Assaying the Gold

I’ve been thinking this week about the uses of the word “gold” in the Bible, which in turn prodded me to find out more about the characteristics of this most precious of metals. Among other qualities that make it the king of metals, gold is the most malleable of them, so much so that “a single gram can be beaten into a sheet of 1 square meter, or an ounce into 300 square feet. Gold leaf can be beaten thin enough to become transparent” ( Wikipedia). That reminded me of a line in John Donne’s poem, “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”:

Our two souls therefore, which are one, Though I must go, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion, Like gold to airy thinness beat.

Donne is referring in his image to the gold-like quality of his relationship to his wife, with whom he is in spiritual connection, even though they are absent from one another. The stress on their golden intimacy merely proves its strength. I think the same can be said of the intimacy between God and His children, the testing of which is several times likened to refining gold through fire, as in Zechariah 13:8-9:

In the whole land, declares the LORD, two thirds shall be cut off and perish, and one third shall be left alive. And I will put this third into the fire, and refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested. They will call upon my name, And I will answer them. I will say, 'They are my people'; and they will say, 'The LORD is my God.'

And then the more familiar passage in Malachi 3:2-3:

But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the LORD.

Both of these passages, and a number of others like them, deal with the purification of Israel as a nation, and that is the norm in the O.T. As I have commented before, the redemptive power of suffering is presented in a much fuller way in the New Testament than in the Old Testament, and the emphasis in the N.T. is more on individual experience and responsibility, as when Paul speaks of teachers building on the foundation of Christ laid by others:

Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each one's work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire. (I Cor. 3:12-15)

Peter presents the refinement by fire in a more positive light:

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (I Pet. 1:6-8)

And the same sentiment is echoed by James:

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. (James 1:2-3)

These N.T. passages invite the individual Christian to embrace and find meaning in being tested, and to be active participants, in fellowship with the suffering of Christ, in bringing glory to God. They are the proven “gold” of God; they are His treasure, and He is theirs. Like John Donne and his wife, though we are stretched “to airy thinness,” our connection with our Father is only strengthened by being tested.

How Kantian Ethics Helps to Demonstrate the Attractiveness of Biblical Ethics: Part I

INTRODUCTION

Few ethical systems have been as influential or as hotly debated in Western philosophy as the one proposed by Immanuel Kant. Kant, living when reason was king in eighteenth-century Enlightenment Europe, proposed what he considered to be the one true ethical system—a system rooted in pure reason, without recourse to grounding morality in God, that sought to explain universal moral truth.[1] This paper will argue that Kant’s ethical system, despite grounding morality purely in reason and in light of its own philosophical failures, contains significant insights that serve to illuminate the philosophical attractiveness of key biblical ethical principles.

To accomplish this, I will highlight three important objectives of Kant’s ethical view and compare them to three critical principles of a biblical ethic. Kant emphasizes (1) the existence of objective and universally-binding moral values and duties that require an intrinsic “Good” to ground objective morality; (2) the principle of “moral worth” that incorporates insightful appeal to the role of motive in ethics; and (3) the belief that humans have inherent value. Kant’s justification for these three contentions will be juxtaposed with the rationale for the biblical ethical principles that (1) God Himself is the intrinsic “Good” that grounds objective morality; (2) moral worth is found in honoring God by willing and acting in accordance with God’s will; and (3) God provides a superior basis for ascribing value and respect to human beings.

After briefly explaining Kant’s ethic, I will first show how Kant, in spite of his exclusion of God from morality’s foundation, offers several key insights that help to establish the tenability and attractiveness of these biblical principles. Then, I will demonstrate how Kant’s ethic fails to accomplish his own desired objectives and how a biblical ethic succeeds. Note that, for the purposes of this paper, a “biblical ethic” refers to a general Christian ethical approach that draws upon the Bible and minimally includes the three biblical principles identified above. Certainly there are a variety of nuanced positions that a Christian ethicist might hold, but this paper will defend these three particular ethical principles that are widely recognized as biblical.

KANT’S ETHICS

Kant was born in 1724 in Königsberg, Germany, and he lived there until his death in 1804. A crucial influence on Kant that was especially formative to his ethical thought is the Enlightenment thinking that was occurring in Europe. The Enlightenment, at its height in Europe during Kant’s lifetime, led to an explosion of scientific progress that brought about a wave of confidence in human reason, and this spilled over into philosophy. Kant was a staunch defender of the Enlightenment ideal of human autonomy and the lofty capabilities of human reason.[2] He viewed the Enlightenment as “man’s emergence from his self-incurred tutelage.” By “tutelage,” Kant means “man’s inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another.”[3] He encouraged people to stop blindly following the traditions of others and claimed that the “motto of enlightenment” is: “Have courage to use your own reason!”[4] Indeed, as we will see, autonomous human reason (i.e., our ability on our own to use the mind’s conceptual schemes to generate knowledge) is the very foundation of Kant’s ethical theory.

For Kant, reason exists in the human mind prior to and independent of experience, and it ultimately produces the basis for objective moral truth. Kant spurned the idea put forth by empiricists like David Hume that all synthetic knowledge is a posteriori. While empiricists were arguing that morality is a human construction based entirely upon human experiences, feelings, and desires, Kant was insisting that “there really exist pure moral laws which entirely a priori (without regard to empirical motives, that is, happiness) determine the use of the freedom of any rational being, both with regard to what has to be done and what has not to be done.”[5] These “pure moral laws” that reason produces are “imperative” and “in every respect necessary” because they are rooted in reason and not contingent upon human experience.[6]

But how does pure reason produce “necessary” moral laws that are objective and universally binding? Kant’s answer is that reason alone produces an intrinsic “good” that serves to ground objective morality—the “good will,” which is the rational faculty that recognizes moral duty. This “good will” is not an instrumental good that merely produces other goods; rather, “it is good only because of its willing, i.e., it is good of itself.” Even if circumstances should not allow the good will to be put to use, it would still be intrinsically good and would “sparkle like a jewel in its own right, as something that had its full worth in itself.”[7] The good will is the only good “which could be called good without qualification.” As such, the good will is able to discern what Kant considers to be the “supreme principle of morality”[8] that serves to generate our moral duties—the categorical imperative (CI).

Although Kant considers the CI to be one cohesive principle, it comprises three formulations. The first formulation is the Principle of Universal Law. It states: “I should never act in such a way that I could not also will that my maxim should be a universal law.”[9] If reason dictates that we could will that a maxim should be applied universally, then it becomes our moral duty to act on that maxim; conversely, if we could not rationally will to universalize a maxim, then it is our duty not to act on it.

It is important to see that Kant’s CI is intended to generate duties that are morally obligatory and not optional or contingent upon the desires of any person. Kant contrasts the idea of a “hypothetical” imperative with his concept of a “categorical” imperative. A hypothetical imperative “says only that an action is good for some purpose,” but the CI “declares the action to be of itself objectively necessary without making any reference to a purpose.”[10] Kant provides a number of examples to illustrate how the Principle of Universal Law reveals to us our moral duties independent of desire. In one example, Kant describes a man who needs to borrow money but does not have the means to repay what he needs to borrow. The man is considering accepting the following maxim: “When I believe myself to be in need of money, I will borrow money and promise to repay it, although I know I shall never do so.” Kant argues that when the man applies the Principle of Universal Law to this maxim, the man will discover that the maxim cannot be universalized and is, therefore, morally wrong. It cannot be universalized, Kant says, because that would make “the promise itself and the end to be accomplished by it impossible; no one would believe what was promised to him but would only laugh at any such assertion as vain pretense.”[11] Thus, regardless of what the man wants to do, reason dictates that his objective moral duty is to reject that maxim and not make the lying promise. If everyone in such a situation made a lying promise then a contradiction would result because the man’s goal of obtaining a loan would not be possible. Kant wants to say that it is this contradiction and not the consequences of undermining loans that makes reason demand the rejection of this maxim.

The second formulation of the CI is called the Principle of Ends. It states: “Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means only.” Kant upholds the inherent value of humans on the same basis that he argues for objective morality—pure reason. Kant argues that humans, as “rational beings,” are by nature “ends in themselves” and “objects of respect.”[12] This is because every person “necessarily” thinks of himself as a valuable end in himself because he has a “rational nature” that grounds value—nothing can be valued without rational beings to do the valuing.[13] This argument of Kant is sometimes called the “regress” argument because “by regressing on the condition of value, it is possible to derive the intrinsic value of rational nature itself.”[14] The second formulation of the CI ensures that no maxim that devalues a rational person can be acceptably universalized.

The third formulation of the CI is the Principle of Autonomy. It states: “Never choose except in such a way that the maxims of the choice are comprehended in the same volition as a universal law.”[15] Given the first two formulations, it is clear that Kant’s theory has no need for a transcendent being to generate moral law for humanity. In this final formulation, Kant emphasizes that the good will of a rational being is sufficient for determining absolute moral law. Humans have the autonomous ability to legislate moral values and duties. In fact, Kant holds that God Himself, along with all rational beings, can only be good by adhering to the CI. He declares, “Even the Holy One of the Gospel must be compared with our ideal of moral perfection before He is recognized as such.… But whence do we have the concept of God as the highest good?  Solely from the idea of moral perfection which reason formulates a priori.”[16]

Another concept that is especially critical to Kantian ethics is “moral worth.” For Kant, “moral worth” means moral praiseworthiness. An agent’s action has moral worth if it is in accordance with duty and the agent is motivated to do the action out of duty. This means that the motivation of an agent is critical, and Kant even asserts that an action done out of duty that is contrary to one’s natural inclination results in the “highest”[17] moral worth of all. Kant regards it as unthinkable that subjective feelings could have any bearing on moral motivation. While Kant thinks God, who lives up to the moral law perfectly, gives us hope that the moral law can be perfectly fulfilled, he at the same time does not allow such hope to be our motivation for being moral. Rational duty must be our motivation in order for our action to have moral worth.[18]

Having briefly surveyed the core points of Kant’s ethic, we will now examine how the three key principles of a biblical ethic identified previously are plausible by comparing them to Kant’s ethic. We begin by seeing how Kant’s ethic offers positive insights that support the tenability and attractiveness of these biblical ethical principles.

INSIGHTS OF KANT’S ETHICS

Kant’s ethical system offers a number of insights that help to reveal the soundness of a biblical ethic. Consider the first biblical principle that objective and universal moral values and duties exist, and that God is the intrinsic good that grounds their existence. This traditional view sees God as the basis of objective morality such that the truths of morality are found in God and are fully independent of all human opinions and beliefs. The Bible portrays God as the very foundation and standard for universally-binding morality. Support for this concept can be gleaned from numerous biblical passages. We are commanded to be holy because of God’s holy character (Lev 19:1-2). God is maximally holy (threefold repetition of “holy”) and exposes our sinfulness (Is 6:1-5). Jesus states that “no one is good—except God alone” (Mark 10:18). God alone is the standard. Although Kant rejects the idea that God grounds morality, he does correctly recognize the reality of objective morality and the need for an intrinsic “good” that must provide some ontological basis for it.

There is great wisdom in Kant’s passionate rejection of all ethical systems that cast morality as a human construct that is relative to the desires of individuals or the whims of culture. Morality must be objective and universal to be truly normative, and normativity is a seemingly necessary feature of any adequate ethical system. Moral relativism, if true, would make moral criticism impossible such that morality would fall apart. Kant recognizes this and harshly condemns ethical relativism for making morality out to be a “bastard patched up from limbs of very different parentage, which looks like anything one wishes to see in it.”[19]

Kant appears to be correct that objective morality must be grounded in an intrinsic “good” that has “its full worth in itself.”[20] He saw that if there is no objective good that serves as the incorruptible standard of moral perfection, then the subjectivity that unacceptably destroys the prescriptivity of morality cannot be avoided. As C. S. Lewis rightly argues, “The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard.... You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality.”[21] Plato recognized this as well when he postulated the idea of a “Good” form that serves as the objective basis by which anything can be called good. Plato saw that the “Good” must exist independent of all appearances and human conventions. Recounting the words of Socrates in Plato’s cave allegory, Plato writes of this “Good” as that which is the ultimate “cause of all that is right and beautiful,” even though we often see it in only a distorted way in this world.[22] As long as morality is truly an objective reality, as it apparently must be, then both Kantian and biblical ethics are correct in affirming an intrinsically good moral standard as a foundation.

Kant also provides perspicacity concerning the second principle of biblical ethics by affirming that moral worth depends on our motives and not just our actions. As discussed previously, Kant only allows for an agent’s action to have moral worth if the action is in accordance with moral duty and the agent is motivated to do the action out of moral duty. Similarly, the Bible indicates that God is concerned not only with our actions but also our motivations and our will. God does not merely base the moral worth of a person’s action on whether the act itself is in accordance with His commands; rather, the motivation of the agent to act in a God-honoring way is also critical. For example, the Apostle Paul writes that God wants us to “will and to act according to his good purpose” (Phil. 2:13). The scribes and Pharisees “do all their deeds to be noticed by men,” and Jesus condemns this motivation (Mt 23:1-12). Even good works, such as prayer, must not be done with a wrong motive (Mt 6:1-6). All food is acceptable to eat, but if one is convinced that eating a certain food is wrong and does it anyway, he is morally guilty (Rom 14:14, 23). So, in Scripture, the action done by a person is not the only thing that is significant in terms of moral praiseworthiness; one’s motivations and reasons for acting matter greatly.

Louis Pojman rightly points out that the benefit of an ethical system that accounts for motive is that “two acts may appear identical on the surface, but one may be judged morally blameworthy and the other excusable” depending on the motive of the agents carrying out the acts.[23] Kant captures this truth, and he realizes that one’s commitment to his moral duty will sometimes require him to contradict his natural inclinations. For example, Kant’s contention that “love as an inclination cannot be commanded” is theologically insightful and attractive.[24] While some critics find such dutiful love to be cold and uncaring, Kant is surely correct that love for others must be more than a feeling that we are either inclined or disinclined to have if love is truly a moral duty.[25] In the same way, biblical ethics involves the command to love others—even one’s enemy—regardless of inclination (Matt. 5:44).

Finally, Kant’s agreement with the third biblical principle that humans are inherently valuable and deserve respect is also intuitively attractive. Although the next section will explore the difficulties Kant has in justifying the value of humans independently from God, Kantian and biblical ethics share the advantage of being in accord with the nearly universal sense most people have that human life is valuable. As Burton F. Porter notes, it is “difficult, if not impossible,” to deny our moral sense that there is something valuable about human life, and denying that human value is an objective reality “runs counter to our most basic feelings.”[26] While this widely-held moral sense that humans have value does not prove that humans really are valuable, any ethical theory that is in accord with such a prominent aspect of our moral experience is to be preferred. With these insights of Kant in mind, let us now examine how the shortfalls of Kant’s ethic highlight the greater tenability of the three specified biblical principles of ethics.

Notes: 

1. John E. Hare, The Moral Gap: Kantian Ethics, Human Limits, and God's Assistance, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996). Though it is not clear, Hare thinks Kant might have believed traditional Christian doctrines (see pp. 38, 48). God is important to Kantian ethics in that He ensures that virtue and happiness align and that the moral law can be perfectly fulfilled; however, for Kant, we will see that moral law springs from reason. God is not its source.

2. R. Scott Smith, In Search of Moral Knowledge: Overcoming the Fact-Value Dichotomy, (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2014), 94.

1. Immanuel Kant, “What is Enlightenment?,” in Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals and What is Enlightenment?, trans. Lewis White Beck (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959), 85.

1. Ibid.

2. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, in Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason: In Commemoration of the Centenary of its First Publication, 2nd ed., trans. F. Max Müller (London: Macmillan, 1907), 647.

1. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 647.

1. Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, in Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals and What is Enlightenment?, trans. Lewis White Beck (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959), 10.

1. Ibid., 8-9.

1. Kant, Foundations, 18.

1. Ibid., 31-32.

1. Ibid., 40

1. Kant, Foundations, 46-47.

1. Ibid., 47.

1. Evan Tiffany, “How Kantian Must Kantian Constructivists Be?,” Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 49, no. 6 (December 2006): 540.

1. Kant, Foundations, 59.

1. Kant, Foundations, 25. Kant sees the “highest good” as the conjunction of virtue and happiness. Notably, he thinks only God can bring about such a condition; however, God is only good by perfectly living up to the CI as demanded by reason.

1. Ibid., 15.

1. David Baggett and Jerry L. Walls, God and Cosmos: Moral Truth and Human Meaning (Oxford: University Press, 2016), 265-266.

2. Kant, Foundations, 44.

1. Ibid., 10.

1. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (San Francisco, CA: HarperCollins, 2001), 13.

1. Plato, Plato’s Republic, trans. George Maximilian Anthony Grube and C. D. C. Reeve (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1992), 189.

2. Louis Pojman, Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong, 6th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2009), 11. For example, it seems that a man who helps an elderly lady across the street to impress his friends should be judged as less morally praiseworthy than a man who does this same action out of a sense of moral responsibility.

1. Kant, Foundations, 16.

1. Julia Driver, Ethics: The Fundamentals (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 86.

1. Burton Frederick Porter, The Good Life: Alternatives in Ethics, 3rd ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001), 85.

Onward, Christian Satirists!

Kansas City, MO—In a hopeful move for the future of quality religious writing, scores of contemporary Christian wordsmiths have rallied behind what promises to be a whole new way in which the kingdom of God can irrupt into this fallen world: satirical blogging. This week marked the launch of The Leek, a radically iconoclastic Christian website that loftily aspires to lampoon evangelical foibles, hoping to root them out and make way for a fresh move of the Holy Spirit in congregations across America. In this bold endeavor, The Leek’s writers and editors have assumed the mantle passed on by church luminaries through the ages. Through incisive pieces that aim to prick the church’s conscience over its potluck obsession and turn our collective hearts to repentance about hokey email sign-offs, these social-media visionaries are natural heirs to the Basils, Augustines, Anselms, and Pascals of past eras.

Finding little audience for and feeling creatively restrained by the strictures of drab discursive analysis or dense literary fiction, these modern-day Christian Juvenals have chosen instead the sarcastic path less traveled.

In an age bereft of entertainment and saturated by abstruse deliberation and punctilious analysis, these courageous countercultural writers embody the Apostle Paul’s charge to resist conformity to this world. They are jumping headlong into the humor void to remind American evangelicals that there are, indeed, a plethora of quirky aspects of our subculture that we must recognize and publicly mock.

Citing the challenges of retaining hope in this fallen world, editor Seth Brown explains that the purpose of The Leek is to seek out elements of the evangelical subculture that are already farcical but that have not yet been roundly ridiculed, bringing eschatological irony to bear on those aspects of our world in most desperate need of it.

Well aware of Christ’s charge in Matthew 28 for his followers to provide hope and light to a dying world, these writers have decided to answer the need subversively—by not addressing it at all. “I know people are spiritually starving to death,” said Jane Lassiter, who recently left her post at Wycliffe Global Alliance to become a modern-day prophetic purveyor of levity. “But I think what they need even more than illuminating truth is a good belly laugh. The peccadillos and idiosyncrasies of the Christian subculture provide a veritable treasure trove of resources to do this impeccably. A merry heart does good like a medicine, after all!”

Thinking along these same lines, other believers have jettisoned their university press contracts for the exciting opportunity to have a by-line at The Leek. “What?” defensively asked John Small whose previous tomes weighed heavily in academic debates against naturalism and scientism. “More people will read my blogs than my books anyway.” Readers of The Leek agree. “The apostle Paul was a good writer; he’d have killed at this kind of thing,” expressed Sam Sawyer who relishes seeing insufferable derogation transmogrified into an art form.

But does the satire do much good, reaching its intended target? “Sure! Good satire is an effective way at providing social commentary,” another enlightened virtual-Jonathan-Swift-wanna-be who’s seen the light added. “For example, the other day my article was like, ‘So what’s up with people always sitting in the same pew in church?’ And a few weeks ago, I offered compelling implicit commentary on how many times worship songs get repeated in services. And recently a friend ripped on Christians who are bad tippers. That’s golden, man! Christians really need to learn to laugh at themselves.”

At press time, Thomas Nelson was increasing its Bible-production-output in preparation for the imminent nation-wide revival The Leek’s launch is bound to spark.

Sweeter than Honey

If there is any food in the world that most people are positive about, honey would probably be it.  From ancient times it has been held in high regard for its taste, its nutrition, its use as a medicine, and its appropriateness as a gift.  No wonder, then, that scriptural references to honey present it as part of the blessings of Israel’s Promised Land (“flowing with milk and honey,” Ex. 3:9 and many times elsewhere in the O. T.); a descriptor of the taste of the miraculous manna (Ex. 16:32) and of the spiritual taste of the Word of God (Ps. 19:10); and even a part of the imagery of erotic romance in the Song of Solomon (e.g., SS 4:11 & 5:1).  Honey plays a key part in two similar narratives in the Old Testament, in each of which honey is found miraculously available in the countryside and is eaten gladly by the finder.  But also in each story, there is a failure to make full or appropriate use of the “honey” of God’s strength.

In the first of these (Judges 14), we find the strange story of Samson’s dealings with the Philistines in regard to his taking a wife from among them.  In the journey to negotiate the marriage with his chosen one, he encounters a lion, which he kills with his bare hands through the power of God.  In a subsequent journey to continue the negotiations for his wife, he comes upon the carcass of the lion he killed, in which now there is a beehive full of honey.  Samson scoops up some in his hand to eat and carries a portion to his parents as well, although he tells them nothing of its source.  His secrecy carries over to his making the lion-honey incident the source of a riddle he asks the 30 Philistine companions who were assigned to attend Samson’s nuptial feast: “Out of the eater came something to eat.  Out of the strong came something sweet” (14:14).  Samson bets his companions 30 changes of clothing that they can’t solve the riddle.

When it becomes apparent that the Philistines are not going to be able to solve Samson’s riddle, they threaten his wife and her family with being burned if she cannot  wheedle the answer out of Samson.  She finally succeeds, and when the companions give the correct answer (“What is sweeter than honey?  What is stronger than a lion?”), Samson responds by slaying 30 Philistines and taking their garments to pay off the bet.  So the lion-honey incident is not only symbolic of Samson’s later becoming the “hive” out of which God scoops the “honey” of His wrath (see my “Twilight Musing” for Dec. 4, 2015), but is also the catalyst for the opening of Samson’s Spirit-inspired battle against the oppression of Israel by the Philistines.  His eating of the miraculously supplied honey betokens his being nourished and enabled by God as Israel’s deliverer and judge.  His prideful and reckless self-reliance on the strength God has given him makes him spiritually blind to the hazard of playing with Delilah, leading to his being shorn of his strength-giving locks and rendered literally blind.

A similar story of being strengthened by eating divinely supplied honey in the wild is told in I Samuel 14, as a part of King Saul’s first campaign against the Philistines.  Saul had rashly “laid an oath on the people, saying, ‘Cursed be the man who eats food until it is evening and I am avenged on my enemies.’  So none of the people had tasted food” (14:24).  Saul in his pride had not consulted God about a strategy for defeating his enemies, but God had a plan for enabling His people to pursue the Philistines to their utter defeat.  “Now when all the people came to the forest, behold, there was honey on the ground.  And . . . the honey was dropping, but no one put his hand to his mouth, for the people feared the oath” (14:25).  Jonathan, however, had not heard the oath, so he ate some of the honey, “and his eyes became bright” (14:27).  When the people informed him of his father’s oath, Jonathan replied with forthright common sense (14:29-30):

Then Jonathan said, "My father has troubled the land. See how my eyes have become bright because I tasted a little of this honey.  How much better if the people had eaten freely today of the spoil of their enemies that they found. For now the defeat among the Philistines has not been great."

When the day ended, the Philistines had been defeated, but the Israelites, in their hunger and faintness, slaughtered their plunder of cattle and ate the meat with the blood, which was forbidden by God in the Law.  Thus was proved the truth that Jonathan had uttered about the negative effect of Saul’s oath.  But far from admitting his error, Saul looked for a scapegoat to blame for God’s not answering his inquiry about whether to continue pursuing their enemies (14:36ff).  When Jonathan was identified by the casting of lots as the one who was “guilty” of having violated Saul’s oath, only the intervention of all the people prevented Saul from compounding his sin by unjustly killing his own son and heir.

As in the story of Samson and the lion-honey, the incident with the honey on the floor of the forest for Saul’s troops speaks to the issue of receiving God’s unexpected gifts of nourishment and strength with thankfulness and a recognition that these gifts are divine enablement to carry out divine purposes.  Both Samson’s and Saul’s pride curtailed the full fruition of the strength God made available to them.  Samson ignored the foreshadowing warning about his vulnerability to the wiles of foreign women, and thus he fell prey to Delilah and lost his strength.  Saul could have been empowered early in his kingship to defeat the Philistines completely, but he relied on his own strategems and was not able to see what God had supplied toward gaining a crushing victory.

The next time you eat good honey, remember and be thankful for the times when God has supplied you with good things in unexpected ways; and pray that you may always recognize and take advantage of His bounty.   As it says in Ps. 34:8-10, “Oh taste and see that the Lord is good!  Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!  Oh fear the Lord, you His saints, for those who fear him have no lack!  The young lions suffer want and hunger; but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.”  Remember that ours is the God who nourished His children in the wilderness with “honey out of the rock” (Deut. 32:13).

Image: "Honey" by D. Giordano. CC License. 

God’s Generous ‘More'

 I’d like to present this week another theme associated with the word and the concept of “more” in Scripture: the way God regards people and the lives they live.  This theme comes through especially strong in the words of Jesus in the Gospels (especially the Sermon on the Mount), which often show God’s use of comparatives and superlatives in what are to human thinking counterintuitive or even paradoxical ways. Early in His ministry, Jesus challenged ordinary human opinions about the value of material comforts.

Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?  (Matt. 6:25, ESV, emphasis mine, here and in all other quotations)

Jesus poses these as rhetorical questions, inviting agreement, but they challenge the anxiety manifested by most humans in seeking to feed and clothe themselves.  Fallen people look not to have “more” with the peace of mind that Jesus points to, but strive for the “more” of accumulating goods so that they can feel secure by their own efforts.  Jesus seems to be saying that until we accept the sufficiency of what God gives us apart from our merits, our material resources will be a worrisome snare to us, rather than a blessing that brings contentment.

Jesus goes on to argue that if God feeds the birds of the air and clothes the flowers of the field with complete sufficiency and even beauty, “Will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?” (Matt. 6:30).  He concludes this instruction by admonishing His hearers to “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (v. 33).  In our human pursuit of enough, we feel it necessary to add ceaselessly to what we already have; but in God’s economy, only those who seek first the things of His kingdom can experience the security of having all we need added to us through God’s generosity.

Jesus takes this line of teaching a step further later in the Sermon on the Mount:

9  Which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone?  10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent?  11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!  (Matt 7:9-11)

If earthly, flawed fathers can be counted on, normally, to respond to the requests of their children with true concern for their welfare, cannot God be counted on, in all His wisdom and power and love, to respond to our requests with what is truly good for us?  Once again, our experiencing the blessing of God’s sufficiency depends on our perceiving and trusting the goodness of His gifts to us.  Although it is not a part of Jesus’ point here, a corollary of this teaching is that just as a human parent will sometimes give his child what he or she really needs, rather than what the child has asked for, so our submission to God in offering our requests to Him includes our acceptance that what He chooses to give us is appropriate to our need, whether or not we understand it to be so at the time.

There is much else that can be said about Jesus’ use of “more,” but I want to conclude this session with a reference to His parable of the workers in the vineyard, for it illustrates perfectly the difference between the human understanding of “more” and God’s.  You will remember the story in Matt. 20 about a landlord who recruited workers for his vineyard several times at different hours of the day, from early morning to the last hour before sunset.  He contracted with the first group to pay them what was the going rate for a day’s work, a denarius.  With subsequent groups he merely promised them “whatever is right” (Matt. 20:4).  So when the end of the day came, the foreman was instructed to pay first the workers who had been hired last, and each one received a denarius.  When down the line the same amount was given to every other worker, quite naturally,

when those hired first came, they thought they would receive more, but each of them also received a denarius.  11 And on receiving it they grumbled at the master of the house, 12 saying, 'These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.'  13 But he replied to one of them, “Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius?  14 Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you.  15 Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?”  16 So the last will be first, and the first last.  (Matt. 20:10-16)

The contrast here is of course between what the workers believe they deserve, based on their comparative efforts and merits, and the leveling effects of the vineyard owner’s indiscriminate generosity.  As an allegorical equivalent to God, the vineyard owner is showing the quality of generous grace, which takes no account of what people deserve.  Even on the human level, the vineyard owner tells the disgruntled workers that he has fulfilled his promise to them and has paid them what was agreed on, which they evidently had no problem with at the time he took them on. “I am doing you no wrong,” he continues; “Do you begrudge my generosity?”  And then, Jesus makes the amazing counterintuitive application: “The last will be first, and the first last.

Jesus’ central point is that the human connection of reward with work and merit is set aside by God’s grace.  Human effort cannot provide the “more” that we truly need, but our loving heavenly Father knows how to give us good things beyond what we deserve.  So it behooves us to cease our worry and rejoice in His generosity!

Image:By Andrey Mironov 777 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24843092

Summary of John Hare’s God’s Command: Chapter 1, Introduction

This new book by Yale philosopher John Hare defends the thesis that what makes something morally obligatory is that God commands it, and what makes something morally wrong is that God commands us not to do it. (Hare writes in a footnote that, strictly speaking, there is an exception to this principle, namely God does not make it obligatory, by commanding it, to obey God’s command, but this is because the principle that God is to be loved, and  so to be obeyed, is “known from its terms.” He takes this issue up again later.) The Abrahamic faiths have made the connection between religion and the foundations of morality through the idea of God’s command. They have had to integrate two kinds of experience: The first is that God tells us to do something, or not to do something, and the second is that we have to work out for ourselves what to do and what not to do. None of these faiths have been able to dispense with either claim.

The difficulty has come in reconciling them. The concern of this book is that we remember to love God’s law and God’s command. Christians, in particular, must recall that the law and the command are the groundwork for the rest of the narrative of redemption. Psalm 119 is an extended expression of the gratitude of a people who would otherwise, without heeding God’s revelation, go astray like lost sheep. The relationship between this revelation of the law and command and our human nature is not that we should deduce how we ought to live from how we are by nature inclined to act, for our natural inclinations are a thorough mixture of what we should follow and what we should not. But God’s command to us fits our nature very well in the sense that it guides us in discerning which of these inclinations found in our nature we should embrace and which we should not. We also need discernment about what to take as a divine command. This book will tackle such issues by looking first not at abstract principles independent of religion, but at the narratives internal to the three Abrahamic faiths about what God and humans are like.

In Christian reflection on this, two main traditions have emerged: divine command theory and natural law theory. The book will, for the most part, conduct its argument in reference to the theories of particular philosophers and theologians rather than using those general terms like “divine command theory.” It’s not clear what we would be accountable to if we were discussing “divine command theory” unless by stipulation. There is no canonical text for the theory. It is better to be content with building up an understanding of how the various thinkers in these two traditions have held views partly similar to each other and partly different.

The first chapter proceeds by identifying three arguments by which we can establish various kinds of dependence relation of morality upon religion. They’re not original, and versions of them are pervasive in the literature. The first chapter takes versions directly or indirectly from Kant. The second chapter discusses what kind of thing a divine command is, and what its species are. The third chapter is about one typical disagreement between divine command theorists and natural law theorists. This is a disagreement about eudaemonism, the view that all our choices and actions are properly aimed at our own happiness. This is relevant for divine command theory because, if we make our moral choices for the sake of happiness, we do not need divine command as an answer to the question why we should choose what is morally right; we should do so in order to be happy. The fourth chapter is what Hare calls “deductivism,” the view that we can deduce our moral obligations from facts about human nature. This is relevant to divine command theory because, if we can deduce our moral obligations from facts about human nature, we do not need divine command to give us the content of the moral law. The fourth chapter has three sections: one on Scotus and his rejection of deductivism, a second on rejection of a form of deductivism in Robert Adams, and the third on the dispute about deductivism between R. M. Hare and Philippa Foot and Rosalind Hursthouse. In sum, the first half of the book is largely concerned with laying out a version of divine command theory and defending it against alternative theories.

The second half of the book relates the theory outlined in the first half to four new areas, the first three to theological accounts in the three main Abrahamic faiths. Chapter 5 is on Karl Barth, focusing on three themes: his particularism (his view that the paradigmatic divine commands are to particular people at particular times and places), his account of human freedom, and his discussion of how we know what divine command is being addressed to us. Chapter 6 is on DCT in Islam, Chapter 7 on DCT in Judaism, and Chapter 8 on evolutionary psychology, defending the claim that thinking of our moral obligations as produced by divine command helps us see how a moral conscience could develop in a way that is evolutionarily stable.

What ties this wide discussion together is the notion of God’s command. What emerges is that DCT and natural law are closer than one might expect. There remain differences between them, but the two are in many respects complementary. There is nothing incongruous in a divine command theorist saying that God’s commands fit human nature, or in a natural law theorist saying that God’s commanding is a necessary condition for a moral obligation. Nonetheless, the form of DCT defended in this book remains different in some key respects from the most familiar forms of natural law theory in the literature.

The first topic, then, is three arguments by which we can establish that morality depends on religion. Hare calls them the argument from providence, the argument from grace, and the argument from justification. The first two come directly from Kant, and the third only indirectly from Kant, but Hare’s argument is independent of him. Kant is not a major topic in remaining chapters, but his arguments are often good ones and he remains a key figure in moral philosophy.

The God of More

We live in a society geared to “more.”  We are urged by advertising to acquire more possessions, more pleasures, more comforts, or more power and success, abetting our own desires for increased possessions or.  But of course what humanity in general wants more of doesn’t fit very well with what God’s “more” is.  Recently I noticed some of His “mores,” voiced through Paul, in my reading of Romans 5, and I’d like to share those with you now.

Romans 5  begins with a summing up of God’s marvelous provision of unmerited salvation through His Son’s death and resurrection and the generosity of His grace, concluding that through His  generosity, we also ”rejoice in hope of the glory of God” (vv.1-2), the same glory that God is going to bestow on the Son (Rom. 8:17). And then he goes on to say (italics my emphasis),

3 More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering  produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and  hope does not put us to shame, because God's love  has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (Rom. 5:3-5, ESV).

“More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings.”  Whoops!  Wasn’t that a slip of the tongue, Paul?  Didn’t you mean, “We exult in our being the elect of God”?  No, indeed, for this is one of God’s “mores” that contrasts with human expectations.   Although God is constantly and faithfully generous in pouring His love into our hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit (v. 5), we do not embrace the hope of glory without struggle or pain, any more than our Lord Jesus did.  He “learned obedience through what He suffered” (Heb. 5:8) and “for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross” (Heb. 12:2).  Paul goes on in Romans 5 to expound on the progression by which “suffering  produces endurance,  and endurance produces character, and character produces hope”—that is, the seasoned hope that rests in a faith that has been put through the fire to be proven as pure and precious as refined gold (see I Pet. 1:3-8).

We are now better prepared to understand the “mores” of verses 9-11.

9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. 11 More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Verse 9 picks up from the fact that Jesus died for people because they were in desperate need and in spite of their being thoroughly undeserving of His sacrificial death.  If, Paul argues, we were “justified by His blood” when our value was severely tarnished by sin, “much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God” now that we are in covenant relationship with Him.   Similarly, if Jesus’ death reconciled us to God while we were still enemies, “much more . . . shall we be saved by His life” (v. 10), the resurrection life that prefigures our own participation in His glory.  The final “more” of this little paragraph brings us back to the rejoicing Paul referred to in v. 2, which has gained depth by being subjected to the suffering that brings maturity to our hope.

There is yet one other, culminating “more” at the end of this chapter that will serve to sum up the theme of God’s abundance overcoming all obstacles:

18 Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness  leads to justification and life for  all men. 19 For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous. 20 Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, 21 so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The analogy drawn in vv. 18-19 seems to be an equivalency: one trespass resulting in condemnation for all = one act of obedience resulting in justification for all.  But the problem of sin brought to light by God’s Law, which “came in to increase the trespass,” was cumulative.  Humans did not cease to sin when Christ died, and therefore the grace of God had to cover not only the sins committed up to the point of Jesus’ death and resurrection, but for all of the time from the Fall until God chooses to wrap things up in the final judgment and the restoration of creation.  God’s grace had, so to speak, not only to keep up with but to outstrip the pace of sin revealed by the Law.  Thus, “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.” And so, as Paul sums up at the end of Romans 8, “we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us” (v.37).  Our God is not merely adequate, He is abundantly sufficient.

A Critical Review of Is Goodness without God Good Enough? Chapter 2

Summary by Robert Sloan Lee

 Is Goodness without God Good Enough?

Chapter Two: C. Stephen Layman, “A Moral Argument for the Existence of God”

In this chapter, Layman unfortunately ignores most of the debate between William Lane Craig and Paul Kurtz, but he does present an interesting argument for the existence of God (or an afterlife in which virtue is rewarded) based on the idea that there are necessary moral truths which serve as reasons for our actions.  However, his moral argument addresses the issue from a different angle.  Specifically, while Layman argues that the existence of morality requires the existence of God or a certain sort of afterlife, he judiciously clarifies that he is not arguing that this is the case simply because morality is somehow dependent on God (even if that turns out to be the case).

Layman’s Overriding Reasons Argument

To motivate his argument, Layman makes two points concerning our reasons for doing or not doing something.

First, Layman observes that many moral philosophers hold that the strongest reasons that a person can have for doing something (whether or not such a person acts accordingly) are always the moral reasons for doing that thing – and that that these reasons are more important than the non-moral reasons that a person may have for not doing that thing (where, for instance, those non-moral reasons are reasons of inconvenience or self-interest).  In short, moral reasons always override non-moral reasons.  For example, suppose one had promised to meet one’s friends at a specific time and was late for no good reason.  One has a moral obligation to be honest as to why one is late, and this obligation overrides the embarrassment that one might feel in admitting to one’s friends that there was no good reason for being late, even if lying would allow one to avoid the embarrassment.

Second, Layman introduces the claim that if there is no God and no life after death, then it is not true thatthe strongest reasons that a person can have for doing something are always the moral reasons for doing that thing.  In other words, if it is in one’s self-interest to do something immoral (and there is little chance of getting caught or little chance of greatly harming others in doing it), then the non-moral reasons for doing something wrong can override the moral reasons for not doing it – at least if there is no God and no afterlife.  However, that would mean that it is false to say that we always have overriding reasons for doing the right thing rather than doing the wrong thing.  The insight and force of Layman’s argument resides in pitting concerns about self-interests against concerns about morality.  If God does not exist and if there is no afterlife, then we face the possibility that “humans have overriding reasons to behave immorally.”  This is a suggestion that “people who take morality seriously” find “profoundly disturbing,” because it means that there can be cases in which “doing one’s duty would (at least sometimes) be irrational in the sense that it would involve acting on” what we normally take to be “the weaker reasons” – and this is supposed to be seriously problematic even if those cases are relatively rare.

The example that he gives to illustrate his argument involve a Ms. Poore who has lived many years in restrictive (but not life-threatening or health-threatening) poverty.  She has an opportunity to steal a large sum of money (without getting caught) that would permanently deliver her from poverty – and she knows that the persons from whom the money is stolen are wealthy enough that they will not be greatly harmed by the theft.  Further, if she does not steal the money she has reason to believe that she will remain in poverty for the rest of her life.  Layman says that stealing might not be wrong in every case, but if there is neither a God nor an afterlife, then Ms. Poore has stronger reasons for stealing the money than she does for doing the right (or moral) thing – and then it follows that moral reasons are not always overriding reasons that trump reasons of self-interest.

Further Considerations

Layman says that it is hard to see how we know that it is true that the strongest reasons that a person can have for doing something (whether or not such a person acts accordingly) are always the moral reasons for doing that thing – he calls this the “overriding reasons thesis” or ORT.  However, he indicates that it is at least as reasonable to believe this claim as it is to believe other claims that we commonly accept (though we do not seem to know how it is that these others are true) – specifically:

(a)  The future will be like the past.

(b)  It is rational to trust one’s sense experience unless one has special circumstances showing them to be unreliable.

In the case of (a), any attempt to justify (a) by appealing to past experience to certify what our future experience will be like the past will simply assume the truth of (a) rather than proving it.  Again, with (b), any appeal to sensory experience to certify that (b) is true will just end up assuming the truth of (b) rather than demonstrating the truth of (b).  Most philosophers simply accept the truth of (a) and (b), and Layman thinks that something similar can be said about the principle of overriding reasons (or ORT).

To state Layman’s argument precisely, we get the following:

1. If God does not exist and there is no afterlife in which virtue is rewarded, then it will not always be true that the strongest reasons that a person can have for doing something are the moral reasons for doing that thing.

2. It is always true that the strongest reasons that a person can have for doing something are the moral reasons for doing that thing. (ORT)

3. Therefore, either God does exist or there is an afterlife in which virtue is rewarded – or both. (from 1 and 2 by modus tollens and DeMorgan’s Law)

An Objection to Layman’s Argument

Layman then goes on to consider some objections to his argument and how he would reply to those objections.  One objection (and perhaps the most interesting objection) is that the argument does not establish that morality is dependent on God.  In this respect, it would seem that Layman’s conclusion may be more in line with Kurtz’s views than Craig’s (despite the former being an atheist and the latter being a theist).  Layman responds to this objection by agreeing that morality may not be dependent on God.  He writes:

I’ve not suggested that God by fiat (or otherwise) lends moral reasons their force.  Let’s just assume, for the sake of argument, that moral reasons have whatever force they have independent of God.  Nevertheless, what a good God can do is guarantee that moral reasons (requirements) are never trumped by other sorts of reasons.  Unfortunately, moral reasons can be trumped assuming naturalism is true.  [emphasis mine]

However, since Layman thinks that moral reasons can never be trumped by non-moral reasons, he believes that naturalism is false, and this leads to his conclusion that either God exists (in such a way as to connect self-interest and morality) or that there is some other sort of afterlife in which virtue is always rewarded.  So, whether or not morality can be grounded in God’s commands or God’s nature, the fact that there are necessary moral truths should (according to Layman) have certain consequences for what we believe about the existence of God or the afterlife.

Parting Thoughts

One aspect of moral truths that sometimes goes unmentioned is that such truths are necessary (if true at all), and one can appreciate that Layman does not overlook this intriguing feature of moral truths.  Given this, explanations of morality that appeal solely to contingent features of the world – features that could have been otherwise (such as our evolutionary history, our environment and education, or our genetic predispositions) – simply do not appear adequate to the task.  Further, if these necessary moral truths can exist independently of God (a possibility which Layman concedes – at least for the sake of argument), this would appear to run counter to Craig’s position that an objective morality must be dependent on God.  One hopes that Craig would address this issue in his response to these essays (as it constitutes a particularly interesting point on the relationship between the ontology of theism and the ontology of ethics).  So, while Layman does not analyze the debate between Craig and Kurtz, some of the issues he raises are pertinent to it, and his own variant of the moral argument is an intriguing one.

Image:By Hans Memling (circa 1433–1494) - www.aiwaz.net, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1455943

Waiting in the Dark

The story of Joseph in Gen. 37-50 is another example of a servant of God “waiting on the Lord” (see Twilight Musings 27).  To sum up his experiences: as a boy of 17, Joseph had dreams of his brothers—and even his parents—bowing down to him, an allegorical prophecy of what actually occurred over 20 years later when Joseph was master of Egypt’s food resources in a time of famine.  A lot of water had to run under the bridge before the time was ripe for these early prophetic dreams to be fulfilled.    Although it wasn’t apparent to Joseph during the first part of this interim period, it was a time of constructive waiting.  His youthful pride in his dreams and in the special favor shown to him by his father were tempered by the hardship of his years as a servant in Egypt.  But God also blessed Joseph in the midst of his servitude by giving him favor with his masters.  He rose quickly to be overseer of the household of his master Potiphar, and then, when he was unjustly thrown into prison, the prison master put him in charge of the rest of the inmates.  Through these jobs he developed the managerial skills he would need to manage Egypt’s national economy through the seven years of plenty and the succeeding seven years of famine.

No doubt when his privileged position in Potiphar’s house was abruptly taken away, Joseph must have wondered why God had blessed him and then allowed him to be cast down again.  I have tried to capture in the following poem Joseph’s thoughts and feelings at that time.  The combination of questioning what God is doing and trying to be ready for what He is going to do next  should be familiar to all of us.

JOSEPH IN PRISON

 (Gen. 39:1-23)

How far away the fields where grazed my father's sheep,

Where in my sleep the visions spoke,

Affirming that my special coat was well deserved;

And in my youth I knew that God had favored me.

A willing instrument I was, rebuking in my father's name

My brothers' worldly ways.

And then the pit, the chains, the foreign land--

No one then to listen to my dreams!

But God was gracious to me still,

As Potiphar repaid the works of God in me,

And I regained my virtuous pride.

In confidence I turned aside

The evil of my master's wife,

Rebuked in righteous words her monstrous lust.

And for my trouble once again

I lie imprisoned and disgraced.

Has God seduced me too, and cast me off

For basking in His favor?

It seems but scant reward

To be chief of those who languish in the dark.

How shall I deal with One who rips away

What He Himself bestowed?

My robe of innocence my brothers drenched in blood;

My robe of righteousness was snatched

To scandalize my name.

[su_spacer]

How shall I now be clothed, my Lord,

Lying naked to Your will?

(Elton D. Higgs,11/28/86)

Of course, we have the advantage of knowing what the final outcome of Joseph’s puzzled waiting is going to be.  Not only will God’s servant be raised up out of prison, he will be launched out on the road that will lead to the final fulfillment of his youthful dreams.  We also know the answer to the question in the poem, “How shall I now be clothed, / Lying naked to Your will?”  In God’s good time, Joseph was pulled out of prison and given appropriate clothing for standing in the presence of Pharaoh; and quickly after that he was given fine linen garments and a robe and jewelry proper to his office as vice-Pharoah of Egypt.

Perhaps our seeing the whole picture of Joseph’s story is a good analogy to our status before God: In our limited understanding, we wait in patient expectation to see the rest of the story unfold, but from God’s point of view it’s already finished, and the ending is to our benefit and to His glory.  Those who wait patiently on God will always be clothed (i.e., equipped) appropriately for what He calls them to do.  And beyond that, we sometimes need, like Joseph, a lot of life experience and the wisdom that it brings to be able to experience in humility what was originally embraced in pride.

Image: Supper ate Emmaus by Lambert Jacobsz. (circa 1598–1636) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

An Easter Reflection

My wife’s an English professor, and she’s helped me realize I’m late to a game, or a party—or an awkward social occasion; whatever! I'm late—that of seeing the power of stories, the way they shape us, how we define ourselves by and see ourselves in relation to them. It makes sense, but as a philosopher I’ve heretofore tended to be more interested, when it comes to something like “worldview,” to think in terms of what’s true and what’s false, what we have good reason to believe and what we don’t. It’s why my philosophy stuff, as much as I love it, sometimes seems so thin and dry in comparison with the richness and thickness of her literature.

 Today is Easter, for example, and the evidential case for the resurrection is important to me. I am confident there’s a nondiscursive way of knowing, via personal experience, the truth of the resurrection, and it may be the most important knowing of all—but though that may be good for those who have it, it doesn’t much help those who don’t. Fortunately the historical case for the resurrection is amazing; my colleague Gary Habermas is one of the world’s leading experts on the topic. For those interested in wondering whether the story of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is actually true, whether there’s evidence for it historically, I’d encourage them to read Gary’s books.

 That sort of thing is a fun intellectual exercise, and it appeals to me as a philosopher. But suppose we establish the truth of the resurrection, or at least the credentials necessary to believe in it rationally. It’s hardly the end of the story, but just the beginning. Even devils presumably believe in the historicity of the resurrection. That it’s true is extremely important, but its truth doesn’t mean we’re conducting our lives according to that truth. This is where seeing worldview as more than a set of propositions one believes to be true can come in so handy, and seeing the power of stories can help.

 We are all of us inveterate storytellers. We love a good yarn—to hear them, to tell them. And the most important stories are the ones we most closely associate with our identity. On a garden-variety note, but one that rings with significance for me, I think of a few years ago, when my mom was still alive. A brother, my mom, a sister, and I met in Kentucky—and for a few hours one afternoon we reclined in a room together and endlessly rehearsed stories that make up our family lore. They were stories we’d told and retold a thousand times, each recounting as delightful as the one before, tickling us all to no end. We didn’t need to exaggerate or stretch the details; the canon’s already fairly established; too much deviation isn’t even allowed. The same stories, yet still rife with significance. I remember that afternoon, while regaling my family members with stories, and being regaled by them, I felt what I can only describe as unbridled joy. I was with people who’d known me my whole life, and we were relishing the stories that, to a significant degree, defined our shared lives together and knit us together as family. I was home.

 The best literature shouldn't be enjoyed just once. C. S. Lewis once wrote that the sure mark of an unliterary man is that he considers "I've read it already" to be a conclusive argument against reading a work. Some stories are good for ingestion; others are worthy to be relished, savored, digested. The greatest Story most of all.

 Each Easter, I go to church, and hear the Easter story one more time. The details are the same. Nothing changes. But as my pastor said this morning, we change. Each time we hear it we’re different. We bring a new set of needs to it, but the story itself remains the same. I couldn’t help but think of Holden Caulfield’s visits to the Museum of Natural History—where the exhibits are always the same, which he found deeply comforting, but those visiting the museum, he recognized, are always different, either in big ways or small. The Easter story provides an even more significant point of constancy, an even more fundamental Archimedean point on which to stand. The narrative of self-giving love reaches its climax each Easter and offers itself to each of us, and though the story is the same, how it speaks to us is always slightly different. For it meets us where we are, at our point of need, reminding us of what doesn’t change, and offers to transform us. It offers us the chance to become part of that universal Story, to define ourselves anew in relation to it.

 That the Story is true is obviously crucial, but recognizing its truth isn’t enough. The Story challenges us to become part of it, to define ourselves by It and Him, to grab hold of what’s constant and permanent, eternal and ultimate, while bracing ourselves for needed and inevitable change in the midst of growing and of life’s vicissitudes and contingencies.

 The Story tells me who I am and what I’m called to be. It reminds me of what love looks like and that death isn’t the end. It challenges me not just to believe that it happened, but that the fact that it happened makes all the difference. It was the key plot point on which the whole narrative turned, marking love's victory and the death of death. It reminds me that as a Christian I don’t merely believe static truths, but dynamic life-transforming ones—that I’m part of a Story that’s still in the process of unfolding. And we’ve been afforded a glorious peek to see how it ends.

Image: Claude Lorrain (1604/1605–1682) [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Victor, not Victim

A linguistic quirk in the history of the English language has resulted in the term “Good Friday” being applied to the day on which Jesus, the Son of God, was crucified. Other languages, though, have more intuitively appropriate designations for this liturgical day, such as “Sad” or “Dark” or “Mournful” Friday. This variation of nomenclatures can serve as a catalyst for some comments on the fact that the events of Crucifixion Friday in scripture can be seen as both sad and good. Today, of course, we have the advantage of knowing what came on the Sunday after Dark Friday, when Jesus burst out of the tomb. On Friday, He appeared to be the victim, but on Sunday, He was clearly the Victor. On Friday, the darkness eclipsed the light; on Sunday, the Light overcame the darkness.

In our life experiences, the shadow of Friday is sometimes all we see and feel, but we still walk in the Light of that Resurrection Sunday, with an additional firm hope of eternal glory to come. We mourn the events of Dark Friday when Jesus was the victim of evil men, but we are buoyed by the realization that Jesus’ death was the necessary door that He had to go through to become the Victor over sin and death. He did not so much overcome His victimization as transform it by showing that victory was embedded in the very act of willing sacrifice. So His death can be seen as a sort of mine planted in the cross that the Devil stepped on unawares, bringing about his own doom and the explosive Life of the Resurrection.

This point of view is very effectively conveyed in the Old English poem, “The Dream of the Cross” (or “Dream of the Rood,” to use the Old English word for cross). In this poem, Jesus is represented as a hero coming to do battle with and overcome his foes. In the narrator’s dream, the cross of Christ speaks:

Then I saw the King of all mankind In brave mood hasting to mount upon me. . . . . Then the young Warrior, God the All-Wielder, Put off His raiment, Steadfast and strong; With lordly mood in the sight of many He mounted the Cross to redeem mankind. When the Hero clasped me I trembled in terror, But I dared not bow me nor bend to earth; I must needs stand fast. Upraised as the Rood I held the High King, the Lord of heaven. (trans. Charles W. Kennedy, 1960)

This is a lovely picture of Christus Victor as He “mounts” the cross, fully capable at any time of exercising His heavenly power to defeat His enemies. But scripture makes it clear that He had a more profound purpose than the exercise of worldly power. His design was to implement the “deeper magic” of God’s world (to use C. S. Lewis’s terminology in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe), and through the redemptive power of the Lamb of God to bring about an eternal victory, not just a temporal one. Jesus did indeed come as a conquering hero, but in the heavenly way of things, He had to endure defeat as an avenue to victory. Let us be willing to follow Him through that door of suffering and sadness to reap the victory in Jesus that lies on the other side.

Image: "Crucifixion" by Rooztography. CC License. 

Waiting as Patient Expectation

The meanings of the word “wait” can refer to basically two situations: (1) someone is standing quietly by in anticipation of another person’s joining him, or (2) someone is serving another person or persons, as in being a waiter in a restaurant. Both cases represent a kind of deference shown by the waiter toward the one being waited upon. It is common in Shakespeare’s plays to find an expression like, “We await your pleasure, my good lord,” which is to say, “We are deferring to your right to say what happens next.” Both of these senses of waiting connote subordinating our immediate desires to the needs or desires of another, so it should not be surprising that the concept of waiting has spiritual applications.

Frequently in the poetry of the Old Testament there is the admonition to “wait upon the Lord,” as in the following:

In the morning, O LORD, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation. (Ps. 5:3 NIV)

Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD. (Ps. 27:14, NIV)

Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him; fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way, over the man who carries out evil devices! Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath! Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil. For the evildoers shall be cut off, but those who wait for the LORD shall inherit the land. (Ps. 37:7-11 ESV) The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD. (Lam. 3:25-26 ESV)

So we see that waiting on the Lord involves patient expectation, courage, and dependence on God to set things right in the world. In other words, waiting on the Lord means deferring always to God’s will and trusting that He is at work every minute to bring about what will be best for His children. The payoff for this confident waiting on God is inner peace and the experience of His goodness.

Some scriptural examples will illustrate how God’s people in the past have profited or lost by waiting or not waiting on the Lord. One of the most salient examples of losing by not waiting on God is seen in Saul’s desperate offering of the sacrifice when Samuel didn’t show up exactly when he was expected. The prophet Samuel had instructed Saul to go down to Gilgal and wait for seven days for Samuel to come and offer a sacrifice and give Saul instructions from God on what to do (I Sam. 10:8). Some time later Saul finally was able to assemble an army to fight the Philistines at Gilgal. As he awaited Samuel’s promised arrival there, he grew increasingly worried that his army would disintegrate in fear and panic before the battle even began. And since as the seventh day drew to an end, Samuel was not yet there, Saul took it upon himself (although he had no priestly authority) to offer the sacrifice. Immediately after the illicit sacrifice had been offered, Samuel came, and he pronounced on Saul the severe judgment of God:

Samuel said to Saul, "You have done foolishly. You have not kept the command of the LORD your God, with which he commanded you. For then the LORD would have established your kingdom over Israel forever. But now your kingdom shall not continue. The LORD has sought out a man after his own heart, and the LORD has commanded him to be prince over his people, because you have not kept what the LORD commanded you." (1 Sam 13:13-15 ESV)

Why was Saul’s action so wrong? Did he not have a real problem on his hands, with the Philistines threatening and his army scattering? Wasn’t his decision to go ahead with the sacrifice evidence of his recognition that God’s help was needed for the Israelites to succeed in battle? But at the base of Saul’s disobedience was a willingness to put his own understanding and judgment ahead of God’s, and this attitude is incompatible with the patient surrender to God’s will that undergirds waiting on the Lord. Although in his rash self-reliance Saul showed some of the qualities that make a good leader—he made a strategic judgment in a tight situation and followed through with determination and resolve—he mistakenly gave the exercise of those qualities precedence over obedience to God and trust in Him. Waiting for Samuel as he was commanded to do would have required Saul to look beyond what was immediately in front of him in order to “see” with the eyes of faith. Saul’s failure to wait in patient expectation for what God was going to do cost him and his heirs the kingship of Israel and set him on a path of self-destruction.

Let us also look at Abraham. His experience in regard to God’s promise that he and Sarah would have a son shows us how even those who eventually reap the rewards of waiting on the Lord may have to go through stages of waiting and learning. There was a long path between Abraham’s initial response to God’s call and the completion of his journey of faith. When Abraham was first commanded to leave his native country to go to another land (Gen. 12), he went “not knowing where he was going” (Heb. 11:8); and when he got there, he wasn’t allowed to stay, but had to go to Egypt to escape a famine. And when he finally returned to the land God had promised, he merely camped out in it, rather than possessing it, for actual control of it by Abraham’s descendents did not come about until many years after Abraham’s death (Gen. 15:12-16). God’s promise of a son to Abraham was renewed when Abraham quite understandably asked God about it after a number of childless years (see Gen. 15:1-6). But no timetable was set, and Abraham and his wife decided to act on their own to supply a son and heir, setting up an enmity between different branches of his descendents down to the present day. Finally, when Abraham and Sarah were far beyond the normal age for producing children, God told them that the arrival of the promised son was right around the corner (Gen. 17).

But even this miraculous fulfillment of God’s promise of a son who would be the forefather of a populous nation was not the end of Abraham’s waiting on the Lord. In Gen. 22 we see the astounding final test of Abraham’s willingness to serve God in obedience (i.e. to wait upon God), when God ordered him to take his only son, this cherished, promised son, and offer him as a sacrifice to the Lord. Only one who had traveled the long path of cumulative experiences of waiting on God could have met this challenge. We want to say on Abraham’s behalf, “Lord, hasn’t this man already led an exemplary life of waiting on you? Can’t you leave him alone to enjoy his old age with the son you finally sent him?” But the outcome of this final testing of Abraham produced a profound symbol of God’s future redemptive action in giving His one and only Son as a sacrifice.

No wonder Hebrews 11 spends so much time presenting Abraham as a prime exemplar of faith in God. In fact, Abraham was the forerunner of a whole line of descendents who awaited in faith the fulfillment of God’s promises and the final end of His plans. “For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God . . . . These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth” (Heb. 11:10, 13).

That brings us to the present period of human history, and to the archetypal waiting we are called to do as members of Christ’s Kingdom on earth, we who are also heirs of the faith testified to in the chapter of faith in Hebrews. In Romans 8, Paul speaks of the glory of final redemption from the corruption of sin and death:

And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. (Rom. 8:23-25)

In II Peter 3, this active hope and eager waiting are presented in a context of contrasts: God’s immeasurable eternal time with the mutability of human time; and the present perishable earth with an eternal “new heavens and a new earth” (3:13). God’s purposes will be carried out in His time and in His way, and only after the present earth and its inhabitants have reached the limits of their willingness to repent will God bring “the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly” (3:7), in which “the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed” (3:10). But out of this destruction and judgment will emerge the final fulfillment of God’s promises to Abraham and his physical and spiritual successors. Peter concludes: “Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God . . . .” (3:11-12).

When our hope and trust are in the promises generated by God’s providential goodness, our patient expectation will always be rewarded. As the saying goes, God never hurries, and He’s never late.

Summary of Chapter 7: "The Foreconditionality of God’s Love" of The Love of God: A Canonical Model by John Peckham

The key question in chapter seven of Peckham’s Love of God is whether God’s love for the world is unconditional or conditional, the answer to which is also essential for determining if humans can forfeit divine love or if it is unilaterally consistent. Peckham employs the term “foreconditional” to express his understanding that “God’s love is freely bestowed prior to any conditions but not exclusive of conditions” (p. 192). He further elaborates: “God’s love is both prior to human love and yet responsive to and conditioned on human love, which is itself response to God’s initiative. This is the foreconditionality of divine love” (p. 196).

Peckham contrasts his understanding of the foreconditionality of God’s love with both the immanent-experientialist and transcendant-voluntarist models, which both in different ways view divine love as unconditional and as something that cannot be forfeited. In the immanent-experientialist model, divine love is ontologically necessary in that God has an essential sympathetic relationship to the world. In pantheism, God is bound to the world and is mutually dependent on others so that God is unable to choose not to love humans. In the transcendant-voluntarist model, God is self-sufficient so that his love depends solely on his sovereign will. Divine love is thus not conditioned on any external factor and is spontaneous and unmotivated in every way. In this system, the object of divine love can do nothing to inhibit, decrease, or forfeit divine love.

The Conditionality of Divine Love

Peckham opts for a model of divine love that recognizes the priority and necessity of divine initiative but that also sees conditionality and reciprocity as essential to the relationship between God and humans. He argues that Scripture depicts divine love as conditioned upon human response. In the OT, God’s “lovingkindness” (hesed) is for those who love him and obey his commands (Exod 20:6’ Deut 7:9-13). What God has promised within this covenant “is presented as explicitly conditional on the ongoing relationship” (p. 194). In the same vein, Jesus declares that the one who loves him is the one that he and the Father would love (John 14:12) and that the Father loves the disciples because they have loved Jesus (John 16:27). Mutuality is evident in these texts, which indicate that believers remain in the love of God and Jesus by obedience.

This conditionality in divine love is complemented by the evaluative aspect of God’s love that Peckham has developed in chapter five of this work. The Lord loves the righteous but hates the way of the wicked (Prov 15:9). Divine mercy is conditioned upon humans showing mercy to each other (Matt 5:7; 18:33-35). Friendship with Christ is also conditioned on obedience to his commands (John 15:14). God loves all persons and bestows his foreconditional love on all (John 3:16), but his “particular, intimate, relational love” is only received by those who respond to his foreconditional love.

The conditionality of divine love means that humans may also forfeit the benefits of divine love. The prophets Hosea and Jeremiah speak of God hating his people, not loving them, and withdrawing his hesed from them (Hos 9:15; Jer 11:15; 12:8; 14:20; 16:5). Jude’s exhortation for believers to “keep themselves” in the love of God (Jude 21) reflects that fellowship with God can be forfeited. The need for believers to “abide” in God’s love (John 15:5-10) also demonstrates that enjoyment of God’s love demands a proper response to it. Peckham argues that this biblical evidence does away with “the sentimental notion that God’s love is monolithic, constant and unconditional,” and he concludes that “God’s love relationship with the world, then, is not dependent on God’s will alone but takes into account human disposition and action” (p. 199).

Three Objections to the Condtionality of God’s Love

Peckham addresses three common objections to the idea of the conditionality of divine love. The first objection is that some would argue that such conditionality might mistakenly attribute primacy to human action in the divine-human relationship. In response to this objection, Peckham asserts the “absolute priority” of God’s love in the divine-human relationship (1 Jn 4:7-8, 16, 19) and argues that God “is the primary source of love and draws humans to himself prior to any human action” (p. 201). God’s love not only precedes human love, but also follows it as well, energizing love for God and obedience as an expression of that love.

The second objection is that the conditionality of divine love might appear to suggest that God’s love is something that could be earned or merited. Peckham explains that his foreconditional-reciprocal model makes a sharp distinction between conditionality and merit. God’s love toward humans is always undeserved, just as was his love for Israel (cf. Deut 4:37; 7:7-8; 10:15), but divine love can be unmerited while at the same time contingent upon human response. The individual who freely receives God’s love has not merited that love, because even the ability to receive divine love is something that comes as a gift from God (cf. 1 Cor 4:7).

The third objection is that the conditionality of divine love might seem to diminish the greatness of God by removing the assurance of divine love or suggesting that God’s love is not faithful. Peckham counters this objection by noting that God never arbitrarily rejects humans or withdraws his love, The removal of divine love always occurs in response to unrelenting human evil. Divine love is conditional but never capricious.

Peckham also assesses if God’s love would be greater by reconciling all to himself in a reciprocal love relationship. Certain forms of universalism are based on the premises that God desires a love relationship with all and also possesses the ability to effect such a relationship with all persons. Deterministic models of divine love would affirm the second premise, but some forms of determinism would deny the first. According to this understanding, God loves all in some respect but he only chooses some to irresistibly receive the benefits of divine love leading to eternal life. Humans do not possess the ability to accept divine love or not.

In contrasts to these perspectives, the foreconditional-reciprocal model accepts that God desires a love relationship with all (cf. Ezek 18:32; 33:11; 1 Tim 2:4-6; 2 Pet 3:9), but that a truly reciprocal loved relationship between God and individuals “cannot be unilaterally determined by God” (p. 207). This conditionality is not due to any defect in divine love or lack in his power but rather to the fact that any truly loving relationship requires “significant freedom.” Peckham argues that “it is impossible for God to determine that all beings freely love him” (p. 208).

The Conditionality and Unconditionality of God’s Love

The final question that Peckham addresses in this chapter is how we should view the many passages that speak of God’s love as everlasting (cf. Jer 31:3; Rom 8:35, 39) in light of the conditionality of divine love. Distinguishing between God’s subjective and objective love, Peckham argues that, “Divine love is everlasting in some respects, yet may nevertheless be discontinued in other respects” (p. 212). God’s subjective love refers to his loving disposition toward all humanity, and this love is everlasting because it is grounded only in his character. God’s subjective love is unconditional and everlasting because his character is unchanging. God’s objective love, however, is conditional because it is “foreconditional and requires reciprocal love for its permanent continuance” (p. 212). Humans possess the freedom to either accept or reject divine love, and God only removes his love relationship with humans “in response to the prior rejection of God’s love” (p. 213).

Peckham also argues that God’s love is unconditional and everlasting in a corporate sense. He writes, “That God will love and save some people is unconditional.” The Lord’s saving purposes and covenantal promises will come to fruition for his people, but conditionality is maintained at the individual level in regard to who will belong to the remnant. The remnant will only consist of those who favorably respond to God’s loving initiatives (cf. Isa 65:8-9; Rom 9:6; 11:7, 22-23). The interplay between the unconditionality and conditionality of divine love is specifically reflected in the working out of God’s covenant grants in the OT. These covenant promises are unconditional in terms of ultimate fulfillment, but individuals or even entire generations may forfeit the blessings of the covenant and even their covenant status. In the Davidic covenant, Christ is the “entirely faithful servant” who receives all of the blessings that are part of that covenant and to confer those blessings to all of his spiritual offspring. However, individuals may either choose to enjoy those blessings through adoption into God’s family or reject these intended blessings and the love relationship they might have enjoyed with God.

In concluding this chapter, Peckham summarizes the differences between God’s subjective and objective love in this manner: “While God’s subjective love never diminishes or ceases, God’s objective love will eventually no longer reach the one who finally rejects it. Those who respond positively to God’s love, however, enjoy everlasting reciprocal love relationship” (p. 217).

Image:By Attributed to Cima da Conegliano - The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London, WC2R 0RN, UK [1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10662424

Results from the 2016 MoralApologetics Writing Contest

Results from the 2016 MoralApologetics Writing Contest: It was our great pleasure to read through all the entries to this year’s writing competition. Submissions ranged from a prose poem to a defense of Molinism, from critiques of naturalism to a critical scrutiny of apologetics by a skeptic. Seasoned writers mixed it up with bright newcomers, and our decision was not an easy one. We finally settled on a Grand Prize Winner, a Runner Up, and two Honorable Mentions:

Overall Winner: Jeff Dickson, “Apocalyptic Love and Goodness”

Runner Up: Frederick Choo, “The Third Option to the Euthyphro Dilemma”

Honorable Mentions: Anil Deo & Nolan Whitaker

Thanks to all who participated, and be sure to try again next time around!

To Know the Cross

by Thomas Merton

I pray that we may be found worthy to be cursed, censured, and ground down, and even put to death in the name of Jesus Christ, so long as Christ himself is not put to death in us. – Paulinus of Nola

The Christian must not only accept suffering: he must make it holy. Nothing so easily becomes unholy as suffering.

Merely accepted, suffering does nothing for our souls except, perhaps, to harden them. Endurance alone is no consecration. True asceticism is not a mere cult of fortitude. We can deny ourselves rigorously for the wrong reason and end up pleasing ourselves mightily with our self-denial.

Suffering is consecrated to God by faith—not by faith in suffering, but by faith in God. Some of us believe in the power and the value of suffering. But such a belief is an illusion. Suffering has no power and no value of its own.

It is valuable only as a test of faith. What if our faith fails the test? Is it good to suffer, then? What if we enter into suffering with a strong faith in suffering, and then discover that suffering destroys us?

To believe in suffering is pride: but to suffer, believing in God, is humility. For pride may tell us that we are strong enough to suffer, that suffering is good for us because we are good. Humility tells us that suffering is an evil which we must always expect to find in our lives because of the evil that is in ourselves. But faith also knows that the mercy of God is given to those who seek him in suffering, and that by his grace we can overcome evil with good. Suffering, then, becomes good by accident, by the good that it enables us to receive more abundantly from the mercy of God. It does not make us good by itself, but it enables us to make ourselves better than we are. Thus, what we consecrate to God in suffering is not our suffering but our selves.

Only the sufferings of Christ are valuable in the sight of God, who hates evil, and to him they are valuable chiefly as a sign. The death of Jesus on the cross has an infinite meaning and value not because it is a death, but because it is the death of the Son of God. The cross of Christ says nothing of the power of suffering or of death. It speaks only of the power of him who overcame both suffering and death by rising from the grave.

The wound that evil stamped upon the flesh of Christ are to be worshiped as holy no because they are wounds, but because they are his wounds. Nor would we worship them if he had merely died of them, without rising again. For Jesus is not merely someone who once loved us enough to die for us. His love for us is the infinite love of God, which is stronger than all evil and cannot be touched by death.

Suffering, therefore, can only be consecrated to God by one who believes that Jesus is not dead. And it is of the very essence of Christianity to face suffering and death not because they are good, not because they have meaning, but because the resurrection of Jesus has robbed them of their meaning.

To know the cross is not merely to know our own sufferings. For the cross is the sign of salvation, and no one is saved by his own sufferings. To know the cross is to know that we are saved by the sufferings of Christ; more, it is to know the love of Christ who underwent suffering and death in order to save us. It is, then, to know Christ. For to know his love is not merely to know the story of his love, but to experience in our spirit that we are loved by him, and that in his love the Father manifests his own love for us, through his Spirit poured forth into our hearts. . .

The effect of suffering upon us depends on what we love. If we love only ourselves, suffering is merely hateful. It has to be avoided at all costs. It brings out all the evil that is in us, so that the one who loves only himself will commit any sin and inflict any evil on others merely in order to avoid suffering himself.

Worse, if a person loves himself and learns that suffering is unavoidable, he may even come to take a perverse pleasure in suffering itself, showing that he loves and hates himself at the same time.

In any case, if we love ourselves, suffering inexorably brings out selfishness, and then, after making known what we are, drives us to make ourselves even worse than we are.

If we love others and suffer for them, even without a supernatural love for other people in God, suffering can give us a certain nobility and goodness. It brings out something fine in our natures, and gives glory to God who made us greater than suffering. But in the end a natural unselfishness cannot prevent suffering from destroying us along with all we love.

If we love God and love others in him, we will be glad to let suffering destroy anything in us that God is pleased to let it destroy, because we know that all it destroys is unimportant. We will prefer to let the accidental trash of life be consumed by suffering in order that his glory may come out clean in everything we do.

If we love God, suffering does not matter. Christ in us, his love, his Passion in us: that is what we care about. Pain does not cease to be pain, but we can be glad of it because it enables Christ to suffer in us and give glory to his Father by being greater, in our hearts, than suffering would ever be.

Editor's Note: This essay comes from the devotional, Bread and Wind: Readings for Lent and Easter, published by Plough Publishing House in Walden, New York, in 2003. It’s found on pages 43-4

The Fires of Sinai and Pentecost

A Twilight Musing

Over the past several years my wife and I have been studying and discussing the relationship between the images of fire and light in the Bible.  In a recent conversation, she asked the question, “Why was the bestowal of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost accompanied by tongues of fire on the heads of those receiving it?”  As I thought about how to answer that question, I began to see that there is an associational relationship between the appearance of the Holy Spirit in tongues of fire to inaugurate the New Covenant and the fire of Mt. Sinai to establish the Old Covenant.  In both cases, fire accompanies and ushers in the establishment of a radical new stage in God’s identifying and dealing with His people.   This comparison also brings out some interesting differences between the symbolic uses of fire in the Old and New Testaments.  Concomitantly, the difference between the terrible fires of Mt. Sinai and the more subtle tongues of fire at Pentecost is reflected in the spiritual significance of marriage in the Old Testament and the New Testament.

In Deut. 4 22-27, Moses recounts God’s speaking to Israel out of the fire on Mt. Sinai, and reminds the  people of their terror at seeing the fire and hearing the Lord’s voice.  Moses refers again to their being “afraid because of the fire” in Deut. 5:5, in his prelude to a reiteration of the Decalogue.   In connection with the first commandment, the prohibition against worshiping any other gods, God explains by saying, “I the Lord your God am a jealous God.”  The most common association of jealousy, especially in the Old Testament, is with a husband’s proprietary response to any indication that his wife prefers another man.  Later, in prophetic rebukes for apostasy by the people of Israel, their infidelity to God is often pictured as an act of adultery, or a violation of marriage vows. The jealousy of God for His people thus reflects the patriarchal quality of marriages in the Old Testament, wherein, unlike the man, the woman was not given the option of divorce, nor did she have the opportunity to have more than one husband.  From customarily being given to the man by her father or some other male in her family, to being ruled by her husband, a woman needed a man as protector. There were, no doubt, loving, intimate relationships between husbands and wives in the Old Testament and under the Law, but the purpose of marriage was for procreation and social stability, not primarily to provide intimacy.  Therefore, for God to liken Himself to a husband who jealously guards his wife reflects a certain degree of formality in their relationship.

In contrast, the coming of the era of the New Covenant on the Day of Pentecost was accompanied by a gentler, though equally powerful manifestation of fire in the tongues of flame resting on the heads of the gathered disciples.  There was no terror in these flames, although the result of the power conferred by the Holy Spirit—speaking in tongues that were understood by all who were gathered in Jerusalem—caused wonder in those who heard the disciples.  This more subtle form of the fire ushering in the New Covenant mirrors a more refined concept of marriage than that connected with the beginning of the Old Covenant.  Whereas the coming of the Old Covenant was marked by the distancing of the people from God (who was pictured as a forbidding but jealous husband), under the New Covenant God, through His Son, is pictured (Eph. 5:25-33) as a husband who is willing to give His life for His bride, the church (the New Israel), and who wants to present her spotless to His Father. Under the Old Covenant, God’s holiness was a barrier to human intimacy with God, but under the New Covenant, God’s Spirit was an avenue to sanctification and intimacy with God through the indwelling Holy Spirit, a person of the Trinity.  This is not a holiness achieved by human effort, but a holiness bestowed by God’s loving grace.  The contrast between the distancing from God in the Old Covenant and the intimacy with God through the New Covenant is seen in Heb. 8:8-12, which is a quotation from Jer. 31:

8"The time is coming, declares the Lord,

when I will make a new covenant

with the house of Israel

and with the house of Judah.

9 It will not be like the covenant

I made with their forefathers

when I took them by the hand

to lead them out of Egypt,

because they did not remain faithful to my covenant,

and I turned away from them,

     declares the Lord.

10 This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel

after that time, declares the Lord.

I will put my laws in their minds

and write them on their hearts.

I will be their God,

and they will be my people.

11 No longer will a man teach his neighbor,

or a man his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,'

because they will all know me,

from the least of them to the greatest.

12 For I will forgive their wickedness

and will remember their sins no more."

Heb 8:8-12 NIV

Thus, the Law ushered in by the terrifying fire of God’s unapproachable holiness has become, in the New Covenant, an intimate law written on our hearts, symbolized by the individual flames on the head of each believer at Pentecost.

To end with a different metaphor, those indwelt by the intimate Holy Spirit become “living stones . . . being built up as a spiritual house” (I Pet. 2:5), a temple in which the Holy Spirit also dwells (see I Cor. 6:16).  Moreover, we as a spirit-filled church are being prepared for presentation to the Father as the bride of Christ.   How beautiful and intricate are the Covenants of God with His people!

Image:By Jean II Restout - Web Gallery of Art:   Image  Info about artwork, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15885407

Robert Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods, “Moral Faith,” Part V: The Emotional Aspect of Moral Faith

Finite and Infinite Goods

A voluntary decision to commit yourself to a proposition does not, by itself, amount to faith. Even the decision plus a bunch of good reasons for your decision still are not sufficient for a sincere belief, let alone a conviction. Faith as Adams conceives it moves in a space bounded on the one side by subjective certainty (which Calvin ascribed to faith, but Adams does not) and on the other side by the subjectively incredible. Within that space it is often hard to tell, subjectively, how far one’s faith is supported by one’s sense of what is more plausible, and how far by willpower. But both, Adams thinks, are normally involved.

It’s also not easy to specify what more is required beyond willpower. As a first approximation we might try to identify the requisite feeling as at least a minimal degree of confidence in the view that you hold. This is not adequate as it stands, however. If you are depressed, you may doubt that your life is worth living. Yet in precisely this sort of case it is very likely both possible and right for you to cling to faith that your life is worth living.

Is it sheer willpower if you do cling to it? Surely not. Willpower can’t give you a belief in a hypothesis that is not “live” for you, as William James put it. Probably no amount of willpower could give you the belief that 2+2=5, or even that you will never die. Nor could sheer willpower give you the belief that the number of bald eagles that laid eggs in 1993 was even rather than odd. If you succeed, against emotional appearances, in clinging to the faith that your life is worth living, the clinging must feel different from trying to believe one of those patently false or humanly undecidable propositions. Perhaps you feel some level of trust in some reasons for clinging to faith, or perhaps giving up faith “feels wrong” for you.

But “confidence” is hardly the right word here. It suggests a state of feeling that is much less troubled than faith has often to endure. In some ways Adams prefers the word “courage,” provided he can make clear that he does not mean courage as a mainly voluntary virtue. He means courage in a sense in which it is felt more than chosen, the sense in which it might be a direct product of being “encouraged.” In Greek it would be tharsos rather than andreia; in German it would be Mut rather than Tapferkeit. The courage of which Adams would speak is not sheer willpower or voluntary determination. We may hope that such emotions are responsive to reality. They must be, if we are to have much chance of living a life both good and grounded in reality. In a sense indicated by Adams’ argument (not to mention other senses), “the just shall live by faith.”

Find the other chapter summaries here.

Image: " Abraham's Journey from Ur to Canaan " By József Molnár - Own work (scanned), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2684048

The Constraints of God’s Holiness

A Twilight Musing

Alternative Scenario for Immediate Post-Lapsarian response by the Creator

(see authorized version in Gen. 3):

God looked down in sorrow and disappointment at Adam and Eve chewing on the Forbidden Fruit and noted their being chagrined at the first thing their newly-opened eyes saw—their nakedness.  They didn’t realize yet why it was a problem, but of course God knew, and He was ready to help them fix it.  Poor babies, they had truly bitten off more than they could chew.  So God came down and stood beside them (though He had to hold His nose to do it—the stench of corruption had already set in), and He set about making them garments to replace the pathetic stitched leaves they had cobbled together to cover their newly embarrassing private parts.*  He then sat down and held their hands and chided them for being so foolish, but He also encouraged them to buck up and learn from their error.  They wept on His shoulder and vowed they would never repeat their mistake, and both they and God saw it as a growth experience.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

As fallen human beings in the lineage of Adam and Eve, I think many of us might be inclined to say, “Yeah, why couldn’t God have cut Adam and Eve (and us) some slack?  After all, He sort of set them up for failure by planting that Forbidden Tree and then letting the Tempter in the Garden.  Why make such a big deal of their failure and then pass it on to all human beings afterward?  We all make mistakes. It wasn’t fair; the penalty far outweighed the offense.”

Such sentiments, though understandable, fail to consider the implications of God’s immutable, innate, essential qualities, such as Goodness, Love, Justice, and—most relevant to this discussion—Holiness.  Strange as it may seem to contemplate, the biblical picture of God indicates that His immutability constrains His choices in ways that are not true of fallible mortals doomed to the ultimate form of mutability, death.  It is expected that humans will achieve only relative degrees of goodness, love, justice, and holiness, since even though we cannot know perfectly, we have nevertheless to act on the limited knowledge we have, i.e., we make choices.  But God, of course, has perfect knowledge and wisdom, and there is no excuse, as it were, for Him to act in any way contrary to His immutable, innate qualities.  He “cannot,” to put it in human terms, do anything that is not in accord with who He Is.  His very name, He tells Moses, can be expressed in human terms only as “I AM WHO I AM” (Ex. 3:14).  James 1:17 describes God as “the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to turning.”

So it is that God could not have merely overlooked the sin of Adam and Eve and reset the program to give them another chance.  When their disobedience broke the bond of identity and oneness between them and God, it became impossible for God in His Holiness to walk with them in their sin—not because He “chose” it so in the way that we use that word, but rather they had removed themselves from the realm of His Holiness.  He could, in perfect justice, have separated Himself from them entirely and left them to the unmitigated consequences of their sin; but, in fact, He not only spoke to them of the negative consequences of their rebellion, but He clothed them and hinted at a mortal blow that would be dealt to their Adversary in the future by Someone born of woman.  God already had a plan by which He could overcome the barrier between sinful mankind and His holiness.  It was a radical and unbelievably costly solution that only He could implement.   That brings us to the Incarnation, in which He let a part of Himself, with the essential qualities of divine Holiness and Justice intact, be injected into the morass of the death-bound fallen world and emerge from it having fulfilled Divine Justice and paid the penalty of death so that forgiveness could be extended without violating God’s Holiness.

Chapters 8-10 of the book of Hebrews present the Incarnation as the culmination of God’s plan to bridge the gulf between His holiness and sinful humans.  After establishing the special priesthood of Jesus according to the order of Melchizedek  (Heb. 7:11-17), the writer makes clear that Jesus as priest has entered into the eternal Holy Place at the right hand of God, not merely into the earthly space into which the Aaronic priests enter once a year to offer the sacrifice of atonement (8:1-2). These Old Covenant priests served only “a copy and shadow of the heavenly things” (8:5) prescribed by the Law of Moses.  In the same way, Jesus’ entry into the eternal Holy of Holies and the sacrifice He made there was not merely “gifts and sacrifices   . . . that cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper, but deal only with regulations for the body” (9:9-10).  Rather, “he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption” (9:12) and establishing a New Covenant through His self-sacrifice.

This New Covenant, in contrast to the Old Covenant, went beyond physical purification that provided temporary access to God’s Holiness and Presence:

But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.  (Heb 10:12-14 ESV)

Through the patient development of His plan over the millennia between the first Adam and the Second Adam, God overcame the necessary separation of His Holiness brought about through the Fall with the loving sacrifice of a part of Himself.  As the first Adam fell, so the Second Adam descended into the wounded world and ascended to the Father to make it whole.

*See “And They Realized They Were Naked” in the poetry archives of Moral Apologetics.

Image:By Carl Heinrich Bloch - www.the-athenaeum.org, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25990900

Summary of Chapter 6, “The Emotional Aspect of God’s Love” of The Love of God: A Canonical Model by John Peckham

The Love of God: A Canonical Model

In chapter six of The Love of God, Peckham explores “The Emotional Aspect of God’s Love.” God’s love is more than emotion and includes the qualities of volition and evaluation (as developed in previous chapters), but the emotional aspect of divine love uniquely reflects its passion and intensity. Peckham argues that “God’s love for humans is ardent and profoundly emotional” (p. 187). He further elaborates on the range of divine emotions reflected in the biblical portrayal of God, “Scripture presents God as affectionate and loving, devotedly interested and intimately concerned about humans, affected by the world in feeling joy and delight in goodness, yet sorrow, passion and intense anger at evil, alongside profound compassion and the desire to redeem humans” (p. 189).

This aspect of divine emotionality raises the question of whether God can be affected by the actions of humans. Because of the intensely emotional nature of divine love as portrayed in Scripture, Peckham rejects a view of God’s immutability that incorporates belief in his impassibility, the idea that God is not emotionally affected by the world or that he cannot be affected by anything outside himself. Peckham instead argues that God’s love is passible in the sense that “God is intensely interested in and affected by humans, and may be pleased or displeased by their response to him such that the quality of his life is affected by the state of affairs in the world” (p. 187). At the same time, Peckham acknowledges the very real differences that exist between divine and human emotions.

The Biblical Portrayal of Divine Emotionality

Peckham’s presentation of the biblical portrayal of divine love is both exegetical and devotional. He begins by exploring the most prominent terms for love in the OT and NT—the word groups for ’ahav and agapao respectively. Both terms denote a type of love that is “affectionate, passionate, warm, compassionately concerned with and interested in its object(s); love in the sense of high regard, value and appreciation for its object(s); and love that includes enjoyment pleasure and fondness” (cf. Col 3:9; 1 Thess 2:7; 1 Pet 1:22; 4:8) (p. 149). Jesus had a deep love for his followers (John 13:1) and even for the rich young man who would make the choice not to follow him (Mk 10:21). God takes genuine joy in his people (Zeph 3:7), and familial images of various types particularly reflect the emotionality of divine love. The Lord loves Israel as his bride (Isa 62:4; Jer 2:2-3; 16, 23; Hos 1-3) and has adopted Israel as his son (Hos 11:1-4). God’s compassion even exceeds that of a nursing mother for her newborn child (Isa 49:15). The Hebrew word for compassion (racham) is etymologically related to the noun for “womb” and thus likely reflects “a womb-like mother love.”

God does not merely will to love volitionally; he loves with “an emotion that is stirred and roused, responsive to the actual state of affairs” (p. 151). One of the primary NT terms for compassion (splagnizomai) belongs to a word group referring to the inward parts of the body as the seat of emotion and thus depicts compassion as a visceral emotion and a “gut response.” Jesus often reflected this type of compassion as he encountered people in need (cf. Mt. 9:36; 14:14; Mk 1:41; 6:34). The “yearning” of God’s heart (Jer 31:20; Is 63:5) in the OT reflects the churning of internal organs as God is touched by the pain and grief of his people. All of this language conveys “profoundly passible and intense emotionality” (p. 153).

God’s emotional love is particularly reflected in those times when he relents from sending judgment because of the entreaties of his people for grace and mercy. The Lord is moved to pity even at the plight of his rebellious people. The revelation that Yahweh is “compassionate and gracious, slow to anger” so that he shows mercy and forgives iniquity (Exod 34:6-7) is foundational to the OT portrayal of God. The Lord continues to “bestow compassion beyond all reasonable expectations” throughout Israel’s history when they betray him and turn to other gods (cf. Judg 10:13; 1 Sam 8:8; 1 Kgs 11:33; 2 Kgs 22:17; Neh 9:7-33). The Lord relents from judgment when humans cry out to him for grace and mercy (cf. Exod 32:9-14; 1 Kgs 21:25-29; Amos 7:1-6; Jon 3:6-10). At the same time, God is not obligated or compelled to show mercy and he may not relent from sending judgment, and he may also withdraw his mercy when humans persistently rebel against him (Jer 16;5; Hos 9:15). The Lord’s “lovingkindness” toward Israel was unconditional in terms of his enduring commitment to the relationship, but conditional in that the blessings and benefits of that lovingkindness were for those who reciprocated with love and loyalty toward the Lord (Deut 7:9; Matt 18:27-35; Rom 11:22). God does everything that he can to avoid the outcome of judgment and destruction, but divine mercy may be forfeited by persistent human rebellion. Jesus lamented over those he desired to save but who were unwilling (Matt 23:37).

God’s compassion is complemented by his passion. God’s jealousy (qana’) in the OT conveys a passionate love and concern for his people and name (cf. Deut 4:24, 31; 5:9; 6:15) without the negative connotations associated with human jealousy. God is provoked to jealousy by Israel’s unfaithfulness (Deut 32:3`; Ps 78:58) and is often portrayed as a scorned husband (Isa 62:4; Jer 2:2; 3:1-12), but this aspect of divine emotionality reflects his protectiveness of the exclusive covenantal relationship he has with his people. God is not jealous in a manipulative, controlling, or envious way but in a manner that reflects the depth of his passionate love for Israel and his desire to protect his people from the consequences of their sinful choices.

God’s love manifests itself in both positive and negative emotions, but these negative emotions are never arbitrary or unmotivated. They always come in response to sin and evil, and God’s wrath is so terrifying because it is the divine response to the rejection of his powerful love. Even when humans sin, God is constantly pulled toward forgiveness and mercy. God is also deeply pained by human sin (Gen 6:6), because he can see the terrible consequences that will follow.

The Issue of Passibility Versus Impassibility

In light of the biblical data, Peckham concludes that maintaining divine impassibility and supposing God’s impassible passion and/or feelings fails to do justice to the many biblical passages in which God experiences responsive emotions. There are simply too many passages like Hosea 11:8-9 that “use passionate, gut-wrenching language” to depict God’s intense emotions, and this pervasive canonical witness argues against imposing an ontological presupposition of God’s impassibility onto the text that leads to reinterpretation of the biblical data (pp. 161-62). Impassibility is particularly difficult to maintain in light of texts that place God’s emotionality within the contexts of give-and-take-relationships where God reacts to unfolding events and human responses to his various initiatives. Based on his analogical understanding of language about God, Pekcham concludes that God’s emotions are real but not identical to human emotions. Nevertheless, there must be similarity for this language about God to have any real meaning. Because of his canonical approach, Peckham particularly seeks to establish a view of divine emotionality that prioritizes and is consistent with the canonical depiction of God. This approach recognizes anthropomorphism in the biblical portrayal of God, but also insists that divine emotionality should not be viewed merely as metaphorical language unless there are canonically derived reasons for doing so.

While rejecting the idea of impassibility, Peckham sees validity in the qualified impassibilist attempts to maintain divine transcendence and the ontological invulnerability of God to the effects of his creatures. God’s passibility is voluntary. God’s emotions may genuinely be affected by the free choices of his creatures and he may feel emotions in response to the free actions of his creatures that he does not causally determine, but God is not involuntarily invulnerable to these effects. God experiences emotions differently from humans because his experience of emotions is “entirely flawless” (p. 180). He is never overwhelmed by his emotions or manipulated by others because of some form of emotional codependency. God has freely opened himself to being affected by his creatures. While God maintains the sovereign freedom to remove himself from this arrangement, he also elects to remain constantly committed to it as an expression of his faithfulness (p. 181). In concluding the chapter, Peckham summarizes: “While none can overpower God, he is affected by worldly events because he has willingly opened himself up to reciprocal love relationship with creatures (p. 189). God loves in highly emotive ways but not in ways that are beyond his divine control.

Image: "The Return of the Prodigal" By Michel Martin Drolling - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19222829

Two Sides to Every Story? How Triviality Obscures the Truth of Domestic Abuse

Editor's Note: In this slight departure from our standard subject matter, we explore some of the implications of justice and charity in cases of domestic abuse, specifically in light of recent statements by a notable Christian leader. The importance and gravity of this issue merit its coverage here at Moral Apologetics.

Imagine the following: A woman lives for years in a volatile situation, never knowing when a word or circumstance will enrage her husband causing him to unleash emotional or physical pain on her. She tries desperately to manage the environment, to forestall these chaotic and traumatic outbursts—for her own and her children’s sake.

This woman’s home life is toxic; it has strangled her spirit, and what little outside support she has dwindles as the situation worsens. She accepts the blame assigned by her husband, she sees hope for change in small gestures of remorse, and day by day she becomes increasingly anxious, depressed, and demoralized.

Suppose this woman seeks counseling for her anxiety and depression. In this process, she realizes, first, that her situation is not normal and, second, that she is not to blame for the emotional and physical violence perpetrated on her. After laboring so long under the impression that she and her husband were equal partners in creating their destructive home environment, she embraces the truth that her husband has wielded unchecked and unjust power over her. Control, not love, animates their relationship.

Although the journey toward healing and freedom ahead of her is long and difficult, she has taken the first step by appropriating this truth.

Women like this, unfortunately, are all too common, even within the church. Controllers like this exist, too; yes, even within the church. In fact, the church—with its insistence on marital fidelity, its teachings of mercy and sacrifice—often provides unwitting cover for perpetrators like the husband of the woman above. Research shows that Christian women are more prone to stay longer in an abusive environment and to endure far worse abuse than their non-Christian counterparts. Unfortunately, pastors are often ill-informed about, and ill-equipped to deal with, the wicked realities of domestic abuse.

Take, for example, Franklin Graham’s recent Facebook post appealing to Christians to withhold judgment and, instead, pray for Saeed Abedini and his wife Naghmeh. Abedini, as many know, is the recently released American pastor who was jailed in Iran for close to four years, charged with proselytizing and undermining Iranian national security.

After working tirelessly to publicize her husband’s wrongful imprisonment and to pressure Washington to obtain his release, Naghmeh halted her advocacy in November 2015, telling supporters that she had endured “physical, emotional, psychological, and sexual abuse” from her husband and didn’t have the resources to soldier on any longer under such circumstances.

During Saeed’s imprisonment Franklin Graham rallied many Christians around his cause. Upon Saeed’s return to America last month, Graham welcomed him to the Billy Graham Training Center for rest and recuperation. While this outcome was the one so many prayed for and sought for so long, Naghmeh’s claims of abuse hung oppressively over any celebration, complicated further by her filing for legal separation on the day Saeed returned to their hometown in Idaho.

And so through his Facebook post Graham attempted a hopeful framework for responding to the murky affair. Wishing to remain impartial, he spoke of the marital troubles facing the Abedinis, called for prayer to ward off Satan’s continued attacks on their family, and reminded readers that “[o]ther than God, no one knows the details and the truth of what has happened between Saeed and Naghmeh except them.”

Although Franklin Graham is not the Abedini family’s personal pastor, as head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and leader of Samaritan’s Purse relief organization, he wields considerable societal influence. How he handles this situation matters beyond the case of this particular family; it speaks to the broader Christian community’s understanding of the realities of domestic abuse. And many will follow the example he sets here.

Graham’s statement seems designed, understandably, to keep rumors in check and encourage Christians to think redemptively on this matter. The charges Naghmeh levied are weighty; no one wants a false claim to shatter an innocent man’s life, especially a man who has endured so much and been a model of Christian faithfulness for so many. And yet Graham’s admonition, evenhanded as it tried to be, reveals a profound naivety about domestic abuse, a naivety that is sadly all too prevalent in the church.

Consider the seeming truism that punctuates Graham’s appeal: “there are at least two sides to every story.” When applied to the situation of the woman described at the outset of this piece, this claim is revealed as nonsense. A man who would inflict physical and emotional violence on his wife probably does have a perspective to share, but what of it? An opportunity to present his “side of the story” would only make way for more manipulation and deceit, this time drawing allies to his side and increasing the pressure on his wife to capitulate.

“There are at least two sides to every story” is valid only in a world governed by fair play, insistent on honesty, and committed to honoring the dignity of others. “There are at least two sides to every story” works for run-of-the-mill marital challenges: how to communicate better, getting finances straight, agreeing on child-rearing techniques. “There are at least two sides to every story,” only when those stories are populated by honorable people behaving honorably.

Conversely, “there are at least two sides to every story” is a monstrous retort to the situation described above. The world of that woman’s oppression is defined by a pattern of unrepentant sin, controlled by someone who has only his own interests in mind. For this woman’s sake and the sake of the many women like her, Graham’s platitude must be rejected and replaced by more sensitive and informed replies.[1]

“There are at least two sides to every story” is an offense to any victim speaking the truth about her mistreatment; it’s an offense to our God who cares about the downtrodden. Rather than bringing light and hope to an emotionally-fraught situation, trotting out this banal expression at such a crucial moment enables actual and would-be perpetrators and further disadvantages victims. Redemption cannot bypass truth.

If there are two sides to every story, in any substantive sense worth emphasizing, is the suggestion that a rape victim has her story and her rapist his own? A sexually molested child his story and the pedophile her own? Holocaust survivors their story and their cruel captors their own? ISIS victims their stories, the terrorists their own? Martin Luther King, Jr. in a Birmingham jail his story, his pious segregationist critics their own? Such claims are patently misguided: either trivially true or wickedly false. In situations terribly warped and twisted by sin, unspeakably deformed by darkness and inhumanity, the worst casualty of the polite words of morally tone-deaf evenhandedness is often the sober truth.

I don’t know that Naghmeh’s situation falls into that category. Nor does Franklin Graham know that it doesn't.

Notes:

[1] Several Christian institutions and professionals offer training and guidance for pastors on domestic abuse, including the following (along with links to their resources): Lifeway, Focus on the Family, Ministry Matters, and Leslie Vernick.

Image: "Broken Glass" by Holger. CC License.