Ed Marcelle

One Story – Life Map of a Pilgrim Journey

There is an unchanging, silent life within everyman that none knows but himself.

George Moore, “Homesickness”

There are some stories that are better than others. Some have greater desperation, which means greater deliverance. There is something in the nature of rescue that draws us. Dr. Alvin Plantinga, analytic philosopher and the John A. O’Brien Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of Notre Dame, was good enough to answer my email on suffering and a sovereign God. In it, the esteemed philosopher and good man of faith, gives some measure of the great story.

Dear Ed,

The problem of evil is indeed a real problem – what I have to say about it is in the last chapter of “Warranted Christian Belief” and in a paper “Supralapsarianism, or ‘Oh Felix Culpa'” which I’ll send you if you like.

Ehrman asks why God permits suffering, and can’t think of a good answer. Here’s one possibility: God wanted to create a really good world. If you think about what properties of a world make it good, you can mention number of happy people, number of people of good moral character, etc., but it is hard to find any property to equal incarnation and atonement, in particular atonement. The first being of the universe, God Himself, was willing to stoop, and to suffer greatly, on behalf of creatures who had turned their backs on Him, in order to make it possible for them to life and have it abundantly. This is not merely the greatest story ever told; it is the greatest story that ever *could be* told.

So all the really good worlds, all the best worlds, contain incarnation and especially atonement. But of course a world in which there is atonement, is a world in which there is sin and evil – and not just a little bit of sin and evil; there has to be some kind of adequation between the magnitude of the redemptive deed and the magnitude of the sin and evil it redeems.

So that’s a possibility – but of course one can hardly say we know why God permits sin and evil. Maybe the above is on the right track, and maybe not. But why think the fact that we can’t figure out why God permits these things is a reason for giving up belief in God? According to the Christian story, God permits sin and evil, but he also joins us in the resultant suffering; the Son of God himself, the second person of the trinity cries out in the terrible suffering of feeling or being abandoned by the Father. God doesn’t just make us suffer to achieve his ends; He suffers too, and his suffering is probably of a magnitude we can’t so much as guess at. Even if we don’t really know why He permits evil (but I rather like the above suggestion), we do know that He is willing to suffer with us; and that enables us to trust him, to feel sure that he has a good reason for permitting sin and suffering, even if we don’t know what that reason is.

Cheers,
– Alvin Plantinga

We all have a story to tell. The Christian has the best story. It is encased in eternity, drenched in deliverance, and has an access that is always open for others to discover their story in Jesus.

To help you see and better know your own story, we have a Life Map at Terra. You can download it here.

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