Covenantide

Author: SJ Hatch

  • The 48th PCA General Assembly: A New Commissioner’s Readout

    The 48th PCA General Assembly: A New Commissioner’s Readout

    Part of the membership vows that we take—at least in my denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA)—are to “support the Church in its worship and work” (Vow #4) and to “study its purity and peace” (Vow #5) and for that reason it is important to know what is going on in the denomination.  Indeed, we not only have a responsibility to do this, but a privilege of being able to have an influence on where the denomination goes; it is not up to the whim of a pope, a bishop, or a pastor.  A focal point for what is going on in the denomination is what happens at General Assembly (GA), which this year was held in St. Louis, Missouri from June 28th to July 2nd. I was able to attend this year as a newly minted Ruling Elder, and the readout that follows is based on presentations I gave to my church last month, which I am happy share more broadly with those who may be interested to foster greater awareness.

    Even before the opening gavel, this was shaping up to be an important GA, since the PCA was not able to meet last year because of COVID and so had to make up two years’ worth of business in one year.  More significantly, however, for the past three years the PCA has been roiled by the issue of how to respond to same-sex attraction, stemming from the Revoice conference held in 2018 at Memorial Presbyterian Church, a PCA church in St. Louis.  More about that in a moment but suffice it to say that the Revoice issue raised the question for many as to whether the PCA would be faithful to historic biblical teaching on human sexuality.  This concern is probably what drove a large number of Teaching Elders (TEs – pastors) and Ruling Elder (REs) to attend: there were over 2,100 commissioners in attendance, which was an all-time high for the PCA and significantly more than the previous high of about 1,600 in 2019.

    What is General Assembly?

    As a Presbyterian Church, the PCA is connectional and has a graduated set of church courts.  All the Teaching and Ruling Elders of a local church comprise the “Session;” those of all the churches in a particular geographic region make up a Presbytery.  Each church in the PCA nationwide can send a Teaching Elder and at least two Ruling Elders to the General Assembly.  The General Assembly is the highest governing body in PCA.  The actual Assembly itself is part trade convention, part business meeting.  This year it was held in the America’s Center Convention Complex (this was the same complex, but a different area from where some US Olympic qualifying trials had been held the previous week).  GA provides a huge opportunity to connect or reconnect with people from across the denomination.  There are several alumni events associated with the major seminaries, such as RTS, Westminster or Greenville, and I personally got to meet up with people I knew from other churches, as well as attend the RTS alumni luncheon and the Westminster alumni dinner.  GA also had a large exhibition area where most major Reformed booksellers, a number of missions bodies, and several ministry support organizations had booths, along with some of the major standing committees within the PCA.  There were also a number of seminars held in the breakout rooms at the complex, geared mostly towards pastors.

    In terms of business, the major committees met early in the week, before GA was officially convened on Tuesday evening.  Chief among these committees was the Overtures Committee.  This is the heart of the deliberative aspect of GA.  Each presbytery can nominate two commissioners (a RE and a TE) to the Overtures Committee, which evaluated, amended, or made recommendations on the 47 overtures (petitions) sent to GA from the presbyteries.  Their work continued through the week.  GA was opened with a worship service on Tuesday evening, with the outgoing moderate, Howie Donahue, giving a good sermon/meditation on the topic of Heaven.  This was followed by various administrative actions basically aimed at how GA would work, certain overviews on the state of the PCA, and so forth.  Beginning late on Tuesday evening and continuing until Thursday were presentations and recommended motions from different committees and organizations in the PCA.  Worship services (with sermons) were held Wednesday and Thursday evenings as well.  The musical styles varied from service to service.  While a handful overtures were addressed during the respective committee reports to the full Assembly, most were reserved for the Overtures Committee report which effectively did not begin until after the worship service on Thursday evening.  In my opinion, this was a flaw in the scheduling, as it crunched the time available to really discuss the issues that were of most concern to the attendees.  Nevertheless, we got through the entire docket and, bleary-eyed, wrapped up deliberations by 1:00 am on Friday morning.

    The “Revoice” Controversy and Same-Sex Attraction

    Much of what GA did on the issue of same-sex attraction (SSA) can be a little confusing if looked at outside of the context of the last few years, so before speaking this GA’s actions immediately, let me first provide some theological and historical context to help make thing more understandable.

    Theologically, the biblically orthodox and historical position is that same-sex attraction is a sin, it is not innate in a person, and it is not immutable.  In other words, people are not born same-sex attracted and they can change through faith in Christ and through the inward work of the Holy Spirit in mortifying one’s sins.  Because of this, one should not claim as one’s identity to be “Same-Sex Attracted Christian” or a “Gay Christian.”  Our sin is not part of our identity; our identity is wholly in Christ and to claim otherwise is to denigrate our union with Christ.

    Over the last couple of decades, some Christians with same-sex attraction have not accepted the biblically orthodox position and there has been a dialogue between them characterized by what they have termed “Side A” and “Side B” positions.

    • Side A holds that same-sex attraction is innate, immutable, and not sinful; indeed, adherents to Side A would claim that is how God made them. To hold this view, however, one has to downplay or reject the fact that every single reference in Scripture to homosexuality or same-sex attraction is characterized in morally negative terms.  Because this position considers same-sex attraction as innate, immutable, and not sinful, there is therefore no problem to identifying oneself as a “Gay Christian;” it is morally neutral in the same way as calling oneself a Black Christian or an Asian Christian.
    • Side B is a more complex.  It equivocates as to whether same-sex attraction is innate but accepts the idea that it is largely immutable and cannot be changed.  It equivocates as to whether it is sinful, with some adherents saying it is and others saying it is not sinful but rather, it is “of sin” (i.e., it is something that is the result of the fall, like disease, but not necessarily a moral category).  It accepts a Roman Catholic notion of concupiscence which holds that having wrong desires is not sinful, only acting upon those desires is.  This contradicts the Lord’s own teaching in Matt. 6:27-28.  It accepts the notion God’s plan for sex is heterosexual monogamous marriage, and its adherents advocate for celibacy and “spiritual friendships” among same sex attracted persons, believing that their orientation cannot or is highly unlikely to ever change.  Adherents of the Side B view believe that whether or not one self-identifies as a “Gay Christian” is a purely pragmatic personal decision.

    The Side A position is logically consistent, but a clear rejection of Scriptural orthodoxy.  Nobody at this point in the PCA is advocating for a Side A position.  That said, the 2018 Revoice conference and successive Revoice conferences since then have been actively promoting Side B.  In my view, the Side B position is logically inconsistent and for that very reason is likely to shade over into Side A in time.

    • By accepting the idea that same-sex attraction is either sinful or “of sin” as well as being immutable, one implicitly says God is the author of sin, that Christ’s work on the cross does not make a difference in atoning for such sin, and that the inward work of the Holy Spirit cannot bring about any sanctification in this area of a believer’s life.  So, although it does not reject biblical orthodoxy explicitly in the way that Side A does, it undermines biblical orthodoxy to a significant degree.
    • By maintaining an emphasis on celibacy, Side B is in effect advocating a works righteousness; one must maintain celibacy on one’s own strength because the Holy Spirit cannot or will not bring about moral change within a person.  Moreover, existentially, it sets up a logical contradiction in a person’s life, to whit: “If God made me this way, then why did He command celibacy?”  From that question, one has to simply accept the command without question or else tend toward either denying the goodness of God or moving toward Side A.  In practice, individuals and churches that have embraced the Side B position almost invariably have moved to accept the Side A position within a few years, if they have not abandoned the faith outright.

    The debate between Side A and Side B broke into the PCA in 2018 because of the Revoice conference that was held at Memorial Presbyterian Church in St. Louis.  Revoice was a response by Side B advocates against the Nashville Statement, which was produced by the Coalition for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood in 2017.  Article 7 of the Nashville Statement says:

    WE AFFIRM that self-conception as male or female should be defined by God’s holy purposes in creation and redemption as revealed in Scripture. WE DENY that adopting a homosexual or transgender self-conception is consistent with God’s holy purposes in creation and redemption.

    Revoice’s mission statement, in contrast, purports

    To support and encourage gay, lesbian, bisexual, and other same-sex attracted Christians—as well as those who love them—so that all in the Church might be empowered to live in gospel unity while observing the historic Christian doctrine of marriage and sexuality.

    Memorial Presbyterian Church allowed Revoice to use its facility for the 2018 conference, although it did not come out and formally endorse the conference.  Nevertheless, the Senior Pastor of Memorial Presbyterian Church, Greg Johnson, expressed support for that and subsequent Revoice conferences, and in May 2019 he published an article in Christianity Today stating that he is same sex attracted.  As an initial response to Revoice, the 2019 General Assembly affirmed the Nashville Statement as biblically faithful and commissioned a study committee to articulate the PCA’s own theological and pastoral approach to issues of human sexuality.  Concerns voiced across the denomination about whether the Revoice conference portended an acceptance or endorsement within the PCA of the Side B position prompted Missouri Presbytery to do its own investigation of Johnson and of Memorial Presbyterian Church handling of the matter; it published its findings in December 2019 (updated subsequently in January 2020).

    • Missouri Presbytery found that while Revoice speakers used terminology that was often imprecise and could lead to being misconstrued, as a whole there was not serious theological error.  It also found that while Johnson and Memorial Presbyterian Church could have done more to engage Revoice’s leadership and to qualify the teachings more than they had done, but they were not wrong in hosting Revoice in principle.
    • These findings led three presbyteries to petition the General Assembly to assume original jurisdiction over both Johnson and Missouri Presbytery, charging that Johnson has allowed the teaching of serious error and that Missouri Presbytery did not handle its investigation appropriately.  As a result of these overtures, under the PCA’s Book of Church Order (BCO), the matter has been turned over to the Standing Judicial Council (SJC), essentially the supreme court of the PCA.  The SJC is still investigating the case.

    This background puts into context the overtures that came to this General Assembly.  Most significantly on this issue was Overture 38, which commend the Human Sexuality Report as “biblically faithful.”  This is the report that that the 2019 GA commissioned and has been publicly available for the past year.  This report goes a long way towards refuting the Side B position and affirming the biblically orthodox position, and its endorsement by the General Assembly is a key bulwark in the PCA standing faithfully to Christ on this issue.  The report contains twelve theological affirmations, each paralleled by pastoral guidance.  During GA, the report was officially presented through a joint video by Tim Keller and Kevin DeYoung, who were the lead authors of the report and who are respected by different constituencies within the PCA.  The video was little tedious—they read the preamble and each article, followed by discussion on what the article means—but it was effective in showing that there was not daylight between them on the historic, biblical position on sexuality.  The GA passed the Overture overwhelmingly.

    A second major overture was Overture 23 was a motion to amend the BCO chapter 16 (“Church Orders – The Doctrine of Vocation”) by adding the following new paragraph:

    16-4 Officers in the Presbyterian Church in America must be above reproach in their walk and Christlike in their character. Those who profess an identity (such as, but not limited to, “gay Christian,” “same sex attracted Christian,” “homosexual Christian,” or like terms) that undermines or contradicts their identity as new creations in Christ, either by denying the sinfulness of fallen desires (such as, but not limited to, same sex attraction), or by denying the reality and hope of progressive sanctification, or by failing to pursue Spirit-empowered victory over their sinful temptations, inclinations, and actions are not qualified for ordained office.

    This passed by a vote of 1438 to 417.  This is aimed at office-bearers in the PCA (i.e., Teaching and Ruling Elders and deacons), from whom we expect a higher character.  The key things to note are: (1) one cannot accept an identity as a same-sex attracted man; (2) one cannot deny that same-sex attractions are sin; and (3) one cannot deny the notion that one can be sanctified to make progress in overcoming such sins and in resisting temptations.  This cuts to the heart of the Side B position.

    The third key overture was Overture 37, which was a motion to amend BCO 21-4 and 24-1 by adding a paragraph “clarifying the moral requirements for church office.”  The BCO chapters referenced here regard the ordination and installation of minister (BCO 21) and elders and deacons (BCO 24).  The difference between Overtures 37 and 23 is that the latter is more specifically focused on examinations that must be done of ministerial and officer candidates.  The added language is as follows:

    In the examination of the candidate’s personal character, the presbytery shall give specific attention to potentially notorious concerns, such as but not limited to relational sins, sexual immorality (including homosexuality, child sexual abuse, fornication, and pornography), addictions, abusive behavior, racism, and financial mismanagement. Careful attention must be given to his practical struggle against sinful actions, as well as to persistent sinful desires. The candidate must give clear testimony of reliance upon his union with Christ and the benefits thereof by the Holy Spirit, depending on this work of grace to make progress over sin (Psalm 103:2-5, Romans 8:29) and to bear fruit (Psalm 1:3; Gal. 5:22-23). While imperfection will remain, he must not be known by reputation or self-profession according to his remaining sinfulness, but rather by the work of the Holy Spirit in Christ Jesus (1 Cor. 6:9-11). In order to maintain discretion and protect the honor of the pastoral office, Presbyteries are encouraged to appoint a committee to conduct detailed examinations of these matters and to give prayerful support to candidates.

    Overture 37 was passed by the Assembly by a vote of 1130 to 692.  What Overture 23 phrased negatively, Overture 37 phrased positively and in a manner broader than simply about sexuality.  Nevertheless, this was probably the most debated resolution in General Assembly.  Both resolutions, because they involve changes to the BCO, are now remanded to the presbyteries for approval.  Changes to the BCO are essentially changes to the constitution of the PCA.  Therefore, there needs to be a 2/3 approval of all the presbyteries (about 58 or 59 presbyteries) and then a simple majority vote of approval at the next General Assembly to be formally adopted. 

    This will probably be the most contentious issue in the coming year as these overtures go to the presbyteries for ratification.  I have heard arguments against them, both on the floor of GA and subsequently, and to be honest, I find them unpersuasive.  Some have argued, for example, that the language in Overtures 23 and 37 will deter men from acknowledging struggles with same sex attraction and cause young people to leave the church because they will see the PCA as “homophobic.”  That is certainly possible, but I think the concerns are exaggerated.  If the very fact of articulating biblical standards causes people to leave the church, then there is not much that can be done about that, since keeping silent about sin is too high a price to pay for keeping anyone in the church.  Moreover, the purpose of examining the character of officer candidates is precisely to get them to frankly acknowledge such notorious sins, insofar as they may exist, and to be able to give a credible testimony regarding how Christ and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit has made a difference in their lives.  Indeed, a credible testimony about the work of Christ in overcoming such sins would strengthen the candidate’s ability to minister to others.  I fail to see how this will be a deterrent.

    Some have argued that the examination requirements in Overture 37 are too vague and will impose an unnecessary burden on presbytery credentialing committees to sort out the criteria by which men are to be examined in terms of their character.  Certainly, credential committees will need to address specifics on a case-by-case basis, but the general principles articulated here seem to be exceedingly clear.  Lastly, some have asserted that approving Overtures 23 and 37 will actually ensconce Side B views within the PCA by not condemning them more explicitly.  This seems to me a completely bizarre argument, and I would not have mentioned it had it not been the fact that I have seen people actually put it forth.  I think that the Overtures as amended strike a reasonable balance between putting forth a clear standard while at the same time avoiding perfectionist demands.

    Like the majority of commissioners, I supported these overtures.  In my judgment, with these three overtures, the PCA has laid out a clear, biblically orthodox position on human sexuality, has addressed the pastoral issues involved in ministering to the sexually broken, and has laid down a standard of conduct that it expects of its officers who may have been struggling themselves with such issues.  Overtures 23 and 37 also highlight that this is not simply a matter of biblical ethics but is fundamentally a Gospel issue.  If an officer candidate characterizes his identity by a sinful orientation, denies such desires to be sinful, denies that the work of Christ atones for such sins and requires repenting of them, and/or denies that the Holy Spirit can progressively sanctify one of such sins, then he really is asserting the deficiency of the Gospel.  It best not to ordain such a man to Gospel ministry.

    Other Controversial Issues

    Although the sexuality issues were the most contentious at this past GA, they were not the only issues that were controversial.  There were proposals for forming new study committees on biblical ethics in digital media, white supremacy, and critical race theory, all of which were voted down.  The Sexuality Study Committee report is a good example of what a study committee should do—examine Scripture, our confessional documents, and the issue in question to provide pastoral guidance to churches on how to address certain matter where there is a considerable debate within the denomination on what to do.  They are not intended to be position papers on trendy issues.  The PCA has had a number of study committees in the past several years and there is considerable fatigue toward study committees right now within the denomination.  Moreover, study committees are expensive, running about $15,000 per year for each year they operate.  A separate overture (17) to limit how many study committees could be funded in a given year passed with controversy.

    The only other issue that engendered some debate were a bundle of three overtures (45, 46, and 48) responding to the attacks in Atlanta earlier this year against Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPI).  One of the Overtures went beyond standing in support of the AAPI community and condemning the violence of the shootings in Atlanta to imply that the PCA needed to examine itself for ways in which it might have contributed to attitudes of violence against the AAPI community.  This almost certainly would have been controversial.  The Overtures Committee recommended addressing the first two by reference to a statement the OC made toward the third:

    “The Report of the Ad Interim Committee on Racial and Ethic Reconciliation to the 46th General Assembly speaks clearly to both the reality of the Imago Dei in all people and to the sin of racism, particularly when it affirms: a) the vision of the redeemed in Revelation 7:9-11, where are all nations and ethnicities are fulfilled in Christ; b) the image of God reflected in all people; and (c) the image of Christ reflected in His body.

    At the same time, we recognize the pain, and at times, violence, that the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community has experienced, particularly due to the events of the past year.  We express out grief together with our AAPI brothers and sisters over the pain and suffering that has occurred, whether this has happened due to unbiblical religious claims, racist pride, or any other cause.

    We, finally, assure our AAPI brothers and sisters of our love and support, and of our desire to walk together in ways that reflect the commitments of the Racial Reconciliation Report.”

    This statement avoided affirming charges of indirect complicity on the part of the PCA in the violence against the AAPI community or a commitment to pursue social justice to rectify the issues that the AAPI community faces.  The resolution passed and the Assembly then had a time of prayer led by one of the Asian-American commissioners.

    The “Boring” Issues

    The issues surrounding Revoice and sexuality attraction were the ones garnering the most attention at this GA, but they were not the only things that GA discussed.  It is worth briefly touching on the less prominent matters discussed as well.  Overtures 1, 3 & 14, 5, 6 & 18, and 31 pertained to the nomination and ordination of pastors and officers and most involved proposed changes to the Book of Church Order (BCO) to clarify or correct certain process matters.  These were largely non-controversial.

    • Overture 1 was the only one submitted by Potomac Presbytery and would have required PCA chaplains to be accredited by the inter-denominational Presbyterian and Reformed Commission on Chaplains (PRCC).  This is currently optional and left up to individual presbyteries.  Doing this would strengthen the credentials of chaplains serving in the ministry, but it was voted down by the Assembly because it would undercut the deference to local presbyteries that has historically been part of the PCA.
    • Overtures 3 &14 involved changes to the Mission to the World (MTW) manual to bring it in line with current practice of not allowing women or unordained men serve in leadership positions with direct authority over ordained missionaries.  This received a much discussion, with the head of MTW actually arguing against the overtures, saying it was unnecessary, ambiguous and would complicate the MTW’s work by having GA involve itself directly in MTW’s operations.  These arguments were not convincing, however, given MTW’s existing policy and the fact that it is a standing committee of GA and thus subject to oversight.  GA approved the overture.

    Several overtures (12, 19-22, 27-29, 33-35, 40 and 41) involved amendments to the BCO to improve the process for handling disciplinary cases.  These overtures are probably driven by efforts to ensure fairness to all sides in dealing with cases like spousal or sexual abuse.  The sophistication of the overtures was generally quite high and gave me encouragement regarding the seriousness with which people across the PCA are dealing with these matters.  The overwhelming majority of these overtures were either deferred to the next General Assembly or referred back to presbyteries for further work.  They were not controversial per se, but they were complicated, and the Overtures Committee wanted more time to work through them carefully.  A handful of overtures (9, 10, 15, 17, 24 & 39, and 26) regarded the regulation of meetings and General Assembly operations.  This was a mixed bag.

    • Two overtures (9, 10) raised the threshold for what would qualify as a minority report in Assembly actions.  The PCA is committed to allowing minority views to be expressed in reports, but it is trying to make them more germane to the topics they are addressing and need to represent a more substantial opinion than just that of a handful of individuals.
    • Two overtures (24 and 39) aimed to reduce the fees that Ruling Elders have to pay to go to GA.  The PCA was intended to be a grassroots denomination in which REs would help safeguard the orthodoxy of the church, but RE attendance at GA has been low for some time.  This overture was voted down, largely because the remedy does not address the real issues depressing RE attendance.
    • One overture (15) would have banned electronic communications regarding voting at GA.  This was aimed at addressing a concern some conservatives have that the progressives in the denomination are coordinating their voting at GA using their smart phones.  This was poorly worded, unenforceable and, for that reason, rightly voted down on the floor.
    • One overture (26) would change the BCO to allow for telecommunication meetings.  This was driven by the situation caused in the past year by COVID and passed without controversy.

    What Does All This Stuff Mean for the “Peace and Purity” of the Denomination?

    All agree that the largest GA ever for the PCA was also decidedly conservative.  In my view, the outcome has for the moment averted a split in the PCA.  Had the votes gone the other way during GA, it probably would have been the final straw for many conservatives and would probably have fueled sentiment leading to a split in the denomination.  That said, while the outcome was one that the conservatives welcomed, I do not have the sense that anyone on the conservative side is doing an end zone dance or thinks that the issues addressed have been definitively resolved.  In the coming year, we need to be in prayer for wisdom for the denomination as it wrestles through these and other issues.  This is likely to be a particularly contentious time and it remains to be seen how things will turn out.

  • On the Feast of the Nativity

    Everyone has Christmas traditions.  Growing up, one that I had was to watch the 1984 version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, with George C. Scott (which is still the best film adaption of the story, IMHO).  The story is emotionally compelling, and each time I watched it I would pray that I would be a better person and not like Ebenezer Scrooge.  Eventually I went to college and began my adult life and that tradition fell by the wayside.  Decades later, however, in researching the origins of our celebration of Christmas, I came to realize that much of what we today associate with the holiday does not have roots in antiquity, as commonly thought, but in a re-imagined reinvention of the holiday during Victorian times, catalyzed by Dickens’ 1848 short story.  Romantic sentimentality, Christmas cards, and gift giving—and with those things, the accompanying commercialization—are not later corruptions from the twentieth century but original features from the nineteenth.  A Christmas Carol is a gospel of moralism, of how one man decided to become a good man by changing his will; the real Gospel is one of how God’s only begotten son attained forgiveness and mercy for a stubborn and resistant people.  These are different stories.

    From Charles Dickens’ Short Story, A Christmas Carol

    For me, such a realization necessitated some rethinking of our observance of Christmas.  If the commercialization of the holiday is a feature and not a flaw, Christmas really is all about the gifts.  We may make a passing reference to Jesus being the reason for the season, but the real focus is on “What did I get?”  As long as gift giving is at the center of the holiday, it will be commercialized.  If we are really going to observe the Lord’s Nativity, however, and not just invoke that as an excuse running up the credit cards, then the two need to be separated.  What my wife and I have started to do in the last few years is push the gift giving aspect off from Christmas day to some point closer to New Year’s, using Christmas proper as a time of family worship and rest.  We are not great at family worship, but we are trying to be more consistent, and on Christmas, I do try to do something a little more formal in terms of selecting appropriate readings for my wife and I to go through.  For those who may find it interesting and useful, I have attached our notional family worship outline for this Christmas.

    Christmas—and really Adventide more broadly—should be a season for remembering the First Coming of the Lord while we await His Second Coming.  Accordingly, in this worship outline, I have included the prayer of adoration is from a great little book on Puritan prayers called The Valley of Vision and regards Christ’s Second Coming.  His First Coming resulted in our reconciliation to the Father and the restoration of our communion with Him; Christ’s Second Coming will fulfill the expectations God’s people have had from antiquity of a Final Judgment, a Final Vindication, and a Final Consummation.  That is what we are still looking forward to.  But as we look forward to this, we must also look back.  The New Testament reading from Hebrews captures the purpose of Christ’s First Coming.  The confessional reading, from the Westminster Confession of Faith, is a beautifully succinct summary of what we as Christians are to believe about the Person of Christ Jesus.

    The centerpiece of this time of worship is a sermon from Leo the Great, the bishop of Rome (i.e., the Pope) from AD 440-461.  Christmas today is shrouded with schmaltzy sentimentality, but it is important for us to remember what it is really about.  The miracle is not about a baby in a manger; it is about God, the creator and sustainer of the universe, becoming incarnate as man.  The first clear observance of the Feast of the Nativity—the proper name for Christmas—is in AD 380, when it was celebrated in Constantinople, then the capital of the Roman Empire.  The celebration came after a long and bitter fight within the Christian Church to uphold the truths about the Trinity summarized in the Nicene Creed.  In the Arian controversy of the fourth century preceding that worship service in Constantinople, orthodox Christians stood steadfast in affirming the truth of the Trinity, that is, that there is one God in three Persons, equal in power, substance, and eternity.  In the decades that followed, the Church had to wrestle with a follow-on controversy in how to understand in particular the Second Person of Godhead, Jesus Christ, and the relationship between His divine and human natures; that controversy spanned most of Leo’s ministry in the fifth century.  Observance of Christmas did not become automatic after 380, and the holiday was celebrated only intermittently in the decades that followed.  Leo, however, used the occasions of the Feast of the Nativity to educate his flock on the Person and work of Christ Jesus through a series of sermons.  If one were to study this closely, one would find a lot of deep theology in it, significantly consistent with what we have received through the Protestant Reformed tradition.  And yet, Leo did not write this as a dry academic treatise, but almost as a short spiritual devotional.  I commend this to your reading and reflection.

    christmas-family-worship-2020Download
    leo-the-great-christmas-sermon-1Download
  • Are We Experiencing the Judgment of God?

    Are We Experiencing the Judgment of God?

    I started my previous posting with the observation by Jonah Goldberg back in April about how in the midst of this COVID-19 pandemic we are not hearing much talk of this being a “judgment of God.”  In that posting, I laid out my thoughts in general on how we are to view the sovereignty and activity of God in the midst of moral evil and natural woe, but here I want to come back to the specific question as to whether what we are seeing now reflects God exercising judgment on the United States and even the world at this time.  This question has nagged me for the last six months.  Consider the following:

    • As of mid-October, there has been about 37 million reported cases of COVID-19 worldwide, with the United States having the most reported cases, nearly 7.7 million.  The United States also leads in reported deaths, with about 214,000 deaths out of roughly 1,070,000 worldwide.[i]  That is, about 1 in 5 COVID-19 cases and deaths worldwide are American.  We have exceeded in absolute numbers the number of cases and deaths in India, which has four times more people and lower quality health care.
    • American media, being largely indifferent to what happens outside the United States, have not really focused all that much on the fact that the largest locust plague in literally decades has hit East Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and parts of India and Pakistan this year.  The UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization estimates that a second generation of locusts this year would likely result in acute food shortages in East Africa for up to 25 million people, with another possible 25 million experiencing food insecurity.[ii]
    This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is locusts-in-kenya-fao.jpg
    Locusts Over Kenya, 2020
    • The longest economic expansion in American history (2009-20) ended in March, with a drop in real GDP of 31.7 percent by the end of the second quarter of this year.  Unemployment reached 15 percent in the spring, dropping back to a “mere” 7.9 percent by September, with 12.6 million people unemployed.  This is the second largest level of unemployment in US history since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the economic situation is the worse it has been since 1982.[iii][iv]
    • As of September, this year’s Atlantic hurricane season is rivaling that of 2005, which was the most active on record and the year when Hurricane Katrina hit.  Although storms this year have not been as intense as those in 2005, this year has already seen 25 storms, and this season may surpass the 2005 record, since the 2005 season did not reach that number of storms until October 22 of that year.  These storms are caused in part by at or near record-setting sea surface temperatures.[v]
    • As of mid-October, wildfires in California have burned 4.04 million acres, the largest ever on record, and of the state’s top 20 largest wildfires historically, six were in August and September of this year, including the largest wildfire ever.  This fire season surpasses the “Big Blowup of 1910,” which was so destructive that it changed the way that the U.S. fought wildfires for the better part of a century.  Smoke from the fires in California, Oregon, and Washington State was so bad that it created haze on the East Coast of the United States.[vi][vii]
    • And all of this is independent of the fact that the U.S. now faces the deepest political divisions in at least 50 years.  We started the year with impeachment proceedings against the President, and partisanship has only deepened since then.  Daily protests against racial injustice across the country are stretching now into months, and commentators are talking about a “cold civil war” to engulf the nation after November regardless of the outcome of the elections.

    The list could go on.  In ordinary conversations we talk about 2020 as a wild or crazy year; one could even crassly call it a “dumpster fire.”  What is undeniable is that the scale, scope, and convergence of the problems we now face is well out of the ordinary.  If we truly believe what we profess as Christians that God is sovereign and is actively involved in the affairs of mankind, then the conclusion is inescapable that these things coming to pass is a result of His will.  It is not simply that God permits them to happen.  In His exercise of common grace toward all people, God sustains the world as we know it and constrains the exercise of moral evil and natural woe within certain boundaries so as to enable His Gospel to go forth to the peoples.  What we are seeing now represents a loosening of that sustenance and of those restraints.  This could only come about because either his sovereignty and power are weakening—an unbiblical notion that assumes that God is less than God and that chaos, not God is behind all things—or because it is His will for it to happen.  Yet, to reiterate what Goldberg pointed out, few—including Christians—are really talking about any of this being a judgment from God.  By contrast, when the last wave of the bubonic plague hit London between 1665-66 and the Great Fire gutted central parts of the city in 1666, pastors and theologians warned their congregants that these things were a judgment from God.  When we experience greater things on a national, transnational, and global scale, we get breezy articles in magazines and newspapers about how celebrities are finding “meaning” in the pandemic through vaguely spiritual platitudes.  Even conservative pastors and theologians today are going out of their way to dampen down the notion that these things represent any kind of judgment from God.

    This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is hurricane-laura-aftermath.jpg
    Hurricane Laura Aftermath, August 2020

    Why are we so dismissive of the idea of God’s judgment?

    Part of the reason, no doubt, is the penchant for religious leaders to invoke “God’s judgment” to moralistically whip particular hobby horses.  In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, for example, Jerry Falwell Sr. and Pat Robertson said God allowed the attacks to happen because of abortion, homosexuality, secularism, and judicial activism in the United States, remarks that they quickly backed away from after incurring political backlash.[viii]  The theological problem with their perspective was in seeing how one got to the effect (i.e., the attacks) from the purported cause (i.e., abortion, homosexuality, etc.).  If “God’s judgment” requires a logical leap to see, then something is probably wrong with that reasoning.  Nevertheless, poor reasoning by some pastors and theologians does not negate the possibility of God exercising judgment on people: God Himself promised to bring judgments against His people for turning away from Him (Lev. ch. 26, Deut. 28:15-68) and he executed such judgments against them by sending them into Exile.  The writer of the Book of Hebrews also speaks of God disciplining His children with painful suffering (Heb. 12:5-6, quoting Prov. 3:11-12, cf. Rev. 3:19).  God’s ultimate judgments thus far in history, of course, are the Flood and the Cross.

    Reacting against simplistic correlations like what Falwell and Robertson made after 9/11, many theologians point to the fact that there is much unmerited suffering in the world and the Lord even told us to expect as much.  There is truth in this observation, to be sure. Scripturally, one can point to Job, to the Lord’s statement about the Galileans who were executed by Pilate or on whom the tower of Siloam fell (Luke 13:1-5), as well as to the man born blind from birth (John 9:1-3ff).  Theologians rightly note that the existence of such unmerited suffering means we should be cautious about declaring something to be “God’s judgment.”  That said, it must be pointed out that all these examples are ones of suffering by individuals or small groups.  If whole societies and nations are facing a convergence of pandemic, natural disasters, economic depression, and increased political strife, then does it not stand to reason that something a little more than individual misfortune is going on here?  The question has to be asked that if those things do not constitute some kind of judgment from God, then what would?  I am at a loss to describe what that could be.

    I think the deeper issue in why we tend to be so dismissive of the idea that we could be experiencing God’s judgment is that, regardless of what many people may formally confess religiously, even as Christians, they more often than not act as functional atheists.  Take, for example, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s remark to MSNBC on September 10 regarding the wildfires: “Mother Earth is angry.  She’s telling us — whether she’s telling us with hurricanes on the Gulf Coast, fires in the West, whatever it is … that the climate crisis is real and has an impact.”[ix]  The statement is foolish: she speaks as if creation is personified when it is not at all a sentient entity.  “Mother Nature” no more exists than the Tooth Fairy, and as a professing Roman Catholic Pelosi should know this.  God exists, however, He may well be angry.  But in this case, He has been written out of the equation.

    Pelosi’s reference to climate change implicitly points to another reason we dismiss the notion of God’s judgment and that is that we have a “God of the Gaps” mentality.  That is, we only invoke God if we cannot explain a phenomenon.  Wildfires and rampant hurricanes are thus due to climate change.  The coronavirus came from wet markets in Wuhan (or if you prefer discredited conspiracy theories, from bioweapons labs there).  Racial issues are due to systemic racism.  Political divisions are due to the incompetence and malignity of the political parties, amplified to the nth degree by social media.  Because we can identify these causes, we do not need for God for a hypothesis.  This also logically means that we see our salvation coming from our ability to address these causes.  Scientists, sociologists, and politicians are our saviors.  Climate change can be fixed by rejoining the Paris Treaty.  Racial frictions can be fixed by Critical Race Theory.  Economic downturn can be fixed by socialism.  The political dysfunction can be fixed by electing or re-electing the political party of your preference.  And with the coronavirus, our salvation comes not from God, but Regeneron, Pfizer, or Astra Zeneca.  When we get the vaccine, life will return to the status quo ante.  Or so we tell ourselves.

    This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is california-wildfires-2020-jakarta-post.jpg
    California Wildfires

    And this is what worries me about our current predicament.  One does not have to probe too long or too deeply to realize that these modern “gods” in whom we are putting our faith will fail.  They will fail because they operate on faulty assumptions, are incomplete, self-contradictory, and/or presume a greater wisdom and ability on the part of mankind than heretofore has been shown by our species in all of recorded history.  They will fail, ultimately, because in being fixated on proximate causes they ignore the deeper reality of an absolute, self-contained, Triune Creator God who is behind all things and who, working through secondary causes, controls all things and has a purpose in all that comes to pass.  Too often in our churches and seminaries, we have absolved God of any notion of judgment because a God who has the authority to judge and is capable of judging does not fit the therapeutic God we want.  We want our autonomy from God, and we tell ourselves that the judging God of the Bible is reflective of a primitive stage in human development, one which we moderns have now transcended by our superior knowledge and technical skills.  Never mind, the fact that despite our better technology and ability to handle complexity, people are still morally the same in essence and no better than they ever have been since the Fall.  As the Apostle Paul said, quoting Ps. 14, “there is none that does good, no not one” (Rom. 3:12).

    The idea of God as judge suffers from caricature, not only from unbelievers but also from within the church itself.  A common image is that God declares arbitrary rules and then gets angry when people do not follow them.  This image seems to be beneath the dignity of a loving God, which is why it is so easy for moderns to dismiss it.  But that is not a biblical understanding of God as judge.  Biblically speaking, the first and foremost thing we must realize is that because God is Creator, all of creation is His domain and it is His right to judge mankind.  If you were to come into my house, berate my wife, harm my cat, and destroy my furniture it would not be unfair for me to judge you and throw you out my house, even using the police if needed.  Likewise, it is well within God’s power and right to judge man in His dominion.  God created man to both reflect His image to creation and to lead creation in glorifying God.  Man’s purpose was to be in a relational union and communion with God, but that was broken by the Fall and man’s entrance into sin.  In God’s redemptive work, He calls His people to love Him with all their heart, all their soul, and all their strength (Deut. 6:5, cf. Matt. 22:37).  Because communion with God Himself is man’s greatest good, anything less than loving God with all our heart, soul, and strength—especially in insisting on our autonomy from God—is no less than cosmic treason, meriting death.  This is the basis for God’s judgment.

    Turning back to our current situation, we may well be fundamentally misjudging the seriousness and duration of our predicament by fixating on the immediate causes and ignoring the ultimate cause, the judgment of God.  Current expectations are that once we get past the elections and get a vaccine for the coronavirus, then everything will return to normal.  I sincerely hope this is the case—but at the same time, I cannot help thinking that if this is from God, then it will go on long enough for God to make His point.  That may well be a lot longer than anyone would care for.  To take but one example: the current search for a vaccine assumes that the virus is fairly stable, more like SARS than the regular flu, and that vaccination would provide immunity for an extended period of time.  But if the virus begins to mutate at a rate like the regular flu and/or if immunity is only for a short duration of time, say only for six months, then we could be dealing with the pandemic for quite some time.  And God controls those variables.  In the Book of Acts, the respected Pharisee Gamaliel told his compatriots regarding the testimony of the Apostles that “if this plan or this work is of men, it will come to nothing; but if it is of God, you cannot overthrow it—lest you even be found to fight against God” (Acts 5:38-39).  Though Gamaliel was not a Christian, it behooves us to heed his wisdom even today.  If these things are from God, then we are fools to think they are merely temporary inconveniences that we can overcome by our own efforts.

    What, then, is the purpose of God in all this?  The common thread in the disasters we are now experiencing is that God exists and only He controls the circumstances we face.  As such, it follows that people should rightly fear and revere Him.  Christians and non-Christians alike are not doing that.  The Apostle Paul, writing to the Romans, aptly observed that, “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them.  For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened” (Rom. 1:18-21).  In the woes we have been experiencing, God displays His eternal power and deity.  To whom?  It would be easy to conclude that He only does this to unbelievers, but Paul speaks of those who although they knew God, did not glorify Him nor were thankful to Him.  This description fits unbelievers as well as many believers.  Christians are often quick to point out the sins of unbelievers.  We want to believe that it is those who support abortion or homosexuality or the encroachment of the state whom God will judge.  It is the Sins of Other People.  Insofar as we reflect on our own sins, we often come up with things like we did not do enough to defend life or to uphold traditional marriage; they are sins of omission, more so than of commission.  To be sure, God will not let the sins of others pass unjudged, but we forget that God calls upon His people to be holy as He is holy (1 Peter 3:16 cf. Lev. 11:44), and the LORD is zealous for the honor of His name.  It is worth recalling that when David confessed his sin with Bathsheba, the prophet Nathan, under the inspiration of the LORD, pronounced God’s forgiveness and added this coda: “However, because by this deed [David’s adultery and murder] you have given great occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also who is born to you shall surely die” (2 Sam. 12:14).  And the child did die.  God does not mess around.  Can we as those who bear the name of Christ say that we as a people have not given the enemies of God cause to blaspheme His name?  Can we personally say we have sought to be holy before God?  Many churches say that “Grace Changes Everything” but all too often this simply becomes a limited view of God and a way of excusing a lack of change in our lives.

    According to Scripture, God’s judgment does not begin with the unbelievers, but with the believers.  The Apostle Peter said in his first letter that, “the time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the end of those who do not obey the gospel of God?” (1 Pet. 4:17).  This certainly was the case with Jonah.  When Jonah sought to flee from the LORD because he hated his Assyrian enemies so much that he preferred to flee rather than preach the fear of God to them, God brought a great storm against the ship Jonah was on.  The storm affected everyone on board, both Jonah and the pagan crewmembers, but God’s purpose was aimed squarely at Jonah (Jon. 1:1-16).  The pagans feared Jonah’s God, but Jonah himself was so hard-hearted that he preferred to die rather than give a gospel to the denizens of Nineveh.  He did not count on God using a large sea creature to swallow him up and thereby give him time to rethink his hard-heartedness.

    God is calling all people, Christian and non-Christian alike, to acknowledge their sins, to repent, and to fear Him.  Christ Himself said, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.  But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear Him who, after He has killed, has power to cast into hell; yes, I say to you, fear Him!” (Luke 12:4-5).  Hell is a concept that Christians have been strenuously trying to remove from their theological vocabulary, but no one in Scripture talks more about Hell than Christ Himself.  Hell displays the righteousness, holiness, and true justice of God.  We want to think of God as love, and He is, but He is not reducible to merely that.  God’s love is perfect, but so also is God’s justice and His wrath.  God pronounced His name to Moses saying, “The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and fourth generation” (Exod. 34:6-7).  God is indeed longsuffering, but that does not mean He will not act to uphold His name and advance His kingdom.  Only in repenting and accepting the mediatorial and atoning work of Christ does anyone avert this eternal judgment of God.  And for Christians, we must examine ourselves, repent of our sins against God and return to Him.  He will humble the proud but be with the broken and contrite (Ps. 31:23, Isa. 57:15).

    [i] Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Dashboard, accessed on 26 Sept 2020 at https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

    [ii] David Njagi, “The Biblical Locust Plague of 2020,” the BBC’s Future Planet, accessed on 26 Sept 2020 at https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200806-the-biblical-east-african-locust-plagues-of-2020, and Pranav Baskar, “Locusts are a plague of Biblical Scope in 2020.  Why?  And What Are They Exactly?” NPR, 14 June 2020, accessed on 26 Sept 2020 at https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/06/14/876002404/locusts-are-a-plague-of-biblical-scope-in-2020-why-and-what-are-they-exactly.

    [iii] Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2 October 2020, access online on 10 October 2020 at https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf.

    [iv] Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, accessed on 26 Sept 2020 at https://www.cbpp.org/research/economy/chart-book-tracking-the-post-great-recession-economy

    [v] Bob Henson, “Why the 2020 Atlantic Hurricane Season Has Spun Out of Control,” the Washington Post online, accessed on 26 Sept 2020 at https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/09/23/atlantic-hurricanes-record-2020/.

    [vi] Cal Fire Incidents Overview, accessed online at https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/ on 10 October 2020.

    [vii] Diana Leonard and Andrew Freedman, “Western Wildfires: An ‘Unprecedented, Climate-Change Fueled Event, Experts Say,” the Washington Post online, access on 26 Sept 2020 at https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/09/11/western-wildfires-climate-change/.

    [viii] Laurie Goostein, “AFTER THE ATTACKS: FINDING FAULT; Falwell’s Finger Pointing Inappropriate, Bush Says,” NYT, accessed online on 30 Sept 2020 at https://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/15/us/after-attacks-finding-fault-falwell-s-finger-pointing-inappropriate-bush-says.html

    [ix] Dom Callicchio, “Pelosi on Wildfires in California and the West: ‘Mother Earth is Angry.’” Fox News online, accessed on 30 Septmber 2020 at https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pelosi-on-wildfires-in-california-and-west-mother-earth-is-angry.

  • God, COVID-19, and Natural Woe

    God, COVID-19, and Natural Woe

    In early April 2020, Jonah Goldberg observed in The Dispatch that one thing we were not hearing much of in this time of COVID-19 is any discussion of theodicy, that is, the justification of the existence, power, and goodness of God in the face of evil.  It is an astute observation; in other times, there usually would be someone saying that this was “God’s judgment” for one or another thing; no one is saying that now.  Among the reasons Goldberg speculates behind this absence is the broad fact that religion is just not as important a factor in American life as it used to be.  This is true and well-documented, but I would go one step further: even among the religious, God is often not held in awe.  This is what makes the current situation so ironic.  For as much talk among Christians as there is about God’s sovereignty and goodness, it rarely goes much deeper than that.  More discussion is focused on debates over the legitimacy of curtailing worship services than on what COVID-19 tells us of God’s working through such woes.  We need a bigger vision of God, and with that, reasons to help us understand how He is operating in times like this.

    To be sure, “theodicy” is not an everyday word, so let me be practical: if we cannot understand how God works in circumstances producing suffering—even without knowing why He is doing things—then it will be difficult to trust Him.  In the end, platitudes cannot sustain us.  Suffering is such an experiential crucible that we cannot live without finding some kind of meaning in it.  Suffering will challenge our view of reality, of God, and of man, and, left to our own devices, it will lead us to distorted manmade views of God that ultimately fail to deliver hope.  Worse, it will drive us outright to despair and hopelessness.  The need to justify God in the face of suffering, then, is not and should not be merely an exercise for academics: if God is who the Bible describes Him as being, then we can only have hope if we have a biblically-based realism of God, of man, and of our circumstances.

    In saying this, I fully recognize that when someone is in the midst of suffering and crying out “Why?” then the first ministry response needs to be to actively listen and not necessarily rush in with a theological answer.  Even Job’s associates got this right in showing up, shutting up, sitting with him, and grieving with him for a time (Job 2:11-13).  There is also wisdom in recognizing that the significance of what one is suffering may not be immediately apparent; indeed it may become so only in time, perhaps a long time.  So, we need to mark our words carefully, and provide encouragement from the Gospel.  Still, at some point, suffering brings to the fore the questions of why this is happening and who God is, and ministry requires more thoughtful answers to undergird the comfort and truth of the Gospel.

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    Job Confronting His Friends (Dore’ Engraving)

    As a starting point, we need to recover a distinction which historically theologians have drawn between “moral evil” and “natural evil,” although for the latter the term “natural woe” is probably better.  The distinctions have largely disappeared from our modern lexicon, but they provide much-needed precision.  Put simply, moral evil is evil done directly or indirectly by people with intent.  Abuse, oppression, depravity, and violence are examples of moral evils.  People are specifically responsible for doing such things, and in Christian terms this is typically what we would call sin.  Natural woe, on the other hand, are those misfortunes for which people as moral actors are not culpable.  This would include such things like natural disasters and, of course, diseases like COVID-19.  People’s actions may exacerbate those things, but do not cause them.  Christians agree that both moral evil and natural woe came in with the Fall, but often confuse the relationship between the two, and thereby confuse how to judge whether God or man is responsible for what comes to pass.

    There are three positions Christians typically gravitate toward in understanding natural woe, and these positions differ in how they view God’s working, man’s responsibility, and the hope (or lack thereof) which they hold out.

    Man’s suffering is due largely to a lack of faith or good behavior.  This is a reward-retribution theology, that is, God rewards you if you do good things and punishes you if you do bad things.  This is the theology of Job’s associates in the Book of Job.  They thought that because he was suffering, he must have done something really wrong to merit what he was experiencing.  All suffering, whether moral evil or natural woe, is man’s fault directly.  God is only giving people what they deserve.  This view is straight moralism and is probably the default mode for most of humanity.  The most egregious form of this thinking among Christians is the so-called “Prosperity Gospel,” which holds that whatever you want, you are to “name it and claim it in the name of Jesus.”  This sees God as like Santa Claus—He exists to give us goodies and make us happy.  It sounds good until someone experiences suffering or loss, at which point the presence and persistence of suffering or grief is only explained by charging that the individual does not have enough faith or is somehow not pleasing God.  The “hope” that it holds out is try harder to do better and believe more fervently.  There is no comfort in this, especially if one feels that he or she cannot do any more than what they have done.

    This view is also fundamentally unbiblical.  The Prosperity Gospel clearly is a false Gospel (Gal. 1:6-10), but even more subtle forms of moralism tend in the same direction.  Biblically speaking, while there is truth to the idea that God rewards what is good and punishes what is wrong, Scripture also shows that suffering is not always the result of sins, and rewards are not always the result of good behavior.  This can be seen in Job (again), in the Psalms, and really, throughout the Bible.  Even our Lord Himself says that some who have died in particularly tragic ways were no worse sinners than others (Luke 13:1-5).  In Scripture, there is a reality and a dimension to suffering that transcends simplistic rewards and retribution.  Moreover, contrary to the Prosperity Gospel, the Bible also shows that God does not exist to make us happy.  Rather, He exists and acts radically independent of us and everything else.  When God reveals Himself to Job at the end of that book (chs. 38-41), He does not explain Job’s suffering nor promise comfort, but rather, through a series of rhetorical questions, asserts His sovereign greatness.  Job wisely responds not with counter questions, but with humility and repentance (Job 40:3-5, 42:1-6).  Likewise, we need to have an awe of God.

    Natural woe is the byproduct of God creating a world that respects man’s free will.  This is more sophisticated than the first position, and is popular among evangelical Christians today.  God has created the world to work according to fixed natural laws because that environment best facilitates man’s free choice.  It is only against the backdrop of a predictable universe with consistent consequences that our choices can have significance.  Thus, things like natural disasters follow the inexorable laws of nature, and God is not going to change that for our convenience.  Moreover, some things which people experience are not necessarily evil, even if they are painful or unpleasant, for example, falling down and breaking one’s arm.  Following from this, because God has given man free will, He will limit His own actions so as to avoid trampling man’s free will.  God didn’t cause these evils to happen but He can use them.  This view has a certain ring of plausibility to it, and no less an apologist than C. S. Lewis advocated for it.[1]  Still, this is not workable—indeed, I do not think it was workable even for Lewis.

    In Lewis’s 1955 autobiography, Surprised by Joy, he noted that he lost his faith in God at ten years of age when his mother died of cancer.  After he returned to the Christian faith as an adult, one of the first apologetical books he wrote was The Problem of Pain (1940), and there he propounded an explanation for natural woe akin to that given above.  In 1956, he married Joy Davidman Gresham, and when she died in 1960—ironically, of cancer, just as his mother had—Lewis went into a spiritual tailspin.  In 1961 he published pseudonymously the book, A Grief Observed, which consisted of private notebooks he kept while grieving.  A Grief Observed is essentially his primal scream at God, and shows how close he came to losing his faith.  That he did not lose faith is to God’s praise, but it is clear that the intellectual answer he gave earlier to the problem of natural woe in The Problem of Pain did nothing for him in grappling with the searing loss of his wife to the evil of cancer.

    Why does this view ultimately fail to give comfort?  For all of its intellectual sophistication, it is logically confused, overly abstract, and tries to exonerate both God and man ultimately by assuming a fundamental randomness in the universe.

    The theologians and pastors I have heard talk in this manner often blur the distinction between moral evil and natural woe by lumping everything under the view that, “We live in a fallen world.”  While this is true, it misses a fundamental point about culpability: moral evil is caused by men; natural woe is not.  People intuitively understand the notion that men do evil to one another.  They don’t understand why things like accidents, diseases, and natural disasters exist to harm people.  COVID-19 is not a moral actor.  The causality of the one is not the causality of the other, and conflating the two only begs more questions.

    This confusion is exacerbated by abstraction.  This view assumes that nature operates on autopilot and that God is not actively involved in overseeing, sustaining, or directing it.  In this regard, natural woe is merely a side effect or a random occurrence in the way that things work.  Indeed, this presupposition is so embedded in our consciousness that it may well explain why we have not seen much discussion of theodicy in the current COVID-19 pandemic: in the popular mind, “stuff happens.”  Considering natural woe as an unfortunate side effect, however, runs contrary to the reality of pain and suffering which we feel.  The suffering caused by losing one’s livelihood or home due to a natural disaster, or by physical pain from a terminal disease, or by the emotional pain of losing a loved one is serious pain.  It is not like breaking one’s arm.  Suggesting it is a “side effect” does not do justice to the depth of what we feel.  This may be a large part of the reason why Lewis’s own formulation did not work for him.  While seemingly sophisticated, it is emotionally distant.

    There is a deeper problem in positing the idea that natural woe is just randomness.  One can talk about a single random occurrence, and odd though it may be, it would not change our sense that there is a coherent universal order.  But there are so many natural woes in the world that if they are all attributable to random occurrences, then we are compelled to say that randomness and chaos are at the root of life.  And if randomness is behind all that we see and experience, then there is no assurance of any predictability, no coherence to life, and no purpose to give life meaning.  Can we really accept the logical consequences of such thoughts?  Can we really accept that our suffering or that of loved ones or the loss of others ultimately is meaningless?  In the anguish of our souls, I doubt we can.

    Moreover, if randomness is behind the natural woes we see, then that would be outside the purview, knowledge, and possibly even the control of God.  This is simply definitional: if it was within the purview, knowledge, and control of God, then it would not truly be random and the real question we would need to grapple with is why did God not prevent such natural woes in the first place or deal with them once they emerged?  The free will angle obscures this more fundamental question about the nature of God.  No one is clamoring to have a tornado wipe out their home or to get COVID-19; there is not a free will issue that God needs to respect.  People want God to intervene to prevent these woes, so why doesn’t He?  Because this view is man-centered, it cannot answer that question.  Moreover, the emphasis on God’s self-restraint leads to a view of God that makes Him out to be less than the absolute God of the Bible.

    And this gets us into the final reason why this view is problematic and that is that it presumes a God who is too small and too limited.  At best, one has the picture of a God who is inconsistent in dealing with natural woes.  In some cases, he heals people or spares them from greater suffering, and in other cases He doesn’t.  But what is the rationale for the difference?  If one takes this view to its logical conclusion then the notion of God restraining Himself to leave room for man’s free will eventually ends up with a Deistic God, a God who created things, but then left them to run of their own accord.  Such a result is logically necessary because at some point God would have to violate someone’s free will, and the only way He could avoid doing that is to do nothing at all.  At best, maybe such a God sympathizes deeply with our pain—but is such a passive God worthy of our worship?  Probably not.  This brings me to the last of the three positions to consider on natural woes.

    Natural woe is part of the sovereign plan of God.  The picture of a restrained, self-constrained, or passive God described above is not the picture of God we get from the Bible.  The Bible shows that God is more than willing to violate man’s free will when it suits Him.  Joseph’s brothers, for example, did not want Joseph to rule over them; Moses did not want to go to Egypt and confront Pharaoh; Paul on the road to Damascus sought the death of Christians.  In every case, God overruled their free wills for an overarching purpose He had in mind in which He would use them.  The Bible clearly shows that God is unceasingly active all the time in the lives of His creatures, and this is part of the reason why we pray to Him in the first place.  We expect that He can and will do things about the pain we are suffering or the grief we are feeling and that He has a purpose in it.  God is fully engaged with His creation, and that is a far more natural thing to expect than the Deistic notion that He created everything and then walked away from it for no particular reason.

    Many Christians recoil from this view, however, on the basis of two objections.  First, they feel that it reduces people to puppets with no free will, with God compelling every action we take, and, second, they feel it makes God the author of all our pain and of all evil.  Rightly understood, however, neither of these are true, and the keys to understanding this rest in appreciating both God’s use of secondary means and His overarching purposes.

    The doctrine of secondary means is often mentioned, rarely explained, and usually underappreciated.  But it is central in explaining the means through which God achieves His ends.  Think, for example, about how we interact with other people: if we want someone to do something, we can coerce or compel them, and sometimes we do that.  But that is not usually how we operate, and there are a range of other means we will use.  Positively, we could provide arguments to persuade them, invoke things to motivate them, and/or appeal to their emotions.  Negatively, we could warn them, rebuke them, or refrain from giving them support or encouragement for things we do not want them to do.  Depending on our relationship to the person—for example, if one were a parent, a teacher, or an employer—we could even widen or narrow the range of options they have for a given decision.  The better we know a person, the more subtle our engagement with them can be, and the more likely we will succeed in getting them to do what we want.  We will know what buttons to push, what to refrain from, and how far we can go.  None of that takes away from the fact that the decisions they make are still their own.  If we can do this in human interactions, then how much more can God do that, who knows us far more intimately than we know even ourselves?  He works with an infinite range of means, toward more overarching goals, over longer periods of time, with all people simultaneously.  Such complexity staggers our imagination, but begins to give us a glimpse into the plan of God.  At the same time, even from this faint glimpse we can see that it is far more realistic and interactive in engaging people than the caricatured view of God’s sovereignty that relies on coercion alone.  Indeed, it compels us to stand in humble awe of such a God.

    This understanding of secondary means also helps counter the charge that this all-encompassing view of God’s sovereignty makes God necessarily culpable for evil.  Here we need to provide some clarifications as to what precisely we are talking about.  Contemporary society has greatly debased the notion of culpability, such that anyone or anything contributing to an evil coming to pass is therefore responsible for that evil.  For example, some try to argue that if a gun seller sold a weapon to a teenager who used it in a school shooting, the gun seller should be held liable for the deaths resulting from that shooting.  But under the same logic, one could just as reasonably hold the victims responsible for their own deaths if they taunted, rebuffed, or ignored the shooter before the incident, thereby in his mind giving him justification for retaliating.  Intuitively, however, we know this is absurd and not right.  The person who actually committed an act is the one responsible for it, with his culpability mitigated or aggravated in degree by his motives and intent.  To say otherwise is to make everyone responsible in some way for everything, which in practical terms means no one is responsible for anything; that leaves the notion of culpability meaningless.

    In the case of moral evil, God’s permitting things to happen or not restraining them from happening does not mean that He causes them to happen.  God may allow us to sin, but will never compel us to sin.  If we sin, we do so because of the sinful desires within us.  With natural woes like COVID-19, however, God can be said to be culpable, since such woes are not caused by human actions, even as they may be exacerbated by them.  This fact brings matters to a head: if God is responsible, active, and can do something about that which is causing our pain and suffering, then why doesn’t He?  This is where we have to acknowledge that God is a free actor, indeed, the only truly free actor who is not dependent on anyone or anything.  As such, He is driven only by His purposes.

    And what are those purposes?  We variously think of God’s purposes as enforcing some cosmic rules, or fostering human flourishing in some vague sense, or even just to make us happy.  These are creation-centric purposes, as if God exists for our benefit.  Biblically understood, however, God’s purposes for man have God as their touchstone.  God created man to bear His image to creation and would be glorified in man leading creation to worship God.  This was to be a noble position, a position of honor, and man was to have communion with God.  Man, however, demanded his autonomy from God through the sin in Eden.  God’s glory will still be satisfied, but now it will be satisfied by the execution of His justice on the rebellion of some and the display of His mercy on others.  God’s goal, ultimately, is the coming of His Kingdom, in which man’s opposition is fully defeated, God’s rule is fully manifested, and God’s people are brought into full communion with Him, having been fully sanctified and purified.  All things, by the plan of God, are directed toward these eschatological ends.  As the Apostle Paul says in Romans, “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose” (Rom. 8:28).  Christ’s death on the cross and resurrection from the dead is part of these “things.”  Through that, God’s people are reconciled to Himself. 

    But there is more in this as well.  God is sanctifying His people and fitting them for communion with Him in glory.  As part of this, the Westminster Confession of Faith’s chapter on providence (5.5) lists that among the reasons His people suffer is to enable them to see the hidden strength of the deceitfulness and corruption in their hearts, to chastise and humble them, to raise them to a more close and constant dependence on Himself, and to make them more watchful against future sin.

    More could be said, but this provides a context for natural woes.  Rather than being random side effects of the Fall, God uses these means to these ends.  In particular, He uses things like COVID-19 to draw the attention of men back to Himself in repentance, to break their stubborn will, to display His glory in overcoming such challenges, and to sanctify His people with whom He will commune forever.  Suffering under such hard providences will be difficult; it certainly will not be meaningless.

    That our suffering has meaning but only in God’s economy is the real crux of the issue.  I say this fully mindful of people I know who have suffered and even died from debilitating diseases and unexpected accidents over the years.  I think of one woman in college who while biking, lost control of her bicycle and when she hit the ground her heart stopped and she died.  I had another friend who while pregnant knew months before her due date that the baby she was carrying had a rare condition which ensured that the baby would not live more than a few hours after birth.  I think of another dear friend my own age, a dedicated serviceman, good athlete, and serious historian, who died of early onset Alzheimer’s.  There are still others who have suffered from cancer or other debilitating diseases.  There is nothing to suggest that they somehow merited their suffering.  Nor could I point them or others in the direction of a God who was so self-limited as to be effectively a bystander.  There is no hope or meaning in such a concept of God.

    The idea of a truly sovereign God who has incorporated pain and suffering into His plan and has a purpose for such things is a hard thing to accept.  To accept it requires humility, since the God that stands behind all reality is One who does not fit into our neat little boxes.  Nevertheless, such a God is One who truly offers hope for the afflicted.  Meaning comes from purpose and purpose must be personal.  An impersonal, random universe cannot supply meaning, since there is no ultimate end towards which things are directed.  If you are not a Christian and you are reading this, then I would encourage you to seriously examine what the basis is for any meaning you are clinging to and whether that hope is sure and unchanging.  Is hope that we invent for ourselves really satisfying?  My sense is no, because for hope to be real it must transcend us.  In the Christian vision of reality, God has purposes for our suffering that transcend our personal safety, comfort, or pleasure.  And if there is meaning in our suffering, then there is also meaning in what we have to live for.

    [1] C. S. Lewis, “Divine Omnipotence” in The Problem of Pain (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), 23-32.  This is as close as Lewis gets to the topic of natural woe.  Even in Lewis’s Mere Christianity, his focus is on explaining moral evil, not natural woe.