Should the 2 topics be merged?
Jeff,
It isn’t even a question of “merging” the two topics. The question of whether God ever enacts violence, ever, is instantly going to be relevant, for any Christian, to the violence of the cross. And one cannot consider the question of whether, or to what degree, God was responsible for the violence of the cross without one way or another engaging in Christology: the question of relationship between Christ and God.
As I noted in a previous comment, this is also then connected to things like the Lord’s Supper and prior typological shadows. Which foreshadowings themselves turn out to sometimes have strong relationship to the question of whether God ever claims active responsibility for violence.
For someone who isn’t a Christian but is only considering this or that kind of theism (or even trinitarian theism from a purely metaphysical direction, not a historical one), the two topics could easily be only indistinctly relevant at best, admittedly. (Although, on the other hand, a very close analysis from the direction of metaphysics might also turn up surprising relevancies between the two topics!–or so I discovered myself. But it takes a very long time to get there.)
Unless you meant something else by “the 2 topics”? Possibly I misunderstood.
I meant there seems to be a lot of crossover with Total Victory’s essay ‘On The Legitimacy of Ascribing Certain Evils to God’.
Jason:
There really are a lot of topical ingredients in the soup that is this discussion; which is not really surprising since there really is a great deal of overlap in all our articulations about God. I console myself that if it were easy, then we likely wouldn’t be talking about the true God! So it’s important to me to affirm with you our mutual adoration of God – especially as seen in the Christ – even though we do differ big time on this.
I find it curious that you would make a statement like this:
when the very premise of this site (EU) is, by those same “Christian authorities”, seen to be heresy. Just an observation…
I am seeing that the theology you are articulating (and with which I disagree) is itself based upon a premise with which I also disagree. Namely, that sin somehow requires a response of violence and punishment; that sin demands retributive punishment for its own sake. Challenge, (successfully in my estimation) of that very premise is what motivates J Denny Weavers “The NonViolent Atonement." So our disagreement may go back even further than you are suggesting.
As to avoiding the charge of “divine child abuse” I guess I have to reject your assertion that since it was God doing it to Himself (a truly bewildering expression to any non-Trinitarian listening in) He is therefore absolved. The roles, titles, labels, of “Father/Son” are the ones God chose Himself – and of course the pre-existing Son was not a “child” in the sense that I am my own father’s child. Nonetheless, at least we can say they are somehow (again human terms given for humans) “family”. To suggest violence is somehow “OK” because it’s “in the family” does not compute with me at all. So I take that charge of divine child abuse far more seriously than do you.
Moving on, you say this:
but also say this:
For me that’s a glaring contradiction. You sound like you are excusing the God’s act (I guess if by definition God can’t sin, and if God did kill His Son, the killing of Christ couldn’t be a sin) while at the same time admitting to the act. So the act of killing Jesus is not a sin when God does it, but IS a sin when we do it? For me that’s “pretzel think”.
Here’s a couple quotes from Weaver…
Lastly, again I confess bewilderment by this statement:
So not only does UR not “trump the Myth of Redemptive Violence” for you, (nor does it need to,) UR is deeply subservient to the Myth of Redemptive Violence. How else TO interpret this statement?
My real interest though, is how interesting I find it that while I disagree with you on this, we do agree on the Reflection of God as seen in Universal Reconciliation. As I see it, UR is quite compatible with both your views on God’s violence as well as with mine. God will do, and has done, everything necessary, within the bounds of freedom (another fascinating discussion) and morality (I’m certain we both agree God is moral) to reconcile His whole creation back to Himself through the Christ. Obviously there are some details on which we disagree on now, but in time (maybe the hereafter) resolution will emerge.
I like that.
later,
TotalVictory
Bobx3
Bob,
Thanks muchly! 
I’ll incorporate the further comment into my reply, then. (Probably this weekend. Possibly no sooner than Sunday, though.)
Jeff,
Oh!–okay, cool, that would have been my other guess. 
While there is a lot of topical overlap, and while I wouldn’t remotely mind other people commenting here, I don’t want to comment in both places myself due to the typically lengthy… um… lengths 
of my comments. I’m already likely to swamp this thread.
I am following along the other thread with great interest, and may ref some things here that are said over there. Similarly, I hope Tom will proceed with commenting on Bob’s question, too, in the relevant thread (with which this discussion started) over in Tom’s Corner; which I will also follow with great interest.
At long last! The reply is done! (I think! )
Thank you for the compliment, btw, on my words concerning the Lord’s Supper. {bow!}
For what it’s worth, I do not typically see violence in the Bible as being beautiful or admirable, even when the heroes are the ones doing it. But there are differences which make the crucifixion crucially different (sorry for the pun ) from any other violence in the Bible.
Which is why I brought it up.
Note: this is a fairly long reply, which could have been and in fact actually is much longer than it looks, since I am appending a .doc file reference sheet along with it! More on this later…
By your own admission, if the lack of mention (in a parable no less–not exactly the first place to go for clear doctrinal teaching) proved anything, it would instantly prove that there was not only no hope for the “tares” but also no hope that God would even bring anything good from the sowing of the tares. Yet you also nevertheless believe (because you’ve read other things in the Bible, for example) that God will bring good from this evil act regardless of the fact that the story ends with no mention of this whatever. (Moreover, we both agree that there is hope for the tares despite immediate appearances otherwise in the parable!)
I do not think that I can be faulted, then, for believing on grounds far beyond this parable, that this enemy was operating within the permission and even the grace of God (abusing that grace though he was), instead of, for instance, operating as an equal and opposite Anti-God who manages to snooker one in when God isn’t looking, leaving God to clean up the mess afterward.
This would be more of a problem for me, if I was claiming that God was tempting people to do evil. Confirming them for a time in their own choices, yes. Working with them despite their evil choices, yes. Sending evil entities to afflict them (after they’ve chosen to do evil themselves)? Yes. Sending evil entities to afflict them for the sake of the evil entities? Yes! (This is basically the story of Job as noted in the prologue.) Sending evil entities to afflict someone for the sake of someone other than the evil entities? Yes. (Also basically the story of Job, as is more widely recognized.)
Seducing people into doing evil? No. But such seductions still happen within (I have to call it this) the permissive will of God. Otherwise we are talking about a very different theology, such as a Manichaeistic God/Anti-God dualism. And there is no sure and certain hope for anyone in that. (Aside from some other more technical difficulties.)
While I would quibble with a few points of the quote Jeff gives, I am obliged to agree with the bulk of it, and thus with its general gist (insofar as the quote presents this). One of the important elements to that gist, is that God, being sinless Himself, takes His own responsibility for the evil, and even the sin, that happens in the world. And He pays for it Himself.
By lying to them, to help them feel better?? God didn’t really intend for me to be here to help you, and had nothing at all to do with you sending me here–but pretend that He did, and don’t blame yourselves or be angry at each other for doing it?
The comfort of Joseph depends on what he’s saying being true: that even though the brothers intended it for evil (that’s their responsibility), God intended it for good–including especially for their own good.
Or, putting it another way, nothing in your explanation requires Joseph to be pretending that God cooperated with them, despite their evil, in sending him here. The figure of speech adds nothing to the forgiveness of the brothers if it isn’t true. Joseph would be just as much of a gentleman and fine brother, only wanting healing for his evil brothers, giving incredible forgiveness etc., without bringing in God’s (ostensible but not real) cooperation with the brothers in what happened. (For example, in Gen 50. Which, notably, you quoted without realizing that back in chp 45 Joseph was explaining to his brothers that God had somehow cooperated with them, at the time of their sin against him, in getting him into place to save them and many other people.)
In lieu of clear prophetic revelation otherwise, I would rather just be agnostic on the topic of which evils occur because God is acting to bring those sufferings about in cooperation with the evil choices of people (though unlike them His intentions are actually good) and which ones God isn’t directly and specifically cooperating with in bringing the incidents about.
However: so long as I believe supernaturalistic theism to be true, then there are corollaries to that, one of which is that any evil occurs within the permissive grace and will of God. But rather than simply standing back and allowing such things to happen (and then condemning them, with or without acknowledging that He had to have at least permitted them to happen), the Biblical narrative contains some examples of God actively cooperating with the evil choices of persons in order to bring about something better than they were intending or expecting.
And in any case, God pays, and has paid, for the evil we do.
I agree with all that; including that I mean more than only that God hasn’t abandoned us. But I also mean more than that God busies Himself redeeming our rebellion (although not less or other than that either).
For allowing which, God pays on the cross. (Showing there, once and for all in history, that He always is paying for this.)
Whereas, although I don’t know (not being a prophet who has been told this) whether God actively collaborated to bring this particular situation about, I do know that it happened on His watch (so to speak) and that He didn’t prevent it from coming about. I also know that an enemy, operating on his own independent resources, didn’t sneak into God’s territory when God wasn’t looking to do something that God had absolutely no connection to and now has to put up with because He lacks the power to do otherwise. (i.e. “not even remotely in His will.”)
I also know that regardless of enemies per se (intentional evil) the natural system is set up in such a way that these things happen occasionally. Nature isn’t an independently existent undesigned entity. Who is the one ultimately responsible for that? The guy up on the cross: it can’t even be blamed on an enemy.
I do also notice, in the scriptural record, that God sometimes actively collaborates in Bad Things Happening To Good People (beyond even bad things happening to bad people). The chief example of which is, again, that guy up on the cross, Who is fully responsible for laying down His own life for our sakes. (But Who didn’t climb up on that cross without cooperation from people either; ones with bad intentions, and ones with good but misguided intentions, and ones just doing their job and trying to survive another day.)
I really do. I promise. If you don’t understand why I’m saying what I’m saying, then it’s better not to believe it–and maybe not even to think about it very far. Even when horrid things like brain cancer force the issue into our face.
But, emotion aside, there are corollaries to saying that something happens entirely apart from the will of God. They’re much the same corollaries we bring up when a traditional damnationist wants to claim that someone continues existing in hell entirely separated and apart from God.
True, I don’t. Which is why I am careful to distinguish between intentions. (And between intention and non-intention, for that matter. Pun in regard to “matter”, not originally intended. )
I also think incidents are more complicated sometimes than simply good or simply evil. Not grey so much as greyscale (where tiny dots of white and black combine at a distance to create an appearance of various grey shading.)
On the other hand, the one Who permissively allows something shares in the personal responsibility of its occurrence. That includes God. In that sense, every evil does lay at the feet of God. (Which are pierced through as a result. )
My previous comment, to which you were replying, was already more than a little long. I thought about addressing it, but I’m not sure how to do so without pointing out, from the outset, that while God insists we are not to fear, He also leads people to understand that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, and many other things of that sort.
The complexity of universal salvation is succinctly demonstrated by the sermon in which Jesus tells us quite briskly that we are not to fear those who, after killing us, have no more power, but rather to fear Him (meaning by context Himself) Who has power to destroy both body and soul in hell. (And he’s paraphrasing Isaiah regarding God while doing so.) This is at the outset of a lesson where He proceeds to tell us not to fear, for God loves us more than flowers which are destined to be burned. (Though the statement about fearing God and not man is repeated elsewhere in context of boldly witnessing for Christ before thrones and principalities.)
I take both of those statements seriously. My teacher, Lewis, used to say that perfect love casts out fear, but so do plenty of other things like greed, lust, pride, anger, foolishness etc. Until we are perfect in love, we who are unjust sinners do well to fear God! (MacDonald, in a quote I’ve already given somewhere else a few months ago, puts the matter even more strongly in regard to the Israelites. Incidentally, since the time I wrote this part of the reply, I’ve had occasion to post MacD’s writing on this again. See the thread, in the “Christian Living” category, "George MacDonald on “The Consuming Fire”.)
It is true that violence breeds fear; which may be the only lesson we will listen to if we insist on being sinners. But, unless such a teaching is divorced from our theology (or even worse by a non-theological ‘Christianity’), then behind that fear and even that violence stands the cross where the One we should fear, Who told us we should fear Him, Who can destroy both body and soul in hell–is hanging, voluntarily, in solidarity with us, bearing our punishments with us, taking His own responsibility for our sin, paying for our sin with His own blood (betrayed by those whom He allows to be sinners). And why? To reveal the heart of God, and what the cost of sin is that He willingly pays for us; so that we will learn to trust the One Whom we would do well to be fearing.
He doesn’t do this to have (even) more of an ‘excuse’ to punish us. He does this in acting toward our final salvation from sin–to free us from sin, and so also to free us from punishment for sin.
(But neither to save us from any death. Rather, so that our deaths may be like His–into life eternal.)
Your story with the dentist is an example of inappropriate encouragement–for a child in your position. It might be the only appropriate way to get through to someone else (like an Italian veteran of WWII campaigning in Africa perhaps.) I trust God to use the best level of encouragement proper to the occasion and to the person.
The point isn’t too obscure; but it does miss a crucial distinction: the husband might be abusive regardless of the exterior treatment of the wife. He could be enslaving and degrading her through pleasure, for example, addicting her to himself. But the man is not an interpersonal fundamental reality whose very existence would cease if he was acting in any way toward a fulfillment of non-fair-togetherness with his wife.
We cannot be immediately sure of the intentions of the man; but we can be sure of the intentions of God. We can be sure that He isn’t trying to enslave us by pleasure for example! Similarly, if He cooperates in violence, He isn’t trying to enslave the objects of that violence through fear, promoting Himself at our expense.
Actually, I thought I had written somewhere earlier that I am not committed to accepting every charge of violence attributed directly to God in scripture. (Although looking back through my posts I can’t find where I’ve said so. Possibly edited out during revisions, by accident.)
But I am obligated to accept at least one charge of violence attributed to God: namely the violence He brings against Himself on the cross, in self-sacrifice.
And I am consequently more likely to accept charges of violence attributed to God which have some typological prefiguring of the cross. Joseph’s story is one such. Job’s story is very interesting in this regard, to give another such example. (Where God’s defense is not that He didn’t do this to Job, but Satan did! In effect God takes responsibility for what happens to Job and his family: and challenges Job, rather forcefully, to trust Him on this. The narrative structure of the poem is very interesting, and dramatically complex; especially from a universalistic standpoint.)
And, admittedly, I am required not to dismiss out of hand even charges of violence that I am very suspicious about (like various massacres.) I am more inclined to reject those as some kind of major misunderstanding (at best), when they are not treated as tragedies for which God nevertheless announces His own direct responsibility.
The various invasion-punishments against Israel, by contrast, are highly complex thematically. God grieves with the victims–but He also insists on having right and full responsibility for their occurrence. He doesn’t only take credit for the good that eventually comes out of being overrun by the Babylonians and Assyrians; He takes responsibility for the sorrow, too.
To me, that’s impressive. And it helps me understand a highly complex combination case like the tragedy of Absalom’s rebellion: God takes direct responsibility beforehand for the saddest, most sordid part of the rebellion, long before it happens–despite the fact that if this hadn’t been mentioned beforehand, no one would have a clue from the later details that God was supposed to have had some kind of direct hand in it. Yet the end result not only typologically prefigures Christ’s own sacrifice on the cross (as a sort of anti-son-of-David 
), but provides a set of imagery for later prophets to use in painting God’s grief and hope for Israel as a rebel son: still loved by God despite Israel’s death.
While I am not obligated to accept every direct claim of God’s responsibility in violence in scripture, though, I do lay ALL violence at God’s feet in several real ways.
And those feet hung from a cross, paying for all violence and all sorrow–whether allowed or participated in by Him.
Apparently due to more fundamental theological differences (even though inadvertent ones).
For example. (Regardless of who is more or less accurate there, obviously we have some differences, though perhaps only in consistency of application.)
Looking forward to that, and to the continuation of the discussion! Which I very much appreciate your time and effort on. {bow!} It’s an important topic.
(Note: TV posted some introductory reflections on the topic for Easter here. I have put my reply, although topically connected to this thread, in that thread instead, for purposes of reducing wordcount in my current reply here. )
Back, then, to TVs troubles with my articulation of Trinitarian orthodoxy:
I don’t normally make that kind of statement unless I expect the issues to be non-debated or unless I’m bringing it in as a secondary element. Obviously I don’t expect the issue to be non-debated, because I was already replying to your affirmation otherwise. What should be just as obvious is that I’m bringing it in as a secondary element, since primarily I am referring to logical corollaries from trinitarian theism (or even from a simpler supernaturalistic theism), with supporting references to scriptural testimony. The latter of which I could expand at great length. (But haven’t done so yet, in order to try to keep my comment length down. Relatively down. )
That being the case, you are free to ignore my observation that I’m standing with the vast majority of Christian authoritative commentators on this issue (including ones who would treat universalism as a heresy). I would rather you be concentrating on my rationales and data anyway; so I shouldn’t have confused the issue by making this comment. My fault, not yours.
Instead, please accept the .doc file which I am including with this comment, which brings together numerous statements across the New Testament indicating that the death of Christ is not done primarily by sinners (although sinners surely share in doing it), but by God Himself (including as Christ).
The Responsibility of God in the Death of Jesus.doc (73.5 KB)
I think sinners sometimes refuse to repent of their sins; and I think God is committed to saving those persons from sin. It follows as a corollary that God is going to act in some fashion toward those sinners. Insofar as sinners refuse to repent of their sins, that action will eventually be punishment. Call it retributive punishment if you like (since the goal is to bring the sinner back into cooperation with God, re-tribute)–it’s for the sinner’s sake, not for its own sake. I have certainly never once said otherwise, or even tacitly required otherwise.
This is in regard to the sinner. If you mean in regard to Christ, then it becomes more complex. We do in fact require the self-sacrifice of Christ, even only to exist in the first place; also to continue existing at all. And I am saying that this is a necessity. This would still be true in an unfallen world, but the difference would be that (in such a case) we are not also abusing the grace of God by sinning. The Passion of the Incarnation in such an unfallen world would not be the murder of God; I strongly suspect it would be the marriage of God Incarnate to a chosen woman (having also been first born of a chosen woman), though I might be wrong about that. But whatever mode the Passion might have been in such a case, it would still be consonant with the eternal self-sacrifice of the Son for our sakes.
As it happens, though, we in our sins murder God–insofar as we can. Meaning insofar as He allows us to do so. (The Greek of the Synoptic Gospels even has an occasional phrase or two in several places which is horribly suggestive of rape, in regard to our attempts to “seize the kingdom by force”: we are “forcing our way into” the kingdom.) We cannot sin and not be abusing God. The crucifixion is a physical manifestation of that abuse on our part toward Him. (Also a physical manifestation of our abuse of other people and even of our selves, which God Himself bears in solidarity with the victims of our sins.)
The scriptures are clear that this is not something that God only allows to happen, though. It is something God Himself acts to bring about, in cooperation with sinners, though with very different intentions than they (we) have in their (our) sins.
Personally, I am bewildered why you would consider the self-sacrifice of someone out of love’s sake for the sake of someone else, to be the same as that person abusing himself (in the unethical sense implied by the term “divine child abuse”). Or even the cooperation of two substantially distinct persons toward that end, being the unethical “abuse” of one by the other. No moreso then would God the Father be “abusing” God the Son as two Persons in substantial unity (so that God is doing this upon Himself, as well as the Father and Son enacting this in cooperation with one another.)
The comparison to child abuse is utterly inapt, as it implies first that the child is not in authoritative cooperation with the parent, of one mind and intention with the parent (which even a “unitarian” Christian ought to be willing to accept about Christ), and secondly that the child is not somehow himself also the same as the parent.
I take the charge of “divine child abuse” with exceeding seriousness; enough so, that I am not whiffling it away by saying ‘oh but it was family members doing it to one another’–which seems to be all that you got out of my response to this, last time.
Be that as it may: if we are going to speak of this as trinitarians (and I certainly am), then the substantial unity of the Father and the Son must be kept in the account, as well as the distinction of the Persons. In sacrificing Himself for our sakes, the Son is doing only as the Father does, and shows us the Father: a position that even a “unitarian” Christian ought to be able to accept, but which is the same as saying that God Himself is sacrificing Himself for our sakes when we are trinitarians. I thus reiterate: how is the sacrifice of God for our sakes tantamount to the crime of child abuse!!?
It simply is not; no moreso than St. Paul condemns God or anyone else of a crime when he says that for a good man one might even dare to die but that, far beyond this, while we were still sinners Christ died for us. Nor does Jesus condemn His own action or anyone else’s when He says that no greater love has a man than this, to give up his life for his friend.
Or, one of us is accounting for a difference of intentions. And since I mentioned a difference of intentions last time (as well as this time), that would be me.
It is only a “glaring contradiction” if the intentions are identical. But they are not. I think even last time I was quite clear about this. How is it “pretzel think” to distinguish between the charitable giving of one’s own life in order to save the life of another, and the taking of another life in order to promote the selfishness of one’s own life?!
The quote from Weaver is more than a little shortsighted: even in the Gospels, Jesus warns about violence that He will be bringing eventually; and RevJohn has much of this violence being poetically described, culminating in the final throwdown of the rebel kings of the earth in chp 19. Nor is the topic of the Son acting “violently” absent from other New Testament texts; far from it. Moreover, insofar as the Son is to be identified (in whatever way, trinitarian or otherwise) with the Angel of the Presence of YHWH in the Old Testament, the Son is directly responsible in those narratives for numerous acts of violence.
It is Weaver who is creating a false distinction of operation between the Father and the Son (not to say the Spirit as well), where none exists in the actual texts; something he can only do by ignoring or drastically reinterpreting reams of material. The “role of violence” is (literally “on the face of it”!) “exercised” more often “by the Son” in canonical scriptures than “by the Father”.
That being said: I strenuously agree that violence (even as “punishment”, even as “divinely sanctioned punishment”), is !!!NOT!!! “the basis of justice”. I have never once said this; nor ever once required this by any implicit logic. I have routinely, not to say monotonously , claimed instead that the basis of justice is the fair-togetherness enacted between the Persons of the substantial Trinity, upon Whose interactions all of reality (even the reality of God Himself) ultimately depends. If God even once did not act toward fulfilling fair-togetherness between persons, even between derivative persons, He would be as guilty of sin as any derivative sinner, with only this substantial difference: that God Himself would cease to exist along with everything else (including us) which depends upon Him for their existence, past present and future (from our perspective).
The logical corollary to this is that even the wrath of God, however it may be expressed, must be directed toward fulfilling fair-togetherness with and in the object of God’s wrath. God’s wrath is contingent upon His love. The result may be delayed by circumstance (especially the circumstance of sinful obstinacy in loving and fondling our sins, although also by the circumstances of a field of “natural history”). But the aim remains true and reliable.
The cross does not show that God (Father and Son and Holy Spirit) is simply not violent at all. It shows us what the truth is behind any violence that God may enact: that God in fact suffers in solidarity with those who suffer violence, whether they are sinners or whether they are innocent. He does not (as a sceptic recently put it on another forum elsewhere) leave us alone as an absent parent in a Lord of the Flies type environment; not on the cross, and so not ever. Nor does He punish us in exclusion from Himself. (The quote from 1 Peter concerning Christ descending to preach to the spirits in bondage, which can be found toward the end of my scriptural digest on this topic by the way, is extremely appropriate to this observation: including in connection to Christ’s enacted sacrifice on the cross.)
Well, one might have interpreted it along the line I gave it, namely that in such a situation there would be no need for ‘reconciliation’ per se in an unfallen Nature! But inasmuch as God sacrifices Himself for us to exist at all, then even in an unfallen Nature I could easily (as I said before, to which you were replying) expect an Incarnation and a Passion and a Resurrection simply as part of God’s loving communion with us. The loving self-sacrifice of God for our sakes is not something restricted to a fallen world of sin, but is necessary for any possible world to exist, even an unfallen one. We depend upon God giving Himself for our sake; we depend upon the Son submitting to the Father, and pouring Himself out for our sake. As I said last time, in an unfallen world the shape of this sacrifice would be rather different, not least because we would not be (as sinners) trying to murder God. But the sacrifice would still be occurring, and I have no reason to believe it would not be echoed in at least one way (more likely many ways) in the Incarnation of the Son.
May it be so!! {bow!} I quite agree that (as you have well put it), God will do, and has done, everything necessary, within the bounds of freedom (yes, another fascinating discussion ) and morality (and yes, I’m certain we both agree God is moral ) to reconcile His whole creation back to Himself through the Christ.
(…making peace through the blood of His cross.)
This was where this posting should have been (apologies for putting it here too in its entirety).
The following is an excerpt from Chapter 2 of Stephen Jones’ online booklet Free Will Versus Ownership (I wish I didn’t keep coming over as an SJ fanboy 
). I have always liked this line of thinking.
I don’t think SJ here believes that God is subject to the Law of the OT but that, because those laws are an expression of his Divine nature (written on His heart so to speak), he will always act in accordance with those laws and so can in some way be said to be bound by them.
(Note: Jeff posted this also in the “Freedom and Annihilationism” thread. So for consistency, I’m porting my reply there here, too. 
)
A fine exegetical example, Jeff. Thanks!
I myself would not claim that God’s plan “called for” man to sin. Neither would SJ, apparently, since later he emphasizes that he is not saying that God pushed man to sin. I can see readers rightly complaining about either an inconsistency or a poor choice of wording in SJ’s explanation!
But it does seem clear from the narrative contexts (leaving aside the question of how literally the story ought to be taken) that God did set up the situation of the temptation; not so that man would certainly sin, but so that man would have a choice to exercise and so to grow–or not. God from His vantage would “already” (from our perspective) know what man’s free choice would be (as well as that of whatever creature was doing the tempting!) and would be acting “already” (from our perspective) across all natural history with that choice in view: condescending to cooperate with that choice in God’s own way. But, He would be acting in His own responsibility for the tragic events that happened, too: so that those events would someday lead to something other than tragedy for those affected by the events.
I think the other aspect of this that I like are the examples of the pit, the Ox trampling about and the rail on the roof of the house. God’s laws included the liability for damage by the owner of something that inadvertantly leads to the harm of a third party even though the owner can rightly claim that they themselves did not actively harm the third party.
For God’s laws to have any moral authority they MUST spring from His essential nature (otherwise it’s just moral relativeism on a grand scale) and so by creating this particular universe in which bad stuff happens He must be ultimately liable (if not responsible) for the consequences. This price is fully and freely paid. It seems with the Christian God the end DOES justify the means.
We could have a pretty good discussion on that concept, by the way! I recommend starting a new thread on it.
Will do.
Whew – where to start in reply…
Perhaps I shall just start at the end with my conclusion, then return to some details. I do appreciate the time you’ve taken to respond Jason, and the deep faith in God it contains and the clarity it brings to your positions. Such clarity in fact that it also becomes ever more clear to me that, from where I stand, to accept such a paradigm would be to lock myself into hopeless contradictions and without footing for recognizing evil nor for protesting it. “Clearly” I can’t do that, nor, I am certain, would you want me to.
Further, it continues to be a great curiosity to me that I remain entirely convinced of the necessity and urgency of removing God as a candidate for cause of evil and suffering while you seem just as seriously convinced on the need to insist upon excusing God for His causing evil and suffering (especially that of His Son) and do so on the basis of intentionality – among other things.
That is good to know I suppose, but misses my point; why NOT see it as beautiful since you believe God orchestrated it? Given that you have insisted on God’s responsibility for all evil because of God’s intention to bring good from all of it, why even bother to carve away certain evil or violence or suffering as NOT beautiful or admirable?
Evidence of our disconnect continues with the story of the tares and the wheat and the enemy. Your comments appear to render the definition of the term “enemy” meaningless; if God willed it by simply permitting it, the “enemy” seems part of the plan all along and is thus NOT an enemy at all! Why then even have the term at all?
My point is, and has been all along, that there really is a category of “enemy” which explicitly implies (how can it not?) the counter “of God, or, of good, or, of right”. So the enemy can be said quite rightly to be anti-God, evil, and wrong. Which renders God both good AND evil; right AND wrong; God AND anti-God. It’s as if the law of non-contradiction vanished.
which is to shift the ground isn’t it? It happened, therefore it must have been permitted. That is a tautology and contributes nothing to the understanding of our question as to God’s causative involvement. How is it that this conversation even has meaning if we simply resort to saying it’s all God’s will (it must be because it happened) and there’s precious little we can “do” about it anyway so why even bring it up? I’ll repeat to you what I said to firstborn; it seems for you there is no such thing as the problem of evil. Yet you do discuss it as if there IS validity to the problem; that puzzles me.
A similar problem arises in our difference re: James 1:13 where
Again, how can you attempt to draw such an exquisitely fine distinction? How can you say this and at the same time assert that God orchestrates evil? (as you have with the killing of the Christ) One simply cannot have it both ways.
The problems I have with this view are again manifest in our disagreement over the comforting words of Joseph to His brothers. Under your view it seems inescapable that in a real way that was God tossing Joseph into that pit. (why not – if they are here acting as God’s agents?) How God then escapes the charge of seducing the brothers into this evil act (Was it an evil act though?) escapes me also.
The point is that even in that evil act – which was, as all evil acts must necessarily be, NOT of God (if evil CAN be “of God” why bother even HAVING a category called “evil”?) – God trumped their evil with His OWN greater goodness! (See how I finally figured out how to use the word “trump” in a thread titled “Can UR TRUMP the Myth of Redemptive Violence” !!) I remain bewildered at what you obviously see as God necessarily incorporating violence into His domain IF He is to be God. 
(returning to this in a moment)
(Also important to observe here that surely Joseph is not saying that there was NO other way God could have accomplished His desires and ends was he? We share here on EU the conviction that God will employ HIs infinite resources to accomplish His goals. Why then the need to talk about Joseph’s statement as confirmation that this was the ONLY way God could have placed Joseph in Egypt at this critical time? Thus God did not “need” the evil acts of the brothers in order to reach His goals; rather, THEIR evil was taken by this very resourceful God and something better was created from it. That distinction is of enormous importance it seems to me.)
This places me then in the position of not being an “ultimate theist” unless I accept the paradigm I openly admit I reject.
Oh well.
(again, coming back to this in a moment)
There is now another idea which follows logically (so it seems to me) from the paradigm I here openly reject. It is this; I have always thought/been taught that there is no excuse for sin; it is irrational, wrong, and in direct opposition to God. However it seems that the wicked brothers who did this evil act against their own brother do, in fact, in this paradigm, have an excuse for their sin; “Hey – don’t blame us; we were merely helping God make sure YOU got to that place in Egypt where HE could use you to bless US!” So too those whom, according to Christ, committed GREAT sin against Him when they gave Him up to be crucified; “Hey – here we are. Agents of God’s grace. Can’t blame us! You Know it ‘had’ to happen, so don’t blame us.” How can I possibly call their actions by their right name – evil – if I simultaneously believe God willed it to be so all along.
Of course any sane person would reject this out of hand. But why? It is quite logical IF God is willing and orchestrating it all to His glory and purpose. That fact IS the “excuse” for our actions! (You seem to sense this problem so periodically try to distance God from the very things you also insist He has the right to cause because of His goodness!)
This forces me to come to the idea that there really is a category of action and choice which is apart from God – completely apart from God – despite the fact He accepts credit for everything as creator of the cosmos. I am very conscious of Jason’s sensitivity on this issue about which he says this:
yet for all practical intents and purposes that is exactly what my view of God demands. I will not, cannot, conflate God and enemy; too confusing and contradictory. And utterly unworkable in the realm of relationship; that very realm in which God seeks to engage us. There is, simply, God’s way, and other than God’s way. That’s it; the two MUST not be conflated lest we lose all meaning to the concept of evil/violence/wrong/sin/etc.
This theme is so oft repeated in scripture that I’m rather astonished 
to find myself needing to repeat it here. We are called to act justly; the opposite of which surely must be seen as against God’s way and thus not even conceivably laid at God’s feet. We are called to love; the opposite of which is anti-God and thus not even conceivably of God. And on it goes.
Jesus says “Moses told you that; I’m am telling you this.”
Later, the people demanded a king – against God’s explicit wishes; yet God helps them pick the very king He does not want them to have. It would be utterly incoherent of God to claim to not want them to have a king, all the while working with them to have a king and say it was God’s will both for them TO have a king and NOT to have a king. That would be contradiction in it’s most blatant form.
Perhaps I have not been clear on just what it is that I protest and deny. I deny that God initiates or creates evil and violence. Rather He takes evil that WE have created and allows it to flourish so that it’s true nature is revealed. I am unable to conceive of God causing or wanting evil/violence/suffering to happen. This seems to me a logical, philosophical, relational necessity.
Here is how TGB on this site puts it (in part) over on the other thread titled
On The Legitimacy of Ascribing Certain Evils to God
That sort of distinction seems to me of infinite importance. That God is deeply entwined and enmeshed and engaged in our affairs for the purpose of redeeming us simply need not be mistaken for His wanting or needing or causing either our predicament or our evil acts in the first place.
Moving forward then, part of my puzzlement arises from these three comments taken from various places in your commentary and observations:
Here is my problem though: given your certainty that what I have insisted on calling the greatest evil of all time (the killing of God on the cross) WAS God’s direct doing, why would it even be necessary to make the above comments? Why be agnostic about the lesser evils when you are anything but agnostic on the greatest horror of all? Why bother fretting about the degree of God’s involvement in violence and evil if His involvement in the greatest act of evil is beyond dispute? And how on earth is it even possible to assess and measure the degree of God’s culpability in evil? As I have said over on the thread “On The Legitimacy of Ascribing Certain Evils to God” if ANY evils can legitimately be blamed on God, ALL of them can. If it’s OK for God to orchestrate violence against His own Son, who cares if He also does so against a little girl if she is raped and strangled?
Of course if God simply gets a free pass, because He’s God, or because by definition He is incapable of evil, then there is nothing to discuss and none of this matters anyway.
On to my concerns about the barriers to relationship that violence naturally brings, I suggest they have been dismissed too casually. For example, I offered the idea, per 1 John, that love casts out fear; here, fear is portrayed as in opposition to love. But you then reply that the fear of God is the beginning of WISDOM? So let me ask if you REALLY think this has any coherent meaning at all if I say that “the unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat” (that’s a fine definition of fear isn’t it?) is the beginning of wisdom.
Also missed, to my chagrin, is the point that with regards to abuse, (wife OR child) confusion about intentionality has nothing to do with it. Since you insist God exerts His will via the evil actions of sinful men, the mans intentionality is irrelevant; thus his violence against his wife must be considered possibly intentioned for good by God! So on what basis can you console that beaten wife or even contemplate considering the mans actions unambiguously evil? If ANYTHING is allowable to God simply because HIS intentionality is beyond question, why bother resisting or questioning evil AT ALL??
This brings me face to face with the question I asked of Tom Talbott – and it strikes at the heart of a major problem with the UR in the idea that since we believe God is working, even behind the scenes, even within the sinful and anti-God wills of free humans, even to the point of enabling their violence, we will thereby be rendered mute in the face of evil and violence and willingly submit to it (maybe even participate in it?? heaven forbid!!) in the mistaken thought that it MUST be part of God’s plan! This strikes a direct contradiction with what seems to obviously be the bibles protracted protest against violence, injustice, and evils of all manner and stripe.
To your comments re Weaver’s book, perhaps it’s best to let Weaver speak for himself; noting only that I find his formulations far more compelling than I do yours. No offense of course! 
Your accounting of the Atonement, to my eye, seems little more than God saving us from Himself; and killing Himself to accomplish this. Your multiple references to the notion that this is all somehow OK because Jesus “paid” places far far too much pressure onto what is a very very limited metaphor touching only on legal and marketplace images and ignoring the more serious need to accommodate the relational, sonship, transformation metaphors.
I’m starting to feel as if I am flogging an already well beaten horse so, believing I have addressed the major points of your wonderfully long reply, I’ll again take a seat. Along with thanks for your generosity of time taken to reply.
And JeffA:
I do thank you for the added ideas of JS – as well as the Reitan links which I’ll hopefully soon get to read. I shall order his book too and hope to find time to read it!
As for the ideas of God taking responsibility for sin by bringing the solutions and resolutions, that is not being controverted at all. That God does this by creating/orchestrating/enabling/willing the very thing He is working against makes little sense to me. It that is not true, the entire topic and conversation seem to me rather meaningless. (See above!)
TotalVictory
Bobx3
Addendum/Addition
JeffA:
We must not let this moment pass without acknowledging the very important contribution the idea articulated by SJ brings to the concept of UR; that God can properly be said to “own” His creation – us along with it – surely also means He must, as mature ruler/sovereign/lord/master etc take “responsibility” for the mess His own creation has spawned. I find this to be, in fact, one of the most stunning aspects of God’s character. For me, it makes Him gritty, real, and utterly admirable in His willingness to BE with us, even though it was WE who screwed up. It is, simply, what a good Father would do.
That God didn’t just let His fallen creation just slide off into oblivion remains, for me, one of THE most compelling reasons to really embrace this God. (though my understanding of Him remains incredibly early, young, and awaiting greater maturity.)
TotalVictory
Bobx3
Bobx3,
Thank you for the acknowledgements. I am not a rigorous thinker like Jason - I am an impulsive Jack-of- all-Trades and master of none. i am a passionate person who rises and falls like the tide and my moods and emotions very definitely colour my thinking (and how I respond to the ideas of others). I think this is why I sit on the fulcrum of the debate God/no God because I find very plausable arguments on both sides.
However, I find your debate with Jason fascinating and illuminating - Though I have only injected material against your position that doesn’t mean I necessarily support that position (though I currently do probably lean slightly more towards it than your position).
keep up the good work!
Well JeffA, one calls it as he sees it yes??
Yet to realize that the WAY we see it is not the sum of the matter.
Personally I have trouble with religion when presented as a closed case file. Settled, beyond question, and ready to be nailed into stone.
Curious though: what might you be willing to have hammered into stone as regards your convictions?
TotalVictory
Bobx3
I think based on my personal experiences in this life the minute I replace a loving God with the impersonal forces of nature my life makes more sense - in other words life to me looks exactly like a series of stuff that just happens - the minute I try to see it as directed by a loving creator I get cognitive dissonance.
I’m sure I don’t articulate this too well but when I remove God from the equation, the fact that some people gets the breaks and some don’t (not in a commercial sense but just in a good stuff/bad stuff sense) I think ‘yes of course - that’s what I would expect to happen’.
I’m sure my problem with it all stems from my childhood experience of the early deaths of both my parents. Other than fatuous platitudes about ‘God has it all in your best interest in the long run’. I defy anyone to be able to make a rational case for those events with the existence of a loving God (they died 3 years apart and then I lived alone for 5 years). The result so far is atheism. If I don’t get any kind of genuine conversion pre-mortem then as far as even Universalist theology is concerned it’s death and a pile of punishment and then eventually some long eons into the future maybe something good will happen - but maybe not or perhaps just annihilation (you all know my views on that one). I didn’t need to wait eons before any hypothetical wiping away of all tears happens I needed it back then. Now put like that it always sounds so much hooey I’m afraid 
However, in a purely naturalistic universe those events are perfectly explicable - they both got sick - they both died - end of story’.
Excuse the dripping bile guys
I guess it would make sense to share where my idea and bias (and HOPE!) come from by sharing this link to a very brief essay by Walter Wink on the subject. He has written at great length on this and related topics in his “Powers” trilogy. Anyway, I’m sure our readers will find this essay very interesting indeed.
ekklesia.co.uk/content/cpt/article_060823wink.shtml
TotalVictory
Bobx3
Why did God set up (or at least continue–if we don’t believe its origin is God) a system of sacrifice in the first place? I don’t think God needed the shedding of blood (death) of animals for the remission of sins. He created the system for some strange reason that we don’t understand. Would it not have been a lot easier just to require a remorseful heart?
“We said we were sorry! So you didn’t need to sacrifice your only Son.” Hey, maybe all that blood letting was just a way to convince those idiots back then.
Amen!