"We know that God Himself never does that which is evil. Nevertheless, He also ordains whatsoever comes to pass. Though He does not do evil and does not create evil, He does ordain that evil exists."
https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/why-does-god-allow-evil
My question: What do you mean by "ordain"? How does God ordain "whatsoever comes to pass," and still not cause evil?
Another theologian states:
"God is certainly sovereign over evil. There's a sense in which it is proper even to say that evil is part of His eternal decree. He planned for it. It did not take Him by surprise. It is not an interruption of His eternal plan. He declared the end from the beginning, and He is still working all things for His good pleasure (Isaiah 46:9-10). But God's role with regard to evil is never as its author. He simply permits evil agents to work, then overrules evil for His own wise and holy ends. Ultimately He is able to make all things-including all the fruits of all the evil of all time-work together for a greater good (Romans 8:28)."
https://www.gty.org/library/articles/A189/is-god-responsible-for-evil
Trent Horn writes:
"Jeremiah avoids detracting from God’s sovereignty by admitting that the Lord causes grief. But God doesn’t just stand by and helplessly watch it happen or delight in our suffering for its own sake. Jeremiah makes that clear by saying God “does not willingly afflict or grieve” us (Lam. 3:33). Instead, God uses suffering to call us to repentance. This is the context in which Lamentations 3:38 is best understood."
https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/is-god-the-author-of-evil
Part of the Westminster Confession declares:
"The almighty power, unsearchable wisdom, and infinite goodness of God so far manifest themselves in His providence, that it extends itself even to the first fall, and all other sins of angels and men; and that not by a bare permission, but such as has joined with it a most wise and powerful bounding, and otherwise ordering, and governing of them, in a manifold dispensation, to His own holy ends; yet so, as the sinfulness thereof proceeds only from the creature, and not from God, who, being most holy and righteous, neither is nor can be the author or approver of sin."
http://www.romans45.org/articles/cause.htm
See the part on this website where God is called the "final cause of evil but not its efficient cause.
J.G. Machen: "When God causes the bringing to pass of the evil actions of men, he does that in still a different way. He does not tempt the men to sin; he does not influence them to sin. But he causes the bringing to pass of those deeds by the free and responsible choices of personal beings. He has created those beings with the awful gift of freedom of choice. The things that they do in exercise of that gift are their acts. They do not, indeed, surprise God by the doing of them; their doing of them is part of his eternal plan; yet in the doing of them they, and not the holy God, are responsible."
See https://faculty.wts.edu/posts/did-god-ordain-sin/
I find the difference between "doing," "creating," and "ordaining" when it comes to God an empty difference. If God creates ex-nihilo, and thus "ordains" ex-nihilo, since creating X implies creating X as X thus ordaining X, then what difference could it be, unless by ordain one means he is setting a teleological purpose but leaving to the agent (and it must be an agent) whether or not he/she will choose that purpose.
ReplyDeleteSaying he "permits evil agents to work" but then saying" he "declared the end from the beginning" in the sense that he knew all the evil events prior to creation requires metaphysical unpacking. He created all things, so if he knew the evil events prior to creation, and that evil agents would do evil, why did he create the evil agents? And can they truly be said to be agents? I don't think so.
""Jeremiah avoids detracting from God’s sovereignty by admitting that the Lord causes grief. But God doesn’t just stand by and helplessly watch it happen or delight in our suffering for its own sake. Jeremiah makes that clear by saying God “does not willingly afflict or grieve” us (Lam. 3:33). Instead, God uses suffering to call us to repentance. This is the context in which Lamentations 3:38 is best understood.""
I would just direct Trent Horn to the dialogue of Job, and Ecclesiastes, those books show quite well how this is nonsense.
On the Westminster Confession ... If God is the final cause of evil, then he must be the first cause of evil ... What's being said is just philosophical confusion here. It's first causation that makes one responsible, not efficient causation.
"But he causes the bringing to pass of those deeds by the free and responsible choices of personal beings. He has created those beings with the awful gift of freedom of choice. The things that they do in exercise of that gift are their acts. They do not, indeed, surprise God by the doing of them; their doing of them is part of his eternal plan; yet in the doing of them they, and not the holy God, are responsible.""
He was ok until he talked about the "eternal plan," I have no problem saying that God empowers evil men to do evil insofar as in God they move, live and have their being, i.e. God's life giving action and sustaining action is a prior condition to their evil. But if the evil acts that are proportedly done by the agents are part of his eternal plan, he is responsible, he's not bringing his plan into being DESPITE the evil acts, but infact BY the evil acts, with him as first cause and final cause.
Frankly, I find these theodicies to be really really bad.
In my view, if one does not allow for some form of open theism, the only really answer to theodicy will have to be some kind of universalism, but even that has theological flaws (not to mention exegetical problems).
ReplyDeleteThanks Roman, I'm trying to wrap my mind around God ordaining all things and it seems that theologians who use the verb, "ordain" mean that God decrees whatsoever comes to pass. I found another discussion about this subject in which the guy writes:
ReplyDeleteGod does not tell us much about HOW he can ordain evil acts while not being guilty of evil, only shows many examples where He does so, always (it appears) for a greater purpose, usually to remind people of their human condition and desperate need for the redeeming grace of Jesus Christ. Ultimately it may be a mystery for human beings to understand, especially at the time, yet crystal clear as regards to its established truth.
"Likewise, nowhere in the Bible did God call us to work out the details of this doctrine by philosophical means, or pry into the secret things of God. Rather He calls us to be faithful to the Text that says God ordains all things, even evil, and that, at the same time, God is blameless in doing so. That He ordains sin sinlessly. I do not have to hold these truths together rationally (according to human knowledge) or philosophically but because they are axiomatic in the Bible. My understanding the intricacies of how this comes about is secondary. God is God. DO our finite minds have to understand HOW He does this in order for it to be true?"
https://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/onsite/moralmonster.html
It's difficult to see how one reconciles universalism with the Bible. Classical theism will never give way to open theism; it will just remain satisfied with paradoxical theology. That's how Augustine of Hippo thought.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is if God acts for a greater purpose, to remind people of their human condition, it is either because they need reminding due to their own actions leading them to forget, and those actions having as their first cause the human agent itself, or their actions were ordained from the beginning with God as a first cause: meaning God would be acting in order to overcome his own action from alpha to the omega.
ReplyDeleteActing to bring good out of evil ONLY makes sense if the evil is not decreed by the one bringing good out of it, if God cannot BUT decree evil to bring some good, there must be something that explains the possibility of X good being dependent on some evil, but what explanation could there be other than God himself.
The whole thing breaks down in my opinion.
As to the mystery claim.
1. Saying an incoherent doctrine is necessitated by scripture is not an argument FOR the doctrine, but against scripture.
2. The assumption is that there aren't different (and in fact better) was to theologically interpret scripture that are both coherent and more faithful to the historical reading.
With Universalism, I agree, David Bentley Hart tries to, but in my view it doesn't work, his argument is mostly philosophical and it depends on metaphysical principles that I believe can be challenged.
I'm not arguing against you btw brother :P, I know you're not a classical theist/calvinist/thomist.
Roman, I appreciate your thoughts on this subject and understand that you're not arguing with me, my brother. I also quoted the website which holds a contrary view to mine, to try understanding how these Calvinists try to correlate human free will with divine ordination while not making God the cause of evil.
ReplyDeleteI think Horn comes at the matter from a Catholic perspective.
Lots of sources on this page: https://reformedbooksonline.com/god-is-not-the-author-of-evil/
ReplyDeleteBut I think they affirm plenty of things without proving what's being affirmed. For example:
Since evils are decreed not effectively, but permissively, the decree of God is not the cause of evil. Nor are the decrees of God the cause of evil on account of the inevitability of their result, since they bring about results not by a coercive necessity but merely by an immutable one.
The inevitability [necessitas] of the decree of God does not destroy the freedom in rational creatures.
The reason is that the necessity is not a necessity of coercion, but one of immutability. The fall of Adam took place by necessity, with respect to a divine decree; however, Adam sinned freely, neither commanded nor coerced nor influenced by God; indeed, he was most strictly warned not to sin.
The inevitability of the decrees of God does not destroy contingency in secondary causes.
I completely agree.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with affirmations in theology is that one has to be very clear what is being affirmed and how it can be made sense of in a theological sense.
The distinction between permission and action in finite agents is clear because in BOTH cases there is a metaphysically prior state of affairs that is either being unfolded or is being acted upon. This is not the case with God.
All states of affairs depend (in some sense) on God, the the question then comes up how can God permit a state of affairs without being the cause of it, if the existence of that state of affairs depends on God metaphysically.
The only plausible answer I have is one that leans towards open theism, i.e. creatures do in sense real sense, act as first causes in ways that are entirely independent of God, although they themselves, and the effectivity of their actions, themselves depend on God. Which means it is logically impossible for God to know what the individual's freely do independently of their freely doing it.
To say "it's immutable but not coercive" is meaningless if one defines coercive as going against someone's will, and if one takes someone's will as not being a "first cause" but in fact being the necessary result of God's act of creation.
Even if the inevitability of the decrees of God does not destroy contingency in second causes, there is no moral relevance in that distinction if secondary causes can be reduced to their first and final cause, if they cannot though then God cannot know the movement of the secondary causes independently of their actualization.
I don't think the theological texts cited provide any/new answer to theodicy. As to the question: why did over 50,000 people have to die in the February 2023 earthquake in Turkey, I did not find an answer there...
ReplyDeleteIf I recall the well-known formulation of theodicea problem: "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then from whence comes evil?"
none of these texts have even attempted to come close to answering this question or to provide an answer to the reasons for the deaths of thousands of people in earthquakes or even the Holocaust, ethnic cleansing, etc. On the other hand, it is a very difficult question!
Roman, I like what you say about creatures acting as "first causes" independently of God: it reminds me of agent causation, which is usually distinguished from event causation.
ReplyDeleteThe difference between God permitting and doing is another interesting point. Does God cause everything as the pancausalists argue? Did he cause Shechem to violate (rape) Dinah?
Donald Hartley would probably answer this question with a hearty "yes," but he would qualify by pointing out that God might have decretally caused Shechem to do this heinous act, but he did not efficiently cause him to act in this way. Of course, it's difficult (nigh impossible) for me to attribute such acts to the God of the patriarchs (YHWH/Jehovah). How does this account of divine providence work to glorify the God who cannot act unjustly or wickedly?
Another point is that Augustine of Hippo believes that men act freely but he posits a kind of soft determinism, which allows God to know what men will freely do. William Hasker discusses this point in God, Time, and Knowledge.
@ Edgar Foster
ReplyDeleteYes, good idea! The example of Dinah* can be used to illustrate the whole issue of admitting Evil. If we say that God allowed Evil, I think we are doing nothing more than describing(!!!) the (in)action of God. But description is often mistaken for response. That we observe something and create only one version for a motive for an action, is that correct? Were there not also other reasons that could have influenced the (in)action of God?
If I argue that God permits/ordains Evil, then that doesn't answer the question of why, as Almighty God, He didn't prevent that Evil? Did he not know about it? If He knew and allowed it, what purpose did Evil serve? My understanding is that behind every attempt to explain Evil by God allowing it, there is a "geometric" series of questions that cannot be answered (the answer then often tends to relativize Evil ("there is a reward after death/resurrection") or, after exhausting all attempts, to claim that we do not know why Evil occurred in a given case...), which, on the one hand, does not call into question a certain explanatory power (i.e. that God permits Evil is observable), but under the weight of the questions, it then points out that the statement that God permits Evil has only limited validity and reach.
If I were to describe other classical responses (see, for example, the pedagogization or aestheticization of Evil; the attempt described above to relativize Evil with respect to the future or present benefit of some Evil, such as pain; or the exegesis of Evil by Satan, etc., etc. ) on the issue of God and Evil, then I would find a similar picture: all of these answers individually, and also in their combinations, are capable of answering some theodicy to some extent, but it is very easy to challenge these answers with questions**, so in my opinion, we will conclude again and again the limited ability of these answers.
Something is missing. If I want to maintain all the attributes of God, such as the claim that He is Almighty, that He is the Creator, that He is Omniscient, that He is not subject to the laws of physics, etc., etc., and Evil existing alongside Him lasting for millennia, with sporadic attempts to destroy Evil (flood or occupation of the Promised Land), then in my opinion there is nothing left to do but ask questions! :-)
Clearly, in responses to Evil where Satan or "God's allowing" is involved, there is an (immanent) question about God's Omnipotence: does Satan or the mere allowing of Evil limit God's Omnipotence. If God permits Evil because He is not so powerful or cannot always compete with Satan, then the question is whether He is truly Almighty God, and automatically, there is doubt about the eschatological expectation that this God is to defeat Evil.
In my view, if I want (and I do!) to preserve the validity of the claim that God is Almighty, while at the same time it is - however superficially - obvious that He allows for Evil and the existence of Satan, there must be some even higher cause that limits God's Omnipotence. Yes, it does. What or who is it? What can be greater than God Himself? I think it's God's Love. God is Love. He has limited Himself in His Omnipotence. I have found no other cause or source. From this starting point*** the following reasoning then follows that Love, God Himself, has temporarily limited His Omnipotence, but that does not mean that His Omnipotence has ceased to exist. On the contrary, if God willed, his justice, his wrath, would destroy everything and no one would be able to oppose him. But he did not, because of his love for others. Why can I say that? Are there any arguments at all for this hypothesis? And also the questions: how did Evil come into existence and why is the existence of Evil so successful that it lasts for millennia, remain. How can these be answered if God, because of His Love, has temporarily limited His Omnipotence? (I will write later...perhaps:-) )
* there are many similar cases in the Bible: typically the death of Jesus - Jesus refuses the help of the legion of angels, but God could have intervened on his own, as sovereign Ruler, in spite of the Son's wishes...and did not. He let him die. From this perspective, then, the Son's resurrection marks another question mark on God's actions... I am deliberately writing this to point out a dramatic situation where simple answers must fail or only delay resolution...
ReplyDelete** the simplest question is: why is it taking so long? a common answer has been that we are living in the last days, that the end of the world is near, which historically has often been based on some chronological speculation, or a charismatic leader, or the initiation came because of some political-economic or natural disaster
*** I do not use the statement "God is Love" in the sense of an exalted exclamation like: Jesus loves you!
"I don't think the theological texts cited provide any/new answer to theodicy. As to the question: why did over 50,000 people have to die in the February 2023 earthquake in Turkey, I did not find an answer there...
ReplyDeleteIf I recall the well-known formulation of theodicea problem: "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then from whence comes evil?"
none of these texts have even attempted to come close to answering this question or to provide an answer to the reasons for the deaths of thousands of people in earthquakes or even the Holocaust, ethnic cleansing, etc. On the other hand, it is a very difficult question!"
I agree, that it's a a difficult question, and I would say it is an impossible one to answer philosophically, to me the only answer is essentially a correct theological understanding of the fall, of agency, and the economy of salvation.
As for the dilemma, the question cannot be answered prior to giving an analysis of evil (i.e. the agential rejection of love, creation, and thus God), what it means for God to create agents that he can love, and what omnipotancy actually entails, and what it does not.
"Donald Hartley would probably answer this question with a hearty "yes," but he would qualify by pointing out that God might have decretally caused Shechem to do this heinous act, but he did not efficiently cause him to act in this way. Of course, it's difficult (nigh impossible) for me to attribute such acts to the God of the patriarchs (YHWH/Jehovah). How does this account of divine providence work to glorify the God who cannot act unjustly or wickedly?
ReplyDeleteAnother point is that Augustine of Hippo believes that men act freely but he posits a kind of soft determinism, which allows God to know what men will freely do. William Hasker discusses this point in God, Time, and Knowledge."
So to me efficient causation is NOT what makes someone morally responsible, it's their first and final cause, i.e. that they initiated the chain and did so for a purpose.
So Harley's response would be problematic for me.
Boris, for myself I don't think God has a choice but allowing evil, not because he is limited by some external force, but because his own moral character necessitates that he allows free agency to his creatures (otherwise he could not BE love), and this allowing of free agency necessitates allowing the consequences of such agency, which is why God needed to go through the whole economy of salvation and redemption to defeat the consequences of such agency.
ReplyDeleteSo in saying God has no choice, what I mean is that God does not change, i.e. if he determines himself as Love he cannot but be love, and love depends on the contingency of the choice of reciprocation, and that choice requires free will, which requires that the will of the God's beloved actually has impact on the world and on others.
So if one thinks of "omnipotency" as somehow some independent property of God, which one defines as supremely powerful, then one does not have a good model of God. Omnipotency is just an abstraction of God, and is just a feature of God in his absolute infinity, and infinite love, and it cannot be understood outside of the whole infinity of God, it ought not to be thought of just creature like power (the power to bend reality to one's will) to the umpf degree, but rather as the lack of limits to the creative love of that who does not bend reality to his will, but he whose will grounds reality itself and the very possibility of reality itself.
Roman, Hartley's response is likewise problematic for me: I don't accept his line of reasoning at all. But I wonder how being the first cause of an action differs in this case from being an act's efficient cause.
ReplyDeleteThe final cause of one's action likely has some impact on one's moral responsibility for an action, but even that gets a little complicated. However, Hartley is arguing that finite agents initiate acts and they act freely, but God is the final cause of our acts insofar as he works them into his eternal plan. I don't think Hartley focuses on the finite agent's telos (the end toward which the creature is striving), but rather God's telos for the cosmos.
Boris, you pose some good questions, and you probably know that the world's great thinkers have set forth many and sundry theodicies. Peter van Inwagen wrote an interesting book about the problem of evil wherein he distinguished a theodicy from a defense as he sought to explicate the problem of evil. Van Inwagen ultimately concluded that all substantive philosophical arguments are failures, but at the same time, it's hard to say that evil makes God's existence logically impossible. Alvin Plantinga made a good case for the LPE not ruling out God's existence but we still have the evidential problem of evil (EPE) to explain.
ReplyDeleteLike Roman said, I'm leery about philosophy's ability to address the problem of evil--be it the LPE or EPE--but I believe that God has given us part of the answer in the Bible, but not the full answer to why he permits evil. I agree with Roman that one must understand what the Bible lays out regarding the fall, agency, etc.
If you like reading Dutch Calvinists, Herman Dooyeweerd developed an interesting way of analyzing the fall, creation, and redemption. He wrote three huge volumes about the subject, and I think the fourth volume is mainly to index the first three parts. His book is titled, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought.
As respects the problem of evil, I also like John Feinberg's work, The Many Faces of Evil. Regardless of the attempt to justify or defend God's allowance of evil, I don't see how we ever stop asking questions. We know some things are true or likely to be true, but do our questions stop when it comes to those matters?
Hi Edgar & Roman,
ReplyDeleteI'm on vacation and I'm typing from my cell phone, so this will be short. But, I'll make a few points:
- the issue of theodicea, creation, sin in Eden and the flood are closely related... I'll elaborate
- I'll add a couple of biblical passages: i've minimally used the Bible so far because i wanted to use a rationalistic approach to the question - the answer will also be somewhat rationalistic (the question of how Jesus turned water into wine or how Peter walked on water cannot be rationally explained - the only way out is faith in God, but that is not, in my opinion, the case with theodicea. I always say to myself: what can be rationally understood is to be rationally understood, and what cannot be rationally understood is to be humbly accepted as it is...)
- answering theodicey is necessary (that's why he thinks the answer is possible), for understanding e.g. Revelation: common commentaries on Revelation e.g. in the exegesis of the apocalyptic horsemen, where it talks about 1/4 of the earth being affected, so many interpretations, let 1/4 of the earth be destroyed (now it doesn't matter whether Satan or God does it), thus bringing into the commentaries, the unresolved question of theodicey - in my opinion. The Revelation commentaries then have God/Satan murder a literal 1/4 of humanity, and they generally don't find it strange. The same can be said of the following 1/3, etc.
- Thank you for your first responses, your responses more or less indicate the direction my thoughts are going too, although I haven't written them all down yet, but the basic and default point has been made => God is Love, and this Love determines all his actions: his omnipotence, justice or right is subordinate to his love - and it's just as well