User:Vejlefjord/Forsyth

In his Christian Theology: An Introduction, Alister E. McGrath describes Forsyth's Justification of God (1916). The book

represents an impassioned plea to allow the notion of the “justice of God” to be rediscovered. Forsyth is less concerned than Anselm for the legal and juridical aspects of the cross; his interest centers on the manner in which the cross is inextricably linked with “the whole moral fabric and movement of the universe.” The doctrine of the atonement is inseparable from “the rightness of things.”

In his Theology and the Problem of Evil, Kenneth Surin points to Forsyth's Justification of God as offering a theodicy based on the cross. God can be justified for creating a world with so much pain and suffering “only if he were prepared to share the burden of pain and suffering with his creatures.” Surin concurs with Forsyth.

Forsyth wrote The Justification of God, while the first world war was killing ten million and wounding another twenty million from around the world. Through the lens of biblical faith, Forsyth saw even “a world catastrophe and judgment of the first rank like the war” as “still in the hand and service of God.”

Before the onset of World War I, widely-held views about God and human progress muted the theodic question. “Popular religion” had preached a God whose sole purpose was “to promote and crown [human] development.” The “doctrine of progress” (first formulated by Abbé de Saint-Pierre) dominated Europe. As Forsyth observed, but the war’s “revelation of the awful and desperate nature of evil” exploded these optimistic views and raised the theodic question about the goodness of God to full force.

There was no theodicy extant to which Forsyth could turn. In spite of his extensive theological studies, he could find no satisfactory “philosophical theodicy or vindication of God's justice.” From this, Forsyth concluded that

no reason of man can justify God in a world like this. He must justify Himself, and He did so in the Cross of His Son.

Forsyth began formulating what he called “God’s own theodicy” with Romans 1:17: “the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith”. There he found the righteousness of God revealed in the Christ who “is the theodicy of God and the justifier both of God and the ungodly.”

[Christ] brings God’s providence to the bar of God’s own promise. In Christ, God is fully justified by Himself. If any man thinks he has anything to suffer in the flesh, God more. In all their afflictions He was more afflicted.

For Forsyth, “God’s own theodicy” stood in contrast to theodicies devised by humans. God’s own theodicy provided Forsyth no philosophical answers to why in God’s “creation must the way upward lie through suffering?” “The tactics of providence cannot be traced,” but “His purpose we have, and His heart. We have Him.” God’s own theodicy is a theodicy of reconciliation and relationship, a theodicy that enables trust in God in spite of unanswered questions.

Forsyth’s understanding of “God’s own theodicy” as enabling a right relationship with God rather than a philosophical justification of God correlates with the two connotations of the word theodicy. Theodicy derives from the Greek words theos and dikē. Theos is translated “God.” Dikē can be translated as either (a) just (and its derivatives justice, justified) or (b) right (and its derivatives righteousness, righteoused). Righteoused is an obsolete verb meaning “made righteous.” A theodicy designed to justify connotes rational arguments. A theodicy designed to righteous connotes relationship because in the Bible righteousness is primarily a relational term.