Chris Neiswonger gives us some mighty fine food for thought today. I wish I woulda had this in class today as I tried to explain the spiritual beliefs of the Puritans (we were reading “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” I really stunk up the place trying to explain things. Not only was I not prepared, but I really got flustered and hence simply confused the students.).
Bottom line: without putting God’s justice front and center, the Gospel makes no sense. Without God’s justice, we appear much better than we are, and God seems petty and just plain odd. Only when we see that our “resume” is instead a “rap sheet” and that God must deal with wrongdoing and evil justly does His offer of forgiveness make sense:
I’m getting a lot of this ‘what a “good god” would do’ thing now in emails and such (backwash from the new atheism).
Try this: Instead of looking supplicant and making excuses for God as if He had been having a bad day, say plainly that “any God that would not judge persons, nations, entire civilizations and even the world would not be a God of any great significance and so unworthy of true faith or sincere worship”.
One way or another we need to face the problem. Either we present God as a mushy glow of love and compassion that would really like to do something about evil but either can’t or won’t, or we present him as he presents himself in scripture and push the problem back at the accuser.
Those without God inevitably absolve the universe of evil in order to avoid the God that judges evil and so make themselves innocent at the cost of moral realism.
Isn’t God at all responsible for the way the universe turned out, i.e. for evil? I mean he is the creator of the universe and as such endowed us with the freedom to rebel and commit atrocious acts on ourselves, the world and others, or, depending on your theological perspective, such as that of Edward’s, the God who determined us to such a rebellion and damned, for no apparent reason, certain people to suffer this damnation eternally while others eternally receive grace.
In ether case it seems that such a God is in some way responsible. In the second he is totally, and as such not good, no matter how you think “good” in regards to God, whether univocal or analogical. Thus the reason one must reject Edward’s staunch Calvinistic perspective from my view.
Regardless, I believe that this is part of what the incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection is about, not just justice, but, rather, God’s acceptance of his complicity in the human condition (the fall) and his willingness to take the responsibility in making it right. Justice is most definitely apart, but not the whole, and should never be isolated from the Christ event and the grace therein. Plenary Substitutionary atonement theory can never capture the complete picture.
Lastly, why the need to defend God’s justice? Doesn’t this defense itself assert that something is lacking, that is, that it is contingent and provisional? Instead of attempting to avert the anxiety that the process of theodicy addresses, why not enter into the anxiety and attempt to think “God” in ways that take account of this anxiety? Is this not what Job did? Is this not what Jesus did on the cross? Why must we who stand piously before this God, defend our piety? What is at stake?