The following is a selection from my book, Why Christianity is True (or at least it will be when I manage to get the time to get this new section added to the book).
The Bible, Morality, and the Problem of Evil
One objection that is often leveled against Christianity is that the Bible, and Christian theology, contain immoral elements in them. For example, the Law of Moses commanded that people found within Israel worshiping false gods should be stoned to death:
If there be found among you, within any of thy gates which the Lord thy God giveth thee, man or woman, that hath wrought wickedness in the sight of the Lord thy God, in transgressing his covenant, and hath gone and served other gods, and worshipped them, either the sun, or moon, or any of the host of heaven, which I have not commanded; and it be told thee, and thou hast heard of it, and enquired diligently, and, behold, it be true, and the thing certain, that such abomination is wrought in Israel: then shalt thou bring forth that man or that woman, which have committed that wicked thing, unto thy gates, even that man or that woman, and shalt stone them with stones, till they die. At the mouth of two witnesses, or three witnesses, shall he that is worthy of death be put to death; but at the mouth of one witness he shall not be put to death. The hands of the witnesses shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterward the hands of all the people. So thou shalt put the evil away from among you. (Deuteronomy 17:2-7)
According to the Bible, God commanded the Israelites to invade the land of Canaan and kill the Canaanites:
When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; and when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them. (Deuteronomy 7:1-2)
But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: but thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee. (Deuteronomy 20:16-17)
The Bible talks about people
being punished in hell (see Revelation 20:10-15). The Bible says that wives are to submit to
their husbands (see Ephesians 5:22-33; 1 Timothy 2:8-15). How are things like this consistent with a good
system of ethics?
Christianity is ultimately all about love. Love is at the heart of everything. It is at the very heart of reality, where the Three Persons of the Trinity experience perfect blessedness and delight as they love each other and experience the divine beauty in each other. God himself is love (1 John 4:8). Creation is the overflow of God’s love, as God chooses to fill up the nothingness with the divine beauty in order to enjoy the expression of it and to share it with the creatures he creates. The purpose of our life, as the Westminster Shorter Catechism puts it, is to “glorify God and enjoy him forever.” It is in loving God and being loved by him that we will find our ultimate happiness. When God himself came into the world as a human being, what he did is sacrifice his life for our salvation in an astonishing act of love to his Father and to us. According to Scripture, the entire moral law can be summed up in the two great commandments to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself” (See, for example, Matthew 22:34-37). St. Paul says that “love is the fulfillment of the law” (Romans 13:8-10). The Bible is full of beautiful exhortations to love our neighbors, to love our enemies, calls to social justice (think of Jesus and the Old Testament prophets), calls to fairness and equity among all, etc. Some of the most beautiful passages advocating compassion are in the Law of Moses (Exodus 22:21-25; 23:1-12; Leviticus 19:9-18, for example), and many more in the prophets, in the New Testament, etc. The only person who, in the Old Testament, is called “a man after God’s own heart,” is David, who is portrayed as a unique person and ruler because of his caring and compassion. Instead of wiping out his rivals to the throne from a previous dynasty, for example, as most rulers would have done, he treats them with compassion and love. (See, for example, his treatment of Mephibosheth in 2 Samuel 9). Jesus overturns common ideas about leadership by calling for true leaders to be servants seeking the good of others.
But Jesus called them unto him, and said, “Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your servant; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your slave: Even as the Son of man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:25-28)
In the very section cited
above where St. Paul tells wives to submit to their husbands (Ephesians
5:22-33], he tells husbands that their leadership should consist of their
willingness to give up their lives in service to their wives. In light of all of this, how are we to
understand the seemingly “harsh” passages of Scripture and the more “negative”
doctrines within Christianity, such as the doctrines of judgment and hell?
When evaluating moral issues, it is crucial to be
rational and to question all assumptions.
This is true when evaluating any issue, but it especially needs
to be pointed out when we talk about morality, since moral points of view tend
often to be bound up with strong emotions, and it is easy for people to
stubbornly insist on certain moral ideals or views based on strong feelings
without necessarily having any actual evidence to back them up. But strong opinions without the questioning
of assumptions is a good way to end up with one’s beliefs being rooted not in
truth but in the prejudices of the zeitgeist.
Earlier in this book, we discussed the value of
intuitions in the quest to know truth. Intuitions,
in which category I am including moral feelings, can sometimes be
manifestations of the subconscious mind processing evidence and coming to
conclusions. But intuition can also
simply reflect prejudices or preconceived assumptions with no basis in the
evidence. In the case of moral concerns
about certain biblical passages or Christian teachings, I think there is often
a mix of both of these things going on. It
is important, therefore, to not let our moral sense come into competition with
our reason. Morality should evoke strong
feelings in us, but such feelings are never an excuse for putting our
rationality to sleep by refraining from rigorously questioning our
assumptions. In this case, however, I
think that our moral concerns about such things as the destruction of the
Canaanites stem from well-warranted moral feelings, at least to some
significant extent. Again, Christianity
is all about love and strongly emphasizes love and compassion, so if we are
looking at things from a Christian point of view, we should feel concern when something
seems contrary to love and compassion.
It is to our credit when we feel such concerns. They should drive us on to a deeper
understanding of how certain doctrines and passages could be understood
consistently with the central characteristics of the Christian worldview. But, again, at the same time, we must be
willing to look at our moral intuitions with a critical eye. If we have reason to believe that Christianity
is a divine revelation, then we should be willing to have our intuitions
challenged and sometimes corrected by God’s revelation rather than stubbornly
insisting on our preconceived intuitions and pitting them against God’s
revelation without letting them be challenged.
We should also keep in mind that, if we have good reason
to believe that Christianity is true, as I think we do, we should be very
careful to vet objections to Christianity.
If we come across something that seems hard to account for, such as how
the destruction of the Canaanites could be consistent with love and compassion,
we should not jump too quickly to the conclusion that there is an
irreconcilable contradiction and jettison the Christian worldview. Certainly, we should not ignore such
concerns, but we should also make sure we have examined things from all angles
and that we really have a solid foundation in the objective evidence before we
draw the conclusion that we have a successful objection to Christianity. We need to show that we have ruled out all
other possible and plausible alternative understandings.
In addressing this concern, it is also important that we are aware of the role that worldview beliefs play in moral evaluations. Morality doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It is the practical expression of a worldview. Different worldview beliefs are going to lead to different ethical systems. If something doesn’t make sense from an atheist point of view, for example, that doesn’t mean that it won’t make sense from the point of view of the Christian worldview. (Or vice versa, for that matter.) If we judge Christianity to fail in some moral way because we are looking at the moral issue from an atheist point of view, we will be begging the question if we are attempting to use the moral objection as an argument against the Christian worldview (or vice versa).
Let’s begin to address our moral concerns by laying out some principles that are a part of or that follow from the Christian worldview that can shed some light on the issues. We’ve seen several of these principles argued for in earlier parts of this book.
1. God’s experience/viewpoint constitutes ultimate reality. The viewpoints of created beings are limited, not encompassing the whole of reality. God is the “universal consciousness” who sees all of reality. As God sees things, so they are. To exist, ultimately, is to be seen/experienced by God. Therefore, God’s viewpoint constitutes the true standard of ethics. What God experiences as good is objectively good, and vice versa. God’s values are the objective values.
From my limited point of view, my happiness seems more valuable than other people’s happiness, because I directly experience my feelings but not the feelings of others. This is why it is possible for beings like us to be selfish or self-centered. But, in reality, other people are just as real as I am, and their feelings are just as real as mine. A fully-encompassing, universal, unlimited viewpoint will see/experience everyone’s feelings equally. We must measure the accuracy of our ethical views against the universal, all-encompassing ethical viewpoint – which is God’s viewpoint. To the extent that our view disagrees with God’s, it is out of accord with reality. And a viewpoint that does not value things according to their real value is going to be seen negatively by a more accurate viewpoint, because it will have skewed priorities. It will value some things too highly and other things not highly enough. And this skewed attitude is likely to result oftentimes in skewed outward actions as well, since we will be acting at least partly on a distorted view of reality in the area of ethical values.
2. Since God’s viewpoint/experience constitutes the objective, fully accurate, and complete viewpoint/experience, the happiness of God will be of supreme value objectively. God is the universal consciousness; all conscious experience is a part of his overall conscious experience. My limited point of view has reality and value only insofar as it is a sliver of universal reality. And, as we’ve seen in previous chapters, it is really only an infinitesimal sliver. My consciousness is like a point on an infinite graph, while God’s consciousness is the infinite graph itself. So while my happiness has value in its own sphere, it is how things appear from the objective, universal point of view which really matters ultimately. In other words, if things are good as they appear to God, they are objectively good, and so if God is happy, that is what ultimately matters. My happiness matters ultimately only insofar as it is relevant to God’s happiness. The more I see reality with objective accuracy and completeness, the more I will see things this way. Therefore, God’s happiness is the Supreme Good. It is the fullness and source of all good. Apart from God, there is nothing ultimately but evil and misery. The ultimate happiness of all beings consists in loving and enjoying God, because he is the Supreme Good.
3. God is omnibenevolent. That is, he loves the happiness and hates the suffering of all beings. Since God is the universal consciousness whose experience encompasses all experiences, God is the ultimate empath. It is therefore psychologically impossible for God to delight in the suffering of any being, and he must naturally love happiness in any being and desire all beings to be happy. (And so should we, since we should value things according to their true value, and that is defined by how God views them.) God also values life, and so therefore should we. However, we should recognize, per #2 above, that God and his happiness are of supreme and infinite value, while we and our happiness are nothing in comparison, since we are simply points on the infinite graph, as it were. God is infinitely more valuable than we are; and yet, in our own sphere, we do have great value, and God values and sees as good our happiness, and so should we. There is a balance here: We must see and value the happiness of limited beings, but we must also see the value of various beings in proportion to their level of being, or the level of their conscious awareness and capacity to experience happiness and suffering. And we must recognize God’s infinite superiority in that respect to the whole created world put together.
4. Moral goodness consists in loving and valuing what is good, and what is “good” is that which produces happiness. Since God is the Supreme Good, moral goodness consists ultimately in loving God. Moral evil consists in turning away from good and the Supreme Good. Moral goodness leads to happiness, of course, while moral evil leads to misery. (When I say that moral goodness ultimately consists in loving God supremely, I should note that I don’t mean to imply that people must necessarily be aware of this on a conscious level or able to articulate it. The Catholic worldview allows that there can be people who may truly love God in their hearts but who may not be aware consciously that they are loving God or be able to articulate that. It is possible, for example, for a person to profess atheism but still love God in their hearts through intellectual ignorance or confusion. But if a person truly, in their heart, is in opposition to the Supreme Good, they are on a path that will lead to ultimate misery.)
5. God is a Trinity in which the three Persons who are fully God share and enjoy the infinite beauty of the divine being and are infinitely happy in that enjoyment. God created the world as an extension of that inter-Trinitarian love and happiness. In creation, God spreads his beauty into the nothingness and gives it life and goodness, thus expressing his beauty in a unique way and sharing it with the creation and created beings. The purpose of our existence, then, is to reflect and to enjoy the beauty of God, to be happy in his happiness.
6. In his complete viewpoint and infinite wisdom, God sees that it is better for the overall good to allow some evils to happen in his creation. God allows both moral evil (sin) and suffering to occur, but only to the extent and in the form that he deems justifiable in connection to the overall good. There are two things we must remember here:
1) While we have value in our own sphere as far as we have existence, we are nothing in comparison to God in terms of being and value. Therefore, set in the balance, the suffering of limited beings is nothing in comparison to the happiness of unlimited being (God). If allowing the suffering of limited beings promotes the happiness of unlimited being, that allowance is morally justified, because morality is ultimately all about promoting the overall happiness of reality. And God allows suffering only to the extent that it does indeed promote the overall happiness – the happiness of God and the happiness of all those who, by grace, will be brought up to share in the divine life, in God’s experience and happiness.
2) God is just. That is, he always treats everyone and everything according to its actual value. God is not unjust to allow creatures to fall into sin or to experience suffering, for goodness and happiness are a part of God’s own life. Creatures, who exist in their own sphere but who, in their own nature, infinitely lack God’s life, do not have any ownership or claim over goodness and happiness. Rather, their natural lot, without God’s grace (the unmerited gift of the divine life), is to fall into sin and suffering, for, without God’s divine life, that is all that there ultimately is. God is being, goodness, knowledge, wisdom, power, and happiness. When he is taken away, the hole that is left consists of emptiness, evil, ignorance, foolishness, weakness, and misery. Creatures do not have a right to the divine life – to God’s goodness and happiness. God does not owe it to them to prevent them from falling into sin and suffering. So he is not unjust when he does allow these things to happen in view of the overall, universal good.
But how does the allowance of evil contribute to the overall good and greater universal happiness? There are certainly aspects of the answer to this question that God knows and we do not. Certainly, we do not know all the reasons why particular evils are allowed in particular situations (see #9 below). But, having said that, I believe we can make some headway in answering this question. We have seen earlier in this book that an aspect of God’s knowledge/experience of himself must be an awareness of what I tend to call his “notional opposite” or “conceptual opposite.” That is, God’s awareness of his fullness of being, power, knowledge, wisdom, goodness, and happiness, involves his awareness of the concepts of emptiness, weakness, ignorance, foolishness, evil, and misery. Just as a full awareness of the concept of light inherently involves an awareness of the concept of darkness, or an awareness of the concept of up inherently involves an awareness of the concept of down. The Beatific Vision – the full experience of and enjoyment of God that is the destiny of redeemed creatures – therefore must also involve an awareness of these concepts. In his plan for creation, then, God allows evil (sin and suffering) to occur in certain ways and to certain degrees because he knows that doing so will facilitate and contribute in an important way to the revelation and knowledge/experience of himself and thus to the happiness of the universe. He enjoys his own glorious beauty and perfections, and he gives and shows himself to us, partly by the narrative of history in which evils are allowed that contrast with and reveal aspects of God’s glory and goodness and show how he is able to overcome and fill up evil with his goodness. Since the allowance of such evil contributes to the overall good and happiness, it is morally good and justifiable for God to choose to make such an allowance. And he is doing no injustice to anyone in making such an allowance, as we have already seen and will see further below, and so there is no moral objection that can be made on the grounds of justice. We must also remember the infinitesimal-ness of limited beings and their value in comparison to God and the value of the divine being. The very greatest possible suffering of a limited being, while very great and important in its own sphere, yet is infinitely outweighed by the happiness of God. And therefore it is possible for the suffering of limited beings to be allowed in order to further the infinite good of the universal happiness of Being in general.
7. The human race is in a fallen state as a result of the sin of our first parents. No one but our first parents is blamed for their sin, but the whole human race has inherited the consequences of that sin. All human beings are born into the world cut off from God’s grace and thus subject to sin, ignorance, foolishness, weakness, suffering, death, and, ultimately, hell (the end state of rational beings outside of God’s grace). This condition is called “original sin.” Per #6 above, we can see that God was not unjust to allow the Fall of our first parents to occur, nor to allow their descendants to be born into a state of original sin. No one is ever forced to sin, but it is part of our fallen human condition that, without God’s grace, we all freely choose it and thus incur the consequences of it.
8. Since God is the Supreme Good and of infinite value, mortal sin (moral evil – turning away from God as our supreme end) is infinitely bad. Without God’s grace, all human beings, in the state of original sin, will choose the way of mortal sin. Mortal sin incurs negative consequences. It incurs sufferings in this life, and, unchecked, it will ultimately incur the suffering of hell – the complete misery that is the logical end state of separation from God. Suffering is both the natural and the moral consequence of sin. It is the natural consequence, because rejection of the Supreme Good results naturally in supreme misery. It is the moral consequence, because mortal sin deserves suffering as its just punishment. The attitude of treating something less than its value deserves or contrary to its true value is an attitude displeasing to those who are aware of the true value of things. For example, if I believe that human beings deserve to be treated with compassion and dignity, and I see someone treating a human being with cruelty and in a way that does not respect their dignity, I find such an attitude and action contemptible. I find it displeasing and hateful. I see that such an attitude does not deserve to prosper. It is not fitting that it should prosper, for, by opposing something of real value, it rejects something good and therefore incurs the loss of that good, which entails suffering. The desert of contempt and punishment increases according to the value of what is opposed or rejected or mistreated. (For example, for most people, if mistreating a worm is seen as bad, mistreating a human being is seen as much worse, because human beings have greater value due to their having an increased capacity for happiness and suffering.) Since God is of supreme, infinite value, rejecting or opposing God is an attitude deserving of supreme, infinite punishment – ultimately, hell.
9. God brings about much good in the world and also allows much evil. While we can understand the basic principles upon which God is acting (as described above), we do not have the vantage point adequate to evaluate the specifics of God’s actions and allowances. In other words, due to our limited knowledge and point of view, we cannot determine precisely how the allotment of good and evil, happiness and suffering, reward and punishment, etc., should be spread about the world. In the Book of Acts, we have a story in which the apostles Peter and James are arrested by Herod. Peter is rescued from prison by the supernatural visit of an angel, but James ends up beheaded. Why this difference? Why did God rescue Peter and not James? Why did God allow James to be beheaded but not Peter? We simply do not know. We know that God makes such determinations based on his own wisdom and justice, and that what he does is always best, right, and just. This follows from the existence and nature of God for which we have argued in previous chapters. But we do not have the knowledge to judge precisely what goods should be brought about and what evils should be allowed throughout the time and space of this world, for we cannot see the entire, universal pattern of spatial and temporal history and how all the parts of it fit into the overall narrative of creation.
10. Although, in the Christian view, the overall condition of suffering and death that exists in the world is a result of the Fall, yet not all suffering is the direct result of mortal sin (or even what Catholics would call venial sin). One of the most dramatic examples of this is the suffering of infants and animals, who are incapable of moral attitudes and actions. However, while infants and animals do not commit personal sin, yet they are still creatures and not God. They do not own or deserve the goodness and happiness of the divine life. If God has allowed both of them to experience the suffering of being separated from the divine life, and in particular has allowed them to partake of the fallen condition of this world and the sufferings that are a part of that, he has done nothing wrong or unjust or incompatible with his values or omnibenevolence. Infants, while not personal sinners, yet are a part of the fallen human race. They are inheritors of original sin and are thus born apart from God’s grace and subject to the conditions of the fallen human condition. Without the intervention of grace, they will eventually grow into mortal sinners, and, even as infants, they not unjustly suffer many of the consequences of being part of a fallen world, including pain and death. While, like all evils, this is a terrible thing, it is not unjust on the part of God to allow or to bring about in his providence. Animals, while not being inheritors of original sin, yet are bound up with humans as part of the created, fallen world, and God has allowed them too, and not unjustly, to experience the sufferings that are a part of that lot. Again, we must remember that God only allows or brings about suffering to the extent that he sees it as necessary for bringing about the greater overall good.
11. God has brought salvation to the human race through the atonement of his Son, who has taken upon himself our sin and suffering and absorbed it into himself so as to overcome our sin and our fallenness and restore to us the divine life. In doing this, he illustrates both the seriousness of sin and the just punishment/consequence it naturally and morally incurs, and also his infinite love and mercy.
12. While God allows many evils to occur and often to go without evident punishment in this world, yet, in the end, God will bring about the ultimate victory of good and the ultimate defeat of evil. Justice will be fully done. No evil or good will go unaddressed in the long run, in the overall scheme of things.
13. God is in complete control of the universe. As the source of all reality and the origin and determiner of all the factors that have influence in reality, God, as Creator, is the one whose ultimate plan is carried out in everything that happens. We do indeed have free will, but it is not independent of God or outside the causal influences of the universe over which God has control. Therefore, when evil occurs, it does not take God by surprise, but he deliberately has allowed it to occur because he knows it will help to bring about the greatest overall good.[1]
14. Even though #13 is true, it is also true that God is not the source of evil in the universe. Evil is a privation, a lack. Since God is the fullness and source of all being and goodness, evil is what happens in the absence of God. Evil is the conceptual opposite of God. God is infinite (complete) knowledge, power, wisdom, goodness, happiness, life, etc. The absence of God thus entails ignorance, weakness, foolishness, evil, misery, death, etc. The universe of creatures is good insofar as it comes from God, but it is not itself God. As we've seen, it participates in God, being derived from him and dependent upon him, but it is infinitesimal in being and value in comparison to God. It does not of itself possess God's life and goodness. If it is to have life and goodness, it must get them from outside of itself, from God. Therefore, apart from God's preventing it, it inclines of itself towards foolishness, evil, misery, etc. The universe was created good, but God has allowed it to fall into sin and suffering. God does not infuse sin and suffering into the universe. Sin and suffering have entered into the universe through God's allowance, but not God's positive influence. Sin is a result of the misuse of free will. Unlike a good will, which operates through God's positive influence (grace), the evil will operates from itself (insofar as it is evil - though it derives all its positive being from God, of course). And suffering is a result of finitude and sin. So, while God is in control, and no evil can occur without his allowance, yet evil is not from God in the way that goodness is.
15. We should keep in mind the unique relationship God has to the universe as its creator, owner, and ultimate governor. Even in the human sphere, in order to understand a person’s actions, we need to understand the role or position they play in a situation. For example, on a personal level, a human being might forgive something done against them by another person. But if that same human being also has the office of a judge within the society’s legal system, he may have an obligation to assign a certain punishment to a certain crime. This does not necessarily mean he is less forgiving or compassionate. As a judge and not simply a private person, he has to be concerned, in the case, not only about his own personal feelings and responses to the situation but also what should or should not be done or tolerated with regard to the overall good of society as a whole, for which he has some responsibility in connection with his authoritative office. The same sort of thing would be true of other individuals with authority, such as lawmakers or police officers. If this is true on the human level, how much more will it be true when we are talking about the Supreme Governor of the universe? It is God’s responsibility to make all the ultimate judgment calls with regard to what goods to promote, what evils to allow, what punishments to enact, etc., in all the different circumstances that occur in time and space, for the overall good of universal reality. If we recognize that we should not blame a just human judge or lawmaker for lack of empathy if, for the overall good of society and weighing all relevant factors into consideration, she decides to enact or enforce a penalty against someone in society because of their actions, how much more should we be careful not to judge God for a lack of empathy or compassion should he choose to enact some particular punishment or allow some particular evil, even if that punishment or that evil seems harsh or severe to us based on our limited level of awareness or knowledge? Again, given our level of awareness compared to God’s, humble trust in God’s judgment is the rational attitude, provided we have good reason to believe that God exists and that he has the nature that Christianity says he has – points we have argued for thoroughly earlier in this book.
16. We must be adequately nuanced with regard to biblical interpretation. According to the Catholic faith, the Bible is the Word of God and is without error. More specifically, Catholic theology teaches that whatever the authors of Scripture intended to affirm has been affirmed by the Holy Spirit and is therefore true. This means we can trust and should follow Scripture, but it also highlights the complexity of biblical interpretation. Authorial intent can be complex. There are different genres of writing that have different connotations (poetry vs. history, for example). Humans write fiction and non-fiction, for another example. If you don't understand the genre, you are going to get very confused as to what a particular author is intending to claim about reality. In order to properly interpret Scripture, we must use all the tools of correct translation and interpretation available to us, and we must look at the larger as well as the more local context. In the Catholic view, God has made the Catholic Church the authoritative and reliable interpreter of Scripture, and so we must look to the Church's guidance for properly understanding Scripture. One example of an important nuance when it comes to morality is to recognize that God gives different rules at different times to different people in different situations, because his revelation comes in the context of particular historical circumstances. God never commands what is evil, but sometimes he regulates things that are not ideal. For example, when Jesus was asked by the Pharisees why divorce was allowed in the Law of Moses (see Matthew 19:3-9), Jesus said that, although God hates divorce and it was not part of his plan for marriage from the beginning, yet he regulated and tolerated divorce among the Israelites because of, as he put it, "the hardness of their hearts." That is, it was a kind of accommodation to their state of societal and moral existence at the time. He did not approve it, but he did not fully address it either and he regulated it (to keep it within certain boundaries). We should remember that, although the Bible is the Word of God, and so whatever it approves or advocates is advocated by God, yet sometimes God’s laws for humans are less than ideal. What I mean is that when moral ideas are translated into laws for particular human beings and particular human societies, those laws will sometimes be a mix between moral ideals and realistic conditions. Human lawmakers understand this. Sometimes an imperfect or corrupt system is in place that cannot be immediately abolished by legislation. In such a case, laws may be passed to bring conditions as close to the ideal as is reasonably possible. Situations or actions may be regulated without necessarily being approved as ideal. God sometimes does the same thing. Recognizing that they are not always ready to understand a full ideal, he leads his people slowly and gently, guiding them incrementally towards the full ideal. His commands might regulate what, in more ideal conditions, might be entirely abolished. This is true throughout Scripture. It is especially true when we are talking about the Law of Moses, which was an application of the moral law adapted to a particular people at a particular time in particular circumstances, and one of the purposes of which was to lead the people of Israel slowly and gently to a greater recognition of sin, salvation, and moral truths. God makes such accommodations in various ways and to varying degrees in different circumstances as determined by his overall wisdom. So while we look to God's law as a source of morality, we must interpret it with all proper nuances. If we are going to make objections to biblical morality, we must make sure we are interpreting the Bible accurately. Is a passage historical or more metaphorical? If there is a divine command, does it reflect the divine ideal in its fullness or is it a product of applying divine values to particular, limiting circumstances? Does the command apply at all times, or was it intended only to apply to a specific situation? If something occurs in a narrative, is the event supposed to be understood as approved by God, or is the narrator relating an event that God disapproves of or about which the narrator is silent with regard to moral evaluation? And so on.
17. We must balance intellectual rigor with emotional sensitivity when dealing with moral issues (with all issues, but with moral issues especially because of their deeply emotional nature). Although we can intellectually comprehend the principles that can help us to understand how God could be just and loving and still do or allow things that might be difficult for us to understand, still, we experience reality from a very different vantage point than God does (or than we ourselves will once we reach the Beatific Vision). God sees the whole picture; we can only experience a tiny part of it at any one time. While God sees, directly and intuitively, the overall pattern of how the goods and evils of the world weave together to form an overall beautiful tapestry, that tapestry as a whole is not part of our current experience. We experience simply small (really, infinitesimal) fragments of this whole. A symphony might contain discordant notes that contribute to the overall pleasantness of the piece when seen in full context, but which seem jarring, unpleasant, and pointless when viewed by themselves without that full context. A small segment of a painting may appear baffling and ugly when seen by itself, whereas it would be seen as contributing to the beauty of the painting if seen in its full context. I am reminded of a quotation from the Essay on Man by the great eighteenth-century Catholic poet Alexander Pope:
Cease then, nor ORDER Imperfection name:Our proper bliss depends on what we blame.Know thy own point: This kind, this due degreeOf blindness, weakness, Heav'n bestows on thee.Submit -- In this, or any other sphere,Secure to be as blest as thou canst bear:Safe in the hand of one disposing Pow'r,Or in the natal, or the mortal hour.All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee;All Chance, Direction, which thou canst not see;All Discord, Harmony, not understood;All partial Evil, universal Good:And, spite of Pride, in erring Reason's spite,One truth is clear, "Whatever IS, is RIGHT." [2]
Although Pope uses strong and bold language here, he is not saying that evil is not evil. Evil is truly evil, and yet it is only allowed because it is used to promote a greater overall good. As St. Augustine put it, “For almighty God. . ., because he is supremely good, would never allow any evil whatsoever to exist in his works if he were not so all-powerful and good as to cause good to emerge from evil itself.” [3] There is much that is harmful and wicked in this world, and thus is not “right,” and yet, in the overall scheme of things, it is right and just for God to have allowed these things to happen.
However, to recognize this intellectually is a far cry from feeling it on an emotional level. Although, when we see the whole picture upon arriving at the Beatific Vision, we will be full of joy, as God is, at what we see, yet, here, our experience is often one of pain and sorrow. And that makes perfect sense. It follows from this that, when we are dealing with the problem of evil, even when we find answers that are able to intellectually and rationally answer our objections, we will sometimes not feel emotionally satisfied. We will still be troubled and baffled. There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, it is to our credit, for it shows that we share God’s values of love, compassion, valuing of human life, etc. God himself, we recall, is the ultimate empath. We should feel pain and even often horror at the evils in the world. But, again, we must also be balanced and learn to distinguish between an emotional evaluation and a rational one. The sufferings caused by the evils in this world are felt very deeply, and evil, as the hymn says, seems "oft so strong." It is difficult, when one is the midst of experiencing great evil or suffering, to imagine how the allowance of such evils could be justified, or to see how any good could possibly counterbalance them. Consider a novel as an analogy. The characters in the novel, while in the midst of the apparent victory of evil (it is typical in a story for the power of evil to reach its greatest height, its victory apparently assured, right before the climactic "eucatastrophe"--as Tolkien called it--where good finally defeats evil), cannot imagine how evil could be defeated and good could possibly win. (I think of Sam's great speech to this effect in The Two Towers movie.) The end of the story is very difficult to conceive of from the vantage point of the middle of the story.
Because pain and wickedness are felt deeply, and because of the difficulty of envisioning the end from the middle, it is difficult for people oftentimes to give an unbiased intellectual hearing to answers to the problem of evil. It feels like a betrayal or a trivialization of the greatness of the pain to hear someone make an argument for how the allowance of such evils in the world could be justified, or how the allowance of evil leads to a greater good. No matter how intellectually convincing such arguments are, on an intuitive and emotional level, they feel woefully inadequate to the reality.
That is all very understandable, and yet, if we wish to get reality right, we must try to approach even this topic with sound, objective reason. We must distinguish between what our feelings tell us and the intellectual merits of the arguments. This is one place where the virtue of faith comes in. Faith is believing to be true what one has good reason to believe to be true even when the appearances are against it. I once heard the concept of faith illustrated by means of the idea of an airplane pilot flying through thick clouds. The pilot's intuition, judging from the appearances out his window, keeps telling him that he is about to crash into a mountain, but his instruments tell him he is nowhere near the mountains and there is no danger on his current trajectory. The pilot has to suppress his instincts and intuitions and trust his instruments. (I have no idea if pilots actually experience situations like this, not having any experience with flying anything, but the analogy is still useful either way.) That is how the virtue of faith works. Our reason leads us to certain conclusions, and yet our instincts make these conclusions seem false. We have to trust our reason over our intuitions and over the appearances. But this can be very difficult, and we must be careful to give ourselves and other people what we and they need at the time. The existence of evil poses intellectual challenges to the idea of God. These challenges must be met by rational arguments. But when people are in the midst of evil, they often need comfort, encouragement, pastoral care, and other kinds of personal and emotional support as much as or more than they need intellectual answers. We cannot respond to the legitimate intellectual challenges by expressions of emotion or platitudes, nor can we properly comfort and encourage people simply by giving them intellectual answers to arguments. Both of these have an essential role, but they must recognize their proper place.
(I want to add here also the observation that emotions or intuitions can themselves be sources of evidence. We should not discount them without considering what they may have to teach us. They can raise red flags for us that might tip us off that we are going astray in our reasoning. On the other hand, we cannot accept our feelings/intuitions uncritically. Sometimes they can arise from desire, prejudice, cultural conditioning, failures of reasoning, limited views, etc. In short, we must take our evidence from all the sources of observation and reasoning available to us, not just the more "intellectual" sources of knowledge, but we must apply critical thinking and assumption-questioning to all claims as well. Thanks to my friend Maddie Zellmer for calling attention to this insight.)
OK, with that foundation in place, let’s look briefly at a few examples of particular moral objections.
1. The Destruction of the Canaanites. In the Torah, God gives the land of Canaan to Abraham and his descendants. A few hundred years later, he leads the Israelites, the covenant descendants of Abraham, out of Egypt and into the promised land. As we saw from Deuteronomy 7:1-2 and 20:16-17, which we cited earlier, God commands the Israelites to go into the land and fight the inhabitants, wiping them out. There are three reasons cited for the Canaanites’ destruction: 1. God has given the land to the Israelites. 2. The great wickedness of the Canaanites (see, for example, Genesis 15:16, Leviticus 18:24–25, and Deuteronomy 9:4–5). Their society was full of much moral corruption, involving things like idolatry, sexual sins, oppression of the poor, child sacrifice, and many other evils. God also makes it clear that he is not giving the land to the Israelites because they are any better than the Canaanites. In fact, he warns them that if they behave like the Canaanites, they, too, will get wiped off the face of the land. (See, for example, Leviticus 20:22–23; Leviticus 18:26–28; Deuteronomy 9:4-6; and Deuteronomy 28:63.) 3. God doesn’t want remaining Canaanite presence in the land to lead the Israelites into sin. (See, for example, Exodus 23:32–33; Exodus 34:12–16; Numbers 33:55; Deuteronomy 7:3–4; Deuteronomy 12:29–31; and Deuteronomy 20:16–18.)
The passages in which God commands the Israelites to destroy the Canaanites are very all-encompassing in terms of who is to be destroyed. Deuteronomy 20:16-17, for example, says they should destroy “all who breathe.” Was God’s command intended to be as all-encompassing as that, and did the Israelites actually understand and apply it that way? There are indications that the command was indeed intended quite broadly, and that, at least sometimes, it was carried out in that way. (See, for example, Deuteronomy 2:34; Deuteronomy 3:6; and Joshua 6:21.) However, there are also exceptions, such as Rahab and her family (See Joshua 2:1–21, 6:17–25). It is noteworthy that Rahab expresses recognition of and faith in the God of Israel, and she also rescues Israel’s spies. That seems to show that the destruction of the Canaanites was not necessarily absolute, but at least partially dependent on the characteristics of the particular Canaanites in question.
The command was specifically related to the promised land as well, suggesting that if particular Canaanites had left the land voluntarily, they would have exempted themselves from the destruction command. The command did not imply an obligation to pursue them beyond the borders of the land.
There is good evidence to think that the command to destroy included not just what we might call combatants, but also women and children as well – and also animals and even often inanimate objects. It is as if the land was being completely purified of its former inhabitants. Some have argued that the command to destroy “all that breathe” might have been hyperbolic, but the text does seem to indicate that, at least sometimes, the command seems to have been understood and applied pretty literally and to have included the destruction of women, children, and animals. On the other hand, again, the example of Rahab indicates possible exceptions and raises questions. If Rahab and her whole family could be spared because of her trust in God and rescuing of the spies, why would infants, who couldn’t possibly be on the side of Israel’s enemies, need to be destroyed? Or animals? The text never really addresses that question. If I had to guess, I would say that the inclusion of infants and animals, as I mentioned above, had to do with a kind of complete cleansing of the land from the culture of its former inhabitants. If the Israelites preserved anything from the former inhabitants, perhaps the concern was that it would cause them to follow in their footsteps (a concern which was proved quite justified in Israel’s subsequent history). Also, the complete destruction of everything symbolized the complete renunciation of an entire culture that had fallen under God’s special curse. Rahab and her family might have been excepted from this because her (and their?) explicit choice to throw in her lot with God and with Israel had the effect of separating her from the corrupted Canaanite civilization. At any rate, the example of Rahab does show that the command to destroy was not absolutely absolute. We could also add the example of the Gibeonites in Joshua 9, and the various times where Israel was allowed to preserve the animals and livestock from destroyed cities (Deuteronoy 20:14; Deuteronomy 2:35, 3:7; Joshua 8:2). So it is difficult to say exactly how absolute the command to destroy “all that breathes” was intended to be or was in fact applied in specific situations.
So what do we make of this, morally speaking? First of all, I want to acknowledge the validity of the concern here. Killing and death are terrible things, because human life is valuable, and because human happiness is valuable. The killing of helpless innocents (such as infants) is terrible on an even deeper level. These things are great evils that must be horribly displeasing to the eyes of a being who is omnibenevolent and who values human life. So it would seem that a clear argument can be made here that such a being could never command such killing. But we must be careful of a leap in reasoning here. We remember some of our principles articulated above. God hates evil (sin and suffering), but he chooses to allow it to happen to some degree because it is better, in the overall scheme of things, for some evils to be allowed than for all evils to be prevented. This is a horrible thing, emotionally speaking, but it can be justifiable. Such allowance of evil does not diminish the terribleness of the evil, but rather illustrates the incredible value of the good to be procured by the allowance of it (ultimately, the revealing of the God who is the Supreme Good and the source of all happiness and thus the happiness of all beings who are enabled to experience that Good). We must also remember that God is not just a ”private person” in the universe. He is its owner, lawgiver, and governor. It is his role to take action to ensure that the best overall good be accomplished. Even for humans, greater responsibility and authority often entails making judgment calls that can be hard, can seem harsh, and can lead to a degree of pain and suffering, as we discussed earlier. How much more is this likely to be true when we are dealing with the Supreme Governor of all time, space, and eternity? We must also keep in mind the fallen nature of the world as a consequence of the Fall of our first parents, and the sinfulness of humanity (as well as the particular sinfulness of the Canaanite communities). We recall that sin is not a light thing. Since God is the Supreme Good, rebellion against God is a matter of supreme evil. It naturally incurs and justly deserves serious negative consequences. With all of these things in mind, can we really show that the command to destroy the Canaanites was unjust? What if God decided, in his infinite wisdom, that what was best for the overall good was to bring great calamities and judgments upon the Canaanites because of the sinfulness of their communities, and to use the Israelites as the executioners of these judgments? Taking into account all the relevant principles and observations and the whole complexity of this sort of thing, can we really show or prove that God’s command was contrary to his infinite wisdom; his empathy and omnibenevolence; the value of love, compassion, human life, and human happiness; or his sense of and commitment to justice? I don’t think we can. And if we can’t, then this objection is answered, at least on an intellectual level. Whether the answer is emotionally satisfying is another question. As we discussed above, we should not always expect an emotionally satisfying answer to all the questions we might have of this sort, given our position in this world. A fallen world and the things that go on in it will never be fully emotionally satisfying to us while we live within it, but that is not the same as having a rational objection that successfully disproves the Christian worldview.
We should also recognize that some theologians believe that the story of the destruction of the Canaanites should be taken not so much as a historical text but as an allegorical text, where the “Canaanites” represent evil and sin, their destruction represents our personal battles against sin and vice in our lives, etc. As we discussed earlier, discerning authorial intent in a biblical text can be complicated. Why are we told the story of the destruction of the Canaanites in the biblical text? Was the author intending to vouch for the historicity of everything he recorded? Is the purpose to convey moral lessons (no doubt that’s at least part of the purpose) and not to make definitive, unquestionable claims about precise points of history that must be believed, or did the purpose include such definitive historical intent? We must look to context, make use of all the tools of good biblical interpretation, and trust the guidance of the Church to discern the best answer. In this case, personally, I don’t see any reason to jettison the more straightforward, historical reading of the text, and yet I cannot rule out categorically or definitively the opinion of those who take a contrary view.
I’ll deal with some other ethical concerns below, but, as this is already becoming a very lengthy section, I will be a bit briefer, having articulated and illustrated the principles and methods involved in properly examining these kinds of questions in general already. The reader can apply these principles and methods to all the various objections that are out there.
2. The Command to Kill Idolaters in the Law of Moses. As we saw above in our quotation from Deuteronomy 17:2-7, God, in the Law of Moses, commanded the Israelites to execute people caught worshiping false gods within the Israelite community. Again, some might argue for interpreting this in a non-literal historical sense, but I think the law can be justified in its more literal form as well. Idolatry is a great sin, because it involves turning away from the true God to other, false gods. God is the Supreme Good, so to rebel against him is supremely bad. If the act is done with full knowledge and full willful intent, it leads ultimately to hell. But even apart from such complete ill intent, even if we assume mitigating circumstances or even complete innocent ignorance on the part of the perpetrator, the action, as an outward action, is still one that is seriously bad and scandalous. (We're not talking here about good things that can be found in the various religions of the world, but beliefs and practices that involve a rejection of the Supreme Good and treating something that is not the Supreme Good as if it is. This is idolatry in a Scriptural sense.) This is especially true within a community like Israel, which had recently been separated from the nations by God in order to be a holy people in which God’s laws would be kept and proclaimed to the nations. (Idolatry is always potentially scandalous, because it is oriented, by its nature, to leading people away from God. In a pluralistic world, however, it can be in a way less scandalous because there is already a plurality of beliefs and practices in the culture. In a society like ancient Israel, however, there was great potential for scandal.) What if God, wanting to drill into the Israelites the importance of worshiping the true God alone and the dangers of idolatry, knowing their proneness to the latter, chose to put in his Law, intended specifically for this people at this time, a harsh penalty for defiant acts of idolatry among the Israelite community? Can we really prove this to have been unjust, unloving, etc.? Again, I don’t want to underestimate the seriousness of anything involving human death, suffering, killing, etc. And yet, as we’ve seen, if we are going to be rational and deal with the complexities of reality instead of simply settling for un-evaluated and overly-simplistic emotional reactions, we’ve got to dive deeper than that. And when we do such a deeper dive, I do not see that what we have here constitutes a successful intellectual objection to the Bible or the Christian worldview.
3. Hell. Hell is the state of final misery incurred by those whose end state involves the permanent rejection of God with full knowledge and will. We’ve discussed already why it follows logically as a natural and just consequence of the rejection of God. And I think that what we’ve already said above about evil in general provides us what we need to deal with this subject as well. However, there is an important difference, in that, while the other evils we’ve looked at have involved only limited and temporary suffering, hell, by its nature, involves permanent and complete suffering. Some would argue that that makes it fundamentally different and inherently unjustifiable. Temporary evils, however bad, yet come to an end, and the persons suffering them are redeemed and eternally happy in the end, while hell is, by its nature, eternal and leaves the sufferer ultimately unredeemed and miserable.
While I grant that this is an important difference, I deny that it exempts hell from the kind of rational answer we’ve given to other instances of evil. All the principles we’ve laid out above apply to hell as well. God allows some beings to reject him finally and permanently and thus end up in hell. He does so because allowing such a thing to happen is best for the overall good in all the sorts of ways we’ve discussed previously. Why is God justified in allowing temporary evils? Because, while the evil is evil in itself and in its own nature, yet its occurrence contributes to the greater universal good and happiness, and so its allowance is a good thing. But how can hell contribute to the universal good and happiness when it involves beings suffering forever in an unredeemed state? Their suffering is never converted into happiness. That is true. But the same principle still holds: The permanent suffering of beings in hell is infinitesimal in comparison to the infinite happiness of God and the Beatific Vision, and so its allowance is justifiable because it contributes to this overall happiness. When seen in itself, a temporary evil seems unjustifiable, yet when seen in the context of the whole, it can be seen how it can be allowed and yet the overall good be still perfectly good and beautiful – like how a story, overall, is made better and more perfect by the evils that occur in it, however displeasing they are in their own nature, or like how a piece of music can be made better and more perfect by means of discordant notes that, in themselves, are ugly. Universal reality is, really and truly, better and more perfect because of the allowance of the evil, which doesn’t ultimately take away from that perfection but actually contributes to it. It would be the same with hell. Even though the suffering of those in hell is permanent, the allowance of this state of affairs does not take away from but contributes to the overall, perfect happiness of the whole, viewed from God’s point of view. God and the saints in heaven will be 100% happy, not because they enjoy the suffering of the damned out of cruelty, nor because they are ignorant of or forgetful of that suffering, but because they see that suffering in its full context, in which it is infinitesimal in comparison to the happiness that is furthered by the allowance of it and so does not diminish one iota from that happiness. This does not diminish the awfulness of the sufferings of the damned (or even of temporary sufferings); rather, it enhances our recognition of the infinite grandness and perfection of the good that is brought about by means of its allowance. Hell is justified by the same sorts of observations used to justify temporary suffering: The allowance of sin and suffering, as the notional opposites of God, is part of what enables God's glorious perfections to be fully seen and experienced. The allowance of hell brings out very clearly and starkly the seriousness and horror of sin and the greatness of what God has redeemed us from, thus illuminating God's justice, mercy, power, and salvation, and contributing to our experience of God in the Beatific Vision. If anyone ends up in hell, we can be sure that God saw that allowing that to happen was necessary for the procuring of the overall good. We must also remember that no one ends up in hell except those who have chosen, with full willfulness and awareness, to reject the Supreme Good. It is not something that is brought upon people involuntarily or in ignorance.
But, again, although I think the above constitutes a successful intellectual defense of the objection from hell, I do not claim that it always will be or always should be emotionally satisfying to us in this life, although it will be when we reach the Beatific Vision.
(I should add that it seems to be a theological possibility within the Catholic worldview that no one ultimately ends up in hell.)
4. Slavery, and the Treatment of Women. These are, of course, two very distinct topics. I wanted to mention them without dealing with them here, considering how long this section is already. I would refer you to the two articles in the footnote for more on these subjects.[4] In general, though, I would again recommend care in the questioning of assumptions. For example, what if God decided to create the world in such a way as to give a higher level of authority to one gender or to another? Let’s say that God gave to wives a higher authority. For example, a husband and wife, in mutual respect and love, work together as partners to lead the family. But a case arises in which, due not to pride or to lack of respect or anything like that but simply owing to the realities of life, the husband and wife come to irreconcilable conclusions about what the family should do in some significant matter. In this kind of situation, let’s say, God has given to the wife a unique authority, which should be acknowledged by the husband, to cast a kind of "final vote" in such matters. That kind of thing is certainly going to rub people the wrong way in our modern society, which puts a strong emphasis on egalitarianism between the sexes. But, putting aside our emotional response and looking at the matter objectively and rationally, can we really prove that God could not have created things in this way? We might have all kinds of ideas as to why we think this would or would not be a good idea, but, remembering that God has wisdom infinitely greater than ours and that he is the Governor of the vast complexity of the universe, can we really prove that God could not see this as something good and just to institute? I don’t think we can. I think the only way we can know if this is something that God would see fit to institute is to look at human experience, reason, and revelation to see if God has in fact instituted it. I’m not suggesting that God has instituted any such thing, but simply using this hypothetical to illustrate the importance of recognizing and questioning assumptions in morality.
Finally, I want to remind us
of how we started this section – by describing how Christianity is centered on
love and focuses on justice, love, compassion, and mercy. It is easy to forget this when we’ve been
spending time getting into the weeds of specific, difficult-to-process, harsh-seeming
doctrines or passages of Scripture. But
these more difficult areas of Christian Scripture and thought are parts of a
larger Scriptural narrative and a larger worldview which center on love and
goodness, and which, while acknowledging and dealing with the great evils that
exist in this world and all the complexities they bring with them, are
ultimately bright with great joy and hope.
[1] For more
on this topic, see https://freethoughtforchrist.blogspot.com/2019/02/predestination-grace-and-free-will-in.html.
[2] You can
find the text of the Essay on Man, among other places, at https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2428/pg2428-images.html.
[3] Catholic
Church, Catechism of the Catholic Church, #311 (footnotes removed),
retrieved from http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p1s2c1p4.htm#V
at 10:26 AM on 1/4/25.
[4] For the
issue of slavery, see https://freethoughtforchrist.blogspot.com/2021/12/the-bible-and-slavery.html. See also the section on “Missions and the
Treatment of Natives” found at https://freethoughtforchrist.blogspot.com/2020/06/church-history-companion-unit-5.html. (Also, just to whet your interest on this subject,
see https://www.papalencyclicals.net/Eugene04/eugene04sicut.htm
and https://www.papalencyclicals.net/Paul03/p3subli.htm
for a couple of historic, 15th and 16th century papal pronouncements
having to do with the slavery of natives during the times of European exploration
and colonization.) For the issue of the
treatment of women, see https://freethoughtforchrist.blogspot.com/2025/01/the-bible-and-catholic-theology-on.html.
Published on the feast of St. John of Damascus, a Doctor of the Church.
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