Theodicy Part 2
An ongoing problem in the debates between Calvinists and non-Calvinists is a matter of defining terms. The most common objection to the Calvinist view is that it unavoidably makes God out to be the "author of evil". Calvinists often respond by denying this and reiterating a definition of theological compatibilism. They might leave the question of how evil came into existence in the first place as a mystery, God somehow simply intends evil to be in service to a greater good.
There is a minor satisfaction in this response. After all, we all can imagine situations of suffering, pain, the actions of morally evil agents, etc. bring about a desirable outcome, whether intentional or not. Just as one example, Dieter Dengler was a German immigrant in the U.S. who after joining the U.S. Air Force ended up being shot down over Vietnam. Dieter explains in Herzog's documentary "Little Dieter Needs to Fly" that his hardships growing up in post war Germany -- with the severe hardships of poverty and physically exhausting work as well as the experience of his grandfather being persecuted for the only one in his village who did NOT support Hitler -- had somehow prepared Dengler for his life threatening experiences as a POW in hostile, exotic territory. We would in fact never know of any notion of virtue in the absence of evil, injustice, suffering.
The bible itself is replete with examples where people are confronted with doubt about God's goodness when evil seems to be unfolding right under a sovereign God's watch. The disciples of Jesus must have had one heck of a time wrapping their head around recent events while in hiding between Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday. It was bad enough that Jesus, who demonstrated his authority and identity as the Son of God through signs and miracles and teachings, did not fulfill his messianic mission of restoring Israel. But the way in which he failed, being at the mercy of a kangaroo court thrown together by petty religious power-mongers, then yo-yoed among the whims of Gentile rulers, finally abandoned to a cursed, criminal execution, exposed to public shame: Where is God in all of this? Has God gone mad and revoked his promises and his integrity? It's easy to imagine what kind of serious questioning and doubting of God's goodness and justice occurs when we don't have enough information in certain circumstances.
While Calvinism is a form of theological compatibilism, it is not a philosophy in the usual sense. It is evaluating and logically arranging the biblical data, not in a way not to satisfy our demand for answer, but in a way that demands of us to be satisfied with the data given. This is not to say it is irrational or logically invalid. Only that there is necessarily a psychological aspect to seeing through these things. Because of the subject matter it is a process of submission not validation. I know that runs the risk of sounding condescending or accusatory, but it is more autobiographical than anything.
Thus as I hope to give an answer in terms of a causal model, I am proposing something to be useful and sufficient for us to best make sense of the data. I've already mentioned that our innate sense of justice ("common sense") is a liability and we need to be careful to examine ourselves whether we are prone to be overly dismissive of unsatisfactory answers on the one hand, or overly speculative of concealed matters on the other hand.
Nevertheless, I haven't yet addressed ultimate beginnings. How does God relate to the introduction of evil as a state of affairs?
Statements like "This makes God the author of evil" don't move the discussion along. We need to look at the possible meanings of "author" while keeping in mind that the word is not preferred because of its ambiguity.
What exactly is mean by it? Based on semantic variants and etymologies, here are some possibilities:
1) God is the prime cause / Creator / originator
2) God is the performing agent
3) God is the responsible agent or principal party
4) God is the authority-figure who authorizes another to act in his stead
5) God is the instigator
6) God is the exemplar
From a Calvinist view, only some of these senses are affirmed and even then carry qualifications. The non-Calvinist may object that these turn into distinctions without a difference, a way of escape the opening charge of attributing the origin of evil to God himself.
But that is exactly the problem, according to the Calvinist. We are not concerned with giving a simple Yes or No answer because the objection is oversimplified and poorly frames the issue.
So let's go through each of these.
(1) Can be basically affirmed by the Calvinist. But with the qualification that there is a distinction between primary and secondary causes.
(2) is rejected since according to the distinction in (1) it is the sinner, as secondary cause, who performs the sin.
(3) depends, because on the one hand God is in no sense obligated to "give a response" to man for his ways. To borrow Paul's analogy, it would be as futile as the clay demanding a response from the potter "Why did you make me thus?" There is a fundamental distinction between Creator and what he has created which makes such a question inappropriate.
On the other hand, there is a sense in which Calvinism affirms that God is responsible for all that happens in the world. But in relation to sin and the propogation of evil, God is never responsible as proximate cause and thus never subject to blame. According to (2) the sinner is proximate cause.
(4) and (6) can only be said of God in terms of his holiness and his redemptive works, not in relation to sin.
(5) can only be affirmed of God in a narrow sense. God does not provoke someone into sin who would have been unwilling to do so otherwise. God "instigates" sin in the sense that he establishes the environment and arranges the circumstances through which man is allowed to express his free moral agency. For example Romans 5:20, "The Law was added so that the trespass might increase", giving a broad historical overview of the function of the Law through the circumstance it put Israel under. God had sovereignly arranged a circumstance for sinful people to live under a legally binding covenant by which their inherent guilt was prolifically demonstrated as a matter of public record of offense and falling short. God did not coerce nor provoke the Israelites to sin more, he arranged the circumstances where they freely increased their trespasses due to their inherently rebellious attitude towards God's holy standards (Rom. 7:7-13).
Now consider this case. Person A has a gunshot wound and Person A dies. These two simply facts about Person A are not enough for a moral valuation of what has transpired. So we work backwards.
Person A is dead. Too much blood was lost through the gunshot wound. The aim of the barrell and the velocity of the bullet upon impact was such that the wound had a high probability of causing a fatality. The trigger on a gun was fired in the direction of Person A. The gun did not go off spontaneously but was fired by another Person B. Person B who was aiming the gun at Person A had these thoughts immediately prior to pulling the trigger: "I need to kill this person in order to take all his money and get away without being caught."
So we have a chain of events, from cause, to intermediate causes, to effect. Now, the hole in Person A is a more proximate cause to Person A's death than Person B, since the hole was the means by which a fatal amount of blood poured out of Person A resulting in the shut down of vital organs. However, the hole in Person B is not the sole cause of the death, nor is the hole a morally responsible agent.
So we continue to move backwards in the chain of events. The bullet, the gun, the trigger mechanism, until we reach Person B. We have now identified the nearest cause to the death of Person A who is also a morally responsible agent. Person B was neither a mere material cause nor a coerced agent. Person B performed an action with morally culpable intent. Thus we have moral valuation in the event of the death of Person A. This was a murder in which Person B as the nearest morally responsible agent is implicated for evil intent according to a set standard of justice.
According to the Calvinist, God is the primary cause of all that comes to pass including this instance of Person A's murder. God ordained Person A's murder; he arranged the circumstances such that Person A's murder would necessarily come to pass when it did. God sustained every link in the chain between Person A's death and Person B's murderous intent and free action, but God himself was not any one link in that chain.
This distinction between God as ultimate cause and man as proximate cause is not a minor point but the crux of the whole matter. Because the corrolary point is that there is a necessary psychological distinction between human and divine motives in any given event in which sin is involved.
If the corollary point of psychological distinction can be established from the relevant biblical data, then the ultimate cause/proximate cause distinction is a reasonably valid inference. This is in fact how the Calvinist reasons from scripture on the matter. Genesis 50:20, as one example, is considered one of the more explicit statements on this psychological distinction (which is also a goal-oriented distinction), where Joseph interprets the events of his life to his brothers. His brothers are morally responsible agents for intending evil to come upon Joseph. But in fact God had ordained these events for a greater good, "the saving of many lives".
Do these incompatible intentions at work in the same chain of events truly sustain God as blameless since he is both ultimate cause and determined the ultimate goal? (We still must ask, blameless before whom? The mankind of Romans 1:17-3:20?)
Scripture indeed states as axiomatic (not needing proof that satiates our innate sense of justice and fairness) that the greater good, a second-order good, is sufficient justification for the ordained introduction and temporary existence of evil as a state of affairs.
So essentially we need to push the issue from beginnings to telos, the goal-oriented intent of God's decreeing all that comes to pass. Scripture affirms, without apologies, that first order evils are necessary to attain a second-order good.
"Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life. John 9:3
Jesus said, "For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind." John 9:39
Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful. Romans 7:13
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28
For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: "I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth." ... What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? 23What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory ... Romans 9:17, 22-23
For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all. Romans 11:32
But the Scripture declares that the whole world is a prisoner of sin, so that what was promised, being given through faith in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe. Gal. 3:22
All well and good, but this only proves God uses certain instances of man's evil intent for a greater good.
There is a minor satisfaction in this response. After all, we all can imagine situations of suffering, pain, the actions of morally evil agents, etc. bring about a desirable outcome, whether intentional or not. Just as one example, Dieter Dengler was a German immigrant in the U.S. who after joining the U.S. Air Force ended up being shot down over Vietnam. Dieter explains in Herzog's documentary "Little Dieter Needs to Fly" that his hardships growing up in post war Germany -- with the severe hardships of poverty and physically exhausting work as well as the experience of his grandfather being persecuted for the only one in his village who did NOT support Hitler -- had somehow prepared Dengler for his life threatening experiences as a POW in hostile, exotic territory. We would in fact never know of any notion of virtue in the absence of evil, injustice, suffering.
The bible itself is replete with examples where people are confronted with doubt about God's goodness when evil seems to be unfolding right under a sovereign God's watch. The disciples of Jesus must have had one heck of a time wrapping their head around recent events while in hiding between Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday. It was bad enough that Jesus, who demonstrated his authority and identity as the Son of God through signs and miracles and teachings, did not fulfill his messianic mission of restoring Israel. But the way in which he failed, being at the mercy of a kangaroo court thrown together by petty religious power-mongers, then yo-yoed among the whims of Gentile rulers, finally abandoned to a cursed, criminal execution, exposed to public shame: Where is God in all of this? Has God gone mad and revoked his promises and his integrity? It's easy to imagine what kind of serious questioning and doubting of God's goodness and justice occurs when we don't have enough information in certain circumstances.
While Calvinism is a form of theological compatibilism, it is not a philosophy in the usual sense. It is evaluating and logically arranging the biblical data, not in a way not to satisfy our demand for answer, but in a way that demands of us to be satisfied with the data given. This is not to say it is irrational or logically invalid. Only that there is necessarily a psychological aspect to seeing through these things. Because of the subject matter it is a process of submission not validation. I know that runs the risk of sounding condescending or accusatory, but it is more autobiographical than anything.
Thus as I hope to give an answer in terms of a causal model, I am proposing something to be useful and sufficient for us to best make sense of the data. I've already mentioned that our innate sense of justice ("common sense") is a liability and we need to be careful to examine ourselves whether we are prone to be overly dismissive of unsatisfactory answers on the one hand, or overly speculative of concealed matters on the other hand.
Nevertheless, I haven't yet addressed ultimate beginnings. How does God relate to the introduction of evil as a state of affairs?
Statements like "This makes God the author of evil" don't move the discussion along. We need to look at the possible meanings of "author" while keeping in mind that the word is not preferred because of its ambiguity.
What exactly is mean by it? Based on semantic variants and etymologies, here are some possibilities:
1) God is the prime cause / Creator / originator
2) God is the performing agent
3) God is the responsible agent or principal party
4) God is the authority-figure who authorizes another to act in his stead
5) God is the instigator
6) God is the exemplar
From a Calvinist view, only some of these senses are affirmed and even then carry qualifications. The non-Calvinist may object that these turn into distinctions without a difference, a way of escape the opening charge of attributing the origin of evil to God himself.
But that is exactly the problem, according to the Calvinist. We are not concerned with giving a simple Yes or No answer because the objection is oversimplified and poorly frames the issue.
So let's go through each of these.
(1) Can be basically affirmed by the Calvinist. But with the qualification that there is a distinction between primary and secondary causes.
(2) is rejected since according to the distinction in (1) it is the sinner, as secondary cause, who performs the sin.
(3) depends, because on the one hand God is in no sense obligated to "give a response" to man for his ways. To borrow Paul's analogy, it would be as futile as the clay demanding a response from the potter "Why did you make me thus?" There is a fundamental distinction between Creator and what he has created which makes such a question inappropriate.
On the other hand, there is a sense in which Calvinism affirms that God is responsible for all that happens in the world. But in relation to sin and the propogation of evil, God is never responsible as proximate cause and thus never subject to blame. According to (2) the sinner is proximate cause.
(4) and (6) can only be said of God in terms of his holiness and his redemptive works, not in relation to sin.
(5) can only be affirmed of God in a narrow sense. God does not provoke someone into sin who would have been unwilling to do so otherwise. God "instigates" sin in the sense that he establishes the environment and arranges the circumstances through which man is allowed to express his free moral agency. For example Romans 5:20, "The Law was added so that the trespass might increase", giving a broad historical overview of the function of the Law through the circumstance it put Israel under. God had sovereignly arranged a circumstance for sinful people to live under a legally binding covenant by which their inherent guilt was prolifically demonstrated as a matter of public record of offense and falling short. God did not coerce nor provoke the Israelites to sin more, he arranged the circumstances where they freely increased their trespasses due to their inherently rebellious attitude towards God's holy standards (Rom. 7:7-13).
Now consider this case. Person A has a gunshot wound and Person A dies. These two simply facts about Person A are not enough for a moral valuation of what has transpired. So we work backwards.
Person A is dead. Too much blood was lost through the gunshot wound. The aim of the barrell and the velocity of the bullet upon impact was such that the wound had a high probability of causing a fatality. The trigger on a gun was fired in the direction of Person A. The gun did not go off spontaneously but was fired by another Person B. Person B who was aiming the gun at Person A had these thoughts immediately prior to pulling the trigger: "I need to kill this person in order to take all his money and get away without being caught."
So we have a chain of events, from cause, to intermediate causes, to effect. Now, the hole in Person A is a more proximate cause to Person A's death than Person B, since the hole was the means by which a fatal amount of blood poured out of Person A resulting in the shut down of vital organs. However, the hole in Person B is not the sole cause of the death, nor is the hole a morally responsible agent.
So we continue to move backwards in the chain of events. The bullet, the gun, the trigger mechanism, until we reach Person B. We have now identified the nearest cause to the death of Person A who is also a morally responsible agent. Person B was neither a mere material cause nor a coerced agent. Person B performed an action with morally culpable intent. Thus we have moral valuation in the event of the death of Person A. This was a murder in which Person B as the nearest morally responsible agent is implicated for evil intent according to a set standard of justice.
According to the Calvinist, God is the primary cause of all that comes to pass including this instance of Person A's murder. God ordained Person A's murder; he arranged the circumstances such that Person A's murder would necessarily come to pass when it did. God sustained every link in the chain between Person A's death and Person B's murderous intent and free action, but God himself was not any one link in that chain.
This distinction between God as ultimate cause and man as proximate cause is not a minor point but the crux of the whole matter. Because the corrolary point is that there is a necessary psychological distinction between human and divine motives in any given event in which sin is involved.
If the corollary point of psychological distinction can be established from the relevant biblical data, then the ultimate cause/proximate cause distinction is a reasonably valid inference. This is in fact how the Calvinist reasons from scripture on the matter. Genesis 50:20, as one example, is considered one of the more explicit statements on this psychological distinction (which is also a goal-oriented distinction), where Joseph interprets the events of his life to his brothers. His brothers are morally responsible agents for intending evil to come upon Joseph. But in fact God had ordained these events for a greater good, "the saving of many lives".
Do these incompatible intentions at work in the same chain of events truly sustain God as blameless since he is both ultimate cause and determined the ultimate goal? (We still must ask, blameless before whom? The mankind of Romans 1:17-3:20?)
Scripture indeed states as axiomatic (not needing proof that satiates our innate sense of justice and fairness) that the greater good, a second-order good, is sufficient justification for the ordained introduction and temporary existence of evil as a state of affairs.
So essentially we need to push the issue from beginnings to telos, the goal-oriented intent of God's decreeing all that comes to pass. Scripture affirms, without apologies, that first order evils are necessary to attain a second-order good.
"Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life. John 9:3
Jesus said, "For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind." John 9:39
Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful. Romans 7:13
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28
For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: "I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth." ... What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? 23What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory ... Romans 9:17, 22-23
For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all. Romans 11:32
But the Scripture declares that the whole world is a prisoner of sin, so that what was promised, being given through faith in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe. Gal. 3:22
All well and good, but this only proves God uses certain instances of man's evil intent for a greater good.
posted by Joe Branca | 3:17 PM
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