Matt,
That’s a beautiful testimony!
Enjoying your book, Derek. I’m inserting little notes so I’ll remember things to mention, but just from the last chapter I read, I especially appreciate your point that narrative Christus Victor is not the same as ransom theory. All the different theories seem confusing to me, especially as they overlap and tread on one another. I like the idea of it being a drama – a story that catches the heart. That rings true for me.
I’m glad you explained to Jason that you aren’t talking about the kind of suffering that is an inextricable part of the healing process. Otherwise I would have had a hard time with reading your book and would have been getting less from it because of always objecting in my mind: “But sometimes you have to suffer in order to be cured – there is no other way.”
Suffering for suffering’s sake is not redemptive. But suffering IS necessary to grow. Even Jesus learned obedience by the things He suffered. Which kind of boggles my mind; didn’t He know? But while I’m sure He did, it isn’t the same as having experienced the pain of obeying when it hurts – or at least, it doesn’t seem so to us. When I was sad a couple of weeks ago and asking God, “How can I take this again? How can I bear it?” I saw in my mind a picture of Jesus’ face, and His tears, and He said to me (in my heart), “I’ve already cried these tears with you, and I cry them with you still. It hurts now, but it will be okay – and I did truly bear YOUR sorrows, and I do understand.” He couldn’t say that – not to me at any rate – if He hadn’t suffered, too. He couldn’t even say it if it were true, because I don’t think I could believe it if He hadn’t come. It’s not enough for Him to just know – He wouldn’t KNOW like we KNOW if He had never suffered.
What’s more, I am at a loss to imagine how anyone at all could ever become great or good or mature, let alone perfect, without having suffered great things. It’s not that suffering is good, and CERTAINLY not that WE should inflict or fail to alleviate suffering (if we can alleviate it), but that suffering will come whatever we do, and we need it in order to grow up and become strong, capable, empathetic, noble daughters and sons of God. Nobody should seek suffering, and enjoying it would just be weird, but when it comes, enduring it patiently does things for us that nothing else could do.
So, that’s my bit so far. I’m genuinely enjoying and benefiting from your book, Derek. I really appreciate your sharing it.
Blessings, Cindy
Bob,
The notion of an all powerful God certainly doesn’t turn most Christians into atheists. They are content with the incongruity and tensions of a concept of God who is both all powerful and “love” but leaves the world in the terrible state it is in. Sure there have been countless volumes of theological exegesis and commentary explaining it away but the net result is it doesn’t leave much of message of good news that you can take to the vast majority of humanity out there.
It does however cause some individuals who have a deep empathy and concern for those who are suffering terribly from injustice and the tragic vicissitudes of life to throw up their arms and say, enough of such sophistry! If there is no God who will act, then we must get on with it ourselves to do justice on the Earth as best we can. That may be the impossible Quixotic quest but it is a noble and worthwhile one.
One of the first names for God in the OT was El Shaddai. This is commonly translated as almighty in most English translations. But its original meaning was something quite different as Jeff Benner explains:
Most Bible translations
translate this word as “Almighty.” Many times a translator will
not translate a Hebrew word literally because the literal meaning
would mean nothing to the Western mind, and in some cases
would actually be offensive to the Western reader. Such is the
case with the word shaddai. The use of the word “Almighty” by
the translator is his attempt at translating the text in a manner that
will make sense to the Western reader as well as retain some of
the meaning of the original Hebrew word.
The root for this word is ds shad [H:7699] which in its original
pictographic script appeared as . The sh is a picture of the
two front teeth and has the meaning “sharp” or “press” (as from
chewing) as well as “two.” The d is a picture of a tent door
meaning to “hang” or “dangle” as the fabric or skin of the door
hangs or dangles down from the top of the tent.
The combined meanings of the and would be “two
danglers.” The goat was a very common animal within the herds
of the Hebrews. It produces milk within the udder and is
extracted by the goat kid by squeezing and sucking on the “two”
teats “dangling” below the udder. The function of these teats is to
provide all the necessary nourishment for the kids, as they would
die without it. The Hebrew word shaddai also has the meaning of
a “teat.” Just as the goat provides nourishment to its kids through
The Living Words ~ Volume 1
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the milk, God nourishes his children through his milk and
provides all the necessities of life. This imagery can be observed
in the following passage.
“And I will come down to snatch him [Israel]
from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring him
up from that land to a functional and wide land to
a land flowing with milk and honey.”
Exodus 3:8
The word shaddai, meaning teats, is often coupled with the word
el, meaning mighty one, creating the phrase el shaddai, literally
meaning the “mighty teat.” Hence we can see the translator’s
reluctance to literally translate this phrase in this manner and
instead using the more “sanitized” God Almighty.
Based on this it would be accurate to refer to God as the all bountiful one. The giver of life who nourishes the creation from his own self like a mother would a child. This does not fit in to well with traditionally patriarchal Christianity but it does resonant more closely with the character of God presented in the person of Jesus the Healer and nurturer. So I do not concede to you that refusing to consider God to be all powerful controlling, micromanager of the cosmos forces me to say that God is impotent and finite in his abilities. To the contrary, God the all bountiful dovetails beautifully with the God who is agape revealed in the crucified Jesus and who by his nourishing and healing life flowing from His very being overcomes all the powers and heals all the wounds inflicted by those powers. Mighty Breasts triumphs over death itself.
Cindy,
I completely agree. What I am objecting to is not the idea of struggle that you are articulating. I am objecting to the idea of inflicting harm on someone else and trying to justify that.
What you are describing is vastly different. You are describing how you (like all of us) go through hard times, and your experience that Jesus is there with you in that pain. That’s beautiful. That’s not punishment, that’s solidarity. When we love, we suffer with others. That’s why they call it com-passion (literally: suffering-with). We hurt because we share another’s struggles.
The idea of inflicting harm on someone for their good is a really old one. The idea was that when you make someone else suffer you would “show them what it feels like” so they would know how much they hurt you. But this does not produce empathy, it produces bitterness. It deeply damages people, and actaully shuts down their capacity for empathy. If you were threatened with violence or harmed physically this would not be good for you. But people used to think it was, and so they regularly beat children (and wives, and servants, and prisoners, etc.).
So since there seems to still be confusion about this let me perfectly clear: we are talking about someone inflicting physical violence on another person–Whipping them, slapping them in the face, torturing them, humiliating them… this was what they did to Jesus. This is how the government treated criminals. This is what they called “justice.” If we think that Jesus was punished for our sins, then this is what we are talking about. That’s the ugly reality. We are saying that this is what God wanted to do to us.
I am saying that this is not what God is like, and not what justice looks like.
Ahem… You could try reading the book… 
Bob, that is not what I said. Please look again.
Hi Jeremy
I will answer your questions as simply and plainly as I possibly can:
Our pain, and the pain of the creation can never be redemptive.
The pain that Jesus (God with us in the flesh) suffered is beyond redemptive – it is what removes all pain that has ever existed. It is by HIS wounds alone that we, the creation, are healed.
A lot of very respectable research (as cited in New Scientist) has been demonstrating that “No pain, no gain” is, to put it politely, the opposite of the truth.
Pain is there to tell you, “Stop! You just did too much – no more!” or even, “Don’t do that!” Pain only occurs when there is damage. Damage is the opposite of healing.
Some years ago I had serious damage to my arms and hands and sometimes it hurt so much I thought I might throw up. The doctors prescribed painkillers. I mentioned that I didn’t want to use them too much because the pain might keep me from harming myself more. The response astonished me:
The pain itself could cause more damage, which would cause more pain, which would cause more damage… in a vicious circle. Take your painkillers!
Hunter-gatherers are the fittest people on the planet, and they avoid pain as much as possible. They would find it incomprehensible that we sophisticated civilized people exercise through pain.
First, the most obvious: even if this is painful, it is not demanded and it is not imposed by anyone else.
Second: dying to ourselves and self-denial are not at all the same as taking up a cross. Bearing a cross in those days was **ALWAYS **literal – real crucifixions were a common sight, a very horrific one, and no one would have used it as an analogy for something lesser.
Third, and most important: Jesus did not tell anyone to take up their cross and follow him. It really matters that we get this right if we’re going to quote it. Jesus says, “**IF **anyone wants to follow me, **THEN **let him take up his cross and follow me.”
IF… THEN… is a lot different from DO THIS.
In fact, on another occasion, Jesus said, “Where I am going you **CANNOT **follow me.”
Jesus knew he was going to have to liberate and heal the world on his own: no matter what good intentions his friends might have had, when it came to the point where they might have a cross to endure, they would run away – and of course they all did.
To our minds, that is like calling your friend “the devil”, but was he doing that, or was he responding to a temptation like those he experienced in the wilderness? The only other time Jesus uses that phrase is when he is rejecting the temptation of power in the wilderness, and in this case the temptation was not to go through with his crucifixion.
Peter was already feeling horrible. Jesus had that conversation with Peter to heal his anguish, not to accuse him (Jesus is not the Accuser!). During the exchange, Jesus changed the word he used for “love” to accept the level that Peter could manage. Peter couldn’t manage “agape”, which is what Jesus asked him first, but he could manage “phileo” – friendship or fondness; and Jesus made clear that he fully accepted Peter with that.
Jesus said those things to the Pharisees in front of the people they were trying to control. It would have been liberating for the ordinary people to hear that. If the Pharisees hated Jesus, they may have been angry at having their authority and control challenged but they certainly wouldn’t have felt hurt or pain! But when Nicodemus visited him privately, and with real questions, Jesus didn’t speak to him in that way at all (some other Pharisees also believed in him).
It would take a lot more than these rather general remarks to convince me of that. When did Jesus hit someone? When did he tell them suffering was given to them for their own good? When did he refuse to heal someone, or make them sick/injure them, because it would be more “character-building” for them to suffer? Please do cite specific examples.
Hey Derek
Me again, I was giving you a hard time on your blog yesterday 
regarding Paul who quoted an OT passage about relying on God for retribution and then describing that as “God’s wrath” which I think you answered well.
I wanted to address this question which you put to universalists:
Ultimately I feel that we come to God in this life out of recognition that things just don’t work well without him. We come to him out of recognition of our need for him. In other words, we come to God because we have needs. We come to God because in our experience of living without him, there is something lacking. This is ultimately why I believe that the world is in the state it is in. This is ultimately why I believe that God seems distant (There are many who just don’t feel God. For a while I didn’t feel God before he made himself real to me). I think God has given us that distance and allowed us to face the natural consequences of a universe in decay in order to help us understand just how much we need him.
One day, we could be faced with the consequences of our sin. We could come to a realisation of how selfish we have truly been. We could be faced with all the people we have ever hurt. When faced with these stark realities and the truth about our nature, when faced with how holy God is by comparison, how much more would we choose to follow God? How much more would we recognise our need for him?
Because of this idea, I feel that we each have a journey that we need to take before God reaches down and reveals himself to us. We all have to experience something of what it means to be in a state of rebellion. For some people that journey is longer than others, and it could well be that for some that journey will stretch on into the next life. I tend to see hell in similar manner to that described by Lewis in “The great divorce”. Hell is not a place of torture, but it is something that is experienced by some right here on earth. This “hell” is just a distancing and a place of learning how much we need God. If this “hell” exists here on earth, I don’t see why it couldn’t stretch on into the next life as well.
I don’t think it is about redeeming us through violence. I think it is about teaching us that we need God through a period of his absence. Does this seem consistent to you?
Great thread! Sorry I haven’t been able to keep up and join in more. But here’s something I wanted to say …
Derek, I just wanted to say how helpful your book and especially the chapter on “The Tyrant of Wrath” has been to me in my pastoral work. So many of the people I try to help have long been trapped in cycles of guilt and self-loathing, and to the extent that they have engaged with christians and the church, they have been pushed down deeper into their living hell. Behind it all is not just a slightly inaccurate and unhealthy image of God, it is actually, as you say, placing God in the role of the Accuser, the Father of lies. People hear the church saying this is what God is like, and they cower away from him and are unable to receive the grace and healing which God is actually pouring out.
Fortunately, it turns out that God is not prepared to leave it at that . And from my experience and perspective I’d say we are in the middle of a significant move of the Holy Spirit (which authors like you, McLaren, Parry, Talbott et al and forums like this, are part of) in which the gospel is being healed, revealed and made ‘fit for purpose’.
Derek,
I think Bob is referring to this quote “I want to believe that even though this world is full of injustice and pain that God apparently can’t stop for whatever reason, that somehow I can still put my hope in the weakness of the crucified God that “All shall be made well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be made well.”
Sorry, I didn’t mean you’re book is not articulate well. I was referring to what you’ve shared here on the forum:
A) Good parents punish children in a healthy way (you affirm)
B) Some punishment is good (you affirm)
C) God cannot punish
This seems to me to be a clear fallacy.
My confusion lies in that it appears you withdraw a bit by stating that you are not talking of punishment in a broad sense,1 that is you seem to argue that God is not abusive – we all agree. But I understand you to also argue that we should not see God as being behind any punishment we’ve ever encountered. I hear that from you because you ask me “Can you give me an example of where you have experienced or witnessed God punishing wickedness?” So if you agree that good parents can punish people using good measure then it shouldn’t be such a violation to say I believe God punishes people. I’m saying it’s hard to get a good triangulation on your position. For me you seem all over the map.
I’m just overloaded with questions like, how would you know when God does stop evil? Or like this one:
If hell is a place where the devil (or us) is/are in control and punishes people (our ourselves), this sounds more like the mythological version of hell where a red devil with horns and a pitchfork rules in hell torturing the poor souls who rejected God. But scripture says Hell was created (by whom) for the devil and his angels.
Please understand, we’re not trying to be antagonists, we’re trying to work out what we already believe to be true (knowing full well it could be faulty). But we need to understand the arguments better and that takes quite a bit of wrestling.
Again, thanks for taking the time with us Derek, we do appreciate it.
Auggie,
I don’t think I have ever said that I affirmed “punishment” nor would I. It is not a word that I would use in a positive sense. So I must insist that I have never affirmed the legitimacy of punishment. I recognize that you and others use this term in a positive sense, but I do not.
Because people are working with multiple definitions here, I have made an effort here on this thread to be extremely clear in what I am referring to, thus in my posts here I have:
- defined what I am referring to consistently as " inflicting physical harm for the alleged good of a person"
- explained (in a number of posts to Jason) that this is wrong because it causes severe psychological trauma and is thus not “for your good,” but demonstrably harmful. This is not an opinion, this is based on verifiable diagnostic criteria from mental health professionals. That is precisely why we call it “abuse” and why it is illegal. Please hear that: I am speaking about doing things that they will put you in jail for. So a simple criteria would be: “am I advocating doing something that is illegal? If not, then I am not talking about the same thing as Derek”
- In my post to Cindy I made this further clarification:
“We are talking about someone inflicting physical violence on another person–Whipping them, slapping them in the face, torturing them, humiliating them by stripping them naked in public, mocking and insulting them… this was what they did to Jesus. This is how the government treated criminals. This is what they called “justice.” If we think that Jesus was punished for our sins, then this is what we are talking about. That’s the ugly reality. We are saying that this is what God wanted to do to us.”
I think that is unmistakably clear, and quite nuanced.
Thanks Andrew! Yes, I think that chapter is particularly relevant to the discussion we are having here in regards to the damage that retribution causes. I’m reminded in particular of the section were I discuss J.I. Packer’s statement where he says that the tormented struggle Shakespeare describes in Macbeth of self-hatred has “God’s sanction” and how he seems to be completely oblivious to how harmful that is. I recently read an article by C.S. Lewis where he similarly showed a complete ignorance of this, and advocated for punishment of criminals and against “humanitarian” treatment of them and against their reform. I cannot overstate the need for theologians to have a basic understanding of mental health and psychology. When we define things as abusive and illegal in our society, and then these theologians becomes the defenders of these very things, this reveals a profound problem. It reveals something deeply wrong with how we are reading the Bible, and makes our witness not only out of date and irrelevant, but actually harmful.
Yes it does. Well said.
Behold I make all things new.
I think one of our sticking points is some expectation that the next age, eon, life or whatever you call it, will follow the exact same rules as the current age.
In our current age/universe we sit between 2 pillars, blessing and judgment (law and grace but not the OT law but natural law). Our current paradigm necessitates balance and the natural laws cannot be broken without consequence. If I jump out of a window gravity will judge me. So I need to learn the blessing of stairs. Water is a blessing. It gives life. Too much water and we will experience judgment, possibly death. Everything we sensually experience in this life/age is based on the relationship of these 2 pillars. Whatever a man sows that will he also reap. The sun shines on the good and bad. You can’t cheat the universe.
Good parents help their children to understand the relationship between the pillars - dog parents as well as people parents. Why? Because they know the consequences of losing balance. Parents know that a child may in fact need to be exposed to some form of judgment in order to forestall a more harsh judgment.
We often confuse the pillars with the directly intervening hand of God. The hurricane is God judging us for our sins. Meaning God suddenly and against anything natural stirred up a storm to punish people - in effect we may believe he acted as an earthy parent would to try and teach us a lesson. God IS a loving parent and he knows his children in this age are living under the constraints of the 2 pillars but he is a parent ultimately unconstrained by our current paradigm.
Why is the current age / universe built on the foundation of the 2 pillars? Because of the fall and the dual mind (knowing good and evil) which we acquired there.
Things are not optimal now in that we don’t currently see in the laws of the universe a very accurate picture of who God really is. There are hints and glimpses but our perception is clouded by our close relationship with the 2 pillars. Religion tells us God is nothing more than the 2 pillars - he is blessing and judgment, goodness and wrath. Etc. This is not true. God is not the 2 pillars.
There is a BIG change coming. Behold ALL things will be made new. It will be like nothing we have ever seen before. It started at the cross where we saw someone and something occur that transcended our 2 pillar paradigm. This new wine will break all of our old wine skins.
We should be careful not to project our current paradigm onto the next. The Spirit is urging us to a greater vision and hope and it is very good news indeed!
Thank you, thank you, thank you, David for this! I can’t tell how much this has meant to me in this moment. I will just say that earlier today I had slipped back into my natural depressive mode where all I feel is the darkness. This shaft of light that you have shown here is a God send. I want to comment more on this great post of yours when I have more time to give it the due consideration it is worthy of.
Please keep it up, don’t go away. I know it can be draining some times to continue the effort when there is so much indifference and resistance to what you are saying.
Dave
I appreciate that everyone’s trying to clarify. My remaining lost in semantics here may say that Fuller too easily gives several theological degrees DaveF seems to dislike the word, “finite,” but wouldn’t apply infinite to the disliked word, “power.” But I assumed that “all-powerful” connotes precisely unlimited power to most people. I’m lost on what we’re arguing (I just see that Girardians-as I am, are keen to avoid the notion that God is violently cruel; or that we should be).
Derek, I thought all three statements were quoting you, word for word! When you just respond, that you haven’t said any(?) of the three statements I’ve perceived, I have no idea how to figure out what your view on that issue is.
In agreeing with everything Cindy beautifully said, are you indeed affirming her thesis that “Suffering IS necessary for growth’”? My impression is that underneath this concern about how to describe God’s painful dealings with us, a pivotal difference is whether a process of purification is something in which God is deeply involved and committed. Are you more yes or no on that? I think today’s most thoughtful evangelical universalists (e.g. Talbott & Parry) perceive that judgment with an intent to purify is what most consistently makes sense of the Bible in a universalist interpretation. They could well be wrong, but I’m not seeing why their interpretations are not convincing.
I’m seeing that what’s opposed by several here is that God ever “inflicts physical harm” or things that “cause psychological trauma.” Of course, it’s those very present realities in an existence where faith assumes that God has an involved concern, that makes understanding God’s relationship to it awfully challenging.
My perception is that major options include 2 possibilities: The whole realm of real suffering arises from another source and is something God does his best to stop, i.e. a dualism where there’s no basis to trust that God’s way will pay off. Or, the more classical (and complex) assumption, that suffering is puzzlingly both something God is overcoming, but which He sovereignly ‘allows’ because of a higher purpose that can be securely accomplished. My sense is that the problems of both these options has led some here to propose some third way. But I am not grasping how that proposal works.
I agree; I believe this is a very insightful post. I mean, I can’t ‘prove’ it, but it has the distinct ring of truth (and life) to it.
Thanks for sharing that.
Bob and Derek; I don’t know if this will contribute to any clarity in the discussion or not, but I offer it in hopes that it will.
As a physician that regularly works with the body’s natural processes, (and this is true of a number of other healing professions as well) there is something that I regularly encounter in the process of healing that is often referred to as a “healing crisis”. What I mean by that is, the body has to reach a point of discomfort (occurring in varying degrees depending on the situation) in order to actually heal. This usually manifests as a symptom or symptoms that is an indicator of an underlying process, and is a very clear indicator that the body is in fact, getting better; yet discomfort (sometimes significant discomfort) is part and parcel of the process.
Perhaps the clearest (and most accessible to the most people) example I can give of this is recovering from the common cold. By the time you develop symptoms, you’ve already had the virus working in you, multiplying out of control for a few days. The point at which you develop symptoms actually signals that your body is working hard to rid itself of the virus (this is actually why you get symptoms). This is however the most miserable part of the cold; still, the fact remains that it is a clear sign (though a counterintuitive one) that your body is actually recovering.
I see you point Mel. But I will make one observation and this also relates to David’s post above. Using analogies from how things operate in this reality cannot be extrapolated to the new creation where things are utterly different. How do we known that? Jesus. When Jesus healed it involved no painful process or procedure imposed on the person being healed. If there was any pain or discomfort experienced it was by Jesus who empathetically experienced the pain and sickness of the person and took it into himself. What they got from Jesus is the, dunamin, healing life energy of God–resurrection life energy.
Dave