Why Does God Have to Do It This Way? (4)
If God is all-powerful and a God of love, why is there so much evil and suffering in the world? Why does he do things the way he does? Why can’t he just end the suffering, sickness, and pain with the wave of the hand? Doesn’t Scripture teach that his right hand is skillful? (Psalm 137:5.)
In attempting to answer these questions biblically, we must immediately admit that God is the originator of all things, both good and evil. He says in Isaiah, “I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the Lord, who does all these things” (Isaiah 45:7). Many other Scripture passages communicate the same thing, including Deuteronomy 32:39. The challenge is in how to reconcile these passages with those that speak of a God of redeeming love (John 3:16), uncorrupted light (1 John 1:5), and everlasting goodness (Psalm 100:5).
The key to resolving the seeming conflicts is context. It is common knowledge that care should be taken to consider the literary form of a Scripture passage and the particular situation, person(s), or thing(s) it addresses. However, another less recognized issue of context, especially concerning our immediate subject of interest, is the question of what “God” means in a particular passage that speaks about him.
To better appreciate this thought, we must recognize that, in his most native form, God is not a person, not even a spiritual person. Indeed, he was originally not even “God.” This may be unsettling to the traditionally religious mind. But a god is an object of worship, reverence, or submission, and without a worshiper, as was the case in the beginning, there can’t be a god. We will build on this thought line in the Scriptures and see where it leads us, especially in answering the big question of evil in the world.
There is something that theologians refer to as the divine hypostasis. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines hypostasis as “the substance or essential nature of an individual.” Hence, when we speak of the divine hypostasis, we are referring to the essential nature of God, his native substance. This is what the writer of Hebrews points us to in introducing Christ: “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature” (Hebrews 1:3a).
Although Hebrews 1:3 in the King James Bible speaks of “his person,” the English Standard Version quoted above more correctly says, “his nature.” This is another instance of the theological underpinnings of the King James Bible, as previously noted. Despite the seeming simplicity, “person” as used in the King James Bible here actually represents a complex theological concept. However, that is beyond our immediate interest.
The relevant Greek word in this Bible verse is hypostaseōs, from which the English “hypostasis” is derived. The literal meaning of the Greek word is “substance” or “subsistence,” as translated in the American Standard Bible and Young’s Literal Translation, respectively. The Merriam-Webster dictionary gives two largely identical definitions of “substance“ and “subsistence,” indicating the essential “characteristic” or “quality” of a thing — that is, its fundamental nature.
Simply put, this original substance, quality, or fundamental nature of God is raw power — infinite power and potential. It is the primitive energy from which everything in existence and everything possible in the universe originates. This is the essence of the “all-powerful” attribute of God.
Paul speaks of this native substance of God in Romans 1:20: “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.” The next part of the Hebrews verse cited earlier speaks of the same thing: “and he upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3b).
This native power of God, the energy source from which everything in existence and everything possible originates, is what scientists refer to as the “Big Bang singularity.” If you can wrap your head around it, here is a brief excerpt from the National Academy of Sciences: “The Big Bang theory says that the universe came into being from a single, unimaginably hot and dense point (aka, a singularity) more than 13 billion years ago. It didn’t occur in an already existing space. Rather, it initiated the expansion — and cooling — of space itself.”
Did you fully grasp it? In common terms, it means that everything in the universe originated from an incredibly powerful source that occupied zero space. That is the “invisible power” of the original nature of God that Romans 1:20 speaks of. As I mentioned some time ago, the Big Bang singularity represents the limit of present scientific knowledge, the point at which scientific laws as presently known begin to flounder. Scientists are mystified and don’t fully understand it, but that is what the best of all they presently know points to.
Having said all that, there is also such a thing as the personification of the native power of God. In other words, the divine substance takes on the form of a person, a spiritual person (John 4:24). The evolutionary emergence or revelation of this “personal God,” an all-powerfully intelligent entity, is no more mysterious than how life emerged from an originally inanimate universe. It is all part of the infinite power and potential of the native substance of God, which not only includes the seed of life but also that of intelligence.
The emergence of this divine mind in the context of the earliest explosive and potentially catastrophic state of the universe is the key to understanding the problem of evil in the world. As we will see, rather than something to be criticized or vilified, it is the only hope of the universe and should be revered — the only thing that could achieve “order out of chaos.” However, considering the potential of the primitive substance of God for both good and bad — every aspect of which must necessarily be expressed before a final and tranquil “steady state” can be achieved — the intervention task of the personal God would come at a cost.
(To be continued.)
***********
Christian Community Reader’s Digest is a publication of Christian Community Online. To visit or engage with us, click here. To read more articles, click here.
