Does God Allow Sin?

I caught a link to an article on the Ligonier site that deals with this question from the Triablogue site.

This is the Ligonier article: Why? The Nagging Questionby Paul Helm
This is the Triablogue post that linked to it: Why? The Nagging Question

The reason I included the Triablogue link is that Ligonier doesn't open their articles for comments from the peanut gallery. Triablogue does. So I posted a comment to the Ligonier article on the Triablogue post. Clear as mud? I'll also copy my comments here because this isn't an area I've written about in much detail. These comments summarize some of my thinking on the nature of sin and evil, what we have to do with it and what God has to do with it. There is much more to be said about this, but this is a foray into this topic that so often confuses us.

I'm convinced that our understanding of evil is not fully developed. We can draw certain conclusions from Joseph's distinction between acts of evil and intent. Much of what we consider to be acts of evil are evil only in context of being performed by fallen men in particular situations. There's no difference between the act of adultery and the act of marital sex except the context of a committed relationship defined loosely enough that we debate divorce and remarriage within the Body of Christ. If the ceremony were enough to warrant a commitment, then we have problems. Additionally, as fallen humans, none of us enters into a committed marriage without importing our own sin. I only mention this by way of example. The issue of evil becomes extremely complex if our goal is to merely to behave well and call ourselves good.

On the other side is the knowledge with Joseph's distinction that nothing we do is truly good because it is always laced with sinful intent and everything God does is always good. for us, even though we may have a core desire to do good, we are not unilateral creatures. There are always tangential desires that creep in. How many of us can say that we are not motivated in the least by a desire to share some of the glory with God for doing something well in his name? Even every act of humility has an element of false humility as long as we need some element of sanctification.

The balance in a fallen world is that some acts carry the weight of divine justification. God could call his people to kill for the right reasons and be held accountable for not doing so. By saying this, however, there are many who would look at their sin and try to find justification for it where scripture can be twisted to that end. This can only be divine justification. It was the penitent prayer of the tax collector rather than the falsely righteous prayer of the pharisee that received justification. They were still sinners. The pharisee thought his good behavior was worth something. Indeed, we should vie for good behavior, but the best among us have no greater cause to stand before God unashamed. Thanks be to Jesus Christ because he stands with us.

One further observation is that

1) if behavior by itself is not evil
2) some acts are justified because of an evil world
3) God never sins
4) Everything we do is laced with sin
5) Acts are caused by both God and us

Then things that are evil for us to do are not evil for God to do. This is what typically troubles us, but it follows if 1-5 are all true. We want to be able to say that we can be as good as God by exhibiting good behavior. We also want to say that God can do evil when we must live in a world that is cursed and difficult because of the sin of our father, Adam, that we have perpetuated generation after generation since then by the mere fact that we have been born separated from God. So it is our guilt that must be addressed, not God's. So even if God directly causes our difficulties, it is on account of our sin, not his.

Why Do We Educate People?

Al Mohler published a blog article recently about the inequality of families with good parents versus bad parents:

President Hollande wants to end homework in order to level the playing field for the nation’s students. As France 24 reports, Hollande told an audience at The Sorbonne, “An education program is, by definition, a societal program. Work should be done at school, rather than at home.”

He went on to explain that it was unfair for students with parents who are engaged with their schoolwork to gain an educational advantage over others, whose parents do not offer such support.

Dr. Mohler points out correctly that good parents are important for their children, even beyond the quality of education that they receive.

However, I want to take this in a different direction. Dr. Mohler, in summing up President Hollande's statements, points out that it is "unfair for students with parents who are engaged with their schoolwork to gain an educational advantage over others." (emphasis mine) The implication is that education is a matter of competition. In this view, the goal of education is to do better than others so that you can help yourself.

My understanding of education has always been that the goal is for each student to do better at the end of any course of study than what they did at the beginning. In other words, the goal of education is a personal struggle against ignorance.

But that's not and end in itself. There's a larger goal. While we improve ourselves the goal is to contribute positively to society thereby helping others, not defeating them.

An observation I've often made is that it seems more acceptable to tout some talents than others. For example, it seems relatively acceptable for a good leader to say, "I'm good at leadership." But one talent it seems particularly unacceptable to tout is intelligence. If someone says, "I'm exceptionally intelligent," he or she is quickly labeled arrogant. The fact is that some people have a natural predisposition to great intelligence. For some reason people don't think that's fair. And this doesn't figure into President Hollande's idea for a "level playing field."

But this betrays the fact that it is fairly common to think of education, not as a benefit to society, but a benefit to individuals over others. The reason is because many people use greater academic achievement not primarily for the betterment of society, but for their own advancement in society. What most in secular society will ignore is that this is precisely evidence that people are basically evil.

So what are Christians to do?

First, we must recognize the God-given responsibility we have to train up our own children.

Second, we must vie to help them get the best education possible with the goal not of improving their own status, but for contributing positively to society, particularly in the fulfillment of the Great Commission.

So we have to stop looking at education as the means for achieving the best life for ourselves on this earth ans start looking at it as a means for drawing us closer to God by using our talents to help other people.

Old Earth Theology – What the Early Church Fathers Taught

This is the final post on a series about Old Earth Theology. This first post is here.

The teachings of the early church fathers are not part of the inspired text. However, as the beginning of our church traditions, they are a study in how orthodox Christianity is understood and taught. So it is interesting to see how the church fathers interpreted Genesis 1.

To this end, there is a good book out that has a chapter that discusses it. It’s entitled Coming to Grips with Genesis: BiblicalAuthority and the Age of the Earth. It’s a collection of 14 articles by various authors in support of YECm. The first chapter written by James Mook details the teaching of the early church fathers on Genesis 1.

Dr. John Millam, an OEC, has a reasonable critique ofMook’s article. I always like to balance arguments with critiques and responses from the opposing side. The side who ignores good arguments from the other side is suspect. While Millam has a good critique, it’s not sufficient as an argument for OECm. Some of the church fathers taught that the days were 24-hour periods of time. Some taught that they were figurative periods of time. In looking at the evidence, however, I found out that the figurative “days” in Genesis 1 were never explicitly taught as long periods of time prior to Adam and Eve. Instead, they taught them as a type of eschatology.

I have never heard of this before, so I have had to study this. This type of eschatology was widely held by various Jewish sects although they differed on the particulars. It was especially popularized by the rise of the teaching of the Kabbalah, a school of thought that taught a form of mystical exegesis. Some scholars argue that the Kabbalah was the origin of the doctrine of the Trinity. I think that theory is in error. But I also think that mystical exegesis is in error. Although the Kabbalah helped popularize the eschatology of Genesis 1, that understanding doesn’t rely on the Kabbalah for validation.

In fact, varieties of eschatology that use Genesis 1 are different enough that it’s not wise to speculate on eschatology on that alone. However, whether the church fathers were YECs or not, it seems most likely that the eschatological understanding was more important to them. Given that one of the differences concerned the day the Messiah was to come, the church fathers certainly understood that he had already come in the person of Jesus Christ.

But I’ll say it again: none of the church fathers taught any form of an old earth creation. Granted that there are problems with using them to support a young earth as Millam has pointed out, but even some of Millam’s arguments are questionable. For example, he argues that while the early church fathers never taught an old earth, he doesn’t think that they would have rejected it either. The appeal to this comes oddly after an attack on their hermeneutics as apparently being vastly different. You can’t have it both ways. If you say that someone’s interpretive method is questionable, you wouldn’t want to say that you think they would have supported your position as evidence that your position is correct. So obviously Millam respects the church father’s understanding of scripture. Given that never taught OECm, and some were explicitly YECs, then the evidence suggests that as a body, they would more likely have accepted YECm.

Additionally, given that some taught that the “days” of creation were allegorical of all of creation, they believed that creation consisted of about 6000 years with a seventh indefinite period of time after the resurrection. What aspects of that are accurate is a different discussion. It’s intriguing to think that perhaps the millennium in Revelation 20 refers to the sixth or seventh day of creation. Just don’t tell the strict dispensationalists. That could stir up a hornet’s nest.

Old Earth Theology – Who Is Making the Arguments

My first post on this series is here.

There are two basic sets of arguments that contribute to an old Earth theology. The first set contains arguments that are scientific in nature. The second set contains arguments that are theological in nature. Quite simply, there are two different groups that make each of these arguments.

Naturalists and Theistic Evolutionists

The mainstream scientific school of thought is dominated by scientific thought that relies on naturalistic presuppositions. That means that before any conclusions are drawn from testing, any supernatural explanations are automatically denied. The untested theory is that the supernatural cannot be empirically tested. The non sequitur conclusion is that only natural explanations are possible.

It is from this philosophy of science that Darwinian evolution draws it’s a priori conclusion. So the question is not whether organisms evolved naturally from inanimate matter. The question is how they evolved from inanimate matter.

Given that even non-biological science is naturalistic, sciences that are not directly related to Darwinian evolution still assume that Darwinian evolution occurred. Therefore, when physicists and geologists test to determine the age of the earth, they must assume that it is old enough for life to have evolved. Therefore, any evidence that the earth is young is dismissed as anomalous or not yet explained.

There are naturalists who otherwise believe in a supernatural Creator. Some may even be Christian. However, they hold any claims of Christianity to be untestable because they don’t fit into the naturalistic presuppositions that they have been taught define science. If you want to work in mainstream science you largely have to buy into naturalistic presuppositions to be accepted.

Non-Evolutionists

The theists who argue for an old earth are the ones who argue from a scriptural standpoint. The question I have always asked is why they argue for an old earth when the scriptures don’t explicitly teach that. The plain reading of Genesis 1 is that God created the earth in 7 rotations of the earth as denoted by the period of the sun. In fact, these theologians go out of their way to deny that Genesis 1 doesn’t mean what it seems to say.

The only reason I can think of why they do this is that they have heard some of the evidence for an old earth and an old universe and are convinced by it enough to see if the scriptures make allowance for the current mainstream science on the matter. What I haven’t heard a single one in this group address is the evidence for a young earth. The only thing I can conclude is that they haven’t heard the evidence for a young earth because mainstream scientists typically don’t address it.

The Science Isn’t Conclusive

The thing is, there is some compelling evidence out there that the earth is relatively young. Not all scientists are naturalistic. Some Christian scientists actually work on the fringes and conduct experiments using science that is based on non-naturalistic presuppositions. That means that they allow that there may be a God.

Answers in Genesis has been a clearinghouse for non-naturalistic science, particularly as it relates to the origins of the universe, the earth, and life. Recently, they have been repackaging some of the leading evidences for a young earth. I’ll repost their top ten list here:

1. Very little sediment on the seafloor
2. Bent rock layers
3. Soft tissue in fossils
4. Faint sun paradox
5. Rapidly decaying magnetic field
6. Helium in radioactive rocks
7. Carbon-14 in fossils and diamonds
8. Short-lived comets
9. Very little salt in the sea
10. DNA in “ancient” bacteria

Another consideration that I think trips many people up is the age of the universe versus the age of the earth. Many scientists, much less laymen, think that time throughout the universe passes relatively uniformly. In our day-to-day life it certainly seems so, so it’s understandable that it’s a difficult concept for most people to grasp.

But vast differences in the passage of time are far more common than most people think. The spectrum of electromagnetic radiation (visible light and various radio waves) is nothing but temporal distortions generated by subatomic interactions that approach the speed of light. What I’m trying to say is that the universe could easily have been created after the earth and aged so fast that it appears older than the earth. It’s not scientific fiction and actually explains a few things that the Big Bang theory can’t account for. There are some that think this theory is far-fetched, but it’s actually a more likely explanation for the evidence than the Big Bang.

What I’m trying to say is that there’s no good reason to believe the naturalists on the age of the earth without question. They have some legitimate observations that can’t be ignored. But those observations have their own problems. Naturalistic science should be scrutinized. Theology that goes out of its way to accommodate it should be scrutinized as well.

My next (and last) article in this short series will discuss what the early church fathers taught regarding Genesis 1. You might be as surprised as I was when I first read it.

Dr. Timothy Keller book: Every Good Endeavor

There’s a deep disconnect between the lives of many church members and many pastors. I don’t think it’s wrong for a man to go from high school straight to college, and from there straight to seminary only to wind up leading a church with very little work experience outside the church. Many of the men who have done so have become very good pastors.

But church members have careers, jobs, vocations, occupations, or whatever you want to call what they do with the majority of their working time, away from anything remotely related to the church. Men especially tend to identify with their work. If they identify with their work and their work is not related to church, then they experience that disconnect I mentioned. Church is something they visit once or twice a week. “Real life” isn’t church.

I’m not sure most pastors have a clue. As long as they see people in the pews everything seems okay, that is until that person falls into some sort of sin. When that happens the pastor is left baffled as to how this person could have turned without realizing that this person has a more significant identity outside of the church.

Dr. Timothy Keller has made some inroads into this mysterious area of church life with a new book Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work.

Based on short biographical sketches, Keller seems to be one of those who doesn’t have much of a work history outside the church. Having not read the book, I don’t know if he covers everything well, but he gave an interview to Desiring God where he discusses some of the points in his book. If this is any indication, then he seems to handle the theology very well and accurately assesses the impact of culture on our working world.

God's Work and Ours: And Interview with Timothy Keller

Based on this interview it’s probably worth reading on those aspect alone. I plan to get hold of this book and read it. It might be worth your while as well.

Old Earth Theology

As a matter of full disclosure from the beginning of this, I’ll let it be known that I’m a Young Earth Creationist (YEC – I’ll refer to Old Earth Creationists as ‘OEC’).

Additionally, to limit any discussion to the topic at hand this series is about the differences between Old Earth Creationism (OECm) and Young Earth Creationism (YECm) between Christians. It will involve some of the science surrounding this topic and will assume that naturalistic evolution has not occurred. So that eliminates discussion of theistic evolution. It’s not that I get many commenters here, but I have a very specific topic that I wish to discuss. I won’t entertain discussion otherwise here.

I have thought about this for a number of years now. The topic of the age of the earth is one that seems fraught with a lack of understanding. Most of the time when I read or hear an OEC explain why he or she believes OECm, the rationale typically given is limited to arguments regarding the exegesis of Genesis 1.

The problem with this approach is that an exegesis of Genesis 1 devoid of scientific considerations results in interpreting each ‘day’ as a single rotation of the earth. In other words, the exegetical arguments that result in a gap between verse 2 and 3 (the Gap Theory), or interpreting each of the days as referring to very long unspecified periods of time, are obviously informed by some information that the OEC isn’t disclosing.

The reason it seems is that OECs think it goes without saying that science has absolutely proven that the earth is old, but they aren’t prepared to discuss the science because they are theologians, not scientists. They haven’t studied the science in any depth, but what they have seen appears to have been pretty convincing to them. Most OECs that I have read or heard merely dismiss the science with statements such as “Well, Genesis 1 isn’t a science textbook.” I can only interpret that to mean, “I don’t understand the science, but it seems to me that scientists have proven that the earth is very old. Genesis can be interpreted different ways. It’s not a deal-breaker. Therefore, I can say that the earth is very old without changing the gospel. That’s so scientists don’t think I’m an idiot and other Christians won’t think I’m a heretic.”

The view of YECm is that a plain reading of the scriptures are that the days are single rotations of the earth and that the science isn’t conclusive.

The only non-theistic evolution OEC that has addressed the science that I have seen merely said that the science for the age of the earth is not encumbered with the same naturalism as Darwinian evolution is. Therefore, he concluded, we can accept the conclusions without delving into the intent of the scientists. The only problem I have with that is that many of the scientists whose work contributes to calculations of the age of the earth are Darwinian evolutionists otherwise and invested in an old earth a priori to testing and analyzing data.

The point of this article is simple. I have some sources that I have reviewed regarding arguments for OEC. But I may not have them all. I have reviewed plenty for the exegesis of Genesis 1, but can find very little other than what I have mentioned for importing scientific conclusions into the exegesis of Genesis 1. If anyone reading this knows of some better argument for OECm, please let me know. I’d like to interact with it and post my findings. I’m looking for the best arguments for OECm if any are out there that I haven’t found. Post links or resources in the comments and I will review what I understand.

What I plan to cover in the future is how the early church fathers handled Genesis 1 (in general) and how the science is not conclusive. If anyone comes up with a better argument than I have seen, I’ll include it as well.

Edit:
The second article discussing who (in general) is making the arguments can be found here.

Some Arguments for Complementarianism

The erudite Steve Hays blogs at Triablogue among other places and carries out some exceptional ad hoc debates online. The following was part of a recent article entitled Amputee-identity disorder detailing one of his recent debates regarding abortion. This section regards complementarianism, the biblical idea that men and women were created by God to complement each other by positionally fulfilling different roles in order to reveal truths about God. These contain some observations I had never thought of before and I wanted to pass them along without further comment.

steve hays
    November 3, 2012 at 10:09 PM

    i) You act like TGC advocates arranged marriage. If a woman doesn't want to have "habitual sex," then don't get married in the first place! No one is forcing them into marriage.

    ii) You have no concept of marriage. It doesn't even occur to you that marriage requires mutual accommodation. You seem to imagine that in a relationship with someone else, you should never ever have to do anything you don’t want to do. That doesn’t work in marriage–or friendship.

    ii) Paul's command (if that's what you’re alluding to) requires mutual accommodation (1 Cor 7:3-4). It's not a command to wives, but a command to couples. A command to husbands and wives alike.

    iii) Is it actually true that men want sex more often than women, or is that, itself, a sexist stereotype?

    iv) Take the hook-up culture on your average college campus. You can't have sexually active single men without sexually active single women. So why assume that women are less interested in sex than men?

    v) Or is that even though women are (allegedly) less interested in sex, they offer sex because that's the only way to hang onto their boyfriend? If they don't offer sex, he will dump them.

    But even if that's true, that's damaging to feminism. For that means women are so emotionally dependent on having a man in their life that they will do things to keep him which they find personally disagreeable.

    vii) Another explanation is that women are trying to keep up with other women. It's a female competition. Every girl has to have her own boyfriend.

    But if that's the case, it makes women look too emotionally weak to resist peer pressure.