Witherington's dilemma

Ben Witherington has attempted to apply an Arminian theodicy to the humanitarian crisis in Haiti. But in the process he unwittingly illustrates the fact that Arminian theology lacks the theological resources to offer a coherent or satisfactory answer:

“For those of us who care about such things, not far behind the question of Why is the question-- Where was God in all this? Doesn't the Bible say that God has especial concern for the poor? Why would God allow or cause this to happen? Is this as the insurance companies have often called it--- 'an act of God'? If not, was God on vacation when this happened?”

http://blog.beliefnet.com/bibleandculture/2010/01/haiti---a-case-study-for-theodicy.html

That sets the stage. So “where was God”?

“It is easier in some ways to explain what is not the case than to say what is the case when it comes to God and natural disasters like this earthquake, despite fundamentalist preachers who are apt to glibbly say things like--- ‘Haiti is the center of voodoo in the Western hemisphere therefore God judged them.’ This hardly explains why all the Christian relief agencies, and various orthodox Christians in Haiti are also reeling from the blow just now. Were they just in the wrong line of fire, or is God's aim that bad???”

i) If he’s alluding to Pat Robertson, then Robertson is not a “fundamentalist.”

It’s understandable if secular pundits are too ignorant to know what these classifications stand for. But Witherington should know better.

ii) I’m myself don’t claim that voodoo had anything to do with the earthquake. I’m in no position to say one way or the other. However, if Haiti were the center of voodoo in the Western hemisphere, then I don’t know why Christians should trivialize the culpability of that occultic infatuation.

iii) It’s overly facile to say the Haitian earthquake could not be a divine judgment on the grounds that some Christians were also affected. Yes, it’s quite possible for the innocent to be in the wrong line of fire. Consider the Assyrian deportation or the Babylonian Exile. Those were both divine judgments. Does Witherington think that only the faithless Jews suffered as a consequence of these judgments?

Again, I haven’t said the Haitian earthquake represents divine judgment. I have no opinion on that. I merely respond to Witherington’s faulty reasoning.

“Let us start with something Jesus says about a natural disaster in Luke 13.8 Jesus asks his disciples ‘were those eighteen who died when the tower of Siloam fell on them worse sinners than all the others who lived in Jerusalem?’ Jesus' answer is no. No indeed. What he is warning against is some sort of automatic correlation between disaster and one's moral condition or beliefs.”

But Jesus doesn’t say the 18 fatalities were innocent victims. Rather, he says that those who escaped that calamity were just as guilty.

So that really doesn’t address the question of whether or not the Haitian earthquake represents divine judgments. Lk 13:8 seems to be neutral on that sort of question.

“Jesus is equally clear that one cannot make a one to one correlation between sickness and sin or disability and sin (see John 9.1-5). In other words, the world is a complex place, and there are many reasons bad things happen to all sorts of people including good people and God's people. And unless one is a fatalist and believes that everything that happens is God's will, one way or another, then one has to allow that all sorts of causation answers are possible in the case of a natural disaster.”

Ben has now bundled two issues into one:

i) It’s true Jn 9:1-5 disproves a one-to-one correlation between disability and personal sin. And that’s important.

ii) But does that passage also teach us that the congenital blindness of this individual was not the will of God? No. Not at all.

To the contrary, it says God willed that disability as a means to an end. So that when Jesus healed him, the miracle would redound to God’s glory.

It’s striking that Witherington would so blatantly distort and deny the explicit teaching of the very prooftext he cites. But his Arminian precommitments intrude.

“Natural disasters, or events of nature, are of course not called by us disasters if they happen on some remote uninhabited atoll in the south pacific and affect no human lives. It is rather when human beings, accidentally or intentionally get in the way of nature, or cannot get out of the way of natural occurences that we call them disasters and start asking sticky questions about God and how the universe runs.”

That’s a worthwhile observation.

“God is not the only source of causation in the world. There are many actors in the world, human and supernatural, and God is only the most important and powerful one. Even the Bible does not suggest God is the only source of all that happens in the world.”

True. However, there’s a difference between saying that God is not the only source and saying that God is the source of some events, but has nothing to do with other events.

Does Witherington think that God has nothing to do with natural events?

“For example, Biblical writers are pretty adamant that God is not the cause of human sin.”

Well, that depends on how you defined your terms. But even in Arminian theology, divine choices and divine actions set up the necessary, initial conditions for natural and moral evils to transpire. So divine causality is a factor.

“Were that the case, God would in no sense be a good God.”

There are sins of omission as well as sins of commission. An agent can be just as culpable for what he doesn’t do as what he does. To simply erect a buffer zone between God and evil is it not an adequate theodicy.

Indeed, Witherington subtitles his article, “Where was God?” If, in effect, he answers that God wasn’t there, that God was “on vacation,” then that would not, of itself, exonerate God from complicity. For the obvious counter is that God should have been there–before it occurred. God should have been more involved. For God was in a position to prevent that tragedy.

The issue of divine causality can go in more than on direction. There’s the issue of God causing things to happen, but there’s also the issue of God causing things not to happen. Why didn’t he causally intervene to prevent the earthquake? So Witherington has yet to solve the problem he posed for himself.

“It follows from this conclusion that there are things that happen in this world that are the fault not of God but of human beings.”

i) Having eliminated God as, in any sense, a responsible party for the Haitian disaster, then we’re back to human agents. Does this mean he blames the Haitians? Is so, then how is his explanation materially different from the explanation of “fundamentalist preachers”?

ii) I agree with Witherington that God is not at fault. However, that conclusion doesn’t follow from Witherington’s argument thus far.

“It does not further this discussion to add that God allowed this to happen.”

If that doesn’t further the discussion, then why did he try to distance God from the catastrophe?

“But then God allows all kinds of things to happen, good, bad, and ugly and it is no reflection on God's character nor is it an indication that God does not care.”

That statement begs the very question at issue. It’s a pious assertion, not a theodicy.

If God truly cared about the fate of the victims, then why didn’t he step in before it happened? According to Arminian theology, he had the foresight and power to do so, did he not?

“We live in an interactive world, a world where human behavior affects nature and vice versa. Its no good blaming the drinking water near Three Mile Island for being poisonous when it was human beings who caused the pollution of the water.”

And how is that comparison comparable to an earthquake. How did human behavior trigger the earthquake?

“Human responsibility for human ills is again and again insisted on in the Bible. Indeed, the primeval stories in Gen. 1-2 tell us that the Fall, which led to disease, decay, death, suffering, sin and sorrow in the world can be traced back to human causation, human sin. According to Genesis, it did not have to be that way, but we screwed up. In other words the primeval story is about prime evil, and we, and not just the snake, are responsible.”

This line of reasoning seems to indicate that Haitians got their comeuppance. We shouldn’t view them as innocent victims of a natural disaster.

If so, then how is Witherington’s explanation materially different from “fundamentalist preachers”?

“Compassion Fatigue. Haiti has been a disaster happening and waiting to happen for ever. Had most of the buildings in Port au Prince been strengthened or rebuilt to withstand such disasters, literally millions of people would have been less likely to be harmed in that city by what has just happened. And we have known about these problems in our own backyard for decades.”

Witherington talks like a 19C European colonialist. Haiti is the white man’s burden.

It’s striking to see the incipient racism in his paternalistic attitude. When did Haiti become our “backyard,” exactly? Do we hold the title-deed to Haiti?

“For decades now the U.S. would rather throw good money after bad on military adventures in the Middle East and elsewhere when in fact with a fraction of what we have spent in the last decade on war the entire country of Haiti could have been rebuilt and given decent housing!!”

Why can’t Haitians build decent housing? If we can do it, why can’t they?

“But of course they do not have oil and other commodities to offer us, so we as a nation have largely ignored them and their cries for help”

Given Witherington’s far-flung speaking engagements, he seems to be an avid consumer of fossil fuel. Take jet fuel, for starters.

Is poverty indigenous to the Caribbean? The Bahamas. Cayman Islands. Virgin Islands.

“Hmmm... the Lord was not in the earthquake, the fire, or the wind--- the natural disasters Elijah saw.”

Did Elijah deny that God caused the earthquake? No. That’s hardly the point of the passage.

“Where is God in all this--- he is in his arms and legs called his followers who are rushing to aid these people, and we must support them. He is standing right there in the rubble suffering with those who suffer, and weeping with those who weep and binding up the hearts of the broken hearted.”

That doesn’t begin to solve the theodicean problem which Witherington posed for himself. After all, isn’t Haiti in God’s “backyard” as well? Hasn’t God known about this disaster waiting to happen? Couldn’t God have given the Haitians housing which was at least the equal of California building codes?

From Witherington’s standpoint, why should we be more compassionate than God?