At work I have a colleague who asks me, again and again, why it is that God did not create human beings incapable of sinning. He is obviously far from satisfied with my answers, and I can't blame him. What would you say? You must have been asked the question.
Cur Deus Homo has a brief aside about the question. In contrast to the rest of the book this section is as clear as mud to me. Nevertheless Anselm's answer manages to shut up his dialogue partner...
Boso: given that God is capable of creating such a man, why did he not make the angels and the first two human beings such that they would likewise be both incapable of sinning and worthy of praise for their righteousness?
Anselm: Do you understand what you are saying?
Boso: It seems to me that I understand it, and that is why I am asking why he did not make them like this.
Anselm: This was because it was neither right nor possible for it to be brought about that any one of them should be identical with God, as is the case, so we are saying, with this man [Jesus, who is righteous and incapable of sin 'independently']. And if you ask why he does not bring this about for as many such human beings as there are persons of God, or why he did not at least do it for one of them, I answer that reason did not at all demand that this should be done: rather, since God does nothing irrationally, it prohibited this.
Boso: I am ashamed at having asked this question.
(Cur Deus Homo, Book 2, Chap 10)
Now I don't want to shut up my friend so completely, but want I do want him to be pointed to him who does make us incapable of sin. So I'm not ashamed to ask such a question of my intelligent readers, in the hope of fresh insight.
Hi Dave,
ReplyDeleteAnselm seems like quite a guy!
The way I've tackled this question is a bit like this:
1. As humans, we were created for a right relationship with our Creator
2. Creating humans knowing that they would fall allows God to demonstrate elements of his character that humans would never have known in the same way if the fall had not happened (mercy, grace, justice etc. - Eph 2:7 etc.)
God wants to be truly and deeply known. Given that grace and mercy are so deeply part of his character, he wants them to be seen (primarily through Christ). Presumably the depth of relationship that follows this disclosure is greater than even the pain of sin and brokenness that results from the fall.
So I'd maybe ask your friend... What elements of God's character can be seen because of our present circumstances? How does this change everything?
Anselm was an interesting fellow. Not afraid to stand up to kings for what he believed in, but he also gives the impression of being a really prayerful and humble guy as well.
ReplyDeleteThat is a really way to respond to the question. I think the closest I came to that was saying that it reveals God and his gracious nature more fully. But I think I kept it too abstract. I didn't say how God wants to be known (better than 'revealed') truly and deeply. And your follow up questions are excellent too. I really am genuinely thankful.
That should read 'really good way'
ReplyDeleteIt's like Anselm can read my internal dialogue! I too have a fictional interlocutor called Bozo and I too imagine him shamed into awed silence by my brilliance. Perhaps I should publish my 'dialogues'!
ReplyDeleteI always try to reframe questions that begin "Why didn't God..." into ones that say "What does it say about God that He did..." It takes it from the realm of speculation to revelation - just as Peter's questions do.
Typically I talk about the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world and the reason the Father loves Him is that He lays down His life. Which is admittedly seriously heavy stuff but it takes you straight to the cross.
But whether you go that route or not I think you want to end up saying 'If the fall is harsh on anyone it's harsh on the Lord who bears its curse in full to redeem the world.' It's the Lord who enters the depths to become Firstborn from among the dead - He bears the brunt of the curse and offers us refuge. And then the points about what this says about Him (a la Peter's) flow out naturally. Hopefully.
Glen - you know bozo too?
ReplyDeleteIf it helps, I normally talk about difference between "can/could" and "will/would".
i really like the question, "do you understand what you are asking?" That could be the most fundamental question God asks of people - effectively, we are God's "Bozo"! Might post on that idea sometime... :)
I guess the elephant in the room is the doctrine of original sin, and whether it's "social" or "genetic", or part of God's curse. On that, I tend to ask whether my circumstances explain or excuse my actions.
Cheers Dave & Pete - great ways of expressing it.
ps im always slightly wary of neatly tied up loose ends - seems to justify sin rather than God in the face of sin, which is always to some extent inexplicable. We don't just want answers, we want hope.
ReplyDeleteI imagine if my house is burning down, I can't get out and my kids are trapped, but I manage to make a phone call & cry for help, I might not understand the cause of the blaze, but I can imagine a situation so urgent that the most loving thing for the person on the other end to do isnt to talk me through it but leave the receiver dangling while they rush to sort some sort of rescue...course, from my end the line's gone dead.
My mind isn't organised enough to organise a dialogue. It is just a cacophony of conflicting voices who leave me more confused than I was when I started, not more convinced I'm right.
ReplyDeleteI think the difficult thing is to show that it was loving of God to give us that 'freedom' to sin pre-fall and that we are not pawns in the chess game of the gods.
Taking it from speculation to revelation is then key, I agree, because in Christ we don't have a capricious god but a person we can trust with questions that can never be fully answered. I am glad, in some sense, that God allowed us to fall because despite the death and suffering I get to know Jesus as the one who loves us so much that he laid down his life for me.
The challenge is that on the narrow view it is bad news. It is only with the wide angle that you can begin to see that there is good news in the story. Reminds me of Jonathan Edwards...
Chris, could you expand your comment that 'If it helps, I normally talk about difference between "can/could" and "will/would"'? I'm not sure I get it.
Thank you one and all. You have provided helpful food for thought.
aiieeee. I'm afraid you accidentally hit one of my buttons. I've been working on this for nearly a year now. I got so interested I never finished my dissertation - might give it another bash in the summer...
ReplyDeleteyou're quite right, I feel the same question beckoning but I'm tempted to wheel out Anselm's do we understand what we're asking?
Happy to elucidate further on could/would, but I'm interested what you think is the difference between "X could do otherwise" and "X would do otherwise"?
I'd also be interested to see in what sense you'd say we are still free after the fall, and whether you can relate that to before the fall - is it the same kind of freedom? if not why call it the same thing?
To set you going, before leaping into "freedom" (glad you distinguished freedom pre/post fall), it's good to ask what we mean by freedom at all (and this impinges on the could/would difference). I might throw out two broad possibilities: Kant v Nietzsche
Kant: your rational ego transcends your actions and can bring your will in line with norms which are rationally binding. Freedom is your power to act according to both desire and reason.
Nietzsche: Kant's "transcendant ego" is simply a myth, which dissolves under his critical philosophy. When we finally actually look at ourselves critically, we find we are bundles of sub-conscious (physical & psychological) drives. Freedom is finally endorsing those drives. "what is the seal of liberation? no longer to be ashamed before oneself".
In short, Kant's free-will is the power to decide to act both according to desires & to reason, Nietzsche would undermine reason altogether. In a sense we become victims of our drives, and freedom is self-acceptance: we embrace what we are, by a gigantic act of will.
in even shorter, do our decisions have reasons we can explain, or causes by which we can explain them away? How you answer that will determine what freedom is.
In other news, thanks SO much for the parcel, it'll be opened on thursday! I'll write in the new year.
As for the "how deeply God can be known" approach, what's the difference between that and a mother rocking a baby out of its sleep so she can cuddle and comfort it? Not a particularly endorsing picture! At best, I guess you could argue it's like God's inoculation - letting us feel some of the disease of sin without suffering the epidemic, but frankly, the reason I don't like the answer from perspective is I can only apply it to christians, at best. Otherwise, it's leibniz' god, the God who ties up so many loose ends he ends up legitimising evil, rather than justifying himself in the face of evil.
ReplyDeleteOn a similar point, I can't apply God's sovereignty (eg as John Piper did in Ruth) for greater good purposes for those (a) outside Israel and (b) outside Christ. For starts, it can lead to a sort of soothsayerism, reading God's will out of circumstances.
Hi Chris,
ReplyDeleteDon't know if you will read this so long after your comments. Unfortunately I have had a bit of cold and you deserved a decent response. I don't know if I can summon that but I don't want to leave you hanging any longer.
On would/could... I would say that would/will is comment on character whereas could/can is more a comment on ability. Would you agree?
Does that get us very far though? Perhaps we could work backwards when responding to the original question, and start by looking at God as revealed in the bible and then dodge the question as irrelevant in the end because God would not act unjustly. I think that is what I do as a Christian, and I do think it is valid to a degree. But if you are trying to defend (!) the trustworthiness of God then it is slightly unsatisfactory to divert the attention from the creation of humanity as a place to look for that.
'Freedom' is such a slippery concept that I love using the scare quotes whenever I mention it. Are Kant and Nietzsche the only two options though? Are they even the main options that non-Christians think of when asking about it? Perhaps Nietzsche's definition is in mind to some degree but I think a more traditional understanding is also in their mind. To quote Melanchton:
Man has the ability of knowing and judging, which is called the mind (mens). The intellect or the reason also is a part of this knowing process. A second part of man is the seeking part, called the will (voluntas) which either obeys or resists the judgment. Under the will there are the desires of the senses or the affections, the subject and source of which is the heart. These desires sometimes agree with and sometimes contend against the will. Under the will is also the locomotive part of a man. (p. 41, Loci (1543))
So I think most non-Christians would be assuming that the mind/desires should have been 'limited' by God to only be able to desire good, and so will/do good. Kant's 'reason' doesn't even come into it.
Maybe I'm missing the point.
I think there is a difference between the mother rocking a baby out of its sleep and the 'how deeply God can be known' approach. I accept that there are similarities though. The difference is that the fall remains our responsibility and was freely chosen. The similarity is God allowed us to be in a dangerous situation for a greater goal. There are similarities between good parenthood and this but there are limits to the danger that good parents expose their children for the purposes of maturation, but it is a balancing act. The sceptic would ask 'Can any benefit to the blessed few justify the eternal suffering souls of millions of people?', and like you I would have trouble with that.
As always happens the question has widened out and started sucking in other issues.
I wish I had the answer. Maybe it is because I don't understand what I'm asking.... argh!