User:Nageh/Theodicy and the Bible (second draft)

Nageh, thanks again for your hours of work. For expediency, rather than editing the earlier draft that you had posted in User:Nageh/Theodicy_and_the_Bible_(second_draft), I removed it and substituted the draft as it is below.

In the draft as it is below, I made very few changes to Nageh’s draft rewrite, but I did much editing of Vejlefjord’s writing in the rest of the article. Vejlefjord (talk) 02:46, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Vejlefjord’s editing

1. Removed many Wiki-links on the basis of WP:BUILD.
 * a. In general, “overlinking should be avoided, as it can make it more difficult for the reader to identify and follow those links which are likely to be of value.” “Unless they are particularly relevant to the topic of the article, avoid linking terms whose meaning can be understood by most readers of the English Wikipedia.”
 * b. “Links should not be placed in the boldface reiteration of the title in the opening sentence of a lead.” Ergo, do not link Theodicy or Bible in the Lead.
 * c. Link only “relevant connections to the subject of another article that will help readers to understand the current article more fully.” Ergo, do not link authors or terms unless needed for understanding the article.

2.Reduced the Conflicting interpretations heading to a lower level subordinate to the major topics of the article.

3. Deleted quite a bit of material I had included:
 * a. Deleted some references that took the “classical theism” position even though they did not so identify themselves as such. This enables sharper focus on references to the two sides in the current debate.
 * b. Deleted material that seemed not essential to the central points in order to shorten and simplify article. I think that I had tried to work in more material than a Wiki-article could bear.
 * c. Deleted some summaries and comments in my words that would have enhanced clarity because they had no citations.
 * d Vejlefjord’s original rewrite had about 16,000 words excluding endnotes. The draft below has about 8,000 words excluding endnotes.

4. Re-wrote much of Vejlefjord’s writing that Nageh had not edited:
 * a. Condensed some passages
 * b. Added more citations because of concern re the OR taboo

5. I added a few summaries or clarifications and searched books to find suitable words to avoid OR. (Searching for books with suitable words took many hours.) Also a few summaries without citations because they were based on previous content: if not OK, please delete.

LEAD. I tried to make the lead comply with WP:LEAD:
 * 1. §3.3.1 First sentence. The article should begin with a declarative sentence telling the nonspecialist reader what (or who) is the subject. If its subject is amenable to definition, then the first sentence should give a concise definition: where possible, one that puts the article in context for the nonspecialist.
 * 2. §3.3.2 Most commonly, the article's subject is stated as early as possible in the first sentence, and placed in boldface.
 * 3. Explain why the subject is interesting or notable in the first few sentences.
 * 4. Summarize the most important points—including any notable controversies.
 * 5. Emphasis given to material in the lead should roughly reflect its importance to the topic.
 * 6. Should be carefully sourced as appropriate, must conform to verifiability and other policies.
 * 7. Should invite a reading of the full article.
 * 8. Lead should be able to stand alone as a concise overview of the article.
 * 9. Length: More than 30,000 characters (draft has about 41k excluding endnotes) three or four paragraphs.

Next Steps. This is certainly no longer my article. So, please, feel free to edit as you will. I am thinking that I will do nothing else unless you ask me to do specific things. When (if ever) you think the article is getting close to being ready to “Go Live,” you might want to call in an editor from Wikipedia:WikiProject Christianity/Peer Review. I see two that seem to have potential to be helpful.

I will check back on User:Nageh/Theodicy_and_the_Bible_(second_draft) Discussion/Talk in a few days to read your responses to what I posted. All the best. Vejlefjord (talk) 02:46, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

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SECOND USER:NAGEH DRAFT BELOW

A theodicy is “a theological construct designed to justify rationally God’s ways in the face of evil and suffering.” The word is a combination of Greek and Latin terms meaning “God” and “Right.” The purpose of a theodicy is to answer the question “how could a holy and loving God who is in control of all things allow evil to exist?” Jewish, Christian, and others religions have attempted to answer this question for thousands of years, and “debates about theodicy continue among believers and unbelievers alike.”

The Bible contains the Old Testament (Hebrew Scripture) and the Christian New Testament. Theodicy is an “intensely urgent” and “constant concern” of “the entire Bible.” Relating theodicy and the Bible is crucial to understanding theodicy because the Bible “has been, both in theory and in fact, the dominant influence upon ideas about God and evil in the Western world.” The Bible raises the issue of theodicy by its portrayals of God as inflicting evil and by its accounts of people who question God’s goodness by their angry indictments. However, the Bible “contains no comprehensive theodicy.” The interplay between the Bible and theodicy is complicated by debates over the Bible’s interpretation. These debates are currently exemplified by the debates between “open theism” and “classical theism.”

“The most common theodicy is the free will theodicy.” It lays the blame for all moral evil and some natural evil on humanity’s misuse of its free will. The free will theodicy interacts with the Bible at its core: what Jesus and Paul say about the freedom of the will and with what kind of freedom of will God endowed humanity at the Creation.

God and evil in the Bible
The Bible contains numerous examples of God inflicting evil, both in the form of “moral evil” resulting from “man’s sinful inclinations” and the “physical evil” of suffering. These two biblical uses of the word evil parallel the Oxford English Dictionary’s definitions of the word as (a) “morally evil” and (b) “discomfort, pain, or trouble.”

The Bible sometimes portrays God as inflicting evil in the generic sense:
 * “I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside me. I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things (Isaiah 45:5-7 abr KJV).”
 * “The Lord kills and brings to life; he brings down to Sheol and raises up. The Lord makes poor and makes rich; he brings low, he also exalts” (1 Samuel 2:6-7).
 * “Does disaster [lit evil] befall a city, unless the Lord has done it?” (Amos 3:6).

In other cases, the word “evil” refers to suffering. Suffering results from either (a) “‘moral’ evil, due to human volition” or (b) “‘physical’ evil, directly due to nature.” The Bible portrays God as inflicting evil in both senses because its writers “regarded God as the ultimate Cause of evil.”

Examples of suffering caused by natural evil attributed to God follow:
 * After Naomi’s husband and two sons died, she lamented, “The Almighty has brought calamity [lit evil] upon me” (Ruth 1:21).
 * “I [God] struck you with blight and mildew; I laid waste your gardens and your vineyards. I sent among you a pestilence. I killed your young men with the sword” (Amos 4:9-10 abr).
 * “Who makes [mortals] seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?” (Exodus 4:11).
 * “The Lord struck the people with a very great plague” (Numbers 11:33).

Examples of suffering caused by moral evil attributed to God follow:
 * Moses complained to God, “O Lord, why have you mistreated [lit done evil to] this people? Since I first came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has mistreated [lit done evil to] this people” (Exodus 5:22-23).
 * The crucifixion was portrayed as “determined” and done “according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God” (Luke 22:22; Acts 2:23). The perpetrators of the crucifixion were “anointed” by the “Sovereign Lord to do whatever [his] hand and [his] plan had predestined to take place” (Acts 4:24-28 abr).
 * Regarding “those who do not believe,” Peter affirmed that “they disobey the word, as they were destined [by God] to do” (1 Peter 2:7-8).

The Bible's portrayals of God as inflicting evil create the need for a theodicy for those who believe in the biblical God because, as Barry Whitney observes, “it is the believer in God, more so than the skeptic who is forced to come to terms with the problem of evil.”

Conflicting biblical interpretations
The interpretation of the Bible in relation to the theodic issues of God and evil often gives rise to contradicting viewpoints. The History of Biblical Interpretation observes that conflicts in biblical interpretation have existed “for over two thousand years” and that they continue between “contemporary interpreters.” A prominent example of conflicting biblical interpretations exists in the current debate between proponents of open theism and proponents of classical theism.

Classical theism’s Mark R. Talbot interprets the Bible as teaching that “God’s foreordination is the ultimate reason why everything comes about, including the existence of all evil persons and things and the occurrence of any evil acts or events,” and he adds, “this is what Scripture explicitly claims.” Talbot quotes Isaiah 45:7 in which God says, “I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity [lit evil], I am the LORD, who does all these things.”

In opposition to classical theism, open theism’s Gregory Boyd, in his God at War: the Bible and Spiritual Conflict, counters that "divine goodness does not completely control or in any sense will evil." As does Talbot, Boyd cites Isaiah 45:7. Along with the passage, Boyd quotes Claus Westermann who interprets the passage as saying that “each and every thing created, each and every event that happens, light and darkness, weal and woe, are attributed to [God], and to him alone.” However, Boyd contradicts Westermann by interpreting the passage as applying only to its immediate context and as “not concerned with God’s cosmic creative activity.”

Biblical indictments of God
Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann observes that “theodicy is a constant concern of the entire Bible,” and he describes theodicy, from the biblical perspective, as a subject that “concerns the question of God’s goodness and power in a world that is manifestly marked by disorder and evil.”

The Bible evokes a need for a theodicy by its indictments of God coupled with expressions of anger at God, both of which question God’s righteousness.


 * Moses indicted God for mistreating his people: when Pharaoh treated the people cruelly, Moses questioned God, “Lord, why have you mistreated [lit done evil to] this people?” (Exodus 5:22).


 * Moses indicted God for not enabling obedience: “The Lord has not given you a mind to understand, or eyes to see, or ears to hear” (Deuteronomy 29:4).


 * Naomi indicted God because he brought calamity upon her by the death of her husband and two sons: “The Almighty has dealt bitterly with me. The Almighty has brought calamity [lit evil] upon me” (Ruth 1:20-21 abr).


 * Elijah indicted God because God had killed the son of the widow who befriended him: “O Lord my God, have you brought calamity [lit evil] even upon the widow with whom I am staying, by killing her son?” (1 Kings 17:20).


 * Job indicted God because God had brought evil upon him by enemy attacks and natural disasters (Job 42:11): “You have turned cruel to me; with the might of your hand you persecute me” (Job 30:21).


 * Jeremiah indicted God for deceiving his people: “Ah, Lord God, how utterly you have deceived this people and Jerusalem, saying, ‘It shall be well with you,’ even while the sword [the Assyrian army] is at the throat!” (Jeremiah 4:10).


 * Jeremiah indicted God for injustice in favoring treacherous people: “Let me put my case to you. Why does the way of the guilty prosper? Why do all who are treacherous thrive? You plant them, and they take root; they grow and bring forth fruit” (Jeremiah 12:1-2).

God in the Dock

To put God “in the dock” means to out God “on trial or under intense scrutiny.” In her book God in the Dock, biblical scholar Carleen Mandolfo studies Psalms that indict God, put him trial, and render guilty verdicts.

Psalm 102 makes God “the focal point of blame,” The setting of Psalm 102 was the ruins of Jerusalem in Judah “c. 539-515 B.C.” Not only had the land been “conquered and devastated, thousands of its people were taken away to Babylonia” as captives, while these who remained in Judah were “harassed by bands of roving marauders.” What follows is based on Mandolfo’s analysis using her own translation that uses Hebrew verse numbering.

Verses 2-3. The psalmist’s admonishing God, “do not hide your face from me” is a “hidden complaint” because it suggests distrust in God’s commitment to justice.

Verses 4-13. The psalmist suffers pain like being “burned by a brazier,” her “enemies taunt” her, and she has to “eat ashes as bread.” She accuses God of inflicting her with these evils: “on account of your fury and your wrath, you have lifted me up and thrown me down.”

Verses 12-13. The psalmist contrasts her shortness of life (“my days are like a shadow in the evening”) and God’s eternity (“but you, YHWH, are eternally throned”). Mandolfo says that “the contrast between vv. 12 and 13 helps to paint YWHW as a deity lacking generosity.” Verses 24-29 contain another indictment of God: “he drained my strength.”

“Until the end [of the psalm,” says Mandolfo, “YHWH continues to be the focal point of blame.” There is no talk of God’s “mercy” or “justice” and no “penitential language”: “the harshness of the complaint. . . cannot be silenced and gets the last word.” Thus, Psalm 102 is “fairly unremitting in its description of YHWH as a deity who uses his power to oppress.” Mandolfo finds no justification of God in the psalm.

Biblical responses to evils
“There is no biblical theodicy.” However, the Bible proffers “various solutions” to questions about God and the evil of human suffering. These “various solutions” to the why of suffering and other evils are delineated in the Bible’s “responses” (James Crenshaw) or “approaches” (Daniel Harrington) or “answers” (Bart Ehrman) to evil that these biblical scholars have identified.


 * Adversity is sometimes taken to be a result of sin. “Adversity pursues sinners, But the righteous will be rewarded with prosperity” (Proverbs 13:21 NAS).


 * Hardship is sometimes interpreted as teaching. We “endure hardship as discipline [or teaching].” It seems “painful,” but “it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace” (Hebrews 12:7, 11 NIV).


 * Affliction is sometimes reckoned as character-forming. Paul interpreted his affliction’s purpose as “to keep me from becoming conceited” (2 Corinthians 12:7 NIV). When he and Timothy suffered “hardship,” Paul believed that it happened so “that we might not rely on ourselves but on God” (2 Corinthians 1:8-9 NIV).


 * Trials are sometimes viewed as testing. James counsels that “trials” are a “testing” that “produces endurance” and contributes to becoming “mature and complete” (James 1:2-4).


 * Trials are sometimes seen as leading to a heavenly reward. Both James 1:12 and Revelation 2:10 promise “the crown of life” for those who persevere under trial.


 * Evil sometimes serves as a means to a good end. God sent Joseph to Egypt by way of his brothers’ evil deed of selling him as a slave for the beneficial purpose of feeding people (“to preserve life”) during a famine (Genesis 45:5).

Gregory Boyd, while appreciating “expositions of various biblical motifs that explain why we suffer, goes on to warn that “none of these motifs claim to be a comprehensive theodicy.” In agreement with Boyd, Milton Crum comments that although such biblical passages might lessen the weight of suffering, ad hoc interpretations of evils do not provide a blanket theodicy. And N. T. Wright “reminds us” that “the scriptures are frustratingly indirect and incomplete in answering questions of theodicy.”

Deuteronomic “theodic settlement”
Brueggemann observes that, while the various biblical books do not agree on a theodicy, there was a temporary “theodic settlement” in the biblical Book of Deuteronomy.

The “theodic settlement” in the Book of Deuteronomy interprets all afflictions as just punishment for sin, that is, as retribution. Brueggemann defines “the theological notion of retribution” as “the assumption or conviction that the world is ordered by God so that everyone receives a fair outcome of reward or punishment commensurate with his or her conduct.” Brueggemann points to Psalm One as a succinct summary of this retribution theodicy: “the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked shall perish” (Psalm 1:6).

Deuteronomy elaborates its “theodic settlement” in Chapter 28. Verse two promises that “blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the Lord your God.” This general promise of blessings is followed by a lengthy list of fourteen specific blessings. But, on the other hand, verse fifteen warns that “if you will not obey the Lord your God. . ., curses shall come upon you.” This general warning of curses is followed by a list of fifty-four specific curses, all of which would fit into the biblical use of the word “evil.”

The Deuteronomic retribution theodic settlement interpreted whatever evils (“curses”) people suffered as just retribution meted out by a just God. However, at least as early as the early 6th century B.C., Jeremiah was asserting that the retribution theodicy was contrary to fact. Jeremiah upbraided God for endowing the wicked with prosperity: “Why does the way of the guilty prosper? Why do all who are treacherous thrive? You plant them, and they take root” (Jeremiah 12:1-2).

Conflicting interpretations

Classical and open theists disagree in their interpretations of the Deuteronomic theodic settlement.

Classical theist John Piper interprets “all calamities” as “both punishment and purification. . . at the same time.” More specifically, regarding the 2004 Tsunami, Piper believes that “God could have stopped the waves,” but chose not to. In such destruction, for believers, death “is a door to paradise.” For non-believers, “suffering and death are God’s judgment.” With small children who are not “being punished or judged,” God can turn their “suffering or death” to serve “their greater good.” More specifically, Piper interpreted the August 19, 2009, “tornado in Minneapolis” as inflicted by God to issue a “firm warning to the ELCA [Evangelical Lutheran Church of America] and all of us: Turn from the approval of sin.”

Piper takes his retribution doctrine beyond death. Concerning those “who do not obey,” he says, “our rebellion is totally deserving of eternal punishment.”

From the open theism stance, Greg Boyd takes issue with Piper’s position regarding God’s retribution. Boyd begins by taking a stand against “speculating about how God is judging others through natural calamities.” And, after surveying relevant biblical passages, Boyd rhetorically asks, “Why then should we suppose that God is still using tragedies to punish people?”

The Book of Job
Brueggemann treats the biblical Book of Job as the prime example of the “newly voiced theodic challenges” to the “old [Deuteronomic] theodic settlement” Job “was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil” (Job 1:1), but nonetheless he suffered “all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him” (Job 42:11). In the midst of his suffering, Job explicitly contradicted the Deuteronomic theodic settlement: “it is all one; therefore I say, [God] destroys both the blameless and the wicked”(Job 9:22).

Not only did Job challenge the Deuteronomic theodic settlement by the fact of his own innocent suffering and by explicit contradiction of the old settlement, he interrogated God, “Why do the wicked live on, reach old age, and grow mighty in power?” (Job 21:7). Brueggemann judges the fact that God had no answer to Job’s why? to be so important that “the Book of Job turns on the refusal, unwillingness, or inability of [God] to answer” Job’s query.

Brueggemann explains that the “turn” he sees in the Book of Job is a turn from seeing the ‘right’ as accepting the old theodic settlement. Now, he continues, “perhaps what is ‘right’ is Job’s refusal to concede, and therefore what is celebrated is his entire defiant argument. . . . That is, what Yahweh intends as ‘right’ is that Job (Israel, humankind) should make a legitimate case” before God “without timidity or cowardice” to “carry the human question of justice into the danger zone of God’s holiness.”

Bible and free will theodicy
A theodicy is an attempt “to reconcile the power and goodness attributed to God with the presence of evil in the human experience.” The Bible attributes both “power” and “goodness” to God.

The free will theodicy, first developed by Augustine, defends God by placing all the blame for evil on “the misuse of free will by human beings.” This free will theodicy is “perhaps the must influential theodicy ever constructed,” and it is currently “the most common theodicy”

Explaining the free will theodicy, Nick Trakakis writes that “the free will theodicist proceeds to explain the existence of moral evil as a consequence of the misuse of our freedom.” Then “the free will theodicist adds, however, that the value of free will (and the goods it makes possible) is so great as to outweigh the risk that it may be misused in various ways.”

In parallel with the free will theodicy, The New Bible Dictionary finds that the Bible attributes evil “to the abuse of free-will.” Others have noted the free will theodicy’s “compatibility with and reliance upon the [biblical Book of] Genesis account of creation” and the fall of Adam and Eve into sin. Because of the compatibility between the free will theodicy and the Genesis account of the Creation and Fall of humanity “the Fall-doctrine” has been characterized as “fundamentally an exercise in theodicy-making.”

Free will and freedom: definition problems
The two terms, “freedom” and “free will,” are treated together (a) because, by definition, a “free will” means a “will” that possesses “freedom” and (b) because “free will” is "commonly used" as synonymous with “freedom.” Likewise, Robert Kane, writing about “what is often called the free will issue or the problem of free will,” says that it “is really a cluster of problems or questions revolving around the conception of human freedom”

In writing about free will, R. C. Sproul points out that “at the heart of the problem is the question of the definition of free will.” Manual Vargas adds that “it is not clear that there is any single thing that people have had in mind by the term ‘free will’.” Because of the confusion created when “definitions of free will are assumed without being stated,” Randy Alcorn urges, “be sure to define terms.”

Adler’s kinds of freedom

Mortimer Adler recognized the confusion resulting from the fact that there are “several different objects men have in mind when they use the word freedom.” In The Idea of Freedom, Adler resolved this confusion by distinguishing the “three kinds of freedom” that various writers have in mind when they use the word. He calls these three kinds of freedom (1) “circumstantial freedom,” (2) “natural freedom,” and (3) “acquired freedom.” “Natural freedom” and “acquired freedom” are germane to the Bible in relation to the free will theodicy.

“Natural freedom” and the Bible
“Natural freedom,” in Adler’s terminology, is the freedom of “self-determination” regarding one’s “decisions or plans.” Natural freedom is “(i) inherent in all men, (ii) regardless of the circumstances under which they live and (iii) without regard to any state of mind or character which they may or may not acquire in the course of their lives”

Biblical scholars find that the Bible views all humanity as possessing the “natural freedom” of the will that enables “self-determination.” In this sense of the term, biblical scholars say that, although the Bible does not use the term, it assumes human “free will.” For example, what Adler calls “natural freedom” matches the definition of the biblical concept of “free will” in the Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms, namely, “the free choice of the will that all persons possess.” Other scholars describe free will in the Bible as follows:


 * If the phrase “free will” be taken morally and psychologically, as meaning the power of unconstrained, spontaneous, voluntary, and therefore responsible, choice, the Bible everywhere assumes that all men, as such, possess it, unregenerate and regenerate alike. The New Bible Dictionary.


 * “Free will is clearly taught in such Scripture passages as Matthew 23:37 . . . and in Revelation 22:17.” Archaeology and Bible History.


 * The Bible assumes that all human beings have “free will” in the sense of “the ability to make meaningful choices,” that is, “the ability to have voluntary choices that have real effects.” If God Is Good.


 * We make willing choices, choices that have real effect. . . . In this sense, it is certainly consistent with Scripture to say that we have “free will.” Bible Doctrine.

Debate re “natural freedom”
The proper interpretation of biblical passages relating to the freedom of the human will has been the subject of debate for most of the Christian era. The Pelagius versus Augustine of Hippo debate over free will took place in the 5th century. The Erasmus versus Martin Luther arguments in 16th century included disagreements about free will, as did the Arminians versus Calvinists debates in the late 16th and early 17th centuries.

There is still no resolution of the free will debate because as Robert Kane observes, “debates about free will are more alive than ever today.” Two very vocal principals in the current debate are proponents of open theism and proponents of classical theism.

Open theism re “natural freedom”

Open theists accept the reality of natural freedom, albeit not by that name. For example, Greg Boyd asserts that “people do have free will. They originate their own actions. Hence, they are the final explanation for what they choose to do.” William Hasker concurs that “Christian thinkers have almost without exception wanted to say that human beings are free in some sense.”

Hasker illustrates the disagreements about the meaning of “free will.” While affirming the reality of the natural freedom of self-determination, Hasker degrades natural freedom as mere “outer freedom” in which a person is not “truly free.” Hasker’s argument is that a person can possess free will in the volitional self-determining sense (i.e., “natural freedom”), but, at the same time, the person’s decisions “may be completely determined by the psychological forces” at work in the person. For this reason, Hasker concludes that the natural freedom of self-determination does not render a person “truly free”

From the open theism perspective that William Hasker calls “the libertarian view,” in order for a person “to be truly free,” a person “must have the ‘inner freedom’ either to act or refrain” from acting. According to open’s theism’s “libertarian (or ‘incompatibilist’) understanding of free will,” in Hasker’s words with his italics, a person is “truly free” only if “with respect to a given action at a given time if at that time it is within the agent’s power to perform the action and also in the agent’s power to refrain from the action.” John Sanders concurs that the “libertarian freedom” granted by God means that “you could have done otherwise than you did in the same circumstances.”

The “incompatibilist” doctrine. to which Hasker alludes holds that “the agent’s power to do otherwise” is “a necessary condition for acting freely” (i.e., “acting of one’s own free will”). Therefore, any kind of determinism (internal or external) is incompatible with open theism’s libertarian definition of free will.

Classical theism re “natural freedom”

John Calvin, a pillar of classical theism, affirmed “free will” in the “natural freedom” sense. “Man is said to have free will, not because he has a free choice of good and evil, but because he acts voluntarily, and not by compulsion. This is perfectly true: but why should so small a matter have been dignified with so proud a title?”

Following Calvin, regarding natural freedom in the Bible, contemporary classical theist Mark Talbot reports that “our freedom to choose, along with our responsibility, is affirmed throughout Scripture.”

In opposition to open theism’s incompatibility doctrine that “the agent’s power to do otherwise” is “a necessary condition for acting freely” of “one’s own free will,” classical theism promotes the doctrine of compatibility. For compatibilists, “freedom” (or free will) requires only “the power or ability to do what one will (desire or choose) to do” without constraint or impediment, even if what one wills is determined.

“Acquired freedom” and the Bible
“Acquired freedom,” in Adler’s terminology, is the freedom “to live as [one] ought to live,” and to live as one ought requires “a change or development” whereby a person acquires “a state of mind, or character, or personality” that can be described by such qualities as “good, wise, virtuous, righteous, holy, healthy, sound, flexible, etc.”

Thus, while Adler ascribes the “natural freedom” of “self-determination” to everyone, he asserts that the freedom “to live as [one] ought to live” must be acquired by “a change or development” in a person. The New Bible Dictionary finds these two distinct freedoms in the Bible:


 * (i) “The Bible everywhere assumes” that, by nature, everyone possesses the freedom of “unconstrained, spontaneous, voluntary, and therefore responsible, choice.” The New Bible Dictionary calls this natural freedom “free will” in a moral and psychological sense of the term.


 * (ii) At the same time, the Bible seems “to indicate that no man is free for obedience and faith till he is freed from sin’s dominion.” He still possesses “free will” in the sense of voluntary choices, but “all his voluntary choices are in one way or another acts of serving sin” until he acquires freedom from “sin’s dominion.” The New Bible Dictionary denotes this acquired freedom for “obedience and faith” as “free will” in a theological sense.

The Bible gives a basic reason why a person must acquire a freedom “to live as [one] ought to live” when it applies Adam and Eve’s sin to all humanity: “the Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5). Or, in Paul’s view, “by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners” (Romans 5:19). Thus, the Bible describes humanity as connaturally “enslaved to sin” (Romans 6:6; John 8:34). Therefore, in biblical thinking, a freedom from being “enslaved to sin” in order to “to live as one ought” must be acquired because “sin” is “the failure to live up to Jesus’ commandments to love God and love neighbor.”

Jesus re acquired freedom

Jesus told his hearers that they needed to be made free: “if you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 8:32). But Jesus’ hearers did not understand that he was not talking about freedom from “economic or social slavery,” so they responded, “we are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, ‘You will be made free’?” (John 8:33).”

To clarify what he meant by being “made free,” Jesus answered them, “very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin” (John 8:34). By his words being “made free,” Jesus meant being “made free” from “bondage to sin.” Continuing his reply, Jesus added, “if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36). “Free indeed [ontós]” can be more literally translated “truly free” or “really free,” as it is in the following translations.
 * “If the son makes you free, you will be truly free” (John 8:36 New Century Bible).
 * “If therefore the Son shall set you free, ye shall be really free” (John 8:36 Darby Translation).

In the John 8:32-36 passage, Jesus taught that “those who sin are slaves to their sin whether they realize it or not” and “they cannot break away from their sin.” The freedom of being “truly free” or “really free” had to be acquired by being made free by “the truth,” John’s name for Jesus in 14:6. Thus, Jesus characterized being made “truly free” as freedom from being a “slave to sin.” At the same time, the Bible holds that it is freedom for righteous living because “from the very beginning God's people were taught that the alternative to servitude was not freedom in some abstract sense, but rather freedom to serve the Lord.”

Paul re acquired freedom

When the New Bible Dictionary says of humanity’s connatural condition that “all his voluntary choices are in one way or another acts of serving sin,” it references Romans 6:17-22. In this passage, Paul depicts the connatural human condition as being “slaves of sin.” To be “set free from sin,” Paul’s readers were told that they had to “become slaves of righteousness.”

Regarding the transformation from being “slaves of sin” to being “slaves of righteousness,” Douglas J. Moo comments that Paul uses the image of slavery to say that “being bound to God and his will enables the person to become ‘free’” — in the sense of being free “to be what God wants that person to be.” The slavery image underscores, as Moo says, that what Paul has in mind “is not freedom to do what one wants, but freedom to obey God” and that the obedience is done “willingly, joyfully, naturally,” and not by coercion as with literal slaves.

Debate re “acquired freedom”
The ongoing “debate about the freedom of the will” includes a debate about the need to acquire the “true human ‘freedom’” required “to live in accordance with God’s will.”

Classical theism re “acquired freedom”

Necessity of acquired freedom. Regarding the necessity for acquired freedom to live as he ought, John Piper states, in effect, that until he is transformed, his natural freedom to choose as he will (volitionality) is determined by (in bondage to) his sinful desires. “I am free to do whatever I please [natural freedom],” writes Piper, but he continues, “what I please is to sin” because “we are born with original sin.” Therefore, “I must be rescued from the bondage of my free will.” Thus Piper concludes, “true freedom [acquired freedom] is being set free from the bondage” to original sin.

Concurring with Piper’s position, E. Earle Ellis reckons that all humanity is endowed with “free agency,” but until a transformation takes place, the human “will in its free agency’ is ‘freed from righteousness’ and bound to our ego (Romans 6:20). It always says no to God.”

In Mark Talbot’s reading of the Bible, the reason an acquired freedom is a necessity is that “every human being in this post-fall world starts out as a slave to sin” as “our inescapable legacy from [the sin of] Adam.” Therefore, Talbot says, “Scripture” teaches that everyone is “dominated by sin” until he/she “has been set free by God to live a life of righteousness.” Yet, before acquiring the freedom that enables “a life of righteousness,” Talbot finds that “our freedom to choose [natural freedom], along with our responsibility, is affirmed throughout Scripture.”

How of acquired freedom. The how of acquired freedom, for Talbot, consists of “God’s changing our nature so that we are no longer slaves to sin.” When this transformation is “complete,” we will have acquired “the freedom to choose to be righteous without the possibility of choosing otherwise.”

Talbot explains that choosing “to be righteous without the possibility of choosing otherwise” is still a “free and morally significant” choice because “it is voluntary.” Such a person will have been so transformed from being a “slave of sin” and his character “so shaped” that it will be “completely natural—indeed, inevitable—for him to choose” righteousness. Thus, Talbot continues, “there are then two explanations” for a person’s actions. “First, it is because he chose to do so; and, secondly, it is because making such a choice was inevitable for him, given who he is.”

Open theism re “acquired freedom”

Boyd agrees with classical theism in depicting Jesus as coming to people who were “slaves to sin” (John 8:34) to set them free, and he also believes it is still true that our salvation consists in being “set free from slavery to sin and guilt.” Because we “fallen humans” are “slaves to sin” the freedom of will to “choose to accept salvation” must be “the work of the Holy Spirit.” However, Boyd contends that the Holy Spirit only makes “it possible for us to believe.” Therefore, acquiring freedom from slavery to sin and guilt depends on a decision by our own libertarian free will because we must be “willing to receive it.” Boyd does not cite Roman:8:7 in which Paul writes that “the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so” (Roman:8:7 NIV).

Sanders also finds humanity in “bondage to sin” and asks “how can they respond to God?” His answer uses parallel terms: God’s “enabling grace” and the “Holy Spirit.” In this answer, Sanders distinguishes between the universal libertarian freedom (liberum arbitrium) and “the ability to respond favorably to God (liberum consilium).” He also uses verbs that suggest the dynamics by which this response comes about: “the gospel story enlightens, convicts, and enlivens us” and “the love of Jesus elicits our loving response.”

Sanders seems to be agreeing with Talbot’s “both human agency and divine agency are to be fully affirmed” when Sanders also takes a fully both/and position by saying that faith “is altogether the work of God and altogether the work of human persons.” But the apparent agreement is negated when Sander refers back to two classical theists and calls their doctrines the “manipulative model” in which people are “coerced” and “faith is solely of God.” Sanders does not refer to Talbot’s assertion that although God governs “the choices of human beings,” he governs without “cancelling [their] freedom and responsibility.”

Open theism denies that what classical theist Talbot calls “true freedom” should be called “true freedom.” In Talbot’s reading, “the liberty that Scripture portrays as worth having” is “the freedom to choose to be righteous without the possibility of choosing otherwise.” He calls this kind of freedom “true freedom.” But open theist William Hasker contends that what Talbot calls “true freedom” is not freedom at all. “According to libertarianism [Hasker’s position], a choice is free only if another choice was really possible under exactly the same (external and internal) circumstances.”

Open theism denies that what classical theism calls “true freedom,” namely, “freedom to choose to be righteous without the possibility of choosing otherwise,” should be called “true freedom.” However, Hasker allows (i) that Jesus possessed such a freedom and (ii) that people in heaven will possess such a freedom.


 * (i) Regarding Jesus, Hasker writes that he views Jesus as “a free agent.” “But,” Hasker continues, “I think it was not really possible that he would do something that would, so to speak, ‘abort the mission’.”


 * (ii) Regarding free will in heaven, Hasker foresees that “it will be as the result of our own choice that we are unable to sin” because “all impulses to act sinfully will be gone.”

Also looking toward heaven, Greg Boyd holds that “the goal of self-determining freedom” is both “to become a person who eternally receives and reflects God’s love” and for this state to be “irreversible.”

Regarding the eschaton, John Sanders asks, “Is the possibility of sin removed somehow?” He answers that “perhaps our material freedom [acquired freedom?] becomes so confirmed and pervasive that we freely never use our formal freedom [i.e., natural freedom] to sin.”

The Fall and freedom of the will
The Fall (sometimes lowercase) in its theological use refers to “the lapse of human beings into a state of natural or innate sinfulness through the sin of Adam and Eve.” The story of the Fall is narrated in Genesis 3:1-7.

Nelson's Student Bible Dictionary describes “the fall” as “the disobedience and sin of Adam and Eve that caused them to lose the state of innocence in which they had been created. This event plunged them and all mankind into a state of sin and corruption.” A Concise Dictionary of Theology provides a similar description of the Fall. In their fall, Adam and Eve “disobeyed God and so lost their innocent, ideal existence” and “brought moral evil into the world.”

The Bible testifies to the deleterious impact of the Fall on all humanity. Shortly after the Fall, “the Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5). Or, in Paul’s view, “sin came into the world through one man,” and “by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners” (Romans 5:12, 19).

Freedom of will given at creation
Writing about God’s creation and Adam and Eve, Baker's Dictionary of Biblical Theology says that “creation is climaxed by persons who possess wills that can choose to either obey or disobey.” The apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus explicitly names freedom of the will as an element in God’s creation. God “created humankind in the beginning, and he left them in the power of their own free choice” (Ecclesiasticus 15:14).

Open theism re freedom given at creation

The standard free will theodicy ascribes an innate worth to freedom of the will sufficiently high to justify God’s bestowing it on Adam and Eve even though it enabled their disobedience by which evil was brought into the world.

Open theist Greg Boyd revises the standard free will theodicy by ascribing a higher value to the “free will” that God gave Adam and Eve than merely the innate worth of freedom. For Boyd, God endowed Adam and Eve with freedom to choose in order, “that they might choose to remain in loving union with God.” Furthermore, “because it was a union of love it had to be possible for Adam and Eve to reject it.” Boyd goes on to assert that it was not a matter of God’s power because “God could have created a world in which his will is always done.” However, in Boyd’s interpretation, that “would have ruled out” both a world in which people make “free choices” and “a world where love is possible.” In other words, Boyd argues, “Creation doesn’t have to have actual evil, but it must allow for the possibility of evil—if the possibility of genuine love is to exist.”

John Sanders prefers “the logic-of-love defense” over the mere “free will defense” of God’s righteousness. Sanders does not base his theodicy on “the supposed intrinsic worth of human freedom.” He bases his theodicy on the intrinsic value of “a relationship of personal love.”

Thus, open theism argues that God gave Adam and Eve the best possible freedom given God’s purpose to create free agents who could choose to love and obey God or who, at the same time, could choose not to love and obey.

Classical theism re freedom given at creation

Regarding the Fall of Adam and Eve, for classical theist Mark Talbot, the “ultimate reason” for the Fall was “God’s ordaining will” because “nothing that exists or occurs falls outside God’s ordaining will. Nothing, including no evil person or thing or event or deed.”

Although Talbot reads the Bible as teaching that God governs “the choices of human beings,” Talbot also reads the Bible as teaching that God governs “the choices of human beings” without “cancelling [their] freedom and responsibility.” Talbot says that the reason we cannot understand this seeming paradox is that we make a “category mistake” in our thinking. The New Bible Dictionary takes the somewhat different position that “we are not able to reconcile God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility. . . because we do not understand the nature of divine knowledge.”

Freedom of will not given at creation
Adam and Eve were created with “free will,” that is “the ability to choose either good or evil.”   The Fall evidences that Adam and Eve were not created with the freedom that Paul calls being “slaves of righteousness” (Romans 6:18): a phrase that denotes “freedom to obey God — willingly, joyfully, naturally.”

Critics of the free will theodicy believe that it “fails” because “God could have created free agents without risking bringing moral evil into the world. There is nothing logically inconsistent about a free agent that always chooses the good.” Relating God’s creation of Adam and Eve and the Fall to theodicy, J. L. Mackie argues “there was open to [God] the obviously better possibility of making beings who would freely act but always do right.” And, Mackie adds, “clearly, [God’s] failure to avail himself of this possibility is inconsistent with his being both omnipotent and wholly good.”

Open theism re freedom not bestowed 

Open theist Greg Boyd describes “the highest state of freedom” as the freedom “to love God without the possibility of falling.” The fall of Adam and Eve by their disobedience demonstrates that God did not create them with Boyd’s “highest state of freedom.”

Neither were Adam and Eve given what open theist William Hasker describes as heavenly freedom when “it will be as the result of our own choice that we are unable to sin.”

Classical theism re freedom not bestowed 

From classical theism’s perspective, the freedom that God did not bestow on Adam and Eve was the freedom that Paul images as being “slaves of righteousness” (Romans 6:18). Mark Talbot describes being “slaves of righteousness” as the “freedom to choose to be righteous without the possibility of choosing otherwise.” This “freedom not to sin” is, in Talbot’s reading, the “true freedom” and the only one that “Scripture portrays as worth having.”

God re moral evil
The free will theodicy justifies God by ascribing all evil to “the evil acts of human free will.” At the same time, the Bible teaches that God “rules the hearts and actions of all men.” The Bible contains many portrayals of God as ruling “hearts and actions” for evil. Following are a few examples:


 * God said, “I will harden [Pharaoh’s] heart, so that he will not let the people go” (Exodus 4:21).
 * Isaiah asked, “Why, O Lord, do you make us stray from your ways and harden our heart, so that we do not fear you?” (Isaiah 63:17).
 * God said, “If a prophet is deceived and speaks a word, I, the Lord, have deceived that prophet” (Ezekiel 14:9).
 * John writes that those who “did not believe in [Jesus] could not believe,” because, quoting Isaiah 6:10, “[God] has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart” (John 12:37-40 abr).
 * God “hardens the heart of whomever he chooses” (Romans 9:18).
 * “God sends [those who are perishing] a powerful delusion, leading them to believe what is false, so [they] will be condemned” (2 Thessalonians 2:11-12).
 * “Those who do not believe . . . stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined [by God] to do” (1 Peter 2:7-8).

Classical theism re God and moral evil

Classical theist Bruce A. Ware reads the Bible as testifying “that God is not passively uninvolved and inactive in the wicked actions of mankind.” To the contrary, God “ordains these actions for purposes” that humans may never know. “Unlike the open view of God,” Ware asserts, “the God of the Bible ordains and accomplishes everything as he alone knows best.” God is “not thwarted by creaturely freedom” and he “does whatever he pleases.” Bruce A. Ware, God’s Lesser Glory: The Diminished God of Open Theism (Crossway Books, 2000). 199, 229.

Mark Talbot asserts that “God has ordained everything, including our free choices,” including “all of our free sinful choices.”

These beliefs of classical theism evoke a theodic question from Roger E. Olson: “how does that escape making God the author of sin and evil?” In contrast to Olson and without recourse to a theodicy, classical theist John Calvin asserts that “the will of God is the supreme rule of righteousness, so that everything which he wills must be held to be righteous by the mere fact of his willing it.” For contemporary classical theist Mark Talbot, because “Scripture says” it, God “will always do what is right.”

Open theism re God and moral evil

Open theist Greg Boyd derides classical theism’s view that “God ordains all that comes to pass,” including “human decisions,” as a “blueprint worldview.” In Boyd’s interpretation, “Scripture makes it evident that though God could control us,” he “chose to limit himself by creating agents with irrevocable free will!”

In opposition to classical theism’s doctrine that God is the “‘ultimate cause’ of all that happens in the world” including the actions of “human freedom,”, Boyd argues that “an adult’s free choice is the ultimate explanation of his or her own behavior.”

In line with Boyd’s position, John Sanders maintains that God created humanity with “libertarian freedom,” and “it is contradictory to assert that an omnipotent God totally controls libertarian free creatures.”

In Boyd’s theodicy, there is “no more reason to hold God morally responsible for the evil his creatures bring about than we do to hold parents morally responsible for the evil behavior of their adult children.” However, Sanders asks a theodic question. If God could “create a world in which free creatures never commit a moral evil,” as Sanders believes, “this raises the question of why God has not done so.” The reason “why” that Sanders offers to justify God is that to “create a world in which free creatures never commit a moral evil” would be “logically contradictory” because “libertarian freedom” is the only “morally significant freedom.” Nevertheless, Sanders holds God as “solely responsible for creating a world with the conditions in which the failure of love was a possibility.”

For David Blumenthal, “whether God ‘causes’ or ‘allows’ evil is not relevant” because “God has an encompassing moral co-responsibility in the action of humans by virtue of being Creator.”

Theodicy unresolved
The existence of evil in the world, in the view of Raymond Lam, “presents the gravest challenge to the existence of an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving God.” Lam also observes that “no theodicy is easy.”

The Dictionary of Theology explains why Lam asserts that “no theodicy is easy.” It explains that “the [theodic] issue is raised in light of the sovereignty of God,” and it asks, “how could a holy and loving God who is in control o Big text f all things allow evil to exist?” The difficulty of the question is attested by the fact that “the answer has been debated for as long as the church has existed,” but “we still do not have a definitive answer and the Bible does not seek to justify God's actions.”

Regarding theodicy and the Bible, Baker's Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology concludes that “the Bible does not answer the oft-posed problem of how a just, omnipotent, and loving God could permit evil to exist in a universe he had created.”

With no “definitive answer” to the theodic question, “debates about theodicy continue among believers and unbelievers alike,” observes Robert F. Brown. Therefore, Brown adds, “theodicy remains a perennial concern for thoughtful religious commitment.” Theodicy remains a “perennial concern” because, Brown reports, “how the divine can be compatible with the existence of evil in the world has perplexed profound thinkers and ordinary people right down to the present day.”

The thousands of books and articles about theodicy testify both to the interest in theodicy and the unresolved nature of the subject. Theodicy: an Annotated Bibliography on the Problem of Evil, 1960-1991 includes 4,200 items: 349 entries for the “Free Will Theodicy” alone. Amazon.com lists 397 books under the keyword “theodicy” that have been published since 1991.

Arthur Peake, who spent his life studying and teaching the Bible with an interest in the problem of evil, concluded that “suffering will always remain a largely unsolved mystery.”