The "New" Story of God: Job, Plato, and the Open View—A Review of The God Biographers more

T. C. Moore - BeingTC.com The “New” Story of God: Job, Plato, and the Open View—A Review of The God Biographers Author: Larry Witham Paperback: 204 pages Publisher: Lexington Books - 2010 Language: English Special thanks to Tom Oord for providing a review copy of this title. General: The God Biographers is a fascinating book about the way God's story has been told in doctrines down through the centuries of religion and philosophy. Perhaps the grand irony is that the book itself becomes a biography of God as it attempts to tell this epic story. Larry Witham, the book's author, described as a veteran journalist on the book's jacket, sets out to, "[look] closely at the cultural and scientific context of each age and how these shaped the images of God." He argues that, "Each biographer labors under the influence of a particular cultural milieu." Therefore, the book becomes primarily a journey through historical theology dating from the Classical period in Greek thought to present day Open and Relational theisms. However, Witham's survey is not merely a general overview. The author specifically details the views of God's biographers as they relates to one of the single greatest tensions in theism: the relationship between divine providence and human volition. In the service of this very specific focus, the author employs the book, and figure, of Job as an overarching theme in which to ground the discussion. This odd yet often-cited ancient Hebrew text stands apart as one the clearest examples of this essential antinomy. Yet, for as many biographers as have attempted to tell God's story, at least as many interpretations of this book have accompanied them. The God Biographers is also a book about two competing biographies of God that have remained enmeshed in a struggle for the hearts and minds of theists since the very beginnings of philosophical and religious thought. The first biography is that of an aloof and "unchangeable monarch," while the second tells of a God who participates in a “dynamic relationship [with] the universe." (p. 2) Astute readers will recognize these two biographies as classic summaries of the competing visions of God developed by the Greeks and the Hebrews. Early Greek philosophers warred against the oppressive myths of capricious gods, who meddled in the affairs of humanity, often for sport, and inflicted meaningless suffering upon helpless victims for their own amusement. In their place, Plato, Aristotle and the like exalted a view of the Supreme Being as an impersonal, static reality that neither felt "passions" nor "changed" in any way. By contrast, the Hebrews exalted a view of God as utterly personal: a living, dynamic presence who revealed himself to their people through the law and prophets, led them 1 T. C. Moore - BeingTC.com out of slavery in Egypt, and responded to their prayers. Over the millennia since humanity began to think and write about the divine, Greek, Jewish, Islamic, and Christian scholars have all had to grapple with these diametrically opposed biographies and account for the realities of daily life, advances in human understand of the world, and the sacred texts of the Bible (and Job in particular). Job is a fitting theme since his story is one of a righteous man who is suddenly stripped of everything. He is depicted as an innocent victim of tragedy at the hands of an enemy: the satan. God's relationship to this calamity has always presented God's biographers with a primal trilemma often called the "problem of evil." And its exploration in relationship to God is called "theodicy." Attributed to the Greek philosopher Epicurus, the problem can be summarized thusly: Is God: 1) "willing but unable to take away evil (impotent)" 2) "able but unwilling (malevolent)" or 3) "both willing and able—so why is there evil at all?" (p. 27) Theists since Lactantius have felt compelled to address this “problem,” but perhaps no century has been more filled with reminders than the twentieth. Two World Wars and the explosive advancement of science brought theism and evil into sharp contrast. Appropriately, then, Witham spends a good portion of the book in this period. Amazing Fate: One particularly nagging observation that seems to follow from this study is just how few solutions the church has formulated for the problem of evil, and how utterly slavish the majority of them have been to Greek philosophy. From Augustine onward, it is as if no one has a novel solution for the existence of evil, in the light of an all-powerful and utterly good God, until Whitehead. Certainly there were those who proposed a sort of primitive "free will defense," but their conceptions of free will as it relates to divine providence would be almost entirely unrecognizable, as such, to us today. Most compromised with determinists by proposing a type of compatibilism that neither freed humanity from fate nor free God from culpability for evil. Instead, over and over again, each successive generation of theologians seem ever more determined to recapitulate the same "greater good" argument that dates back to Classical Greece. Is it possible the church is truly this devoid of creativity? Itʼs also irritating how often the theology of Godʼs absolute controlling power is directly linked to its mirror image in the political sphere. Running relentlessly beneath this soaring overview is an insidious subtext of power and privilege. Who are these men (and they are entirely men) who wax eloquent about the "greater good" God intends 2 T. C. Moore - BeingTC.com amidst senseless evil? Overwhelmingly they are the children of wealth, heirs of privilege, and ultimately live to be the ones welding the power of the sword against their adversaries. Take Calvin, for instance. In Geneva, during a period of over a year in which he delivered 159 sermons on Job, fiercely condemning any suggestion that God's mysterious and 'secret' will, which stands behind all seemingly arbitrary suffering makes this God a "tyrant," he simultaneously urges the City Council to burn Michael Servetus at the stake for heresy. Is it possible Calvin's own power just might have colored his theological perspective on God's "sovereignty?" Perhaps a better question would be: How could it have not? This also becomes particularly relevant when the competing biographies reach the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in US evangelical scholarship. Witham rightly characterizes the inerrancy movement as much more of a cultural and political phenomenon than a theological one. “No single group can claim the power to define inerrancy,” writes Witham, “since Bible interpretation is dynamic—and even Calvinists disagree in their interpretations.” He quotes John Sanders, “What is really being argued here is: ʻThe Bible clearly teachesʼ is equivalent to ʻour interpretation of scripture is inerrant.ʼ ” (p. 179) Praise: Witham does a great job covering a staggering amount of history in such a brief book. Without selling short his subjects, he manages to briefly yet skillfully summarize their largest contributions to theodicy whether positive or negative. Aside from a few rough patches towards the beginning, Witham also manages to handle the theology of his subjects well. While itʼs still clear theology isnʼt Withamʼs first language, it appears engaging historical narrative might well be. After reading this book, Iʼm interested to also read his Marketplace of the Gods and A City Upon a Hill. Withamʼs prose kept me interested and lacked excessive redundancy. Sure he needed to use the terms “sovereignty,” “providence,” and “free will” a thousand times, but this is to be expected. Besides that, I thought he mixed up the terminology enough not to frustrate readers. Aside from these noteworthy aspects Witham is also fair to each subject he covers, and the book includes a very helpful index and bibliography. Critique: Perhaps the only criticism I would strongly level against Witham is a criticism that is common to books written in the field of US theology. Similar to a hundred other books of its kind, the author claims to carefully consider historical and cultural contexts of his subjects, yet race seldom plays a significant part in his analysis, if at all. Instead, an examination of the various God biographer's relationships to race and racism is glaringly missing from this work. Certainly in light of the chattel slavery of American colonialism, not to mention the segregation of the Jim Crow South, we can see the direct relationship between social injustice and theological determinism. Many slaveholders in the South not only defended their slave-owning with thoughts of biblical authorization, but also with deterministic thoughts of the Africansʼ fate. Furthermore, Greek 3 T. C. Moore - BeingTC.com philosophers in the Classical Age were not freed up to ponder the divine mystery because work was unnecessary in their day. No, they were freed up to philosophize because they were slave-owners. Conversely, the Hebrews could not conceive of an "Unmoved Mover," because their experience of the divine was of one moved to liberate them from slavery in Egypt! As slaves, they were not free to consider suffering theoretically; they studied the matter in their bones! Therefore, race and racism are critical components to understanding the development of God's biography, yet they are virtually absent in this work. Conclusion: The God Biographers is as enjoyable to read as historical theology gets. I was reminded of Bruce Shelleyʼs Church History in Plain Language. Yet Witham makes an important and unique contribution to this field. Few books trace the path of suffering, providence and free will down through the centuries as Witham has, with significant space given to process and Openness thought. In the future, I can see The God Biographers being cited as a seminal work in this respect. Therefore, Iʼd strongly recommend this book to all students interested in the historical development of the Free Will Tradition as it relates to theological determinism. Withamʼs book may be the best one on the subject currently available. 4