In this three part article I am looking at the response of Andrew Ollerton to Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch's loss of faith. Andrew Ollerton is the author of the Bible Society's successful Bible and Romans courses, courses we have run at our church. Andrew's answer to Kemi Badenoch can be found on the Premier Christianity website here. Andrew's article is divided into three parts: Viz:
Part I: What Andrew refers to as his Logical Response. I looked at this in Part 1 of the series
Part II: This is about Andrew's Biblical Response, and is the subject of this blog post.
Part III: This concerns Andrew's Pastoral Response, and will be the subject of the next post in this series.
Below I interleave Andrew's Biblical Response with my own comments.
Andrew's BIBLICAL REPONSE
Andrew: Secondly, let’s consider a biblical response. Taken as a whole, the Bible depicts God as the enemy of evil and never the cause of it. In Genesis, God created only what is good.
MY COMMENT: Many Christians (and that includes myself) have trouble getting round the genocidal slaughterings of the Book of Joshua, slaughterings which are depicted as the implementation of God's will. OK, there may be apologetics here that takes into account the mitigating constraints which arise if one is constrained to play humanity at their own game, but it means that God as the enemy of evil and never the cause of it is not an immediately obvious truism*. The statement In Genesis, God created only what is good, is deeply issue laden: For example, can we equate the "good" of Genesis 1 with perfection? At a lecture in Norwich Cathedral Cambridge biologist & Faraday institute member Denis Alexander maintained that in Genesis 1 "good" meant fit for purpose and not perfection. In fact the Bible itself is clear that the creation was far from perfect: Firstly, humanity was given the task of subduing and organizing the chaotic Earth beyond the garden and this suggests that the Earth was less than perfect and needed more creative work to be done.
But the real challenge to the notion of a perfect creation is found in the Biblical fact that the two main players in the cosmic drama, namely, humanity and Satan were given a less than perfect power of choice, a power which allowed them to implement choices which could endanger "project earth" and send it on a near catastrophic course in the space-time continuum. Unfortunately I too have that less than perfect power of choice, so unless I'm a radically renewed creation I'd better be barred from the New Heavens and earth.
ANDREW: At the end of Revelation, [God] promises to restore all things. Now, as we interpret God’s ways between these bookends, we must avoid two dangers. One is to equate God’s silence or hiddenness with indifference. Kemi Badenoch assumes that if God cared for Elisabeth Fritzl, he would prove it by stepping in. However, while God is active in the world, he has given humans free will. He is not a puppet-master continually tweaking reality.
As the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks noted: “We believe God gave us freedom. It is the most fateful decision he made in the entire universe.” God teaches us what is good but does not forcibly prevent us from doing evil. Josef Fritzl is therefore responsible for his actions. To blame God for such malevolence overlooks the serious truth of free will.
MY COMMENT: I can accept that God's silence or hiddenness doesn't necessarily imply indifference. But if we are expecting God to step in and stop the suffering then why is their any suffering and evil in the first place, because surely God would then be obliged to step in from the get-go. Therefore that a morally perfect omni-everything God has allowed suffering and evil to multiply from day one remains a mystery at this stage. However, as I mentioned in part I we now have to face the challenge of atheist PZ Myers who wrote:
No one uses the problem of evil to disprove a god, but only the idea of a benevolent god, or more specifically, the perfectly good being most Christians promote. When I see it deployed in an argument, it’s usually to make the narrower point that I don’t believe in your god..........But OK, sure, (if) the problem of evil says you should be anything but a traditional Christian, I’ll take it.
Well, OK I may not agree with that, but it is a robust & genuine challenge; namely, that the easy explanation for suffering and evil, if one assumes God exists, is that God is a baddie. But as a response to the question of suffering and evil I find Andrew's talk of "freewill" a cliche that is far from adequate; the general idea behind the "freewill" argument is that if we can source suffering and evil in human and satanic choices then that absolves God of any creative responsibility for the world's problems. The claim is that then it is all down to human & satanic "freewill"; God is therefore let off the hook. But the bad news is that so-called "freewill" is a mine field of issues....
Firstly one would have to trace all those flawed "freewill" decision making processes back to God's creation of agents who have the propensity to make such morally flawed decisions. Secondly, as I have made a case for in the past, the debate between so called "freewill" and "determinism" is suspect from the point of view of intelligibility. The concepts of both "freewill" and "determinism" used by both sides of the debate fall over on the questions of their coherence. Therefore the resort to "freewill" is no answer to Myers' challenge and fails to off-load moral responsibility for the Creation's woes from the Creator to the Creation's agents.
***
ANDREW: The opposite danger is to assume God’s current tolerance of evil is permanent. It is not. God has set a day to end injustice and hold evildoers to account, including Fritzl. Moreover, those like Elisabeth who have suffered at the hands of earthly fathers will have their tears wiped away by their heavenly father.
Then and only then, from the vantage point of eternity, will pain and suffering be put into perspective. To feel deep anguish in the face of evil today is absolutely right. But to reject God for this reason is premature. Instead, we need to hold on in hope and echo the cry that concludes the Bible: “Maranatha! Come Lord!”
MY COMMENT: I think there is some force in the above apologetic: True, there is a measure of amelioration if one puts suffering and evil in the context of a much larger divine plan, a plan which includes ultimately putting the world permanently to rights and satisfying justice....the respective theological terms for this are expiation and propitiation. The idea here is that the New Eternal Heavens & Earth which are metamorphosed from the current creation will be so wonderful as to make all the temporary suffering of this world worth it. The New World will be like waking up from a bad dream, or for what is for some a nightmare. But there will be no waking up from the bad dream if its choosing agents still have a propensity for selfishness.
......to be continued
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