N.T. Wright on God and Evil
Back in 2006, N.T. (Tom) Wright—the prolific author, New Testament historian, and bishop of Durham—came out with a book that seeks to grapple with evil from a biblical perspective: Evil and the Justice of God (InterVarsity Press, 2006). I, along with fellow Christian philosopher Mike Rea (Notre Dame), had the privilege of responding to Wright’s book at the 2006 American Academy of Religion annual meeting in Washington, DC. Ever the Christian gentleman, Wright offered gracious, insightful replies to us both. This interaction was followed by questions from the audience. It was a splendid evening indeed.
Mike’s and my responses to Wright’s book were just published in the most recent issue of Philosophia Christi, the Evangelical Philosophical Society’s journal (www.epsociety.org) . You can read my response to Wright’s book, which includes both a summary of the book as well as various questions, comments, and calls for clarification:
http://www.paulcopan.com/articles/pdf/comments-questions-evil-justice-of-God.pdf.
Let me know what you think.
By the way, if you’re interested in a rich biblical, theological resource, see N.T. Wright’s “unofficial website,” which is full of excellent articles and podcasts: http://www.ntwrightpage.com.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!- Is Wright Right about the Righteousness of God?
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- Robert Bowman on Books that have Shaped his Life
- The Future of Justification: A Review (Part 2)
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bethyada on 10 Jan 2009 at 2:37 am #
Hi Paul Copan, I have some thoughts on what you have written but note I have not read Wright’s article.
I agree with several of your comments early in the review. I think you are correct in emphasising that evil is a negation of good. Philosophically that is where we must start. However could evil be more? Planes are a copy of birds but are also something in their own right. Evil may have started as the perversion of good but is it possible that it has become something real of itself. One needs also to consider Lewis’ comments that even those who love evil do so for the “good” they desire. Eg. they may desire pleasure but via an illegitimate means, which would fit into your suggestion that evil is always only understood in light of a perversion of good.
I also agree that evil must be a perversion, not just a lack or absence. You examples of flight are good to refute absence, but further, examples of lack of vision, hearing, etc. when these are design features means that this is not mere absence, it is rather a perversion of the good.
3. This is where we differ and why I think your system struggles. Yours is internally inconsistent, and (I think) doesn’t match the foundational scriptural worldview of evil. Evil is totally tied up in the Fall. Every explanation of evil ultimately has its source in man’s fall. And I think Genesis 3 gives us more information and understanding on this issue.
You quote Job and Psalm 104 but I think you should be careful how you interpret these verses. Job for example is God talking about himself as a creator, and thus touches on creation, but in the context of he being the creator, not in the context of explaining the how of creation. That God is creator of goats doesn’t mean there current state is that of their creation.
It is difficult to ascribe Psalm 104 solely to creation. While verse 5 can refer to the creation event, verse 6 could apply to either this or the Flood. In fact verse 9 would imply the Flood more than the creation. Verses 10-18 seem to apply to current providence rather than a previous event. And while the making of the moon and sun are surely creation events, the context is that of the current situation (much like the Job verse you cited). And several other components of this Psalm speak to events later than creation such as ships and sinners, the ongoing (ie. present) creation of animals, and the eternity of God’s glory.
This is to say that your interpretation of these verses suggest to you that this is how they were at creation, rather than the fact that God is their creator whatever they are like now.
Rather than a gloss, the comment that these creatures ate plants is not an absence of mention of a food chain, it is a specific claim to a completely different food chain (than we now have) and, I think, denies prelapsarian carnivory. Passages like Isaiah 11, 55 lend some support this contention.
Why can animals not have a nature that has been affected by the Fall? Yes, we should reverse effects of the curse, but if this is not part of the curse why is it bad? Goldengay’s claim that this is not God’s intention but not part of the Fall makes one wonder both why it is and also how God could describe his creation as very good when he opposed animal death.
You find a parallel here with our bodies not being created incorruptible, but is this the case? And our resurrection bodies are something different, this is because of God’s redemption, not because of lacking at creation. At creation we had access to the tree of life, there was nothing lacking or less than optimal in Adam.
Death is an intruder, all death—man and animal. Animal death is not a good but less than optimal, it is a bad. All of creation is broken and groans for redemption.
4. I agree with both justice and restorative justice. Redemptive reconciliation is also useful, but these 2 actions are different and may belong to different realms. The first an issue of justice and the second one of mercy. We should desire mercy over justice as per Jesus’ teaching. Note however that Jesus was speaking to individuals. I think a lot of murky water could be cleared here if the distinction between God’s requirements of the state and his desire for individuals is noted and kept distinct. (One could argue that the requirements from God for the state and individuals are the same, but the state and individual are not the same and so both must be reasoned thru). The role of a Christian as a police officer and soldier is more easily understood. He can act as an agent of the state, but he is also to do his job in a manner that honours Christ. He may be forbidden to take offences against him into his own hands yet distribute justice (such as execution) on behalf of the state doing its job maintaining order.
Susan on 13 Jan 2009 at 1:34 pm #
Hi Paul, I finally read your article! Good thoughts. I appreciate the point you made about the tendency of some to leave out the role Satan/demons play in the whole scheme of things, with regard to evil. What a serious oversight! It’s amazing the abandoning of evil which takes place in the life of one who was influenced by Satan, but comes to be inhabited by God’s Spirit. This I have seen.
Good point, about police officers (my husband is one).
Paul Copan on 27 Jan 2009 at 1:58 pm #
Thanks, Bethyada and Susan, for your comments. Sorry about the delay. I’ve been traveling of late and have fallen behind on responses to my blogging.
Let me elaborate on the food chain and the fall. Romans 5:12 talks about human death entering the world through the fall—and I would add, humans becoming vulnerable to dangers such as ferocious animals. Protection from them was removed by the fall.
God originally created the food chain as part of his “very good” creation, which involved animal death. This food chain, however, will no longer exist in the new heavens and earth, when wild animals will be domesticated and become incapable of doing harm: Although Genesis 1 emphasizes the order, goodness, and beauty of the natural world that God created, we see in other Scriptures that God created the “food chain” and the preying of one species upon another. Indeed, this is exactly what we see from the fossil record: carnivorous activity was present long before human beings appeared on the scene. We can’t escape the fact of an animal food chain and, consequently, animal death in the non-human world before the fall.
While Genesis 1 exclusively mentions the beauty of creation, other passages describe its bloodiness—a “Nature red in tooth and claw,” as Alfred Lord Tennyson put it. For example, in Psalm 104, a *creation* psalm, we read that the “lions roar for their prey and seek their food from God” (21). These animals also die: “When you hide your face, they are terrified; when you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust” (29). In the book of Job, God talks about His creation, which involves predatory activity. We read of the hawk spying out prey from the rocky crags (Job 39:28-29); its nestlings suck the blood of it, and “where the slain are, there is he.” God also created the “fierce” Leviathan (crocodile) with “fearsome teeth” (41:1,10,14). Note that there is not even a hint this being post-fall situation. It seems built in to creation from the outset. Also, Job 38:39-40 speaks of the prey of the lion and of lions crouching in wait in a thicket.
Carnivorosity existed before the fall in the animal kingdom. Just check out the teeth of the Tyrannosaurus Rex—not your average herbivore!
I’ll continue my comments on my next posting….
Paul Copan on 27 Jan 2009 at 2:04 pm #
Furthermore, while God gave humans every kind of tree and plant for consumption (Genesis 1:29), this doesn’t mean humans were originally vegetarians—nor does it mean that meat-eating reflects human fallenness or hardness of heart! While Genesis 9:3 affirms that “every moving thing that is alive shall be yours to eat,” Gordon Wenham points out that this merely ratifies or confirms the legitimacy of meat-eating. Genesis isn’t interested in whether people were originally vegetarian or not, but that God supplied them with food. Henri Blocher suggests that Genesis doesn’t move from the prohibition of meat-eating (in Genesis 1) to permission (Genesis 9). This shift in emphasis is more likely stylistic: Genesis 1 omits this feature—though the food chain is not an evil—to suggest the perfection of harmony in the creation. Genesis 9 adds this aspect of permissibility to convey the feeling that the peace has been broken.
The goodness of creation doesn’t imply its perfection or completion (Rom. 8:19-23). Leading it to perfection is the task left to humanity.
This fits what 1 Timothy, 4:3-4 points out: read that the meat-denying ascetics are rejecting what God created good (echoing Genesis 1, where God declared His creation “very good”). These gifts are to be received with thanksgiving.
Furthermore, God tells human beings to “rule over the fish of the sea” (Genesis 1:28); one wonders what this could mean apart from permission to eat them. Abel kept sheep, presumably to eat (4:2-4). Noah himself distinguished between clean and unclean animals (7:2), which assumes the edibility of meat prior to the flood.
Not only does the Old Testament endorse the goodness of eating (kosher) meat—ox, sheep, goat, deer, gazelle, and the like (Deuteronomy 14:3-6). The New Testament declares all foods clean (Mark 7:19). In fact, because “the earth is the Lord’s, and all it contains” (1 Corinthians 10:25), even eating idol meat sold in the marketplace could be freely eaten, Paul declares. Paul appeals to the creation as being the source of good things, including meat as a food for humans.
Okay, on to part III!
Paul Copan on 27 Jan 2009 at 2:11 pm #
Okay. Here are my final comments (for now!):
It seems that the food chain, then, isn’t abnormal or “anti-creational,” and humans can freely eat meat as a good gift from God (although this doesn’t mean consuming animals to the point of their extinction—something that would negate the “cultural mandate” in Genesis 1-2 to care for the earth as God’s co-regents). If the food chain is built into creation, what was the difference after the fall? The fall meant that humans could be threatened by and become fearful of many animals. The safety and invulnerability of our first ancestors was removed. They became vulnerable to thorns, earthquakes from shifting tectonic plates, and other natural phenomena God built into the created order.
For the new heavens and new earth, we’re told that the wolf will dwell with the lamb, and the cow and the bear will feed together (Isaiah 11:6-9; 65:25). Wild animals will no longer pose a threat–hence the picture of domestication. One caution is in order: we have to be careful about overliteralizing these texts that refer to the new heavens and new earth (cp. Isaiah 65:1). For instance, Isaiah 65:20 says that “the youth will die at the age of one hundred.” But surely this is a picture of living a long and full life since there’s no more death in this final state! British New Testament scholar C.F.D. Moule comments on Isaiah 11:6-9 (which mentions the bear’s grazing and the lion’s eating straw): “No one with a grain of sense believes that the passage . . . is intended literally, as though the digestive system of a carnivore were going to be transformed into that of [an] herbivore. What blasphemous injury would be done to great poetry . . . by laying such solemnly prosaic hands upon it!” Even though the food chain was built in to the animal kingdom at the first creation, things will be different in renewed creation of the new heavens and earth. Simply compare these comments: “the lion will eat straw leike the ox” (Isa. 65:29) and “there will be no lion there” (Isa. 35:9). Surely we don’t want to go literalistic here and ruin the point of Isaiah’s poetry—which is that there will be no danger. We’re not talking about carnivorous animals changing their diet.
Well, these are my reflections on the matter. I hope this clarifies things.
bethyada on 11 Feb 2009 at 5:06 am #
Paul, I have only recently seen your reply. I won’t add much here but will say that I am happy to carry on this discussion including the points you raise above in a future post, and there are many worth discussing.
I’ll restrict myself to this comment:
Carnivorosity existed before the fall in the animal kingdom. Just check out the teeth of the Tyrannosaurus Rex—not your average herbivore!
This is not an argument based on exegesis, rather on extra-biblical assumptions.
Kind regards
Paul Copan on 11 Feb 2009 at 8:49 am #
Thanks, Bethyada.
I wasn’t offering an exegetical position here. All I was doing was making an inference based on passages like Job and Psalm 104, using the scientifically-supported example of the T-rex (which appears in the fossil record before human beings).
At any rate, as I’ll be posting on something else shortly, we can carry on the correspondence by email: paul_copan@pba.edu.
Blessings and all good wishes,
Paul