Sunday, September 19, 2004
(3:26 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Theological Indulgence
We here at the Weblog have lately shied away from directly addressing theological concerns. Since, however, I am enrolled in a graduate degree program at a seminary, I have lately been dealing with many theological questions, and it seems arbitrary to exclude them from blogical consideration. Thus, I present to you a response I posted to the CRI General Forum to the question "Is God fair?" I changed the question to be "Is God just?"I am having trouble with this question as well. In immediate terms, it seems self-evident that God is not fair. Luther said (I paraphrase) that if one looks at the objective reality of the world, one can only conclude that God is either powerless or evil. I think that's about right. The presence of war, poverty, and despair in human life -- not to mention "natural" disasters such as earthquakes or hurricanes that seem to destroy human projects indiscriminately -- are so overwhelming that the very goodness of creation itself is often called into question. The success of the unjust and the suffering of the just, or, worse, the seeming randomness with which life's pleasures and joys are parcelled out, fly in the face of the idea that a loving and just God is guiding and directing the course of life on earth. Such an idea is absurd on its face if one simply reads a newspaper.One will note that this response seems to fly in the face of my last theological post, in which I claimed that lefty Christians need to stop being shy about telling people they're going to hell. Perhaps the two can be reconciled -- I don't know.
I reject the idea that God has a secret cache of information such that, if we knew it, we would agree that God is fair and that the things that happen are all for the good. If God is God, then he does not need us to defend him in the same way that people defended the Bush administration's claims in the lead-up to Iraq, asserting that they had good and convincing information that, for some reason, they were unable to share with the public. Justice that is not immediately perceptible is not justice at all; attempting to claim that there is some higher logic by which manifest injustice turns out to be justice is the worst kind of sophistry.
If I were disposed to assert that God is just -- something the Bible seems to require us to do -- I would limit myself to trust that, from the perspective of the last judgment, God will have been just. A part of any justice worthy of the name has to consist in setting things right. As we can all see, creation has gone massively wrong, cutting off the possibility for a meaningful and fulfilling life for the majority of the world's inhabitants. The only possible convincing manifestation of divine justice, in my view, is universal salvation, wherein the world and everyone in it is made whole.
I believe that Scripture is not unambiguous on this point, but that there is sufficient Scriptural warrant for a lively hope for universal salvation. I recognize that my assertion here might seem to be arrogant in making claims on God or standing in judgment of God, but I think that there is ample Scriptural evidence of faithful people making such claims on God, based either on the explicit covenant of Israel or on the promises implied by God's having created us at all. If God does not make all creation whole on the last day, then he will not have been just, not in any meaningful sense.
(I'd like to thank Paul and Low-Rent in advance for their insightful and witty comments.)
