates on the theology and

John writes with a more philosophical or spiritual interest for the more sophisticated Jew or Greek, perhaps.

Some different emphases are given by the writers for their different readers. Variously emphasizing this and sometimes that.

Differences don't mean contradiction, they mean different perspectives with different emphases and referring to different parts or aspects of the mission..

The multiplicity of gospels show this was not an mission or events in secret, but were before witnesses consistently.

If there is only one witness, the cops are understandably sceptical that there is a case without substantial evidence. Once again, compare the Quran where the only witness was self-proclaimed beneficiary of the 'revelation'.!