Andy Naselli

Thoughts on Theology

problem of evil

Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be

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From a funeral homily by Jack Collins:

On Saturday, I heard Jackie say, “No parent should ever have to outlive their own child.” I heard the same words from my father’s mother when my father died; and my wife and I said the same thing when we lost our first child. The pain is horrible; the loss is beyond our ability to describe.

When we feel this grief, we are feeling that it’s just not right for this to happen. We don’t want our loved ones to suffer; we don’t want to be separated from them by death. We want to be sure that they are happy, and we want to be able to enjoy their company always.

The Bible tells us that these feelings we have are right. Death and suffering are intruders in God’s good world; they don’t belong here. And the story of Adam and Eve, the first human beings, tells us how these evil things came in: When these, the parents of us all, disobeyed God, they opened the door to all manner of sin and evil, not only for themselves, but also for us.

You don’t need me to prove it; it’s all around us. It’s why we are here today.

But the Bible story doesn’t end there: instead it tells us about how God wants to help us, to heal us of what is wrong with us.

—C. John Collins, Did Adam and Eve Really Exist? Who They Were and Why You Should Care (Wheaton: Crossway, 2011), 136. [Read more…] about Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be

Fly by the Instruments

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I flew for the first time yesterday. I’ve flown as a passenger in commercial airplanes countless times, but this was my first time to fly as a pilot in the captain’s seat.

Skip Goss, president of Skill Aviation, graciously offered to take me up. (He was in my group at Exploring Christianity earlier this year, and we have some mutual friends who are learning to fly at his prestigious flight school.)

We started off in Waukegan going south along Lake Michigan, circled Trinity’s campus a few times, and then continued south along Lake Michigan. We circled various parts of downtown Chicago and flew next to the Sears Tower. Viewing Chicago aerially from such a low elevation was amazing. We stopped for lunch at the Schaumburg airport, and we circled over Trinity’s campus again on our way back to Waukegan. This time I called Jenni at our campus apartment from a cell phone, and we waved at each other! My favorite part was flying about 150 mph just above the surface of Lake Michigan and seeing the massive lake-front homes.

Skip is a master-teacher, and since he invited questions about aircraft and flying, I pelted him with questions. Among other things, I confirmed that spatial disorientation is a relatively rare condition but one that every pilot must be prepared for. I keep thinking about a penetrating analogy that Jon Bloom shared on the Desiring God blog in December 2007: “What I Learned in a Spiritual Storm.”

  • Bloom explains that when a pilot experiences spatial disorientation in a storm, he must fly by the instruments. He must trust the instruments.
  • When we experience spatial disorientation in a spiritual storm, we too must fly by the instruments (i.e., God’s word). We must trust the instruments. The right response to evil and suffering is to affirm what God says in the Bible—even if we can’t exhaustively explain every facet of it—and trust him.

Read the whole thing.

Related: The Logical and Emotional Problems of Evil

Recommended Reading on Job

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Over the past month or so, I’ve read over 300 books and articles (often only parts of them) about the book of Job for a dissertation chapter I just drafted. Here are three of the most edifying and accessible resources:

1. D. A. Carson. “Job: Mystery and Faith.” Pages 135–57 in How Long, O Lord? Reflections on Suffering and Evil. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006. [Amazon | WTS Books]

Carson

Penetrating insight, pastoral warmth.

2. Layton Talbert. Beyond Suffering: Discovering the Message of Job. Greenville, SC: Bob Jones University Press, 2007. [Amazon]

beyondsuffering

See my review.

3. Derek Kidner. “The Book of Job: A World Well Managed?” and “Job in Academic Discussion.” Pages 56–89 in The Wisdom of Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes: An Introduction to Wisdom Literature. Downers Grove: IVP, 1985. [Amazon | WTS Books]

Kidner

Pithy.

Update: See ch. 4 (free PDF) in From Typology to Doxology.

Theology That Wounds Rather Than Heals

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Reflecting on Job 16–17, D. A. Carson observes,

There is a way of using theology and theological arguments that wounds rather than heals. This is not the fault of theology and theological arguments; it is the fault of the “miserable comforter” who fastens on an inappropriate fragment of truth, or whose timing is off, or whose attitude is condescending, or whose application is insensitive, or whose true theology is couched in such culture-laden clichés that they grate rather than comfort. In times of extraordinary stress and loss, I have sometimes received great encouragement and wisdom from other believers; I have also sometimes received extraordinary blows from them, without any recognition on their part that that was what they were delivering. Miserable comforters were they all.

Such experiences, of course, drive me to wonder when I have wrongly handled the Word and caused similar pain. It is not that there is never a place for administering the kind of scriptural admonition that rightly induces pain: justified discipline is godly (Heb. 12:5–11). The tragic fact, however, is that when we cause pain by our application of theology to someone else, we naturally assume the pain owes everything to the obtuseness of the other party. It may, it may—but at the very least we ought to examine ourselves, our attitudes, and our arguments very closely lest we simultaneously delude ourselves and oppress others.

–D. A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God’s Word (vol. 2; Wheaton: Crossway, 1999), entry for February 17. (This book is available for free as a PDF from TGC.)

I compiled lists of what to say and not to say to people who are suffering in an address on the logical and emotional problems of evil. Abbreviated forms of those two lists occur at the end of this four-page essay. Would you add anything to those lists?

Do We Have a Free Will?

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This summer my church, CrossWay Community Church in Kenosha, Wisconsin, hosted a “Difficult Issues Series” on Wednesday nights. I addressed this topic: “Do We Have a Free Will?”

  1. MP3 (1 hour and 45 minutes including Q&A)
  2. Handout (7-page PDF)
  3. Condensed Essay (4-page PDF, which Reformation 21 reprinted today)

Here’s the basic outline (the handout is more detailed):

Introduction

Question 1. Why should we study “free will”?

Question 2. What are some challenges with studying “free will”?

1. What is “free will”?

1.1. Will

1.2. Constraining and Non-Constraining Causes

1.3. Incompatibilism vs. Compatibilism

1.4. Indeterminism vs. Determinism

1.5. Libertarian Free Will vs. Free Agency

1.6. God’s General Sovereignty vs. God’s Specific Sovereignty [Read more…] about Do We Have a Free Will?

D. A. Carson: “Making Sense of Suffering”

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This weekend D. A. Carson spoke at a conference on “Making Sense of Suffering” to Omaha Bible Church:

  1. Part 1
  2. Part 2
  3. Part 3
  4. Part 4 (Gospel Reflections on Trials and Tribulations)

DAC also led a pastor’s session on “Preaching and Biblical Theology.”

HT: Erik Raymond

Related:

  1. D. A. Carson MP3s
  2. The Logical and Emotional Problems of Evil: This links to a handout that lists recommended resources on suffering, including this annotation:

* Carson, D. A. How Long, O Lord? Reflections on Suffering and Evil. 2d ed. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006. [1. Outstanding, clear, practical, pastoral. The entire book rewards thoughtful reading, especially chapters 11–13. Chapter 11 condenses and updates the major argument of his Ph.D. dissertation completed at Cambridge University in 1975 and reprinted as Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility: Biblical Perspectives in Tension (2d ed.; Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2002).]