In a world not without its fill of pain and suffering, how can god be both all powerful and all loving?
This is the question that dominates a particular branch of theology known as Theodicy, which literally means “the justification of god” or something like that.
But more than that, it is a question most, if not all, of us grapple with it, be it often or be it when some kind of tragedy inevitably invades our small corner of the world.
Before I briefly share my thoughts on this question, let me say this: It is never wrong to cry out with a “How?” or a “Why?” The Psalms (and plenty of other books in the Bible) are filled with the outcries of anguished souls questioning their god. The reality of painful human experience is not glossed over in Scripture in favour of glib theological musings and formulae.
And on that note, allow me to present you with some glib theological musings and formulae.
First things first - the question in question once more: In a world with so much evil, how can god be both all powerful and all loving?
There are a number of presuppositions brought to the table when this question is raised, which I think I’m right to be dubious about.
1 - That there is a contradiction between an omnipotent, all loving god and a world where bad things happen. Why can’t the two co-exist? The question is often asked in the same way that someone might ask “How can a room with no windows have one of its windows wide open?” but clearly it is not in that category of obvious contradiction. So from where is the contradiction derived? From how we think such a god ought to operate within his world?
2 - That we know who the word “god” is referring to. Which god are we talking about when we ask this question? Where did we get our ideas about what he is like? Talk to Richard Dawkins, and he is a fictional character, and a really horrible one at that. Talk to N.T. Wright, and he is the world’s loving creator who is intimately involved in putting his creation to rights. Talk to a deist, and god is some being who created the world and then left it to run by itself as he resides in a far away place. In short, the unknown in this question is not simply the answer to the paradox it poses; the unknown is perhaps god himself.
3 - That we know what godly power and godly love would look like if we saw it. We come to this question with our own definitions of power and love, and we perhaps remain unwilling for those definitions to be altered.
There are I’m sure other presuppositions that we all have, but those are some of the main ones I can think of.
I approach this question as a Christian, which means that I think the unknown god in the paradox is known through Jesus of Nazareth. This, for me, is highly significant when it comes to wrestling with the tension posed by the question. If we look at the question through the three lenses Richard Hays uses in his book on New Testament Ethics -- community, cross, and new creation -- the significance of Jesus becomes clearer.
Community
Jesus did not come and eradicate all of the evil in the world through powerful love. He began something transformative, but he then left the power (so to speak) into the hands of his disciples. They were to be his community which would be a light to the world, empowered by the spirit of god to manifest the kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. God -- in what might be considered foolishness -- has chosen this community to continue on from where Jesus left off. Perhaps if the church of today was more willing to be god’s healing agent in a broken world, the apparent contradiction between god and his creation would be rather hollow.
Cross
If I have made Jesus sound like simply the founder of some new human movement, then the cross will surely correct this. Christians see this as -- amongst many things -- god’s definitive solution to the problem of evil. It is the place where “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself”.
Moreover, the cross also redefines what we mean when we talk of power and love. It is the ultimate revelation of both. As Paul says in Corinthians, god’s power looks like weakness. Actually, it is weakness; it is power in weakness. When we talk of an all powerful god, this usually triggers images in our mind of some glorious being floating around on a cloud and zapping things in order to fix them (or perhaps smite them); rarely does it trigger the image of a man dying on a Roman cross.
Love also gets a make-over, seen now not to be a pain-free, happy-clappy thing, but something costly, something which feels hurt as well as joy. God’s love revealed on the cross is a love that runs deeper than him wishing us well, with his power then the power to make us well. It is a love that enters into the depths of human need and suffering; a love which can cry out “My god, my god, why have you forsaken me?” The real paradox is that god has experienced the feeling of god-forsakenness.
New Creation
Finally, the Christian knows that what we see now is not the way things will always be. There is hope. God has raised Jesus from the dead, and so though we suffer now, we can be confident that it does not and will not have the last word over our lives. This does not mean that suffering is to be ignored or trivialised. It is real and tragic. New creation has burst into life, but the old order of being lingers on, and we continue to feel its harrowing effects, and we continue to cry out to god “Why?” and “How long?” The tension of the question “how god can co-exist with evil?” is felt by the Christian, and is not supposed to be explained away. I hope I haven’t done that.
I only hope to have shown that god has not remained silent on the issue. As the Psalm which begins with “My god, my god, why have you forsaken me?” goes on to say,
Indeed, god has not hidden his face from us. He has heard our cries. Through Jesus of Nazareth he has dealt a devastating blow to evil, triumphing over it through the cross. Through his community of believers he intends to point back to what Jesus has accomplished, and to point forward to the consummation of his new creation. The present remains a time of tension and toil, but there also remains faith, hope, and love in the midst of it all, and the greatest of these is love. We are to re-enact in the present the powerful love of god that was made known on the cross, doing so by faith in Jesus, and in the hope that one day all wrongs will be made right.
This is the question that dominates a particular branch of theology known as Theodicy, which literally means “the justification of god” or something like that.
But more than that, it is a question most, if not all, of us grapple with it, be it often or be it when some kind of tragedy inevitably invades our small corner of the world.
Before I briefly share my thoughts on this question, let me say this: It is never wrong to cry out with a “How?” or a “Why?” The Psalms (and plenty of other books in the Bible) are filled with the outcries of anguished souls questioning their god. The reality of painful human experience is not glossed over in Scripture in favour of glib theological musings and formulae.
And on that note, allow me to present you with some glib theological musings and formulae.
First things first - the question in question once more: In a world with so much evil, how can god be both all powerful and all loving?
There are a number of presuppositions brought to the table when this question is raised, which I think I’m right to be dubious about.
1 - That there is a contradiction between an omnipotent, all loving god and a world where bad things happen. Why can’t the two co-exist? The question is often asked in the same way that someone might ask “How can a room with no windows have one of its windows wide open?” but clearly it is not in that category of obvious contradiction. So from where is the contradiction derived? From how we think such a god ought to operate within his world?
2 - That we know who the word “god” is referring to. Which god are we talking about when we ask this question? Where did we get our ideas about what he is like? Talk to Richard Dawkins, and he is a fictional character, and a really horrible one at that. Talk to N.T. Wright, and he is the world’s loving creator who is intimately involved in putting his creation to rights. Talk to a deist, and god is some being who created the world and then left it to run by itself as he resides in a far away place. In short, the unknown in this question is not simply the answer to the paradox it poses; the unknown is perhaps god himself.
3 - That we know what godly power and godly love would look like if we saw it. We come to this question with our own definitions of power and love, and we perhaps remain unwilling for those definitions to be altered.
There are I’m sure other presuppositions that we all have, but those are some of the main ones I can think of.
I approach this question as a Christian, which means that I think the unknown god in the paradox is known through Jesus of Nazareth. This, for me, is highly significant when it comes to wrestling with the tension posed by the question. If we look at the question through the three lenses Richard Hays uses in his book on New Testament Ethics -- community, cross, and new creation -- the significance of Jesus becomes clearer.
Community
Jesus did not come and eradicate all of the evil in the world through powerful love. He began something transformative, but he then left the power (so to speak) into the hands of his disciples. They were to be his community which would be a light to the world, empowered by the spirit of god to manifest the kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. God -- in what might be considered foolishness -- has chosen this community to continue on from where Jesus left off. Perhaps if the church of today was more willing to be god’s healing agent in a broken world, the apparent contradiction between god and his creation would be rather hollow.
Cross
If I have made Jesus sound like simply the founder of some new human movement, then the cross will surely correct this. Christians see this as -- amongst many things -- god’s definitive solution to the problem of evil. It is the place where “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself”.
Moreover, the cross also redefines what we mean when we talk of power and love. It is the ultimate revelation of both. As Paul says in Corinthians, god’s power looks like weakness. Actually, it is weakness; it is power in weakness. When we talk of an all powerful god, this usually triggers images in our mind of some glorious being floating around on a cloud and zapping things in order to fix them (or perhaps smite them); rarely does it trigger the image of a man dying on a Roman cross.
Love also gets a make-over, seen now not to be a pain-free, happy-clappy thing, but something costly, something which feels hurt as well as joy. God’s love revealed on the cross is a love that runs deeper than him wishing us well, with his power then the power to make us well. It is a love that enters into the depths of human need and suffering; a love which can cry out “My god, my god, why have you forsaken me?” The real paradox is that god has experienced the feeling of god-forsakenness.
New Creation
Finally, the Christian knows that what we see now is not the way things will always be. There is hope. God has raised Jesus from the dead, and so though we suffer now, we can be confident that it does not and will not have the last word over our lives. This does not mean that suffering is to be ignored or trivialised. It is real and tragic. New creation has burst into life, but the old order of being lingers on, and we continue to feel its harrowing effects, and we continue to cry out to god “Why?” and “How long?” The tension of the question “how god can co-exist with evil?” is felt by the Christian, and is not supposed to be explained away. I hope I haven’t done that.
I only hope to have shown that god has not remained silent on the issue. As the Psalm which begins with “My god, my god, why have you forsaken me?” goes on to say,
You have answered me
Indeed, god has not hidden his face from us. He has heard our cries. Through Jesus of Nazareth he has dealt a devastating blow to evil, triumphing over it through the cross. Through his community of believers he intends to point back to what Jesus has accomplished, and to point forward to the consummation of his new creation. The present remains a time of tension and toil, but there also remains faith, hope, and love in the midst of it all, and the greatest of these is love. We are to re-enact in the present the powerful love of god that was made known on the cross, doing so by faith in Jesus, and in the hope that one day all wrongs will be made right.
Thats good. A difficult balance to mantain. Yes, God is absolute Sovereign. He cannot be manipulated or cojoled. But, and this is the but, he is also loving and full of commpassion. Thats where the Holy Spirit comes. Only he can help us keep the balance. keep reading....keep writing...keep asking the hard questions...no matter what our experience in God is, there is more...there is also more...
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