God's Omni-Benevolence

[Jill]

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[steve]

RFCA,

I appreciate your thoughtful answer, and agree with it.

"Jill",

I don't mean to ignore you. The reason I generally do not have any response to your posts is that I often cannot understand what you are saying, or how it relates to a topic under consideration.


Paidion,

1. You did not have to respond if you did not wish to, but, in choosing to respond, I do wish you would actually have dealt with my question. It was not a trick question, nor a trap. It was a true-to-life example of what has happened in many cases—namely, God intervening to deliver a person from a calamity, and then choosing not to deliver that same person (or another person) from a later calamity. This really happens, and you could not give an honest answer without changing the terms of the example. If you wish to respond, please take the question as it stands and help me out with the answer.

You cannot say, "I doubt that the thieves were killed by angels," because, in the example, that is exactly what happened (just as Herod was killed by an angel, and as Balaam would have been, had he continued on his course). Since there are angels who protect the righteous (according to both the New and the Old Testament), you cannot object to my using such a scenario in my illustration. If you wish to say there is never such angelic intervention, then you are simply denying the reliability of scripture, and we no longer have a common basis for discussion. The question I posed is directly relevant to our discussion. If your point of view has merit, you should be able to answer the question as it stands.

2. In seeking to explain why your friend died in the plane wreck, you wrote: " As for me, I'll stick by a simpler and more realistic explanation, that God seldom intervenes in human affairs because He respects generally (not specifically) the free will of all people." Yet, unless the plane was sabotaged, this man's death had nothing to do with free will, so it does not serve as an example of your thesis. In fact, it provides a great example of the scenario envisaged in my question: On other occasions, God has intervened by His angels to avert calamity, and even says that this is His standard practice with the righteous (Psalm 34:7). Yet, on this occasion, when the angels, no doubt, could have saved the plane (and done so without even interfering with anyone's "free will"!), their aid was withheld. Therefore, one must choose between my three aforementioned options. I would like to hear your choice. Here are the three options again (since they have now receded to a previous page, I will re-post them):

1. God had more awareness and power to rescue on Monday than He had on Thursday; or

2. God's higher purpose allowed for delivering the family on Monday, but did not allow for such deliverance on Thursday; or

3. Neither God's power nor His purposes were involved, but merely His caprice.

I know that you would be most drawn to #3, if not for the word "caprice," but, since we are talking about why God gets actively involved in one case where He is needed and not in a similar case where He is equally needed, apart from allowing that He has some purpose, we must assume that there was no purpose guiding His inconsistent behavior, leaving only caprice as an option.

3. You wrote:

Why is God so adamant that we feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, clothe those who lack clothing, relieve those of whom others take advantage, relieve the widows and orphans, and visit those in prison? "What you do for the least of these my brethren, you do for me." If intense suffering is required to achieve the highest of God's purposes, such requirements appear to prevent the very means by which He achieves them.

As for your question concerning why we should help the suffering, when in fact God can use suffering for a good purpose—I can hardly believe this to be a serious question, but I will answer it nonetheless. It is because alleviating suffering can also serve a good purpose. We are supposed to obey God, and that is why we do what we can to help sufferers. Where we succeed, God has used us to bless them; where we fail, God must use other means, or apparently has other plans—namely to accomplish some other purpose through their (or our) suffering. As one great theologian put it: You just keep doing your best, and pray that it's blessed, and He'll take care of the rest.

None of your philosophical challenges to the biblical position really hang together—and they all have the fatal flaw of rejecting scriptural statements. If you are not concerned that your view contradicts plain scriptural statements, then we can not profitably dialogue further on this or any other theological matter.

P.S. I discovered (what others may have already known) that there have been at least two previous threads on this debate. We have been referring throughout this thread to a previous one, but in addition to that one (http://www.theos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=2771), there is also this even earlier one: http://www.theos.org/forum/viewtopic.ph ... &sk=t&sd=a

[Homer]

Paidion, Steve, et al,

John Mark Hicks has written an excellent book, "Yet Will I Trust Him; Understanding God in a Fallen World". Hicks faith was shaken at the sudden death of his first wife in her youth. They had dedicated themselves to be missionaries and were preparing to go to Eastern Europe. They had prayed ardently for health and protection. How could God have ignored their faithfulness? And then Hicks married again. A son was born and was named Joshua. Joshua soon was discovered to have a genetic disease that took his young life as a teen. Joshua suffered much through his short life.

Yet Hick's study of the scriptures led him to write concerning Job:

"Divine permission, then, means that God permits events which He neither determines nor plans. God may not have planned the death of my first wife, but He permitted it. He made a decision in response to my prayer for her health. He at least decided to permit her death. God may not have planned Joshua's genetic condition, but He permitted it. God made a decision in response to our prayers for Joshua's health. He at least decided to permit his genetic condition. If God is sovereign in such a way that He could act at any moment to change my personal history, then God at every moment decides whether to act or not. He decides whether to prevent any given event. Therefore, when God permits something, it expresses His decision in that circumstance, and His decision, I am confident, is not arbitrary. His decision to permit arises out of some purpose or intent that He has in that circumstance. While Satan may intend a particular circumstance for evil, God intends it for good. While Satan sought to destroy Job's faith, God intended to refine it.

By way of permission, then, God is accomplishing His purposes in the world. God permitted Satan to test Job because he had decided to test Job. He had His own purposes for doing so. With divine permission Satan used both human agents and natural forces to test him. God, then, carries out His permissive will through Satanic, human, and natural agents."

[Jill]

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[Homer]

Hi Jill,

I posted Hick's comments in reply to Paidion's story about the death of another missionary.

You wrote:

......nor is the author here for comment.

But I am here for comment; Hick's view is the same as my view of the matter.

God bless, Homer

[Jill]

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[Paidion]

Paidion,

1. You did not have to respond if you did not wish to, but, in choosing to respond, I do wish you would actually have dealt with my question. It was not a trick question, nor a trap. It was a true-to-life example of what has happened in many cases—namely, God intervening to deliver a person from a calamity, and then choosing not to deliver that same person (or another person) from a later calamity. This really happens, and you could not give an honest answer without changing the terms of the example. If you wish to respond, please take the question as it stands and help me out with the answer.

Okay. I quote your “true-to-life example of what has happened in many cases”:

Now take an average person, whom God loves. On Monday, thieves try to break into this man's house to rob and kill his family. However, an angel of God strikes the thieves dead outside the house (an example of such a thing may be seen in 2 Kings 19:35). However, on the following Thursday, another band of thieves comes, breaks into the man's house and kills his family (an example of this kind of thing may be seen in 2 Kings 25:1-7). How shall this man view the situation? It seems that he has only three options:

1. God had more awareness and power to rescue on Monday than He had on Thursday; or

2. God's higher purpose allowed for delivering the family on Monday, but did not allow for such deliverance on Thursday; or

3. Neither God's power nor His purposes were involved, but merely His caprice.

The opening description of the scenario assumes that God strikes the thieves dead outside the house. But how can this be known? Why should the death of the thieves be attributed to an angel of God? Did anyone see the angel? If so, I doubt that this is a “true-to-life example of what has happened in many cases”, at least not within the last 500 years.
#1 and #2 both assume that God had a hand in the events.
#3 asumes that God sent his angel to strike the thieves dead, but only acted on a whim.
Yes, there is a #4.
#4 God did not act capriciously, since He did not have a hand in either event. No one saw an angel striking the thieves dead, and attributing their death to God is mere speculation.

As for the idea that God acts capriciously because He occasionally intervenes to prevent evil acts, but usually doesn’t, I refer you to my statement on a different thread, that God seldom intervenes because to do so would upset the stability of the universe. If you want to call this a “higher purpose”, then so be it. In that case, I concede that God refrains from preventing evil in order to bring about a higher purpose. But this is a general higher purpose, and not one specific to any individual state of suffering. But in the other thread I gave this as an explanation for His not preventing people from being injured or killed from “natural” disasters. At that time, I explained his not intervening in cases of man’s cruelty to man as His general respect for free will. But since He does sometimes seem to prevent atrocities, perhaps it is necessary to apply the matter of stability of the universe in His withholding help in the many cases of man’s atrocities to man as well. That would eliminate the “caprice” theory. I don’t have the answers all wrapped and neatly tied in a package, but I am continuing to think about these matters, thanks to your objections, and hopefully will be able to hone some of the rough edges.

You cannot say, "I doubt that the thieves were killed by angels," because…

What I did say was, “Not that I doubt it.” So why bring up what I cannot say.

If you wish to say there is never such angelic intervention, then you are simply denying the reliability of scripture, and we no longer have a common basis for discussion. The question I posed is directly relevant to our discussion. If your point of view has merit, you should be able to answer the question as it stands.

I don’t wish to say anything which is not the truth.

2. In seeking to explain why your friend died in the plane wreck, you wrote: " As for me, I'll stick by a simpler and more realistic explanation, that God seldom intervenes in human affairs because He respects generally (not specifically) the free will of all people." Yet, unless the plane was sabotaged, this man's death had nothing to do with free will, so it does not serve as an example of your thesis.

It serves as an example of God’s non-intervention to save one of His servants from death, which, according to your thesis, He refrained from acting in order to fulfill a deeper purpose. According to mine, He refrained from acting in order to maintain the stability of the universe.

None of your philosophical challenges to the biblical position really hang together—and they all have the fatal flaw of rejecting scriptural statements.

What challenges to the biblical position? Which scriptural statements are they rejecting?

You haven’t given even a single scripture which supports your thesis that in ALL cases in which God does not act to prevent evil, He is fulfilling a higher purpose. All you have done is present scriptures in which in some cases, He has allowed people to carry out their evil intentions in order to fulfill a higher purpose --- and with that fact, I have never taken issue.

If you are not concerned that your view contradicts plain scriptural statements, then we can not profitably dialogue further on this or any other theological matter.

I am awaiting even one of these “plain scriptural statements” which my view contradicts.