My Challenge to Brian Chilton on the problem of Evil

This is my reply to an article by Brian Chilton entitled

Did God Create Evil?

God and Evil

By: Brian G. Chilton | July 3, 2018 

After Bible study one evening, a good friend of mine and I discussed the problem of evil. He asked an excellent question, “Did God create evil?” I said, “No, I don’t think he did.” However, my friend objected because he said, “God created everything, so he must have created evil.” This conversation was quite good, and we found common ground by the end of our discussion. This article relates to some of the issues that we discussed.

I would have asked you whether you'd be willing to stop calling all instances of rape "evil" if you found out one instance was caused by God.  That's a more direct challenge that doesn't do much to enhance friendship.

One of the first issues we needed to clarify was the nature of evil. What do we mean when we say something is evil? My friend was using the term to define any type of disaster or bad thing. I was using to term to define immoral behaviors, such as torturing babies.

Then apparently you'd agree that God was evil, since God tortured David's infant son for 7 days with a terrible sickness before finally killing it...for something the baby obviously didn't do, and there is no contextual expression or implication that this torture/death was for atonement:

 10 'Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised Me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.'
 11 "Thus says the LORD, 'Behold, I will raise up evil against you from your own household; I will even take your wives before your eyes and give them to your companion, and he will lie with your wives in broad daylight.
 12 'Indeed you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, and under the sun.'"
 13 Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD." And Nathan said to David, "The LORD also has taken away your sin; you shall not die.
 14 "However, because by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born to you shall surely die."
 15 So Nathan went to his house. Then the LORD struck the child that Uriah's widow bore to David, so that he was very sick.
 16 David therefore inquired of God for the child; and David fasted and went and lay all night on the ground.
 17 The elders of his household stood beside him in order to raise him up from the ground, but he was unwilling and would not eat food with them.
 18 Then it happened on the seventh day that the child died.  (2 Sam. 12:10-18 NAU)

The arbitrary nature of God is clear from the fact that God did this to the baby after assuring David that his sins at issue (adultery and murder) were "taken away" meaning God would not require capital punishment.

To say nothing of how the passage reeks with political corruption, wherein the prophet of God can so easily fend off the divinely mandated death-penalty for his favorite politician.

Chilton continues:

How do we answer this question? Did God create evil? In this article, I would like to look at four common tricky areas that need to be dissected in order to answer the question.
 Ontology and Epistemology of God and Evil. The terms ontology and epistemology are philosophical terms but are important to this area of conversation. One cannot neglect philosophy because bad philosophy often leads to bad theology. First, let me define the terms and how they play a role in this discussion.
 Ontology is the study of the nature of being. It deals with how we know something exists. For instance, does a pizza exist? How do we know a pizza exists? These are ontological questions that deal with the nature of pizza’s existence. And oh, how tragic life would be without the existence of pizza!

LOL.

Epistemology deals with the theory of knowledge.[1] This area deals with how we know something to be true. What is the nature of such and such? To use our illustration of pizza, ontology would ask, “Does pizza exist?,” whereas epistemology would ask, “Is pizza good?; Can we know that pizza is tasty?” So, a created thing would deal with the area of ontology, whereas the nature of the thing would deal more in the area of epistemology more or less.
 When we talk about God creating all things, we must understand that God created everything that exists including the potentials to do certain things.

And if that is a reliable portrayal of god, it is most reasonable to deduce that God has been creating creatures throughout all of eternity, resulting in a logical contradiction;  the created order existing just as long as God has.

However, if we grant the existence of human freedom, then God is not responsible for the actions that people take.

That's a pretty big IF. Arminians and Calvinists have been at each other's theological throats since the 16th century, and before that it was Augustine and Pelagius.  But I would think God forcing people to sin in Ezekiel 38-39 would not be convincingly amenable to Arminian interpretation.  The commentators are understandably reluctant to explain how God's choice of metaphor "put a hook in your jaws (38:4) was a good illustration of his respect for human freewill.

Yes, God provides the means and conditions that can lead to a person’s actions and God knows the free actions that a person will take, but the person is responsible for his or her own actions.[2]

You won't be reconciling your Molinism with the sadistic puppetry God exercises in Ezekiel 38-39 anytime soon.

Therefore, God created all things and created the conditions where a person could do good or evil. But, God did not create evil, because evil is not a thing to be created. It is not like a virus or slab of concrete. Evil is an attribute. It is a personal rejection of the good, the good which is an attribute of God.

Once again, that the bible teaches that God forces people to sin is clear from Ezekiel 38-39.

The Moral Character of God. God is thoroughly identified in the Scriptures as being the ultimate good.

But this wouldn't constitute any intellectual obligation upon the atheist, even if such appeal to authority sounds convincing to other Christians.

John tells us that God is love (1 Jn. 4:8).

Actually, you cannot demonstrate the identity of John's human author with enough clarity as to render skeptics of the issue unreasonable.  Thus the gospel is John is sufficiently anonymous that skeptics can be reasonable to reject it just like they don't pay attention to another anonymous 1st century works like Hebrews.  Furthermore, the last verse of John indicates the author was a "we" and therefore they are conveying what the "disciple" taught, which means John wasn't written by john, but at best written by his followers, which means the gospel constitutes hearsay, another justification for atheists to resist any attempt to quote it as an "authority" on God.

Scripture also indicates that God is absolutely holy, which means that he is set apart and absolutely pure (1 Sam. 2:2; 6:20; Ps. 99:9; 1 Cor. 3:17; Rev. 4:8).

If you take that stuff seriously, then because God sometimes causes men to rape women, you can no longer make the broad-brushing claim that all rape is evil.  You'd have to carefully qualify that rape is only evil if God is not causing it:

15 Anyone who is found will be thrust through, And anyone who is captured will fall by the sword.
 16 Their little ones also will be dashed to pieces Before their eyes; Their houses will be plundered And their wives ravished.
 17 Behold, I am going to stir up the Medes against them, Who will not value silver or take pleasure in gold. (Isa. 13:15-17 NAU)

 I'm not really worried about other internet apologists who dismiss this argument by merely carping that Isaiah here is merely engaging in "trash talk".  My view that this was a serious threat from a serious god has the backing of Christians who are legitimately credentialed bible scholars:

17–18 As the macabre scene resulting from the cosmic quake passes, the finger points to historical movement. Yahweh calls attention to stirrings among the feared Medes for which he claims responsibility.

Watts, J. D. W. (2002). Vol. 24: Word Biblical Commentary :

Isaiah 1-33. Word Biblical Commentary (Page 198). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

Since atheists need only show their interpretation of a bible verse to be "reasonable" to start disproving the insulting rhetoric in Psalm 14:1 and Romans 1:20, it is significant that evangelical Christian scholars, that is, the type highly unlikely to credit God with causing rape, would nevertheless admit this was the case.  Thus my accusation that Isaiah 13 teaches that God causes rape, is "reasonable" and I need prove nothing more to avoid the "foolish" label.

Chilton continues:

Since God is the absolute good and absolutely pure, it is false to claim that God does evil.

Ok, so you are preaching to Christians only, you are NOT attempting to persuade skeptics.  Thanks for clarifying.

James says that “No one undergoing a trial should say, ‘I am being tempted by God,’ since God is not tempted by evil, and he himself does not tempt anyone. But each person is tempted when he is drawn away and enticed by his own evil desire. Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and when sin is fully grown, it gives birth to death” (Jms. 1:13-15). James answers the question for us in great detail about God’s relationship to evil. God cannot do evil because God is the absolute good.[3]

James' idealistic theology is refuted from Ezekiel 38-39, where God is obviously forcing pagan people (i.e., "hook in your jaws" [38:4]) to attack Israel.  This moral objection to god cannot be removed by simply carping that this battle is yet future.  God's threat to force people to sin, remains evil at present, just like Hitler's threat in 1942 to exterminate Jews was evil, even if at the time of threat, he hadn't quite carried it out yet.

So, how do we know what is evil and what is good?

Easy, you just go along with whatever the bible says.  If God says rape is evil, it's evil.  If the bible says God causes rape, then those particular instances of divinely caused rape are NOT evil.

If you are driving down a highway, you will see a sign that posts the speed limit. In town, the speed limit will most likely be 35 miles per hour. How do you know that you’re breaking the speed limit driving 55 miles per hour in that zone unless there is a speed limit posted stating that one should only go 35 miles per hour?

Good point:  You cannot prove that an adult man having sex with his 8 year old wife is "sin" because there's nothing in the bible or the "Law" either condemning or prohibiting such age-discrepant marriages. When you drive in a car and there's no signpost telling you what the speed limit is...

The law must exist before you can know if you’re breaking the law.

So because God felt no need to condemn or prohibit sex within adult-child marriages, you cannot know whether such activity constitutes breaking God's law.

Moral standards must exist before one can know that he or she is doing evil. Objective moral standards come from God.

There is no such thing as an objective moral standard.  If you reply "thou shalt not torture babies to death solely for entertainment", I would respond:  "what objective standard or moral yardstick are you using to show that this act is immoral?"  You cannot ask me what I think, my conscience is no more the basis for objective morality than is the conscience of a serial killer.

Again, evil is not something to be created. Evil stems from a rejection of God’s moral goodness.

Old-earth creationists reluctantly admit that carnivores existed on earth before sin did, which would thus force you to to say that when a lion tears out a zebra's guts, this is not evil.  Then you'll have to explain why most people are horrified to watch such carnage for the first time...is this the holy spirit manifesting his morality in their hearts? Or do those people merely hold an incorrect view of morality?   If the latter, then you agree that we can manifest compassion without this implying God's existence.

Ra’ah, Disaster, and Evil. Let’s face it. Biblical interpretation is tough especially when it comes to the original languages.

Justifying the atheist, if they so choose, to reject bible discussions because it is absurd to think the creator of the universe wants modern people to have a more difficult time discerning his will than he wanted for Moses, Abraham, the apostles, etc.

Some individuals have spent their entire lives seeking to master the biblical languages but are still left with questions.

Tragic, given that the NT tells Christians so much about what to do, nobody would have time to bother with extra-curricular non-essentials that the bible never expresses or implies any demand for, like learning dead languages.

If that is the case, should those of us with less training in the biblical languages not have much more humility when it comes to such terms? I think so.
 Often, Hebrew words can take several different meanings depending on context. I remember when taking Greek that Dr. Chad Thornhill would often emphasize context, context, context when interpreting a confusing term. In Hebrew, one such example is the confusion that occurs with the term ra’ah. Ra’ah describes a disaster but it can also be used to describe something evil. Ingrid Faro explains with the following:
 “For example, the Hebrew root “evil” (ra’; ra’ah; r’ ’) occurs 46 times in Genesis and is rightly translated into English using at least 20 different words, and nuanced in the Septuagint by using eight Greek forms (11 lexemes). Yet English-speaking people often incorrectly assume an underlying meaning of “sinister, moral wrong” and interject that into each use of the Hebrew word.”[4]
 In Amos 5:3, it is noted that “If this is a judgment announcement against the rich, then the Hebrew phrase עֵת רָעָה (’et ra’ah) must be translated, “[a] disastrous time.” See G. V. Smith, Amos, 170.”[5] Thus, the term ra’ah can indicate a disaster that has befallen a group of people and does not necessarily mean “evil” as some older translations have indicated.
 But, doesn’t disaster indicate something evil? If God brings disaster, does that not indicate that God does something evil? No, not at all! God is holy.

And there you go...your presuppositions are driving your exegesis, which we otherwise call "eisogesis".  You are not going to call god unholy regardless of what you might discover about the bible in the future.

If a people are unrepentant and are unwilling to stop doing evil, then God is completely justified in bringing judgment.

You think God was justified to torture David's infant son for 7 days.  I'd say you believe in God's justified judgment for reasons other than moral argument.  You believe it simply because "the bible tells me so".

The disaster is not evil if it is due justice.

Then the rapes God threatened against the women of Babylon in Isaiah 13 wouldn't be evil if they were due justice.

Like a parent disciplining a child or a judge executing judgment against a convicted criminal, disasters are sometimes the judgment of God poured out upon an unrepentant people.

What we'd like to know is why you don't think it evil for God to torture babies.  is it merely because the bible says God is holy and good?  How could you possibly expect this to sound convincing to the skeptics you are trying to prepare your Christian audience to answer?

I think it was good that the Allies stormed into Germany to overtake the evil Adolf Hitler.

Morality is relative and therefore doesn't permit dogmatism on whether some act is good or evil.  You simply say what you feel, and flock to the particular group that agrees with you.

Likewise, it is actually good for God to bring judgment as it coincides with his holy nature.

Then you are forced to calls God's threat of rape in Isaiah 13 "good", and therefore admit that had those rapes actually took place, those rapes would have been "good" too.

Evil Allowed to Permit the Ultimate Good. So, the final question that must be tackled is this: If God is good, then why would he allow evil to exist in the first place? Why would he create a condition where evil could exist? The answer to this is quite simple. God’s allowance of evil is to allow a greater good.

Then because rape often causes the victim to be more aware of her surroundings, or causes her to volunteer at a rape crises clinic, this justifies ignoring the short term pain and calling the rape good solely beacuse of the long-term good. 

Sure, your bible expressly forbids you from saying "let us do evil that good may come", but blindly quoting the bible cannot get rid of a well-developed argument.  If you are willing to call an act "good" because it is likely to produce long-term good even if it also produces short-term pain, then because rape can have long-term good, you cannot cite to the short-term pain as if that's all there is to say in the moral analysis.

With all of your lecturing about how God looks to the long-term good when causing people to suffer, you are not at liberty to pretend that rape's moral classification requires nothing more than citation to its causing immediate temporal harm or pain.  You aren't done deciding whether rape is good or bad until you have also factored in all that long-term and divinely intended "good" you keep talking about.

So...is rape evil because of it's short term infliction of pain?  Or is it good because it produces the long term result of motivating the victim to be more protective of herself in the future?

What is that greater good? Love.

Then you are forced to defend God's torturing of David's baby for 7 days, as a "loving" act.  Good luck.

For love to truly exist, it must be free.

No, when you have your dangerous brother involuntarily civilly committed  as he resists arrests, this too is "loving".

And unless you think we might possibly sin after we get to heaven, the fact that we'll authentically love god in heaven without ability to sin, proves that God could have infused Adam and Eve with the same holy will,  and we wouldn't be in the mess your god pretends to bitch about today. 

And God's alleged taking aborted babies to heaven proves that human beings don't "need" to live on this sinful earth for any amount of time in order to make possible our future sinless perfection.  How do you think God causes aborted babies, who go to heaven, to refrain from sin the rest of eternity?

It must be freely given, freely received, and reciprocal between both parties.

No, the parent can authentically love the teen son as they have him arrested for theft, and while he manifests hatred toward them as he goes off to jail, no reciprocity needed.

God could have created us as robots or automatons. But, that would not provide true love.

But it would have achieved a sinless world, and some would argue that refraining from sin is better than preserving the Arminian view of love.

The ultimate love was given in Jesus, who experienced the horrors of torture and experienced the just punishment that we deserve.

No, he was a common criminal whose own family tried to stop his public outbursts, and all this stuff about his dying for sin is gratuitous theological afterthought.  And Calvinists could sing circles around a Molinist like you, on the absurdities you create by pretending that atonement didn't actually occur until the individual sinner's moment of faith.

He did so that we would have life eternally. The penalty of our eternal punishment was paid on the cross at Calvary. God lovingly confers his grace to all who would willingly receive.

dismissed, you are clearly reserving this part solely for church.  I don't go to church.

His grace is freely offered and is freely received. This kind of love would not be possible if God had not allowed the conditions that would allow evil to exist.

But it could be argued that preventing people from sinning is more holy than infusing people with an Arminian-type of "freewill".

A greater good has come.

Then why don't you praise god every time a child is raped to death?  If God didn't interfere to save the child, then just standing around and allowing that rape to proceed must be "godly".

One day, those who have trusted Christ for their salvation will no longer need to worry about evil because evil will be vanquished.

Then according to your prior statements, that would also vanquish true love, since love cannot exist without the genuine possibility of doing evil.  But if we can authentically love God in heaven without ability to sin, God could have given the same ability to Adam and Eve.  So God's choice to do things in a way that fills the earth with evil, proves him every bit a moral failure as Hitler who chose to fix the Jew-problem in the unnecessarily brutish way that he did.

The redeemed of Christ will be transformed. We will experience the bliss and glory of the heaven that awaits us. To God be the glory!
 So, did God create evil? It depends on what you mean. God created the conditions for evil to exist but did so to allow a greater good which is the free love that is experienced between the Lover (God), the beloved (us), and the spirit of love between the two. Evil is not a thing to be created. Rather, it is a condition that exists when a person or group of people reject God’s goodness and his holy moral nature.

Tell that to the Christian woman 5 minutes after she has been raped.  Apparently, your theological arguments stop making sense when people experience actual evil in real-time.