Morality and God’s Choice, Part II: Job

March 7, 2019faithfictionfatherhood Leave a comment

(This is the 11th of 17 posts in my “200 for 200” challenge. Please continue to repost, link, and send your friends my way!)

For the previous post in this series, please click here.

The Book of Job is my favorite book in the Old Testament. There are some passages in the OT I like more (Jeremiah 31:31 and its surrounds, for instance), but taken as a whole, Job is where it’s at for me. The book gives an answer to the problem of theodicy that remains relevant today, along with shooting down some still-espoused misconceptions about how God works that plague simplistic theologies.

And it’s important to note here that I think that the Book of Job’s primary task is theodical. This is tangential to, but inextricably linked with questions of morality–specifically, the morality of God. Put simply, is a God who allows bad things to happen to good people a good and just God? That’s the question the Book of Job seeks to answer (or, as we’ll see, show us is simply beyond human ability to fully grasp).

When we look to the framework of the Book of Job, we’re reminded that we must view the question asked, broad and expansive as it may be unto itself, as a limited (and somewhat problematic) one when it comes to questions about God’s morality.

Remember that Job’s affair begins when “the Satan” (which should be properly read as a job title akin to “the accuser” rather than a personal name) presents himself (itself?) to the Lord and, sua sponte, God boasts about Job’s faithfulness. The Satan argues that Job is only loyal to God because he is well-blessed with life’s joys and comforts; at this God turns Job over to the Satan to be tested.

If we read this exchange literally, God does not come off in a great light. Instead, God is allowing suffering simply to win a bet, so to speak. But if we read it mythopoeically, which I think we must, the dialogue is simply a personification of an existential question–why does God allow bad things to happen to God people? Or, perhaps, what is the meaning of suffering?

That the angels present themselves to the Lord in the beginning of this text seems (to me, at least) to intimate some throwback to an earlier way of thinking, when Yahweh was viewed as a god in the pantheon of El rather than the supreme being God’s self, part of a “divine court” (in the monarchical sense of the term rather than the legal sense). If that is true (and I don’t have sufficient information to be sure), then: (1) it indicates an older origin for the Book of Job than when it was written down (already probable) and (2) it reinforces the idea that we should view the framework of Job as a mythological set-up for a theological investigation rather than a literal telling of what God did to Job (who himself, admittedly, probably never existed–but that’s not the point). This is all to say that the Book of Job only works as satisfying analysis of theodicy as allegory; taken literally, the Book of Job just makes a jerk of God.

I also want to point out the strangeness of Job’s reward at the end of the Book. Job’s old things are not restored to him; they are replaced. He is given a new family to compensate for the one taken from him, not given his formerly-living loved-ones back. This may have something to do with common afterlife beliefs (or a lack thereof) in the time that Job was originally created (or when it was recorded), but I have not done the research to make any useful comment on that, except to say that the history and nature of Jewish belief in an afterlife and/or resurrection is extremely complex, rich and varied, even today. It is well documented that the Sadducees in Jesus’s time appear not to have believed in an afterlife, but whether this could be fairly extended backward in time to the Book of Job is outside the realm of my own current scholarship.

It is tempting to read the Book of Job as concerning God’s sovereignty. After all, God’s appearance at the end of the text might be irreverently summed up as God asking Job, “Who the f*** are you to question me?” That line always brings a smile to my face, particularly when uncensored in teaching about this text. It certainly wakes up those who were drifting. Here’s a taste from the text itself:

“Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said: ‘Who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me. Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone–while the morning stars sand together and all the angels shouted for joy?'”

That question (whether or not using my paraphrase)–what authority or basis does Job have to question God–isn’t really about God’s sovereignty (though that follows later). Because of the mighty acts described, it’s tempting to think that God is comparing God’s power to Job’s, but a closer reading reveals that God is making the rhetorical point that Job lacks the comprehension and understanding necessary to make sense of the answer to Job’s question.

Early in the text, there is a strong focus on Job not sinning by what he says about God. In particular, I love the advice he gets from his wife: “Are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die!” (2:9). The implication is that, if Job says that God does not have the right to treat him as God has, that Job will be speaking a lie and defying God and thus be subject to divine punishment.

Job walks a fine line in his responses, one that is important for us to consider carefully. Repeatedly, Job calls God “Almighty.” He acknowledges God’s power directly (30:18) and God’s omnipotence (“Does he not see my ways and count my every step?” 31:4).

He says, “…how can mere mortals prove their innocence before God? Though they wished to dispute with him, they could not answer one time out of a thousand. His wisdom is profound, his power vast. Who has resisted him and come out unscathed?” (9:2b-4).

And, “How can I then dispute with him? How can I find words to argue with him? Though I were innocent, I could not answer him; I could only plead with my Judge for mercy. Even if I summoned him and he responded, I do not believe he would give me a hearing. He would crush me with a storm, and multiply my wounds for no reason. He would not let me catch my breath but would overwhelm me with misery. If it is a matter of strength, he is mighty! If it is a matter of justice, who can challenge him? Even if I were innocent, my mouth would condemn me; if I were blameless, it would pronounce me guilty” (9:14-20).

Throughout the Book, Job never questions God’s sovereignty. In fact, it is part of the basis of his desire to question God: because God has the power to do things differently, to choose not to afflict Job, Job can ask why God has chosen to do so as a moral question. He cannot oppose the answer, but he can ask why.

This in essence, gets right to the heart of–and then past–Divine Command Theory. Job’s position, essentially, is to acknowledge that no one can oppose the will of God and that God, as sovereign over all things, has the authority to establish what is and is not “righteous.” But this does not answer the question of whether God plays by God’s own rules or exempts God’s self from them.

The answer the Book of Job gives is a complex one. Job’s “friends” (Bildad, Zophar and Elihu) repeatedly reshift the blame back to Job or his family. Surely, Job’s suffering is the result of some secret sin he has committed and not confessed. But the narrator tells us that Job is “blameless,” Job repeats this assertion, and even God confirms it in the conclusion of the story, so the friends’ argument fails absolutely.

This kind of ad hominem attack to “save” God’s righteousness from human inquiry is still a common retort in questions of God’s morality–it is easy to blame the complainant’s own unrighteousness as the reason for his suffering. The best part about it: rejection of this argument requires the assertion (as Job makes) that one is without fault and absolutely righteous. For those of us who are not literary figures but actual people, this approach simply isn’t tenable.

But the ad hominem attack is as much a logical fallacy when made on God’s behalf as it is in any other circumstance. Even God decries its use, commanding at the end of the text tat the friends make sacrifices and ask for Job’s intercession with God for forgiveness for not “speaking the truth” about God.

So the Book develops this tensive relationship between fundamental ideas: no one has the authority to try to judge God, but God also rejects that God needs to be protected from moral scrutiny by humans. This is the first of the reasons that this series is titled “Morality and God’s Choice;” it seems that God has made God’s self available to moral questioning–or at least asking why–even though God has no duty to–and man has no authority to–do so.

This paradoxical relationship plays out in what I would call the two answers that God gives to Job in response to his questions. In the first answer, Chapters 38 and 39, God gives the answer I first described above–that Job lacks understanding sufficient to grasp why God allows the good to suffer. In the second answer, Chapters 40 and 41, God exerts God’s authority–the same authority Job’s been asserting throughout that makes God ultimately immune from the judgment of mortals.

But God’s words in Job are just part of the whole argument made by the Book’s writers. God’s rejection of the arguments of Job’s friends is an admission that bad things happen to good people–something experience readily confirms. This in and of itself sets up (or rather acknowledges) the complexity of the question of God’s morality–how do we parse out the morality of God allowing certain things to happen and when God actively wills certain things?

Here’s where the order of God’s two answers becomes important, because it changes the intent and meaning of God’s insistence on God’s authority from a rejection of questioning to a reassurance made to creation. When God begins by explaining that Job can’t understand the complexities of the moral questions he is asked, God finishes by explaining that God is, in fact, in control of all things and, therefore, Job’s faith that God is Good (the real reason he is blameless, I would argue) is well placed.

So, we can summarize the thrust of the argument in the Book of Job as asserting that God, ultimately, is both all-powerful and good. Not because God has to be good, but because God chooses to be. It may sometimes be difficult for us to see or understand that, but this is an important aspect of our faith in God, and a reason that Paul relates faith, hope and love so closely. Our faith in God is in–and borne out by–God’s love for us, without which we could have no existential hope.

I would argue that we see God personally rejecting divine command theory through the narrative of Job; that this twists the expectations set up by the literal reading of the story is, in my mind, ironic, poetic and funny.

As a conclusion, I’m going to repeat the ideas that will carry us forward in this series. First, God does not need to rely on God’s sovereignty to protect God’s self from moral questioning, because God is good by all measures and therefore needs no defense. Second, there is, impliedly at least, some righteousness in asking God why–so long as we accept the limits of our understanding. We see this not only in the allegory of Job, but also with Jacob wrestling with God. There is relationship here, an honest desire to be closer to (and or blessed by) God, and this presents a rival source of righteousness to blind and unquestioning obedience.

As we move onward, we’ll look at how we might see how God’s actual morality and justice, not just by fiat but by conscientious and loving Will in action, reveal themselves. We’ll look at what the Incarnation says about God’s morality. And we’ll look at what God’s choices mean for us in the way we consider the morality, justice and righteousness to which we are called in Christ.

Morality and God’s Choice, Part I: Divine Command Theory

February 7, 2019February 7, 2019faithfictionfatherhood 1 Comment

(This is the 7th of 17 posts in my self-imposed “200 for 200” challenge. Send your friends my way!)

In thinking about the conflict over sexuality in the United Methodist Church–and the impending General Conference later this month, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about morality in general. This is in great part because many conservatives within the Church have made the sexuality issue one of morality in that they say that they cannot be in fellowship with those who support the “immoral” practice of homosexuality.

With that background, I’m not actually interested in discussing (in this post, at least), the sexuality issues before the UMC–there’s plenty of discussion to be had on that topic, which I’ve written on in the past and will continue to do. Here, though, I’d like to talk more generally about morality.

The Source–and What Does That Mean?

Most Christians will tell you that God is the source of all morality. I would agree; if God is the Creator of all that is, then it necessarily follows that morality in any absolute sense flows from God and God’s creation. For many, though, that’s the end of the analysis–or rather, the analysis goes like this: all morality comes from God, the Bible is God’s word, therefore the Bible contains the black-and-white guidelines to all moral questions.

If only things were so simple! I’ll be talking about the interpretive issues in such an approach in much greater detail next week in a special post. For now, let’s combine a logical/philosophical approach with Scripture and see where that leads us.

I’ve written elsewhere a little about Divine Command Theory, the theory that underlies what I’ll call the “Simple Approach” to Christian morality. For convenience, the short definition of the Divine Command Theory is the idea that something is morally good if God commands it because God commanded it.

This is not really a statement of morality, though. It relies on the premise that the created has no right to question the Creator. That may be true, but it is a statement of power and authority one over the other, not one of morality.

Here is probably a good place for a quick break to talk about terminology. I’m going to have to use my own definitions to avoid the sort of circular logic I see in dictionary definitions of the terms that I’ll use. When speaking of “morality,” I mean those thoughts and actions that are “right” or “good”: for now let’s say that this means those thoughts and actions that are beneficial to others and not injurious (we’ll look at a more Biblical definition later). When speaking of “justice,” I’m going to use a common-sense definition of “equity and fairness.”

With this terminology, I’m going to ask a series of related questions:
(1) If morality comes from God, can God be moral?
(2) If the answer to (1) is “yes,” is God moral?
(3) If God is the source of morality, has morality become independent enough of God that humans could evaluate the morality of God’s action?
(4) If the answer to (3) is “yes,” what should our evaluation be?
(5) In light of the answers to the above, how do we determine what God has determined is moral and what is not moral?

Moral action requires free will–without the ability to choose one’s actions, there can be no praise or condemnation for actions taken, because the actor could not have done differently. With this in mind, going to offer two possibilities that comport with Divine Command Theory:

Divine Command Theory, Option 1 – Morality is Mandatory
In this possibility, we accept that Divine Command Theory is an existential truth, a law of reality that simply is, whether God wills it or not.

This approach is on its face unacceptable, for two reasons. The first is the logical necessity of will and causation in moral culpability. In this formulation, God’s action by necessity is moral; there is no possibility of immoral action. This removes any meaning of the word “morality” from God’s action–the terms simply stops making logical sense because there is no alternative and therefore there can be no distinction between moral and immoral.

The second is that such a statement undermines God’s sovereignty (the whole point of the Divine Command Theory in the first place). If God cannot act in a way that is immoral, than God is not impassible and some external force has a power over God, which seriously injures the commonly-accepted idea that the definition of God in the monotheistic sense implies that there is no higher power. Certainly, in the usual Christian understanding, such an admission is extremely problematic.

To be fair, though, I don’t think that the above is the intent of anyone making an argument for Divine Command Theory, so let’s dismiss this out of hand.

Divine Command Theory, Option 2 – Essential Nature
We might be able to salvage the argument made in Option 1 if, instead of saying that Divine Command Theory is a truth of reality that stands above God, we argue that Divine Command Theory is true because morality is simply part of the essential nature of God, therefore it follows that everything that God does is moral and the Theory holds.

Ultimately, though, we are faced with the same dilemma. If God is unable to self-determine whether or not God is moral, we have problem with God’s sovereignty. This is a distinction without a difference from Option 1–we’ve simply moved the mandatory nature of Divine Command Theory from the external to the internal. But, in either place, the claim that Divine Command Theory is inherently true raises the same challenge to God’s sovereignty by placing some restriction on the free and unfettered will of God to determine reality, internal or external.

Divine Command Theory, Option 3 – God is in Control
Under this formulation, Divine Command Theory is a result of God’s choice to create in such a way that Divine Command Theory is a fact of reality. This preserves God’s sovereignty in that it is the will of God that determines the existential fact of Divine Command Theory.

On its face, this option is logically consistent; it allows Divine Command Theory to be true while maintaining God’s sovereignty and God’s place as the arbiter of morality. For these reasons, if we rely solely upon our philosophical approach, we must admit the possibility that Divine Command Theory is true under this statement of it.

But there are consequences (as always). If this statement of Divine Command Theory is true, what does it say about the character and nature of God? Under this formulation, God has chosen amorality for God’s self. God would be amoral because it would be logically inconsistent to say that God acted or commanded immorally if it is necessarily true that God’s action or command is moral. Without a choice between the moral and the immoral, there cannot be a determination of morality because there are is no meaningful difference or alternative. As we stated above, it is the use of the will to choose between alternatives that makes moral responsibility possible.

The only choice between alternatives that God could be said to have made under this ideology is that God chose arbitrarily to be counted as moral. This choice is not so much a choice about moral action but a choice to be unaccountable to anyone (or anything) for moral judgment. God would stand above any concept of morality.

Again, there is no logical problem with such a reality, but there are some practical and Scriptural problems.

In general, the Christian understanding of God includes an acknowledgment that God is good. It is tempting here to use John 3:16 as a Scriptural support for this idea. For now, though, I’m going to play devil’s advocate and temper that understanding by reference to Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew 5:44-46, Jesus calls for his followers to love not just those who love them (which even the tax collectors do!) but to love their enemies. For Jesus, love alone is not the factor that determines morality–the choice to love those who may be difficult to love is a sign of morality.

That passage in Matthew in and of itself provides some basis for a Biblical definition of morality. In the last sentence of Chapter 5, Jesus tells us to “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Sidestepping any trinitarian dilemmas there, is that a meaningful statement if we are to understand that God has chosen to be above any human concept of morality?

Likewise, what do we do with Jesus’ statement in Luke 18:19 that “No one is good–except God alone.” Admittedly, that statement could be true under the Divine Command Theory, because God could have decided that God is “moral” and no created thing is (because, of course, no created thing is God) in establishing DCT as a fact of reality. But think about what it says about the nature of God if that’s the way we read the statement. It becomes a reminder only of God’s sovereignty, empty of the hope that lies in a knowledge of God’s goodness.

To take a broader approach, can Divine Command Theory co-exist with most (perhaps all) of our theories of atonement in Christ? If as we trinitarians believe, Jesus Christ is God, and if God is necessarily moral and unable to be questioned on a moral basis by humans, do Jesus’ deeds really count for much as a poultice for the many misdeeds of humanity? If Jesus was incapable of immorality (whether by necessity or by will exercised at the time of Creation), could Jesus be the resolution of Adam’s Fall?

If God so ordered all Creation such that God could never be immoral, would God be just? From a standpoint of pure power, the answer is “yes,” because no created being has the power to question God. But, from a human perspective (insufficient for a real determination of reality as that is) would God’s judgment of the created be just when God refuses to allow judgment of God’s action by the created?

I have referenced elsewhere the following quotation from Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, but it bears repeating here. The character Alexander Chung-Sik Finkle-McGraw says:

“For, you see, even if there is no right and wrong, you can find grounds to criticise another person by contrasting what he has espoused with what he has actually done. In this case, you are not making any judgment whatsoever as to the correctness of his views or the morality of his behaviour–you are merely pointing out that he has said one thing and done another. ”

Finkle-McGraw goes on to state that that’s not a terribly fair approach to apply to humans, who might earnestly believe the values they espouse but prove through human frailty to fail to meet their own values in their actions. For God, though, there is no such caveat. Regardless of the question of God’s morality, if God were to issue a moral command to humanity that God refused to follow God’s self, there would be an argument against God’s justice there. And we return to the point here, I think: if God chooses to be morally unquestionable by the created, then God has prioritized power and authority over goodness. God would be entitled to do such a thing (how could we resist it?), but is that the God of the Gospels? That’s a question we’ll try to answer in this series.

In the next post, we’ll take a look at Job and God’s response to just this situation–being questioned by the created.