Wayne Rossiter Wrote a Post About my Take on Suffering: Here’s my Response

Truth be told, I cannot remember a time when someone ever wrote a critique to one of my blog posts on their blog. Well, that has now happened with Wayne Rossiter’s critique on his blog of my thoughts on suffering and death. Needless to say, a response to his critique is in order. Enjoy.

A Summary of the Issue
As a matter of context, I had written a four-part series critique’s Ken Ham’s 2007 book, How Could a Loving God? in which he addressed the issue of reconciling the idea of a loving God with the reality of suffering and death in this world. In the first three parts, my fundamental problem with Ham’s position was that of his misreading of Genesis 1-3 as being a literal, historical account, and his reading into Genesis 1-3 the assumption that God’s original creation was literally perfect, and that therefore when Adam and Eve (whom Ham assumes were two historical people) disobeyed and ate the forbidden fruit (about 6,000 years ago), that they, along with the rest of the natural world, “fell” from a state of perfection. Therefore, Ham understands the good news of salvation in Christ as God eventually restoring this fallen, imperfect creation back to that original state of perfection.

To the point, that is simply a wrong way to read Genesis 1-3 and it is a wrong way to understand the goal of salvation in Christ: (A) Nowhere in Genesis 1-3 is it said that creation or Adam and Eve were perfect—it just isn’t there; (B) The fact that Adam and Eve are described as “naked” and are deceived by the serpent goes to show that they are depicted as innocence, naïve, and child-like—but certainly not perfect or perfectly mature; and (C) The famous passages in Paul (notably Romans 5 and I Corinthians 15) make it quite clear that salvation in Christ isn’t a “getting back” to some kind of perfect Eden, but rather is something better.

Furthermore, as I’ve written in a series about the early Church Father Irenaeus (who was a disciple of Polycarp, who was a disciple the Apostle John—i.e. meaning he was really early) I’ve pointed out that Irenaeus: (A) Emphasized the importance of preserving the Apostolic teaching and tradition, (B) Specifically said that the teaching that there was an originally perfect creation and that Adam and Eve were perfect was, in fact, heretical, and (C) Said that it was inevitable that Adam (and by extension all of us, since we are “in Adam”) disobeyed and sinned because he wasn’t perfect, and that it was through suffering that he (and by extension all of us) come to a true love and understanding of God—and this is seen fully in the suffering, death and resurrection of Christ.

I discuss that in more detail in my series on Irenaeus here (You can find this series on my blog, starting here), but the point is that my view regarding Genesis 1-3 (most simply put: that we are not sinful because of a historical Adam, but rather that we are sinful because we are Adam—that story explains the state of humanity) isn’t some new and novel view. It has its roots in Scripture itself and it is reflected in the earliest of the early Church Fathers who were insistent on passing on the original Apostolic teaching.

Now obviously, there is a whole lot more to understanding Genesis 1-3 (and indeed Genesis 1-11) as well as the issue of suffering and death within God’s purposes, but that is the core difference between my view and Ham’s. We both agree that suffering and death are part of this created order; we both agree that in God’s sovereignty, He uses suffering and death to bring about His purposes. But Ham’s historical-literal interpretation of Genesis 1-3 leads him to two errors: (A) There was an original “perfection”—neither the biblical text nor the early Church Fathers support this notion, and (B) The Christian hope is that God will bring everything back to an Edenic-like state—neither the New Testament nor Fathers like Irenaeus support this notion either: the Good News of salvation in Christ is that God is doing something greater, that we will bear the image of the “man of heaven” (Christ) and no longer the image of the “man of dust” (Adam).

With all that said, let’s look at Wayne’s critique.

Wayne’s World
I think my above summary actually answers some of Wayne’s critiques, but I want to focus on a few specific points and statements he made in his post. His comments will be in bold, with my response following each one.

(1) Having said that, the YEC view has a lot going for it theologically. For starters, it takes Genesis 1-3 seriously. Thus, it doesn’t have to draw some arbitrary line in the sand where mytho-historical storytelling ends, and real history begins.

The question is not whether one takes Genesis 1-3 “seriously” or not. I absolutely take it seriously. The question is whether one is correctly interpreting it, and my contention is that Ham simply misinterprets it. For those of us well-versed in literature—and ancient literature at that—there is a glaring difference in writing between Genesis 1-11 and the rest of Genesis. I write about this elsewhere, but to respond to Wayne’s comment, but to suggest that those who don’t read Genesis 1-3 as literal history aren’t taking the Bible seriously is a bit insulting (although I don’t think Wayne was intending for it to come across that way).

(2) To summarize Anderson’s view, suffering and death have always been part of creation. Creation is not perfect, and it is incomplete. “Suffering, pain, and death are inevitable in this created order. They are a part of God’s original creation. But this created order, God’s original creation, is not the finished product. It is phase one.” For this reason, suffering and death are not evil. Rather, they are constructive, acting as some refining fire for each of us as individuals. As Anderson puts it, “Transformation and salvation comes through suffering. Resurrection life only comes after, actually through, death.”

While Wayne’s summary of my position is correct, his “for this reason” is where he goes wrong. Nowhere did I say that suffering and death weren’t evil. What I emphasized is what the Bible emphasizes: suffering and death are a reality, and the Good News of the Gospel is that through Christ, God has used suffering and death to bring about transformation and ultimately resurrection. In I Corinthians 15, Paul makes it explicit: what is natural must die before resurrection can occur.

Again, Ham’s problem and Wayne’s misunderstanding goes back to their assumption that Genesis 1-3 is to be taken as history that there was an original “perfect” creation. But like I already say, nowhere in Genesis 1-3 does it claim creation was originally perfect, and as we find with Ireneaus, we know that the view there was an original “perfect” creation was actually considered heretical. What do you do with that? I take the Bible and the early Church Fathers seriously. I don’t ignore them.

(3) Anderson mocks the widely-held view that we are in need of moral reparations in our relationship with God. That sin condemns.

I don’t think my comments were mocking anything. The issue there is basically how one understands the atonement. My quick summary of the typical Protestant view wasn’t mocking—I have to think most people who read that will say, “Yeah, that’s pretty much what I’ve always been told.” By contrast, the Orthodox view of the atonement strikes me as much more coherent and biblical. Here is a clip that explains it:

(4) As a side note, I would be very interested to know what his view of sin and damnation is. I don’t know if Anderson is an annihilationist, universalist, or something in between.

I touch upon this issue in my two-part series on the topic of hell. But my view in a nutshell leans to annihilationism: Christ is the source of life; if you reject Christ, the source of eternal life, you will die and cease to exist—you will lose life; you will cease to live. You will not live forever in torment; you will be cut off from the source of life and will be no more. This has been an issue that has been contemplated for 2,000 years.

(5) Perhaps the biggest is that Anderson makes no mention of sin. Seemingly, there was no fall of man. By his own words, suffering and death are not consequences of sin. Suffering and death themselves are not evils but are necessary and formative aspects of existence.

To the point, Genesis 1-3 lay out the basic realities of the natural world and human beings: (1) Human beings (i.e. Adam) are made in God’s image, yet (2) still come into this world naked, naïve, vulnerable, with no wisdom or knowledge of good and evil, and hence (3) they sin, and in doing so, although created in God’s image, they fall short of being like God; therefore (4) the reality is that we are sinful image-bearers in a world of suffering and death, and we are in need of salvation. Despite that, there is the promise that God will, through the offspring of the woman, eventually “crush the head” of the serpent and do away with death forever. Until then, this is the world in which we live. In that respect, Genesis 3 isn’t about a historical “fall” from some original perfection. It is describing the reality of human beings in this created order, and in that reality, (A) human beings sin, and (B) there is suffering and death.

(6) It seems that he believes the crucifixion was just a demonstration of God’s power over death. He went first, to show us it could be done.

Well, the crucifixion (and resurrection!) is the demonstration of God’s power and victory over death. That’s the point! Christ was victorious over death and his resurrection was the first sign of the in-breaking of the Age to Come into this present, corrupted age of sin and death. And through the empowering of the Holy Spirit, followers of Christ, although they too will experience suffering and death, will also be victorious over death as well—that is the what the good news of the Gospel is all about.

(7) But, why bother with being falsely accused and innocently killed? Jesus could have simply lived a normal life, died at a ripe old age, and then rose again. His innocence does no work, and He does not act as a sacrifice for sin. This also wreaks havoc on the entire story line leading up to that moment. The law and the sacrifices of the Old Testament would be rendered meaningless too, and Jesus ceases to represent the perfect and ultimate sacrifice for all sin for all time.

I’m a bit confused here. Why bother? Because, as is virtually on every page of the New Testament, it is through suffering and death that resurrection and transformation happen. And that what the point of my post: like it or not, the Good News of the Gospel is hard. As for Christ being the sacrifice for sin, we have to understand what the New Testament writers were doing when they say that. That is a huge topic in and of itself, but here is the point: they are using the sacrificial imagery of the Old Testament sacrificial system in the Tabernacle/Temple to explain the significance of what Christ’s death accomplished.

Most people, though, misunderstand what the sacrificial system was about. Simply put, the priests would kill an animal, not because the killing of the animal appeased YHWH’s anger—that was the mindset of the sacrificial system among the pagans: kill an animal, appease an angry god. In Israel, the sacrificial system was different: you went to YHWH’s House, offered an animal, the priests (acting on YHWH’s behalf) would slaughter the animal, put it on the altar (i.e. the grill!), and after taking their portion, would give the rest of the meat back to you, and you would then enjoy a meal in YHWH’s House as a way to celebrate the forgiveness of your sins and the reconciliation of relationship with YHWH. Hence, the New Testament writers were emphasizing that Christ was like the sacrificial animal that brought about the reconciliation of God and His people.

That being said, that isn’t the only way the New Testament writers describe the significance of Christ’s death. The three main metaphors we see in the New Testament are the Temple/sacrificial metaphor, the hospital/healing metaphor, and the law court metaphor. The problem (primarily among Protestants) is that they focus only on the law court metaphor that Paul used, and that Luther and Calvin emphasized. The result is an incomplete view of the biblical description of the significance of Christ’s suffering and death.

(8) To argue that any form of redemption comes through death and suffering is to presume that we need redeeming. That is, we have a problem that must be remedied. From what we read in Anderson’s blog, this problem is suffering and death. But who made the problem? Not us. God did it. This is like the physician who sets your broken arm, only after he broke it.

Well, yes, we do need redeeming. Our problem is that we are enslaved to sin and are under the rule of suffering and death. But then Wayne goes off course in his rush to “defend God,” and unwittingly falls in with Job’s friends: “No, you can’t say it’s God’s fault! It must be your fault!” What’s God’s response? “I don’t need to be defended—suffering and death are a reality, and I don’t need to explain myself to you.” The Bible doesn’t say God “broke our arm” and then set about to set it. The Bible says this: You are created in God’s image; you sin; you live in a world in which you are a slave to suffering and death; you’re not a finished project; look at Christ—the way to resurrection goes through suffering death first. You are a natural man of dust; but if you are in Christ, you will be raised to be like the man of heaven.

That’s it—to go beyond is futile. It is to venture into areas that, as we learn in the Book of Job, God has chosen not to explain to us.

(9) Wayne disagrees with my assertion that suffering refines us as Christians, and that the fires of suffering can either refine us or burn us up. Most people who survive true suffering (even Christians, for example, with PTSD) aren’t necessarily better people for it. Oftentimes, they’re broken people for the rest of their lives. …When the sick, maimed, or dying come to Jesus, He never said, “suck it up buttercup, this is how I make you a better person.”  He doesn’t claim to cause death or suffering. He doesn’t suggest they’re good. He tells us to look to the more important issue, which is the condition of our eternal relationship to Him.

Romans 5:3-5 tells us to rejoice in our sufferings, because they produce endurance, and endurance produces character, and character hope—and that hope does not put us to shame. James 1:2-4 tells us that suffering trials produces steadfastness, and that, when it reaches its full effect makes one perfect. Talk about suffering and how God uses it to refine us and make us Christ-like is virtually on every page of the New Testament. As for the examples Wayne gives, it seems he doesn’t see the final result. It seems he sees only up to being put in the grave, so to speak, and doesn’t see the resurrection that comes after that. And please, nowhere do I (nor the Bible) say that God causes death and suffering. The testimony is clear: suffering and death are part of this created order; God is sovereign; and in Christ we see that suffering and death are overcome by the power of the Spirit, but one must go through them—one doesn’t avoid them.

Now, yes, there is a temptation to try to distance God from even the hint that on some level he is responsible in some way for suffering and death, and to rush to say, “No, no, no—not God’s fault!” But God won’t have it. He doesn’t commend Job’s friends for trying to defend him. Rather, His anger burns against them and says they have not spoken what is right about Him, as Job had done.

(10) I suspect that Anderson’s view on suffering and death is a necessary consequence of some underlying theological positions. That is, his view on suffering and death follows necessarily from something else. Namely, I think it follows as a consequence of his view on creation more broadly [i.e. theistic evolution].

This is a common assertion (I won’t say “attack”) that YECists (at least people who are more biblical literalists) often level against: they try to tie it to theistic evolution. Let me say two things: (1) My understanding of Genesis 1-11 and my views on suffering and death have nothing to do with theistic evolution. They have developed in the course of my Biblical Studies. I came to my conclusions about Genesis 1-11 a good ten years before I even started looking into the creation/evolution debate. (2) My main problem with many theistic evolutionists, old earth creationists, and young earth creationists is their attempts to try to make Genesis 1-11 “fit” within what science has discovered about natural world. Genesis 1-11 isn’t addressing that issue at all. And so, Wayne is simply wrong to assume that I am trying to reconcile Genesis 1-11 with modern science, or that I try to explain sin through scientific means.  

And so, Wayne ends his critique this way: Put simply, theistic evolution puts the biblical story in a blender. What’s left is fairly unintelligible. In that gruesome scene in the movie Predator, Dutch (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger) asks, “Did you find Hawkins?” His subordinate replies, “I can’t tell.” Similarly, we might ask, “Did Joel find an answer to the problem of suffering and death?” It’s such a mess, we can’t tell?

Well, sorry, nothing that I said about suffering and death has anything to do with theistic evolution. And I’m sorry, but I think what I said isn’t a mess at all. Sure, it isn’t a nice, tidy, simplistic answer like, “It’s Adam’s fault,” or “Don’t even insinuate God is in any way responsible, Job!” but I think God is okay with that. In any case, when it gets right down to it, Wayne’s fundamental problem with my comments on suffering and death comes down that I don’t think the early chapters of Genesis 1-3 are meant to be read as literal history.

To that, all I can say is that my views on Genesis 1-11 and the issue of suffering and death are thoroughly biblical and they echo the teaching of many early Church Fathers.