God Reforms Hearts

Thaddeus Williams

Description

Must we be free to truly love?Evil is a problem for all Christians. When responding to objections that both evil and God can exist, many resort to a "free will defense," where God is not the creator of evil but of human freedom, by which evil is possible. This response is so pervasive that it is just as often assumed as it is defended. But is this answer biblically and philosophically defensible?In God Reforms Hearts, Thaddeus J. Williams offers a friendly challenge to the central claim of the free will defense-that love is possible only with true (or libertarian) free will. Williams argues that much thinking on free will fails to carve out the necessary distinction between an autonomous will and an unforced will. Scripture presents a God who desires relationship and places moral requirements on his often--rebellious creatures, but does absolute free will follow? Moreover, God's work of transforming the human heart is more thorough than libertarian freedom allows. With clarity, precision, and charity, Williams judges the merits and shortcomings of the relational free will defense while offering a philosophically and biblically robust alternative that draws from theologians of the past to point a way forward.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Christian theology
• Theology
• Christianity

Informations

• Publié par: Lexham Press
• Date de parution: 11 août 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781683594987
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

God Reforms Hearts
Rethinking Free Will and the Problem of Evil
Thaddeus Williams
God Reforms Hearts: Rethinking Free Will and the Problem of Evil
Copyright 2021 Thaddeus Williams
Lexham Academic, an imprint of Lexham Press
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You may use brief quotations from this resource in presentations, articles, and books. For all other uses, please write Lexham Press for permission. Email us at [e-mail] .
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are the author’s own translation or are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV ® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.
Print ISBN 9781683594970
Digital ISBN 9781683594987
Library of Congress Control Number 2021935525
Lexham Editorial: Todd Hains, Abby Salinger, Abigail Stocker, Jim Weaver, Mandi Newell
Cover Design: Lydia Dahl
For Hendrik
Contents
PART I: EVIL AND THE AUTONOMOUS HEART
Rethinking Free Will as a Condition of Authentic Love
1.1: The Relational Free Will Defense
1.2: The Axiom of Libertarian Love
1.3: True Love
Is Freedom from the Heart Indubitable or Dubious?
Part 1: Summary and Conclusions
PART 2: FREEDOM AND THE ENSLAVED HEART
Depth Capacity and the Case for Libertarian Free Will
2.1: The Moral Imperative Argument
Does “Ought” Imply “Can”?
2.2: The Grievous Resistance Argument
Does Divine Grief Imply Human Autonomy?
2.3: The Relational Vision Argument
Can One Guarantee Another’s Love?
Part 2: Summary and Conclusions
PART 3: LOVE AND THE REFORMED HEART
The Scope of Divine Action in Human Love
3.1: Five Models of Divine Action in Human Love
3.2: Heart Reformation and the Bible
3.3: The Problems of Evil Revisited
Part 3: Summary and Conclusions
Epilogue: What a Difference One Word Makes
Appendix A: Taqdir and Trinitas
Divine Power and Human Responsibility in Sunni Islam and Reformed Theology
Appendix B: Is God Vulnerable?
Evaluating Vincent Brümmer’s Notion of Autonomy
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Index
PART 1
Evil and the Autonomous Heart
Rethinking Free Will as a Condition of Authentic Love
1.1
The Relational Free Will Defense
Don’t let us make imaginary evils, when you know we have so many real ones to encounter.
— Oliver Goldsmith, The Good-Natured Man

THE PROBLEMS OF EVIL
A survey conducted by the Barna Research Group revealed that the number one question posed about God by a cross section of American adults is, “Why is there so much pain and suffering in the world?” 1 In my years of teaching philosophy and theology, students have raised no other question with more frequency and urgency. As Proclus stated the question in the fifth century AD , “ Si Deus est, unde malum ?” (“If God exists, whence comes evil?”). 2
We need neither modern surveys nor ancient sayings to inform us that reconciling the existence of evil with that of a supremely good and powerful Being constitutes an excruciatingly troublesome problem. Evidencing the magnitude of the problem of evil is Barry Whitney’s published bibliography entitled Theodicy , which cites over 4,200 philosophical and theological works on the topic in the three-decade span between 1960 and 1990. 3 That factors to a new scholarly publication on the problem of evil every 62.4 hours (in English alone), and the trend shows no signs of abating in the new millennium.
Solving the enduring problem of evil in its multiple and mind-bending forms is well beyond the scope of both this work and author. Rather than arriving at definitive answers to the problem(s), God Reforms Hearts enters the mass sojourn to encourage progress, however small, in the right direction toward answers.
This work seeks progress by focusing on one of today’s dominant strategies for answering evil—the “Relational Free Will Defense.” The defining premise of this Defense is the claim that authentic love requires free will. Many scholars, including Gregory Boyd and Vincent Brümmer, champion this claim. 4 Best-selling books, such as Rob Bell’s Love Wins , echo that love “can’t be forced, manipulated, or coerced. It always leaves room for the other to decide.” 5 The claim that love requires free will has even found expression in mainstream Hollywood films, including Frailty (David Kirschner Productions, 2002) , Bruce Almighty (Universal, 2003) , and The Adjustment Bureau (Universal, 2011).
Is this pervasive claim of the Relational Free Will Defense philosophically credible? Does it stray from biblical insights into the nature of love, freedom, and evil? Does the claim that love requires free will clash with a robust relational response to evil in its concrete (rather than abstract) forms? These questions, often unasked in the contemporary literature, form the cornerstone around which I have built this work.
Before clarifying the Relational Free Will Defense and developing the questions above, we must first debunk the idea that there is a problem of evil. In reality, the theist faces a plurality of problems with evil. First, we may discern diverse problems in the abstract realm.
(1) Abstract Problems of Evil in Logical Form. J. L. Mackie has famously argued that the claims “evil exists” and “an all-good, all-powerful God exists” are logically incompatible. 6 In the famous words of David Hume, “Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both willing and able? Whence then is evil?” 7 Here the theist faces what is known as the “deductive problem of evil.” How should the theist respond to the philosophical claim that it is logically impossible for both God and evil to exist?
(2) Abstract Problems of Evil in Evidential Form. William Rowe argues that evil’s existence in the world, along with its heinousness and apparent senselessness, render God’s existence not logically impossible but highly improbable. 8 This is known as the “inductive problem of evil,” which takes diverse shapes and forms. 9 How should the theist respond to philosophical claims that God’s existence is improbable , given evil as we encounter it in the world?
(3) Abstract Problems of Evil in Natural Form. A philosopher could draw a distinction between what Hitler has done and what a hurricane has done, evils caused by persons in contrast to those caused by impersonal forces of nature. There are not only problems of moral evil but also problems of what philosophers often call “natural evil” (e.g., earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, droughts, and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome). Natural evil arguments can also take either deductive or inductive forms.
Moreover, the abstract philosophical problems outlined above are not identical to the personal problems faced in the wake of a bleak medical diagnosis, a broken relationship, an extended season of God’s hiddenness, or any other personal encounter with the effects of the fall in a post-Genesis 3 world. Here is “the question mark turned like a fishhook in the human heart,” 10 to quote novelist Peter De Vries. Such problems are not a matter of neat logical syllogisms arranged in black and white in a philosopher’s text. They are messier, often logic-defying problems that persist in a dizzying array of dark shades in a sufferer’s heart. We may add to the abstract problems the following concrete problems of evil.
(4) Concrete Problems of Evil in Intra-Fide Emotional Form. The sufferer may be a believer suffering from inside the pale of faith ( intra-fide ). In this case, the concrete problem is a distinct problem of continuing to trust the God in whom one has a positive belief and prior relational commitment. It is the form that C. S. Lewis articulated with such vulnerable honesty in A Grief Observed shortly after cancer claimed his beloved wife. 11 Long before Lewis, David and the Hebrew prophets wrestled with the concrete problems of evil in their intra-fide emotional form (Pss 10; 13; 35; 88; Lam 3; Hab 1).
(5) Concrete Problems of Evil in Extra-Fide Emotional Form. Conversely, the sufferer may suffer from outside the pale of faith ( extra-fide ). In this case, the concrete problem forms more of a subjective blockade to initiating trust towards God in whom one lacks any positive belief or prior relational commitment. It is a rejection of God motivated by emotional encounters with evil, independent of abstract philosophical considerations. As Dostoyevsky’s tortured character, Ivan Karamazov, responds to a case for God’s existence, “I would rather remain with my unavenged suffering and unsatisfied indignation, even if I am wrong.” 12
Here we are confronted with the emotional problems of evil, which multiply with virtually every experience of human heartache and may vary significantly in their intensity, effects, and implicit conclusions from heart to heart. 13 The failure to distinguish these concrete problems from the less personal and more abstract philosophical problems of evil can lead to a wearying assault of misguided and irrelevant counsel. Imagine, for example, expounding Augustinian privationism (the notion that evil is not a real thing but lacks positive ontological status) in an effort to console parents who have lost a child at the hands of a drunk driver. For them, evil is a very real, concrete thing.
We may add to the domain of concrete problems the following existential problems of how to answer the evils in our own lives, cultural contexts, and the invisible world at large.
(6) Concrete Problems of Evil in Personal Existential Form. How do we make moral progress against the lingering, potent, self-destructive, internal bent toward moral evil, or in the Pauline ethical vocabulary, “the old man” (Eph 4:22–24; Col 3:9–10) or “the flesh” (Rom 8:12–13; Gal 5:16–24)? 14 Without ongoing engagement with this question, we ourselves become part of the problems rather than part of the solutions.
(7) Concrete Problems of E