05/22/2021- “Be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in you.” (1 Peter 3:15) “Apologetics is the enterprise of obeying that command.” // New Weekly series //1 of ? – “The Problem of Evil.”// Back to: “Yes, Jesus loves me!”, sung as when we were little children.
The quote that comments on the command in 1 Peter 3:15 is from the “Pocket Handbook of Christian Apologetics by Peter Kreeft and Ronald K Tacelli. (Reference ISBN-13: 978-8308-2702-2) It is only 141 pages and pocket size at that. Yet, other than the Bible itself, I have not worn out the pages of any book more than this one, for good reason. It is power-packed, a good bedside book, for I would not recommend reading more than a few pages at a time.
I am not going in chapter order. I will cover “Chapter 7” in the next day, in summarized form: “The Problem of Evil”. As it stands now, next weekend, I will focus on Chapter 2 – Faith and Reason.” And I expect, if we go a year, we will get in finer detailed questions in much greater depth. But if we get into active conversations on this blog, we may opt to go into greater depth immediately. I will dance in the street if I can get just a handful of brothers to purchase this book, and/or other great resources, in order to engage as enthusiastic messengers for the Good News to current and future brothers and sisters in Christ. I will confess to you on my near term retirement list is to take at lest one Masters Theology course in Christian Apologetics (online) with Biola University and Houston Baptist currently my top choices.
Ok, are you ready? I will parenthetically note my own comments, all others come from the book.
“There seems to be a logical contradiction built in to affirming all four of the following propositions:
- God exists.
- God is all-good.
- God is all-powerful.
- Evil exists. ….
Five possible solutions:
- Atheism is the denail of proposition 1, that God exists.
- Pantheism (Jimmy: “Hinduism”) is the denial of proposition 2, that God is good and not evil.
- Modern materialism and ancient polytheism both deny propisition 3, that God is all-powerful. Ancient polytheism limited God’s power by splitting God up into many little gods, some good, some evil. Modern naturalism, such as “process theology”, does the same thing by reducing God to a being of time and growth and imperfection and weakness. (Jimmy: In other words , God is not immutable; He himself is subject to “evolution”)
- Idealism here means the denial of real evil. It comes in various forms, such as Advaita Hinduism, Christian Science, and much New Age thinking, all of which say evil is an illusion of unenlightended human consciousness.
- Finally, traditional theism (orthodox Christianity, Judaism and Islam) affirms all four propositions and denies they are logically contradictory. This can be done if and only if there are some ambiguous terms.
Defining Evil
…
- Evil is not a being. If evil were a being , the problem of evil would be insoluble, for then either God made it — and thus He is not all-good– or else God did not make it — and thus he is not the all-powerful creator of all things.
….
- Thus God is off the hook for sin, but not for suffering. It seems — unless the origin of suffering can also be traced to sin. This is what the story in Genesis 3 does. Without explaining how, it tells us that the thorns and thistles and the sweat of the brow and the pain of childbirth all are the result of sin.
Connecting Suffering With Sin: The Fall
There are two powerful arguments for the historical truth of Genesis 3. (Jimmy: “The Fall”) First, every tribe, nation and religion throughout history has a similar story. One of the most wide-spread “myths” (sacred stories) in the world is the myth of a past paradise lost, a time without evil, suffering or death. The mere face that everyone innately believes the same thing does not prove that it is true, of course; but it is at least significant evidence.
…
A second piece of experiental evidence for a historical time of innocence and a historical Fall are the four most salient facts abou the human condition:
- All desire perfect happiness.
- No one is perfectly happy.
- All desire complete certainty and perfect wisdom.
- No one is completely certain or perfectly wise.
….”
Defining “Free Will”
“Free will is part of our essence. The alternative to free will is not being a human but an animal or a machine. … To put it another way, even omnipotence could not have created a world in which there was genuine human freedom and yet no possibility of sin, for our freedom includes the possibility of sin within its own meaning. “All things are possible with God” indeed; but a meaningless self-contradiction is not anything at all. … as C.S. Lewis said) that “nonsense does not cease to be nonsense when we add the words “God can” before it.”
Defining “Goodness”
…
“God allows suffering and deprives us of the lesser good of pleasure in order to help us toward the greater good of moral and spiritual education. Even the pagans knew that: the gods teach wisdom through suffering.”
God let Job suffer not because he lacked love but precisely out of his love, to bring Job to the point of the beautific vision of God face to face (job 42:5), which is humanity’s supreme happiness. Job’s suffering hollowed out a big space in him so that a big piece of God and joy could fill it. Job’s experience is a paradigmatic for all saintly suffering.
…”
Defining “Happiness”
…
“Deep happiness is in the spirit, not the body, or even the feelings… (Jimmy: This is such a critical wake up call for society today, we are so wrapped up in our feelings, it is choking our spirit. And you better believe the devil plays on that card over and over. So how about we take it out of the deck, for it never ends well for us..)
The sword of the self is designed to sing in the sun eternally, like the seraphim. If we could catch a glimpse of this heavenly destiny., if we understood why we are destined to judge angels (1 Corinthians 6:3), we would not see a problem in the sufferings of Job. Teresa of Avila said that the most miserable earthly life , seen from the perspective of heaven, looks like one night in an inconvenient hotel.
Providence and Freedom
(Ok brothers, I am going to expound on this section. As noted below in the first sentence. we may have to also elaborate and expound upon the five terms definition if this section leaves us with gaps. Email me at Semikkah7@protonmail.com and ask me for an account and system assigned password so you can contribute to our blog group conversation. That is how we grow as a Christian remnant community. And, if you buy the book, you will get the price of the book back many times over. And I will add my own comments at the end as well.)
“Once we understand the five terms discussed above, we can better understand the relation between God’s providence and human freedom.
God knows all things, and His knowledge is eternal. Therefore He must know that we are going to choose before we ever choose it. But then how can we choose anything freely? Being free seems to involve an alternative; I may choose the path of vice or virtue. But if it has been determined from eternity that I will choose one path rather than another, there is really nothing for me to genuinely choose. God in creating me, seems also to have created all my choices. So my choices turn out not to be mine at all but really God’s. Two terrifying conclusions seem to follow: (1) If God exists, human freedom is impossible; and (2) God is the author of sin. Such is the problem of providence and freedom.
Our reply will be brief. First, when we say that God’s knowledge is eternal or that he knows from all eternity the choices you are going to make, we do not mean that he knows at a time in the distant past that you will do something in the future and that this knowledge determines you to do it. We mean instead that the kind of knowledge God has (like the kind of being he has) is not limited in any way by temporal constraints as our knowledge has) – (*A – below) Time is the measure of moving, changing beings; in other words, time is a creature every bit as much as these things are. God, the Creator , is beyond such measure. His being transcends time and all such temporal categories.
(*A) – Jimmy : The Lord, by His grace, has shown me His Truth and Wisdom in this. If we are deluded enough to think we can fully understand God, then our god (note – drop to lower case) is too small! As, C.S. Lewis noted, we tend in our natural state to insist on “putting God in the dock”. Isn’t that where the devil went with Adam and Eve in the garden? Another example: “How could God put a soul into hell for eternity if He was truly all loving?” So, we try to put God in a box , and he becomes our god. We throw out the God of justice, and we lose the God of love as well. To the side, just think how boxed up we are just by how we cannot even reflect on not having a time dimension. Ok, on that note, let’s get back to our authors:
“We naturally think of God’s eternity as if it were a temporal extension stretching infinitely back into the past and forward into the future. That is because our language reflects the kind of being we have: finite, changing, timebound. We know that God’s being cannot really be like that and therefore that his knowledge cannot really look forward or back. He sees in a single and eternal act of vision all our free choices as they really exist, embedded in their times and places and circumstances.
Second, if God created us to be free, our freedom is a created gift. That is to say, God’s creating and conserving power must be present in all of our free acts. There can be no human freedom that is absolute in the sense that it eliminates the need for God. If God is really the creator, the source of being of all things, he must also give being to our freedom. His power cannot be an impediment to our free acts, as it would be if he were just another, but supremely powerful creature — like a cosmic hypnotist, making us do their bidding when we think we are acting on our own. Creatures can act on their own only with respect to other creatures; but never with respect to the Creator. Without God there would be no freedom for us to have. And there would be no “us” to have it.
A great deal of technical theology has been written about the problems of providence and freedom. We decline to enter those dark and still turbulent waters. But as Christians we offer this thought: If God really is intimately involved in giving being to our free choices, to all our actions, think what a terrible thing sin must be. God has committed himself to create and sustain those of us who use the gift of freedom to hurt others and to hate God himself. The power of those who drove the nails into his beloved Son’s hands and feet came ultimately from Him. If freedom has a terrible price, surely God pays more than His share.
Practical Application
More important than evil as an argument against the existence of God is evil as a broken relationship with God, a spiritual divorce. Therefore, more important than a logical answer to the problem of evil theoretically is a personal answer to the problem of evil practically. More important than an apologist is a Savior.
The theoretical problem produces in us ignorance and questioning. The practical problem produces in us sin and guilt. Christ came to solve the second problem, not the first. Christ was not a philosopher.
Guilt can only be removed by God, because guilt is the index of a broken covenant with God. Shame is only the index of a horizontal, human fear or fracture, but guilt is vertical, super-natural. A good psychologist can set you free from shame but not from guilt. He can even set you free from guilt feelings, but not from real guilt. He can give you anesthetics but cannot cure your disease. Psychology can make you feel good, but only religion — relationship with God — can make you be good.
That’s why God sent His son; no one but Jesus Christ could take away our sin and guilt. Faith in his atoning sacrifice is the only answer to the real problem of evil. Our only hope is not a good answer but “good news,” the gospel.
The great theologian Karl Barth was asked in his old age what was the most profound idea he had ever had, in his many years of theologizing. He instantly replied: , “Jesus loves me.”
(Jimmy: Do you remember when we were little in vacation bible school?: “Jesus loves me, this I know. For the Bible tells me so. Little ones to Him belong, they are weak , but He is strong. Yes, Jesus loves me!….” Recall in the Gospel that Jesus told His disciples to not hinder the little children from coming to Him. And he added: “Unless you are like these little ones, you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”)
Soli Deo Gloria! Always connected through prayer and by His grace!
Jimmy