Divine Evil - a collection of annotated bibliographies

Divine Evil - Anthony (a) Annotated Bibliographies

Research question

Can we reconcile the biblical narratives with the idea that God is good? Hypothesis

Our limited capacities makes it very difficult if not impossible to answer this question.

Details of text

Bergmann, M., Murray, M. & Rae, M., Divine Evil (Oxford University Press, 2011) Chapter 1 Louise Anthony’s main argument.

How the text relates to the research question

Anthony considers it is impossible to reconcile the biblical narratives with the idea that God is good.

Summary of the Text

Thesis Statement

A straightforward reading of the biblical texts would indicate that God is a negligent and abusive father.

Argument

Anthony argues that God is a terrible parent and that if we love Him we are displaying the psychology of an abused child. The biblical narrative indicates neglect e.g. leaving Adam and Eve in the garden with a deadly tree. Likewise the narrative involves physical abuse often through the mass slaughter of people e.g. the killing of 24,000 Israelites through a

lethal plague brought about due to their getting involved with Moabite worship (Num 25: 1-9). The narrative also involves psychological abuse through extreme and bizarre punishments e.g. the ten plagues visited upon Egypt (Exod. 7-11).

Furthermore, for her the biblical narratives suggests God is far more concerned with His own glorification than with the well being of His human children. She notes the ten commandments have much more to say about protecting God’s name than it does about the way we should live. Likewise most of the last 12 chapters of the book of Exodus (Exod. 20-23) relate to God’s needs and very little of it reflects laws designed to benefit humans (Exod. 23: 1-11).

Objection to the argument of the text

On a superficial level I would agree with Stump that there is, to put it mildly, an approach to interpreting scripture that errs on the negative side which could be objected to as being open to alternative conclusions e.g. Stump, in Wandering in Darkness has given a sophisticated defense of God’s handling of Abraham and of Job that addresses most of the issues raised by Anthony. However a more fundamental objection is that Anthony is not equipped to make the judgements she is arriving at. Firstly, as a creature she has not got the authority to pass judgements on her creator - there is a diakological divide. To use a scriptural analogy it is a bit like a pot asking the potter why have you made me the way I am (Isaiah 29:16). As Plantinga notes ‘given that God does have a reason for permitting these evils, why should we think we would be the first to know?’ (Plantinga 2000:467). Secondly, as a physical being who is not born of the spirit she is incapable of understanding the spiritual world (John 3:3, 14:17, Rom 8:5-11). Without the indwelling spirit of God we are blind to the spiritual world. The New Testament teaches that we become children of God through spiritual birth. It is this that overcomes the diakological divide we have between us and God as a consequence of our first natural birth.

Development

Anthony makes a very powerful and highly emotional attack on God as a good father which I found very thought provoking, in places quite amusing and often bordering on offensive. In addressing her response I realise that there maybe a need to explore the extent to which God is father to all his creation or is He ultimately only the father to those who are born of the spirit and have thus overcome the diakological divide between creature and creator. Also to what extent is His fatherhood a secondary characteristic to His being ‘Judge of all the earth’ (Genesis 18:25). For example in a human court of law the fact that the judge is the father of the defendant would not give him the right to alter the due process of law, therefore to what extent should we expect God to do any differently in a heavenly court of law.

Divine Evil (chap1) - Stump (b) Annotated Bibliographies Research question

Can we reconcile the biblical narratives with the idea that God is good? Hypothesis

Our limited capacities makes it very difficult if not impossible to answer this question.

Details of text

Bergmann, M., Murray, M. & Rae, M., Divine Evil (Oxford University Press, 2011) Chapter 1 Eleonore Stump’s response.

How the text relates to the research question

Stump argues that to properly approach the biblical narratives you need a community of interpreters.

Summary of the Text

Thesis Statement

Stump argues that Anthony mishandles the biblical stories and therefore her conclusions are mistaken.

Argument

Stump agrees that if Anthony’s interpretation of the biblical stories is correct then her assessment of God is valid. However her contention is that since Anthony’s interpretation fails to reflect or properly engage with the rich community of interpreters, then her accusation that God is an abusive father has not been proved.

Objection to the argument of the text

Whilst I agree with Stump that the weaknesses in Anthony’s interpretative style undermine the force of her argument, I can appreciate Anthony’s comment that the Bible was not expected to be only accessible to those with PhD’s. The ‘priesthood of all believers’ implies a level of perspicuity with regard to biblical texts which makes me cautious in giving too much authority to the rich community of interpreters referred to by Stump. Particularly as the Bible has often been seen as the judge of religious authorities rather than the other way around.

Development

The limits of biblical perspicuity need to be defined. Which aspects of the Bible should be easily accessible and which aspects should reasonably be considered opaque. For example, is it reasonable to assume that historical and moral assertions should normally be easily interpreted whereas the attributes and motives of the divine should be more opaque.

Divine Evil - Anthony (c) Annotated Bibliographies

Research question

Can we reconcile the biblical narratives with the idea that God is good? Hypothesis

Our limited capacities makes it very difficult if not impossible to answer this question.

Details of text

Bergmann, M., Murray, M. & Rae, M., Divine Evil (Oxford University Press, 2011) Chapter 1 Louise Anthony’s main argument.

How the text relates to the research question

Anthony considers it is impossible to reconcile the biblical narratives with the idea that God is good.

Summary of the Text

Thesis Statement

A straightforward reading of the biblical texts would indicate that God is a negligent and abusive father.

Argument

Objection to the argument of the text

Development

Divine Evil (Chap 2) - Curley (a) Annotated Bibliographies

Research question

Can we reconcile the biblical narratives with the idea that God is good? Hypothesis

Our limited capacities makes it very difficult if not impossible to answer this question.

Details of text

Bergmann, M., Murray, M. & Rae, M., Divine Evil (Oxford University Press, 2011) Chapter 2 Edwin Curley’s main argument.

How the text relates to the research question

Curley considers it is impossible to reconcile the biblical narratives with the idea that God is good and/or perfect.

Summary of the Text

Thesis Statement

A straightforward reading of the biblical texts would indicate that God is asking people to do things that are morally wrong and any reasonable alternative explanation would imply God is not perfect.

Argument

Curley argues that the Old Testament narrative frequently depicts God as either demanding that people should do something morally wrong or explicitly giving permission for moral wrongdoing. The examples Curley gives are the command given to Abraham to sacrifice his son in Genesis

chapter 22; the repeated commands given by God to the people of Israel to commit genocide by utterly destroy the nations they conquer (Deuteronomy 7:1-2, Joshua 6:15-21 & 1 Samuel 15:3); giving permission for the captured women of Cannan to be used sexually and giving permission for daughters to be sold into slavery (Exodus 21) Attempts to avoid these conclusions either involve making God an unreliable witness, because the scriptures, which He inspired, declare Him to be saying one thing yet in reality He did not mean that to be the case, or that the His ‘ways are not my ways’ objection of the skeptical theists may satisfy theists, but others would see these lines of defense as potentially justifying anything.

With regard to the New Testament Curley notes that whilst an argument for moral development could be made, the clear, and he sees as novel compared to the Old Testament, teaching on the afterlife found in the New Testament poses a significant threat to non-Christians. Firstly, in suggesting they will face eternal punishment, and secondly, because the eternal consequences of not believing in Jesus are so great it could lead to forced proselytization through torture and threats of punishment or death (something that has happened in medieval Europe). Curley believes this new doctrine of the afterlife has led to historically to the church abusing this power. Therefore, Curley sees the problem of evil as existing in both the Old and New Testament.

Objection to the argument of the text

Of the four cases Curley highlights from the Old Testament I want to consider in detail the issues surrounding the two which can be explained as examples of God permitting a practice that was significantly more humane than the cultural practices, but not representing God’s highest view of behaviour. That is the selling of daughters into slavery and the using of captives for sexual pleasure. These two follow a similar pattern to situation we find in Matthew chapter 19 where Jesus explains that due to the hardness of people’s heart God allowed divorce, but that this was never His highest intention. It is interesting to observe the disciples

negative reaction to Jesus’s comment about divorce. In effect they said this is impossible (Matthew 19:10). Suggesting that Jesus’s observation on the hardness of the human heart was spot on! Yet those same disciples once they had received the Holy Spirit were part of a church that taught that marriage between believers was for life (1 Corinthians 7:10-11). The Christian doctrine of the fall means that without the help of the Holy Spirit humans can only reasonably be expected to achieve a certain level of morality. This is why on the sermon on the Mount Jesus compared the two types of morality. He was anticipating that, with the coming of the Holy Spirit, there were new moral possibilities for humans to attain to. Which is why He concludes that section of the sermon with the challenge that ‘we should be perfect even as our Father in Heaven is perfect’. (Matthew 5:48).

With regard to the issue of genocide and the sacrifice of Isaac these will need to be addressed in the context of an overarching theodicy that incorporates the eternal as well as the temporal and as I hope to argue at another point, I believe this approach should address the issues raised by Curley.

Development

From this discussion I can see a potential pattern in the types of difficult moral situations God commands or permits which cause problems. One type involves a theodicy that looks at the eternal, which I will discuss in

my essay, but other types of problems have to do with permissive instructions that don’t reflect God’s highest vision of what it is to be human. Instead they reflect his realistic understanding of what a fallen human can achieve without the help of the Holy Spirit. However, it is clear from Jesus’s teaching and the early churches teaching, that with the Holy Spirit the moral possibilities we can attain to are huge - including being perfect like God. Therefore, if we want to see what the morality of God looks like in flesh and blood, then we will see it in the lives of Christians, full of the Holy Spirit, carrying out the daily routines of life, or when they forgive those that have killed their children.

Divine Evil (chap2) - van Inwagen (b) Annotated Bibliographies Research question

Can we reconcile the biblical narratives with the idea that God is good? Hypothesis

Our limited capacities makes it very difficult if not impossible to answer this question.

Details of text

Bergmann, M., Murray, M. & Rae, M., Divine Evil (Oxford University Press, 2011) Chapter 2 Edwin Curley’s main argument.

How the text relates to the research question

Peter van Inwagen accepts the premise that the Bible represents God commanding things that are morally wrong e.g. genocide. If that is the case then either the Bible cannot be infallible or God is not perfect.

Summary of the Text

Thesis Statement

Though the Bible represents God as commanding moral wrongdoing this can be reconciled to the Bible being inspired by God, because His revelation of morality has developed incrementally over the course of human history in proportion to our ability to receive it.

Argument

Van Inwagen attempts to give a story where it is possible to believe every passage of the Bible is inspired by an omniscient and morally

perfect God despite the fact that the Hebrew Bible represents God as commanding moral wrongdoing e.g. genocide. The story van Inwagen gives us is that God uses humans to convey His revelation knowing that their writings will significantly reflect their worldview rather than His worldview. God is prepared to allow this because He is slowly fashioning a new morality that more truly reflects His morality. This training first requires God to awaken in the Israelites the moral sensitivities needed to see how crooked they were. Once that has been achieved then He can train them into a new morality that more accurately reflects His perfect morality.

Van Inwagen then explains how effective this approach has been - he describes it as a very effective ‘meme’. It has persisted in history and spread geographically all over the world. Furthermore, it’s fruit can be

seen in the damage it has done to the casual brutality of the ancient world that saw nothing wrong in genocide. Through the progressive revelation of God’s desired morality found in the Bible, God has through his Spirit, working through the Bible, gradually straightened our moral timber. The Bible has profoundly influenced moralists in the world for good and even atheists function on its precepts. With regard to the question ‘why didn’t God make people able to receive the truth straightaway?’ van Inwagen freely admits he does not have an to that question.

Objection to the argument of the text

The concept of the Bible as a force for good is one that I would agree with and will explore in detail in the essay. Likewise, I accept that the morality required in the New Testament is significantly different to that of the Old Testament, (but that is more of a step change due to the work of Jesus on the cross which allowed God to pour out His Holy Spirit on believers, rather than the gradual progression that van Inwagen proposes). However, it is van Inwagen’s claim that the Hebrew Bible contains narratives in which God commands things that in reality He would never command, because they are morally wrong, that I must take

issue with. As Stump will argue with the case of the Amalekites (chapter 6) it is possible to see that the destruction of the Amalekites at that point in history was better for them in their eternal existence than their continuation to live a few more years on earth. Whilst this line of argument may appear very dangerous in that it could excuse any amount of morally objectionable activities, it is clear from the New Testament that the eternal is what counts not the present age (well illustrated in Jesus’s statement ‘what good is it for a person to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?’). In the context of eternity death is not such a big thing.

This teaching is most clearly expressed in the New Testament. It is given to Jesus to explain in some detail the eternal consequences of our actions. I disagree with Curley’s claim that this is a new teaching, because it is implicit in the Old Testament, but I agree that it is made much more explicit in the New Testament. However, it is interesting to note that Jesus firmly rejected the imposition of this truth by using the sword (John 18:36) - Christianity must not coerce faith by means of the state. This doctrine should provide a healthy check on the abuse of such a teaching - unfortunately this has not always been adhered to in the history of Christianity.

Development

A number of lines of development can come from this study. 1) The Bible as a force for good.

2) The reasons for different types of teaching between the Old and New Testaments.

3) The role of eternity in refining our understanding of what is morally good.

4) What relationship should Christianity have with the state.

Divine Evil (chap 2) - Curley (c) Annotated Bibliographies

Research question

Can we reconcile the biblical narratives with the idea that God is good? Hypothesis

Our limited capacities makes it very difficult if not impossible to answer this question.

Details of text

Bergmann, M., Murray, M. & Rae, M., Divine Evil (Oxford University Press, 2011) Chapter 2 Edwin Curley’s response to van Inwagen.

How the text relates to the research question

Curley is happy to agree with van Inwagen that the Bible represents God commanding things that are morally wrong e.g. Genocide. Therefore, the Bible is no longer a reliable source of moral guidance, which means its commands and prohibitions no longer deserve unconditional obedience.

Summary of the Text

Thesis Statement

If it can be agreed that the Bible represents God commanding things that are morally wrong e.g. Genocide then its commands and prohibitions no longer deserve unconditional obedience.

Argument

In many ways Curley is happy to accept van Inwagen’s position that the biblical accounts of God commanding genocide etc. are unreliable. His objection is that he is not sure van Inwagen’s co-religionists are likely to be so sanguine, as this position runs counter to their understanding of the accuracy of divine inspiration and the effectiveness of an omnipotent God in imparting moral lessons.

Interestingly Curley is concerned that this diminishing of the moral authority of scripture may have some unfortunate consequences as it does have very good things to say about some issues. However, Curley disagrees with van Inwagen that those ‘who criticize biblical morality get all their insights from biblical tradition’ (p89)

Objection to the argument of the text

In some ways it is difficult to object to Curley as I agree with him that van Inwagen’s defence of biblical inspiration is so weak that most of his co-religionists would find it unacceptable, therefore I want to concentrate on Curley’s interesting admission that Christianity has had some good things to say with regard to morality. He then goes on to question whether all of our moral insights come from the Bible. I often joke with the pupils I teach about whether the Vikings would have developed the Geneva convention on the treatment of prisoners unless they had first become Christians. I further develop this point by saying that the effect of Christianity over a thousand years on a nation can be seen in how it turned the Viking culture of the 9th century into the modern Swedish culture that produces Ikea furniture!

This point is explored in detail by Vishal Mangalwadi in his book ‘The Book that made your world - How the Bible created the soul of Western Civilisation’ (2011). In this book Mangalwadi describes how people inspired by the Bible and its teaching created the modern world by defining or redefining who we are and what it is to be human. The Bible also impacted a range of issues e.g. rationality, technology, heroism, morality, family, compassion, true wealth and liberty. In developing this

thesis Mangalwadi has the advantage of coming from a strong Hindu background in India. This means he can compare one completely different worldview with another and can thereby clearly see the differences. Our problem in being brought up in Western Europe is that the worldview we know has been Christianized for over 1000 years - so much so that even an outspoken atheist such as Richard Dawkin recognises that in many ways he is still a ‘cultural Christian’. Curley is right to say that not all his moral insights come Christianity, but I think he would be surprised how many of his insights do come from Christianity.

Development

Take up Curley’s challenge by isolating those moral insights that have no connection with Christianity (or only a weak connection) and evaluating how good they actually are and asking whether they are sustainable for this life and for the life to come in eternity. To take up van Inwagen’s challenge - would a secular version of the Bible be appealing to people of most times and for most cultures, or would our modern secular version of the Bible be little more than a temporary cultural mask that reflects our passing fancies.

Divine Evil (chap 3) - Fales (a) Annotated Bibliographies

Research question

Can we reconcile the biblical narratives with the idea that God is good? Hypothesis

Our limited capacities makes it very difficult if not impossible to answer this question.

Details of text

Bergmann, M., Murray, M. & Rae, M., Divine Evil (Oxford University Press, 2011) Chapter 3 Evan Fales - Satanic Verses.

How the text relates to the research question

If Fales is correct in concluding that the Bible cannot be a divine revelation, because of its seriously deficient morality, then this will cast doubt on whether the Bible is infallible.

Summary of the Text

Thesis Statement

Fales argues that the awful moral status of God, as presented in the scriptures, invalidates Locke’s claim that, alongside its authentication through the number and the quality of its miracles, the Bible also satisfies the criteria of divine revelation that it should not be inconsistent with the rules of morality.

Argument

Fales takes John Locke to task for arguing that the Bible satisfies the criteria for being trusted as a divine revelation. Firstly he believes Hume has successfully refuted the evidence for miracles. Secondly, he believes the representations of God’s activity we find in both the Old Testament and the New Testament seriously undermine the claim that the Bible is not inconsistent with the rules of morality.

Fales looks at three events, two the Old Testament and one in the New Testament, to illustrate his point. He believes the treatment of the Midianites and the Caananites are both morally repugnant and that Christian attempts to respond to these claims are inadequate. To illustrate this inadequacy Fales considers William Craigs five mitigating considerations and finds each of them unsatisfactory - indeed he finds them chilling.

Nor does Fales think Christians should find comfort in the New Testament, because the Christian doctrine of the atonement is ‘morally incoherent, psychologically damaging and practically dysfunctional’. Morally incoherent because penal substitution does not seem to make sense. Psychologically demoralising because we should take responsibility for dealing with our sins, rather than off load them to God through the cross. Practically dysfunctional because there is no evidence that Christians, taken collectively, are ethically superior to non-Christians.

Fales concludes by stating that the only way a believer can retain their belief in the inspiration of the scriptures is to retreat to a strong divine command theory. However, that would require a high price of Christians, as it would mean ‘abdicating the moral high ground from which Christian apologetes have traditionally attacked pagan religions’.

Objection to the argument of the text

With regard to the effectiveness of Hume’s line of attack against miracles I believe the work of Keener in detailing hundreds of miracles he has either observed, or has received detailed accounts from reliable sources (Keener 2011:266-267), makes a very powerful case against Hume’s skepticism. (With regard to my research the case for miracles is very important as the worldwide flood is an example of a miracle - or using Swinburne’s definition it is an example of a super miracle (Swinburne 2010:4)).

With the evidence for miracles being strong not weak as Fales believes it to be, we now face a problem. Fales clearly believes that the biblical narratives paint God as morally defective and that the only way a believer can retain their belief in the inspiration of scripture is by retreating into some form of strong divine command theory. Given our cultures current understanding of morality Fales has a strong point. God’s actions as recorded in the Bible appear morally wrong. The dilemma is that to set aside these narratives as either defective, part of a progressive revelation or claim they have been misunderstood seems implausible. Furthermore, as Carson observes in his introduction to the ‘Enduring Authority of the Christian Scriptures’, Coolridge, writing in 1841 despairing at peoples naivety, notes that ‘every denomination, Calvinist and Armenian, Quaker and Methodist and Established Church, and everywhere their principal arguments were grounded on the position that the Bible throughout was dictated by omniscience…’ (Carson 2016:22). As a hostile witness Coolridge supports the view that almost every part of the church in early 19th century Britain believed in the full inspiration of the Bible. Likewise, McCall in his article on ‘Wesleyan Theology and the Authority of Scripture’ finds that there is no grounds for believing early Wesleyan theologians did not hold to the classical account of scriptural authority. In fact they consistently upheld it when they make reference to such matters (Carson 2016:173). Furthermore, as Thompson establishes in his article ‘The Generous Gift of a Gracious Father: Toward a Theological Account of the Clarity of Scripture’, Jesus

was confident in the clarity of scripture and He not only expected His contemporaries to be familiar with the scriptures, but He also expected them to understand their meeting (Carson 2016:626-627).

Therefore, if the evidence for miracles points strongly to the veracity of the Bible and yet the plain reading of scripture, which church tradition for its first 1800 years upholds, leads us to conclude that the God we find in the Biblical narratives is not, by our current understanding of morality, a good God, then we will need to wrestle with these passages and in so doing find out more about who God is and who we are.

Development

Using Keener's work, reestablish the credibility of the argument from miracles as one of the primary proofs of the divine inspiration and potential infallibility of the Bible. Also explore how we can reconcile the moral impasse between our current perception of the morality of God’s actions and God’s self revelation to Moses that He was good (Exodus 34:6-7).

Divine Evil (Chap 3) - Alvin Plantinga (b) Annotated Bibliographies Research question

Can we reconcile the biblical narratives with the idea that God is good? Hypothesis

Our limited capacities makes it very difficult if not impossible to answer this question.

Details of text

Bergmann, M., Murray, M. & Rae, M., Divine Evil (Oxford University Press, 2011) Chapter 3 Evan Fales - Satanic Verses.

How the text relates to the research question

Plantinga’s argument for ‘skeptical theism’ potentially provides the most useful line of defence against the accusation that God is a moral monster, if I wish to assert the accuracy of the historical narratives found in the Old Testament.

Summary of the Text

Thesis Statement

With regard to the Old Testament narratives that imply genocide Plantinga argues that ‘whatever God did, he must indeed have a good reason, even if we can’t see what that reason is’ (p113). With respect to the moral incoherence of the atonement Plantinga suggests the problem lies with the fallibility of our moral intuitions.

Argument

Plantinga initially accuses Fales of creative hermeneutics with regard to the Midianites, but ultimately accepts that the narratives involving the destruction of the Canaanites (Deuteronomy 7:1-5 & 20:16-18) and the Amalekites (1 Samuel 15:1-3) provide initial grounds for an accusation that God ordered genocide. His response is to suggest a list of four epistemic possibilities.

1) Take the stories at face value and argue that in the light of eternity there is moral wisdom in these commands.

2) Argue that the New Testament supersedes the Old Testament. 3) These morally repugnant stories should not be taken at face value. Just as we do not take the story of the rich man and Lazarus at face value.

4) Recognise that not all scripture should accepted as literal events that took place in history - Plantinga’s example is that of Job.

Plantinga argues that whilst each of these is potentially valid none seems completely satisfactory. In the end he argues that just as Job was not given the reason for why he was suffering, so we are in a place of not fully understanding God’s reasons for what he does. However, we have the comfort of knowing that the God who we worship is the God who sent his son to suffer and die for us. Therefore, even if we cannot understand God’s reasons for everything, in the cross we have evidence that God is a God of supreme love.

With regard to the atonement Plantinga argues that whilst it may seem strange for A the injured party to accept B’s payment for C’s debt, this changes when we realise that A is not just another human, but God himself. If God accepts that Jesus paid the debt for sin then Jesus does, even if this goes against our moral intuitions. Plantinga argues that our moral intuitions are not infallible. For example, our forefathers thought sexual sins appalling, whilst our generation takes a relaxed attitude to sexual sins but finds intolerance appalling. This means we have to be

open to the possibility that some of our moral intuitions may not be accurate.

Objection to the argument of the text

Plantinga’s response to the difficult passages in the Bible can appear too glib. At the end of Job God makes the following comment on Job that is very intriguing.

‘After the Lord had spoken these words to Job, the Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite: “ My anger burns against you and against your two friends, for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has…”

Job 42:7

I do not think God was just referring to Job’s admission in verses 1 to 6 of chapter 42, that he was in the state of ignorance which Plantinga refers to in his defence of God, when he commends Job for speaking ‘what is right’. It seems that God valued Job’s wrestling with the dilemma he faced - which was how to reconcile God’s righteousness with his current suffering, considering he had done so much throughout his life to ensure he was right with God. This concept of wrestling with God seems to be a feature of scripture, one which I want to explore more in the essay. I think Plantinga is correct to say that the ultimate reasons for suffering may not be knowable, but the indications from scripture are that God wants us to wrestle with this problem and in doing so enter more fully into an understanding of who he is.

Development

Explore the scriptures that imply God wants us to wrestle with him and then consider why he might desire such wrestling.

Divine Evil (Chap 3) - Evan Fales (c) Annotated Bibliographies Research question

Can we reconcile the biblical narratives with the idea that God is good? Hypothesis

Our limited capacities makes it very difficult if not impossible to answer this question.

Details of text

Bergmann, M., Murray, M. & Rae, M., Divine Evil (Oxford University Press, 2011) Chapter 3 Evan Fales - Satanic Verses.

How the text relates to the research question

How useful are our moral intuitions in understanding God’s actions. Summary of the Text

Thesis Statement

Fales believes a chasm exists between his moral intuitions and the moral intuitions of those who wish to support the Christian message of salvation - however he remains committed to the attempt to bridge it.

Argument

Fales addresses three issues from Plantinga’s response. Firstly, he argues that Plantinga is a bit hypocritical when accuses Fales of ‘creative hermeneutics’, since Plantinga is also flirting with ‘creative

hermeneutics’ when he quotes Craigs justification of the slaughter of the Canaanite children. Fales believes this type of justification, involving an afterlife, is alien to the worldview encapsulated in the Pentateuch. Secondly, Fales wants to stress that his rejection of Old Testament morality and the Christian plan of salvation was not meant to condemn the moral judgment of Christian, but to explain that he could not accept their position. Finally, whilst recognising the reasonableness of Plantinga’s strategy of trying to interpret the difficult passages against the knowledge of divine love revealed in Christ’s life and death, he marshals two arguments against this proposition.

1) The ‘kingdom of heaven’ should not be ‘built upon the unexpiated tears of one innocent child’.

2) The Passion did not happen nor did the gospel writers mean to assert that it did happen.

Objection to the argument of the text

The issue of whether the ‘kingdom of heaven’ can be built on the unexpiated tears of one innocent child will be the subject of the essay so I will leave discussion of that to later, instead I want to consider Fales extraordinary claim that the Passion did not happen and that the writers of the gospels did not mean to convey that impression. Obviously if I wish to claim the worldwide flood was a real event I will want to argue that the Passion was likewise a real event.

In his book ‘The Resurrection of God Incarnate’ Swinburne estimated the probability of the resurrection of Christ, using Bayes Theorem, was 100 over 103 - which means it was almost a certainty (p213). Even Gerd Ludemann, who does not believe in a literal resurrection, in his critical study of the New Testament texts, comes to the belief that most of the elements of the Passion took place (What Really Happened to Jesus p132-134). As to the claim that the writers of the gospels did not intend to imply the events of the Passion took place, I wonder what evidence Fales has to support that conclusion. N.T. Wright in his book ‘The

Resurrection of the Son of God’ argues that theories based on what the early church was thinking about when they put together the gospels can only be based on elaborate guesswork. He states that ‘when traditio-historical study builds castles in the air, the ordinary historian need not feel a second class citizen for refusing to rent space in them’ (p19) or as Alster McGrath puts it ‘Biblical critics often seem to overlook the sheer provisionality of scholarship’ (A Passion for Truth p100). Therefore, Fales claim that the events of the Passion did not happen, or that the writers of the gospels did not mean to imply they happened, suggests the chasm Fales was referring to may extend beyond our moral intuitions, it may also extend to what constitutes reasonable grounds for believing an event happened in the past.

Development

Examine, and if possible establish, what constitutes reasonable evidence for one to have warranted belief that an event happened in the past, because ultimately I will want to make the case that we have such evidence for the worldwide flood.

Divine Evil (Chap 4) - John Hare (a) Annotated Bibliographies Research question

Can we reconcile the biblical narratives with the idea that God is good? Hypothesis

Our limited capacities makes it very difficult if not impossible to answer this question.

Details of text

Bergmann, M., Murray, M. & Rae, M., Divine Evil (Oxford University Press, 2011) Chapter 4 John Hare - Animal Sacrifices

How the text relates to the research question

How useful are our moral intuitions in understanding God’s actions. Summary of the Text

Thesis Statement

Hare believes the Hebrew vision of animals involved a certain level of dignity and that their sacrificial system was part of a developmental process that God used in an appropriate way and in which he ensured a level of animal welfare in the process.

Argument

Hare addresses the issue of ‘violence, vengeance and victimage’ against animals in the Bible by exploring three aspects of this problem.

1) Hebrew scriptures treatment of animals in general.

2) Sacrificial use of animals

3) Ritual and its relation to metaphor

Based on the Hebrew scriptures animals originally had a protected status and they were all vegetarian (Gen 1 & 2). Also in their future state after the second coming the animal kingdom will return to vegetarianism (Isaiah 11). Furthermore the covenant after the flood (Genesis 9) was to the animal world as well as Noah. Even the killing and eating of animals had restrictions and was only allowed after the flood. The Old Testament also has regulations to ensure animal welfare which lead the writers of the Talmud to declare that we had a duty to ‘relieve the suffering of all living beings’.

With regards to animal sacrifice, Hare wants to understand it in its own terms and not as part of an evolutionary process and for that he proposes three models.

1) An imitation of God.

2) An attempt to attract and maintain the presence of God. 3) An expiation of ritual purity and sin.

The sacrificial system imitates God because the method of sacrifice imitates Gods shepherding of our lives. So just as God in his providence brings us to death, but does not consume our essential life, so the sacrificer brings the animal to death, but does not consume the blood which represents the life of the animal, instead they offer it back to God.

The sacrificial system also attracts the presence of God, not particularly because he likes sacrifices - there are many scriptures that at best indicate that he is ambivalent to sacrifices - but the sacrificial spirit of a broken and contrite heart He does respond to, and it is that spirit coupled with obedience in carrying out sacrifices that attracts God’s presence.

The expiation of ritual purity and sin is achieved through an evaluative transfer in a way that is similar to an ambassador signing a document on

behalf of their country. Since the animal is part of the house of the person who is either ritually impure, or has sinned, the animal can affect an evaluative transfer. Hare believes that for this evaluative transfer to lead to justified vicarious transfer or substitutionary punishment there would need to be consent - which in the case for Christ was given. Therefore animal sacrifice was a temporary solution and once Christ died, no longer required. Hare goes on to justify the temporary nature of the sacrifice by appealing to Maimonodes answer which says that God used animal sacrifice as this was already our habit when the Mosaic laws were being established.

Hare’s final reflections on this topic was to compare our own treatment of animals in factory farms, and for research with the Jewish treatment with its much more wholesome approach providing a relatively painless method of killing and through this sacrificial system elevating the status of the animal to a high office as it represented them before God. For Hare these points do not justify animal sacrifice, but makes it more intelligible. These sacrifices can be seen as an enacted metaphor.

Objections to the argument of the text

With regard to the treatment of animals in the Bible Hare could have also referred to other Hebrew scriptures that point to the whole of creation being subject to God’s care. In Romans 8:19-22 we see that creation was “subjected to futility, not willingly but because of Him who subjected it in hope”. Ultimately creation will be released from corruption. We see from the comments of Jesus that whilst we are highly valued, because we are made in God’s image, creation is also valued - the sparrows are known by God and God takes delight in clothing the lilies of the field. As Stump paints it in her interpretation of Job, God not only impressed Job with his power as creator, but he also reminds Job of His playful delight in creation. The verse in Romans 8 indicate a covenant between God and his creation in which their temporary futility will be rewarded in the glorious consummation in the sons of God, and as long as the sacrifices

of Israel further that objective then God will not be breaking his covenant with creation. (I will explore this issue in more detail in the essay).

Development

Explore the significance of God’s relationship to creation and particularly to animals and how this relates to the extinction of most animals in the worldwide flood.

Divine Evil (Chap 4) - James L. Crenshaw (b) Annotated Bibliographies

Research question

Can we reconcile the biblical narratives with the idea that God is good? Hypothesis

Our limited capacities makes it very difficult if not impossible to answer this question.

Details of text

Bergmann, M., Murray, M. & Rae, M., Divine Evil (Oxford University Press, 2011) Chapter 4 John Hare - Animal Sacrifices

How the text relates to the research question

How useful are our moral intuitions in understanding God’s actions. Summary of the Text

Thesis Statement

Crenshaw believes that all three pillars of Hare’s arguments in favour of the biblical treatment of animals are weak and they are easily capable of being refuted.

Argument

Crenshaw recognises that Hare’s response to the issue of ‘violence, vengeance and victimage’ against animals in the Bible rests on three pillars

1) Hebrew scriptures treatment of animals in general.

2) Sacrificial use of animals.

3) Ritual and its relation to metaphor.

Crenshaw believes none of these pillars can withstand close scrutiny. He notes that a number of Hare’s examples are either clearly fictional (the example of the lamb in the parable told by Nathan to David), or they are mythological (the book of Jonah). Whilst Crenshaw accepts the story of Adam and Eve implies vegetarianism he believes the implied vegetarianism of the paradise to come has more to do with human security than animal welfare. Crenshaw also rejects the idea that all animal sacrifices were of household animals - citing the example of Abraham sacrificing a ram caught in a thicket in the sacrifice of Isaac and the thousand animals sacrificed by Solomon at Gibeon.

With regard to the second pillar Crenshaw believes there is no moral gap that requires animal sacrifice because based on the Old Testament picture of God humans are more moral than he is (p141). As for the holiness gap Crenshaw considers this demand is impossible to meet and he supports Kant in believing that the blood of animals cannot be expected to take away human guilt.

Likewise Crenshaw takes issue with the third pillar which was the idea of sacrifice bringing near the divine presence because it provides a means of imitating God. He objects firstly on the grounds that unlike humans who can only kill, God can bring to life, which makes a big moral difference to this action of sacrifice. Secondly, Crenshaw notes that the blessings accruing to the divine presence are problematic, observing that it brought torture to Job and could result through God’s displeasure in the Israelites eating their own children (Leviticus 26:29). In the end Crenshaw observes that whilst the Hebrew treatment of animals may be marginally more merciful than our modern treatment of animals, it would require a redefinition of ‘good’ to suggest a deity who required the type of animal sacrifice we see in the Old Testament could be called ‘good’.

Objections to the argument of the text

From the outset Crenshaw expresses concern that Hare is misusing scripture by not casting his net wide enough, and by not paying due regard to genre, ‘which provides clues to subtle nuances’ (p141). Unfortunately Crenshaw’s treatment of scripture often lacks the very understanding of subtle nuances which he accuses Hare of. For example Crenshaw claims that the presence of God was for Job a form of torture which he sought in vain (p142). Whilst it is true that Job was experiencing a form of chastisement at the hands of God, and as Proverbs notes no chastisement is enjoyable, none-the-less it is a sign of God’s love to receive such correction (Proverbs 3:11-12). As Stump notes, the language of God to Job (Job 38-41) is rich in nuances that show forth God’s love to his creation and by implication his love to Job. It is also clear by Job’s reaction that he understood this (Stump likened this to a scenario where the president of the United States personally came to the house of a politics lecturer to defend his policies against the lecturer’s criticisms - whilst on one level this might seem overwhelming on another level it showed the incredible high regard the president felt for this lecturer that he cared enough to justify himself in person, furthermore such a visit would be a source of great social prestige in the community for the lecturer (Stump 2010:195)). Confirmation of the validity of Stump’s postion can be seen in God’s vindication of Job before his friends and community which powerfully showed God’s abundant favour towards Job. That Crenshaw thought Job had sought God’s presence in vain is hard to reconcile to any reasonable interpretation of Job considering it clearly states in Job 42:12 that ‘the Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning…’.

Another example of Crenshaw’s unsympathetic handling of the Bible can be seen in his attempt to imply that seeking the Lord’s presence is not something to be wanted because it could lead to him starving you into the plight of eating your own children (p142). There may be moral issues surrounding this passage in Leviticus 26, but to relate it to desiring the presence of God shows a strange regard to the subtle nuances of

scripture. This part of the chapter in Leviticus is all about people who have repeatedly over many centuries rejected any meaningful desire to seek the presence of God, therefore it implies the opposite of what Crenshaw uses this passage for.

Both these expositions of scripture suggest Crenshaw is so prejudiced against God that he cannot treat the Bible in a reasonable fashion. It would seem to me to be one of the first requirements of rational discourse is that you should make an accurate account of positions taken even if you disagree with them, and I find Crenshaw’s treatment of the Bible fails that test.

Development

Clarify to what extent it is a requirement of rational discourse that you should give an accurate account of positions taken even if you disagree with them.

Divine Evil (Chap 4) - John Hare (c) Annotated Bibliographies Research question

Can we reconcile the biblical narratives with the idea that God is good? Hypothesis

Our limited capacities makes it very difficult if not impossible to answer this question.

Details of text

Bergmann, M., Murray, M. & Rae, M., Divine Evil (Oxford University Press, 2011) Chapter 4 John Hare - Animal Sacrifices

How the text relates to the research question

How useful are our moral intuitions in understanding God’s actions. Summary of the Text

Thesis Statement

Hare believes Crenshaw has failed to interpret scripture correctly therefore Hare’s arguments are still valid. Furthermore, Crenshaw has not appreciated the full significance of Maimonides defence of God’s use of animal sacrifices.

Argument

Hare initially takes issue with Crenshaw for misunderstanding his use of scripture. Firstly, Hare was not intending to use Nathan’s story or the story of Jonah as historically accurate, his point was a conceptual one - namely that the Israelites considered animals to be part of the

household. Secondly, Hare does not agree with Crenshaw that the sacrifices involved in Solomon’s thousand burnt offerings at Gibeon or the sacrifices of Job’s friends, were of non-household animals. Therefore Hare believes his account of animal sacrifice being that of household animals is still valid.

Likewise, Hare believes that the prophetic scriptures referring to the fate of animals at the end times is not about human security as Crenshaw states, but it is about vegetarianism, since the scriptures explicitly refer to the juxtaposition of predator animals with their prey.

However, Hare’s main point is a defence of Maimonides claim that God permitted animal sacrifice because at that time in human development this was the most appropriate way of expressing certain truths, since humans in this period of history were accustomed to such sacrifices. Therefore, for Hare, ‘God’s commands, like those of human parents to their children, are given in relation to our development’ (p146).

Objections to the argument of the text

Like Hare I take issue with almost every interpretation of scripture Crenshaw uses and have seriously questioned whether his use of scripture is reasonable. However, my objection with Hare lies with his use of Maimonides defence that animal sacrifice was essentially a concession. There is a rich tradition in Christian teaching that sees animal sacrifice as a pattern of the sacrifice of Christ. As the writer of the book of Hebrews points out the sacrificial system instituted by Moses was a pattern of things to come (Hebrews 8:5). In John’s gospel Jesus is explicitly referred to as ‘The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’. The killing of an animal to make skins to cover the nakedness of Adam and Eve; the choice of Abel’s sacrifice of a lamb over Cain’s vegetarian offering; the unusual request for the sacrifice of Isaac, which was eventually replaced by the sacrifice of a ram, thus fulfilling Abraham’s prophetic claim that ‘God will provide for himself the lamb for the burnt offering’ (Genesis 22:8), all point to the idea that animal

sacrifice was a deliberate choice by God designed to both highlight the seriousness of sin, and the need for the ultimate sacrifice of his son to address this problem of sin. These issues I will explore in more depth in the essay.

Development

Explore how God might justify the use of animal sacrifices as a type of Christ’s death.

Divine Evil (Chap 5) - Mark C. Murphy (a) Annotated Bibliographies Research question

Can we reconcile the biblical narratives with the idea that God is good? Hypothesis

Our limited capacities makes it very difficult if not impossible to answer this question.

Details of text

Bergmann, M., Murray, M. & Rae, M., Divine Evil (Oxford University Press, 2011) Chapter 5 Mark C. Murphy - God Beyond Justice.

How the text relates to the research question

How useful are our moral intuitions in understanding God’s actions. Summary of the Text

Thesis Statement

Murphy argues that ‘God and humans do not, by nature, share a diakological order, and it is only in sharing such an order that the possibility of wrongdoing arises’ (p163). However, God does to some extent enter our diakological order when he is in a cooperative relationship with humans.

Argument

Murphy makes a distinction between two claims concerning God’s treatment of the Jerichoites:

1) God acted wrongly with respect to the Jerichoites in the destruction of Jericho

2) God wronged the Jerichoites in the destruction of Jericho Murphy suggests that the truth of (1) does not entail the truth of (2).

Initially Murphy discusses claim (2) by speaking positively about the skeptical theistic position that we are not in a position to judge God’s actions, because we are not ‘well positioned to assess whether there are goods that justify the permission of those evils’ (p155) - such as the destruction of Jericho. For him this skeptical theistic position allows him to argue that claim (1) is impossible to prove since we are not in a position to assess its validity. However, his main argument against claim (2) rests on the premise that the people of Jericho do not share the same diakological order as God and where such a situation exists it is meaningless to talk of God wronging the Jerichoites. He rejects Darwell’s claim that our second-person relationship to God means that it is possible to be wronged by God, because Murphy thinks it is implausible to believe there are any ‘prior norms’ that mean that if God orders certain actions this counts as wronging the people concerned. Murphy also rejects Thompson’s claim that at some level God and humans share a diakological order, because he does not believe that they are linked by a set of norms that have a common source.

However, Murphy does think if God enters into a cooperative venture with humans, then it becomes coherent to describe what it would be for God to wrong that group of humans. (In the case of the Old Testament that would be the Isrealites.) He concludes by admitting that whilst he may have saved God from the charge of wronging the Jerichoites, God can still be accused by other humans of being the sort of God that we should not show allegiance to, because we would be wronging our fellow humans by doing so. Murphy’s response to this claim is to say that because God loves all of us that makes all the difference. We may not understand why God does things the way he does, but we must trust

that he has reasons and that our lack of knowledge about those reasons is to be expected.

Objections to the argument of the text

Using the biblical narratives, from God’s perspective the diakological divide between God and humans is almost unbridgeable and it appears humans also understand that. Therefore, when God speaks directly from Mount Sinai, it is the humans who beg him to stop (Exodus 20:19). When Moses asks God to show him his glory God replies “you cannot see my face, for no-one may see me and live” (Exodus 33:20). God’s reply to Job also spells out the unbridgeable nature of the diakological divide between even righteous Job and God, and one would have assumed that Job was in the type of cooperative venture that Murphy felt did imply some coherence to the claim that God could wrong Job. A frequent analogy used in the Bible is to refer to us as clay and God as a Potter (e.g. Isaiah 29:16 & Jeremiah 18:1-9), which implies a significant diakological divide. This theme is also explored in the New Testament when Paul discusses whether God has acted unjustly in his dealings with Essau and with the Pharaoh of the Exodus. For both situations Paul refers to Isaiah 29:16 when he states ‘But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’” Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?’ (Romans 9:20-21).

Even the incarnation, which Murphy did imply had brought about a change in the diakological gap between God and man, does not have the immediate effect that Murphy seems to give it. Jesus makes it clear to all that he is good and they are not. He also makes it clear to Nicodemus (John 3:10-15) and later to the crowds in Jerusalem (John 8:42-56) that he had experienced the ‘Beatific Vision’ and they have not. Jesus is under no illusion that there is a diakological gap between himself and those he was amongst. This diakological divide is only bridged by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that believers could

experience after the day of Pentecost. (So significant was this indwelling that Jesus said that even the least of these believers was greater than greatest Old Testament prophet (Matthew 11:11)). However, even this indwelling is only a downpayment for the full experience of bridging this vast diakological divide. It is the final ‘Beatific Vision’ that will forever end this gap, or as John puts it ‘we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is’ (1 John 3:2).

However in fairness to Murphy there is a situation where God does enter into a special type of cooperative arrangement with humans that God does feel obliged to fulfill and these come in the form of covenants. Some are conditional, however others are unconditional. For example the covenant with Noah stated that God would never flood the earth again (Genesis 9:11). Likewise God promised never to reject the descendants of Israel despite all they had done (Jeremiah 32:17).

Development

Explore the implications of the diakological divide from God’s perspective.

Divine Evil (Chap 5) - Wes Morriston (b) Annotated Bibliographies

Research question

Can we reconcile the biblical narratives with the idea that God is good?

Hypothesis

Our limited capacities makes it very difficult if not impossible to answer this question.

Details of text

Bergmann, M., Murray, M. & Rae, M., Divine Evil (Oxford University Press, 2011) Chapter 5 Mark C. Murphy - God Beyond Justice.

How the text relates to the research question

How useful are our moral intuitions in understanding God’s actions.

Summary of the Text

Thesis Statement

The Jerichoites are God’s children and therefore at some level are worthy of respect and therefore capable of being wronged by God.

Argument

Morriston believes Murphy’s claim that God’s purposes in exterminating the Jerichoites is beyond our knowledge is untenable, because the Bible makes it all to clear why the people of Jericho were to be killed. Furthermore, whilst the claim that we have no evidence that the killing of men, women and children caused ‘psychological damage’ to the Israelites is probably correct, that lack of effect suggests that God’s law

given 40 years previously had produced very little effect in raising the moral level of God’s chosen people. However, Morriston’s main line of attack is the claim that God cannot wrong the people of Jericho, because they are not in a cooperative relationship with Him.

For Morriston, in virtue of their being created as ‘living, breathing, self-conscious, free agents’, the people of Jericho deserve to be respected. Instead, as far as Morriston is concerned there is no evidence that God shows them any love and his treatment of the Jerichoites fails to meet our ‘bedrock moral intuitions’, because the slaughter of the Jeriochites for the reasons of ‘Lebensraum’ is a clear example of a gross injustice. Therefore the people of Jericho have been wronged.

Objections to the argument of the text

Morriston claims that the Hebrew Bible furnishes no examples of God showing love to the people of Jericho. That is a big claim and there are examples that show this statement is invalid. Firstly all people on earth experience the general love of God whether they are wicked or good. As Paul states ‘nevertheless God did not leave Himself without witness, in that He did good, gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness’ (Acts 14:17). I for one am very grateful for how pleasant to our senses is the food we eat. God has made many aspects of our life incredibly enjoyable. The beauty of all of his creation, the landscapes, the trees and flowers, the skies with their clouds and sunsets all gladden the heart. There is much about life that we take for granted, but it has been designed to be enjoyed. As Lewis puts it in the ‘Screwtape Letters’ it is God that invented pleasure. The people of Jericho were blessed with all these things. However, we know from the Bible that God was not willing to dispossess the people of Jericho until their wickedness had reached a point at which the type of judgement God planned became appropriate. It would be over 400 years from when God promised the land to Abraham till Joshua was commanded to take it and the reason for this delay was that the ‘iniquity

of the Amorites was not yet complete’ (Genesis 15:16). The type of judgment executed on the Canaanites was very rare and could only take place when the culture in question had reached a level of iniquity that allowed God to bring about such a punishment. Further evidence of God’s love for the people of Jericho can be seen in the very public approach the army of judgment. It is clear from Rehab’s conversation with the spies that the people of Jericho knew judgment was coming (Joshua 2:9-11). They had every chance to repent as the people of Nineveh did and thus save their city from destruction (Jonah 3), or they could have fled to another location, or as Rehab did strike up a deal with the Israelites (something the Gibeonites also rather cleverly did - Joshua 9). The public proclamation of judgment is an act of love designed to bring about repentance. The proof that God honours such repentance can be seen in not only the protection given to Rehab and her whole household (Joshua 6:22-23), but in the fact the she is included in the Messianic genealogy (Matthew 1:5).

Therefore, Morriston’s claim that the Hebrew Bible gives no examples of God showing love to the Jerichoites is not valid and this betrays a certain lack of empathy for the God of the Bible that seems to be a common characteristic of the four philosophers, (Anthony, Curley, Fales and Morriston) I have studied so far. It appears to be based on assurance that they are right in their shared indignation against God, because he has violated some deeply held ‘bedrock moral intuitions’. In the essay I will want to discuss this accusation in more detail.

Development

Develop arguments that would encourage the opponents of theism to explore the wisdom of being more empathetic towards God.

Divine Evil (Chap 5) - Mark C. Murphy (c) Annotated Bibliographies Research question

Can we reconcile the biblical narratives with the idea that God is good? Hypothesis

Our limited capacities makes it very difficult if not impossible to answer this question.

Details of text

Bergmann, M., Murray, M. & Rae, M., Divine Evil (Oxford University Press, 2011) Chapter 5 Mark C. Murphy - God Beyond Justice.

How the text relates to the research question

How useful are our moral intuitions in understanding God’s actions. Summary of the Text

Thesis Statement

Murphy confirms that the diakological divide between the Jerichoites and God is too great to coherently talk of God wronging them, but that since the incarnation that diakological divide has to some extent been bridged.

Argument

In response to Morriston’s article Murphy makes three points. Firstly, he clarifies that his use of skeptical theism was to set aside the possibility of our being in a position to judge whether God acted wrongly with respect to the Jerichoites without wronging them. His argument is that whilst the

Bible supplies some of the reasons God has revealed to us for why the Jerichoites were destroyed, we are in no position to know the ‘complete reasons’, because we are not God and therefore do not have access to

all the knowledge and understanding that he has. Secondly, Murphy argues that prior to the incarnation the only way the diakological divide between God and humans could be bridged is through cooperative activity and since that bridging of the divide is only partial it does not imply, as Morriston suggests, that since God is in diakological connection with some humans he is in diakological connection with all humans. However, with the incarnation, Murphy believes there does now exist a universal connection, because we now share with God a common nature. Finally, Murphy is in agreement with Morriston that our hearts should go out in sympathy with the Jerichoites. He believes we should have solidarity with them, because we are sinners just as they are. However, that does not mean we should ‘look accusingly at God’, because he is acting in his judicial capacity and we should respect his right to pass judgment - just as a wife would respect the judges right to execute judgment on her husband, yet actively desire that the judgment should not take place.

Objections to the argument of the text

As I will deal with Murphy’s first two points in the essay I will concentrate on his third point about having sympathy with the Jerichoites. I am not sure that is a valid position. For example in law, as we have seen in the recent trials for terrorist bombings, the expectation is that close family members should not protect each other from justice. Likewise, showing acts kindness to family members by sending money to them if they are in Syria fighting for ISIS is deemed a criminal offence. We see similar prohibitions across the board in all criminal activities. This goes beyond the realm of law and extends to public revulsion to certain crimes, for example peadophilia, where there is little sympathy for the perpetrators of such crimes and an expectation that family members of the perpetrators would also share that revulsion (I also strongly suspect the Jerochoites may have been involved in that level of activity). Interestingly

there was a recent documentary about the children of senior Nazis involved in the extermination of the Jews. It explored how they struggled to come to grips with the crimes of their parents and for some of them this involved confessing the crimes of their parents and seeking reconciliation. What it did not involve was their having sympathy for their parents. Whilst it is useful to understand why people do evil things, it is not wise to promote sentimental sympathy for people when they receive the appropriate judgement for their actions. We do not know what the crimes of the Jerichoites were, but we do know that God waited 400 years before their iniquity reached the point where he felt he had to act (Genesis 15:16). The good news is that God does not desire that anyone should perish but that all should come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9). An example of this good news can be seen in the book ‘The cross and the Swastika’, where the army chaplain assigned to the senior Nazis on trial at Nuremberg, discovered that God was willing to grant salvation to a significant number of the prisoners he ministered to. Interestingly this was also replicated with the army chaplain to the senior Japenesse war criminals when they were put on trial. The statue on top of the Old Bailey is blindfolded to show that Justice is impartial, however mercy is a free gift available to all - John 3:16.

Development

Develop an account of wickedness that both establishes its awfulness yet allows for the operation of mercy.

Divine Evil (Chap 6) - Eleonore Stump (a) Annotated Bibliographies Research question

Can we reconcile the biblical narratives with the idea that God is good? Hypothesis

Our limited capacities makes it very difficult if not impossible to answer this question.

Details of text

Bergmann, M., Murray, M. & Rae, M., Divine Evil (Oxford University Press, 2011) Chapter 6 Eleonore Stump - The Problem of Evil and the History of Peoples: Think Amalek.

How the text relates to the research question

How useful are our moral intuitions in understanding God’s actions. Summary of the Text

Thesis Statement

Stump believes there are alternative interpretations of the Amalekite narratives that do not either destroy the concept of the inspiration of scripture or undermine the possibility of theism.

Argument

Stump sets out the problem by considering the case of the Amalekites in which God commands the destruction of a people group - men women and children along with all their animals. She then explores the problems

attached to potential responses to this narrative. If we deny the divine inspiration of this passage of scripture or completely allegorise it, then in all probability we will ultimately lose confidence in the divine inspiration of the rest of scripture, as we will have no objective method for assessing which parts are inspired and which are not. However, to reject entirely the inspiration of scripture, though the preferred outcome of many modern commentators, is potentially an over hasty response given that the scriptures form an important part of more than one monotheistic religion. Thus before we adopt either of these approaches we need to examine this narrative very carefully.

In her attempt to do this Stump invites us to conduct a thought experiment by considering a universe in which humans live eternally and God desires them to be in union with himself, however as we have free will, he cannot force that union. Furthermore, for humans there is an objective standard of morality which God expects us to adhere to, which includes the forbidding of murder and ‘mandates a certain standard of care for animals’ (p182). Stump also states that in this possible world any suffering experienced by individuals must be ‘defeated by benefits that accrue to him from his suffering’ (p183). One final assumption in her thought experiment is that the moral condition of the Amalekites is such that God knowing the future direction of their moral decline ‘judges it better for the Amalekites to cease existing as a people’ (p185). Using such a thought experiment Stump concludes that the narrative of the Amalekites we find in the Bible does not have to lead us to the conclusion that God has acted unjustly.

Stump then explores the claim that it was morally indefensible for God to ask the Israelites to kill the Amalekites. She asks whether this order, though morally permissible for the reasons previously suggested, involved the moral corruption of the Israelites asked to carry it out. If God wants a people to cease to exist there are examples in Sodom and the great flood which show God is quite capable of doing this without human intervention. Stump sees a pattern in the Old Testament where the punishment of wrongdoing involves the community. Though this process

at first seems inefficient as a form of keeping moral order, when seen in the context of God’s desire for us to experience union with him, this process can be seen as formational in achieving that objective .1 However, even this process appears to be a failure since the Israelites end up committing the same sins as the Amalekites. At this point Stump does a quick review of God’s dealings with humans throughout the Old Testament period and concludes that this type of apparent failure is a common theme. Her response to this is to suggest that this was God’s purpose so that we could through repeated failure ultimately accept the only truly successful way to achieve union with God, or on a more limited level we can learn ‘what will not work to enable a people to become just, good, and loving’ (p197).

Objections to the argument of the text

Stump’s observation about the apparent failure of God’s remedies to bad human behaviour appears to be very perceptive, however I am not sure her explanation is valid. Firstly, it is not clear that people have used these narratives for that purpose. These narratives have been used to warn us against breaking God’s laws as Paul points out and for illustrating the weakness of the human condition (1 Corinthians 10:1-13). We also know from Paul that the law was not only used to point us to appropriate standards of moral behaviour, but was also used to show us our need of a saviour, because of our inability to obey the law without the power of the Holy Spirit (Romans 7:7-25 & Galatians 3:19-25). Therefore, without a clear record within scripture or church history that Stump’s interpretation was being used for the purpose that she suggests, then we would have to observe that yet again God appears to have failed in successfully carrying out his purposes , since we have ignored his subtle reason for allowing us to fail so often. The second reason for questioning Stump’s interpretation of why God allows repeated failure is that scripture already hints at alternative interpretation. In Job we see that the outcome for Job and his family are

1 As an aside Stump also notes that the destruction of the Amalekites would not have been as morally corrupting as some have suggested as this was not an isolated example of violence - the Israelites would have been used to warfare.

related to a conversation in heaven (Job 1-2). Likewise, Paul refers to the church as a demonstration of God’s ‘manifold wisdom … to principalities and powers in the heavenly places’ (Ephesians 3:10). For Paul the life of a Christian involves a spiritual battle where the reality of principalities and powers is greater than the conflicts we may have with other people (2 Corinthians 10:3-5 & Ephesian 6:11-12). There is a sense that God is in conversation with the spirit world as well as the human world in his dealings with humans. Therefore, whilst God’s judgments against the antediluvian world, Sodom, the Cannanities and the Amalekites are morally righteous, they also play out against a spiritual reality where these actions are also relevant and have meaning2 - particularly the repeated failures. Whilst such an approach to reality appears unbelievably complex, to God this level of interrelatedness is not exceptional . Therefore I would like to expand Stump’s putative

world to include the role of ‘principalities and powers’.

Development

Explore why God would allow the repeated failures discussed by Stump - my initial reaction is that it is in part a demonstration to ‘principalities and powers’ and ultimately to humans of the total disaster that sin is and that it is a vindication of God’s remedy for it. 2 An analogy would be a game of 3 D chess.

3 We now realise that the DNA also functions in a multi-dimensional space.

https://creation.com/four-dimensional-genome

4In literature this is explored in C S Lewis’s book ‘The Screwtape Letters’

Divine Evil (Chap 6) - Paul Draper (b) Annotated Bibliographies

Research question

Can we reconcile the biblical narratives with the idea that God is good?

Hypothesis

Our limited capacities makes it very difficult if not impossible to answer this question.

Details of text

Bergmann, M., Murray, M. & Rae, M., Divine Evil (Oxford University Press, 2011) Chapter 6 Eleonore Stump - The Problem of Evil and the History of Peoples: Think Amalek.

How the text relates to the research question

How useful are our moral intuitions in understanding God’s actions.

Summary of the Text

Thesis Statement

Draper believes that Stump’s defence is totally implausible because it is not consistent with a reasonable understanding of what a literal interpretation of scripture would look like and it is not consistent with what one would expect of a morally good God.

Argument

For the sake of argument Draper simplifies Stump’s position to three claims which he calls the ‘literality claim’, the ‘morality claim’ and the ‘plausibility claim’, and he wants to show that all three are unsuccessful

even by the standards of her version of Christianity. The ‘literality claim’ fails because it is clear that God does give a reason for the destruction of the Amalakites, and whilst Draper accepts there may be other reasons that we are not told about, if we are to maintain the concept of the narrative being literally true, then we cannot jettison the one reason we are given - which is retribution. Furthermore, the violence associated with this event cannot be expunged by alluding to some future eternal bliss, or claiming that for those living in violent times the risk of psychological damage is greatly diminished. For Draper the horror of violence will always be damaging - people living 3000 years ago are still human.

With regard to the ‘morality claim’ Draper argues that Stump cannot avoid accepting that she needs to give up a ‘deeply entrenched moral view’ if she is going to defend the literal status of the destruction of the Amalekites. Claiming that the killing of the Amalekites is not genocide because it is authorised by God is false, since the act of genocide only requires one acts with intention of destroying a people group - ‘It does not require that the motive for one’s action be to destroy a people’ (p202). It is clear that the intention of the Israelites was to destroy a people group at the request of God, therefore they were committing genocide on the basis of God’s command. In which case either God is immoral or Genocide is not morally wrong in all situations.

Draper only briefly addresses the ‘plausibility claim’ by arguing that the failure of Stumps approach to meet the ‘literality claim’ and the ‘morality claim’ already damages any chance of her approach being plausible. Furthermore, it also seems highly implausible that an omnipotent and omniscient God could not bring about the desired union of the Israelites with God without the destruction of the Amalekites.

Objections to the argument of the text

It is clear that Stump is reluctant to investigate the retributive aspect of God’s command to destroy the Amalekites and Draper is right to point

that out. He does accept that other reasons may be involved, but what he cannot accept is the putting aside of the one reason we are given. At first sight it does seem strange that after a period of almost 400 years God suddenly remembers to execute judgment on the Amalekites. Given our knowledge of God’s other judgments against people groups (the flood, Sodom, Cannan and Nineveh), where there appeared to be a requirement for these groups of people to be so morally decayed that judgment was an appropriate response from God’s perspective, we can assume that the Amalekites were in a similar position. If we assume the Amalekites were as bad as the Nazi’s, possibly even worse, and those that were destroyed were the Amalekites who failed to take the appropriate actions needed to save themselves e.g. repentance or fleeing to another part of the Middle East, then the call to destroy the Amalekites is not so arbitrary as it at first appears. In the execution of purely human conflicts mass destruction has taken place against civilian populations e.g. Dresden and Hiroshima in WWII. One may argue the legitimacy of either of these events, but they do show that even in the recent past humans have felt obliged to deliver mass destruction in a fight against evil. It is therefore not unreasonable to assume that God may have felt the moral necessity to execute such a judgment. That we find it hard to understand how God can justify this mass destruction may reflect our limited understanding of the issues God has to face. I can understand why as a society we are reluctant to accept the legitimacy of any claim that God would sanction the killing of a people group. However rather than dismissing the possibility that God could command such an action it would be wiser to ask what are the conditions required for a good God to authorise such an action.

Development

Using the world wide examine from God’s perspective what he considers are the conditions required for him to exercise a judgment a whole people group - this is of particular relevance to the final judgment of this kind - what is often referred to in scripture as ‘the great and terrible day of the Lord’ (Joel 2.31).

Divine Evil (Chap 6) - Eleonore Stump (c) Annotated Bibliographies Research question

Can we reconcile the biblical narratives with the idea that God is good? Hypothesis

Our limited capacities makes it very difficult if not impossible to answer this question.

Details of text

Bergmann, M., Murray, M. & Rae, M., Divine Evil (Oxford University Press, 2011) Chapter 6 Eleonore Stump - The Problem of Evil and the History of Peoples: Think Amalek.

How the text relates to the research question

How useful are our moral intuitions in understanding God’s actions. Summary of the Text

Thesis Statement

Through a thought experiment Stump argues that our limited understanding of the issues God is dealing with means we are not in a position to act as judge in the case of his handling of the Amalekites.

Argument

Stump responds to Draper by conducting a thought experiment in which Max, who comes from a world which only knows life as being inside a building and in which no-one has experienced illness or death, observes a hospital in which surgery is taking place. As far as he is concerned the

activities of the surgeons fulfill the textbook definition of torture and surely those involved with the surgery must be undergoing some level of psychologcal damage as a consequence of their gruesome work.

For Stump the issue does not stem ‘from a difference in moral theories. It stems from an enormous difference in world-views’ (p205). Max cannot understand the world-view of the surgeon because he has not experienced sickness, death or life outside his building. However we know the surgeons are acting with professional competence when they do their work. Likewise we know the parents are acting in love when they allow their children to be subjected to the trauma of surgery. All of this is lost on Max because his world-view is so different, and that difference is a by-product of his limited understanding of all the possibilities of what reality can look like.

From this thought experiment Stump draws the conclusion that in her ‘putative world’ it is not unreasonable to believe that God allows the suffering of the Amalekites for loving reasons - just as the surgeon inflicted what looked like torture with good puposes in mind.

Objections to the argument of the text

I thought Stump’s thought experiment was an excellent illustration of how an impoverished world-view can utterly fail to grasp the complexities of reality and thereby come to totally erroneous conclusions. From Max’s perspective he is completely justified in his moral outrage, but that indignation is a product of his ignorance not his insight. However, I think the analogy has a weakness in that hospitals are places designed for healing, whereas God’s dealings with humans involve judgment as well as healing. As Draper noted, one of the reasons for the destruction of the Amalekites did involve some form of retribution. Divine punishment1 and some form of divine vengeance seem unavoidable concepts if one

1 See Isaiah 10:3, Jeremiah 10:15, Matthew 25:46, 2 Peter 2:9

2 See Deuteronomy 32:35, Psalm 94:1, Romans 12:19, Hebrews 10.30

is to take the scriptures as accurate and divinely inspired. I will address this issue in more detail in the essay.

Development

I need to look at the work of Jonathan Edwards and others to see what philosophers have said regarding the concept of divine punishment.

Divine Evil (Chap 7) - Richard Swinburne (a) Annotated Bibliographies

Research question

Can we reconcile the biblical narratives with the idea that God is good? Hypothesis

Our limited capacities makes it very difficult if not impossible to answer this question.

Details of text

Bergmann, M., Murray, M. & Rae, M., Divine Evil (Oxford University Press, 2011) Chapter 7 - Richard Swinburne - What does the Old Testament Mean?

How the text relates to the research question

How useful are our moral intuitions in understanding God’s actions. Summary of the Text

Thesis Statement

God intends his revelation through scripture to be interpreted using the ‘patristic method’ and therefore Old Testament passages that pose difficulties should be seen through this prism if they are to be understood as God intended them to be understood.

Argument

Swinburne sets out his argument with a general consideration that to understand a piece of literature you need to know its context. For the

Bible that context is God’s desire to reveal something of himself and his purposes to all of humanity (p214). Furthermore Swinburne believes it is the church which has the unique authority to determine the meaning of a passage . He particularly refers to the ‘patristic method’ of interpretation

as being significant. It argues that every biblical sentence should be interpreted in the light of the rest of the Bible (p220), which means the correct interpretation of a passage should not contradict other well established biblical doctrines. Swinburne also believes our interpretations of the Bible should not only accord with established Christian doctrine it should also be compatible with modern science (p221).

Flowing from this belief in the ‘patristic method’ and his understanding of how we derive meaning through language Swinburne makes three points. Firstly, that individual passages may not be inspired, but the source of inspiration comes from the compiler of the larger unit which contains the individual passage and it is that larger unit that gives the context that draws out the inspired meaning of this individual passage. Therefore the troubling passage in Psalm 137:9 would not make sense without reference to the rest of the Psalms with their message of God’s forgiveness of sins.

Secondly, there is a ‘principle of accommodation’ where God has to work with primitive people and adjust the articulation of moral truths to the fact these people are too primitive to understand what God wants to say. Swinburne gives the example of the statements found in the Pentateuch that suggest sins of the fathers will be visited on their sons (Exodus 20), whereas later on in Israel’s history God can expound through Ezekiel a more complete understanding of the moral law where he states the children are not responsible for their parents sins (Ezekiel 18:2). He also quotes Jesus when he describes how God permitted divorce because of the hardness of the Israelites heart.

1 Swinburne argues that the church has this authority because it was founded by Jesus and given that authority by Jesus, and that the authority of Jesus was authenticated by his life, death and resurrection (p214)

Finally, Swinburne notes that in some cases God commands things to be done which for anyone but God would be morally wrong, but because God is our benefactor he has the right to withdraw the gift of life and thereby shorten it. Whether this gift is long or short it is still a wonderful gift. Therefore, the death of the Caananites is not of itself wrong unless one argues that any death is an evil - which is a different argument.

Objections to the argument of the text

The ‘patristic method’ described by Swinburne does not seem to fully represent how Jesus and the apostles interpreted the Old Testament. It is clear that with regard to the worldwide flood, the part of the Old Testament I am most interested in, these writers believed it was literally true. Furthermore the notion that the New Testament ushered in a new version of morality does not seem to reflect Jesus stern teaching on eternal punishment or his admonition to avoid unnecessary changes to God’s law (Matthew 5:19). Likewise when we consider the apostle Paul’s claim to be declaring the inspired word of God, he clearly avoids referring to the support of the church of his day (Galatians 1 & 2), instead he refers to working of miracles as his authentication that he was an apostle. He believed that miracles were a manifestation of the ‘power of God’ (1 Corinthians 2:5 & 1 Thessalonians 1:5) (and we know from Acts that this power was the power to perform miracles (Acts 19:11-12)). In fact Paul was very concerned about the future state of the church, hence his comments to the church of Ephesus (Acts 20:28-31) and his description of a future apostacy (2 Thessalonians 2). The authentication that a revelation comes from God does not lie with the church, but with God supplying miracles - even Jesus said ‘if you won’t believe me for my words would you believe me for my works’ (that is miracles - John 5:36), or through fulfilled prophecy (for example Luke 24:28-35). As I will discuss in the essay there are good reasons to question an overreliance on the church as an arbitrator on these matters.

Development

Develop the appropriate grounds for authenticating a person is speaking on behalf of God.

Divine Evil (Chap 7) - Wes Morriston (b) Annotated Bibliographies

Research question

Can we reconcile the biblical narratives with the idea that God is good?

Hypothesis

Our limited capacities makes it very difficult if not impossible to answer this question.

Details of text

Bergmann, M., Murray, M. & Rae, M., Divine Evil (Oxford University Press, 2011) Chapter 7 - Richard Swinburne - What does the Old Testament Mean?

How the text relates to the research question

How useful are our moral intuitions in understanding God’s actions.

Summary of the Text

Thesis Statement

Morriston believes all three of Swinburne’s attempts to maintain the divine inspiration of scripture, despite it’s difficult passages, are implausible.

Argument

Morriston faithfully records Swinburne’s overall defence of the Bible in that whilst each passage of the Bible may have multiple meanings the most important meaning is God’s intended meaning, and our understanding of that meaning is derived using the ‘patristic method’.

Morriston then procedes to consider three examples of Swinburne’s defence and raises objections to each in turn. Firstly he cannot see why God would allow the verses in Psalm 137:8-9 to be written given that he had inspired Jeremiah at the same time to write that the Jews going into exile should pray for the Babylonians. Furthermore the metaphorical interpretations of these verses were unavailable at the time they were written because the New Testament was not written for another 600 years. In which case the most obvious conclusion is to discard these verses as they clearly ‘do not speak for God’ (p228)

Secondly, Morriston cannot see why anyone should defend the inclusion of Exodus chapter 20 since its conclusion about the next generation suffering for the sins of their parents is directly contradicted by the passage in Ezekiel 18 that refers to us bearing individually our sin. The notion that God created primitive people, for whom these deliberately incorrect statements were needed to help them work out for themselves these issues seems highly implausible.

Finally, with reference to the ‘divinely mandated genocides’ Morriston takes issue with Swinburne’s analogy of the need to take the life of a carrier of a deadly infectious disease which can be extrapolated to explain why God would wish to take the life of those who would spread an infection that would lead to spiritual death. Morriston has six points to make about this. Firstly, he is unconvinced the analogy holds because he would struggle to accept the killing of a person with an infectious disease always believing there could be an alternative solution and God, being omnipotent has many more options at his disposal. Secondly, this line of thinking could potentially justify the death of ‘evangelical atheists’ such as Richard Dawkins. Thirdly, where is God’s love for the Canaanites being shown through this divinely sanctioned slaughter. Fourthly, whilst divinely mandating the killing of the Canaanites has its problems forcing the Isrealites to participate in this seems totally inconsistent with purer conception of the deity we now hold. Fifthly, if the aim of the extermination of the Canaanites was to protect the Israelites from spiritual contamination then the rest of the Bible shows it did not

work. Finally, were the adult Canaanites really that bad and surely God could have tried to redeem them.

Ultimately Morriston concludes that we should stop trying to accommodate these ‘morally problematic texts’, but instead admit that ‘these parts of the Bible are mistaken’ (p231).

Objections to the argument of the text

Since the flood narratives of Genesis 6-8 incorporate the death of all land dwelling life not found on the Ark the issue of the genocidal passages needs to be addressed. Morriston in his reply to Swinburne assumes, like many other writers, that these ‘genocidal passages’ are in some way totally at odds with the New Testament’ vision of God. However, a quick reading of Jesus’s condemnation of the Pharisees in Matthew 23 and his stern rebuke of Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum in Matthew 11:20-24 suggest Jesus was as capable of wrath as the God of the Old Testament was. Likewise, the apostles were under no illusion that the whole world was under severe judgment as Paul points out in the second chapter of the letter to the Romans and Peter does with regard to the final judgment in 2 Peter chapter 3. Furthermore in the book of Revelation - however one interprets the book - one of the overarching themes is the severe judgment to come. Therefore the idea that the God of the Old Testament has seen the errors of his ways and has now reformed his manners is not borne out by the weight of New Testament scriptures that describe the judgment to come

Development

Explore how the God of love can also be the God of wrath and judgment.

Divine Evil (Chap 7) - Richard Swinburne (c) Annotated Bibliographies

Research question

Can we reconcile the biblical narratives with the idea that God is good? Hypothesis

Our limited capacities makes it very difficult if not impossible to answer this question.

Details of text

Bergmann, M., Murray, M. & Rae, M., Divine Evil (Oxford University Press, 2011) Chapter 7 - Richard Swinburne - What does the Old Testament Mean?

How the text relates to the research question

How useful are our moral intuitions in understanding God’s actions. Summary of the Text

Thesis Statement

The claim that the Bible is without error should be seen in the context of Christian doctrine and thinking especially as the inspiration of some passages lies in the compilers of narratives rather than the original authors.

Argument

Swinburne rejects Morriston’s demand that certain passages found in the Bible should be regarded as ‘morally inadequate …(because)...

‘They don’t speak for God’’ (p232). Instead Swinburne puts forward the idea that whilst the Bible can be considered to be a collection of true sentences it is also a progressive revelation. Therefore the idea that children suffer as a consequence of their parents actions is true, but the revelation that we all must ultimately stand before God on the basis of our own actions is a greater truth. Likewise, the wish to punish the Babylonians for their terrible destruction of Jerusalem may be considered a lesser truth than the action of mercy and forgiveness, but it is still worthy of enunciation (p232). Furthermore, whilst the Church Fathers believed many of the Old Testament narratives, including the commands to ‘exterminate the Canaanites had a deeper meaning’ they also believed they happened in history (p233) and God cannot be faulted if the temporary gift of life is only a short one. The analogy Swinburne uses to illustrate this point is that of a person who lends a book. The duration of that loan is at the discretion of the lender alone and the lender does you no wrong if the loan is only a short one. Swinburne claims that one of the main aims of life is not that it should be long and happy, but rather that we should learn to ‘reverence the right things and that includes worshipping (God)’ (p234) and it is in that light we should consider God’s actions as revealed in the Bible.

Objections to the argument of the text

Whilst the idea of progressive revelation seems attractive in that we have God’s covenant with Adam, then his covenant with Noah followed by his covenant with Abraham. He gives the law to Moses, establishes a king after his own heart in David and then gives the nation of Israel a long line of prophets. Ultimately he reveals his truth to all of humanity through his son Jesus and the church that he gave birth to. This process could look like ‘progressive revelation’ except that as Stump and others have noted all of these attempts have failed. For Stump this repeated failure is part of a process needed to form a people of God (p197), and it is clear that Paul viewed the failures of the Old Testament as examples for us to learn from (1 Corinthians 10:1-13), however as Hegel noted ‘We learn from history that we do not learn from history’. Another way of

viewing these repeated failures is to ask the question why does an omnipotent and omniscient God permit this state of affairs. Yes there may be an element of character development taking place, but it could be that God is wanting to demonstrate his incredible wisdom to principalities and powers as well as to us and it is clear from the first letter to the Corinthians that God has chosen the ‘foolish things of this world to put to shame the wise …(so) that no flesh should glory in His presence.’ (1 Corinthians 1:27,29). These failures are no surprise to God as he repeatedly warns people that he knows they will fail him. Moses warns the Israelites of their ultimate failure (Deuteronomy 28), Joshua does so just before he dies (Joshua 23), likewise Samuel when the children of Israel ask for a king (1 Samuel 12) and Jeremiah makes the same point when the remnant of Judah ask his advice after the destruction of Jerusalem and the death of Nebuchadnezzar’s agent (Jeremiah 42). In all these situations the people of God predictable do the opposite of what God wants. The situation in the New Testament is hardly better. Jesus spends much of his public ministry expecting to be killed by the children of God (John 10) and Paul when leaving the Ephesian elders for the last time specifically warned them of dangers from within the church (Acts 20:27-30) and some interpretations of the book of Revelation see this book as a warning to the church about the coming apostacy. One reading of this continual failure of God’s people is that it is a demonstration to principalities and powers as well as us that the problem of sin is bad that only a second personal experience of the beatific vision will overcome this problem.

Development

How reasonable is it to see the overarching arc of God’s narrative as the demonstration to all in heaven and on earth of the complete wisdom of God’s dealing with the problem of sin and are there any others who have advanced the same position.

Divine Evil (Chap 8) - NicholasWolterstorff (a) Annotated Bibliographies

Research question

Can we reconcile the biblical narratives with the idea that God is good?

Hypothesis

Our limited capacities makes it very difficult if not impossible to answer this question.

Details of text

Bergmann, M., Murray, M. & Rae, M., Divine Evil (Oxford University Press, 2011) Chapter 8 Nicholas Wolterstorff -Reading Joshua.

How the text relates to the research question

How useful are our moral intuitions in understanding God’s actions.

Summary of the Text

Thesis Statement

The book of Joshua should not be seen as an accurate history but as a hagiography that serves a purpose in providing admonition and encouragement. Therefore the accounts of God ordering the killing of people need not be taken too literally.

Argument

Wolterstorff asks the question how can God authorise the destruction of Hazor, using Hazor as a typical example of the type of dilemma we face when confronted with passages in the Bible that suggest God has

authorised or sanctioned an act of gross immorality. Wolterstorff will argue that a careful reading of the text in its literary context makes it implausible to interpret it as claiming that Yaheweh ordered this extermination. In reaching this conclusion he considers two other interpreters of Joshua chapter 11, Brueggemann and Calvin. Ultimately, whilst sympathetic to aspects Brueggemann’s approach, he rejects it because the God of liberation theology that emerges bears little resemblance to the text. Wolterstorff also questions Calvin’s approach because he feels it does little to resolve the moral conflict. Calvin is aware of the problem of infants being slaughtered. For Calvin they share our original moral guilt, but we would also expect that as they are made in the image of God they should excite God’s love (p248). In the end, Calvin has to appeal to our ignorance to resolve/side step the problem with this statement ‘God is just in all his ways, sometimes it is impossible for us to see justice in what God has done’ (p247).

To avoid Brueggemann’s loose treatment of scripture and Calvin’s unhelpful theistic scepticism Wolterstorff proposes a middle approach in which we see the book of Joshua in its context as one book in a group of five books, starting with Deuteronomy and concluding with Second Kings. In this context Joshua is seen as a ritualistic hagiography that uses frequent hyperbole. Wolterstorff notes that the book of Judges provides qualifying evidence that these mass exterminations never took place in the manner first implied from a literal reading of Joshua, since for a number of towns struck down by the sword in the book of Joshua there is evidence in the book of Judges that they still existed along with their inhabitants eg Hebron and Debir.

Furthermore, Wolterstorff observes that the compilers who arranged these five books were not mindless - they could see the inconsistencies. For Wolterstorff the reason they did not reconcile these inaccuracies was that they knew the role of Joshua was that of admonition and encouragement using the genre of hagiography. Admonition not to forget God and encouragement in that they have a great deliverer. Wolterstorff believes these messages found in Joshua are still valid today and proof

of the past usefulness of this book in delivering moral progress can be seen in its frequent use by African Americans in their fight against slavery and racism. Likewise, the themes found in the book of Joshua were used by the oppressed in South Africa. For him these uses of Joshua support his contention that this is how we should use this type of literature - as a useful hagiography rather than an accurate account of what happened.

Objections to the argument of the text

As Anthony points out Wolterstorff seems to ignore the many references throughout the Bible to God punishing sinners that bear a strong resemblance to the records we find in Joshua. It seems implausible to claim that all these accounts are versions of hagiographic hyperbole. As I am proposing to defend the accuracy of the flood narratives found Genesis 6-8 which describe how an act of God resulted in the death of all humans and land animals not found in the ark the defence that Wolterstorff proposes is not going to be appropriate. In my essay I hope to advance some thoughts on an alternative approach.

Development

Explore possible theodicies that make sense of the frequent episodes where many people die as the result of divine action.

Divine Evil (Chap 8) - Louise Anthony (b) Annotated Bibliographies Research question

Can we reconcile the biblical narratives with the idea that God is good? Hypothesis

Our limited capacities makes it very difficult if not impossible to answer this question.

Details of text

Bergmann, M., Murray, M. & Rae, M., Divine Evil (Oxford University Press, 2011) Chapter 8 Nicholas Wolterstorff - Reading Joshua.

How the text relates to the research question

How useful are our moral intuitions in understanding God’s actions. Summary of the Text

Thesis Statement

Even if Wolterstorff is correct in recategorizing the Book of Joshua as a piece of hagiography involving hyperbole that does not address the many other examples we find in the Bible where God appears to sanction moral outrages nor should we accept hagiographies as having moral value.

Argument

Anthony has three objections to Wolterstorff’s account. Firstly, she is unconvinced that hagiographic hyperbole can ever have a useful moral function. Secondly, she does not believe this example of hagiography is

particularly benign. Finally, for her this strategy fails to cover all the dubious passages we find in the Bible.

Anthony objects to falsehood being presented as history and she is suspicious of Wolterstorffs’ comment that the type of attitude to history Anthony supports will end up ‘stopping our mouths’, because it comes down so heavily against our cultural hagiographies. For Anthony these hagiographies are used to by those in power for dangerous purposes. As she notes ‘history belongs to the victors … (and) the propagandistic value of false histories is a feature not a bug’ (p260).

Anthony concludes by noting that the whole narrative drive of the Bible is inherently racist because of its exaltation of a ‘chosen people’. Part of this same concept can be seen in Christianity with its claim that the Chhritian believer is part of the new ‘chosen people’. Anthony remains unconvinced by her theistic friends who assure her that God is not like that. For her the Hebrew Bible is full of this worldview in which God takes sides and therefore the moral worldview of the Bible is repugnant and the mass killings authored by God are not an exception but are in fact part of a much more general moral problem that lies at the heart of the Bible.

Objections to the argument of the text

Anthony’s comment that history belongs to the victors and therefore propaganda is a feature not a bug of of history, if true, proves too much. If her comment is valid, then it is valid for her as well as those who wrote in the past. If this is the case, then the history that is now being written is being written by a new set of victors who have their own propaganda they wish to disseminate. I am not sure that Anthony would wish to support that position, but that is the logical outcome of her bold claim that ‘history is written by the victors’.

A more reasonable position with regard to history is be aware of the tendency that Anthony refers to and place appropriate safeguards in

place. Therefore we need to be more self critical about imposing our cultural preferences on past activities and instead take the past warts and all. This includes taking an empathetic approach, which does not

seek to judge too quickly the motives and actions of others, but first of all tries to enter into their world. Ultimately we may wish to come to a judgement of some past event, but that judgement will be with wisdom and not part of the victors propaganda. As Jesus said be careful how you judge because you will be judged with the same judgement as you judge others - how that might take place I will explore in the essay (I will also consider her serious accusation that the Bible involves racism in the essay).

Development

Explore the role of judgement.

Divine Evil (Chap 8) - NicholasWolterstorff (c) Annotated Bibliographies

Research question

Can we reconcile the biblical narratives with the idea that God is good? Hypothesis

Our limited capacities makes it very difficult if not impossible to answer this question.

Details of text

Bergmann, M., Murray, M. & Rae, M., Divine Evil (Oxford University Press, 2011) Chapter 8 Nicholas Wolterstorff -Reading Joshua.

How the text relates to the research question

How useful are our moral intuitions in understanding God’s actions. Summary of the Text

Thesis Statement

Hagiographies can have a positive moral effect and the book of Joshua has historically had a positive effect.

Argument

Wolterstorff argues that Joshua is not false, but it is not literally true, instead it is a form of hagiography. He goes on to argue that hagiographies can have a positive influence, for example biographies of Susan B. Anthony, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr and Bishop Tutu. Hagiographies are not necessarily completely false, however they

may contain statements which are not entirely correct because of hyperbole and the placing of emphasis on the main character can lead to omissions and distortions that a more scholarly account would cover differently. As to whether Joshua, if treated as a hagiography, had a positive moral message, the record of history suggests that for many, including African-Americans, it did have a positive message of encouragement.

Objections to the argument of the text

Strange to say my objection is that the historicity of the conquest of Canaan is widely disputed by most biblical archaeologists, in which case the arguments about the relative accuracy of the book of Joshua and the book of Judges is somewhat irrelevant since historians of this period would reject both books as a faithful record of Israel’s entry into Canaan. If these historians are correct, then the biblical narrative found in both books is substantially false on almost every level. Therefore claims about God authoring genocides that never happened seem a bit redundant other than proving the compilers of these books, could by modern standards, be considered somewhat barbaric in their estimation of God’s moral compass, claiming that he authorised mass killings that in reality never took place. However, as I wish to establish the infallibility of the Bible I will need to challenge the consensus we find amongst archaeologists with regard to early biblical history. Fortunately there are a number of experts in this field who have done this and there is reason to believe that the work of James (Centuries of Darkness 1991), Rohl (Pharaohs and Kings: A Biblical Quest 1995) and Bimson (Redating the Exodus and the Conquest 1981) amongst others should be seriously engaged with, and it is certainly important for philosophers who discuss this period of biblical history to be aware that such a debate is possible. As a consequence of knowing this debate is possible I will for the purpose of my essay assume the historical accuracy of both Old Testament books - it is for historians to argue this point, but I do not feel compelled to accept their conclusions until I see evidence that they have properly and respectfully engaged in this debate.

Development

To what extent is it reasonable for philosophers to hold scientists and historians to account if there is evidence that they are failing to engage in opponents arguments. This is potentially a very important point in my thesis because, I will argue that evidence of such absence of engagement, (often seen in the bibliographies of books and articles I have studied) undermines the authority of the relevant statements being made by the experts. Therefore, until there is evidence of such engagement, the philosopher does not need to feel intimidated by the scientist or historian in question, as they are no longer speaking as an expert in this debate, instead they are just expressing an unsubstantiated opinion. A classic example of this is Professor Harrison in his excellently researched book on The Fall of Adam and the Origin of Modern Science. Looking at his bibliography one is immediately impressed by the thoroughness of his work. However, when he makes a reference to modern creationists (p137), there is no evidence from his bibliography that he has engaged with any of their work. As a consequence his comments on this should only be treated as an unsubstantiated opinion rather than an authoritative verdict (even though I admire the rest of his work). Likewise, to what extent should claims of academic consensus be challenged by philosophers, if they have evidence that a whole academic community is refusing to engage in respectful and detailed debate with their opponents.