Yoram Hazony, author of The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture, recently wrote a provocative opinion article for the New York Times in which he summarized his skepticism toward the idea of a perfect God. Hazony suggests that there are two compelling reasons why the God of classical theism should be rejected: first, reconciling the existence of evil with God’s omniscience, omnipotence, omnibenevolence is too great a challenge. Second, he says, such a picture fails to match the Old Testament portrayal of God.
Hazony insists that the problem of evil shows that God cannot be both all-good and all-powerful, for if he were we would not find the injustices in the world we do. He chalks up affirmation of such perfections more to the influence of Greek philosophy than to biblical thought. Regarding the God of the Old Testament, he writes:
The God of Hebrew Scripture is not depicted as immutable, but repeatedly changes his mind about things (for example, he regrets having made man). He is not all-knowing, since he’s repeatedly surprised by things (like the Israelites abandoning him for a statue of a cow). He is not perfectly powerful either, in that he famously cannot control Israel and get its people to do what he wants. And so on.
Consider the standard perfections of omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence. Hazony says forthrightly that the problem of evil renders reconciliation of omnipotence and omnibenevolence either highly unlikely or flatly impossible.
Hazony’s claims are predicated on an unrefined conception of omnipotence. Talk of perfection only makes sense in terms of achieving the right balance of properties, not by maximizing a thing’s constituent principles simultaneously. To speak of a “perfect bottle,” for example, is colloquial at best, confused at worst—how many drops of liquid are contained in the “perfect bottle” admits of no objective answer. God has as much power, knowledge, and goodness as are mutually compatible and compossible.
If God sovereignly chooses to confer on human beings libertarian freedom, that means that some logically possible worlds are not feasible ones, but it hardly shows that God is not omnipotent. Hazony also errs in taking the great “I am” declaration of God to be an indication of God’s incompleteness and changeability, rather than, as seems the more straightforward meaning, God’s uncreatedness and ontological independence.
One reason Hazony makes these claims is that he wishes to emphasize the need for tentativeness and provisionality in theology, and remind us that our knowledge of God remains fragmentary and partial. In Hazony’s view, “The belief that any human mind can grasp enough of God to begin recognizing perfections in him would have struck the biblical authors as a pagan conceit.”
According to the Hebrew Bible, Hazony insists, God represents the embodiment of life’s experiences and vicissitudes, from hardship to joy; although God is ultimately faithful and just, these aren’t perfections or qualities that obtain necessarily. “On the contrary, it is the hope that God is faithful and just that is the subject of ancient Israel’s faith.”
He concludes by arguing that his view is one that ought to appeal to people of faith today: “With theism rapidly losing ground across Europe and among Americans as well, we could stand to reconsider this point. Surely a more plausible conception of God couldn’t hurt.”
Is theism really losing ground, or are certain religious institutions? And what does it even mean to speak of the Hebraic depiction of God as more realistic than the idea of God as altogether perfect? It is certainly more anthropomorphic, or to put it more precisely, anthropopathic—portraying God as if he had human passions. But does that make it more “realistic”? And why does the fact that lines of Scripture do not read like a philosophical text compromise the philosophical work of evincing such a conception, or render the effort utterly artificial, or invalid?
The claim that a perfect God is a Greek convention incorporated into theology is an allegation that overlooks the role of what theologians refer to as “general revelation.” The Greeks had no corner on the market of reason. Plenty of Greeks—Euthyphro, for example—believed in all sorts of rather morally deficient gods. Indeed, we could return the favor and suggest that it’s actually Hazony’s conception of God which is more influenced by Greek ideas in this regard than by Scripture.
The fact remains, though, that in the New Testament itself we find ample indications of a morally perfect and perfectly loving God. This happy convergence of the a priori deliverances of reason and the a posteriori deliverances of Scripture should come as no surprise since one would expect resonance between the outcomes of special and general revelation. Nothing less than this view of God can answer our deepest hopes.
David Baggett is professor of philosophy at Liberty University and co-author, with Jerry Walls, of Good God: The Theistic Foundations of Morality. Tom Morris taught philosophy for fifteen years at Notre Dame and writes for various outlets.
RESOURCES
Yoram Hazony, “An Imperfect God,” New York Times, November 25, 2012
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Comments:
If so, we might still wonder why God doesn’t at least limit our freedom. We would still be largely free, but not free to commit absolutely heinous atrocities… Or, if that is not a possibility, then it seems plausible to me to argue as follows: Perhaps, if we were to be free, then this amount of evil did need to be allowed, but we can still prove that there could be no good God, for if there were a good God he would not have desired to create such free beings. In other words: the evil in the world caused by human choice outweighs by far the value of the existence of beings with that choice – so it is clear that God cannot possibly exist. A good God simply would not have created people like us…
In any case – even ignoring all the above, Baggett and Walls have only tried to address suffering caused by free human agency. But there is ample suffering caused by the natural world to get a very powerful argument from evil off the ground.
The argument from evil is surely the most serious and profound of the arguments against God’s existence. It cannot be done away with in a couple of lines.
Most interesting is the moment that God tells us - in part in the Ten Commandments - that we cannot work on a Sabbath, on pain of death, particularly gathering and preparing food; while suddenly in the New Testament Jesus himself allows his disciples to pick grain/corn to eat on the Sabbath.
While suddenly God acquires an entirely new name: Jesus. And adds a whole new section to the Bible; the New Testament.
Based on this all-too-human, changeable side of God, some might conclude - with say Harold Bloom - that our traditional idea of our god or Lord, was based on a sort of idealized compilation of many human kings ... or "Lord God"s. Who often changed their very human minds, after all.
First off, the very roots of the entire New Testament/Covenant grow deep within the soil of the Hebrew Scriptures...for both Covenant's factually represent only ONE book, or body of revelation, in G-d's redemptive plan of salvation in time-space-dimension history for "whosoever will" - or His Jew & Gentile spirit-creatures of the only rational/moral animal species called Homo sapiens, from "every nation, people and language" - that the "God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob" might be glorified, through the comprehensive ministry of G-d Himself, as "God the Son," in the human flesh, or the Lord Yeshua of Nazareth, THE "Lamb of God slain before time began." (Revelation 13:8)
As to your obvious oversight in Jesus' (Exodus 3:14) "I am" statements, and the appropriate interpretation of such, unequivocally stated at least ten times in the NT, please read the context of John 8:12-59, paying particular attention to his manifestly unobscured declaration in v. 58. Please remember, that as spirit-creatures made in G-d's own image, don't be misled, or confused, when our transcendent Creator revealed in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures is sometimes seen as manifesting the characteristics of personhood, because He is indeed, a wholly perfect, Personal Creator G-d!
You might consider, that since "we" obviously lack omniscience, one might still be wrong about passing final unerring judgment - on His personal character, and dealings with His creatures.
As to the Divine appearances in the Hebrew Scriptures of YHWH [G-d] himself, as "the Angel of G-d" ["Theophanies"/"Christophanies," or the Aramaic "Memra"], please read all of Genesis 18; (esp. v. 14); Gen.16:7-13; 22:11-18; 31:10-13; 32:22-32 with Hosea 12:2-4; Exodus 3:2-14; 23:20-23; Joshua 5:11-13 (where we see this "man" literally identify Himself as "YHWH Sabaoth"; and notice Joshua's response, precisely as that of Moses in the Exodus 3:2-14 passage, which is highly illuminating, given the 1st commandment in the Decalogue???); also in Judges 13:2-22, another Divine manifestation of G-d to both parents of Samson...all of which, provide particularly clear patterns of "special revelation" (like in the NT), whereby Almighty G-d temporarily assumes human flesh, for the purpose of crystal-clear revelation; whose examples find their Ultimate expression/fulfillment in the incarnation of the Son of God [e.g., Daniel 7:9-14], with the Gospel of John's classic exposition in chapter 1:1-18. Space simply doesn't permit a more complete treatment of this issue.
Also, what the Sabbath clearly prohibited was "labor for the sake of profit," not the gleaning of grain from a neighbors field to satisfy immediate hunger. (e.g., Deuteronomy 23:25.) Thus Yeshua, who'd unambiguously claimed himself to be "Lord of the Sabbath" - hence "its" SOLE author/authority, which also included the issue of even healing on the Sabbath, or "doing good" (see Synoptic Gospels, Matt. 12:1-13; Mark 2:23 - 3:5; Luke 6:1-11 - provided the appropriate, or correct interpretation/meaning to the religious leaders of his day on Sabbath observance, by adding, "the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." (Mark 2:27)
But deeds of doing good, deeds of necessity, acts of mercy & service to G-d, were clearly viewed as being acceptable during periods of Sabbath rest. (i.e., Matthew 15:1-20, or Mark 7:1-23, provide in penetrating detail, the Lord Jesus' scathing corrective to the manner in which the religious leaders (Pharisees & Saducees) had actually changed, or ultimately "defiled" the original Divine "intent" on Sabbath keeping. I do hope the aforementioned helps address your last post!
God is perfect, holy and righteous. He is omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent.
Hazony is, like all of us, a created being. He attempts to judge his Creator, on which Hazony has no ground to stand upon. A fool believes that he knows more than God.
But it seems rather exaggerated to claim that the *straightforward meaning* of the Biblical text is God’s uncreatedness and ontological independence… The fact that they quote God’s ‘great declaration’ of Exodus 3:14 as “I am” indicates that they have entirely ignored Hazony’s point. Namely, that the Hebrew phrase – “ehyeh asher ehyeh” – seems more accurately translated as “I shall be what I shall be” or “I shall be whatever I shall be”, than the strangely popular “I am that I am”. Then when God goes on to call himself simply “ehyeh”, this would seem to be better translated “I will be” than “I am”. This verse is so enigmatic that it seems unlikely that any interpretation of it could be claimed to be “straightforward”. But if the verse is translated in what seems to be the natural way given the Hebrew, then Hazony’s interpretation that it implies God’s ‘incompleteness and chageability’ becomes rather easier to understand, rather than some obvious ‘error’.
In fact, I have always wondered what the grammatical (rather than purely a priori theological) justification is, for the common “I am that I am” translation of Exodus 3:14. If anyone can shed some light on this, I would be grateful!
((This is what Hazony says in his article on this matter: “God responds to Moses’ request to know his name (that is, his nature) by telling him “ehi’eh asher ehi’eh” —“I will be what I will be.” In most English-language Bibles this is translated “I am that I am,” following the Septuagint, which sought to bring the biblical text into line with the Greek tradition (descended from Xenophanes, Parmenides and Plato’s “Timaeus”) of identifying God with perfect being. But in the Hebrew original, the text says almost exactly the opposite of this: The Hebrew “I will be what I will be” is in the imperfect tense, suggesting to us a God who is incomplete and changing.”))