Satan and the Problem of Evil, Part II

7. Praying in the Whirlwind

Biblical theists hold that God works miracles and responds to His people’s prayers. This chapter argues in two sections that the trinitarian warfare model of providence makes better sense of the Biblical understanding of miracles and prayer than the blueprint model does.

• God Always Does the Most God Can Do considers why if God is all-good and all-powerful His interaction with the world is so selective and arbitrary. It highlights God’s words to Job out of the whirlwind (Job 38:1-41:34), concluding by observing that peace came to Job only when he learned that although his suffering was a mystery he should nevertheless humbly trust God–“His suffering is not God’s fault, and God is not against him. God’s character is trustworthy.”
• The Power and Urgency of Prayer considers the role of petitionary prayer within a trinitarian warfare worldview. Although conceding that God could have made a world in which He didn’t need prayer or any human decisions to carry out His will, it affirms that God chose to create a world in which some things genuinely hinge on what free agents do physically and through the power of prayer. Thus whatever restrictions God faces in what He does He has placed upon Himself by choosing to create this kind of world.

8. “Red in Tooth and Claw”

Since “natural evil” originates independently of human actions, why would the natural world which He presumably has direct control over be risky? Chapters 8 to 10 deal with this question, showing how diabolical the problem is, evaluating seven approaches to it, and attempting to demonstrate how the trinitarian warfare theodicy completes what is lacking in each of the other theodicies.

• The Magnitude of “Natural” Evil shows how diabolical the problem is.
• “Natural” Evil and the “Higher Harmony” of Creation considers Augustine’s view that all the apparently hostile aspects of nature when viewed from His all-encompassing perspective contribute to the beauty of the whole. However the view is not only difficult to justify but also contradicts the Bible’s portrayal of God as against all forms of evil.
• Cursed Because of Sin considers the view that God cursed nature as punishment for human rebellion. Positive aspects of it are that it is more consistent with Scripture than the previous view, that it is not excessively mysterious, and that it is reasonable to suppose that our present inability to master nature is a result of our having lost an authority that once belonged to us (Genesis 1:26). However there is no discernible correspondence between the suffering that a person or a group of people experience at the hands of nature and the amount or intensity of their sinfulness, on the evidence of paleontologists animals were harmed by other creatures and natural phenomena before humans were created and fell, and the problematic aspects of creation seem to outrun by far what would be called for in punishing humans for their crimes.
• Nature as the Arena for Human Soul-Making considers John Hick’s version of Irenaeus’s view that nature is designed by God to challenge creatures because the goal of creation is to produce souls of a certain kind of character. According to it the possibility of natural evil is the price that God must pay if He desires a world capable of producing creatures who could develop moral character in their relationship with Him and in their relationship with each other. Among its shortcomings are that the amount and intensity of suffering that animals and humans endure as a result of natural evil seems excessive and that God’s failure to intervene in tragedies even after the persistent prayers of concerned people cannot be adequately explained in it.
• Nature as a Kenotic Process is a recent approach that suggests that nature is “red in tooth and claw” because it reflects and participates in the self-sacrificing nature of the Creator. Criticisms of the view are that, while we must concede that some organisms survive by taking the life of other creatures, it is not clear why this pain-filled natural order is the way that it has to be and that the kenotic explanation of natural evil is consistent with Scripture, which depicts the animal kingdom as being noncarnivorous before the Fall and such violence as disappearing when the Lord’s kingdom is finally established.

9. When Nature Becomes a Weapon

• The View of God as Inherently Limited holds that nature is not perfect simply because the God who creates and sustains it is limited in His power. The view’s most influential expression is found in Process theology, which is rooted largely in the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead and understands God and the cosmos to form two eternal, interdependent realities that are together in the process of becoming. Denying that God can exist apart from the world, it denies that He unilaterally created the world and thus that all creaturely power comes from God and that He can supernaturally intervene in the world. Thus to the extent that we affirm the Biblical portrait of God, we have reason to deny the Process portrait of God. Boyd also identifies significant philosophical problems with Process thought and critiques it on natural evil.
• Nature as Inherently Limited considers the attempts of many contemporary philosophes and theologians to explain natural evil by appealing to inherent limitations in nature. Their arguments fall under two general motifs, the dual potentiality of created things (for blessing in one situation and for curse in another situation) and randomness in nature. Neither explains why God doesn’t intervene.
• Barth and the Menace of das Nichtige considers Barth’s concept of “the nothingness” (das Nichtige), according to which when God said yes to creation (that is, when God created this particular world) He necessarily said no to everything He did not create and this no stands over and against creation. This gives the whole of contingent creation a shadow side which limits and perverts that to which God said no. Barth explains much of what we natural evil in this way. Boyd rejects Barth’s concept as absurd.

10. This an Enemy Has Done

This chapter reviews how the trinitarian warfare perspective on natural evil has been articulated by theologians in the early church and in contemporary times and then attempts to respond to various objections that have been raised against it.

• Satan and Nature in the Early Church observes that early Christian thinkers assumed that angels were created free and given an area of influence and responsibility over creation and explained natural evil as resulting from some of them led by Satan rebelling against God and abusing their authority over nature.
• Satan and Nature in Recent Thought observes that although many theologians throughout church history have suggested that evil spirits are largely responsible for natural evil, it has been assumed that everything that Satan and demons do somehow fits into God’s plan for world history. However there are a few notable exceptions to this general trend and this section reviews their reflections.
• Objections to Warfare Theodicy addresses the major objections that have been raised against the trinitarian warfare explanation of natural evil: 1. the natural theodicy is too vague; 2. the trinitarian warfare theodicy violate’s Ockham’s razor, which stipulates that, all other things being equal, the simplest way of accounting for things is the one most likely to be true; and 3. The warfare view of natural evil contradicts the Biblical creation account.

11. A Clash of Doctrines

This chapter opens by affirming that the war will eventually end and as the spotless bride we will sit down with Christ at an eternal wedding banquet. It then considers the fate of the rebels in four sections:

• The Problem of Hell observes that according to traditional interpretation the rebels will anguish in a lake of fire that will never be extinguished (Revelation 20:10,15) and asks how a God who loves and died for every human could preserve the existence of the rebels for no other purpose than eternal torment. It says that it will answer this question by examining and critiquing in this chapter two interpretations of hell that have been offered throughout church history and that are held today, the traditional and majority view that hell is eternal, conscious suffering and the annihilationist view that hell will eventually cease to be because the wicked will be extinguished and by proposing a mediating view rooted in Barth’s concept of das Nichtige.
• The Case for Eternal, Conscious Suffering reviews briefly the Biblical evidence for the traditional understanding of hell as eternal, conscious suffering. Among the passages that it cites are Daniel 12:2, Isaiah 66:24, Matthew 25:31-46, Luke 16:19-31, and Revelation 20. The section then considers two philosophical arguments that have been offered throughout church history in support of the necessary eternality of hell, justice demands that hell be eternal because sin against God is an infinite offense, and hell must be eternal because the soul is immortal. Boyd then proposes another argument, that the possibility of eternal suffering had to be part of the irrevocable freedom and eternal potentiality given to humans but admits that he himself isn’t entirely convinced that the argument is valid.
• The Case for Annihilationism responds to passages suggesting eternal torment and overviews the evidence for annihilation of the wicked from the Old Testament and from the New Testament. Annihilationists maintain that the passages used to support the doctrine of eternal hell do not teach that hell is suffered eternally but only that its consequences are eternal. They argue that the pervasive pattern of divine judgment in the Old Testament is that God allows evil to run its full course and then annihilates it, starting with the accounts of Noah and of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 6-8 and 18-19 and emphasizing passages in the Psalms such as 1:4-6. They claim that the evidence is even stronger in the New Testament, citing words of Jesus such as those in Matthew 10:28 and John 3:16 and many other passages.
• Conclusion notes that although some notable evangelical scholars have endorsed annihilationism many Christians still have reservations about it. Boyd concludes by saying that he doesn’t believe that either the traditional position or the annihiliationists’ position adequately accounts for all the Biblical evidence cited in support of the opposing side’s position. He proposes to explore in the final chapter whether or not there might be a way in which we can coherently affirm that the wicked are exterminated in one sense but experience eternal torment in another sense.

12. A Separate Reality

This chapter explores whether or not there might be a way in which we can coherently affirm that the wicked are exterminated in one sense but experience eternal torment in another sense. Boyd makes use of Karl Barth’s concept of das Nichtige discussed in Chapter 9, attempting to construe hell as existing in a peculiar “third way” between being and nonbeing. He then suggests that when God’s victory over all His foes is finally manifested and thus when He finally exercises His right to define all of reality as He will, the shared medium of relarionship will cease to exist between all who say yes to God’s reality and all who continue to say no to it. The result will be that those who have rejected God and thus reality cease to exits to everyone except themselves.
In suumarizing Chapter 9 I agreed with Boyd that Barth’s concept of das Nichtige is absurd. Similarly I view Boyd’s concept of a “third way” between being and nonbeing as absurd or at least as too speculative.

Appendices

This is just an outline. Ask for details on entries.
Appendix 1: Remaining Objections considers:

• The trinitarian warfare theodicy undermines belief in God’s omnipotence.
• The trinitarian warfare theodicy is contracdicted by Romans 9.
• The trinitarian warfare theodicy is contrary to the biblical teaching about exhaustive divine sovereignty.
• The trinitarian warfare theodicy is inadequate on a personal level.
• The trinitarian warfare theodicy is constructed on an ad hoc basis.
• The trinitarian warfare theodicy is overly speculative.
  Appendix 2: Four Philosophical Arguments for the Incompatilibility of EDF & Self-Determining Free Will
• The Meaning of Self Determination
• The Distinction Between Possibility and Actuality
• EDF and Actual Occurrences
• The Cause of Eternal Definieness
  Appendix 3: On Incomplete Probationary Periods
• Post-Mortem Developments and the Free Will Defense
• Incomplete Processes and the Future Probation
  Appendix 4: A Theology of Chance
• The Arbitrariness of Life
• The Definition of “Chance”
• A Cause Without a Reason
• Who Is and Who Is Not to Blame
• The Lord of Chance
• Chance as a Beautiful Mystery
  Appendix 5: Exegetical Notes on Texts Used to Support Compatibilism
• Paradigms and Proof Texts
• Texts Used to Support Compatibilism: Genesis 45:5; 50:20; Exodus 4:11; Exodus 21:12-13; Joshua 11:19-20; Judges 9:23; Ruth 1:13; 1 Samuel 2:25; 2 Samuel 16:10; 2 Samual 17:14; 2 Samuel 24:1; 1 Chronicles 21:1; 1 Kings 8:57-58; Job 1:21; Psalm 105:24-25; Psalm 135:6; Proverbs 16:4; Proverbs 16:9; Proverbs 21:1; Isaiah 6:10; Isaiah 14:24, 27; Isaiah 45:7; Lamentations 3:37-38; John 6:44; Acts 4:27-28; Acts 13:48; Acts 17:26; Romans 9:18; Romans 11:36; Ephesians 1:11; 2 Thessalonians 2:11-12; 2 Timothy 1:9.

Satan and the Problem of Evil, Part I

Introduction

“The blueprint worldview” holds that behind every event there is a specific reason why God ordained it or let it take place. However for certain horrifying experiences it is hard to believe that a specific divine purpose is being served. Moreover the view is rooted in an imbalanced reading of the Bible, which as well as emphasizing God’s ultimate authority over the world emphasizes that created beings can and do resist His will. Headed by a powerful fallen angel named Satan, they form a rebel kingdom. It is clear that God will someday vanquish them, but in the meantime there is a genuine war between God and them. This motif expresses what Boyd calls the “warfare worldview” of the Bible. His thesis is that God created the world to display His love and to invite others to share in it but that it was not logically possible for Him to have this objective without risking the possibility of war breaking out in His creation.

Boyd also explains in the introduction why he included “Satan” in the title of the book, why he labels his position a trinitarian warfare theodicy, how his theodicy differs from other approaches to the problem of evil, his method, the organization of the book, and the style of the book. On his method, he identifies four criteria: Scripture is divinely inspired and therefore trustworthy in all matters that it intends to teach; reason, if employed correctly, is also a trustworthy guide in seeking after truth; experience has a legitimate role in play in our quest for truth, but it should never be placed above or even considered apart from Scripture and reason; and all theological and philosophical reflection must be conducted in critical dialogue with church tradition. Boyd tried to employ all four criteria simultaneously in working out the implications of love and thereby attempting to make the warfare worldview of Scripture intelligible.

1. The World at War

This chapter summarizes God at War, Part II, in five sections:

• The Warfare Worldview of the Old Testament examines God’s conflict with hostile waters, the cosmic monsters Leviathan and Rahab, and battle among the “gods.”
• Warfare in the Ministry of Jesus considers Jesus’ view of the Satanic kingdom and his demonstrating the kingdom of God by casting out demons and healing sick and diseased people.
• Warfare in the New Testament Church considers Satan’s continued activity in the world, including his actions against the church and individual believers.
• The Warfare Worldview of the Postapostolic Church considers the warfare worldview of the postapostolic fathers under these headings: a mediated providence, angels as free moral agents, God’s moral rule, fallen angels and the problem of evil, and the fall of the “prince of matter.”
• Conclusion expresses Boyd’s conviction that the early fathers were headed in the right direction with their suggestion that the possibility of evil is built into the nature of freedom and that creatures had to possess freedom if they were to be capable of moral virtue but that this direction was significantly lost with the advent of Augustine’s blueprint theology.

2. The Free Fall

Boyd’s goal in the chapter is “to begin to make philosophical sense of the warfare worldview of the Bible … by reflecting on the nature of love.” He opens by affirming that love is the reason that God created the world, supporting his claim by quoting from Jesus’ prayer in John 17. He then submits the first condition of love: it must be freely chosen. Identifying this as the first thesis of the trinitarian warfare theodicy (TWT1), he explains in a section called “Love and Freedom” how both Scripture and experience confirm it. He devotes the bulk of the chapter to exploring in a section called “Compatibilistic Freedom” its implications, offering a critique of compatibilism (the view that morally responsible freedom is compatible with determinism) and examining scientific, philosophical, and theological objections to self-determining freedom. He concludes with a section called “Conclusion.”

“Compatabilistic Freedom” contains four subsections:

Self-Determining Freedom and Moral Responsibility argues that compatibilistic freedom does not adequately explain moral responsibility because according to it causal chains can be traced beyond an agent’s willing to heredity, environment, God, or fate, making the ultimacy of why a deed is what it is not to lie with the agent but with something else.

Compatabilist Freedom and the Problem of Evil argues that if the ultimate explanation for why and everything is the way it is lies with God, not free agents, then it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that God is ultimately responsible for everything, including the evil in the world.

Compatibilistic Objections to Self-Determining Freedom addresses a scientific objection, a philosophic objection, and a theological objection to the concept of self-determining freedom. The scientific objection is that modern science shows that everything about humans is determined by their genes and environment; Boyd offers six arguments against this objection. The philosophical objection is that the notion of self-determining freedom is incoherent; after a lengthy discussion, Boyd concludes the charge is not compelling. The theological objection is that the concept of self-determining freedom is inconsistent with the Biblical understanding of original sin and salvation by grace alone; Boyd claims that there is no merit in accepting a gift and thus that we can consistently claim both that everyone who is saved is saved solely by God’s grace and that everyone who is not saved has only himself or herself to blame.

3. A Risky Creation

Since love must be freely chosen, it may be rejected. Thus God could not create a world in which love is possible without risking war. This constitutes the second thesis in the trinitarian warfare theodicy (TWT2): “Freedom implies risk.” However this claim is controversial, attributing risk to God’s seeming to contradict the classical understanding that God possesses exhaustive definite foreknowledge (EDF) of everything that will ever come to pass. In Chapters 3 and 4 Boyd tries to establish that what is called the open view of God and the future is more Biblical and more consistent logically with the warfare worldview of Scripture than the classical understanding. Chapter 3 contains five sections:

• Risk and Exhaustively Definite Foreknowledge observes that according to the EDF doctrine God knows eternally that certain individuals will end up in hell if they are created and raises the question of why God would create individuals that He knows will end up in hell. Some have proposed the view that God simply knows what will take place but cannot alter it in light of this knowledge, thus avoiding the problem of God’s creating individuals that He knows will go to hell, but the view raises the problem of how God can respond to anything. The open view of God and the future affirms that future decisions of self-determining agents are only possibilities until agents actualize them and thus affirms that in creating the world God faced the possibility, but not the certainty, that free creatures would oppose Him to the extent that they have and thus is the perspective that renders intelligible the trinitarian warfare view.
• Open-Ended Prophecies opens by noting that the Bible contains many prophecies that were fulfilled long after they were given, prompting some to question how God could give such prophecies unless He possessed exhaustive knowledge of what was to come. However some prophecies are simply declarations of what God Himself is going to do, thus being a matter of God’s knowing His own intentions rather than His seeing into the future, and other prophecies are not unconditional predictions of what will certainly happen but warnings of what might happen if things don’t change. Three examples of the latter are Jonah and the repentant Ninevites (Jonah 3), Hezekiah’s recovery (2 Kings 20), the flexible potter (Jeremiah 18).
• The God Who Moves with Us in Time gives more ways in which the Bible portrays God as facing an open future under these headings: the disappointed God (Jeremiah 3:6-7, 19-20; Isaiah 5:1-4), the God who asks questions (Numbers 14:11), the God who regrets (Genesis 6:6; 1 Samuel 15:11, 35), the Lord of the present (1 Samuel 23:10-12; none of God tells David comes to pass), the God who finds out (Genesis 1:19, 22:12; etc.), the search for an intercessor (Ezekiel 22:29-31), and open-ended eschatology (Revelation 3:5; 2 Pet 3:9-12).
• The Omniresourceful God gives an example of God’s facing a future partially composed of possibilities (Exodus 3:7-4:9), examples of His saying “maybe” (Jeremiah 26:3; Ezekiel 12:3; Exodus 13:17), and examples of His presenting options to humans in conditional terms (Jeremiah 22:4-5; 1 Kings 9:4-7). God’s facing a partly open future is similar that of a master chess player.
• Conclusion: Risk and the Open Future sums up the chapter.

4. A Question of Balance

As I noted in introducing Chapter 3, Chapters 3 and 4 try to establish that what is called the open view of God and the future is more Biblical and more consistent logically with the warfare worldview of Scripture than the classical understanding. Chapter 4 considers in six sections the most convincing arguments against the open view, in the course of which it fleshes out and defends its understanding of divine sovereignty, and three more arguments that support the view:

• A Foreknown Bride and a Foreknown Messiah considers Romans 8:29 and Old Testament prophecies accurately predicting details about the coming Messiah. Romans 8:29 says, “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.” Some think that the verse implies that God knows who will and will not be saved, but according to Boyd what God loved ahead of time was the church considered as a corporate whole rather than select individuals. The prophecies about the Messiah raise the question about how they are possible unless God possesses exhaustive definite knowledge, but according to Boyd they are examples of the many aspects of the future determined by God.
• The Open View of the Future and Middle Knowledge considers the Molinist theory of “middle knowledge” and identifies the open view of God and the future as a version of Molinism. Rejecting Molinism and not viewing the open view as a version of it, I won’t consider it here.
• A Philosophical Argument considers the argument that affirming EDF is logically incompatible with affirming that agents possess libertarian or self-affirming freedom.
• Physics and the Open Future argues that the indeterminate behaviour of quantum particles suggests a partly open future.
• Our Experience of Ourselves notes that we assume that the future is partly open and partly closed every time that we deliberate between options and that our sense of moral responsibility presupposes that the future is to some extent open for us to decide but also presupposes that some of the future is not up to us to decide.
• Conclusion summarizes the section and raises some questions that the next two chapters will address.

5. Love and War

This chapter deals with some questions about the meaning of love as the answer to the problem of evil, in the course of which it develops the third and fourth theses of trinitarian warfare theodicy, in five sections:

• General Control and Individual Freedom responds to the objection that the concept of a risk-taking God seems to undermine God’s sovereignty by pointing out that there are no Biblical or rational grounds to suppose that divine sovereignty must entail exhaustive divine control.
• On Trusting God responds to the objection that God cannot be trusted as the source of our strength and comfort unless He meticulously controls the world by pointing out that trusting God doesn’t mean that He will protect us from all tragedies but that “the love of God in Christ Jesus” will be with us through them.
• The Dark Side of the Potential to Love responds to the question of why God allows some agents to harm and even kill other agents by arguing that contingent agents cannot have the capacity to love other agents without having the capacity to harm them. This claim forms that third thesis of trinitarian warfare theodicy, risk entails moral responsibility (TWT3).
• Corruptio Optimi Pessima responds to the objection that God wagers so much on human and angelic freedom by arguing that the potential to bless or to curse must be proportionate to the potential to love, This claim forms the fourth thesis of trinitarian warfare theodicy, moral responsibility is proportionate to the potential to influence others (TWT4).
• Conclusion summarizes the chapter and raises some questions that the next chapter will address.

6. No Turning Back

This chapter addresses three more questions about the warfare worldview, in the course of which it submits the final two structural theses of the trinitarian warfare theology, in four sections:

• Why Must God War Against Rebel Agents? addresses the question of why God doesn’t simply destroy enemy agents once they have chosen to rebel against Him. It critiques two ways in which this question has been answered – the greater good and a hoped-for universalism – and proposes a third way, that once God gives the gift of self-determination He has to, within limits, endure its misuse. Thus constitutes the fifth thesis of the warfare theodicy: the power to influence is irrevocable (TWT5).
• The Finitude of Freedom explains God can be assured of eventually winning. This constitutes the sixth thesis of the trinitarian warfare theodicy: the power to influence is finite (TWT6). Three considerations help confirm this thesis: arguments in favour of finite freedom from the nature of contingent creatures, from the wisdom of God, and from experience; both our saying yes to God’s love and our becoming conformed to the image of Jesus Christ being enabled by God’s grace; and the Scriptural teaching that the war that God fights in this age is not an eternal war.
  The section also considers five categories of variables affecting the quality of an agent’s freedom: the ongoing influence of God, our original constitution, previous decisions, other agents, and prayer.
• Conclusion summarizes the chapter and shows how the trinitarian warfare theodicy makes sense of the fact that a world created by an all-good and all-powerful God could become a nightmarish war zone and the fact that God is assured of winning the war though many particular battles have yet to be decided.

My Personal Opinion

Although I think that in Satan and the Problem of Evil, Part I, Boyd demonstrates convincingly that open theism deals with the problem of evil more Biblically and more logically than other attempts to deal with it do, I have reservations about some parts of his presentation. In Chapter 3 he claims that God knows all future possibilities with their various probabilities because these are objective realities. However I don’t think that possibilities are objective realities and thus don’t agree that God knows them. Similarily in Chapter 4 I reject Molinism, which Boyd accepts to the extent that he identifies the open view of God and the future as a version of it. Also in Chapter 5 although I appreciate Boyd’s arguments in affirming TWT3 and TWT4, I still question God’s allowing humans to do so much harm to other humans.

God at War, Part II

The Old Testament shows that something profoundly sinister invaded and threatens God’s creation. But unlike other warfare worldviews, the Old Testament repeatedly stresses God’s absolute supremacy over all others. In the New Testament the reality of the warfare itself shares center stager with the supremacy of God. The fundamental goal of these five chapters is to defend this thesis. (This is from the introduction to Chapter 6.)

6. Tying Up the Strong Man

This chapter is divided into four sections: Intertestamental Developments, Jesus’ View of the Satanic Army, Jesus and the Kingdom of God, and Conclusion. The first section claims that in the third and second centuries B.C. an increasing number of Jews began to believe that their continuing oppression wasn’t God’s disciplining them for their sin but an aspect of Yahweh’s conflict with lesser gods. The section considers the origin and development of the latter viewpoint, called apocalypticism, rejecting the possible influence of Zoroastrianism and discussing favourably “the Watcher tradition” in which the “sons of God” of Genesis 6:1-4 were angels entrusted with watching over the earth. The second section claims that Jesus viewed his teaching and miracles as acts of war against Satan and his angels. The third section claims that by the “kingdom of God” Jesus meant his and his disciples’ ministry of setting up God’s rule in place of Satan’s rule, Boyd’s noting that Jesus began his ministry in both Mark and Luke by announcing the coming of the kingdom and casting out a demon. The fourth section encourages us to seriously consider treating sickness and disease as Jesus did, revoting against them as evil deeds of the devil instead of accepting them “as from a father’s hand.”

7. War of the Worlds

This chapter examines two representative examples of exorcisms by Jesus and investigates the cosmic warfare significance of two representative miracles performed by Jesus. It is divided into two sections; Exorcisms in Jesus’ Ministry and Jesus’ Mastery over Rebellious Nature. The first section examines the exorcism of a multitude of demons out of a man at Gerasa (Mark 5:1-27 and parallels) and the exorcism of a demon out of a young boy (Mark 9:14-30 and parallels). Noteworthy features of the former are the switch from the singular to the plural by the demon and the demon’s plea to remain in the area by entering into a herd of swine. Noteworthy features of the latter are the terrifying characteristics exhibited by the child; the fact that it was a young boy who was demonized, telling us that the demonization was not something for which the demonized person was responsible; and the inability of the disciples to cast the demon out of the boy because of their insufficient faith and prayer. The second section considers the calming of the raging sea (Mark 4:36-41 and parallels) and the cursing of the barren fig tree (Mark 11:12-14 and its parallel). Jesus’ “rebuking” the wind and commanding the waves to be “quiet” treats the storm as a demon, and “barren” suggests that the fig tree had been demonically cursed. Similarly Jesus’ other miracles, including his raising people from the dead, have a warfare significance, their setting in motion forces that will eventually overthrow Satan’s assault upon earth and upon humanity.

8. Storming the Gates of Hell

This chapter highlights the warfare dimensions of a selection of Jesus’ teaching, considering several of his teachings in the Synoptic Gospels and then several of his teachings in the Gospel of John. It is divided into three sections: Jesus’ Warfare Teachings in the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus’ Teaching in the Gospel of John, and Conclusion (to Chapters 6-8). In the first section the first two passages considered are Matthew 16:18-19 (Jesus’ promise to Peter after his confession) and Matthew 6:9-13 (the Lord’s Prayer). The second section overviews three themes that highlight the centrality of the warfare dimension in John’s portrayal of Jesus’ ministry: light and darkness, the “archōn” (ruler) of this world, and “from above” and “from below.” The third section concludes that Jesus and his disciples understood that all the evil in the world was ultimately due to the Satanic kingdom and that their central mission was to oppose and overthrow such things.

9. Christus Victor

Chapters 9 and 10 investigate five themes related to warfare in the New Testament outside the Gospels, two in Chapter 9 (the victory of the cross and deliverance from the devil) and three in Chapter 10 (the demonic realm, its ongoing activity, and its origin and destiny). Thus Chapter 9 is divided into two sections: The Victory of the Cross and Deliverance from the Devil. The first section claims that although Jesus’ death on the cross satisfied perfect justice and therefore stoned for our sins, its primary significance was defeating Satan and the evil powers under his dominion and establishing Christ as the legitimate ruler of the cosmos and humans as his legitimate viceroys upon the earth. A key passage given in support of the claim is Psalm 110:1, “The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.” The second section gives some passages which state what Christ accomplished on a cosmic level and then show what this means to us., the first one being Colossians 1:15-22, in which verses 15-20 stress Christ’s cosmic victory and verses 21-22, “And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight,” state what this means to us.

10. Engaging the Powers

As I noted in introducing Chapter 9, Chapter 10 investigates three themes related to warfare in the New Testament outside the Gospels–the demonic realm, its ongoing activity, and its origin and destiny. Because it divides its treatment of the second theme into two sections and provides a concluding section affirming the centrality of the warfare perspective in the New Testament, the chapter is divided into five sections: The New Testament’s Conception of the Demonic Realm, The Activity of the Demonic Realm, The Christian Life as Warfare, The Origin and End of Satan and Fallen Angels, and Conclusion: The Centrality of the Warfare Perspective. The first section presents evidence that although many scholars argue that the “powers” in Paul’s terminology refer primarily to structures created by God to preserve order within creation in general and within human society in particular, Paul viewed the “powers” as transcendent personal beings created by God and ordered in an hierarchal fashion, some of whom became evil and thus have to fought against by the church and overthrown by Christ. The second section demonstrates that although the New Testament understands Satan and the hostile cosmic powers to have in been in principle been defeated through Christ’s ministry, death and resurrection, it also understands that Christ’s victory has not yet been fully applied to the world at large and that demonic powers can still bring about evil in the world and war against the church and individual believers. The third section portrays two ways that the Christian life as warfare is portrayed: exorcisms and putting on “the whole armour of God.” The fourth section gives evidence for Satan’s kingdom originating in rebellion against God (Jude 6 and 2 Peter 2) and affirms the ultimate defeat and destruction of Satan, his legions, and all humans who have aligned themselves with him (numerous Biblical passages). The fifth section affirms the centrality of a warfare worldview in the New Testament, attributes the evil in the world to this war, and encourages us to look forward to God’s ultimately vanquishing his foes and ending all sorrow. “Marantha: Our Lord, come! (1 Cor 16:22)”

My Personal Opinion

“The fifth section affirms the centrality of a warfare worldview in the New Testament, attributes the evil in the world to this war, and encourages us to look forward to God’s ultimately vanquishing his foes and ending all sorrow.” Although I agree that Jesus and the early church viewed themselves as at war with the Satanic kingdom, I think that God’s primary motivation in sending Jesus to die on the cross was His love for the world (John 3:16) rather than His desire to defeat Satan. Although I agree that this war is responsible for much of the evil in the world, I think that at least some of the moral and natural evil in the world is due to our actions and God’s response to them (Genesis 3:16-19). However, despite the miserable situation that we are now in, I trust that God will ultimately vanquish his foes and end all sorrow. Thus I also say, “Marantha: Our Lord, come!”

God at War, Part I

Several years ago I posted the following about God at War:
“God at War demonstrates that a central concern of the Bible is what Boyd terms a ‘warfare worldview,’ the view that the world is populated by spiritual beings at war with each other. The book is divided into two parts, each with five chapters. The first part consists of an introductory chapter relating the warfare worldview to the problem of evil and four chapters considering the warfare worldview of the Old Testament, and the second part considers the warfare worldview of the New Testament….
“When I studied the free-will defence to the problem of evil in the mid 1980’s, I rejected the suggestion that Satan was responsible for natural evil. One reason was that I felt that the Bible pictured Satan’s as being able to inflict pain and suffering upon humans (or at least the righteous) only with God’s permission and I questioned a God of love’s allowing Satan to do such. However after reading God at War and Satan and the Problem of Evil, I’m more sympathetic to the idea.”
(https://opentheism.wordpress.com/2013/06/07/some-books-promoting-open-theism-by-gregory-a-boyd/)

This is the first of four articles summarizing and evaluating God of War and Satan and the Problem of Evil. In each article I’ll summarize each of the five or six chapters in the part of the book that the article concerns and then give my opinion of Boyd’s argument in that part of the book. This article is about Part I of God of War, which as noted above consists of an introductory chapter relating the warfare worldview to the problem of evil and four chapters considering the warfare worldview of the Old Testament. However before summarizing the five chapters, I’ll summarize Boyd’s introduction to the book.

Introduction: The Normativity of Evil Within a Warfare Worldview

Then he said to me, “Fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to understand and humbled yourself before your God, your words have been heard, and I have come because of your words. The prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days, but Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I was left there with the kings of Persia…. now I will return to fight against the prince of Persia; and when I go out, behold, the prince of Greece will come.” (Daniel 10:12-13, 20, ESV)

Doubtless the “princes” are spiritual beings who oversee various territories. Thus the account depicts an angelic battle taking place behind the scenes of physical reality. This raises such questions as: Are certain invisible beings able to disrupt a plan of God to answer a prayer? If so, how does this affect the omnipotence of God and what does it imply for our understanding of the problem of evil?

The vast majority of ancient peoples and even primitive people today (Boyd gives numerous examples) hold that the world is not all or even primarily physical and is certainly not all right but was populated with influential spiritual beings, some of whom were evil and most of whom were at war with one another. Boyd calls this understanding a warfare worldview, “that perspective on reality which centers on the conviction that the good and evil, fortunate or unfortunate, aspects of life are to be interpreted largely as the result of good and evil, friendly or hostile, spirits warring against each other and against us.” The central thesis of God at War is that this warfare worldview is the basic worldview of the Bible, both in the Old Testament and even more so in the New testament.

God at War and Satan and the Problem of Evil contend that the warfare worldview of primitive cultures must be taken seriously by Christians for these reasons:

1. It is not only shared by most biblical authors but is central to the whole New Testament.
2. It provides a remarkably different and better understanding of the problem of evil than does the classical-philosophical Christian approach to it.
3. This change in understanding of evil is empowering in terms of confronting it.
   Boyd gives full and clear explanations of each of the three reasons

1. Hearing Zosia

Three fundamental objections to the spiritual warfare perspective on evil must be addressed before fleshing out the warfare thesis:

1. The thesis requires a sufficient appreciation for the radicality of evil in our world and the radical nature of the problem this poses for the classical-philosophical understanding of divine sovereignty as meticulous control.
2. The thesis requires a willingness to think about the power of God, the reality of evil, and the influence of Satan in some rather untraditional ways.
3. The thesis requires as a central component a belief in angels, Satan and demons as real, autonomous free agents and the belief that the activity of these beings intersects with human affairs for better or for worse.

The Concrete Problem of Evil
Zosia was a little girl…the daughter of a physician. During an “action” one of the Germans became aware of her beautiful diamond-like dark eyes.
“I could make two rings out of them,” he said, “one for myself and one for my wife.”
His colleague is holding the girl.
“Let’s see whether they are really so beautiful. And better yet, let’s examine them in our hands.”
Among the buddies exuberant gaiety breaks out. \one of the wittiest proposes to take the eyes out. A shrill screaming and the noisy laughter of the soldier-pack. The screaming penetrates our brains, pierces our heart, the laughter hurts like the edge of a knife plunged into our body. The screaming and the laughter are growing, mingling and soaring to heaven.
O God, whom will You hear first?
What happens next is that the fainting child is lying on the floor. Instead of eyes two bloody wounds are staring. The mother, driven mad, is held by the women.
This time they left Zosia to her mother.
At one of the next “actions,” little Zosia was taken away. It was, of course, necessary to annihilate the blind child.
(Quoted by Boyd from Philip Friedman, editor, Martyrs and Fighters: The Epic of the Warsaw Ghetto, New York: Praeger, 1954, pp. 166-67)
If God is all-loving, He must have wanted to protect Zosia. If He is all-powerful, He must have been able to protect Zosia. Yet Zosia suffered an unspeakable ordeal and then was murdered. This and other events which Boyd refers to make no sense and constitute the intellectual problem of evil.

The Problem with the Problem of Evil
This way of formulating the problem of evil has three features which call into question the assumptions that give rise to it. First, this way of posing the problem seems to render it unsolvable. Second, Scripture shows no awareness of the problem, suggesting that Scripture reflects a different conception of God. Third, the view of evil found in Scripture runs counter to the view of evil presupposed in this formulation of the problem of evil.
Boyd discusses each of these three features. In discussing the first, he criticises the views that what seems evil is actually part of a higher harmony and that all things, including morally responsible free actions, fit into God’s ultimate will for His creation. In discussing the second, although conceding that individuals occasionally express convictions that come close to the classical-philosophical problem of evil, he claims that both Job and the New Testament picture the way that events unfold in history as being as much a factor of what human and angelic agents willed as what God Himself willed. In discussing the third, he argues for the warfare worldview that he finds implicit in Scripture against both the classical-philosophical of providence and the modern disbelief in angels and demons.

2. Locking Up the Raging Sea

This chapter is divided into three sections: The Warfare Motif in Ancient Near Eastern Literature, Demons in the Old Testament, and Yahweh’s Conflict with the Raging Sea. The first section demonstrates that not only did the ancient Greeks, Egyptians, and Mesopotamians view the world as being populated with good and evil spirits that strongly influenced the lives of people but also that they understood the very creation of the world to involve cosmic conflict. The second section considers evil spirits from the Lord (which Boyd understands to be evil spirits used by the Lord to His own end) and various other demonic spirits but observes that the Old Testament view of demons is quite restricted compared to that of Israel’s neighbours. The third section deals with the raging waters which the Israelites believed encircled the earth and with the ferocious sea monsters such as Yamm and Leviathan that waged war on the earth.

3. Slaying Leviathan

This chapter is divided into two sections: Yahweh and the Cosmic Monsters, and Warfare and Creation. The first section argues that Leviathan (Job 3:8, etc.), Rahab (Job 9:13, etc.), and Behemoth (Job 40:15-24) are cosmic monsters rather than being just natural creatures (as some take Leviathan and Behemoth to be) and that, although created good, they rebelled against and continue to fight against God. The second section argues that Genesis 1 is an account of God’s restoration of the world after the original world had become a formless and empty chaos as a result of conflict rather than being an account of God’s original creation; this theory is generally called “the gap theory” but Boyd prefers to call it “the restoration theory.”

4. Judging “The Gods”

This chapter is divided into four sections: Yahweh and Lesser “Gods,” The Nature and Origin of Ancient Jewish Monotheism, The Council of Yahweh, and Rebellion Among the Gods. The first section claims that although the Israelites believed that there was only one true God, they also believed that other gods existed; two Bible passages cited in support of the claim are Exodus 20:3 and 1 Corinthians 8:4-6. The second section discusses whether monotheism or polytheism is the primordial faith, deciding for a primal monotheism that acknowledged and worshipped a single Creator but also acknowledged the existence of other lesser gods. The third section presents evidence for the Lord’s being surrounded by a council of gods, including His being called “the LORD of hosts,” the prologue to the book of Job, and Micaiah’s vision in 1 Kings 22, and for these gods being portrayed as His warriors. The fourth section focuses on two passages that light is shed on by the understanding that Yahweh rules through the administration of lesser gods and that these gods are capable of rebelling against Yahweh’s order, Daniel 10 and Genesis 6.

5. Rebuking the Adversary

The most powerful and rebellious of the created gods existing below Yahweh and above humans was and is one named Satan. The goal of this chapter is to analyse the Old Testament’s references to him. It is divided into three sections: Is God the Author of Evil?, Other Possible References to the Devil, and Conclusion (to Part I). The first section considers the role of Satan in the book of Job, gives six arguments against the theory that Yahweh is the ultimate source of evil, and looks at two passages in the Old Testament besides those in Job where Satan is explicitly mentioned, Zechariah 3:1-10 and 1 Chronicles 21:10. The second section considers three other passages that have traditionally been interpreted as referring to Satan: Genesis 3, Isaiah 14:1-23, and Ezekiel 28. The third section reviews six conclusions reached in Chapters 2-5):

1. While all the Old Testament authors are intent on expressing the sovereignty of Yahweh, they understand this sovereignty to entail that Yahweh does genuinely battle cosmic foes.
2. While only a small amount of attention is given to evil spirits (“demons”) in the world, a significant amount of attention is given to the existence of gods who form a council of Yahweh and collectively constitute his army.
3. While Satan will later become the example par excellence who went wrong, in the Old Testament he remains a relatively minor figure. Nevertheless, he is seen as an adversary of God and of us and as consistently malicious.
4. The serpent of Genesis 3 can be interpreted as either symbolizing or embodying Satan, and Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 can be understood as referring not only to the fall of human kings but also to the fall of Satan.
5. The only place where anything like the problem of evil is explicitly addressed at length in the Old Testament is the book of Job.
6. There is a “world in between” Yahweh and us that is largely characterized by warfare and, for better or for worse, significantly affects the world as a whole and therefore each of our lives.

My Personal Opinion

Because I think that the worldviews of Israel’s Near Eastern neighbours were developed by them to explain how and why things are as they are, I think that Boyd overemphasizes in Chapter 2 the similarity between those worldviews and the worldview of the Israelites, which I think was revealed to them by God. I also think that in Chapter 3, given the limited references to Leviathan, Rahab, and Behemoth in the Old Testament, Boyd overemphasizes their as cosmic monsters. However despite those reservations about Boyd’s presentation, I concur with his six conclusions.