The book of Exodus is about kingdoms and servitude; enslaved in the kingdom of Egypt, generally representative of the kingdom of the world (Satan's kingdom), Israel is released from their bondage and "freed into" God's Kingdom. Attested to by the Old and New Testaments is the fact that true freedom, as my Facebook post from the other day says, is not found in autonomy, but in servitude to the right master, to the master with the authority to make one free. That's why I say they were "freed into," because freedom is not a one way release from something, but a transference from one kingdom to another. Salvation in Christ is not simply a release from the consequence of sin (death), but the transference from the kingdom where there is sin due to breaking God's law, into the realm of grace where one's obedience to the new Master is not forced, coerced or mandated, but is the natural response of someone who realizes what has been done for them. In the "Old Kingdom," obedience is forced; in the "New Kingdom," obedience grows naturally in love.
When a person reaches the edge of understanding what God has done for them and is nearing the place of full acceptance by faith into salvation, he/she experiences a conflict of these two kingdoms, which are now equally affecting and influencing them. The two places in Scripture where this phenomenon is most easily seen is in Exodus 1 and Romans 7:13-25.
In Exodus, God's people are enslaved in Egypt. The purpose of in this enslavement is population control and security. At least, it was until the Egyptian government realized their efforts were useless against the principles of God's Kingdom, at which point they began killing Hebrew children themselves (1:22).
Under Egyptian domination, obedience was forced. The NET Bible translation of Exodus 1:13-14 reads, "...and they made the Israelites serve rigorously. They made their lives bitter by hard service with mortar and bricks and by all kinds of service in the fields. Every kind of service the Israelites were required to give was rigorous." The Hebrew word most translations render "afflicted," means "to make one feel their dependence." Israel was hopelessly oppressed and suppressed under this regime. Their obedience was forced and there was no escape.
But there was another force at work on them: the promise of God to those in His Kingdom. When God first made His covenant promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3 God said,
2"And I will make you a great nation,
And I will bless you,
And make your name great;
And so you shall be a blessing;
3And I will bless those who bless you,
And the one who curses you I will curse.
And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed." (NASB)
Israel did not become the people of God by entering into a covenant with God at Sinai in Exodus 19-20. Israel become God's people by His sovereign choice, in Abraham. This is why God refers to Israel as "my firstborn son" as early as Exodus 4. They were already God's chosen people while enslaved in Egypt. They were part of God's kingdom. Thus, "the more the Egyptians oppressed them, the more they multiplied and spread. As a result the Egyptians loathed the Israelites, and they made the Israelites serve rigorously." (Exod. 1:12-13, NET)
At the same time that the principles of the kingdom of this world was at work in Israel, the principles of God's kingdom and covenant applied as well. Israel could see both kingdoms at once. So when the Hebrew midwives are commanded to commit mass infanticide, they choose obedience to the higher kingdom. They feared Pharaoh, but they feared God more. True freedom was servitude to the master with enough authority to give them freedom. God's favor and blessing shone through to His people even while they were entrenched in oppressive slavery.
The same principle is at work in Romans 7. Much debate exists about who the "I" in this passage is (Paul, Adam, unconverted Gentiles, etc), but the interpretation I favor is that Paul is speaking as any person, Jew or Gentile, who is in the process of converting, and he is speaking from the perspective of being "in Adam." This is why in 7:9 Paul says that he (whoever he is speaking as) was alive once apart from law, and who can say that but Adam? This passage describes the stage of enlightenment to the realization of God's law. Despite being enslaved and bound to sin, unable to lift his head to God, he becomes aware of the reality of God's law and wants to obey, but cannot, because he is "unspiritual, sold into slavery to sin" (7:14b).
Ultimately, true freedom for the person Paul speaks for (which is everyone who comes to Christ), is found in accepting the higher master, the higher kingdom. In salvation we are transferred from the kingdom of law and sin, into God's kingdom of infinite grace where no sin is counted against the adopted sons of God.
"Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (7:24-25a, NET).
Friday, June 14, 2013
Saturday, April 6, 2013
Justification and Mission
Some thoughts about the connection between justification and acts of justice/mission. To accept and believe in justification but to not "make disciples as you go" (the grammatical sense of Jesus' words in the Great Commission in Matthew 28), or not participate in social justice actions like crisis pregnancy ministry, homeless ministry, etc, is to divide God, particularly Christ, in half.
God chose Israel to be a "kingdom of priests" and a "light to the nations." The Church, because we are saved by faith like Abraham, enters into the same purpose, being a "Kingdom of priests" and a "light to the nations." The very purpose of their/our being chosen was to be a light for the surrounding nations, to lead them to God, in whom is their salvation and life. That's the whole point. Our justification ,and the working out of it in our lives (our progressive sanctification), are distinct but inextricably connected. God continues to work that out in our lives as long as we cooperate and don't stifle the Holy Spirit's leading in our lives to purify us and progressively sanctify us.
The working out of our justification means the manifestation of the implications of justification. One of the primary, if not THE primary implication(s) of justification is becoming a channel of holiness and reconciliation, a channel of God's righteousness to other people. Salvation is imputed righteousness, God's perfect righteousness earned in Christ's life imputed to us freely by faith. Sanctification is imparted righteousness, God's righteous acts done through us by the Holy Spirit that attracts other people to God. It's not about shaming people and guilting them into serving the homeless and doing evangelism, but it's about pointing out that the purpose of salvation is not to be holy in ourselves and live separate from the world. The point of our salvation is for us to be holy before God for the purpose of being holy unto other people, and to live separately, or more properly "differently," while IN the world. The purpose of God choosing people to save is so that they will then be active lights to other people to direct them to the God that saved them.
If a lightbulb said to its maker, "I will shine my light on everything around me...just not that person because I don't like him and he smells funny," the maker wouldn't say, "Can't you see how much you have and how much he lacks? He doesn't have any light. Someone's got to step in and help him out. Shine your light on him!"
That would be guilt manipulation, the most common evangelical method of getting people out the door to live missionally.
But if the lightbulb's maker said, "Well, lightbulb, what do you think I made you for? To do what you want and avoid the things you don't want? No. Indeed, I made you to give light to everyone and everything around you. It's not about who you're shining light on, it's about what you were made to do."
It's not about whether we want to shine light on other people. It's about what we were made to do, and that we will never be happy and fulfilled if we are not doing what we were made to do. Like that car insurance commercial: How happy does our insurance make people? "Happier than a slinky on an escalator."
God chose Israel to be a "kingdom of priests" and a "light to the nations." The Church, because we are saved by faith like Abraham, enters into the same purpose, being a "Kingdom of priests" and a "light to the nations." The very purpose of their/our being chosen was to be a light for the surrounding nations, to lead them to God, in whom is their salvation and life. That's the whole point. Our justification ,and the working out of it in our lives (our progressive sanctification), are distinct but inextricably connected. God continues to work that out in our lives as long as we cooperate and don't stifle the Holy Spirit's leading in our lives to purify us and progressively sanctify us.
The working out of our justification means the manifestation of the implications of justification. One of the primary, if not THE primary implication(s) of justification is becoming a channel of holiness and reconciliation, a channel of God's righteousness to other people. Salvation is imputed righteousness, God's perfect righteousness earned in Christ's life imputed to us freely by faith. Sanctification is imparted righteousness, God's righteous acts done through us by the Holy Spirit that attracts other people to God. It's not about shaming people and guilting them into serving the homeless and doing evangelism, but it's about pointing out that the purpose of salvation is not to be holy in ourselves and live separate from the world. The point of our salvation is for us to be holy before God for the purpose of being holy unto other people, and to live separately, or more properly "differently," while IN the world. The purpose of God choosing people to save is so that they will then be active lights to other people to direct them to the God that saved them.
If a lightbulb said to its maker, "I will shine my light on everything around me...just not that person because I don't like him and he smells funny," the maker wouldn't say, "Can't you see how much you have and how much he lacks? He doesn't have any light. Someone's got to step in and help him out. Shine your light on him!"
That would be guilt manipulation, the most common evangelical method of getting people out the door to live missionally.
But if the lightbulb's maker said, "Well, lightbulb, what do you think I made you for? To do what you want and avoid the things you don't want? No. Indeed, I made you to give light to everyone and everything around you. It's not about who you're shining light on, it's about what you were made to do."
It's not about whether we want to shine light on other people. It's about what we were made to do, and that we will never be happy and fulfilled if we are not doing what we were made to do. Like that car insurance commercial: How happy does our insurance make people? "Happier than a slinky on an escalator."
Monday, February 18, 2013
God's Immutability Challenged
This is a paper I put together for a philosophy class I took over the summer. A few people expressed interest in reading it.
In a recent article published in the New York Times, Yoram Hazony, president of the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, and author of The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture, argues against the omnipotence, omnibenevolence, and immutability of the God of the Hebrew Bible, using internal evidence from the Hebrew Scriptures and external evidence from reason. For Hazony, God being perfectly powerful and perfectly good would be an absurdity. The purpose of this essay is to show that Hazony's conclusion is erroneous, relying on special pleading and an equivocation fallacy. What this essay further seeks to demonstrate is that a transcendent being who is perfectly good and perfectly powerful is in fact reasonable enough to believe, even if unprovable. See the following excerpts from his article:
"You often hear philosophers describe “theism” as the belief in a perfect being — a being whose attributes are said to include being all-powerful, all-knowing, immutable, perfectly good, perfectly simple, and necessarily existent (among others)."
"It seems unlikely that God can be both perfectly powerful and perfectly good if the world is filled (as it obviously is) with instances of terrible injustice. Similarly, it’s hard to see how God can wield his infinite power to instigate alteration and change in all things if he is flat-out immutable. And there are more such contradictions where these came from."
"...it’s hard to find any evidence that the prophets and scholars who wrote the Hebrew Bible (or “Old Testament”) thought of God in this way at all. The God of Hebrew Scripture is not depicted as immutable, but repeatedly changes his mind about things (for example, he regrets having made man).... He is not perfectly powerful either, in that he famously cannot control Israel and get its people to do what he wants."
"...God responds to Moses’ request to know his name (that is, his nature) by telling him “ehi’eh asher ehi’eh” —“I will be what I will be.” In most English-language Bibles this is translated “I am that I am,” following the Septuagint, which sought to bring the biblical text into line with the Greek tradition of identifying God with perfect being. But in the Hebrew original, the text says almost exactly the opposite of this: The Hebrew “I will be what I will be” is in the imperfect tense, suggesting to us a God who is incomplete and changing."
Is it really necessary to say that God is a “perfect being,” or perfect at all, for that matter? As far as I can tell, the biblical authors avoid asserting any such thing. And with good reason. Normally, when we say that something is “perfect,” we mean it has attained the best possible balance among the principles involved in making it the kind of thing it is. For example, if we say that a bottle is perfect, we mean it can contain a significant quantity of liquid in its body; that its neck is long enough to be grasped comfortably and firmly; that the bore is wide enough to permit a rapid flow of liquid; and so on. Of course, you can always manufacture a bottle that will hold more liquid, but only by making the body too broad (so the bottle doesn’t handle well) or the neck too short (so it’s hard to hold). There’s an inevitable trade-off among the principles, and perfection lies in the balance among them.
Hazony's argument hinges on two primary elements: the classic problem of evil, (i.e., how can a good God and evil co-exist?) and what he sees as the absurdity of ultimate perfection, (i.e., how can you maximize every attribute of anything and not have a resulting absurdity?). He begins his argument by defining theism as “the belief in a perfect being.” In reality, Hazony is not engaging theism as a whole, but only the type of theism that is in fact the belief in a perfect being. This does not necessarily represent the basic definition of theism, however, which is simply the belief in a transcendent being of some kind.
Being careful not to speak in absolutes or to take a hard stance, Hazony gives the first element of his argument: the classic problem of evil. However, rather than simply restating the age-old argument against an omnipotent and good God coexisting with evil, Hazony says that it is the supposed immutability of God that would prohibit him from exerting power for good in the world. In other words, if God is immutable, then his omnipotence is rendered useless, which means his goodness is moot.
The premises would be more reasonable if they employed a more well-established definition of immutability. On this point Hazony avoids providing a definition and instead gives examples from the Old Testament of what he means by immutability, which seems to change back and forth between two definitions: God's unchanging nature, and His inability to enact change. Hazony's claim is that the concepts of divine immutability and divine impassibility were derived from Greek philosophy and became part of biblical theology only due to Hellenization, and that without Greek thought laid over the Old Testament, the Hebrew God is seen to change constantly. This argument, and the evidence Hazony provides for it, will be considered further in the argument engagement section.
The second element of Hazony's argument is the apparent absurdity of absolute perfection. With this argument Hazony commits an equivocation fallacy, the substitution of a word's definition in mid-argument in order to turn the conclusion. He begins by saying that God's perfection is not biblically supported, and then gives justification for that claim based on an obscure and uncommon definition of perfection. If perfection does indeed mean what he says it does then his argument is valid and compelling, but since it rests on a fallacy it should be considered in more depth, and the reasonableness of God's perfection should be considered apart from this argument since invalid arguments do not necessitate false conclusions.
In his treatment of the problem of evil, while Hazony uses the existence of evil as an argument against the existence of a good God (this argument largely hinges on whether or not evil is an existing thing or merely the absence of good), his focus is on God's immutability. One problem many people have with this doctrine is the confusion of immutability with immobility. As theologian Charles Hodges stated it, “In denying that God can change, they seem to deny that He can act.” (391) As stated previously, the premises of the argument would be more reasonable if the definition of immutability was more well-established, and by that I mean if the definition reflected what most theists mean when they say “immutable.” As the maxim goes, a text without a context is a pretext, and since words have no meaning outside a context, what theists mean when they say “immutable” (since it is not properly a biblical word) should be the definition used in the premise.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines immutability as the doctrine that asserts that “God cannot undergo real or intrinsic change of any sort.” (Leftow) In other words, nothing can so affect God that he changes, and that his essential nature or essence cannot change. As Hodge, and many others, has pointed out, immutability does not imply immobility. The fact that God's nature or essence does not change does not mean he is unable to act in real time and space and interact with his creation. It also does not preclude him from having emotions consistent with personhood; it does not further preclude him from having emotional responses to events within time and space. As with people, we should not infer a change of essential nature or character in a person should he or she respond emotionally to an event.
The predominant problem with Hazony's line of reasoning on this point is his meshing of two arguments together that should remain separate. The first is that the God of the Old Testament changes, and the second is that the type of immutability that comes down from Greek philosophy is incompatible with a perfectly good God. But the way he phrases the argument, the Greek philosophy point is seemingly irrelevant, and placing it as he does in the middle of this argument makes the point function as a red herring. Whether or not people hold to the doctrine of divine immutability in the Greek sense is irrelevant to whether or not the God of the Hebrew Bible changes. This line of reasoning looks like this.
A. The God of the Old Testament seems to change
B. The original Greek understanding of immutability is incompatible with a perfectly good God
C. Therefore God is not immutable.
The second way Hazony's argument against immutability disappoints is his use of special pleading. When Hazony says “it’s hard to find any evidence that the prophets and scholars who wrote the Hebrew Bible... thought of God in this way at all,” he is clearly ignoring evidence that does exist in the Hebrew Bible. This is not an essay on theology or biblical exegesis, but the fact remains that, irrespective of his conclusion, he is ignoring key passages such as Malachi 3:6, “I the LORD do not change.” Just because evidence is rare or hard to find has no bearing on whether or not something is true. Murderers have been convicted based on evidence that was difficult to find or otherwise seemingly miniscule, because the rarity or seeming miniscule nature of a piece of evidence is not proportional to the weight it might hold in an investigation. For some cases a single hair may mean the difference between freedom or lethal injection. That direct statements may be rare does not diminish the weight those statements might have. If two statements seem at first glance to provide conflicting information, both must be dealt with together rather than automatically dismissing it as a true contradiction and choosing a side to ignore.
Lastly, as for his argument against immutability, Hazony provides a few general biblical examples, and one specific example, of God being imperfect, incomplete and constantly changing. One example he uses to show that God's immutability negates his omnipotence is that God is unable to control Israel and get them to do what he wants. This is, of course, assuming God's desire was to control them. Logically this also does not follow:
A. If God were all-powerful Israel would be controlled by God
B. Israel is not controlled by God
C. Therefore God is not omnipotent
This employs the same reasoning as the following argument:
A. Police officers issue traffic tickets
B. Officer Johnson never issued traffic tickets
C. Therefore Officer Johnson is not a police officer
This false dilemma erroneously appeals to the law of the excluded middle, giving only two options when at least a third is possible. In this case Hazony lists as the only options either God's perfect control of Israel, or God's being impotent to control them. He does not allow for the possibility that, in his omnipotence and sovereignty over all that he created, God chose to give people free will. It is reasonable to imagine the possibility that the free actions of Israel, however unpleasing they may be to God, are allowed within his all-powerful sovereignty. If omnipotence and sovereignty precluded his allowance of free will, then God would not truly be omnipotent and sovereign.
The assumption that if God were all-powerful that everything would always go according to his will is made out of arrogance; the person who assumes it first makes the assumption that they know the mind of God. But if a transcendent being does exist, and did in fact create things such as galaxies and DNA, neither of which we fully understand, we must allow for the possibility that he knows a thing or two we do not and that he cannot be conformed to our own conception of God. It is extreme arrogance to argue against the existence of God on the basis that he is not as we would have him be.
The specific biblical example Hazony uses to argue against God's immutability is Moses' encounter with God in the burning bush in Exodus 3. Hazony's argument (see above) does not make sense grammatically or logically. God saying “I will be who I will be” does not refer to a changing nature, but to something that is not finished being what it is. If a man says “I will be a man,” he is referring to the unchanging nature of his status as a male. If a woman is asked the question “Who are you?” and she responds with “I will be who I will be,” we don't assume that her nature or essence or character will change. It does not follow, for example, that if Linda says she is going to be what she is going to be, that her friend Bill would assume that Linda's essential nature, essence or character will change.
Assuming God's statement should be translated “I will be what I will be,” (the translation is debatable), if God is referring to his divine nature (as Hazony even admits that he is), then it is equally likely, if not more likely, that God's statement is referring to precisely the opposite of what Hazony claims. It is then likely referring to God's unchanging, complete nature, rather than his changing, incomplete nature.
As to his grammatical comments, Hazony is drawing conclusions from grammar without actually thinking in grammatical categories. The imperfect tense only refers grammatically to action that is incomplete. Grammatical categories and syntactical relationships between words shed no light on the subjects or objects they refer to. One example is grammatical gender, which is “primarily a matter of syntax,” and carries no reference as to the essence or nature of the nouns they represent.(O'Connor 99)
Furthermore, Hazony claims that “I will be what I will be,” in the imperfect tense, is “almost the exact opposite” of the common translation “I am that I am,” which reflects a perfect tense (completed action), which does not appear in the text. Should we conclude then that this statement means God's nature is incomplete because the words that describe it are grammatically incomplete? Imperfect tense, however, is not the opposite of perfect tense. It only refers to an action that is yet incomplete. One only needs an elementary understanding of classical Hebrew to know that the distinction between perfect and imperfect can often be uncertain anyway. Hazony is certainly drawing a conclusion from grammar without thinking in grammatical categories.
Could it be, then, that when God says “I will be who I will be” he is referring to an eternally unchanging nature, hence the Septuagint's rendering of the Hebrew as Ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ὤν, “I am [the one who] I am being?” If that is the case then the translators of the Septuagint were not attempting to bring Old Testament theology in line with Greek thought, as Hazony assumes, but were rather trying to faithfully encapsulate all that was intended in that statement in Exodus.
Hazony's second major element of his argument, the argument against divine perfection, is more problematic. As previously stated, an equivocation fallacy drives Hazony's conclusion. He says, “Normally, when we say that something is 'perfect,' we mean it has attained the best possible balance among the principles involved in making it the kind of thing it is.” “Normally,” and “we mean,” are opinions at best, and a far cry from anything definitive. Here Hazony is making the error of semantic anachronism, the reading of a late meaning of a word back into earlier literature. It is irrelevant what we mean when we say “perfect;” what matters is what it meant when the Bible was written.
Here again he is ignoring a body of evidence; specifically he is ignoring five times in the Old Testament (according to the New American Standard version of the Bible) the word “perfect” (the Hebrew תָּמִים, tammim, meaning blameless, complete or sound) is used to describe attributes or works of God. Again, this is not a theology or exegesis paper, but in any case Hazony is clearly avoiding a body of evidence. His insistence that the biblical authors did not assert that God is perfect is based on the fact that the biblical authors did not describe God in terms of the type of perfection he is looking for, which is “maximizing all [an object's] constituent principles simultaneously.” According to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (11th Edition) there are eight definitions of “perfect,” and fourteen secondary definitions, and Hazony's definition is represented by one secondary definition. Clearly this is not the common conception of “perfect.”
One of Thomas Aquinas' five proofs of the existence of God is the argument from gradation of perfection. In his thinking, the idea of perfection is one of comparison rather than one of definition. For Thomas, perfection is something only seen in the comparison of things, and ultimately is grounded in the absolute. Writing of this “proof”, R.C. Sproul explains that “we cannot have a relative of anything unless the relative is measured against an absolute.” (73) For example, one diamond may be demonstrated to be more perfect than another diamond because it is understood, perhaps a priori, what a truly perfect diamond would look like, even if such a truly perfect diamond does not really exist. This explains why the market value of a diamond increases exponentially with its particular degree of perfection.
Hazony's concept of perfection in terms of maximizing attributes, if applied to diamonds, would say that a “perfect” diamond would be one that has the best possible balance of its principles; a perfect diamond would be shaped so as to fit tightly in a setting, would be large enough to catch enough light to sparkle, but not so big that it could not be worn comfortably. This would fail to take into account the fact that a smaller diamond can be worthy many times more than a larger diamond because of its superior degree of perfection.
In conclusion, Hazony's understanding of perfection also fails to take into account that God is not separate from his attributes. An attribute of God is something we use to explain God's identity. All the divine attributes together is a summation of who God is. God does not have an omniscient quality; God's identity is omniscient. God does not have an omnipotent quality; God's identity is omnipotent. God does not have love; God's identity is love. God is not separate from his attributes. Saying that certain attributes of God would be opposed to other attributes would be appealing to the classic argument of an immovable object versus an unstoppable force, which cannot co-exist. In examining God's attributes we're not looking at separate attributes in a vacuum which would seem to conflict with another; we're looking at one God who's identity is expressed in omniscience, omnipotence, omnibenevolence, omnipresence, love, etc.
The existence of a transcendent being that is, at the same time, good, all-powerful and all-knowing is reasonable, even if unprovable. For such a being to exist is not as unlikely as Hazony's straw-man makes it appear. None of his ideas are new, and few of them are logical. The danger of this kind of article is that few people take the time to check the facts and trace the logic, and therefore can be swayed by a weak argument that sounds reasonable enough. Yoram Hazony should be challenged to rewrite his article without redefining the terms, and without using unverified, highly (and often) debated, facts as premises.
Works Cited
Hazony, Yoram. "An Imperfect God." Opinionator An Imperfect God Comments. New York Times, n.d. Web. 5 Dec. 2012.
Hodge, Charles. Systematic Theology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1952. Print.
Leftow, Brian, "Immutability", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). Web.
Sproul, R. C. The Consequences of Ideas: Understanding the Concepts That Shaped Our World. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2000. Print.
Waltke, Bruce K., and Michael Patrick. O'Connor. An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990. Print.
In a recent article published in the New York Times, Yoram Hazony, president of the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, and author of The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture, argues against the omnipotence, omnibenevolence, and immutability of the God of the Hebrew Bible, using internal evidence from the Hebrew Scriptures and external evidence from reason. For Hazony, God being perfectly powerful and perfectly good would be an absurdity. The purpose of this essay is to show that Hazony's conclusion is erroneous, relying on special pleading and an equivocation fallacy. What this essay further seeks to demonstrate is that a transcendent being who is perfectly good and perfectly powerful is in fact reasonable enough to believe, even if unprovable. See the following excerpts from his article:
"You often hear philosophers describe “theism” as the belief in a perfect being — a being whose attributes are said to include being all-powerful, all-knowing, immutable, perfectly good, perfectly simple, and necessarily existent (among others)."
"It seems unlikely that God can be both perfectly powerful and perfectly good if the world is filled (as it obviously is) with instances of terrible injustice. Similarly, it’s hard to see how God can wield his infinite power to instigate alteration and change in all things if he is flat-out immutable. And there are more such contradictions where these came from."
"...it’s hard to find any evidence that the prophets and scholars who wrote the Hebrew Bible (or “Old Testament”) thought of God in this way at all. The God of Hebrew Scripture is not depicted as immutable, but repeatedly changes his mind about things (for example, he regrets having made man).... He is not perfectly powerful either, in that he famously cannot control Israel and get its people to do what he wants."
"...God responds to Moses’ request to know his name (that is, his nature) by telling him “ehi’eh asher ehi’eh” —“I will be what I will be.” In most English-language Bibles this is translated “I am that I am,” following the Septuagint, which sought to bring the biblical text into line with the Greek tradition of identifying God with perfect being. But in the Hebrew original, the text says almost exactly the opposite of this: The Hebrew “I will be what I will be” is in the imperfect tense, suggesting to us a God who is incomplete and changing."
Is it really necessary to say that God is a “perfect being,” or perfect at all, for that matter? As far as I can tell, the biblical authors avoid asserting any such thing. And with good reason. Normally, when we say that something is “perfect,” we mean it has attained the best possible balance among the principles involved in making it the kind of thing it is. For example, if we say that a bottle is perfect, we mean it can contain a significant quantity of liquid in its body; that its neck is long enough to be grasped comfortably and firmly; that the bore is wide enough to permit a rapid flow of liquid; and so on. Of course, you can always manufacture a bottle that will hold more liquid, but only by making the body too broad (so the bottle doesn’t handle well) or the neck too short (so it’s hard to hold). There’s an inevitable trade-off among the principles, and perfection lies in the balance among them.
Hazony's argument hinges on two primary elements: the classic problem of evil, (i.e., how can a good God and evil co-exist?) and what he sees as the absurdity of ultimate perfection, (i.e., how can you maximize every attribute of anything and not have a resulting absurdity?). He begins his argument by defining theism as “the belief in a perfect being.” In reality, Hazony is not engaging theism as a whole, but only the type of theism that is in fact the belief in a perfect being. This does not necessarily represent the basic definition of theism, however, which is simply the belief in a transcendent being of some kind.
Being careful not to speak in absolutes or to take a hard stance, Hazony gives the first element of his argument: the classic problem of evil. However, rather than simply restating the age-old argument against an omnipotent and good God coexisting with evil, Hazony says that it is the supposed immutability of God that would prohibit him from exerting power for good in the world. In other words, if God is immutable, then his omnipotence is rendered useless, which means his goodness is moot.
The premises would be more reasonable if they employed a more well-established definition of immutability. On this point Hazony avoids providing a definition and instead gives examples from the Old Testament of what he means by immutability, which seems to change back and forth between two definitions: God's unchanging nature, and His inability to enact change. Hazony's claim is that the concepts of divine immutability and divine impassibility were derived from Greek philosophy and became part of biblical theology only due to Hellenization, and that without Greek thought laid over the Old Testament, the Hebrew God is seen to change constantly. This argument, and the evidence Hazony provides for it, will be considered further in the argument engagement section.
The second element of Hazony's argument is the apparent absurdity of absolute perfection. With this argument Hazony commits an equivocation fallacy, the substitution of a word's definition in mid-argument in order to turn the conclusion. He begins by saying that God's perfection is not biblically supported, and then gives justification for that claim based on an obscure and uncommon definition of perfection. If perfection does indeed mean what he says it does then his argument is valid and compelling, but since it rests on a fallacy it should be considered in more depth, and the reasonableness of God's perfection should be considered apart from this argument since invalid arguments do not necessitate false conclusions.
In his treatment of the problem of evil, while Hazony uses the existence of evil as an argument against the existence of a good God (this argument largely hinges on whether or not evil is an existing thing or merely the absence of good), his focus is on God's immutability. One problem many people have with this doctrine is the confusion of immutability with immobility. As theologian Charles Hodges stated it, “In denying that God can change, they seem to deny that He can act.” (391) As stated previously, the premises of the argument would be more reasonable if the definition of immutability was more well-established, and by that I mean if the definition reflected what most theists mean when they say “immutable.” As the maxim goes, a text without a context is a pretext, and since words have no meaning outside a context, what theists mean when they say “immutable” (since it is not properly a biblical word) should be the definition used in the premise.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines immutability as the doctrine that asserts that “God cannot undergo real or intrinsic change of any sort.” (Leftow) In other words, nothing can so affect God that he changes, and that his essential nature or essence cannot change. As Hodge, and many others, has pointed out, immutability does not imply immobility. The fact that God's nature or essence does not change does not mean he is unable to act in real time and space and interact with his creation. It also does not preclude him from having emotions consistent with personhood; it does not further preclude him from having emotional responses to events within time and space. As with people, we should not infer a change of essential nature or character in a person should he or she respond emotionally to an event.
The predominant problem with Hazony's line of reasoning on this point is his meshing of two arguments together that should remain separate. The first is that the God of the Old Testament changes, and the second is that the type of immutability that comes down from Greek philosophy is incompatible with a perfectly good God. But the way he phrases the argument, the Greek philosophy point is seemingly irrelevant, and placing it as he does in the middle of this argument makes the point function as a red herring. Whether or not people hold to the doctrine of divine immutability in the Greek sense is irrelevant to whether or not the God of the Hebrew Bible changes. This line of reasoning looks like this.
A. The God of the Old Testament seems to change
B. The original Greek understanding of immutability is incompatible with a perfectly good God
C. Therefore God is not immutable.
The second way Hazony's argument against immutability disappoints is his use of special pleading. When Hazony says “it’s hard to find any evidence that the prophets and scholars who wrote the Hebrew Bible... thought of God in this way at all,” he is clearly ignoring evidence that does exist in the Hebrew Bible. This is not an essay on theology or biblical exegesis, but the fact remains that, irrespective of his conclusion, he is ignoring key passages such as Malachi 3:6, “I the LORD do not change.” Just because evidence is rare or hard to find has no bearing on whether or not something is true. Murderers have been convicted based on evidence that was difficult to find or otherwise seemingly miniscule, because the rarity or seeming miniscule nature of a piece of evidence is not proportional to the weight it might hold in an investigation. For some cases a single hair may mean the difference between freedom or lethal injection. That direct statements may be rare does not diminish the weight those statements might have. If two statements seem at first glance to provide conflicting information, both must be dealt with together rather than automatically dismissing it as a true contradiction and choosing a side to ignore.
Lastly, as for his argument against immutability, Hazony provides a few general biblical examples, and one specific example, of God being imperfect, incomplete and constantly changing. One example he uses to show that God's immutability negates his omnipotence is that God is unable to control Israel and get them to do what he wants. This is, of course, assuming God's desire was to control them. Logically this also does not follow:
A. If God were all-powerful Israel would be controlled by God
B. Israel is not controlled by God
C. Therefore God is not omnipotent
This employs the same reasoning as the following argument:
A. Police officers issue traffic tickets
B. Officer Johnson never issued traffic tickets
C. Therefore Officer Johnson is not a police officer
This false dilemma erroneously appeals to the law of the excluded middle, giving only two options when at least a third is possible. In this case Hazony lists as the only options either God's perfect control of Israel, or God's being impotent to control them. He does not allow for the possibility that, in his omnipotence and sovereignty over all that he created, God chose to give people free will. It is reasonable to imagine the possibility that the free actions of Israel, however unpleasing they may be to God, are allowed within his all-powerful sovereignty. If omnipotence and sovereignty precluded his allowance of free will, then God would not truly be omnipotent and sovereign.
The assumption that if God were all-powerful that everything would always go according to his will is made out of arrogance; the person who assumes it first makes the assumption that they know the mind of God. But if a transcendent being does exist, and did in fact create things such as galaxies and DNA, neither of which we fully understand, we must allow for the possibility that he knows a thing or two we do not and that he cannot be conformed to our own conception of God. It is extreme arrogance to argue against the existence of God on the basis that he is not as we would have him be.
The specific biblical example Hazony uses to argue against God's immutability is Moses' encounter with God in the burning bush in Exodus 3. Hazony's argument (see above) does not make sense grammatically or logically. God saying “I will be who I will be” does not refer to a changing nature, but to something that is not finished being what it is. If a man says “I will be a man,” he is referring to the unchanging nature of his status as a male. If a woman is asked the question “Who are you?” and she responds with “I will be who I will be,” we don't assume that her nature or essence or character will change. It does not follow, for example, that if Linda says she is going to be what she is going to be, that her friend Bill would assume that Linda's essential nature, essence or character will change.
Assuming God's statement should be translated “I will be what I will be,” (the translation is debatable), if God is referring to his divine nature (as Hazony even admits that he is), then it is equally likely, if not more likely, that God's statement is referring to precisely the opposite of what Hazony claims. It is then likely referring to God's unchanging, complete nature, rather than his changing, incomplete nature.
As to his grammatical comments, Hazony is drawing conclusions from grammar without actually thinking in grammatical categories. The imperfect tense only refers grammatically to action that is incomplete. Grammatical categories and syntactical relationships between words shed no light on the subjects or objects they refer to. One example is grammatical gender, which is “primarily a matter of syntax,” and carries no reference as to the essence or nature of the nouns they represent.(O'Connor 99)
Furthermore, Hazony claims that “I will be what I will be,” in the imperfect tense, is “almost the exact opposite” of the common translation “I am that I am,” which reflects a perfect tense (completed action), which does not appear in the text. Should we conclude then that this statement means God's nature is incomplete because the words that describe it are grammatically incomplete? Imperfect tense, however, is not the opposite of perfect tense. It only refers to an action that is yet incomplete. One only needs an elementary understanding of classical Hebrew to know that the distinction between perfect and imperfect can often be uncertain anyway. Hazony is certainly drawing a conclusion from grammar without thinking in grammatical categories.
Could it be, then, that when God says “I will be who I will be” he is referring to an eternally unchanging nature, hence the Septuagint's rendering of the Hebrew as Ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ὤν, “I am [the one who] I am being?” If that is the case then the translators of the Septuagint were not attempting to bring Old Testament theology in line with Greek thought, as Hazony assumes, but were rather trying to faithfully encapsulate all that was intended in that statement in Exodus.
Hazony's second major element of his argument, the argument against divine perfection, is more problematic. As previously stated, an equivocation fallacy drives Hazony's conclusion. He says, “Normally, when we say that something is 'perfect,' we mean it has attained the best possible balance among the principles involved in making it the kind of thing it is.” “Normally,” and “we mean,” are opinions at best, and a far cry from anything definitive. Here Hazony is making the error of semantic anachronism, the reading of a late meaning of a word back into earlier literature. It is irrelevant what we mean when we say “perfect;” what matters is what it meant when the Bible was written.
Here again he is ignoring a body of evidence; specifically he is ignoring five times in the Old Testament (according to the New American Standard version of the Bible) the word “perfect” (the Hebrew תָּמִים, tammim, meaning blameless, complete or sound) is used to describe attributes or works of God. Again, this is not a theology or exegesis paper, but in any case Hazony is clearly avoiding a body of evidence. His insistence that the biblical authors did not assert that God is perfect is based on the fact that the biblical authors did not describe God in terms of the type of perfection he is looking for, which is “maximizing all [an object's] constituent principles simultaneously.” According to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (11th Edition) there are eight definitions of “perfect,” and fourteen secondary definitions, and Hazony's definition is represented by one secondary definition. Clearly this is not the common conception of “perfect.”
One of Thomas Aquinas' five proofs of the existence of God is the argument from gradation of perfection. In his thinking, the idea of perfection is one of comparison rather than one of definition. For Thomas, perfection is something only seen in the comparison of things, and ultimately is grounded in the absolute. Writing of this “proof”, R.C. Sproul explains that “we cannot have a relative of anything unless the relative is measured against an absolute.” (73) For example, one diamond may be demonstrated to be more perfect than another diamond because it is understood, perhaps a priori, what a truly perfect diamond would look like, even if such a truly perfect diamond does not really exist. This explains why the market value of a diamond increases exponentially with its particular degree of perfection.
Hazony's concept of perfection in terms of maximizing attributes, if applied to diamonds, would say that a “perfect” diamond would be one that has the best possible balance of its principles; a perfect diamond would be shaped so as to fit tightly in a setting, would be large enough to catch enough light to sparkle, but not so big that it could not be worn comfortably. This would fail to take into account the fact that a smaller diamond can be worthy many times more than a larger diamond because of its superior degree of perfection.
In conclusion, Hazony's understanding of perfection also fails to take into account that God is not separate from his attributes. An attribute of God is something we use to explain God's identity. All the divine attributes together is a summation of who God is. God does not have an omniscient quality; God's identity is omniscient. God does not have an omnipotent quality; God's identity is omnipotent. God does not have love; God's identity is love. God is not separate from his attributes. Saying that certain attributes of God would be opposed to other attributes would be appealing to the classic argument of an immovable object versus an unstoppable force, which cannot co-exist. In examining God's attributes we're not looking at separate attributes in a vacuum which would seem to conflict with another; we're looking at one God who's identity is expressed in omniscience, omnipotence, omnibenevolence, omnipresence, love, etc.
The existence of a transcendent being that is, at the same time, good, all-powerful and all-knowing is reasonable, even if unprovable. For such a being to exist is not as unlikely as Hazony's straw-man makes it appear. None of his ideas are new, and few of them are logical. The danger of this kind of article is that few people take the time to check the facts and trace the logic, and therefore can be swayed by a weak argument that sounds reasonable enough. Yoram Hazony should be challenged to rewrite his article without redefining the terms, and without using unverified, highly (and often) debated, facts as premises.
Works Cited
Hazony, Yoram. "An Imperfect God." Opinionator An Imperfect God Comments. New York Times, n.d. Web. 5 Dec. 2012.
Hodge, Charles. Systematic Theology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1952. Print.
Leftow, Brian, "Immutability", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). Web.
Sproul, R. C. The Consequences of Ideas: Understanding the Concepts That Shaped Our World. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2000. Print.
Waltke, Bruce K., and Michael Patrick. O'Connor. An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990. Print.
Saturday, January 19, 2013
If You Hold Fast...Type of Faith or Type of Gospel?
I was reading 1 Corinthians 15 this morning and had a little breakthrough. I've always been sort of troubled by these types of verses, as is verse 2, the "if you hold fast to the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain" part. I think a lot of people read this (and this is what troubled me) in the sense that you are saved by the Gospel IF you hold fast to it and don't go back in your belief, appealing to the idea of perseverance. If you persevere in this and don't "stop believing" then you are saved, not at a one-time belief but only if your belief perseveres.
But as I read through this this morning there was a different meaning that naturally came through, and it honestly makes more sense. I think what Paul is saying is that he received this Gospel, and they received this same Gospel and are saved by it...
...as long as the gospel they received is the same as what he is about to explain.
He's not addressing the type of belief they must have in the gospel, but rather he's explaining the gospel in which they must believe. The "unless you believed in vain" part has got to mean simply that they received the true gospel but, like the Galatians, ended up believing a twisted one, a way of being the seed that is plucked out before it can take root.
Once again, it's not the type of faith, but the object of faith. I love the way Tim Keller put it. He was preaching about the Exodus, and he said "You know, there are those who say 'Yes, all you have to do is believe...but you've REALLY got to believe!' Don't do that. Don't do that. This is what you're doing when you say that. In Exodus 14:22 it says that the waters when parted formed a wall of water one either side of the Israelites. Now, there are some who walked between those walls of water and said, 'We're gonna die! We're gonna die! We're gonna die!' but there were others who walked through and just said 'Wow, this is amazing.' And both types of people were equally saved."
But as I read through this this morning there was a different meaning that naturally came through, and it honestly makes more sense. I think what Paul is saying is that he received this Gospel, and they received this same Gospel and are saved by it...
...as long as the gospel they received is the same as what he is about to explain.
He's not addressing the type of belief they must have in the gospel, but rather he's explaining the gospel in which they must believe. The "unless you believed in vain" part has got to mean simply that they received the true gospel but, like the Galatians, ended up believing a twisted one, a way of being the seed that is plucked out before it can take root.
Once again, it's not the type of faith, but the object of faith. I love the way Tim Keller put it. He was preaching about the Exodus, and he said "You know, there are those who say 'Yes, all you have to do is believe...but you've REALLY got to believe!' Don't do that. Don't do that. This is what you're doing when you say that. In Exodus 14:22 it says that the waters when parted formed a wall of water one either side of the Israelites. Now, there are some who walked between those walls of water and said, 'We're gonna die! We're gonna die! We're gonna die!' but there were others who walked through and just said 'Wow, this is amazing.' And both types of people were equally saved."
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