A Confusion of Analogies

A quick thought I had on another argument I hear Christians use against evolution. It goes something like: "Just as Christians believe Jesus was raised from the dead, which contradicts the laws of science, so we shouldn't let the scientific claims of evolution get us to give up our belief in a created world. ("Created" here meaning by some means other than evolution) In other words, if we're willing to believe in one unscientific miracle, why not another? Those Christian evolution-believers are being selective in how they hold God's word above science!

I'd like to point something out: I think this argument is comparing apples and oranges. We have specific evidence that Jesus rose from the dead, both from scripture and circumstantially from extrabiblical sources (Jewish/Romans historians mentioning that Jesus' followers believed He rose from the dead). However, there is no comparable evidence that Jesus did not rise from the dead. Skeptics who dispute this point don't marshal their own counterevidence; they try to show why the evidence Christians use to draw their conclusion is insufficient. What the belief in the resurrection is contradicting is not specific counterevidence, it is the generally observed principle that dead people don't come back to life.

Now compare the case of evolution. In this case, we have evidence in the fossil record that, while less unambiguous than the historical evidence that Jesus rose, still accommodates evolution as the best scientific theory we currently have to explain it. What more literal readers of Genesis are doing is not providing a better scientific theory to explain the evidence; they are trying to show why the evidence evolutionists use to draw their conclusion is insufficient. What the belief in evolution is contradicting is not specific counterevidence; it is the generally assumed principle that the Bible should be read as literally/historically true.

Sound familiar?

So I don't think the parallel in this argument goes the way its proponents would like it to. The analogy to be drawn is not God's word trumping the claims of this world (which, as I have argued in my first post on the Fall, is not a healthy view of truth). Instead, it is new evidence trumping a preexisting, inductively drawn theory that is better treated as descriptive than prescriptive. The laws of science are descriptive by nature; we can use them to try to look for patterns and make predictions, but if new observations don't match the predictions, we don't say, "the observations must be mistaken because they contradict the law"--no, we change the law to explain the new observation. Likewise, the literal/historical method for reading scripture is not given to us as a prescriptive law that all of scripture is supposed to comply with, and applying it prescriptively to disregard things is a mistake.

Two Responses on the Historicity of Adam

Because of the high value I place on originality in my posts, I try to avoid writing direct responses to other articles, but this one on Justin Taylor's blog caught my eye. It critiques the view advanced by Peter Enns, Denis Lamoreux, and others that, in light of what we know about evolution, it's reasonable to conclude that Adam was not a historical person. There has, of course, been considerable pushback from evangelicals on this point, and Taylor himself links to two other articles which I'll address here.

Adam versus Claims from Genetics, by Vern Poythress

This fairly academic paper examines the claim that "voluminous data about the information contained in human DNA...demonstrates our ape ancestry." It seems to do a fairly faithful job of reporting scientific evidence brought to bear in support of evolution; unfortunately, it restricts itself to a tiny subset of the evidence: the resemblance of much of the human and chimpanzee genomes (he devotes a few pages to showing why this evidence can be misleading). Obviously there is much, much more that could be said for evolution than this point, but Poythress doesn't mention it.

He makes the excellent point that the raw data supporting evolutionary theory says nothing about any purpose behind it or the lack thereof; i.e. that evolution being true doesn't mean it's random and unguided as Dawkins and other secularists would say, and that God could have used it as a means to create. He then proceeds to ignore this point for the rest of the paper (at least for human origins) as he conflates Darwinism, gradualism, and evolution into one fuzzy package that is supposed to be opposed to good Biblical hermeneutics. (See the very title of the paper, which sets doctrine and science on opposing sides) He treats "gradualism" as the claim that God is somehow bound to natural laws and could only have created life via gradual processes, which he then proceeds to rebuke by demonstrating that God could have created Adam and Eve specially. Since I doubt any Christian holding to evolutionary creationism would consider God to be subject to the law of natural selection, this isn't very helpful.

Poythress explains that there are two ways to interpret the human-chimpanzee genome evidence: "Darwinism, with its purposelessness and gradualism" or a Christian framework. We see that he doesn't consider any separation between the domains of science and religion; theology can and should be used to interpret scientific data, not just results: "We cannot presume to say just how he did it without looking both at the data and whatever we have come to know about God." By this reasoning, theological reasoning should be brought to bear to control the interpretation of any evidence that could lead one away from sound doctrine. Having "science" in the name of my degree, I would argue that theology should affect scientific reasoning through basic, Christlike values like honesty, integrity, and fair-mindedness, not by steering our reasoning process to support preexisting theological conclusions.

Poythress goes into some other arguments about Jesus turning water into wine and population bottlenecks, but they all fall under the common head of establishing that, no matter the evidence, an original human pair could have existed at some point. (Which could be earlier than 4004 BC due to gaps in the genealogies) The implied conclusion, then, is that a faithful reading of scripture is enough to establish that they did exist: "If we receive the Bible’s instruction, we must be cautious about such assumptions." ("That the past is like the present, and that the rates of mutation and other genetic processes remain the same") He seems to be saying that we can trust our God-given intellect and intuition in the realm of science to the glory of God, until we start moving toward conclusions that cast doubt on our theology at which point even the most basic assumptions (like the regularity of nature) are no longer sound.

Overall, this paper assumes what I consider to be a rather unhealthy view towards scientific knowledge, as I have attempted to demonstrate above. It exploits whatever wiggle room there is in current conclusions to clear a place for its interpretation of scripture as it pertains to history, even if the evidence seems to be leading in a different direction. A quote towards the end worries me: "What looked like firm conclusions in the excitement at an early stage may be modified later. We need patience to assess the research." In other words, there is still plenty room for authentic Christian belief (in a historical Adam) in the uncertainty of the present scientific conclusions--a restatement of the "God of the gaps" view that proposes God as the explanation for what we don't know about the universe, rather than what we do know. The tricky thing about scientific gaps is that they close.

What Depends on an Historical Adam, by Steven Wedgeworth

This article incisively states the theological problem with evolution I observed a few months ago, namely that it casts doubt on our means of explaining sin and death, and even somewhat implies that God created death. Even more than Polythress above, Wedgeworth gets at the incompatibility between evolution and Christian belief in a historical Adam and original sin. he goes directly after the claims of Peter Enns in particular.

He uses several of the same tactics I disagreed with Polythress on (check the context if you like), such as conflating the scientific theory evolution with the secular worldview of "Darwinism":

The reason that evangelicals are losing the historical Adam are several, but they all reduce down to the dominance of the Darwinistic evolutionary theory, both in the academies and in the media.  

Or only allowing other scripture to be used as a reason for interpreting Genesis nonliterally (that is, the literal-historical hemeneutic is the "default" for faithful interpretation), and assuming that the only alternative to Genesis being historically true is its authors simply being wrong:

It is clear that only Biblical exegesis remains in the dock. Indeed, what we are seeing in theological circles is a new refusal to exegete at all. Instead of demonstrating the ways in which the rest of the Bible supports a figurative or mythical reading of Genesis, we are told that it doesn’t matter if even the Old and New Testament writers were mistaken.

His main argument, though, is somewhat more fundamental than Polythress': if we deny the historicity of Adam, we also deny the historicity of the Bible in general and the Gospel. Paul uses Adam as the counterpart to Jesus in Romans 5:12-19, and if the historicity of Adam is lost, then Jesus' work loses its meaning:

If the first Adam was mythical, then the nature and work of the Second Adam, precisely as Second Adam, would have to be mythical as well. This does not mean that the Judaean man whom Paul identified as the Second Adam was himself a myth, nor that his life did not unfold in real history. Rather it would mean that his redemptive identity, along with the nature of what He said was his work, was merely mythical, not an objective event with objective effects. He would have been seeking to fulfill a myth.

After mentioning Peter Enns almost as a kind of theological boogeyman at the beginning of the article, Wedgeworth never mentions him again or shows evidence of having read his book The Evolution of Adam, which devotes an entire chapter to the question, "What do we do with Romans 5:12-19?" Besides ignoring all of the arguments (both intra- and extrabiblical) that Enns uses to make his case, this also means he ignores Enns' response that, in far fewer words, Paul understands Adam as distant history and Jesus' as resurrection as a current event that had become central to his understanding of everything--that is, Paul is interpreting the Genesis account in light of the present reality of the death and resurrection of Christ, not the other way around. And not just interpreting, but reinterpreting (the OT and Jesus themselves significantly make no mention of Adam as the root of the human predicament).

He shows just how much doctrine evangelicalism has staked on its reading of Genesis 1-3 (emphasis added on the last sentence):

If Adam was not a historical individual, and if instead the Genesis account is a sort of mythical story which was employed in order to make a uniquely religious point, then Christianity is necessarily rendered merely metaphorical, expressing truths of the human condition through symbols. The Bible in this case is no longer an authoritative account of human origins, history, and final destiny. It no longer addresses all men in all places and times, but rather expresses one faith-narrative the seeks to convey a meaningful but wholly internal truth.
Put more simply: if Adam is mythical, then so is redemption. While it does not follow that if Adam is mythical, then the historicity of Jesus must also be denied, it does follow that if Adam is mythical, then the historicity of Jesus as Second Adam must be denied. And Christianity is founded on Jesus as Second Adam.

Apparently the only reason to believe in the historicity of Jesus is the historicity of Adam (nevermind the fact that there is actual historical evidence for the existence and ministry of Jesus): "The progressive evangelicals certainly believe in the historical Jesus. But apart from an earlier historical Adam, they have no coherent need to." I'd like to defer to N.T. Wright who provides an excellent explanation (which I've already linked to) about how the significance of Genesis 2 and 3 can be independent of its historicity. And not just the core of the gospel, but the very fabric of religious truth itself, and reality with it:

What exactly does this reimagining accomplish? The none-too-insignificant answer is that it changes our narrative of reality altogether. The Scriptures, and our religion, no longer tell a story about the structure of reality, but rather only of a particular subset of experience within it. In short, this retelling and reimaging also accomplishes a significant privatization of religious truth.

His interpretation of Romans 8: 20-25 is also interesting:

For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance.

To which Wedgeworth says, "Sin is not only an internal and personal problem for the Apostle Paul. It is an ontological issue, affecting the very creation itself, the entire cosmos. Because of Adam’s sin, 'the creation was subjected to futility.'" He seems to be interpreting "him who subjected it in hope" here as Adam, not God; this is unbelievable to me. I have already tried to show how interpreting God as "him who subjected it" not only allows Christians to accept evolution, but results in a better hope and a better picture of God (which I am still working out) than the "Adam broke everything" narrative (which, again, begs the question of how on earth Adam's sin could have had such far-reaching consequences as changing the tectonic structure of the earth, creating disease, and apparently planting a bunch of old dead things in the ground that couldn't have died before?).

With all of that being as it may, Wedgeworth's article really falls short in that it doesn't address the view of evolutionary creation by looking at its chain of reasoning, pointing out weak points, and offering superior interpretations of the evidence it uses. (Which is exactly what I tried to do with the Fall narrative in my two-part post on it) Instead, it argues against it based on the perceived consequences of its being true, using an argument that is based on fear--fear of incorrect doctrine. (Which I no longer think is a good idea for Christians to follow) He says, "In light of what we already know, this can't possibly be true" rather than asking "This looks like it might be true; what would that mean?" Rather than dissecting the viewpoint of evolutionary creation, he fights it based on what lies at the bottom of the slippery slope of Biblical interpretation: the denial of the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. The tricky thing about slippery slopes is that they're rarely as slippery as you'd like.

The heart of the matter?

I'll say one more thing about an interesting quote by (of all sources for a Calvinist website) Pope Pius XII (emphasis added):

14. In theology some want to reduce to a minimum the meaning of dogmas; and to free dogma itself from terminology long established in the Church and from philosophical concepts held by Catholic teachers, to bring about a return in the explanation of Catholic doctrine to the way of speaking used in Holy Scripture and by the Fathers of the Church. They cherish the hope that when dogma is stripped of the elements which they hold to be extrinsic to divine revelation, it will compare advantageously with the dogmatic opinions of those who are separated from the unity of the Church and that in this way they will gradually arrive at a mutual assimilation of Catholic dogma with the tenets of the dissidents.
15. Moreover, they assert that when Catholic doctrine has been reduced to this condition, a way will be found to satisfy modern needs, that will permit of dogma being expressed also by the concepts of modern philosophy, whether of immanentism or idealism or existentialism or any other system. Some more audacious affirm that this can and must be done, because they hold that the mysteries of faith are never expressed by truly adequate concepts but only by approximate and ever changeable notions, in which the truth is to some extent expressed, but is necessarily distorted. Wherefore they do not consider it absurd, but altogether necessary, that theology should substitute new concepts in place of the old ones in keeping with the various philosophies which in the course of time it uses as its instruments, so that it should give human expression to divine truths in various ways which are even somewhat opposed, but still equivalent, as they say. They add that the history of dogmas consists in the reporting of the various forms in which revealed truth has been clothed, forms that have succeeded one another in accordance with the different teachings and opinions that have arisen over the course of the centuries.

Wedgeworth comments: "Pius’s concerns about viewing dogma as the reporting of mere forms or as intellectual clothings which only exist over and around the true reality is precisely the problem we are dealing with today." He seems to be saying, at least implicitly, that Biblical doctrine is absolutely true and not clothed in any particular intellectual or philosophical context. This is interesting because I directly and completely disagree with it. In any disagreement, I strive to understand exactly where the two parties diverge, which may be hidden under multiple layers of inference and rhetoric, and I suspect that in this case the above statement may be it.

So I'd be interested to hear other peoples' thoughts on this question, which has more than two answers--basically, how contextualized the truth in the Bible is. In the case of human origins or in general, what are the "elements [that are] extrinsic to divine revelation"--where does the human side of scripture end and the divine begin? Or, to push Enns' incarnational analogy to its logical conclusion, is scripture somehow 100% human and 100% divine? This is a fascinating question that I'll have to explore more in future posts.

As I said at the beginning, directly critiquing the work of anyone, let alone two men with several times as many years of life and degrees than me, gives me the heebie-jeebies--even if there is realistically no chance of their ever reading this post unless it is the one that finally breaks me into the Christian blagosphere. All I ask, faithful reader, is that you consider our words and not our credentials. I pray that these responses were not written out of selfish ambition or a disdain for those I disagree with, but of love for the truth. A healthier faith is one that encompasses and transforms more of our experience, and so we should seek a view of creation that explains our external knowledge instead of pushing it aside.

Denis Lamoureux: I Love Jesus & I Accept Evolution

I try to avoid posts that simply link to other peoples' work, but I was listening to a series of slideshows by Denis Lamoureux, a professor with doctoral degrees in theology, biology, and (logically enough) dentistry and a proponent of the "evolutionary creation" interpretation of Genesis that offers a way of harmonizing modern science with the Biblical account of creation. The slideshows summarize his book I Love Jesus & I Accept Evolution and do a much better job of explaining how this can be than I can (or even Peter Enns). So far he has done four of these concisely narrated presentations, and I stay updated on them via Peter Enns' blog.

Chapters 1 and 2: Lamoreux explains why the perceived conflict between evolution/"science" and religion/faith is an illusion and presents the alternative of evolutionary creationism (or teleological evolution), which embraces both science and faith.

Chapter 3: Lamoreux explains the hermeneutical principle he is applying to Genesis, which he calls the "message-incident principle". This means separating out the inerrant, unchanging kernal of truth in the Bible from the incidental, contextualized means used to deliver that truth, which may incorporate (or "accommodate") ancient ideas of cosmology and biology that are now known to be false. In other words, he believes that the Bible must speak theological, but not scientific truth, in contrast to inerrancy which believes it must speak both.

He gives some good examples of passages in which this principle must be applied:

1. Jesus' mustard seed parable (Mark 4:30-32), where Jesus' statement that the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds has since been proven false by the orchid.
2. Ecclesiastes 1:5, which is not simply a poetic way of expressing a modern understanding of the solar system but presupposes a stationary earth around which the sun revolves.
3. The second and fourth days of creation in Genesis 1, where God creates the sky as a solid dome (the "firmament") and places the sun, moon, and stars on it.
4. Or Philippians 2:10, where "under the earth" is better understood as a reference to Hades, the Greek underworld.

In all of these examples the theological message has to be separated from the incidental way in which it is delivered, which was originally thought to be true is now known to be false. He then raises the question of whether the creation narrative of Genesis 1-2 falls into the same category.

His mantra here is to "separate, don't conflate" the message and the incident. This approach recognizes the Bible's dual role as the word of God and the word of human authors. You may object, "Jesus and the apostles took the Bible more seriously than this and interpreted it literally, and so should we." But as I've already pointed out, Jesus and Paul both use hermeneutical tricks that would get them laughed out of the room today. It seems "taking the Bible seriously" is itself culturally contextualized. The message-incident principle is, of course, not found in the Bible because it wasn't necessary for anyone in the Bible to apply it to messages already contextualized to their own culture. What we have in common with Jesus and Paul is a need to read scripture faithfully, but also as relevant to our present context and in harmony with what we believe about the world at large.

Supplement to Chapter 4: An interesting tangent in which Lamoreux discusses the theory that the creation and flood accounts are the combined work of two different authors.

Chapter 4: Lamoreux points out the numerous stylistic and factual differences between Genesis 1 and 2 (e.g. different names for and depiction of God, different literary style, different order of creation of man, woman, and land animals/birds), which the two-account theory from last time explains. He compellingly argues for the understanding of Genesis 1's seven-day structure as a literary framework for an ancient conception of origins, not as scientific or historical fact. He then applies his "message-incident principle" to the Genesis creation account to separate out the truths a modern audience can still glean from it from its ancient science that we now know to be false.

With New Eyes

Well, I've finally succumbed to the inevitable and acquired a Greek New Testament (three, actually). I just got several more Greek resources today and should be starting my Greek classes this month. I'm terribly excited to learn the language and get that much closer to reading the New Testament as it was originally written.

I've already started reading the book of John and discovered some other, unexpected benefits to reading it in another language. Amazingly, I can understand it pretty well due to picking up the alphabet from majoring in math, learning words from English roots and word studies, and having the ESV translation in parallel. But whereas I'm an extremely fast English reader, not having studied Greek I read at about the painstakingly slow rate of a first-grader. But in the Greek, new things keep jumping at me from the text; sometimes in John I feel like I'm meeting Jesus for the first time at 23. I never knew how much I was missing reading the Bible in English until I stopped.

One chapter that made a big impression on me in Greek was the story of Jesus healing the man born blind (τυφλος) in chapter 9. Jesus approaches this man and his disciples ask if his blindness is due to his sin or his parents'. (After all, everything that's wrong in the world is because of sin, right?) Jesus rebukes them and explained he is blind so that "the works of God might be displayed in him." He then performs a rather strange miracle involving making mud with spit and washing the man's eyes with it before telling him to wash in the Pool of Siloam, where he is cured of his blindness.

Then people who know him ask him what happened and, when he explains himself, he is brought to the Pharisees. They immediately use the fact that Jesus healed him on the Sabbath to discredit him and refuse to believe his testimony that Jesus is from God, despite His miracle. Finally, Jesus reveals Himself as the Son of Man to the man and he believes; Jesus ends with the cryptic line, "For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind."

Like I said, when I read this story in Greek, it forced me to slow way, way down and savor every verse (even every word) until I started noticing all kinds of things I'd always glossed over before. I was struck by how the Pharisees discredit the man and refuse to listen to him they have already made up their minds that Jesus is a "sinner" (meaning He doesn't conform to their strict interpretation of the Law) and can't possibly be from God for this reason.

Now, of course Christian teachers frequently look at the Pharisees as an example of what not to do--they are consummate legalists, they care more about the fact that Jesus healed the man on the Sabbath than that He healed him of blindness, they have replaced the law of God with manmade laws that only they can live up to  so they can look down on everyone else as "sinners", they are so pridefully focused on their own moralistic performance that they are blind to the works of God through Jesus among them, and so on.

But by only looking at the Pharisees along the works-versus-faith dimension, we miss something of crucial importance. We think that because we do follow Jesus and are justified by faith instead of trying to be justified by works as they did, that we've learned our lesson from them, when often we haven't. In fact, when we think such things, we are looking down on the Pharisees for being legalists just as they looked down on people for being "sinners". That was what made an impact on me in the Greek: how totally analogous the two situations are.

How often do we pray (or at least think) like the Pharisee in 18:11, "God, I thank you that I am not like other people--Pharisees, legalists, or the self-righteous." If we focus in on the Pharisees' legalism, we can totally miss the wider and more serious issue of their pride. Justification by faith instead of by works is no sure protection against boasting, as I often hear Calvinists saying or implying. It is possible to fully believe that you are justified entirely by faith apart from anything you have done and still be a proud, self-righteous prick--if, like the Pharisees, you divide people up into "us" and "them" categories by standing before God, whether "them" means "legalists", "the unsaved", or something else. It's ugly when Christians treat nonbelievers like this, using their sin as an excuse to discard their objections or specific situation and plow their gospel presentation straight through their defenses. It's even worse when Christians treat other Christians like this over theological disputes.

Jesus' final exchange with the man is interesting:

Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.”
Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things, and said to him, “Are we also blind?”
Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains.

The word Jesus uses for "guilt" is αμαρτιαν ("hamartia"), which is normally translated as "sin". (You can imagine why translating it this way might cause theological problems) I think what Jesus is saying is that, by claiming to be able to see (that is, claiming spiritual insight or moral authority), the Pharisees have in fact blinded themselves to who Jesus is--in contrast to the man born blind, who took Jesus at His word and can now see Him with his eyes and as the Son of God. If we come to Jesus seeing, we are blinded to the glory of who He is, but if we come to Him blind, he opens our eyes to see Him.

Let me try to apply this chapter as incisively as I can:

• Is there anyone you look down on--for personal, cultural, or theological reasons?
• Is there someone (or a group of people) that you disagree with but think you don't have to listen to or consider for some reason? (Maybe because they're "wrong" and you're "right")
• Do you claim to have spiritual "sight"? If so, does this responsibility terrify and humble you as it should?

Evil, suffering, and all that fun stuff

My friend and ministry partner Mike asked me a few weeks ago to do a post on the "problem of evil", one of the most common objections raised to Christianity. It goes something along the lines of, "How can a Good, all-powerful, all-knowing God allow such evil and suffering to happen in the world? It's a question raised by sincere believers, wavering doubters, and hardened skeptics alike, a question with which every theistic belief system since time immemorial has had to wrestle with. In the wake of the recent Boston Marathon bombing, I thought to myself, "Now is the perfect time to get working on this post, to try in my own way to make some sense of this tragedy". Then I soberly reminded myself: in this fallen world, it's always the "perfect time" to think about the problem of evil.

In this post I will, unsurprisingly, be looking at evil from a Christian standpoint. A bit more rigorously, the objection can be stated as the impossibility of reconciling the following three seemingly paradoxical premises:

1. God is good and loves/cares for people.
2. God is all-powerful, able to stop evil and suffering.
3. Evil and suffering exist.

Wrong Ways

Before starting my investigation, I'm going to start with some examples of how not to answer the problem of evil.

• Deny the first premise; God is not really good or doesn't really love/care for us. If you do this, you have thrown anything recognizable as Christianity out with the bathwater. This may seem obvious, but the classically Calvinistic response that "We all justly deserve eternal torment in Hell anyway, so anything better that we receive is really an expression mercy" flirts with this possibility. Or, alternately, the extreme voluntaristic view that anything God does (including inflicting suffering) is automatically good and praiseworthy because He's God. Anyone who espouses this view has probably never tried to tell someone who is truly in grief that their situation is really proof of God's love. If we try to look at suffering as mercy because it's "better than we deserve", the term "mercy" becomes meaningless to us.
• Deny the second premise; God is not really able to stop evil and suffering. This option is not as popular and, like the first, if accepted it does not point to a God worthy of our worship. The philosophical "free will defense" espoused by Plantinga and others is related to this, arguing that it is possible that God logically could not have created creatures with free will who never sin. Not only does this argument offer no comfort for anyone who is actually suffering, it also dangerously implies that we will either continue sinning or forfeit our free will in the paradise promised us in Revelation.
• Deny the third premise and assert that evil and suffering don't really exist. For obvious reasons, this option is untenable for anyone not living under a rock.
• Sidestep the question altogether by parrying it into an argument for the existence of God by arguing that the existence of evil points to the existence of a perfectly Good standard of morality. Notice how this doesn't answer the question at all.

There are two "right" ways to answer the problem of evil--the philosophical way, and the pastoral way. Answering the problem of evil on philosophical terms is (relatively) easy; the pastoral answer I can only blindly guess at here.

Philosophical Answer

The productive ways I have seen of answering the problem of evil all generally take aim at its implicit assumption that God being "good" or "loving" means that He must prevent evil or suffering--or more generally, that He exists for the sake of our comfort and our interests. (Which is really selfish when you look at it closely) In other words, people smuggle into the first premise an external or preexisting definition of "good" or "loving" and then expect God to conform to it. Seeing that He does not, they conclude that it's illogical to believe in a good or loving God.

But being a faithful Christian means believing that God is love and that no one is good except God alone. It means laying aside our preconceived notions of "good" or "loving" and looking to God, and especially to Christ, for their definitions. Instead of expecting God to conform to our standard of goodness, it means earnestly seeking to conform to His standard of goodness. It means accepting that God is good and then asking the critical question, "How is God good in the midst of suffering?" People have spent their entire lives trying to answer this question. But the first step is believing that an answer exists.

C.S. Lewis has a lot to say about this question. The apparent meaninglessness of life and the uncaring nature of the universe were the main reasons for his atheism before his conversion, and afterward he wrote The Problem of Pain about what he had learned. In this book he looks at what we mean by "good" or "loving" and how God can be these things even while allowing suffering. He says about the problem of evil (emphasis added):

The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves, is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word 'love', and look on things as if man were the centre of them. Man is not the centre. God does not exist for the sake of man. Man does not exist for his own sake. 'Thou hast created all things, and for they pleasure they were and are created.' [Revelation 4:11] We were made not primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us, that we may become objects in which the Divine love may rest 'well pleased'. To ask that God's love should be content with us as we are is to ask that God should cease to be God: because He is what He is, His love must, in the nature of things, be impeded and repelled by certain stains in our present character, and because He already loves us He must labour to make us lovable.

In other words, to state that God's love for us is incompatible with human suffering is to misunderstand the nature of God's love for us. God's love does not consist in simply leaving us as we are and making us as comfortable and free from pain as possible there. God wants us to be truly happy--and, being wiser than we, He knows that the only way that this can happen is by our loving Him, the source of everything good.

When a rich father dotes upon his child, giving him everything he asks for no matter how trivial or unhealthy and satisfying his every desire, do we think this is the greatest expression of love a father can have for his child? Of course not; the child is "spoiled", and unless he keeps getting spoiled he's going to have a rough time growing up and adjusting to life in the "real" world. What the spoiled child wants, or thinks he needs, is not what he actually needs. Given how often in scripture God's love for us is analogized as a father's love for his children, it's important to see how this truth has parallels with God. Is it possible that just as a responsible parent knows his child's needs better than the child, God knows our needs better than we do--well enough to know that they can't be met within a painless life?

The Christian doctrine is this: greater communion with God Himself is the greatest need of humans, but left to their own devices, no one will seek Him out but will instead reject Him; we call this tendency sin. So in order to truly love us, according to His definition of love, God needs to change our hearts and desires, to reorient them from innumerable lesser pleasures to Himself; it is the only way for us to be truly happy. He makes no guarantees that this process (called sanctification) will be pleasant. In fact, in my own experience pain is a necessary part of growing closer to God. I've found that I never care less about God than when everything in my life is running smoothly. Living a carefree life full of earthly comforts and no need for God is like eating a diet of candy; it feels good in the short run, but ultimately leaves us hungrier than before. In this metaphor, God is the wise parent who we're eventually glad made us eat our vegetables.

In a better-known quote, C.S. Lewis says that "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world."  Sometimes pain is the only way God has of getting through to apathetic or hostile souls and reshaping them into something lovable. He continues: "No doubt Pain as God's megaphone is a terrible instrument; it may lead to final and unrepented rebellion. But it gives the only opportunity the bad man can have for amendment. It removes the veil; it plants the flag of truth within the fortress of a rebel soul."

The conclusion of my post series on the Fall, which I wrote while this post was on hold, turns out to be very relevant here. I concluded that "the road to glory in Christ is paved with suffering". In other words, just as Jesus achieved His greatest glory through suffering on the cross, so Christians should expect to come to know Christ and share in His glory by first sharing in His sufferings. You might object that this isn't fair to non-Christians, whose suffering would then seem to profit them nothing. But this isn't God's fault; from His perspective, pain is an invitation to be adopted as sons and daughters and begin the process of soul-refining that it makes possible. And be honest--if only Christians suffered, no one would ever want to be one and God's desire for humanity would be entirely frustrated. Suffering can be thought of as one way God knocks for us (Revelation 3:20), inviting us to an existence infinitely greater than the jealous pursuit of mere comfort.

Free Will

I will say something about the importance of free will here. Unlike Alvin Plantinga, I do believe that God "could" have made humans sinless, but with free will, but I know better than to question why He didn't, and instead set things up so that our greatest good is so often achieved through suffering. The whole "free will defense", the argument that in our present reality God couldn't stop evil without stepping on peoples' wills, is not comprehensive. Yes, it directly applies to acts of malicious evil like bombings or mass shootings, but not  to natural disasters, disease, animal attacks, or accidents.

But free will applies in another way to these instances of suffering. We ask, say, "Why does God allow millions of children to starve in Africa?", while missing another question that begs to be asked: "Why do we?" America alone easily has enough money to end world hunger or many other common causes of suffering. This isn't meant to make anyone feel guilty--of course no one person should expect to be able to make such a difference, unless you're a billionaire--but it does speak to people who see things like world hunger simply as evidence that God is heartless.

As I argued in the ending of my series on God's providence, God seems to have (unwisely?) delegated some of His sovereignty and work in the world to us, the church. This is what I mean by it being a scary level of responsibility: on some lower, immediate level, it is up to us to decide whether God (or rather, His body the church) is loving or heartless. This should make us think twice before questioning whether God cares about human suffering, because often we condemn ourselves in the asking.

Pastoral Answer

If you have voiced the problem of evil not merely as a philosophical objection or reason not to believe but as a heartfelt cry to a God you worry doesn't really care, the material in the previous sections may have been interesting, but I don't expect it helped much. Believing the general principle that God can and does use suffering to bring lost souls to Himself is little comfort in specific instances of suffering. In fact, I'm not sure there is a blanket "pastoral answer" to all suffering that makes everyone who hears it automatically feel loved and comforted. Fortunately, the Bible is much, much more than a philosophical foundation for belief; it contains many examples of people enduring suffering before God and their reactions, which can and do still comfort people today.

Planful Suffering

One "right" way to respond to suffering is to try to personalize the philosophical answers about it or make them relevant to the sufferer; the classic response that "God has a plan" is an archetypal example of this. There is no "one size fits all" response that is guaranteed to speak to a specific situation. Some other possible ways this response may be phrased are:

• "God is in control" (again appealing to the present situation being part of His plan in some hidden way, Romans 8:28)
• "God never wastes pain" (expressing hope that God will make something positive out of the situation, as in 2 Corinthians 1:4)

Of course, true as these things may be, it's rarely a comfort to know God has a plan without some idea of how this plan may involve ____, and without this explanation these answers sound vague, trite, and platitudinous. So a constant appeal to a higher plan--typical of the "healthy souls" observed by William James--cannot be the only recourse for Christians in trying circumstances. In fact, I would say it shouldn't even be the default response.

In an effort to not sound uncaring or platitudinous, lots of Christians adopt pastoral responses to suffering and evil that focus on its origins and coming demise.

• Appeals to spiritual warfare/blaming evil in the world on spiritual forces, citing Ephesians 6:12 (which begs the question of why God is letting them win battles and, if taken too far, can become a denial of premise 2 of the dilemma)
• "It will all be over someday" (appealing to the promises in Revelation 22:3 of the end of sin and pain)

But these explanations don't always work. In recent news, I saw a much bigger response from Christians to the Boston marathon bombings that killed three than to the Texas fertilizer factory explosion that took more than ten times as many lives and caused much more damage. People are shocked by the senselessness of two brothers killing innocent people at a marathon and Christians, having the "easy" explanation of sin and the "fallen world" for this tragedy, swoop in and offer their witness. But even more senseless catastrophes like the factory explosion (being an accident) have no easy target for blame, so most Christians are silenced. Could this be a sign that the Fall narrative is insufficient as an explanation for suffering?

Planless Suffering

The alternative to trying to seek comfort in a vague knowledge of "God's plan for suffering" is simply not trying. This doesn't mean denying that God has a plan but simply being honest and admitting your inability to make any sense of your situation, your inability to rejoice or find comfort in God, or even your inability to feel Him at all. This sounds like it would be profoundly unsatisfying and bordering on a denial of faith--but this is the response of the "sick soul" observed by William James, which Richard Beck found was correlated with a less defensive, more healthy and honest Christian faith and which was characteristic of Mother Teresa's private spirituality.

There is also an abundance of examples of the planless response to evil in the Bible, especially in the Psalms. Psalm 13 is a short and sweet example of this:

How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?
Look on me and answer, LORD my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,
and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
and my foes will rejoice when I fall.
But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation.
I will sing the LORD’s praise,
for he has been good to me.

The big difference I see between Psalm 13 and the planful responses above is that David makes no claim to any special knowledge about God's doings or reasons--which is all too often the case with us as well. It is deeply personal, an honest cry for help to a God who he continues to trust and call on even though He seems to have forgotten the psalmist's plight. Obviously, calling for help to a God who seems to have forgotten you involves a certain amount of internal tension, but David's trust in his God goes deeper than his present situation. He realizes the importance of that word seems. It's exactly how I felt when I kept praying and waiting for God to resolve my hangups with the Bible, even though He had stopped making sense to me because of those hangups. So great is David's trust in God that he is able to continue rejoicing in Him even in the presence of his enemies. (See also Psalm 23)

An even rawer example is Psalm 88, which is filled with rays of sunshine like "I am overwhelmed with troubles and my life draws near to death", "You have put me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths", and "darkness is my closest friend". But even this psalmist hasn't stopped hoping in God: "But I cry to you for help, LORD; in the morning my prayer comes before you"

Or consider the entire book of Job, possibly the best treatment the Bible has on suffering, the story of a righteous, wealthy, and happy man who loses everything he has except his very life. Though in the story Job's plight is revealed to be the result of a bet between God and Satan, Job has no knowledge of this and is left to ask God, "why"? As his friends keep insisting that he must have done something to deserve his fate, Job gets defensive and increasingly self-righteous (32:1), eventually demanding that God explain Himself to him. Finally, in chapter 38, God responds, not with a mindblowing, comprehensive explanation of His ultimate purpose in suffering but with a withering series of questions reminding Job of his smallness and ignorance of God's ways. This turns out to be just what Job needs to cure him of his self-righteousness (42:1-6). So Job's real problem wasn't his plight--it was his sinful attitude, and this is what God addresses. (This fits in very neatly with C.S. Lewis' answer above)

You'll notice (I did, at least) that all of my examples of "planless" suffering were from the Old Testament, and the verses backing up "planful" suffering were from the New. Does this mean that because Christ has come and we live in a different part of history than David and Job, that we should expect the crystal-clear picture of suffering that Paul seems to promise? Not necessarily. Sometimes we're like Paul in his letters, receiving marvelous visions and explanations for our hardships (see 2 Corinthians 12), but much more often we're like David in his Psalms.

I will attempt to put these two kinds of responses together into my best attempt at a pastoral response to the problem of evil. (If you want a better one, ask a pastor) Above all the most important response to suffering is to keep trusting God, as we see David do--not merely "believing" in Him in some ethereally vague sense, but actually trusting that He is real and interested in your welfare, enough to keep petitioning Him. If you get glimpses of a larger purpose behind your suffering (like my realization that my struggles with doubt were preparing me to help others with theirs), rejoice in them, but don't expect them as something God is supposed to show you or, even worse, try to manufacture them as a way to comfort yourself. This does mean living with existential tension rather than trying to minimize it with coffee-cup Bible verses quoted out of context. I'll close with this beautiful quote from a talk by Pope Francis I that I found today that I found relevant:

Being patient: that is the path that Jesus also teaches us Christians. Being patient ... This does not mean being sad. No, no, it's another thing! This means bearing, carrying the weight of difficulties, the weight of contradictions, the weight of tribulations on our shoulders. This Christian attitude of bearing up: of being patient. That which is described in the Bible by a Greek word, that is so complete, Hypomoné, in life bearing ever day tasks; contradictions; tribulations, all of this. These - Paul and Silas - bear their tribulations, endure the humiliation: Jesus bore them, he was patience. This is a process - allow me this word 'process' - a process of Christian maturity, through the path of patience. A process that takes some time, that you cannot undergo from one day to another: it evolves over a lifetime arriving at Christian maturity. It is like a good wine.

Story and Wonder: What Harry Potter taught me about heaven

Warning: This post contains spoilers from, of all things, Harry Potter.

In my posts on the Fall, I mentioned that the eschatological hope (that is, "Heaven") for Christians is much more than playing a harp or singing "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come" for all eternity. But what is it, then? Peter says to "set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming." (1 Peter 1:13) For me, at least, this is impossible if "grace" in the culminated sense Peter uses it remains an abstract quantity that we have some of now but will have more of later--or if it's expressed in painfully simple ways like "doing nothing but praising God for eternity". These images of grace do little to inspire hope in me--yet the Bible doesn't take the time to go into much detail on what, exactly, we're supposed to be hoping for. I think some imagination is called for.

C.S. Lewis' picture of eternity as not static but continually-increasing joy, wonder, and fullness hits me much more deeply and powerfully, and therefore I think it's closer to the truth. But even aware of this picture, for years another doubt nagged at me. I had trouble imagining how eternity could be anything other than terribly dull without any conflict. After all, what good story today is without some kind of conflict, whether it be person-against-person, human-against-nature, or good-against-evil? The Lord of the Rings with no conflict would just be a series of fantastical travel observations. Many stories would have even less left than this. The central storyline of the Bible is a sort of conflict (one-sided though it may be) between God and sin. Yet part of what the Bible does say about heaven is that all these conflicts will be done away with, along with suffering, crying, pain, etc. (Revelation 21:4) This sounds great, but what could be left to spice up this dull, conflict-less existence?

But I've realized there is something else that can captivate us in a story, to say nothing of real life, at least as much as conflict: wonder. That is, the kind of awe-infused, starry-eyed, joyful apprehension of something whose grandness makes us feel very small. I felt glimmers of it it last week on my trip to England when I was hiking in the picturesque Cotswalds, walking through Christchurch great hall (which served as the inspiration for the great hall in the silver-screen Hogwarts), or stepping into the cavernous St. Paul's Cathedral in London.

It's funny I should mention Hogwarts, because I was about to tie this line of thinking in with Harry Potter anyway. As I have mentioned to many of my friends, I don't like the Harry Potter books--but that's only part of the story. I don't like books four through seven--but I did, and still do, enjoy the first three. The reason for this is the near-total change in tone that takes place throughout the series. In the beginning of the series, there is a continual sense of wonder pervading the story as Harry, raised among muggles, becomes resituated in a world literally pervaded with magic. Rowling does an excellent job of allowing us to share in this wonder along with Harry. Yes, there is conflict even in The Sorcerer's Stone--but this conflict only really takes over the plot from wonder toward the end, to tie everything in the first book up in a satisfying conclusion. (It's been years since I've read the books, so I'm probably generalizing)

But later, an especially in book four and beyond, the tone shifts completely. The central focus shifts from wonder to conflict--it's no longer about Harry making his way through the wizarding world, but about defending it from Voldemort. As the stories grew darker to increasingly resemble the kind of action movie they were later made into, as beloved characters started dying left and right, the part of me that so enjoyed the first few books was increasingly frustrated and, at the end of book six with the death of Albus Dumbledore, gave up all hope, heartbroken.

You could argue that J.K. Rowling simply wanted the stories to grow up with their readers (tell that to an 11-year-old whose parents just got him a set of all seven books to read at once), but I grew right up along with everyone else and still vastly prefer the first three books over the last three. Apparently I still prefer wonder over conflict for telling a good story--and I don't think I'm alone, even among adults.

My experience teaching preschoolers in Sunday School gives another perspective on this. Kids have much lower standards for things worthy of their attention. My kids can endlessly entertain themselves with markers and blank construction paper, some blocks, or a bin full of dress-up clothes. When I read to them, the books in our room can have some extremely simplistic conflict to them, or not; it doesn't make a huge difference to them.

Obviously I'm not a developmental psychologist, nor have I received any education on how to work with kids, and I can only guess at what's going on in their little heads, but it seems safe to say that kids see the world in a very different way than we do. When the idea of operating a dump truck (even a toy one) is exotic and exciting enough to grab your attention week after week, life doesn't need conflict to be exciting.

We have become accustomed to the world around us in a way that kids haven't, yet, and often this can mean  we cease to be driven by wonder as they are. Let me offer the hypothesis that this will change in heaven. By knowing Christ and through the paradigm shift that occurs, we begin to get glimpses of a vast spiritual reality (that is, the "face of God", 1 Corinthians 13:12) that was previously obscured by the blindness of sin--a landscape worthy of literally endless wonder even for a cynical adult like myself. This was especially evident to me as I was rereading the ending of The Last Battle and tying it in with Romans 8. What if it really is that good?

The idea of eternity as continual wonder with increasing knowing of God makes no sense if we think of "knowing God" in a propositional sense; that is, simply knowing He is perfectly good, loving, just, &c. and having this knowledge confirmed beyond all doubt. In fact, I've never found mere propositional knowledge of God to be the least bit useful in a devotional or worship sense. Psalm 46:10 says, "Be still and know that I am God", but somehow meditating on a tautology doesn't do it for me. (Maybe I'm not "knowing" hard enough, or doing it wrong) I think it means something else. Maybe we shouldn't expect thinking about spiritual truths disconnected from our everyday reality to change our lives. Theology was never meant to be lofty and abstract, but concrete and firmly rooted in a particular context.

Just before Psalm 46:10, verse 8 says to "come behold the works of the Lord". We come closer to the face and knowledge of God not primarily by philosophical meditations (though these can also help in putting things together) but by seeing Him at work in and through our own experiences, the people around us, even ourselves--portraying God in mighty actions first, descriptive words second. In the Old Testament this is often done by celebrating the story of the Exodus or military victories as God's doing (the premodern worldview of the Ancient Near East saw everything that happened as the will of God/the gods). In the New Testament people know God primarily by way of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Maybe the purpose of the Bible is to allow future generations of Christians to have that same experience of the cross on which all of history turns.

A Challenge to Complementarians

Last night my New Testament class studied Paul's "pastoral epistles": his letters to Timothy and Titus. Overall, I'd say these are very practical, less theological letters chock-full of wisdom that has been teased out into practical, contextualized application for some early church leaders. This study included a protracted but unsurprising discourse on some of the verses many Christians would most like to remove from their Bibles, 1 Timothy 2:11-15:

A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.

It's easy to see how this instruction could rub people the wrong way today. What does one do with this verse and others like it in Paul's epistles like 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 and Ephesians 5:22-24? Some simply denounce Paul as a misogynist. For those unwilling to write off scripture in such a away, Paul's remarks on women have become increasingly problematic to interpret and apply as our culture has drifted farther and farther away from them.

The point was then raised that for the Christian, there are two basic ways to respond to 1 Timothy 2:11-15: say it's culturally contextualized and no longer applies to us today and then square that with his statement that "all scripture is God-breathed and useful" in 2 Timothy 3:16, or believe that it does still apply today and try to figure out what on earth that application might be.

"It does apply"

I'll focus on the second option first; that is, holding that Paul's statements on male-female relations, difficult as they may seem, can and should still be applied in some way to the church today. This is roughly equivalent to the line of thinking known as complementarianism, which is basically summed up as saying that men and women were made by God with different giftings and abilities and to have different roles in the church and in the home, even though they are of equal value in God's sight. This view is behind restrictions in many denominations on women being pastors or elders (or priests), as well as the view on marriage advanced by Mars Hill Church in Seattle and many others. It is mainly contrasted today with egalitarianism, the view that men and women can serve equally in the church, if not in the home.

I'd like to make more of a term I read in Brian McLaren's book A New Kind of Christianity that may be my favorite word of the year: "orthopathy", from the roots "orthos", meaning right or correct, and "pathos", meaning feeling or passion. It clearly parallels "orthodoxy", or "right belief". When I read that word, it clicked in my mind as if to fill a hole in my thinking I hadn't known was there. Merely having that word as a counterpoint, I realized how much effort Christianity has historically put into orthodoxy (enough to wage wars over it) and how relatively little it's put into orthopathy, even though the number-one command placed on Christians is to love (Matthew 22:34-40) Romans 13:8-10), not to believe the right things. Or maybe we just don't notice orthopathy because, when done right, it leads to harmony and health and never controversy and division.

And so, though a healthy desire to let the Bible speak as God's word and take seriously what it has to say is very good and essential for those who seek to apply 1 Timothy 2:11-15, it isn't enough. This application must be done in love, and as an expression of love for God, for His church, and for one's fellow believers. (See 1 Corinthians 13:1-3) This turns out to be very difficult. Whatever we say about men and women being equal in God's sight despite their different roles, it can be very hard for women barred from ministry for theological reasons to see it as an expression of love and not discrimination--especially because Paul never states any comparable restrictions on the roles men can occupy (childbearing is off-limits to men for more pragmatic reasons). This testimony on Jonathan Martin's blog shows how complementarianism can be deeply hurtful rather than loving.

I'll admit my biases: my mother is an elder, a role for which I believe she is very much qualified, at the church I grew up in, which also has a female pastor for whom I have great respect. These facts make it impossible for me to make a blanket statement that women are never supposed to hold positions of leadership in the church, much less claim that egalitarian churches are false churches populated by false Christians or demand that my mom step down and switch churches. I can't say there is nothing to the complementarian view because God obviously has made men and women different, but as in all things, love, even more than sound doctrine, must be the driving force. Combining these two goals in the area of gender is a difficult and thorny but necessary task that, as a single 23-year-old blogger with a severe tendency to shoot his mouth off, I am in no way qualified for.

"It doesn't apply"

Meanwhile, for those who would assert that though this passage was a binding command to Timothy, it was based on cultural factors specific to his time and place (like the fact that women had been barred from temple worship and hadn't received any theological instruction that wasn't filtered through their husbands and so were ill-equipped to teach or lead men, or simply the prevailing roles assigned to men and women in the first century which have since drastically changed) so it doesn't necessarily apply today have two main things to explain:

• The aforementioned 2 Timothy 3:16, which states that "all Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness," which seems to preclude "contextualizing away" difficult passages in this way.
• Paul doesn't justify his instruction here with any cultural or pragmatic explanations, but with the order of creation, which seems pretty timeless.

The usage of 2 Timothy 3:16 here to argue that this passage can and does still speak to our culture means interpreting the verse so as to say, "All commands in scripture retain some relevance or weight for readers in every context, even though it might change over time and place". So in other words, 1 Timothy 2:11-15, being scripture (2 Peter 3:15-16), is therefore useful (in some way) for teaching, rebuking, correcting, or training, so we must find a way to hold to it and can't simply set it aside as no longer relevant.

In the next chapter of his second letter, Paul tells Timothy to "bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, and my scrolls, especially the parchments" (4:13). This was a command when it was written, but has not been relevant as a command for over 1900 years. (Though, surprisingly, it can still be useful for preaching and teaching, as this sermon by John Piper shows) So though 4:13 does still have something to offer as a window into Paul's life, its original relevance as a command is completely lost. A similar point could be made for Paul's requests to greet certain people at the end of his letters.

Therefore, in the presence of such a counterexample it seems unjustifiable to interpret 3:16 in such a universal way (such that one counterexample, which we have found, invalidates it). With 4:13 as a precedent, I conclude--with fear and trembling--that it is possible for certain commands in scripture to pass out of relevance for believers today. If 1 Timothy 2:11-15 has not, it will take a different argument than using 3:16 in such a blanket fashion to explain why.

After his instruction to women, Paul writes, "for Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner". The common-in-Paul conjunction "for" indicates that this, an appeal to Genesis 2 and 3, is the reason or substantiation he's giving for his previous instruction.

I don't think it's a stretch to say that Paul's reasoning in this instruction is at least a bit foreign to modern readers. Who, after reading the account of Genesis 1-3, would conclude from the order of creation and sin that women should never teach men? It's one example of a fact that Peter Enns likes to point out: Paul uses scripture in ways that would make modern interpreters cringe. He rips parts of the Old Testament out of their original context and meaning to relate to Christ (2 Corinthians 6:2, Galatians 3:11 and 16) and even changes the original text (Romans 11:26-27) to serve his point.

Modern interpreters who tried these kinds of tricks would quickly lose their credibility. Does Paul get a free pass because he's Paul and he was writing scripture (even though he didn't know it at the time)? Are we supposed to do as Paul says, not as he does in regard to hermeneutics, even as he sets himself up as an example for other believers in his letters (1 Corinthians 4;16, 2 Thessalonians 3:9)? It seems to be the case that Paul interpreted his Bible (well, Old Testament) by a different set of rules (shared by other writers inside and outside the canon) than we do today. In his book Inspiration and Incarnation Peter Enns wrestles with the tension between Paul's methods and the ones we consider "correct" today. To summarize extremely, he denies that there is just one correct "method" for interpreting scripture; Paul's hermeneutic is as contextualized as ours is, but they must both have in common the new reality of Christ as their center.

I think Paul is doing something similar in backing up his instruction in 2:11 with the creation order and Fall. To give his words more weight, he seems to be taking Genesis 2 and 3 and interpreting them in a novel (but credible, for his time) way so as to resolve a practical issue Timothy is having. His use of Genesis seems much more like a rhetorical device than an unbreakable chain of logic.

We affirm that the Bible speaks the true words of God, but the simple word "truth" can carry a surprising number of associations, not all of them correct. I think when we say that the Bible contains God's "truth", we tend to think of truth in a Platonic sense--eternal, immutable, and pure. (Because, after all, this is what God is like, right?) And certainly some Biblical truth, like the very nature of God, is like this, even as the way in which we handle and approach it may change.

But I don't think practical instructions, like 1 Timothy 2:11-15 belong in this category. Is it possible that  Paul's directive for women to be silent in church is not in itself eternally true, but the result of applying an unchanging need (harmony and sound teaching in the body of Christ) to a specific situation Timothy was facing (women having a different social status and less education than men)? And that our application of the same need, our situation being very different, will therefore look different? In this sense, 1 Timothy 2:11-15 has not, in fact, passed out of relevance for us today, only Paul's situation-specific application.

A Challenge

By now you've probably realized which way I'm leaning in regard to interpreting 1 Timothy 2:11-15. But please don't hear this post as simply, "I'm right and complementarianism is wrong". The fact that I had to delve deeper into the mind of Paul than I had any right to go in order to reconcile his command with what I consider to be Christlike love troubles me and shakes my confidence. To any complementarians reading this who would say that women still shouldn't hold positions of authority in church, I'm not telling you to drop your view, but I would challenge you to do two things:

• Simply acknowledge the very real tension that exists between following Paul literally here and loving our sisters in Christ who have a desire for ministry. Simply saying, "Paul said it, Paul is scripture, so we'd better do it that way" treats the Bible like a simple instruction manual when it is really much, much more than this.
• Consider that you could, at least in theory, be wrong in applying Paul this way, and what the implications of this would be.