Category Archives: suffering

Redeeming Reason with John Mullholland

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I met John Mulholland, who works at the University of Chicago Law Library, back in 2007. Over the years John has been a consistent proponent of a holistic Christian worldview, including its relevance for the university, and has organized many conferences on the subject, helping many to reflect on what it means to serve Christ in academia.

At John’s invitation I came to speak at an event called “The Redemption of Reason” at the University of Chicago in October 2007; I gave two talks, one on God’s validation of Job’s lament in the speech from the whirlwind, a second on the meaning of the imago Dei as God’s call for whole-life service.

Recently I became aware of a Facebook page that John has been involved with, that is grounded in the heritage of Charles Malik, the Lebanese Christian intellectual and diplomat who was president of the UN General Assembly.

Malik, who was Eastern Orthodox, studied with Alfred North Whitehead and Martin Heidegger and earned a PhD in philosophy from Harvard, and later taught in both the US and Lebanon. He entered the civil service in Lebanon and besides service to that country he was instrumental in developing the UN charter of rights and served as president of the UN General Assembly from 1958-59. Malik also wrote in the area of theology and I have heard his name dropped and seen his works cited especially when I was a campus minister with Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, back in the 1980s.

One of my M.A. students (Cord Sullivan), who is coming on staff with IVCF at the University of Buffalo, has a Malik quote as the byline for his email: “more potently than by any other means, change the University and you change the world.” Now you can see why this Facebook page is called the “Charles Malik Society for Redeeming Reason.” I’m glad I discovered it.

Recently, John posted some comments there about the talk on “Restoration” I gave at Jubilee 2015.

A gift of Shalom from Professor J. Richard Middleton for this little venture, where we seek to engage the university and culture as Christians with the Good News of Jesus. Middleton, NT Wright and others now see an holistic message of salvation, which empowers us to do both deeds of mercy, but also deeds of creation in science, art, medicine, et al.

Nicholas Wolterstorff echoes this work by Middleton and others with remarks about God’s call to us all to be messengers of Shalom in this world, agents of God’s mission – see esp. p.72

Then John quotes some of my blog post on the Jubilee conference, and concludes by saying:

Click around Middleton’s blog to find more resources. Here is the table of contents for his new book, A New Heaven and a New Earth.

I recommend the postings on the Malik/Redeeming Reason Facebook page for inspiration and enlightenment on seeking God’s kingdom in the academic realm.

Thanks, John, for your service in the cause of Christ that goes back a long way!

Birthday Reflections on (Almost) a Year of Blogging

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I started blogging in mid-February 2014. So I really should wait another month to reflect on the past year. But today is my birthday, so I think it’s appropriate to take an opportunity to look back.

A Posture of Gratitude

I am, first of all, grateful to God for the gift of life—this fragile, contingent existence we have as human beings, subject to all the ups and downs of joy and suffering. Despite the difficulty, which often accompanies the joy, I receive every moment (and another year) as a gift.

I am grateful also for the gift of salvation through Christ. It is amazing that the incomprehensible Creator of the universe should enter human existence and suffer death so that death would be overcome and we can participate in the renewal of life that comes with resurrection—a renewal that begins even now, with the ultimate hope of a new heaven and a new earth.

And I am grateful for the continuing presence of God’s Spirit—in my life, in the life of my family, my friends, my church, and my seminary (all of which are signposts of grace and means of support in a life that cannot be lived in isolation).

So I am aware, at this milestone in my life, that the essential posture of healthy existence is gratitude, a response of openness and thanksgiving to our loving Creator and Redeemer, who continually calls us into newness, often through other people.

I am specifically grateful for my loving wife, Marcia, who has been a faithful friend and partner on a life journey that has had many twists and turns. And kudos to my two sons, Andrew and Kevin (both in their twenties), who have figured out a great deal about life and have become their own persons. I am immensely grateful to God for the gift of family, both near and far.

And I am a part of an amazing church, the Community of the Savior, whose commitment to the ancient-future Christian faith sustains me and empowers me for a life of ministry.

I thank God for the opportunity I have had to teach over the years at different institutions—first at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto while pursuing my doctoral degree; then at Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School for six years; then ten years of teaching undergraduates at Roberts Wesleyan College; and now the last (almost) four years at Northeastern Seminary (NES).

I’d have to say that NES is simply the best environment in which I have ever worked. I have many wonderful students and amazing faculty and staff colleagues; and my Dean, Doug Cullum, is specially gifted by God with theological insight, deep compassion, and organizational skills par excellence (and he is also one of the pastors at my church; not sure how he does it all).

And it was Lisa Bennett, Associate VP for Communication & Enrollment at NES, who prompted me to begin blogging.

Blogging

Blogging—right. I was going to talk about that.

The first thing to say is that blogging has turned out to be just a hard as I thought it would be when I wrote my first post on the difficulty I foresaw in blogging as an introvert.

But it has also been rewarding. Through this website (and the various social media sites that this blog is linked to) I have been able to get into contact with friends and colleagues from the past and I’ve met lots of new people who share similar interests.

The biggest problem with blogging is that it is extremely time-consuming. Maybe some people can just knock off a few comments and post them without much thought. But I tend to agonize over what I’m going to say; writing a blog post takes a long time (especially if it is a content post, and not just an announcement). And then I edit, edit, edit. And then I edit some more.

When I look back at my second blog post (“Creation to Eschaton—And the Kitchen Sink?”) in which I suggested the topics I expected to post on, I see that I have accomplished only some of my predictions so far. I have posted on topics of creation, evolution, suffering, doubt, redemption, and the eschaton. But I certainly haven’t addressed all the specific issues I listed there. And I haven’t talked much about Caribbean theology (except in telling some of my life story). The good news is I haven’t run out of ideas for blog posts; I have lots of topics left to discuss (and new ones constantly arise).

I’m also aware that I began two multi-part book reviews (one on Bruce Glass’s Exploring Faith and Reason, the other on Ron Osborn’s Death Before the Fall) that I have not yet completed. I hope to get to those shortly.

I’m also interested in suggestions and questions from readers of this blog that might lead to other topics (some have already given me ideas for new posts that I want to write in the coming year).

So, for now, one last note of gratitude: Thanks to all my readers; I value your interaction (either through posted comments or emails).

So here’s to another year; I pray that my posts might stimulate and encourage you in your life, your thinking, and your faith.

The Problem of Animal Suffering in a Good Creation—Engaging Ronald Osborn’s Death Before the Fall (IVP, 2014), Part 2

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In a previous post I explained my interest in the problem of suffering and summarized part 1 of Ronald Osborn’s book, in which he addressed various problems with a literalistic reading of the biblical creation accounts (that is, taking them to be a straightforward scientific or historical account of the world, as many modern Christians do).

In the present post I will address Osborn’s account of animal predation as part of the good world God made (since predation significantly contributes to animal suffering); I’m actually going to go a bit beyond Osborn, to strengthen his case.

In my final post I will interact with Osborn’s chapter on Christ’s redemption of animal suffering.

Osborn on Animal Suffering and Death

In the five chapters of part 2 of Death Before the Fall Osborn finally gets to his advertised topic—animal suffering. Osborn explains that the critique of literalism in part 1 “is to a large extent prolegomena” to part 2, which addresses “the theodicy dilemma of animal suffering and mortality” (p. 19).

Osborn correctly notes that this is a problem for both creationists and evolutionists. Although creationists often object to the implication of an evolutionary account of the world since it involves millions of years of the suffering and death of animals (through extinctions, disease, carnivores preying on herbivores), even creationists need to account for why God would allow animal suffering (especially through predation) to be so pervasive in a young earth.

If this is due to the Fall (human sin) as most creationists claim, doesn’t this seem like unjustified suffering? Since most creationists affirm that animals were vegetarian prior to the Fall, this means that carnivores are a post-Fall phenomenon. Does this mean that today’s carnivores were previously herbivores who suddenly grew (or evolved) canines? Or did pre-Fall carnivores use their canines for eating vegetation? And beyond all these crazy theories, creationists still need to answer the question of why animals have to suffer for human sin.

In part 1 of this review I noted that Osborn’s background in the Seventh Day Adventist church equipped him for addressing young earth creationism. In a similar manner, his approach to the problem of animal suffering is informed by having grown up in Zimbabwe of missionary parents, which included many visits to a game reserve. He mentions his awareness of the presence of predatory animals (crocodiles and jackals) and describes witnessing lions eviscerating a fresh kill with the smell of blood in the air.

The world of the game reserve was “deeply mysterious, untamed, dangerous, beautiful and good” and “the danger was part of its goodness and beauty. . . . Herein lies the central riddle of this book” (p. 13).

Although part 2 contains five chapters, the tension evident in the above quote is embodied in the contrast between chapters 12 and 13. These are the chapters that most interested me.

Animal Predation as Part of God’s Good Creation—The Witness of Job

Chap. 12 (“God of the Whirlwind”) explores the vision of the book of Job, where animal predation is part of the world God celebrates.

In response to Job’s complaint about his sufferings, God describes in his first speech an untamed non-human world that includes suffering and death (Job 38-42). Not only does God send rain on a land where no human lives (Job 38:26-28), but in his rhetorical questions to Job, God implies that he provides food for lions and ravens:

39  Can you hunt the prey for the lion,
or satisfy the appetite of the young lions,
40  when they crouch in their dens,
or lie in wait in their covert?
41  Who provides for the raven its prey,
when its young ones cry to God,
and wander about for lack of food? (Job 38:39-41)

Indeed, God commands the eagle to build her nest on high, from which she delivers prey to her young (Job 39:27-30), who “suck up blood;/ and where the slain are, there she is” (39:30). Those are the closing words of God’s first speech to Job, and I have often thought it is no wonder that Job was struck silent, at a loss for words at such a gruesome image.

But Osborn is right in emphasizing that throughout the first speech God is delighting in animal ferocity.

This delight continues in God’s second speech, where the creator boasts about Behemoth and Leviathan (given the mythic overlay of these beasts, I wouldn’t reduce them to known animal species, as Osborn seems to do here).

I initially thought that Osborn wrongly identified the second beast with Behemoth (pp. 153 and 157), but it turns out that he was using the New English Bible’s rendering of the first beast as a “crocodile,” which is what most interpreters take as a possible model for Leviathan, the second beast.

Part of the reason I misread Osborn here is that he quotes selections from the description of Behemoth (40:15-15, 19-20) along with selections from the description of Leviathan (41:12, 33-34), all in one block quotation, without distinguishing them from each other (p. 153).

He himself may have been confused by the NEB, which he was quoting, since it idiosyncratically translates 40:15 and 20 as if Behemoth (“crocodile”) was a carnivore (“who devours cattle as if they were grass” and “he takes the cattle of the hills for his prey and in his jaws he crunches all wild beasts”). In the NRSV these lines are correctly rendered: “it eats grass like an ox” and “the mountains yield food for it where all the wild animals play” (this is what the Hebrew actually says). In other words, while Leviathan is clearly a carnivore, Behemoth (seemingly modeled on a Hippopotamus) is a herbivore (though still a dangerous animal).

Despite this slip, Osborn’s point is well-taken that these dangerous beasts (like many animals in the first speech) are paraded before Job as part of a world God is proud of. Predation and danger therefore do not constitute “natural evil” in the book of Job.

Beyond Osborn—The Psalms on Animal Predation

A similar perspective may be found in the Psalms—although Osborn doesn’t explicitly address this. But his case could be strengthened by adding other relevant biblical references to God’s approval of animal predation as part of the natural order.

Just as Job mentions the feeding of ravens, so does Psalm 147. Verse 7 calls on the reader to sing praise to YHWH because “He gives to the animals their food,/ and to the young ravens when they cry” (verse 9). Ravens are omnivores, often scavenging on carrion.

And just as Job mentioned the feeding of lions (which are clearly carnivores), so Psalm 104 notes: “The young lions roar for their prey,/ seeking their food from God” (verse 21).

The psalm even claims that God feeds all animals:

27  These all look to you
to give them their food in due season;
28  when you give to them, they gather it up;
when you open your hand, they are filled with good things. (Psalm 104:27-28)

 This implies that at least some biblical texts (Job and Psalms) regard animal predation (thus animal death, even suffering) as simply part of the good world that God made; after all God feeds the animals. This is, therefore, not part of what we should regard as “evil.” If a human being is injured or killed by a wild animal, this is certainly “evil” to us; but to regard animal predation in general as “natural evil” is a highly anthropocentric judgment.

The Parallel between Animal Predation and Natural Disasters

Thinking of animal predation as “natural evil” is somewhat like viewing natural disasters (earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, tsunamis, tornadoes) as intrinsically evil. Yet such destructive phenomena have been part of the world long before humans; they are simply part of the natural geological forces and weather patterns on this planet. Like animal predation, when a natural disaster negatively impacts human life, this is certainly “evil” to us. But that has to do with the interaction of humans and nature, not nature considered independently.

Terence Fretheim’s book Creation Untamed: The Bible, God, and Natural Disasters (Baker Academic 2010) is a superb theological exploration of this theme.

Fretheim (who is one of the most careful readers of Scripture that I know) clarifies how we may think of natural disasters as part of the wildness of the cosmos that God has incorporated into the order of the world; this wildness is part of the good (but not “perfect”) creation that God made. Such natural phenomena may certainly be impacted negatively by human behavior (Fretheim suggests that Scripture itself supports this). And he boldly addresses how the Bible even portrays God as mediating judgment on humanity by the use of natural disasters—all the while affirming that such disasters are not intrinsically evil.

In my next post I will address Osborn’s chapter on Christ’s incarnation and atonement and how these relate to animal suffering. I will raise what I perceive as an internal tension between this chapter and the idea that animal predation/suffering is simply part of the good creation.