Video Transcript: Christianity Lecture 3

I have here on the board my reconstruction of the argument that Porphyry gave  in that book called against the Christians. And I'm assuming that you can see  this. God by definition, is the being with all the only perfections, including  maximal goodness, justice and power. Those are not the only perfections, but  includes those. And of course, this idea of God being the being with all the  perfections means not just all the ones we can think of, but whatever there are,  whether we know of them or not. God's got them all by definition. I already  expressed my grave reservations about this. It seems to me that's not the right  way to go. But this this is another reason why it isn't. Because if that's true, then  premise two seems to me to be right. If undeserved suffering exists, God is not  maximally good. Think about that. Suppose I'm in a resort. I'm enjoying myself.  I'm sitting by the pool. I've got a nice cigar and something interesting to sip on.  I'm working a crossword puzzle. I'm enjoying it. Down at the other end of the  pool. A two year old toddles out falls in the water and is drowning. And I do  nothing. I sit there and take another puff of my cigar and work on my crossword  puzzle. And child drowns? Would you call me good? I don't think so you don't  have to tell me what you would call me. But I'm sure it wouldn't be good. I then  ringing my buzzer and have the pool boy come out with a net scoop out the  corpse of this little child. It's think I was a heartless monster. But now suppose  I'm not there. And the toddler comes out and falls in the pool and is drowning?  Why doesn't God pull him out? If you wouldn't call me good, if I didn't pull him  out? Why would you call God good when he doesn't? It's a lot easier for him to  pull the kid out than it is me isn't much effort for me. That's what this premise  comes down to. If there's undeserved suffering in the world, then God wouldn't  be maximally good. Because the maximally Good God would want only  deserved suffering, to be allowed, would want to see to it that people were  rewarded for being good and punished only for being evil, not suffering when  there. There's no evil being punished. And same thing with the next premise. If  God's all powerful, he's not all good. And if he's all good, then he mustn't be all  powerful. Because if he is all good, and he doesn't want the kid to drown, the kid drowns anyway, then it must be that he hasn't got the power to do anything  about it. So if undeserved suffering does exist, so God's either not maximally  good or not maximally powerful. And since that's the definition of God, God  doesn't exist. That's the way this argument goes. Now, the first thing that I want  to say about it is that it depends very much on this definition. And the definition  is anything but biblical. Where in Scripture, does God say that he is good in the  sense of seeing to it that only good happens to all the people who trust him or  love him? Or do what is good? There is no such promise at all. Nowhere ever,  and in fact, there's a lot of the reverse. There's Psalms there in the Psalms that  cry out, Lord, why do you seem to have turned you're away from us and you're  not paying attention to our prayers. We fought these heathens on the battlefield,  and they slaughtered us yesterday. What are you going to do about that? We 

were trusting in you but you have to come help us. Things go wrong for people  that trust in God. The New Testament even says, all those who live godly In  Christ, Jesus WILL suffer persecution, they can expect some in their lifetime. So there is nothing about this definition that fits the biblical picture of God. If God  isn't maximally good, he's good in specific ways that he promises to be. And the  main one of those is that he promises His forgiveness, love and everlasting life,  to anyone who turns to him in repentance, and fixes their faith on him. That's the main way he said to be good. And it's a good, it's a good we don't deserve. But  he does it anyway. The same thing is true about power. I tried to say that earlier.  If you consider power to mean, can do anything maximally powerful, then it runs  into contradictions, doesn't it? Then you ask, Can God make a rock so big, he  can't lift it? And no matter how you answer it, there's something God can't do?  Well, what that shows is that something wrong with the idea of maximally  powerful. And what I said to you before was that that's not the right way to  understand God's power, God just created all the powers there are in creation,  and He controls them. And he can assert power of his own into it. When and if  he wishes as to when he intervenes, performing a miracle, or something like  that. Those miracles don't need to break any laws, Jesus turns water into wine.  Grapes, and bacteria do that all the time, all by themselves, they just take  longer. It doesn't violate a law. I defy anyone to name the law, it violates it's not  that that miracles violate laws, it's that they're injections of God's own power into a certain set of circumstances, and to bring about a result that would not have  otherwise occurred. If I hold my phone up like this, it doesn't fall on the floor.  That's not a miracle. Because the phones are supported object, not an  unsupported object. If I take my hand away, and God holds it there, it's still not  an unsupported object. So it's not violating any law. But this is a different sort of  idea of God's power from the idea that he has a perfection called power, that it's  maximally powerful. Now, having said all this, how does that explain why God  doesn't pull the drowning kid out of the swimming pool? And there's a real sense in which, of course, this example, stands for any kind of undeserved suffering  that we may endure. And the answer to this is that we don't know. We don't have an answer, because all the way things come to pass in the world, under God's  direction. The plan for all of that is hidden in the unknown being of God. We  don't know why God sometimes intervenes to save someone. That's what he  closed the mouth of the lions. When Daniel was thrown to the lions by the king.  The Prophet was delivered. But in another case, we're told Isaiah was executed  by being sawed in pieces. So God didn't intervene on that case. Why does God  sometimes rescue people turn the evil back on the doers? And sometimes not?  And the answer to that is we just don't know. All of us would like to know some  people. I've heard people say from the pulpit, that we'll know the answer to all  that when we get to heaven. I don't find that to be a promise in Scripture either.  We're not told but take a look at this. God, the Creator of the universe, offers us 

a covenant of love, forgiveness. and everlasting life what's the reason for that?  There's no explanation for why God would do that either. Why does he let  sometimes that a children drown or a murderer get away with killing someone? I don't know. But then I don't know why that would be either. Paul calls, say Paul  calls this, this the unsearchable, unknowable richness of God's love can't  penetrate into the depths of the divine being. Why should God create creatures  like us, and then make such a covenant, so as to take us into His kingdom  forever? When Christ returns, there's no that's inexplicable as the evils we  endure and live with the undeserved sufferings that come to us all, and are  grievious to us all. And for the difference here, there's another difference here.  And that is that God stands by us. In these undeserved sufferings. He's  incarnated Himself and come and shared our grief, and even execution to death, and been raised again from the dead, to show us what will happen to us. We put our faith in Him and we rise when Christ returns, and live forever with the Lord.  And in that final kingdom, God will wipe away every tear, there'll be no more  sighing, no more sorrow, no more death. This is God's promise. And that's the  sense in which he's good. God enters into promises with human beings. And we  have the right to hold him to the promises. We don't have the right to hold him to what he hasn't promised. And he hasn't promised that there will never be any  undeserved suffering befall anyone if they trust in him. And all of this is  summarized very beautifully in one book of the Bible that's devoted to this  subject. And that's the book of Job. It's devoted to why did the Why did good  people suffer. Job is just such a person in the story, he's a good man. He, he  treats people fairly deals, honestly. He never oppresses anybody. Doesn't take  advantage of the poor. He helps them. And he's become very wealthy, so  wealthy, that as each of his kids get married, he gives him a ranch as a wedding  present, that's pretty wealthy. And then, a series of misfortunes befall him. He's  ruined financially, his his holdings are destroyed. His children, the number of  them are killed in terrible incidents. And finally, he breaks out in some kind of  disease. And of course, a skin disease in the ancient world, was terrible thing.  All skin diseases were called leprosy because they couldn't distinguish them.  Like the many different kinds. And so if you had any kind of skin disease, you  were quarantined. And that's what happens to him. He has to leave society and  go to the valley of the lepers and live with them. People who can't be associated with anymore for fear of contagion. His wife, even comes to him and says, why  don't you curse God and die, it'd be you'd be better off than living like this. She's  not much help. And in the story, three of his friends come to visit him, even in the quarantine. And they they make speeches and the speeches amount to saying,  God is just and good, so this couldn't happen to you. Unless you had sinned. It  must be a just punishment for something you did, why didn't you fess up?  Confess what you did, and God will forgive you and you'll you'll be restored and  he says, I have nothing to confess. I didn't do any wrong. I didn't oppress 

anyone. I didn't murder somebody or robbed them or save them or defraud  them. I didn't do any of that stuff. Oh, They said, You're justifying yourself that  can't be right. Because God's perfectly good. I see what his friends are doing is  exactly what that argument did that I had on the board. They're saying, God's  perfectly good, so he couldn't let anything unfair happen to you. That's not what  the Scripture says, God says He will not be unfair with us in his dealing with us,  He will be good in his dealings with us and kind and merciful. But he doesn't  promise that everybody else will be, he'll see to it, that life's a piece of cake  that's not there. So they're making the exact same mistake as Porphyry's  arguing. Finally, at the end of this story, Job says to his friends, I would tell God  to his face if he came down here, that I didn't deserve this. And they put their  hands over their ears. That's terrible. That's blasphemy. And in the end of the  story, and of course, as in all Jewish stories, the meaning of it, the poor point of  it comes at the end, God does appear. And he demands that Job, give account  of himself. Because one of the things Job said was, it would have been better if I were never born. He didn't say I wish I had never been born, that would be  different. He made a judgment that God had made a mistake. It would have  been better if I were never born. And God says that you're so smart. Tell me how to create stars and how to do this and that the other stuff that I did, Job says, I, I  misspoke. I repent, I take it back. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that. But then  Job, God in the in this story, tells Job's friends, something very significant for our problem here. God says to those friends, you didn't speak the truth about me the way my servant Job did. And what Job had said is, Sometimes God allows the  righteous to suffer, and the evil people to prosper. And Job's friends had said,  no, that can't be because God's perfectly good. See, and God rebukes them for  that fact, God says, Out of my sight, go offer sacrifices and ask to be forgiven.  And even then I won't forgive you until Job prays for you. The point here is that  we can't judge God by the standards that apply to us. God's the creator of those  standards. God is the creator of the laws of morality and justice. Sorry. And we  can't impose them totally on God. They don't automatically apply to God. They  apply to God insofar as he is bound himself to promises to us. Yes, there he is  obliged. And he has made those promises. Those promises are called  covenants. And he has promised forgiveness and everlasting life to those who  turn to him and repent. That's the goodness of God that we can hold him to. But  that is comes up purely of His grace. It's not because we deserve it, or he'd be  wrong not to do it. God came incarnate into the world to share our sufferings and our grief, even death, in order to make the way for us to be forever with Him. He  didn't have to redeem humans, there was no moral obligations, because God's  goodness is not a perfection, identical with this being. But God's goodness is  consistent with the promises that He has made to us, the offer of everlasting life, redemption. And that's something God created. But it's part of his nature, the  nature in which he is pleased to manifest himself. Sometimes, this, knowing this,

understanding this point of view, can be a real help in our daily lives, and other  times. It just, it seems weak. I want to acknowledge that I think this is the best  answer we can give. And that the other answers that have been tried don't work. The the main other answers that have been given to this problem, from the  standpoint from the viewpoint that God is all and only perfections has to do with  making it possible for people to overcome evil and suffering and making them  better fit for the kingdom of God. That's one answer. Another answer has been  that it that it allows for human freewill to play, and that the undeserved suffering  that some people suffer is always caused by the the wicked actions of other  people, their freewill choice to be evil, and we suffer. And one of the most  outstanding defenders of that point of view has said, This even applies to natural evils evils that come to us, suffering that comes to us by flood or a hurricane or  tornado fire. Those can be caused by Satan. And they're still the products of evil  freewill choices. This doesn't look right to me. I mean, in Isaiah 45, God says, is  recorded as saying, I create light, I create darkness, I create blessing, I create  disaster. I the LORD do all these things. And the point is, that even if it was done by Satan, God would have had to allow it for it to happen. Even if it all suffering  is caused by freewill actions of other people. God could intervene, intervene to  prevent the evil freewill act from producing the pain. It was intended to produce.  Even if suffering is necessary, somebody wants to say to fit us for the kingdom  of God, God could have made us fit for the kingdom without the suffering.  Because the fact is that if God can create heaven at the end of time he could  have created it in the beginning to start with and he didn't. The answer to why is  we don't know. It is mystery, not in the sense of a puzzle that can be solved if we could just think of it as clever if we were just clever enough to think of a solution. Mystery means in theology, a question that makes sense to answer but has no  answer. I'm sorry, question that makes sense to ask. We can ask the question,  but we can't answer. There is no answer. There's no answer. For us. There's no  answer to be revealed by God. It's God's will. That's what we can say. reason I  said that this works, in a sense, and in another sense, can at times seem weak  is that we're when we're in the throes of actual suffering from some terrible thing  that has gone wrong. In our lives in the lives of the people we love. The suffering seems unnecessary. We tell ourselves God, you could have prevented this. And  maybe that's true. And maybe we don't know why he allowed to happen, what  happened. But we do know that he stands by us in that suffering. We do know  that Jesus Christ shares it, that He grieves with us and offers us comfort, the  comfort of his presence, the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives. And that all  of that comes with the assurance that there is no pain. No suffering that Earth  can inflict, that heaven cannot cure it's that promise that's ultimately our guide  and our stay through undeserved suffering. And it poses no great inconsistency  for this view of God, as I have presented it, and the rebuttal of Porphyry's  infamous argument. And with that, we'll close this course. Please do the reading.

And I wish you well with the exams.