Episode 28: Thomas Jay Oord – The Problem of Evil (Part 2)

Jared  

You’re listening to Faith for Normal People, the only other God-ordained podcast on the internet. 

Pete  

I’m Pete Enns. 

Jared  

And I’m Jared Byas.

Intro  

Jared  

Hey folks, it’s time to tell you about our November class, “Claiming the Promised Land: Dismantling the Doctrines That Shaped the World,” taught by Sarah Augustine.

Pete  

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Jared  

Yep, and Sarah is going to lead us through unpacking the doctrine of discovery, which is a philosophical and legal framework dating back to the 15th century that gave Christian governments moral and legal rights to invade and seize indigenous lands and dominate indigenous peoples. Think Christopher Columbus.

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Yeah. And we’ll also explore a theological framework for decolonizing the doctrine of discovery, and identify concrete steps towards seeking repair.

Jared  

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Pete  

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Jared  

Alright, folks, well, you’re in for a treat. Today is our first ever two part series, a crossover, if you will. Last week on Bible for Normal People, we talked about suffering and the problem of evil from a biblical scholar point of view. And today we’re looking at the same topic, suffering, the problem of evil from a theological point of view. 

Pete  

Yeah, and so today, we’re talking about this topic, the problem of evil in modern theology with friend of the podcast, Thomas Jay Oord, who’s a theologian, a philosopher, and an author. He’s got a couple—a of bunch of great books, but you really want to be aware of “God Can’t,” and also “The Death of Omnipotence and Birth of Amipotence.” What’s that? Who knows? Listen, and you’ll find out.

Jared  

That’s exactly right. In fact, he taught one of our classes called Reframing God. So if you’re interested in hearing more from Tom on some of these topics, or broader theological topics, go to TheBibleForNormalPeople.com/Classes. And of course, don’t forget to stay tuned at the end of the episode for Quiet Time.

Pete  

Alright, folks, let’s dive in.

Intro  

“Wouldn’t a God who is powerful enough and loving enough want to stop or prevent the unnecessary suffering in the world? Process theology gave me a solution to the problem of evil which said that God is not omnipotent. It’s not that you just can be a Christian and have this view of God who’s loving but not all powerful, I think it fits the general drift of Scripture better than the alternative.”

Pete  

Hey, Tom, welcome back to our podcast. 

Tom  

Good to be with you guys. 

Pete  

I’m sure it is. It’s good to have you with us, too. We love talking with you, don’t we?

Jared  

Pete  

Speaking of the problem of evil. 

All  

Pete  

Yeah, so let’s get into this. You know, this is a follow up podcast from one we did the previous week, where we took a biblical and Ancient Near Eastern approach, and this is more philosophical, maybe theological or something, whatever. So let’s just get into that and remind us what the problem of evil is.

Tom  

The problem of evil for people who believe in God rests on three basic claims. The first claim is that there is a God who is powerful. Usually the word used is “omnipotent,” can do anything. Secondly, this God is perfectly loving, “omnibenevolent” loves everyone and everything. But third, there seems to be evil in the world, unnecessary suffering, pointless pain, random things that seemed to serve no purpose. So how can all three of those be the case? Because wouldn’t a God who’s powerful enough and loving enough want to stop or prevent the unnecessary suffering? That’s how the problem of evil gets started.

Pete  

Jared  

Can you just take a second—because I don’t want to make any assumptions here, because I think it’s really important people will understand what the problem is. So can you just take another second and expand on what is the problem? The problem being; if God exists in these ways, that we wouldn’t have suffering? The assumption is, that we wouldn’t have suffering and so there must be something deficient with God or what is the problem exactly?

Tom  

Well, if there is a God who has all these attributes, you would think that God would prevent the unnecessary suffering in the world. Now this is according to some recent polls, the number one reason people who don’t believe in God—atheists, agnostics—say that they just can’t, if there was this kind of God, we shouldn’t have at least this much evil or if any evil. But it’s also a problem for those of us who do believe in God, and I happen to be one of those people, because we want to know, how do we make sense of this? “Doesn’t God care enough?” Which is a question about God’s love. Doesn’t God care enough to stop the unnecessary suffering? Or has God abandoned us? Or, a very common answer is “God’s ways are just higher than our ways, we can’t understand God.” So these are the kinds of issues that arise. One is whether you should believe in God or not. The other is, if you do believe in God, do you have a coherent view of God given these attributes?

Jared  

So before we get into how we’ve wrestled with this in the modern world, can you talk a little bit about the past versus the present? And how this, you know, was this a problem in the ancient world? Is this a modern problem? And how is it different now for those of us kind of post enlightenment, then say, pre?

Tom  

Yeah, I think this has always been a problem, but it has taken different forms. You know, you read the Christian scriptures, and often people who suffer think that God is punishing them, or they think there’s a cosmic battle going on and they’re the victims of the bad guys in the battle. Or they think maybe God is trying to teach them a lesson, you know, build them up in some way. And those options are still on the table today, but a lot has changed in contemporary culture, at least, you know, generally speaking, that makes other answers—or at least possible answers—more palatable. I mean, think about, we’re different today than the time of the writing of the scriptures. Today, we have the internet, [Laughing] we have access to a whole lot more information about the widespread suffering in the world. A person who lived a thousand years ago wouldn’t really know what’s going on a hundred miles away, but we get easy access to that through the internet and through news. But also, we have a greater notion or a greater awareness of various religious traditions and ways of understanding reality that the typical person a thousand years ago or two thousand years ago, just wouldn’t have. They would have a fairly narrow view of options. But today, you know, you can again, get on the internet and find out what the Bahá’í, or the Buddhist, or the Muslim, or all kinds of varieties of Christians think about any particular topic. So there’s this greater awareness of the possible responses to suffering. 

And then I think, in the contemporary era, there is a greater appreciation for individual agency and freedom. And I think the best illustration of this is the fact of democracies in the world. You didn’t have a lot of democracies a thousand years ago, you had a very hierarchical system, everyone looked at—well, they were supposed to look up to whoever was in charge. And there wasn’t a great sense of my own choice day-to-day. Whereas in our contemporary world, a lot of folks believe they have free will, they make decisions, etc and that has to be taken into account. 

Two more things. One, today, a lot of us believe in chance and randomness. We don’t, when someone wins the lottery, we don’t say, “Well, God predestined it,” at least most of us don’t say that. We think there are random genetic events that occur when someone has a child with some sort of genetic change. We don’t think God fiddled with it, at least most of us don’t. So this idea of chance and randomness that was usually explained a way in the past as God’s doing, in some mysterious way. And then I think one final one, and that is, I think today we have a greater sense of historicity. That is, we see ourselves as part of an ongoing history, that includes an evolutionary history, that includes changes in governments, changes in ideologies, changes in models of understanding reality. And that changes the game when it comes to trying to come up with some kind of answer to the problem of evil.

Pete  

Mhmm. You know, Tom, just to tie it in with the last episode we had with Marc and with Alan, the one thing they said was that, you know, atheism really wasn’t on the table back in the day, and it is now and I think, you know, there are all sorts of reasons for that but I think there are other options open for people very viable options open for people raised in the church or whatever, saying, “It just doesn’t seem like God makes much sense.” But back then it was like, no, you had to work it out somehow. You know, and maybe that’s where the idea of, you know, Satan becoming the embodiment of evil came into play to sort of try to explain that, of course, “Why does God allow Satan?” That’s [Chuckles] That’s kicking the can down the road a little bit…

Tom  

Right [Laughs]

Pete  

So we’d have to dwell on this but I’m curious as to if you can answer the question when atheism became a thing in church history. Is that too vague a question?

Tom  

I sure I don’t know, like when did it emerge as a real viable option? 

Pete  

Yeah.

Tom  

I mean, I think you can point to atheists throughout history. But I agree with you that today, people know that that’s an option. It’s in popular culture. You know, Ricky Gervais, a very outspoken atheist, you know, I’ve got all kinds of problems with his arguments, but people know who he is. And you’re not, at least when I was growing up, I only knew atheists at a distance. Those are those people that, [Chuckles] you know, I read about in books. But today, I think it’s it is a real option.

Jared  

Coming back to the problem of evil here. Again, this isn’t a new problem. Even in the last five hundred years, there’s been many different scholars, philosophers, and theologians wrestling with this problem of evil. So what have some of the classical solutions been? And what are some of the shortcomings there?

Tom  

Well, one of the common ones, both in the academy and sort of the lay level, and the kind of churches that I’m a part of, and have been a part of, is to say that what we think is evil or bad is somehow caused or allowed by God, to build our characters to make us tougher, you know, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger kind of a thing, sometimes called the soul building theodicy. And this has a certain amount of plausibility, because we do know that sometimes we are better off after we endure difficult things. I mean, as a university professor, I required my students to do a lot of homework and that wasn’t easy and fun. But the idea was that they would be smarter if they did the studying. And so that kind of principle, that going through difficult times can make things better, has some truth. I don’t think it has the full truth.

Jared  

Well, I was gonna say too, that, in some ways, is biblical, I mean, we can get some of that-

Tom  

Yes!

Jared  

-In terms of the suffering bringing us closer to Christ and identifying with Christ in our suffering, and I’m just thinking of many verses, probably even taken out of context around “suffering may last of the night, but joy comes in the morning,” “Just as a parent chastises or disciplines a child, that God disciplines us.” So this is a biblical theological idea for why we might—but what I hear you saying is to talk about it as a solution to the problem of evil, though, takes it too far, because there are counter examples of suffering, where it’s really hard to understand how character is being built through it.

Pete  

Yeah. Exactly, right.

Tom  

Yeah, you just can’t look at—at least—I can’t. I can’t look at a person who’s a victim of repeated sexual abuse and say, “You know, you’re just a lot better off now that you went through that.” It just doesn’t make any sense.

Pete  

Yeah, exactly. It belittles it, so that causes trauma. So…

Tom  

Yeah. And I think most people today will point to the Nazi Holocaust and the incredible, vast, destruction, and death and torture and say, “You know, really, that’s necessary to make the world a better place?” I don’t think so.

Pete  

This is interesting to me. I mean, what do I know about it? I don’t know the solution to it. But I remember reading a couple years ago, Dennis Edwards. 

Tom  

Yeah. I know him. 

Pete  

Yeah, who I’ve learned quite a lot from, his books on evolution and Christian faith. But he says that suffering is the cost of doing evolutionary business. It’s almost like it’s inevitably baked into the structure of the cosmos. Now, the question is, why is that? But he says, without the suffering, you don’t have the diversity that we have, you know, and I find that interesting. It doesn’t solve the problem for me. I don’t know, Jared, if that helps.

Jared  

Well, but it does, it brings up another solution, maybe, I wanted to ask you about. And that is, I think probably one of the most famous solutions or answers is by, you know, Alvin Plantinga, who talks about the free-will defense.

Tom  

Right.

Jared  

That not evolution, but if you substitute free will, in the sense of—well the greater good is free will, and you logically—they call it the logical problem of evil—there is no inconsistency with saying that the greater good is free will and therefore in order to have free will, we must have the possibility of suffering and so on. So maybe you can articulate that better. But how is that as far as a solution to this problem of evil? Is it saying basically, it’s baked into if we have a universe of free will, we just have to accept that this comes with it?

Tom  

Yeah, I think that is a common one, especially today. And it’s sometimes combined with what we call a world building scenario. That is, you know, God has this notion, we have to have a world with certain laws, certain consistencies, and free will, in order for there to be real moral accountability, in order for there to be the kind of real relationship God wants with us. That’s an argument you hear a lot from Christian theologians and philosophers. The problem with that, at least in most of its forms, is that most of those people still want to believe that God could intervene to take away freedom from time to time to do a miracle to them, resurrect Jesus, or something like that. And once you put in the, you know, God occasionally interrupts and overrides freedom or overrides the natural laws, then you’ve got the question: well why doesn’t God do it a whole lot more often to stop this, that, and the other?

Pete  

Mystery of god!

Tom  

Yep.

Pete  

Mystery, just a mystery. 

Tom  

And Alvin Plantinga will appeal to mystery. He’ll say, “Well, maybe God’s ways are beyond ours and God’s got a purpose that we just don’t understand.” 

Pete  

I know Jared loves the mystery angle.

All  

Jared  

I was gonna say, we’re not going to spend any time on the third one, which is “God’s ways are higher than ours,” which is another way of saying, we don’t know.

Pete  

Whatever. Yeah.

Jared  

Yeah, that’s not an answer.

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Pete  

Correct me, Tom, if I’m wrong, or Jared, too, but you know, the free-will defense still seems to assume that we’re causing it, or God is causing it. That doesn’t really work well, in my opinion, with what you said earlier about how our universe, we have to deal with chance and stuff just happens.

Tom  

Yeah, at least in most of its forms, the free-will defense only pertains to humans, or at least highly complex creatures. Maybe your dog has free will or chimps. But there’s a lot of other things that go on—I mean, the pandemic could be a great example—that doesn’t seem to have been caused by anyone’s poor use of free will. They’re what we call “natural evils” that make the world apparently worse than it otherwise might have been. And so we can’t say, “Well, it’s just all free will.”

Pete  

Jared  

So are there any other classical solutions to this? Because I do want to turn to, you know, the idea—there’s been some more developments on this, and I want to talk about some of that. But I don’t want to shortchange how this has historically or classically been talked about.

Tom  

Well, I do want to say one thing about the mystery issue, because there are some really smart and sophisticated Christian philosophers today who call themselves skeptical theists, who play this mystery card and just are very blunt about it. They just say, “Yep, I believe there’s a loving and omnipotent God, and the problem of evil just can’t be solved.” And when I come along—which I’m going to do in a moment—and offer a solution, then I sound like I’m some sort of know-it-all elitist. [Laughs] You know?

Pete  

Yeah. 

Tom  

Pete  

Tom  

…How can this be?

Jared  

Good. Yeah. And I think that it is a challenge, too, because I think it is nuanced, in terms of—around mystery being a way to opt out of thinking critically, and a way to justify or not have to think about things in a certain way. And so it’s hard to nuance, when is it a cop out, so to speak? And when is it humility? 

Pete  

Tom  

Definitely fair.

Jared  

Okay, so how do we talk about…Maybe bring us up to the 21st century. Particularly, you know, I’m thinking about process theology. And maybe you can just—that may be a new term for people. And so, you know, maybe you can tie a definition of that to this idea of the problem of evil and how it might relate to that.

Tom  

Yeah, process theology, process philosophy in the 20th century became a major, major player in the questions about the problem of evil. And the reason for this is that process thought takes contemporary science very seriously and is informed by it. It also takes historicity seriously and says that even God experiences history, so he moves through time, like we do. It takes the free-will issue seriously, in fact, so seriously, that it says not just humans are free, not just your dog, but there’s some kind of agency and lack of, you know, full determinism, even at the quantum levels of reality. So it’s a way of looking at reality that says no one can control anybody else in the sense of being the only cause. And when I say no one, that includes God. Even God can’t control a worm. God can’t control you and me. God influences everyone and every thing at every moment at all levels of complexity, but this God can’t control anyone or anything. And the reason process folks say this, at least—we’ll use the work of David Ray Griffin as the primary example of this—the reason God can’t control creation isn’t because God decided not to some time in the past, it’s because there are certain metaphysical laws that obtain, that apply to God and creation. And one of those laws is that no one can control others in the sense of, again, being the full cause. So that then obviously gives us a nice little response to the problem of evil. In fact, this solution says, “You thought God was omnipotent? Nope, God isn’t. God does love everyone and everything. But God is not omnipotent.”

Jared  

In—I want to maybe tie it to this a little bit. I don’t know, older people might have remembered, there was a really popular book by Rabbi Harold Kushner-

Pete  

Kushner, yeah.

Jared  

-Called “Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People.” And he sets up this classical problem of evil and his conclusion is that God’s not all powerful. And so in a sense, if we use those categories, which may not be the best categories to use. When you say God can’t control, in that classical dilemma, if we will, of the problem of evil, you’re saying to solve the problem, process theology opts for the side of God is not all powerful—if by that you mean can control, as the single cause, things in this universe?

Tom  

That’s precisely it. Yep. Now, with Rabbi Kushner, it wasn’t quite clear from his great book, why he thought-

Jared  

Mhmm.

Tom  

-God was not in control. It was… Process theology gives us a full theological and philosophical framework. Rabbi Kushner wrote really well to a wide audience. But when I read that book, I wasn’t sure—was God not controlling because God is choosing not to control when God really could but just is voluntarily self-limited? Or is there some sort of essential limitation on God’s power? And process thought comes right out and says, “No, there are essential limitations on God’s power.”

Pete  

Tom, I’m sensing something, can we back up just five seconds here and explain what the word “process” means, in process theology?

Tom  

Yeah, “process” is a word that is used to try to talk about how everything changes as it moves through time. You and I do, worms do, God does, quarks do, civilizations do. Even chairs have a kind of change that goes on moment by moment. Most of the Christian theology has been written from a philosophical assumption that we call “substance philosophy,” which says, “Well, there’s some changes, but they’re not really changes to what’s at the core of what it is.” And process says, “No, we should start with change as we try to understand reality.”

Pete  

And then can you tie God into that a little bit? Again, I’m thinking, I mean, I go nuts over this stuff. I think it’s very interesting, but I don’t understand it all. But I imagined there are listeners for whom this is pretty new stuff. So tie God again, into the process about God changing and what that means, explained that.

Tom  

Yeah. Well, maybe I’ll do it by talking a little bit about scripture. You can find passages in scripture that talk about God being unchanging, “I, the Lord do not change.” But then you’ve got other passages, in fact, more than 40 times in the Hebrew scriptures, God repents—which is to change. To have a change of mind. And so you’ve got these two kinds of themes in the Christian scriptures and beyond Christian scriptures. In some sense God seems to be unchanging, but in other times, God seems to change. I mean, take all the instances in scripture which God is said to be wrathful. God moves from a state of, we’ll call it an emotional state of neutrality, to being wrathful. That’s a change in God. 

Now, the classical Christian tradition has wanted to say “No, we shouldn’t take seriously the changing stuff. We should just say that’s just humans projecting on God their own emotions.” And so when it says God is happy about something or sad about something or angry that we’ve harmed one another, well, that’s just us projecting our emotions onto God, but God is essentially immutable, impassable, which means unchanging and unaffected. Process theology comes along and says, “No, we should take both God’s changingness and unchangingness seriously.” The unchanging aspect refers to God’s nature or essence, but the changing refers to God’s experience. So God’s an experiential, universal spirit, who really can’t have emotions, who really is affected by our prayers, etc. But God’s nature as love, well, that’s unchanging, that’s eternally the same.

Jared  

This is going to maybe get us too nerdy and I hesitate to even say it. But it’s been very helpful to me to utilize complex systems theory to think about this, in the sense of, you know, right now we’re in the studio, and there’s a table, and the table is very stable, and unchanging, at a certain perspective, right at the perspective that I’m at right now. But if we were to take a microscope and get down, if we could take a microscope down to the quantum level, to the quantum foam, right, we’re gonna find that it’s the swarming mass of unstable change. That’s what the table is. And so in some ways, I think, for everyday people—and I include myself in that, because I certainly don’t understand all that—it can both be stable, and it can be changing, always. Always and forever changing. And it’s just a matter of what scale you’re talking about it on, as to whether it is unchanging or changing. But what I hear with process theology is it takes seriously that, at that quantum level, at the base, there is change. And for most of Western history, like you said, there’s always an essence, that unchanging, whether that’s God or whether that’s us. There’s always like, the substance, the thing that doesn’t ever change. And then there’s all these accidents, you know, my hair color, and my eye color and all that’s kind of accidental, and I grow and change but who I am, my soul-

Pete  

“Accidental” meaning non-essential.

Jared  

Yeah, non-essential.

Pete  

Not by mistake.

Jared  

Not by mistake. Yeah, sorry. And so that helps me to kind of start putting my arms around it, if anything in a way that says, “Wow, this universe is way more complex than I thought.” And if we take a step back, it’s not too far to say, “Well, if we actually looked at the things around us, and what science is telling us that all things are changing. It’s not a huge jump, to see God in that,” if that makes sense.

Tom  

Yeah, that’s nicely said.

Jared  

That was good. I think that was a really good step back because…

Pete  

Mhmm.

Jared  

We can get real heady real quick talking about things like process theology, but-

Pete  

Yeah.

Jared  

In its core, what I hear you saying is: If you think about process as change, and theology as the study of God, like that’s process theology. It’s studying God in a way that posits change at the bottom of things. 

Tom  

Yep, mhmm. That’s right. 

Jared  

So with that, to kind of bring us back to the problem of evil—as we try to hold all these threads, my brain is starting to hurt. 

Tom  

Jared  

You know, process theology gives us a framework, but one of the reasons we wanted to have you on is because you’ve done a lot of work to maybe further refine it into a particular Christian framework for how to think about God in this way, as a solution to this problem of evil. Can you just talk more about how you think about this stuff?

Tom  

Yeah. I have, for many decades, been committed—maybe a better word is smitten—smitten by the love of God. I was a Christian when I was younger, then was an atheist for a while, and returned to faith based primarily on the conviction that my intuitions about love had to have some kind of source that most people call God. And my thinking, then, philosophically, theologically—in my life I’ve tried to be a person who orients how I think around the questions of love. And of course, the Christian scriptures can be really helpful in that things like “God is love” are found in scriptures, and the great commandments, etc. So Christianity is a very natural fit to these deep intuitions about love. Process theology gave me a solution to the problem of evil, which said that God is not omnipotent. 

But about 20 years ago, I was at the American Academy of Religion giving a paper and one of the persons that there challenged me, he said, “Well, you’ve got a philosophical solution to the problem of evil but that’s not really theology. Theology proper begins with the doctrine of God, not some sort of human philosophy.” So I thought about it for a second. And I thought, you know, I think I could take up that challenge. I think I could start with the doctrine of God is loving, and then work from there and to make the key move to say, “God’s love is inherently or essentially uncontrolling.” It’s not loving to overcome, to be the sole cause, but it’s real love if you’re in a relationship in which there’s mutual giving and receiving, and if that’s God’s very nature, maybe God always does that, because that’s who God is. 

I think that’s revealed in Jesus—at least Jesus points to that as a possibility—and so I’ve proposed the idea that we should think of God first and foremost as a God of love, whose love is necessarily, by nature, uncontrolling. And this is different from at least some process notions, that say God is constrained by these metaphysical laws that obtained to everything that exists. But it’s also different from some of my friends who think that God chooses voluntarily not to control at least most of the time, but could if God wanted to, and maybe occasionally does. I have a God whose nature is love, and always loves, has to love and therefore can’t control anyone, or anything.

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Pete  

So a question that I can see coming up is like, what about God’s sovereignty?

Tom  

Yeah, it’s a really good question, then. Solve if you can.

Pete  

Yeah, Tom. Answer it, then, huh?

Tom  

Pete  

Come on! 

Tom  

So it all depends on what we mean by sovereignty, right? If sovereignty means that God is the only power in the universe, then I reject that. If sovereignty means that God is in control of everything, by at least making sure that really important things happen and God does it single handedly, then I reject that. But I do happen to think God is the strongest in the entire universe. To use philosophical language, I think God is maximally powerful. But God’s power is always shaped by love. So if you want to talk about sovereign love, I guess you could, the word I’ve invented is an amipotent, A-M-I-P-O-T-E-N-T, “ami” for love, “potent” for power. God’s power is the power of uncontrolling love.

Jared  

I think that’s important. Because when we talk about sovereignty, I don’t know how we talk about it without talking about control.

Pete  

Yeah, obedience, just, [Hums].

Jared  

How do you talk about this in a way that—I’m just thinking of friends who would maybe come from more of a liberation theology background where power can liberate. In a way that sometimes—at least when we’re talking about actual liberation, in terms of kind of socio-political ways—does come from a kind of power that, I don’t want to say controls because I don’t know if that’s true. How, from the from the side of oppression or injustice, does that change how we see love in terms of whether or not it can control or not control outcomes? Because I think for a lot of people getting rid of a God who can control can feel like a privileged position, right? It’s like, well, yeah, if I’m a middle class American who’s not, hasn’t historically been oppressed by anyone. Yeah, kind of, I don’t want to be controlled. But if it’s coming from like, “Oh, but I need God to be all powerful, because I need to believe that God can liberate me from this particular place of oppression at some point in the future.” How does that get navigated?

Tom  

Yeah, it’s really important. You know, I do believe God’s in the business of liberation. It’s just that I think the liberating God does requires our cooperation. God can’t do it single handedly, God calls upon us to cooperate in the work of liberation, for all who are under oppression. Some people who are in difficult situations, let’s say in an oppressive government, let’s say somewhere, I’m just going to pick a country or I’ll say, Central America. Some people will say to me, “Well, I really want a God who can rescue me single handedly who can liberate me without my help or anybody else’s. Because if I don’t believe in that, God, I’m hopeless.”

Jared  

Right. Exactly. 

Tom  

Yeah. And to those people, I say, “Well, how’s that working out for you?” I mean-

Jared  

Right.

Tom  

-How’s it working out-

Pete  

Yeah.

Tom  

-Thinking that God can do it single handedly. Either God doesn’t give a rip about you, or God’s off on vacation somewhere else. And I think it undermines a kind of confidence in the love of God, if God could liberate singlehandedly, but he’s choosing not to.

Jared  

So in some ways that theological premise flies in the face of reality. And that’s the problem, that really is the problem of evil, even in the ancient Near Eastern sense that we talked about with Marc and Alan is, we just have to wrestle with the fact that reality is not lining up with this conception of God as all good and all powerful, and we have to reconcile with that reality-

Jared  

That’s only because there’s sin in your heart, Jared, and you don’t see it.

Tom  

Jared  

Yeah, exactly. 

Pete  

That’s the answer, right?

Jared  

There’s really, you know, there’s not an answer that is satisfactory, is what I hear you saying. It’s like, that would be nice, sure. But that’s not the reality we see.

Tom  

Every time I go and make a presentation on this general way of thinking that I call open and relational theology, someone or someones comes up afterwards and says to me, “You know, that’s kind of what I’ve always been thinking, but I never had the words to quite articulate it because it matches the way my life seems to work.” And I think that’s a huge benefit to this theology, it actually fits experience.

Pete  

Tom, can I—for my own sake, I want to talk a couple threads together here—so the big question of how does God relate to the world, just our world and the cosmos in general. Just how does God relate to the world? A big part of that, from what you’re saying, is cooperation. 

Tom  

Yeah. 

Pete  

Right. And that, you know, the Venn diagram, I’m thinking of here, one of the circles, we have to throw love into this equation now too.

Tom  

Yeah.

Pete  

Yeah, I just, I find that really mind bending, I think, in a good way. But can we talk about miracles for about 15 seconds? And what you think about that? And how that works into this.

Tom  

Yeah, first, let me set up the problem. What I call the problem of selective miracles. I’ve prayed for a lot more miracles to happen that have ever happened. [Laughing] And they seem to happen so rarely. And so what’s going on there? Does God only care about some people? Is it a part of God’s plan that some people get cancer and die? I mean, how do we do- How do we work with miracles? I think we can affirm miracles, but we have to define them in such a way as to say, that miracles occur because God acts but also, there’s some kind of creaturely response, or the conditions of creation are conducive for those miracles to happen. So God alone doesn’t bring these things about, there’s something either at the cellular level, at the societal level, somewhere in some kind of arrangement—because again, there’s cooperation from top to bottom in this model.

Pete  

Or maybe subatomic level?

Tom  

Even there. Yeah, yeah.

Jared  

Well, it’s kind of built into the word—I just want to point out—it’s built into the word cooperation, is co-operating.

Tom  

Yes, exactly. Yeah. I do want to make sure I’m careful, however, that the people who are listening to this don’t say to themselves, “Oh, well, this sounds like the Pentecostal church that I went to, that blamed me when I wasn’t healed from whatever, because I didn’t have enough faith.” I’m not saying that. I think people can have plenty of cooperative faith with God mentally but the cells or organs or muscles in their bodies aren’t cooperating or aren’t conducive to the kind of miracles God wants to do.

Jared  

So maybe take that a step further than, if it’s not that then what is it? In relation to that particular example of someone that has a disease, you know, a terminal illness, and they, you know, they’ve prayed they’ve had faith, but what does cooperation with God look like maybe in that? In the miracle, in the sense of miracle that you’re that you’re using.

Tom  

Yeah, so to explain what I’m saying here, I think we all just have to realize that we can’t, in our minds, think certain things and then our bodies just instantly do that. For instance, at this very moment, I can’t think to myself, “Heart, stop beating,” there’s something about that heart that’s going to keep beating, even if I mentally thought about it. Or [Chuckles] I’ve been on airplanes, and I’ve gotten ready to get off the plane and my foot has fallen asleep and you know, and I can’t instantly say “Wake up foot, get my feeling back.” So there’s a kind of agency in our bodies that we cannot control entirely with our minds. We can influence it, but not control. So the person who is told they didn’t have enough faith, and that’s why they haven’t gotten better, they may very well be cooperating with God all they know how to cooperate mentally. But the cells and muscles and other factors are facing obstacles in their environments in the bodies. And here, I’m not necessarily referring to the demonic, I’m just saying there are forces and factors in the in our bodies and in the world that oppose the kind of well being that God wants.

Jared  

Well, we’re unfortunately coming to the end of our time, which, you know, surprise, we didn’t come to the depths of metaphysical understanding-

Pete  

We didn’t hit everything!

Jared  

-Process theology and the problem of evil in forty minutes.

Pete  

I wanted to hit everything, I’m sorry. 

Jared  

I do have, I do have, maybe to kind of wrap it up, because I think this might be heady for a lot of people or a lot of new terms and I’m going to oversimplify, but what I’m hearing is if we have a traditional problem of evil, which says, “Look at all this suffering, how can that happen in the face of a God who’s all powerful, and all good?” What I hear you say is that you can still be a Christian, a practicing Christian, and let go of one of those horns of the dilemma, to say that God’s not all powerful. And then what this open and relational theology does is then it says, “Okay, well, then what kind of theology is that?” If you’re letting go of this classical or traditional—and I don’t mean that in the biblical sense, because I think it is important, what you said earlier is that we have a God who changes and a God who doesn’t change in the Bible. We have diverse voices of what kind of God we have throughout the scriptures. But in terms of say maybe the last five hundred years of western church history, you can still be a practicing Christian and let go of one of those. And that open and relational theology is a way to replace maybe a theology that doesn’t make sense of the world in the 21st century. Is that a good summary? Would you change anything about that?

Tom  

I like it a lot. I would say even more strongly. It’s not that you just can be a Christian and have this view of God who’s loving but not all powerful, I think it fits the general drift of scripture better than the alternative. And I talk about that in one of my recent books, but as I’ve grown older, I’ve realized my primary commitment is to love. I’m a Christian because I think the Christian tradition has incredible resources to help me frame what it means to live a life of love. And I think that Jesus of Nazareth did an amazing job of exemplifying love and action in the world. It’s not that you can kind of decide to be a Christian. I think it’s… that Christianity, at least from my lights, fills out and puts depths to the notions of love that I think are central to the to God and reality. Well, not sure if that was very eloquent or not.

Jared  

That’s wonderful. That’s wonderful. 

Pete  

Yeah, thats…

Jared  

I mean, I think for me, that’s why I wanted to kind of put it that way is, I think it’s climactic, in terms of, we’ve been talking about all this heady stuff, but really, it comes down to what you just said, is it’s a, it’s a framework for Christian expression, that brings front and center the primacy of love. And I think that’s something that a lot of people are hungering for, frankly. It is, they want to hold on to this faith. But it can’t look the way it did. It has to have something else in the center of it. It can’t have coercion and control, and mental assent and heady theological frameworks, but has to have this relationality and this love at the center. And so I really appreciate you coming on and tying those pieces together for us. Thank you so much for coming on. Tom.

Tom  

Thanks for the opportunity to chat.

Jared  

And now for Quiet Time.

Pete  

With Pete and Jared. 

Pete  

Well, Jared, that was a couple good episodes there about the problem of evil, I think with the biblical ancient angleman Tom Oord. So anyway, raises all sorts of questions for me. So okay, what do you think? You, Jared Byas, what do you think about the problem of evil and has the question of God being good versus powerful impacted you personally?

Jared  

Yeah, absolutely. It was, honestly, it probably [Chuckles] It’s gonna be a windy road.

Pete  

Windy or whiny?

Jared  

Windy- Well, with me? It’d probably usually both. 

Pete  

Jared  

But I think there’s two, there’s two sides to my story with this; one, is what led me to what I would say is a more reformed theological tradition. And one that was more philosophical.

Pete  

Mhmm, you mean like Calvinists Reformed?

Jared  

Yeah, yeah, Calvinist. Yeah. I mean, what led me into Calvinism. I didn’t grow up with that. It was a whole host of things. But I do remember, at a young age, I’d probably in middle school, reading through my Bible, and finding these—I can’t remember all of them now—but I do remember, I think Isaiah 45:7 was one, where God says, “I create the light and the dark, I create weal and woe, I do all these things.” And I was like, wait a minute, I remember reading and thinking…

Pete  

Jared  

“God creates the woe and the dark. What does this mean?” And so it really did, for me, that led me down the path of a Reformed theology where God decrees all things and in some way, is sovereign, you know, this decreto will versus the ethical will and moral will idea. And so that was, this is, been in my brain since I was a middle schooler. 

Pete  

Oh.

Jared  

Trying to like kind of figure this out. And then, you know, the philosophical side is reading all the literature and you know, how do you do this from a philosophical vantage point? And you know, in the episode, we talk about Plantinga’s free-will defense.

Pete  

Mhmm.

Jared  

And people uphold that. I think one of my challenges within that is, it’s sort of like we’re trying to defend a certain conception of God, in anything that we’ll do that, we’re going to latch on to. And so that’s my problem with it is like, yeah, in some ways, does it get us out of some things? Sure. But I think what I appreciate about Tom is it makes it personal. Like, okay, well, what are we saying about God in this conversation? 

Pete  

Right. Yeah. 

Jared  

What kind of God do we have instead of just trying to defend a certain conception, I think it raises more questions of, what kind of God are we talking about then? 

Pete  

Yeah. 

Jared  

So it becomes more theological and that’s where it’s more personal for me. So I don’t care that much, to be honest.

Pete  

Mhmm.

Jared  

About the problem of evil, I think it’s an interesting conversation. I think the biblical witness of how God is portrayed in the Bible doesn’t seem too concerned with it. This idea in the abstract, or theoretically. I think what matters is more of how we talked about it in the previous episode with Marc and Alan, around the book of Job, and lament, and the idea of human suffering, in that. It’s more meaningful to me when we come from that angle than the logical problem of evil. What about for you?

Pete  

Well, I mean, a couple things. I read… I think I was in seminary, you know, at a Calvinist Reformed seminary. I read Harold Kushner’s “Why Bad Things Happen to Good People,”—I think it’s “Why Bad Things Happen to Good People,”—and I critiqued it immediately as like, you can’t say that about God, God saw, all this kind of stuff. But now I’m like, yeah, gee, the guy had a point. Plus, I think he lost his son and that’s what drove him to do this. I mean, it had existential questioning. Yeah. But I think over the years, this is the one issue that has made me say, maybe there is no God. 

Jared  

Pete  

I haven’t come to that conclusion. But this is the issue. It’s like, all this, what is happening in this universe. And that, you know, I’ve people like Tom and others that I’ve read, who have a different angle on this, and basically giving us a different portrait of God to begin with, has been for me, I think, sort of important for at least thinking through this more constructively. So for me, it has a lot of meaning. And I don’t feel like I need to solve this either. I mean, you say you don’t care, I think maybe we’re saying the same thing that I don’t feel the need to solve it. But-

Jared  

Well, maybe if I can too, to reframe it. And I may get in trouble for oversimplifying, which I’ve done before on a video and I had people like, “Well, you, you just haven’t read the… ‘This’ article.” But I don’t know how you get away from the problem of evil can’t be solved. 

Pete  

Yeah.

Jared  

You can let go of one of the tenants. And that’s what we do. So why do bad things happen if we have an all powerful and all good God? It’s an incompatibility. All the solutions, quote, unquote, “solutions,” don’t get us out from that being a problem. They just give on one side of the other. So Kushner, or Tom Oord, will give on the idea of God’s not all powerful. Now, there’s all these reasons for that and sort of we have a more sophisticated theology to understand what it means for God not to be all powerful, and under what conditions and why and how, but that’s letting of go that. On the Reformed side, I would say “You let go of the God being all good.” And of course, there’s going to be pushed back on that. 

Pete  

Oh yeah.

Jared  

But it doesn’t mean we have to redefine the kind of common sense way we use those words, if we’re going to say that this isn’t somehow a contradiction, or—not contradiction, logically, but just an incompatibility. So I don’t know if there’s a solution to the problem other than getting rid of one of the horns of the dilemma by how we frame things, how we define things, or how we conceive of God.

Pete  

I think there were more fruitful paths forward. I say that rather than saying, you go this way, you’re gonna find the solution.

Jared  

Right.

Pete  

There are more helpful ways forward.

Jared  

Yeah.

Pete  

You know, and critiquing, you know, the “Omni-God,” as many people put it. All the omni is, it is Greek, its philosophical. The Jews adopted it when they came under Greek influence, and the early Christians went to town with it. And I sometimes wonder, boy, that seems like a big mistake. [Laughing] You know? Here, I’m critiquing two thousand years of history. But you know, it’s an issue that has meant something to me and I’m fine living with the ambiguity of it in my life, as I’ve learned to be with many things.

Jared  

Okay, so then to kind of talk about it more personally, Tom mentions this relationship and we talk about it in the episode of love and control. What has been your journey with thinking about those two concepts of love and control? Because I think for a lot of us, we grew up in a tradition where we may have thought of that you know, God is loving and God is controlling. That was all-

Pete  

Right.

Jared  

-Part and parcel of the same thing. 

Pete  

Yeah.

Jared  

So how has that shifted for you?

Pete  

Well, I do think you know, leaving God out of it entirely it’s it’s hard to love somebody and control.

Jared  

There you have it folks. God-

Pete  

Jared  

Pete is leaving God out of it.

Pete  

Leaving God out of it permanently. I mean, temporarily-

Jared  

Pete  

For sake of discussion!

Jared  

I knew it, I knew it.

Pete  

Jared  

Pete  

Gonna get into trouble, you know… You’re not going to fire me, are you? 

Pete  

Did you say that before? Anyway. Yeah, but you know, love and control… Okay, here’s how I look at it. I can love another person, let’s say my adult children, without controlling them, but I’m still going to watch out for them. And to me, that’s where that collapses just a little bit. Like, I mean, if God is Love God is not a micromanager. But God, but I’ll pull any other human being out from the path of traffic if I I see it happening, right? So I’m down with I agree with that as, as a principle, love is not controlling. But I don’t know, for me at least, that it really addresses all the stuff about what God could or couldn’t do. And I’m sure you know, Tom probably has a really good answer to that which we didn’t get into this specifically and I, you know, I totally respect him. I love what he does. But just this is where I am, you know, at this point. I can’t wrap my head around all the philosophical problems and all the arguments, but that just strikes me as “Okay. But still.” It’s almost as if the God is love, but sort of in a deistic kind of way, like at a distance watching, like sort of seeing things almost disinterestedly from a distance. And that’s not what Tom says, but I sort of, I go there pretty quickly, when I think of God is not being involved in some sense. How about you?

Jared  

No.

Jared  

Yeah, I mean, [Sighs] I’m showing my cards a little bit in that—I’m gonna say this for the second time in this short, Quiet Time. 

Pete  

Jared  

I don’t, I just don’t care that much.

Pete  

Mhmm.

Pete  

Yep. Mhmm.

Jared  

I think it does matter for a lot of people. I think it has a tangible difference. And so I don’t think, I’m not saying it doesn’t matter objectively. I think it doesn’t matter to me. But that’s coming from having read through the articles and wrestled with it on an existential level for a long time. And coming out the other side of saying, “I don’t know, it doesn’t really matter to me.” Like, I need to know, what is so much more real and important and urgent for me to figure out, what is my relationship between love and control? Because it has real impact on the people around me.

Jared  

In terms of what is help, and how does help not control but actually help and…

Pete  

Jared  

I just think there’s enough fodder for me to be wrestling with that for a while. I don’t need to figure out how God is figuring this love and control thing out.

Pete  

Well, yeah. I don’t know if we can. We need an episode, one day, Jared, and we’ll call it things Jared actually does care about it. 

Jared  

Pete  

It’d be short, it might be a very short one. [Chuckles]

Jared  

Pete  

I’m just, I’m just saying.

Jared  

That would be great. It’ll be an introduction, and then just white noise. 

Pete & Jared  

Jared  

Excellent. Okay. Well, that’s for another time.

Pete  

Yeah, that’s for another time. Anyway, a lot of stuff here. Just I mean, this is the conversation that doesn’t really end. You know, if you want to keep it going, you can keep it going. And I’m interested.

Jared  

But I think it’s, you know, maybe it’s a fruitful effort for people to dig out the books and dig out the articles and to go on a journey. If this is something that you haven’t really thought of, or it’s been a problem, but you haven’t dug into-

Pete  

Yeah.

Jared  

-What thoughts have been had, there are a lot.

Pete  

And I think there is value for me, at least in what the, via negativa. You know, the negative way. There’s certain things I definitely do not believe about God.

Jared  

Right.

Pete  

There’s a whole bunch of stuff I just don’t know. 

Jared  

Right, right. 

Pete  

Right. And I don’t think God is malevolent. What’s the word?

Jared  

Malevolent.

Pete  

Malevolent?

Pete  

And I can’t pronounce that word, and you want me to figure out God? Forget it. I can’t do it. [Chuckling] You know, but I think that’s fine to say, “I don’t believe this at all, or that at all,” about the ultimate being in the multiverse, you know, but even those things are just, I think, guesswork in a sense. You know, guesswork married with a little bit of logic and experience, and listening to smart people who think about these things a lot. But I’m actually fine with that, saying what I don’t believe to be God. Well, what do you believe? Well, I’m working on it, folks. I mean, aren’t we all sort of working on that? I know, I am.

Jared  

Mhmm.

Jared  

It’s the process of elimination. 

Pete  

Yeah.

Jared  

Get through the 9 million things you don’t believe about God, surely, there’ll be some things left.

Pete  

And the thing is that, you know, getting back to the first episode with with Alan and Marc, I really don’t know how much the Bible helps with this question at all, frankly. Because they just had different—I mean, you you like the Bible, I like the Bible too, but in this respect… You know, I don’t know if God is actually sleeping. You know?

Jared  

Right, right.

Pete  

The way that way Marc said, and I get what he’s saying, is that at least the ancient Israelites believe that, but I think that the kind of discussion we’re having, and the kind of discussion they had, are pretty different kinds of conversations, right? So you know-

Jared  

And even, not even without the hierarchy of one being better than the other. It’s just we have different categories of thought.

Pete  

Right, that’s what I mean.

Jared  

And different language that we’re going to be using to talk about this stuff.

Pete  

Different cultural moments. And, you know, if people were to say, probably the evil, I’d say, and I say something like, “Well, maybe God’s sleeping.” That wouldn’t work, you know, that’s not really an answer. That’s like, okay, then there’s no God, because Gods don’t sleep, you know, we’d have a different kind of discussion entirely.

Jared  

Right. I think what I want to say here is, I want to make sure that I don’t advocate for short circuiting someone’s process.

Pete  

Right.

Jared  

Because, there’s a lot-

Pete  

You don’t have that kind of power anyway, Jared.

Jared  

That’s right. I don’t, I can’t make you do anything.

Pete  

Stop controlling! Stop controlling.

Jared  

Alright. I guess I don’t want to discourage people’s process. These are legitimate issues that a lot of serious thinkers have spent a lot of time thinking and writing and talking about.

Pete  

Right.

Jared  

For centuries. So it’s worth it, I don’t want to be dismissive about it. It’s worth wrestling with, worth grappling with. 

Pete  

Right, I agree.

Jared  

Well, we’ll see you next time. 

Pete  

Yep. See you, folks.

Outro  

Jared  

Well, thanks to everyone who supports the show. If you want to support what we do, there are three ways you can do it. One, if you just want to give a little money, go to TheBibleForNormalPeople.com/give.

Pete  

And, if you want to support us and want a community, classes, and other great resources, go to TheBibleForNormalPeople.com/join.

Jared  

And lastly, it always goes a long way if you just wanted to rate the podcast, leave a review, and tell others about our show. In addition, you can let us know what you thought about the episode if you email us at info@TheBibleForNormalPeople.com     

Outro  

You just made it through another episode of Faith for Normal People! Don’t forget, you can also catch our other show, The Bible for Normal People, in the same feed wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was brought to you by the Bible for Normal People team: Brittany Prescott, Steven Henning, Wesley Duckworth, Savannah Locke, Tessa Stultz, Danny Wong, Natalie Weyand, Jessica Shao, and Lauren O’Connell.    

Outro