Theology course: Week 8 reflection

This week’s lesson was sort of a continuation of the last one. It was about “perspectives on the problem of evil”. This was just more philosophy, rooted around the age-old question of: If there is a God and He is a good God, why does He still allow evil and suffering to exist? or, If evil exists, God cannot be good, because a good God would eliminate evil and suffering.

Personally, I have never spent much time wondering about this. We know that the Fall corrupted our world and introduced sin & death to mankind. Suffering is part of that; and as to why God would allow it, I think that’s just part of free will. Adam & Eve had free will to choose in the Garden of Eden, but they made the wrong choice, and therefore the perfection of the Garden was marred and mankind was doomed to suffer in one way or another (the man having to do painful toil to get the land to yield fruit, and the woman to suffer great pains in childbearing – which apparently includes PMS, monthly period cramps, wild peri-menopausal symptoms and crazy menopausal symptoms as well. I have a bone to pick with God: He never said anything about all this other stuff! But I digress).

So it’s not that God doesn’t want to stop suffering, but it’s part of the ‘curse’ that came with the Fall, so it couldn’t be removed because once Pandora’s Box has been opened, you can’t stuff all those things back inside it once again. You can’t go back to the way things once were. That’s why we have the Redemption story and the sacrifice of Jesus.

Anyway, to get back to the lesson, apparently there are two ways of dealing with the problem of evil, one of which is ‘theodicy’ – trying to explain why an all-powerful, good God would permit evil to exist, or in other words, trying to vindicate God from accusations that He hasn’t eradicated suffering because He doesn’t care that people are suffering; the second is a ‘defense’ which argues that there’s no problem with a scenario where God and evil co-exist, that it’s logical for them to do so – therefore, the presence of evil doesn’t automatically negate the presence of a powerful and good God.

But, if we ask, How can evil exist if God is all-good and all-powerful?, first we need to know what ‘evil’ means. So then the class got a few interpretations of ‘evil’, from Augustine, Irenaeus, Reformed movement, and Heiser.

Augustine’s view is that evil is a defect or lack. Thus, everything that God creates is good (because He’s a good God) but then evil came in and caused a ‘defect’ – thus we have ‘natural evils’ where because we live in a “defective” world, there are natural disasters, diseases, and other things not directly caused by human actions; but we also have ‘moral evils’ which result from human choices and misuse of free will, such as when a person commits a crime. So the idea here is that God isn’t behind evil, it’s humans making wrong choices that lead to evil.

Irenaeus’ view is that evil and suffering are permitted because they aid in moral and spiritual development; after all, “suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope” (Rom 5:2-4). To Irenaeus, suffering contributes to sanctification.

The Reformed view comes from Calvin’s theology (::sigh::) whereby, if God is absolutely sovereign and has determined all that will happen, then evil exists within His plan and is ordained for divine purposes – but moral evil still arises from human choices and is not God’s fault. Compatibilism and all that (see week 6’s reflection).

Finally, Heiser’s view opposes Calvin’s in the sense that Heiser believed God does foreknow all things, but that doesn’t mean that those things are predestined; God can know all possible outcomes without ordaining them. The lecturer used the example of 1 Sam 23:9-13 where David asked God whether Saul would come to the city where David was, and God said yes. And then David asked whether the citizens would surrender David to Saul, and God said yes again. So David, being smart, left the city, and those incidents did not occur. The argument is that God has foreknowledge of what could occur, like, “If A happens, B will happen” but it is not predestined that either A or B will happen. Humans still have free will to decide, so one can decide not to do A after all, and then B will also not take place. In this way, free will (leading to possible evil) and divine omniscience can coexist, so God again allows humans to make the choices that may lead to evil.

I like Heiser’s explanation and Augustine’s view; I think that Irenaeus’ idea about God allowing suffering in order to help us to mature and grow spiritually was probably a ‘by the way’ thing, like in Rom 8:28-29 – in all things God works for the good of those who love Him and have been called according to His purpose, because He wants us to be conformed to the likeness of His Son. Sin and suffering have entered the world, so He had to redeem this somehow as He is the Redeemer, and I guess He therefore decided, why not make use of it? lol

After that, we got into “the logical problem of evil” based on J. L. Mackie’s philosophical thought experiment, and Plantinga’s response. I don’t want to get into this too much, because it is too convoluted. It involves propositions which are challenged and then re-formulated. Like, it takes a statement such as, “There are no limits to what an omnipotent being can do” (thus God would have the power to do anything), then proceeds to challenge the statement: Can God do the logically impossible? Like create a square circle? If He can’t, is this a limitation on God’s part? Then maybe the statement should be amended with a qualification: “There are no non-logical limits to what an omnipotent being can do.”

So, like, since we say that God is good and therefore, we think that He should eliminate evil or suffering because He is good, that means we believe that a good being would always eliminate evil as far as it can. But let’s say that eliminating this evil would bring about a greater evil, or it would somehow end up eliminating a good as a side effect – a good that outweighs that evil. Then would eliminating the original evil still be the right thing for a good being to do? So maybe we shouldn’t assume that a good God ought to remove all evil for the sake of removing it. Maybe some evils can’t be removed without removing certain goods because life is rarely black and white, and people aren’t all bad either. Like a thief and swindler who is a caring father to his children.

Likewise, maybe God, being good, values free will – because He is good and therefore doesn’t want to force every being to toe His line. So in His eyes, freedom is of “greater value” than ensuring zero evil by forcing people to follow Him like robots, therefore it’s worth the risk of the possible evil that may arise if/when humans misuse this freedom. And that’s how we conclude that the existence of evil is logically compatible with a good, omnipotent God.

The thought process is really logical and relies heavily on reasoning, so it was easy to follow, and didn’t feel like one was trying to turn one’s brains into a pretzel to defend the indefensible (like Calvin’s determinisim and compatibilism). But still, it’s … so much in your head. It’s very intellectual. Like you’re living in your own head, you know?

I get that all of this is important for apologetics because the problem of evil and suffering is a big one that trips up a lot of non-Christians… but eh. I can do this kind of thinking & reasoning, but I don’t like it because I feel that it’s unhealthy to be too much in my own head. You get too removed from the real world, I think.

The average person who is upset about the problem of suffering is usually upset because either they themselves or someone they care about has experienced great suffering. These kinds of thought experiments aren’t going to help them, neither will they convince them. You cannot argue a person into the Kingdom of God. People who want to argue are people who are already entrenched and firm in their belief; their mind is made up, they are not seeking to be convinced otherwise. They just want to prove they are right.

Which means that, in the end, this kind of philosophical thinking & reasoning is mostly just for your own intellectual satisfaction. You want to understand, so you go reason it out. But in understanding, I don’t know if anything really changes. Sure, now I understand – in my head – how God and evil can co-exist and why it is perhaps not logical to expect a good God to remove all evil & suffering from the world purely due to the fact that He is good and should not be able to tolerate evil. But if I were wounded in this area (like, if I or a loved one had suffered greatly and I was upset with God as a result), I don’t think that understanding this intellectually would change how I felt. Feelings are rarely affected by logic.

So, I don’t really know what to do with this information. Yay, we reconciled the issue of trusting a good God who allows evil to be present in this world, because we now know (or think we know) that He values human freedom… even though He was aware that humans would misuse this freedom. Uh… ok, that’s great, but so what? I am reassured that I’m not a robot being manipulated like a pawn on a chessboard, but apart from that, I don’t see much practical value in this information…

Theology course: Week 7 reflection

This week’s lesson was on faith & science. I admit I rolled my eyes at the topic. Because, if God is Creator, then obviously He’s also the creator of science, right? He created the earth and everything in/on it, and science is a “careful study of the structure and behaviour of the natural world” (as per the Cambridge Dictionary) so obviously science must be compatible with Scripture. WHAT ACTUALLY IS THERE TO DEBATE?!?!?

By now you can probably tell that theological studies are not agreeing with me. I think I’m lucky I took this subject as an “experiment” instead of signing up for a Masters in Christian Studies or some other similar thing. We’re only halfway through (lesson 7 of 12) and I already want to quit. But… I also shouldn’t stick my head in the sand and maybe, just MAYBE I need to know some of this stuff – it might be good to know – so I’m gonna make myself stick it out. Urgh. Adulting does suck.

Anyway, there are apparently four models used to interpret the relationship between faith & science (or the lecturer chose to highlight four, maybe there are more – he did say that sometimes there are too many things to cover, so he has had to choose the most common or prominent theories/concepts). The four are: the conflict model, the independence model, the dialogue model, and the integration model.

The conflict model puts faith and science in conflict due to a literal interpretation of the Bible. Like, you believe that God really made the world in seven 24-hour days but it conflicts with what we know of evolution. The independence model sees faith & science as independent – separate fields of enquiry – and therefore the two don’t overlap; science focuses on the “how” of things (how things work), while theology focuses on the ”why” of things (meaning, purpose, and value). The dialogue model sees science & theology as informing each other due to shared concepts like the origin of the world and acknowledges the differences between the two. The integration model sees theology & science as integrated, i.e. “belonging to one truth” (quoting from the lecturer’s slides) – both form a single coherent picture. No prizes for guessing which model I’m in favour of.

Then we moved on to views of creation, namely how the “7 days of creation” are interpreted. ::sigh::

For me, if you start with the position that Scripture and science cannot be in conflict because God created science, then there must be a way to understand and interpret Scripture which allows us to see that it does not contradict what we know to be true. Therefore, the seven days of creation can’t be literal 24-hour days.

So, apart from the literal (or traditional) view, which I have just thrown out of the window, we have the “day-age” view, which is still somewhat literal as it takes 2 Pet 3:8 (“With the Lord, a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day”) and says maybe the “day” in Genesis is representative of a longer period of time; but the other two views see “day” as metaphorical – the symbolic view says maybe the “days” aren’t actual days; based on the literary structure used in Genesis, maybe the author was just using “days” to give us an idea of the various stages of creation, since we humans only understand chorological & linear time; the analogy view says the “worked for six days and rested on the seventh” thing is supposed to help us understand God’s pattern of work & rest (by using an analogy) and it isn’t even meant to really focus on creation at all. I’m really much more inclined to the symbolic view; I think it’s the most logical. I don’t think the analogy view makes sense because there is too much detail in each of the six “days”, which would be unnecessary if all the author wanted was to emphasise the need for rest after working for six “days”.

Next, the lesson went into creation vs. creationism and various views of creationism – attempts to interpret when the creation of our known universe actually occurred. This is also an attempt by theologians to reconcile the age of the universe and the earth (as have so far been proven by science) to what is written in the Bible. So, I was also meh about it because again, I’m convinced that science and Scripture cannot contradict each other. I’m quite happy to admit that I don’t understand how it all works but I do know that God’s Word is Truth, but we also know that not all of the Bible is literal (hello, Song of Solomon and Revelation) so WHY would we insist on reading the account of creation literally? Some people are just hard-headed… like the Israelites ::cough::

(I should not say that. Mana tau got plank in my own eye but pointing out the speck in others’ eyes. Aiyoyo. Repent, repent)

Anyway, I am starting to wonder if I’m deficient in some way, because CLEARLY, my classmates are extremely interested in all these theological theories and debates and have read up about the various viewpoints and had questions about them. Do I accept things too easily? Am I too credulous? Have I been sticking my head in the sand? Bleargh.

Together with views on creationism, we have views on Adam & Eve: Were they real people? Does all of humanity really only descend from a single couple? But science and genetics apparently have suggested that humanity descended from a population of several thousand, not a single pair – this I learnt from my lecturer, I didn’t know it prior. Ish, all these are pointless thought experiments to me. I understand why it is important to some people to resolve these so-called “discrepancies” or figure out how to harmonise scientific knowledge & what Scripture has written. But it just isn’t important to me.

We talked about ancient and modern cosmology – the understanding of the universe and how it works – because, the lecturer said, we need to understand the view of the time in order to read the OT in context and understand the imagery/descriptions used. He showed us this video, which was very interesting:

Then we covered biblical inerrancy: “hard inerrancy” which means that all the content of the Bible is inerrant – all historical and scientific information included in it is also considered to be inerrant; vs. “limited inerrancy” which holds that Scripture is inerrant in matters of faith and salvation, but it was not intended as a science textbook so it may not be accurate in matters of science and history.

I think the latter makes more sense. Yes, Scripture is inspired by God, but I think God’s purpose in giving us His Word would have been to help us understand how He relates to us and how He wants us to relate to Him – the story of salvation and redemption. I think He wouldn’t be that concerned with correcting the authors’ understanding about how various aspects of nature work. It doesn’t matter if they didn’t know how rain is formed and what causes heavy rains leading to flooding, as long as they knew that God has ultimate control over the elements and that He can decree rain or drought. So it makes sense that they would have wrote about these things based on their understanding at that time.

Theology course: Week 6 reflection

This week I think there was too much jargon and I was disgruntled as a result. I think I was more annoyed by the pre-class reading materials, which caused me to approach the lesson in a less conducive frame of mind. Why was I so annoyed? I complained to my brother that the chapter on “meticulous providence” by Oliver Crisp was worse than the law textbooks which I had to read for my undergraduate degree! It’s like the theologian was not writing English, even though he was!

I needed more background knowledge in order to be able to understand Crisp’s writing. He started off by mentioning the Heidelberg Catechism and its definition of ‘meticulous providence’ in the first sentence as if he already expected readers to be familiar with both the catechism and the concept of ‘meticulous providence’. I had never heard of either in my life. Obviously, I was off to a bad start.

In fact, when I attended the lecture, I realised I didn’t even understand the topic: divine providence. Because one of the first things the lecturer pointed out was that providence is different from provision… which I didn’t know (oops). And that ‘providence’ refers to “God’s foresight and governance”. So ‘meticulous providence’ is about how God’s sovereignty plays out in the way He governs the world: that nothing can happen outside of His will, therefore everything that happens must be within His specific plan or decree.

This only led to more jargon, namely ‘determinism’, which I understood to mean more or less the same thing. I think it is called “determinism” from the root word ‘determine’, as in, “Everything that happens has already been determined beforehand, as it has been decreed by God.” If God is all-powerful and sovereign, then nothing can happen outside His purview, right?

Then we go to the thorny issue of free will. Because, if everything is already decreed by God, then do we have free will? The lecturer said that there are two types of free will: a) Free from coercion, and b) Free to have options (if only option is available, then arguably you don’t get free will to choose since there is nothing to choose from).

After that we went to primary and secondary causality. I did feel like we were bouncing around a bit cos this didn’t seem connected to the issue of free will. But anyway, God is “the uncaused first cause” (i.e. the primary cause) and any other factor or agent that causes something to happen in this world would be considered a secondary cause. The power that we humans have to cause things to happen is derived from God. The lecturer gave the example of a craftsman’s tools such as a hammer, saw, or chisel, which are secondary causes that enable a chair to be built. They derive their ability to “cause” a chair to form & come together from the craftsman himself. As an arts & crafts kind of person myself, I liked that illustration.

I just have to say here that I don’t care about all the arguments about how is it that God is sovereign and in control of all things, yet humans are still able to have free will.

Calvin’s view, as presented by the lecturer, makes him (Calvin) look silly cos he wanted so much to defend God’s complete sovereignty (God ordains all events, and nothing happens outside God’s will) that he then he had to twist himself into knots trying to explain that humankind could still retain free will even if they are doing things that were ordained by God before the beginning of time.

Somehow, in Calvin’s viewpoint, we have the freedom to voluntarily decide what we want to do, and our decisions end up magically compatible with God’s sovereign will even though God did not manipulate or ‘determine’ our actions. This is the concept of ‘compatibilism’ (more jargon!). It was invented to explain that determinism does not cancel out free will. In my notes, I wrote:

Soft determinism = people can still make decisions because of compatibilism. But although they make decisions, they did not really have a possibility of making a different choice because God had decreed from the beginning of time that they would do what they did. They think they have a choice and it feels like they have a choice, but the choice they actually make always aligns with God’s decree.

If reading that gave you a headache, imagine me sitting in this lecture.

We were also presented with viewpoints from Arminius and Molina, but I don’t care enough to go into them and they didn’t take as hard a stance as Calvin.

The next part of the lesson focused on our understanding of ‘foreknowledge’. We understand time in a linear way but God isn’t bound by the boundaries of time as we know it. So, for God, omniscience means that He sees everything at once instead of seeing events sequentially: that’s how He was able to see it all and know it all even before the dawn of creation. That’s timeless knowledge.

For us humans, because we think in terms of a chronological sequence of events, the fact that God knows the future is ‘foreknowledge’; but actually to God it is just… knowledge. It’s not that He knows what is going to happen – it’s that He knows everything, all at once. Being omniscient and omnipresent, He’s outside time & space so for Him there is no yesterday, today, or tomorrow.

This was very interesting to me and a new way of thinking. It helped me to understand what we mean when we say, “God has a plan” and “God is in control”. It’s not that God is in control so things will work out in the end or God is in control so He’s capable of turning things around at any time. It’s more like He is in control because He already knows it all, therefore events and situations will unfurl as they should. I am very tired so my thoughts may not be 100% clear.

The last part of the lesson was on predestination, again from Calvin, Arminius, and Molina’s view. I don’t care about that either, and I apparently didn’t take notes on this part although it is included in the lecturer’s slides. I think I am supposed to care because, just like with determinism, if one could be predestined as stated in Rom 8:30 then it might mean that our choices aren’t real choices and don’t really matter, because (especially in Calvin’s view) it was always going to happen anyway.

Then it would mean that, perhaps, there is no need to evangelise because the people who are going to be saved will be saved anyway. But it would also mean that God decides not to select certain people, which the lecturer said is called “double predestination” because some are chosen to be sons of God, while others are chosen not to be sons of God. Which sounds rather cruel, really.

But then that also reminds me of that parable where the labourers were recruited at different times of the day but promised the same wage, so at the end of the day it seemed unfair that the labourer who had worked since the morning received the same amount as another labourer who had only worked for two hours or something. I never really understood that parable. Like, is it meant to tell us that God's concept of fair is different from our concept of fair? Or, that God is always fair because He adhered to the terms of the contract, and gave the labourers strictly what they were owed, not comparing the contributions from each of them? But if He knew He was going to offer all workers the same amount -- and He should know, since He is ominiscient -- then He would also know that some workers would be getting the same amount of money for less amount of work. To refuse to give the earlier labourers more was kinda callous and cruel, in my opinion.

Anyway, going back to the lesson: So if one can be “not chosen” and God allows that person to follow his/her own sinful inclinations and eventually become subjects of His judgement & justice, it seems unfair and cruel. Then again, in the OT, God also chose Israel and didn’t choose other nations. Hmmm.

The lecturer posited that perhaps, predestination is not to be saved but to be conformed to the image of Jesus, as stated in Rom 8:29 – sort of like to restore the natural order. We were made in God’s image but the Fall marred that image, so in the context of this Bible passage, I think predestination is about being selected to partner with God in restoring the world to what it was originally meant to be.

We were reminded in class that Israel was also chosen (as I said earlier) – but they turned to idolatry many times and eventually got exiled from the promised land. So, the theory is that being chosen or “predestined” does not mean that one is saved. If Israel had been saved, they wouldn’t have continued to worship other gods.

The suggestion was: What if to be “the elect” means you were chosen to have access to the truth, to have access to God and His teachings and warnings and exhortations? Israel was supposed to be a testament to God’s power and goodness to the nations around them – the elect is supposed to teach others about God because they know Him and love Him. But having access to the truth does not mean you will put your trust in Him and commit yourself to Him – as seen with the Israelites. They still had a choice whether to do that or not (or so it seems. Calvin would have disagreed).

I like this “being predestined doesn’t mean one will automatically be saved” interpretation of the Scripture. It seems less harsh and unyielding compared to the idea that to be predestined means you were chosen to be saved, while others were chosen to be ultimately cast into hell. But 1 Tim 2:4 says God desires all men to be saved, so that interpretation doesn’t work for me.

John Piper explains 1 Tim 2:4 by saying that what God desires, He doesn’t always do; for example, He hates murder of the innocent (Prov 6:16-19), yet He decreed Jesus’ murder at the hands of Pontius Pilate (and all those who clamoured for Jesus to be put to death), in order to put into place the means of salvation. So, Piper says that God doesn’t choose to give the gift of sovereign grace to everyone, which means they don't get His help to open their eyes to the truth which would have brought them to belief and repentance. I don’t know why sovereign grace couldn’t be given to everyone; Piper wasn’t real clear about it. He wrote, “God is more committed to glorifying His own free and sovereign grace than He is to saving all.” That statement makes zero sense to me.

Anyway, Piper is Reformed and the Reformed “comes down from Calvin”, as my lecturer said. Calvin again… forever giving people headaches.