Given that death is a part of life – always has been, and existed in creation long before the first human, and given that death involves suffering, I think that the problem of theodicy is highlighted. We cannot, then, link suffering straightforwardly to human rebellion can we? Perhaps this question can be fruitfully engaged through a more precise understanding of divine love, one which creates and allows for rejection, suffering and reconciliation (as modelled, for example, in the story of the prodigal son). For this love to find expression in creation, it was necessary for it to contain within itself the possibility of suffering an evil. Then, through risk, suffering, and the chance of rejection, God, in Christ, reconciles all things himself.
One author puts it like this:
‘the creation of such a universe will involve the creation of those negative possibilities of suffering, conflict and destruction, which are conditions of rejection, loss and reconciliation, and thus of manifesting the wholly self-giving love of God’ (Keith Ward’s, What the Bible Really Teaches, 74).
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16 comments:
Surely every free-will theologian will agree with this notion of love, and so would I. However, the more difficult issue that we have discussed in the comments on your "Adam and the Apostle Paul"-post still seem to remain. It is one thing to create the POSSIBILITY of rebellion and suffering, but a different thing to believe that suffering and death were already in-built into how life works on this plannet before rebellion was actually enacted (i.e. before humans appeared on earth).
Hi Volker, Yes, thanks for pointing that out. It is the latter that Ward is suggesting I believe, but I wonder how real that division actually is, between created with possibility, and created with it 'built in'.
Hi Shane, I went through that debate again - pretty 'hot under the collar' at times!
Actually, I found your comment very helpful. I wonder, though, how death can be both tragic and an expression of God's goodness (your way of putting it like that was a new thought for me) at the same time.
Yes - i wondered the same thing as i wrote it! I guess i was thinking of the concept of life (and theology) as dramatic artistry - bouncing off balthasar and, more recently, van hoozers "drama of doctrine." I wonder whether, if life is understood as an artistic drama, it is possible for tragedy not to be inherently linked to sin (although it may be), but another place where we discover god, and respond to him? Not sure myself,
Shane: a phrase from Moltmann I quite like is that death became deadly.
Chris: what implications does this have for eschatology? If the possibility of suffering is the condition for the full manifestation of God's love, then does this mean that the end of death is the end of (the full manifestation of) God's love?
It does seem strange that God allowed whole branches of humanity to go extinct , such as Neanderthal Man.
I have actually spoken to Neanderthalers. They have evolved shop elbows for getting on the S-28.
But were the Neanderthalers who went extinct , as loved by God as Homo sapiens.
Perhaps they literally were Untermenschen, who had to be eliminated to create Lebensraum for the genetically superior species?
All part of God's plan , I suppose.
Hi Chris, I read something interesting along the lines of 'death before sin' a couple of years ago in Robert Sacks' 'A Commentary on Genesis.' Its been a while, so this is no exact quote, as it is not in front of me.
Sacks points out that in creation, God tells the earth to 'grass grass' (using the cognate accusative verb form), but the earth instead 'sprouts forth.' He has the idea that it's hard to say that the earth didn't sin first by disobeying the way in which God asked the vegetation to come, and that creattion is recalcitrant at the very least. He goes on to discuss how the idea that 'grass' could 'grass itself' (sounds so dirty) is as close to the Greek idea of nature that one can find in the Bible, and that the Greek idea of nature, as a closed in being that has its being in itself, is an idea not possible in Biblical thought, exemplified by grass' inability to do so.
I'm not exactly sure what bearing this would have on the discussion, or of the validity of Sacks' argument (as I'm an amateur with no knowledge of Hebrew), but it is a thought that has much interested and troubled me nonetheless.
Thanks for the great blog, by the way.
Crikey, Byron, good question!
Perhaps one can see the eschaton as the realisation of the divine love for a broken world, not as just another event in history, but its decisive fulfilment. Dunno if that makes sense in light of your excellent question!?
Hi Steven!
Met Neanderthals eh?! Me too! Actually, there is some evidence that Neanderthals practiced a primitive sort of religion. Were they as loved by God as homo sapiens? Answering theologically, I would have to say ‘yes’. Part of God’s plan that they die off? I think a different understanding of divine ‘plan’ needs to be developed, but that is an area I haven’t really begun to look at!
Hi Shanetor,
Thanks for visiting! Yes, I think I get your point. And an interesting one it is.
The Hebrew word in Gen 1:12 is different from the one God commanded in 1:11, but I think they were being used synonymous, with a view to poetic variety I would think. I don’t think, in other words, that the narrative is trying to make the point Sacks is. But I see the point he is driving at I think.
All the best,
Chris
One thing I noticed seems to be taken for granted is that all death involves "suffering". Surely human death is in an entirely different league to animal death -we only experience suffering in any kind of meaningful sense with consciousness and awareness of pain. While animals do have nociception (the physiological process) that will make them try to get away from something that's "hurting" them, but it is not "pain" to them, not suffering... Just "instinct". I think we all just like to anthropomorphise and think animals feel the same way we do!
So could there have been death pre-fall without suffering?
'Were they as loved by God as homo sapiens? Answering theologically, I would have to say ‘yes’. Part of God’s plan that they die off? '
If you love something, you let it go extinct, don't you?
Or do you?
Animals don't suffer when they die?
The RSPACA prosecute people who cause animals suffering.
Do you want to tell them that animals can't suffer, or should I?
Must go. I have some dogs I want to stick needles in their eyes.
Hey Steven, your point is well taken; and I'm certainly not promoting killing or maiming animals. I appreciate the work of the RSPCA with people don't take of their pets, since animals do have value. But I don't think that they have either the same value as a human being, or the same sense of self and understanding that is needed to conceive of "suffering". When a gazelle is killed by a lion it's not lying there going "ow, this hurts... And I'm so young... I don't want to die... What will come of the kids" ...it's not thinking these things because it's not "thinking" anything at all... That's my 2 cents :)
wasn't the earth in chaos at the time of creation? Did not God have to overcome chaos? (and still is - see the end of Revelation - no more sea=chaos) so it is possible the earth was in a state of rebellion. Interesting idea. However, God did say "it was very good." Is this his allowance for sin in the created order as part of his plan for redemption? I am just a wee MDiv student so my thought could be off a bit.
Are you sure death in itself involves suffering? A silly question,maybe, but really now - it's the dying part, the fear, the pain, the dying frenzy, that involves suffering. And dying is living, still. Suffering is not a part of death, it occurs before. So death could be a work of Goodness. It's life that isn't...
God didn't invent suffering by creating death, but by creating life.
Anyway: "Love hurts, so God can't have love without hurt" is like saying "God was bound to create evil along with freedom or He wouldn't have had free humans."
That's not solving theodicy, I think. That's belittling God into human dimensions by imaging him as subject to human constraints, emotional, logical or otherwise.
And then there's that clever objection by "Byron" that that "Love hurts"-Doctrine makes paradise a less lovely place...
Or am I being simplistic?
Hi Steven,
If you love something, you let it go extinct, don't you? Or do you?
Perhaps this question presupposes more than I can be sure of. Perhaps a more inductive analysis is necessary, before ‘love of God’ and ‘good will’ can be used as premises in an argument.
Hi Brain,
Thought provoking words, thanks! The allusions to Chaos in Genesis are not as clear, however, as some think in my opinion - though they certainly are in that Psalm.
Hi Simon,
Anyway: "Love hurts, so God can't have love without hurt" is like saying "God was bound to create evil along with freedom or He wouldn't have had free humans." That's not solving theodicy, I think. That's belittling God into human dimensions by imaging him as subject to human constraints, emotional, logical or otherwise.
What would be belittling about that? Surely we don’t then end up with Pascals ‘God of the Philosophers’, but perhaps the God revealed in Christ.
And then there's that clever objection by "Byron" that that "Love hurts"-Doctrine makes paradise a less lovely place...
True. I cannot say a word on that; I don’t know if we can even suppose much. I would be speaking about as knowledgably as a Penguin could discourse on Nuclear Physics (to cite The House)
But to have a stab anyway, perhaps the New Creation, when understood not simply as another event in the future but the fulfillment of all God's gracious promises, will then have displayed to the glory of God, his love in all its fulness for all eternity. Does that make sense? Or speaketh I crap? Long sentence, sorry. But then your German, so it should be no problem!
perhaps the New Creation, when understood not simply as another event in the future but the fulfillment of all God's gracious promises, will then have displayed to the glory of God, his love in all its fulness for all eternity. Does that make sense?
I'm not sure it makes sense, really. Forget that petty silly argument that what constraints our feeling and thinking oughn't to constrain God, just as he should be able to know the square root of -1.
But "love in all its fullness for all eternity" - does that make sense without hate, or at the very least the idea, the concept, the theoretical possibility of hate, in order to give the term "love" it's semantic counterpart without which it simply denotes nothing, makes no distinction, becomes empty?
You'll need more than fancy words to get out from under Byrons argument, I think.
Btw: Welcome back. And since you've reaped much praise in those last days let me add that I, too, enjoy your blog very much. I hope you're not annoyed by every Tom, Dick and Simon spouting clever ideas here yet. The price of popularity :-)
Hi Simon,
I am not annyoed by your comments at all! I truly appreciate them! Thanks for your kind words about the blog.
I'll have to ponder your objections for a while, then get back to them - I'll run a post on my eventual musings, rather than responding here.
Alles Gute
Chris
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