theodicy

Interview with Thomas Jay Oord on “The Uncontrollable Love of God”

~ Mike Skinner ~ 1 Comment

Thomas Jay Oord is a professor at Northwest Nazarene University who is perhaps best known for his theological approach to the topic of God’s love.7-300x300 He is also the author of the upcoming book, “The Uncontrolling Love of God: An Open and Relation Approach to Providence.” You can watch this video to see the basic thesis of Oord’s new work or read this blog post to see his theology “in action” after the Paris terrorist attacks.

I had the privilege of asking Thomas a few questions about his upcoming book. I hope you enjoy the interview and I encourage you to order the book as soon as possible!

 

Thomas – first let me say thanks for agreeing to let me ask you a few questions about your upcoming book “The Uncontrolling Love of God.” We are still a week away from the official release of your book and it is already #1 on the following Amazon lists: Systematic Theology, Science and Religion, and Christian Death and Grief. Did you expect such an amazing (and early) response to this work?
 

Every author I know dreams about having his or her book being widely read and showing up on best-selling lists. So I am obviously pleased the book is being received so warmly. I didn’t expect a response this big! Perhaps one reason for its best-selling status is that it address big and complex questions using language understandable to the masses. I am a scholar who writes technical theological and philosophical material. But I worked very hard to write this book in an accessible way.

Your book will likely create controversy, particularly among conservative Christians outside of the academy. What would you say to someone who might initially feel like passing up your work based on their assumptions about both their views and yours?

I had dinner with Juergen Moltmann recently. During the conversation, he looked me in the eye and said, “Theology is supposed to be controversial!” I took him to be saying that the ideas about God — theology — should always stretch us, because a total grasp of God is always beyond our reach.

I recognize that some people will feel uncomfortable when I address big and complex questions and then pose plausible but novel answers. I hope my proposals will be helpful to many people. And I never expect everyone to agree with me. I appreciate robust dialogue when done in love. I hope to offer winsome and persuasive reasons for the hope within me.  When some readers find my proposals helpful, I’m deeply satisfied!

Your conclusions in The Uncontrolling Love of God might be very different from what many readers learned growing up, believe, or are maybe currently teaching. Why do you think so much of Christianity has missed this key insight into the nature of God and his interaction with the world?

Too many people start their theological reflection with the idea that God is a sovereign king or ruling Lord. This starting point is one some theologians consciously affirm but many others affirm it unconsciously. This goes for Christians and non Christians.

For instance, we have Hollywood blockbusters titled “Bruce Almighty” and “Evan Almighty.” But I doubt film producers thought even once about a movie about God with the titles “Bruce All-Loving” or “Evan Omnibenevolent.” The default for many is absolute omnipotence.

But I think Christians ought to be first to say, “When we do theology, we’ll start with God’s love and then work out the other attributes in light of love.” Maybe if we imagined God as the ideal parent instead of the controlling monarch we could do theology in ways I think are more faithful to the broad biblical witness.

Your book brings together theology and science in a unique way. How does science influence your theological work? Do you think that there is a shortcoming in theology when it comes to letting the conclusions of science interact with theological issues?

In my view, contemporary experience, in its various forms, inevitably influences our reflections about God and theology. To think about God well, therefore, we need to think about the world well.

Science is one of the most powerful expressions of human existence. Theologians ignore science at their own peril. In my view, overall proposals for explaining existence must include what we think are the best in theology, science, philosophy, and more. The most convincing theology is multi-disciplinary.

Your book also has a uniquely pastoral tone to is as you deal with the problem of evil and suffering in our world. Is this a purely academic exploration for you or are there personal experiences that drive your work as well?

We all deal with evil. But some people deal with it more directly and deeply than others. My own life is not much different from most who experience pain. And my own questions about God’s activity in relation to evil are similar to the questions others have. So I’m not unusual in that way.

I think Christians too often focus either on pastoral responses to evil or theoretical proposals to the problem evil. Most pastoral responses fail to address adequately the question, “Why didn’t God stop this evil in the first place?” Most theoretical proposals fail to take seriously the personal and therapeutic dimensions to suffering and tend to focus on some version of the best of all possible worlds defense. Few solutions to the problem of evil address both pastoral and theoretical aspects. I try to do both, although there is always more that could be said!

I’ve personally been keen of your formulation of “essential kenosis” since I first read “Nature of Love.” I know that stands at the center of this book as well. If you had to pick one or two ideas other than essential kenosis that serves a foundation for your thesis, what would it/they be?

You’re right that the notions of essential kenosis form the heart of the book. They do so, because questions of the nature of God’s love and power are central to essential kenosis. And getting clear about what we mean by God’s love and God’s power is crucial for so many aspects of theology.

On a technical side, I think one of my major contributions in the book is my explanation for why love is logically prior to power in God’s nature. This view entails, for instance, that we rightly say God cannot do some things, because love does not allow God to do them. To use the Apostle Paul’s language, “God cannot deny himself.”

Another key idea in the book is that randomness, chance, or indeterminacy are real for us and for God. God cannot foreknow the entire future, either the free actions of complex creatures or the random events in the universe. Few theologians have admitted that randomness is real even for God and then worked this into their understanding of God’s providence. For someone like me who thinks love comes first in God’s nature, however, it is natural to think God cannot control creaturely freedom but also cannot control random events at the micro or macro levels of life.

I know that the process of writing often is a time of clarifying ideas and connecting new thoughts. Did any of your conclusions in “The Uncontrolling Love of God” surprise you once you had finished the book?

Two things come quickly to mind.

1) When doing additional research, I discovered that many theologians in the Christian tradition have said that God cannot act in certain ways. In other words, they thought God’s omnipotence is never absolute and always has limits. Jacob Arminius even goes so far as to list many thing God cannot do!

2) I gained far greater clarity than I had before on the relation of God to the so called “laws of nature.” I came to realize that it makes little sense to talk about “laws of nature” and more sense to talk about “law-like regularities” in the world. My novel proposal, consequently, is to argue that these law-like regularities derive from God’s steadfast love for all creation, including the smallest entities of existence and the most complex. Because God must love all others, God cannot interrupt the law-like regularities in the universe that originate from God’s steadfast love.

Thomas, thanks once again for taking the time to answer my questions. Blessings on you and your work!

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David Bentley Hart on the Problem of Evil (Theodicy)

~ Mike Skinner ~ 3 Comments

I’m currently preparing to give four talks on the problem of evil (theodicy) this weekend and have been spending some more time in one of my favorite books on the issue, The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami? by David Bentley Hart. Here is a sampling of the many great quotes to be found:

“It is a strange thing to find peace in a universe rendered morally intelligible at the cost of a God rendered morally loathsome.”

“One is confronted with only this bare choice: either one embraces the mystery of created freedom and accepts that the union of free spiritual creatures with the God of love is a thing so wonderful that the power of creation to enslave itself to death must be permitted by God; or one judges that not even such rational freedom is worth the risk of a cosmic fall and the terrible injustice of the consequences that follow from it.”

“If it is from Christ that we are to learn how God relates himself to sin, suffering, evil, and death, it would seem that he provides us little evidence of anything other than a regal, relentless, and miraculous enmity: sin he forgives, suffering he heals, evil he casts out, and death he conquers. And absolutely nowhere does Christ act as if any of these things are part of the eternal work or purposes of God.”

“As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child I do not see the face of God, but the face of his enemy.”

“I honestly don’t know (how to respond to moral evil). I haven’t a pastoral bone in my body. But I would implore pastors never to utter banal consolations concerning God’s ‘greater plan’ or the mystery of his will. The first proclamation of the gospel is that death is God’s ancient enemy, whom God has defeated and will ultimately destroy. I would hope that no Christian pastor would fail to recognize that that completely shameless triumphalism – and with it an utterly sincere and unrestrained hatred of suffering and death – is the surest foundation of Christian hope, and the proper Christian response to grief.”

The Problem of Hina: Theodicy in John 9

~ Mike Skinner ~ 12 Comments

Small exegetical decisions often result in radically different theologies.

Consider the implications of John 9:1-3 (NIV):

As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
“Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.

For many, this passage implies that God gives people sicknesses (like blindness or cancer) in order to work towards a greater good.

In this popular understanding, evil (like sickness) is an unfortunate but necessary part of God’s will. God gave this man blindness so that Jesus would be able to perform this miracle later in his life. Perhaps you have heard this common refrain: “You might not understand right now why God allowed [X] to happen, but it is all a part of His plan.” Representing this view, Matt Chandler (an influential evangelical preacher) found personal comfort during his own fight with cancer knowing that it was part of the pre-determined will of God.[1]

Yet, is this an acceptable view of God and his relationship to evil?

The problem of evil is one of the many issues highlighted in passages like this one. How is God “good” if he causes/allows suffering? Why can’t an all-powerful and all-wise God find ways to accomplish his purposes that do not involve evil and suffering?

For some, like myself, the theology presented above costs too much. It safeguards the sovereignty of God (everything that happens is a result of his will), but at what price? It paints a picture of a God whose character is at best drenched in moral ambiguity. How can we legitimately call such a God “good”? Theodicies such as these also seem to distort the biblical logic of creation and redemption. The biblical narrative portrays a God who does not create nor desire evil (such as death, sickness, and suffering). It also portrays a God at work in history in order to abolish all evil as he establishes a new, eternal creation. Why then would God, in the present, be working against his own purposes?

Is there another way to read John 9:1-3?

Yes! In fact, I think this passage has been mistranslated and thus misinterpreted. It serves as a perfect example of how small exegetical details can end up exerting an enormous amount of influence over important theological conclusions [See also: “N.T. Wright on Matthew 10:28 – Satan or God?”].
How so?

A closer reading of John 9:2-3 reveals that the problem of evil is actually a problem of hina.

Hina ( ἵνα ) is a greek particle commonly seen as a form which functions to introduce purpose clauses. Most first-year Greek students have already memorized the primary semantic meaning of hina: “in order that” or “so that” [see this excellent post – Greek Vocabulary: Are We Cooking The Books?).

Let’s look closely at the greek construction of John 9:2-3.

[9:2] καὶ ἠρώτησαν αὐτὸν οἱ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ λέγοντες,
Ῥαββί, τίς ἥμαρτεν, οὗτος ἢ οἱγονεῖς αὐτοῦ, ἵνα τυφλὸς γεννηθῇ;
[9:3] ἀπεκρίθη Ἰησοῦς, Οὔτε οὗτος ἥμαρτεν οὔτε οἱ γονεῖς αὐτοῦ,
ἀλλ’ ἵνα φανερωθῇτὰ ἔργα τοῦ θεοῦ ἐν αὐτῷ.

There are actually two hina clauses, one in each verse. The first occurrence of the particle cannot logically be indicating purpose (that the man or his parents sinned in order that he would be born blind). Thus, most translators render it as a “result clause” – a perfectly acceptable reading. In fact, throughout the New Testament and other early Greek literature, hina is regularly used in ways that cannot be understood as introducing a purpose clause. This is why it’s so important to remember that the context and function of a form is more important than any pre-determined semantical meanings.

Margaret Sim has argued persuasively that we should abandon our attachment to associating hina clauses with purpose statements.[2] By her count, only 40% of hina clauses in Luke and 62% in John indicate purpose. This evidence leads her to suggest that we begin to rethink the usage of this particle – not as a container of semantic content, but as a particle that functions to represent what the speaker thinks or expects. Thus, hina can (and does) regularly function to indicate purpose, but it also (not infrequently) indicates commands or wishes.[3]

The second hina clause, in John 9:3, is an independent clause. This creates a problem for reading it as expressing purpose. Most English translations skip over this grammatical conundrum by providing the phrase “it happened.” But this is not necessary or advisable, and as Sim says, “if the primary function of hina is seen as indicating the purpose of the main verb, then it is essential that a main verb in fact be present so that the reader can access such a function. If the main verb or clause is absent, then there is no syntactic context in which purpose can be expressed in a grammatical sentence.” We must let the actual function of the particle and the context of the clause (not a fixed semantical meaning) determine our readings. Thus, Sim renders the verse:

“Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but the works of God must/should be revealed in him.” 

The theological implications of this translation are staggering:

“The hypothesis of the imperatival hina . . . releases the text from the fatalism which had obsessed it, and dissolves the picture which had become familiar through all our English versions, a man destined from birth to suffer for the sole purpose of glorifying God when he was healed.”[4]

What if John 9:3 is not a statement about God’s mysterious sovereignty, but about his clear desire to overcome any and all evil that has invaded his world. Such an interpretation would have the advantage of the lager context of the Gospels – where the clear assumption is that sickness and disease are the works of the devil, not God.

David Bentley Hart summarizes the Gospel’s portrayal of Jesus’s relationship to evil nicely:
“It is from Christ that we are to learn how God relates himself to sin, suffering, evil, and death. It would seem that he provides us with little evidence of anything other than a regal, relentless, and miraculous enmity: sin he forgives, suffering he heals, evil he casts out, and death he conquers. And absolutely nowhere does Christ act as if any of these things are part of the eternal work or purposes of God.”[5]

What sort of fragmented view of the Trinity results if we try to reconcile that 1) Jesus establishes the Kingdom (in part) by healing sicknesses (cf. Luke 10:9), yet 2) the Father is the one who has caused these ailments in the first place. Is the Father working against the Son? Perhaps this is why it has taken so long for the Kingdom to be consummated, the Trinity is not yet on the same page! On the other hand, what if Jesus’ opposition to evil is an expression of God’s true will – his desire to bring his reign to earth as it is in heaven? We could then understand the nature of the Triune God as unequivocally good and wholly opposed to all evil. This would require many of us to rethink our concept of “sovereignty” – perhaps sovereignty does not mean that God controls and dictates every action and event of history. Perhaps his sovereignty is more like that of an all-wise, master chess player, who is working towards a goal in which he cannot be stopped, no matter the opponent or challenge.

[1] See this AP article by Eric Gorski on Chandler’s attitude toward his cancer: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/2010-02-01-pastor31_ST_N.htm.
[2] The full paper can be read here: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/docs/RT%20and%20independent%20ina%20clauses.pdf.
[3] See Zerwick, Biblical Greek, 141-142; see also Blass, Debrunner, & Funk, A Greek Grammar, 195-196 (“F – The Imperative, 3).
[4] Nigel Turner, Grammatical Insights, 145.
[5] David Bentley Hart, The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami?, 87.