Huw on the Theodicy Meme
15 June 2008 - 13 סיון 5768 by Huw
if the nature of god is omnipotent, benevolent, and anthropomorphic (that god is a person, who sees suffering as wrong, and can change all of it), why does god not act to relieve all suffering, or at least the greatest amount of suffering for the greatest amount of people the greatest amount of time?
Why does seeing God as “person” mean we are seeing God in an anthropomorphic way? Why do we assume that relieving “at least the greatest amount of suffering for the greatest amount of people the greatest amount of time” would be benevolent?
The basic assumption of Christianity is that while God, in his essence, is unknowable (as are all persons), he decided to reveal himself to us in Jesus and thus it is possible to know God as well as it is possible to know any person. This revelation is that God is love.
Having said that, why assume this partially anthropomorphic deity is, in fact, omnipotent?
We have no reason to assume that based on Scripture: for other than creation itself and the recordings of the apocalypse, God does nothing without human co-operation. It might even be better to say God does nothing save through human co-operation. Even the greatest acts of liberation - the Exodus, the return from the Babylonian Captivity, the Hanukkah Revolution, and the action of Jesus’ death and resurrection - require human participation, human action, human co-operation with God. God does nearly nothing by himself in even the most anthropomorphic stories of the Bible.
Yet God does nearly everything out of love, at least in human hindsight.
Love is not strong in the common sense of the wold. In fact, love is pretty weak. (How many soldiers have been protected from harm by their mothers’ love?) Yet love is stronger than death. Many waters can not quench love.
God is love.
2. if you were god, and you were omnipotent and benevolent, how would you respond to suffering?
Me, now, insists that I would fix it. But then, I’m not benevolent. If I were - and let’s add omniscient to the mix - I don’t know what I’d do. We act as if we know what “benevolent” is. We act as if we know what “good” is and would, in fact, want to do it.
3. if this is not the nature of god, what is the nature of god, that allows suffering in the world?
What I do know is that God weeps. That God-is-Love is a powerful statement not of “let God fix everything” but rather that God weeps watching the world get messed up. God weeps at the best of his best friend, Lazarus. God is afraid of death. God knows that humans are clueless a lot and weeps for that. God knows what it means to go hungry, to skin his knees, to teethe. To have his teeth fall out and be replaced. And God knows how to Cry.
I can’t think of anything more powerful than this image: a God weeping in love at our broken lives.
4. if these are the wrong questions to ask, what are the right ones?
I’ve got two streams of theology in my head. One says that someplace in mythological history, the world broke. This is the Jewish understanding as well as the Christian one. But our understanding of the mechanics differs:
For Jewish Mysticism, the entirety of everything was God. And, in order to create the universe, God had to, in fact, pull back a little: had to compress himself a little - make a little room in his infinity. Imagine this as a space.
Then, as the worlds came into being, God poured himself into the creation but the creation - by nature, finite, couldn’t handle infinity: and so it shattered. It is the action of God and Man together to repair that shattering.
Christianity, of course, has legends of “the fall”, although Christian Mysticism reads that differently than, say, Augustine. “The fall” is only a poetic image - like the shattering of the world in Jewish Mysticism. They are images of a world that, in our gut, we can tell isn’t running the way things should be.
We have a couple of choices here: we can blame God for it, as when many people ask how God could “allow” the tsunami that struck in South East Asia a few years ago, or how God could “allow” the Chinese Earthquake, the Holocaust or other such things. We thereby absolve ourselves of any action or responsibility. The omnipotence of a God who won’t fix anything that’s wrong - or the idea that God clearly can’t be God (which is the covert purpose of these questions) because he won’t fix what we want him to fix lets us pin the blame on a God that can’t exist, or a faith that clearly must be wrong.
We can try to stop assuming we know something about God beyond what he has chosen to reveal - including giving up the pagan (neither Christian nor Jewish-scripture based) assumptions that God is all-powerful and all-knowing. Holding these assumptions gives us the right to blame God for everything. But the deity that we blame doesn’t exist. Rejecting these assumptions give us the space to reject the existence of a God that isn’t real and give up on a faith that is, at heart, a denial of what Jesus taught us through his life. Once we accept the idea that God is not omnipotent - either by design or being - and does not interfere with human actions, with nature we can begin to wrestle with the meaning of evil. Our purpose, to work with God to heal a broken world, might become more manageable.
The other thing our gut tells us - the other stream of the theology in my head - is that the right answer for most things is Eucharist: thanksgiving.
Look at the Eucharist: it is made by nature and by man. We sow the wheat or the grapes. The Sun shines, the rains water, the earth grows, we harvest, we crush, we purify, we store - nature ferments the wine as well as the yeast in the bread.
Then we ask God to bless them and make them into something else. And he does.
Imagine doing that with everything: with the sucky job, with the car accident, with the tornado, with the tsunami, with the divorce, the mass murder, the best friend’s suicide, the ending of the relationship that was to last forever…
What happens to the broken elements when I take them and I offer them to God like the broken bread on the altar? In what form do they come back to me communicating Christ?
It’s easy to turn this around into imagining that God gives us all the things we’re thanking him for. My favourite evening prayer, the Akathist of Thanksgiving, borders on this constantly. But we misunderstand the nature of Christian Thanksgiving in that way.
The Akathist of Thanksgiving offers glory to God for all things on earth from raspberries to lightening to powerful storms. But that needn’t be because all things originate in God’s action: God Did Them to Me. Rather because we are told to make Eucharist in all things. God needn’t be in control of the world in order for man to hold up the world and offer it to God. And that does put God in the world.
The way of blaming God for everything, ironically, takes God out of the world. But the way of Thanksgiving, of Eucharist, puts him in the world in a special way: one that requires our actions, our work, to repair it. When we look at the world with Eucharistic ideas, we begin to see God in the brokenness and then serve him there. We become (as we are meant to be) God’s hands repairing the world, finding new ways to love and serve. God’s discovery of ways to prevent tsunami, God’s discovery of the cure for cancer or AIDS happens not when we whine at him for the problem but when we find it with him.
Sorry Huw, but I am a little confused about your paragraph on “know[ing] something about God beyond” revelation. You say that the concept of an all-powerful and all-knowing (omnipotent & omniscient) God is a pagan concept. Please explain.
Has I wrote: the scriptures have God working in partnership with humans, not in an “omni” sort of way (outside of Creation itself). The “omnis” come from our contact with Greco-Roman philosophy. Look at the deity in the creation story who offers a lot of animals to the human as a partner before discovering the human needs another human as a partner.
This is a deity who is learning *with us* what it all means to be living on this earth in community. Or look at the deity in Jewish Mysticism whose in-rush of divine power was so strong that he broke the world, himself: setting up the conditions that make the errors of Eden happen. This deity is rather like all the other tribal deities of the early era. Later we discovered the idea of “that than which nothing greater can be conceived” - a human concept - and began to work it into our theology along with all its contradictions (like George Carlan asks, “If God is all powerful, can he make a rock so big that he himself can not lift it?”)
I have to disagree with you based on Jewish (and Christian) scripture.
I am not a scripture scholar, but it all starts with Abraham, the Abraham from which the three big monotheistic religions claim to start. In Genesis 17:1, God revels to Abram, “I am the Almighty God”. The Hebrew word used is “Shadday”, which transliterates as almighty, most powerful. Almighty means omnipotent. In fact, the word appears approximately 50 times in the Old Testament (ref).
As an example, the book of Job uses almighty/shadday about 30 times alone. Scholars are unsure for the date Job was written, but they tend to place it between the 7th and 5th centuries BC, with some as late as the 4th century BC. The vast bulk of this time period was before the beginning of Hellenistic influence in Palestine after 330 BC.
Almighty/shadday is used twice in the Psalms (68 & 91), where both are attributed to King David. And he dates back to the 10th century BC! If you do not believe these prayers/songs where written by David, they at least come from the first temple era which ended in the 580’s BC.
This all shows that the concept of an all-powerful God was known to the Jewish people before the influence of the Greco-Roman philosophy.
That’s the way El Shaddai translated - which is different from its meaning, of course. The name seems related to a Mesopotamian title meaning “God of the Mountain”. (There is also a Goddess named Shaddai).
If you assume that the deity discussed in the Hebrew scripture is, a priori, different from the other tribal gods in the area, then you get one result. If you assume otherwise, you get another result.
But you pick two excellent sets of stories, either way. I noted the Jewish mystical idea of God limiting himself in order to make room for the creation. You pick two sets of stories where God limited his “Almighty-ness”, instead, begging humans to help. While God’s person may be as the “Omnis” teach, he doesn’t act that way.
Which is the same thing, here, and thus the point of my argument.
The word ’shaddai’ actually has a number of possible etymologies, from the one Huw mentioned to connections with the Hebrew roots for ‘breast,’ i.e. abundance, or ‘destruction.’ In any case, the translation ‘almighty’ was not even used in the LXX, where it was most often translated simply as ‘theos,’ and likewise ‘dominus’ in the Vulgate. It wasn’t until later English translations that the term ‘God Almighty’ was translated as such.
To back up from scripture Huw’s contention that the God of the Bible is not omnipotent, there’s the story of Moses essentially telling God to “cool it” when the Israelites built the golden calf while Moses was receiving the law on Mt. Sinai. Of course, God was angry at this and wanted to destroy the Israelites. Moses then essentially appealed to God’s self interest and told him that none of the surrounding tribes and nations would trust him anymore, which basically means God would not have any worshipers, which basically means the God of the Hebrews would become obsolete. This doesn’t sound like an omnipotent diety to me. There’s also the story of Abraham finagling with God not to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah if he could find 100, no…50, no still…10 righteous people. I think Huw is right in saying that God’s Omnipotence came not from the Hebrew bible but from Graeco-Roman culture…
Do you object to the idea that the concept of omnipotence may have been a pagan concept adopted into Christian theology? Or do object to using the omnipotent attribute at all in describing the nature of God?
I’m not following you, Mark. To whom is the question directed?
Please ignore my previous comment. The omni attributes of God are only a part of a larger question.
Whose story is the Bible?
Is it God’s story about us learning to live with him? Or is it our story about God learning to live with us?
If the story is about us learning to live with God, then it is our attitudes, our hearts, our programs for happiness that must change to his.
If the story is about God learning to live with us, then it is God who has to change and adapt to us.
I am tempted to say it is a little of both. Reading scripture, especially the Old Testament, makes it seem like it is both, but scripture is written from our point of view. And I think there is a grave danger in saying both.
I believe that the second interpretation leads to a form of idolatry as Donald Schell described in his reply to the theoldicy meme, that is, “a theology and spirituality that offer[s] a means to manipulate God for our own purposes”, a “religion of manageable results”. If God has to adapt to us, then we can manipulate him. (And didn’t Schell mention this in connection with the old Hebrew prophets?)
Regardless of the origin of the concept of omnipotence, it must have been very important to the early church fathers to include this one attribute of God’s nature into the Nicene Creed.
I think to deny this attribute of God starts a cascade of thinking that ends in the second interpretation of the Bible, an interpretation that is not God-centered. (And results in, or begins with, things like a process theology, open theism, gnosticism, and at least a too literal interpretation of scripture.)
Again, Mark: to whom are you directing your questions? Marjorie, James and myself - as well as Donald and Fr E - are participating in the conversation.
I have no doubt that the Omnies were important to the Church Fathers. The question was were they right to include such a Hellenism?
The Bible is a human-centred document, writen by humans about their dealings with this deity. The Church has produced Open Theism, Process Theology, Liberation Theology and, indeed, whole libraries full of other theologies since Nicea. The theology has evolved as our relationship with God has evolved and, again, that’s the point of the discussion.
You asked a question about the Bible: again, I’m not sure if you’re looking for “my” answer or “the right” answer. But here is mine: the Bible is a record (sometimes historical, sometimes not) of some persons’ dealings with God. It is right, wrong, poetry, mythology, commissioned flattery, political propaganda, and any number of other possibilities. But even in the places where it is wrong, it seeks to convey the truth as understood by our Spiritual Ancestors in the light of their experience of God. We walk in the same path (one hopes) composing the same texts: of equal value in Truth, if not in style, as we seek to follow the same deity in our own experience and lives.
I think the problem of Theodicy - of attempting to reconcile the presence of evil in the world with God - is caused by our words; not by God, not by our experiences.
Theodicy is caused by attempting to put our experiences into a box crafted by some people a long time ago who may have been wrong (as I may be wrong). I’m suggesting that we work with images from people who lived even longer ago. Not because those images are “more right” but because they reconcile these differences for us (and for those who posed the questions originally).
I wonder if ‘the omnis’ should be read in the context of royal acclamations. When an ancient courtier said, ‘O King, live forever!’ Did he actually expect that meant or implied the king was omni-vivant or whatever ever-living would be? I don’t think this kind of rhetoric was simple flattery, but something more like the French language’s intuition that won’t let you ascribe a superlative to someone without using the subjunctive verb. There are things you can’t say without using the superlative, but it’s also beyond the limit of real comparison or ordinary skeptical scrutiny, so it takes on a quality of ‘as if.’ Is it satisfying to hear Anselm argue that God is that than which nothing great can be conceived? Isn’t it truer to say with our Cappadocian teachers that God simply is inconceivable? And don’t we get ourselves in trouble putting ‘IS’ to attributes as though the words implied we knew God’s very being?
I ran across an article today that is germane to your post, “Does God Suffer?” by Fr. Thomas Weinandy. The article starts off a little slow, but gets much better as it proceeds. I highly recommend it!!!
Hi Mark - thanks for the link. I edited your post - changed the link to the article from the Word Document (! don’t have Word & I refuse to access microsoft documents because of security issues) to the article, published in First Things in Nov. 2001
The traditional doctrine of God’s impassability - preached in the face of God’s clear suffereing as recorded in the Gospels - is highly emphasised in Orthodoxy’s liturgy. I don’t buy it. Sorry. No more than I buy the “essence and energy” silliness.
This paragraph shows the problem: they took an assumption (”the omnies”) and then re-wrote their understanding of scripture to make sense in light of their new discoveries. It’s funny that the writer goes to great pains to say this isn’t true - even as he says it, over and over.
Once you let go of the omnies, you no longer have to force the rest of the bible to jump through pagan hoops.
Huw — Weinandy and the concept of God’s impassibility *never* denies the suffering of Jesus. How the suffering human nature of Jesus connects with his impassible (according to traditional theology) divine nature, no one can say; that’s partly why it’s called a mystery.
1) Theology can only use metaphors. Some metaphors are better than others. Some metaphors lead to serious inconsistencies. I can sympathize with ignoring the concept of God’s impassibility to help understand the mystery of suffering (it has practically no pastoral application in my opinion), but what does one say when scripture refers to God hating individuals? Does God literally hate Esau? It goes without saying that God hates sin, but people? If so, who else does a passible God hate? If anything, that surely goes against the Gospels. How can God, Who is Love, hate?
2) Could you please explain your reference to “‘essence and energy’ silliness”? I honestly do not know what you mean by it. It is not mentioned in Weinandy’s article? The only concept I know that deals with essence is from philosophy/theology in regards to essence and existence, or essence and actuality.
No: not in that article. I was referring to the Palamite teaching on “Essence and Energy” (that God is unknowable in the former) which lends itself to a Gnostic read if we are not careful.
Answer to question 1) the earlier you go in the bible, the more clearly we’re dealing with a tribal deity. you don’t need to ask those questions unless you assume all the other things we’ve been talking about. Certainly tribal gods hate people… but we grew up: and so did our concept of God.
Seriously - as you suggest - it is all metaphors, including the omnies. I’ve been saying that those raise other pastoral problems (just as passibility does). You don’t need ‘em, just as you don’t need the doctrine of passibility.
“Incarnation = quite a mystery” is about as far as we need to carry the conversation, I think.
Thank you for your post, your answers, and my questions.
Oops! I meant putting up with my questions. :)