Witherington vs. Piper on Natural Evil

Ben Witherington offers his observations about the lawsuit filed against God by Nebraska State Senator Ernie Chambers. It seems Mr. Chambers wants to blame the Almighty "for what the insurance companies usually call 'acts of God'-- namely natural disasters, such as the tornadoes that recently struck Kansas and Nebraska." It's just another case of a wacko with too much time on his hands and not enough publicity to satisfy his ego. But Witherington points out that some notable theologians haven't been much help when it comes to public perceptions about God and his activity in the world.

John Piper on his website of course recently had a post about the disastrous collapse of the bridge over the Mississippi in Minneapolis. His view was that however random it might seem to us, that actually this was the will of God, and in essence we should just suck it up. God is sovereign and he disposes things as he will, and according to his sovereign pre-ordained plan. If you just happened to be on the raw end of the deal, so much the worse for you. Since all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, actually God has a right to judge the whole world now, if he so chooses. The fact that he spared some shows God's mercy, according to Piper, but he was under no obligation to spare anyone. 'There but for the grace of God go I", so to speak. This doesn't sound much like an attempt to mourn with those who are mourning. It is interesting that Senator Chambers and Rev. Piper would seem to agree on the source of this sort of mayhem.

Piper's view is typical high Calvinist fare. Witherington, although not calling Piper out on this particular point, does pose those age-old questions with which Wesleyan/Arminians have long stumped Calvinists.

My question for them would [be]--- is God the author of sin as well? Is God responsible for all that goes wrong in the world? Do these folks really have no clear sense of secondary causes which, while we can say God allows them to happen, we certainly would not want to say God causes or ordains them to happen? Is there no such thing in their vocabulary as God's permissive will? And even if there is-- what good is it for them to talk about God's permissive will, if in fact they think that God pre-ordains both what he permits as well as what he does directly?

For all their attempts at nuance, Calvinists who hold to such a hard determinist view of the sovereignty of God have never been able to give satisfactory answers to such questions. The logical implication that God, having pre-ordained all things to happen exactly as they happen, must then be the author of sin and evil, as well as righteousness and good is skirted in not so artful fashion by those who, at the same time, claim Arminianism is an affront to the sovereignty of God.

The prominence of the Calvinist view in American theological circles since before the nation's founding is, no doubt, one of the reasons insurance companies and other secular entities often refer to natural disasters and other catastrophic events as "acts of God." Most of us probably don't give the term a second thought until someone like Sen. Chambers exploits it as part of a political publicity stunt. But such carelessness with our terminology has serious consequences, both theologically and practically.

J. Kenneth Grider (A Wesleyan Holiness Theology, pp. 220-21) offers a more balanced view of the problem of naturally occurring evil, drawn from the Wesleyan/Arminian tradition.

A proper view of righteous and innocent suffering should also be in keeping with the Arminian tradition in theology--close to Arminius himself, and not to the overly tolerant and liberal wing of Arminianism. This Arminian orientation means that we do not believe (as Calvin did) that God is the absolute sovereign One who directly orders whatever happens. We understand that He works often through secondary causes, mediately, instead of by direct fiat. He works through what we properly call natural laws: instances of natural evil occur because of the laws of nature--as in tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes, for examples.

God, as all-powerful, can work miracles whereby natural laws are set aside; and in graciousness, He sometimes does work miracles on behalf of his people. Yet the righteous and innocent often get sucked into natural laws and their devastation, even as the wicked do. In those cases, God does not directly order the frustration in the lives of righteous and innocent persons. He permits them only in a remotely removed sense: by establishing natural laws, which usually work for our good, and which are better for us than a topsy-turvy world without them would be--in which, say, there would not be any way of predicting the direction in which a leaning tree would fall when cut.

Scripture suggests that God usually works mediately, through secondary causes, instead of by direct fiat. He created Eve in that way, using Adam's side, not creating her outright. And once He had the first pair, He created other human beings through the human reproductive process.

Leading his people through judges and speaking to them through called prophets are instances of God working with people through intermediaries.

Besides this, and even as part of all this, God orders His world through human beings who are free either to do His will or to oppose His will. This is basic to an Arminian type of theology. We humans really can and do often thwart God's will. Though God is absolutely sovereign, this does not mean that He directly orders whatever happens on the earth. He persuades rather than drives, and He gets only more or less the ideal of what He had in mind. This is so in the moral sphere, and it is so also in the natural sphere. An Arminian does not talk about lightning or tornadoes or floods or other instances of natural evil as "acts of God"--as Calvinism does.

With this kind of understanding, an Arminian does not say to bereaved parents that fro some strange and inscrutable reason God took their small girl who was run over when she fell through a hole in the floor of a pickup truck. The Arminian understands that God is not the one who does what we humans are too good to do, but instead He is on the sufferer's side as a refuge and source of strength in the midst of the sorrysome cirucmstance--which God did not want to happen any more than we did.