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The Wonder of the Cross: The God Who Uses Evil and Suffering to Destroy Evil and Suffering, by Richard A. Shenk
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When considering and confronting the problem of evil, we may be asking the wrong question: Why is there evil in the world if God is good and powerful? It may be wrong because it smuggles in an unbiblical premise: God can and should use his coercive power to relieve suffering since he is both good and able. But what if coercive power does not work to accomplish God's goals? This book is an investigation into the possibility that the noncoercive power of the Cross must be at the center of this issue, and that the Cross could reform this question. We could ask, instead, How is God destroying evil and suffering-and why is he taking so long? The answer to this reframed question might be: He is using evil and suffering to destroy evil and suffering for His People; this is how long it takes. While not a "solution" to the problem of evil, could this help us learn to delight in God in a world in which evil and suffering seem at times so relentless?
- Sales Rank: #3565258 in Books
- Published on: 2013-05-08
- Released on: 2013-05-08
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 10.00" h x .78" w x 7.00" l, 1.40 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 344 pages
About the Author
Richard Shenk (PhD, University of Wales, Lampeter) is an Adjunct Professor at Bethlehem College and Seminary where he teaches theology and a pastor at Village Church (both in the vicinity of Minneapolis, Minnesota).
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent Treatment of the Problem of Evil!!!
By Joel Aubrey
The classic “problem” of evil is laid out well by D.A. Carson when he writes, “If God is both omnipotent and perfectly good, how can he permit evil? If he is willing but not able to check the suffering, then he is not omnipotent; if he is able but unwilling, he is not perfectly good. The implication is that the very existence of evil calls into question the existence of God.” This “problem” however, is specifically a problem for those who believe in a good and omnipotent God. Carson explains that, “If there is no God, and no criterion of goodness outside the universe itself; if all that happens is simply the wastage of evolution… what rational person should feel any outrage before ostensible ‘evils’ at all” (Carson, 27). In other words, for an atheist to feel outrage over evil would seem to be quite inconsistent with their overall worldview.
So why does God not use his omnipotent power to utterly destroy the evil that exists in the world? Furthermore, if a good God created all that is, why does evil exist in the world at all? Does the fact that there is Evil in creation make God the creator of Evil? Among the many different ways that Christians have sought to answer these questions over the last 2000 years, The Wonder of the Cross by Rick Shenk stands out as a clear and helpful guide that sheds light on these thorny questions. Shenk does not pretend to have the complete answer to all the questions. In fact, he believes that “this is a problem without an exhaustive solution” (153). Yet his approach does not merely posit the cross of Christ as “consolation” for our experiences with evil. He believes that the cross itself presents us with the theodicy for answering the classic problem of Evil. In short, Shenk’s Thesis is that “Evil and suffering is destroying Evil and Suffering to bring about ‘Conforming Freedom’ for God’s people in the final state” (11). So why does an omnipotent and good God not use his power to obliterate evil? Well, biblically speaking, he did, and it did not work. The flood waters that destroyed the world of evil could not cleanse Noah’s heart (Gen 6-9). Shenk’s answer is that “Evil and Suffering is the God ordained instrument used against Evil itself” (210). Shenk agrees with Henri Blocher that nowhere do we see this more clearly than at the cross. Blocher explains that God “makes the supreme crime, the murder of the only righteous person, the very operation that abolishes sin” (Blocher, 132). This is the case because, “The greatest evil in the world is death and the greatest victory is the death of death” (Shenk, 151).
The second part of Shenk’s thesis is that the ultimate goal of the victory at the cross is to bring about the “conforming freedom” of God’s people. Shenk understands “conforming freedom” to be a state in which God’s people are finally “free to obey God without restraint or reserve. It is not absolute power to contrary; it is wanting to please God at every moment” (178). This is the essence of what it means to be completely conformed into the image of Christ who never sins (Rom 8:29), and to be in a glorified resurrection state. Shenk argues convincingly that Romans 8 leads us to see suffering as the necessary means of glorification. In his own words, “God brought creation and human willful-creatures on a necessary journey through futility (the inability to live out our created purpose) so that freedom (the ability to perfectly live out our created purpose) might be fully granted to his people” (183). Suffering and evil is thus the means by which God conforms his people to Christ and destroys sin within them.
Key to Shenk’s thesis is his understanding of Evil and Suffering as “a subordinate-metaphysical necessity” (11). For Him, Evil is “both the intrinsic problem and the instrumental solution in God’s economy” (Ibid). One of the difficulties with saying that God “uses” Evil “instrumentally” to defeat Evil, is the question I posed above: where did the Evil God uses come from, and how can God not be evil to use it? Shenk agrees with Augustine who famously argued for the “Privative” nature of Evil. He lays out Augustine’s argument as follows: 1) Evil is not a substance because substances were created good. (2) No substance exists that was not created. (3) So, as a substance, evil does not have existence. (4) But evil, though not a substance, exists because the human will does not align with God’s goodness (Shenk, 74-75). This understanding of evil need not take away a belief in the reality of evil. Evil exists, but it is a sub-existence arising not as a created substance, but as a privation of all that is good in the world God created.
How then did this privative evil find Adam as its first human host? Would not the fact that Adam was created with the potential to fall seem to imply that his will was not created good? Shenk argues that though Adam was created good, his “heart was not tethered to God’s perfection” (198). In other words, God himself is the fountain of all goodness, but Adam himself was not a fountain of goodness. He was created with the capacity to freely choose to not worship God. Although God ultimately planned to work conforming freedom in the lives of his people, it seems that this freedom could not be given “to his people in one act” (256). Following Augustine again, Shenk posits four “stages” of Freedom God has used to bring those he has chosen to redeem into a state of conforming freedom: Adam’s freedom to sin or to not sin, the freedom of a sinner to only sin, the freedom of a believer to sin or to not sin, and finally, conforming freedom (234). Ultimately then, Adam fell because God created him able to fall, and ordained that he would fall. In Shenk’s words, “I affirm God as the primary cause of evil, mediated by a secondary and immediate cause” (189). Another way of saying this is that “God is responsible for his world as he created it and nothing occurs that he did not forsee or permit – and in a significant sense, will” (190). Having chosen to create a word in which he would bestow conforming freedom on His people, God necessarily ordained to actualize a world in which evil would find Adam as its host, plunging the whole race into death so that God himself would have to enter creation and die to accomplish the death of death. Evil is not simply a tool God uses to accomplish good ends, but more specifically, it is the enemy God chose to fight when he ordained this world. And the only way it can be effectively fought in His people is by making it commit suicide at the cross and at every subsequent instance of suffering it brings against his people.
I believe that Shenk’s approach to the problem of Evil is particularly helpful in three ways: 1) It does not pretend to answer all the questions and thus go beyond what scripture has given us. 2) Shenk does not shy away from saying some hard things about the Subordinate – Metaphysical necessity of Evil given God’s intensions for obtaining a bride for his Son and communicating his Divine fullness to that bride. Perhaps, for reasons unbeknownst to us, the reason God chose to actualize this world, as opposed to a world free from evil, is because His self-glorifying goal of bringing a people to the conforming freedom of continual delight in Himself would have been unachievable in a world without suffering and evil – in a world without the cross. In the Bible, God does not seem as eager as we are to clear His name from the suffering that happens in the world. One significant example is in Genesis 50:20 where Joseph tells his brothers, “you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.” Here we see a classic example where God is said to use evil against evil – bringing about the good of his people Israel. 3) Shenk’s book leads us to posit the central theme of the Bible – the Death and Resurrection of the Son of God – as the central answer to all our problems.
One practical application of this book for someone who aspires to be a pastor is to meditate more deeply on the cross than ever before. If God can use that horror of that event to accomplish the death of all death and the salvation and eternal joy of untold millions of people, how much more can he use these “light and momentary” afflictions to kill my own sin and produce in me an “eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Cor 4:17). I want to daily apply the power of the cross to my own soul so that I will be ready to bring its glory into the hospital bedrooms and to the funerals of my future flock.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
How does God use evil and suffering to destroy evil and suffering
By Goofball
Rick Shenk writes what I believe is an extremely well researched, challenging and and critically important book to wrestle with in respect to how evil plays a role in the design of what God created. This is an extremely complex topic for us all to wrestle with for people of faith or those who use the development or existence of evil as counter to how God and Christ can be considered good or worth following. However, in perfect design you see how evil is conquered by itself at the cross.
This book is full of historical views of the subject of evil and how it plays out in the story of Christ and in life today. This book is written in a manner where Rick takes us on a journey of his hypothesis and he rightly and humbly works through each point using scripture as the base and the works/thoughts of scholars as well.
In the end, I agree with his conclusion that evil is defeated by itself through Christ's death "at the cross, evil is conquered by evil" The hope we have in life is that Christ gives us forgiveness, salvation and defeats evil at the cross.
This book is challenging in subject and takes dedicated time to be intentional about learning and understanding the points being made but it truly develops and pushes thinking beyond your normal books but set against the topic of evil this makes a great deal of logic and sense. I greatly enjoyed the journey through the book and the conclusion. I would recommend this to anyone who is challenged by this subject as a believer or not.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent Book! Shenk's writing is clear, well-organized and thought provoking!
By Faith Burnham
Dr. Shenk's writing is clear, well-organized, and thought provoking. He uses a plethora of Scripture, and makes his case with humility. I was very excited to read this book! After I began, I couldn't put it down. The sound theology and premises considered in this book can serve as an encouragement to Christians on how to persevere through pain and suffering and use it to grow closer to Christ. N.T. Wright once said that since Christ's death and resurrection, God does not work in spite of evil; He works in and through it. Jesus Christ took the worst Satan could throw at Him, entered into human pain, and came out victorious. We can do the same when we face adversity and continue to trust in the God who raises the dead! As Dr. Shenk proclaims, God uses evil and suffering to destroy evil and suffering.
This book is an excellent read and helps one develop a proper theodicy. I am a wife and mother, and I highly recommend this book to women who can use it to teach their children. Put your thinking cap on and dive in!!!
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