November 19, 2020 Show with Scott Christensen on “What About Evil? A Defense of God’s Sovereign Glory”

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 19th day of November 2020, and I am thrilled to have back on the program a returning guest who has one of the most crucial issues he's going to discuss today, one of the most crucial issues within Christendom that has actually divided

Christendom for centuries, the answer to the question, I should say. It's also a question that is probably one of, if not the most frequently asked question by critics of Christianity and even just critics of theism, the belief that there is a

God and that that God is good. The question is, what about evil?

And of course, the fuller question that an atheist might typically ask is, if God exists, why is there evil in this world, if indeed he is so good and kind and gracious and benevolent?

But today we are going to seek to address that issue from a

Christian perspective, a theologically reformed perspective, and first and foremost, a biblical perspective.

What about evil? A defense of God's sovereign glory, the title of Scott Christensen's new book, and Scott Christensen happens to be the associate pastor of Kerrville Bible Church in Kerrville, Texas, and he also is the author of other books, including

What About Free Will? But as I said, today we are addressing his latest book,

A Massive Hardback, published by Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, more well -known today as P &R

Publishing, What About Evil? A Defense of God's Glory, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Trump and Zion Radio, Pastor Scott Christensen.

It's great to be here. And why don't you tell our listeners, first and foremost, about the

Kerrville Bible Church. Well, yes, Kerrville Bible Church was started about 40 years ago, and it's a

Bible -believing church that is focused on expository preaching.

Our pastor, our teaching pastor, Chris McKnight, has been there for 20 years.

He just celebrated his 20th anniversary of preaching at this church, and we hold to strong Reformed views of God's salvation in Christ, and it's a great place to serve.

I've been there for about one year now, and left a church that I pastored in Colorado for 16 years, and the

Lord led us here, and we're excited to be here. Great, and if anybody wants further information about Kerrville Bible Church in Kerrville, Texas, go to KerrvilleBibleChurch .org,

and Kerrville is spelled K -E -R -R -V as in victory,

I -L -L -E. Well, this is certainly quite a thorough, quite a massive volume that you have written, and it probably needed to be, because of all the questions that are very often thrown at believers, not only by other believers, but also by atheists and agnostics and enemies of Christianity.

Very often these are nothing more than dodges and rabbit trails to confuse or to stupefy the

Christian who is sharing his faith, evangelizing, defending his faith.

Usually the person, if they are in the category of an atheist or agnostic, isn't really interested in an answer, but there are sincere, genuine believers, especially when they are going through a horrible, painful trial in their lives.

It might even be that they were the victim of some kind of horrific, unspeakable evil, and they may be even answering this question, asking these questions themselves, and in particular the question, what about evil, especially if they are young believers, but even a seasoned

Christian of many years and even spanning decades, they might even be a senior citizen.

They might even be on the brink of entering into eternity at an elderly age, and they still might have these questions.

So, just reflecting on the fact that this question has been addressed over the centuries on many occasions, even by those who share our

Reformed faith, why is it that you sought out to write this new book on this subject, and such an impressively large volume on this subject?

Well, when I wrote my first book, What About Free Will?, when you address questions of free will, you often intersect questions about evil, and so I addressed some of those questions briefly in that first book, and then my editor at PNR really thought that I had addressed those problems well, and it really felt that there needed to be something more fuller just specifically addressing the problem of evil.

I really didn't want to write that kind of a book. I had some other ideas in mind, but he convinced me that it needed to be written, and so I have been working diligently on the subject for the last four, four and a half years.

And originally, the book wasn't intended to be so long, but it kind of ended up being that way, and they were happy, the publisher was happy with that, and I'm happy with it.

I felt like I've addressed the questions as thoroughly as I think is necessary for believers and unbelievers to grapple with, especially when it comes from the

Reform perspective on these questions. Typically, the problem of evil is addressed with what is called the free will defense as the most common response to the problem of evil that Christians offer, and of course that is the response of what are known as free will theists.

That would include Arminians, opened theists, and Molinists, and so I present quite a different perspective that comes from historic

Reformed theology that affirms God's sovereignty over all the affairs of man without neglecting the fact that we are morally culpable and responsible for our choices as human beings, and so I try to deal with all those questions.

And I know that we may get some of our open theists listeners, if there are any, upset that we're not giving them an adequate description of their views on this, or even those who believe in a middle knowledge of God theory and all of these other theories, but if you could give us a brief summary of what their explanation is, and then we can move on to the truth.

Yes, well, open, all three of the free will theist positions would be classical

Arminianism, then the more recent, what I would call a kind of a radical form of Arminianism is known as open theism that continues to have adherence today.

In fact, don't they call themselves, maybe not all of them, but don't many of them call themselves consistent

Arminians? Yes, personally I think that if the view of free will that is held by free will theists, which is known as libertarian free will in the philosophical literature, then

I think open theists are the most consistent in their views, whereas Arminians are inconsistent in those views, because it especially affects one's view of foreknowledge, and so essentially the main difference between Arminians and open theists is that Arminians believe that God foreknows all the future.

He has meticulous foreknowledge of every future event, whereas open theists do not believe that he has exhaustive foreknowledge of the future.

In fact, God cannot be absolutely certain of anything that will happen in the future, and that would be true if libertarian free will is true.

In other words, libertarian free will believes that one could, given the same events in history up to a point of making a choice, those events could all be the same and one could make one choice or another choice with no antecedent sufficient causes determining which choice a person would make.

So to imagine this in a different way, if someone is walking down a particular path and they get to a fork in the road, and let's say we repeat that same set of events where somebody is walking down that path, they could choose, when they get to the fork, they could choose side

A or side B, and it doesn't matter what preceded that choice, that you could have all the same circumstances that preceded that choice, and libertarian free will says that you could choose one or the other and nothing determines what choice you would make.

If that is true, then we could never know what choices a person would make before they made it, and that would include

God himself, and open theists acknowledge that, and therefore they deny the scriptures that clearly say that God knows the future, that he in fact has determined the future.

So that would be the main difference there between open theism and Arminianism, although there's of course other issues as well.

And in fact, even though we would recognize as Reformed Christians that Arminians are being inconsistent when they say this, they would share with us an abhorrence typically, depending upon how moderate they are.

There are evangelicals, or professing evangelicals, who are very sedated and indifferent when it comes to serious heresies that arise in the church.

But your average conservative Bible -believing evangelical who believes firmly in the inerrancy of scripture, believes in the gospel, and has a classic understanding of God, they would share with us an abhorrence and an opposition to the open theist view that God does not know the future, purely on the basis that he is omniscient and knows all things, even all things in the future.

Right, correct, correct. So open theism has been regarded as heretical, not only by Calvinists, but by Arminians as well, and rightfully so.

But the issue then comes down to, well, do they have a consistent view of libertarian free will, and I happen to think that they do.

If libertarian free will is true, then the open theist position would make more sense. So that then throws the problem of free will back on the

Arminians. Are they holding to a consistent biblical view of God's omniscience, while at the same time holding to libertarian free will?

And I think they are not. And since I do not think that libertarian free will can be biblically defended,

I think that it needs to be rejected. But if you reject free will, then you would no longer be an

Arminian. And so, if you could, give us a classic answer to the issue by, let's say that there is, as we have unfortunately all witnessed in the media, we see the horrific mass shootings at a school, whether it be an elementary school or a high school or a college.

Somebody charges in there, either a student or some other individual begins shooting people seemingly indiscriminately, killing them.

He is either arrested or gunned down himself by police. And what would be the typical, well -meant but very flawed answer to why this occurred by an

Arminian evangelical Christian? And then we could move on to the open theist, and then we could move on to what you would believe to be a biblical answer, which you and I would think is a

Reformed answer, because we believe that Reformed theology is the best of theologies known to men that accurately reflect the scriptures.

But if you could, give us those breakdowns of something like that, that is unfortunately an occurrence that happens all too frequently in our world.

So typically the response to, you know, you have a, let's just take the example of a school shooting of some sort where multiple people are shot in a senseless act of violence, and immediately people will begin to ask the questions, well, why did

God allow this to happen? And just to frame for your listeners what the issues are, the classic problem of evil is what is called a trilemma.

In other words, Christians believe two things about God. They believe, number one, that God is all good.

Number two, that God is all powerful. So because he is all powerful, he would prevent evil from taking place in the world.

So if evil exists, then either God is not all good, in other words, he wants evil to be in the world, therefore he himself must be evil, or he must not have the power to stop evil or prevent it, and therefore he is not all powerful.

So for example, Rabbi Kushner wrote a book some years ago called

Why Do Good Things Happen to Bad People? Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People? And his essential answer to the problem of evil is that God is all good, but he's not all powerful.

So God doesn't want bad things to happen, quote -unquote, to good people. Of course, we've got a problem already just by calling people good.

Rabbi Kushner is wrong on several points. Nonetheless, what he is saying is that God simply is not powerful enough to stop evil from happening.

So that's the basic issue. Yeah, even the late stand -up comic

George Carlin, back in the 70s at least, before he became an atheist, he used to attempt to defend the goodness of God by basically saying that he was subject to physical laws that he created, and he wouldn't phrase it that God was good, he would say that God is a cool guy, and that he is not responsible in any way, or he is not the origin or the author or the ordainer or orchestrator of evil acts, calamity, or even natural acts of disaster, that he is just the

God that loves us, almost like a deist understanding of God, that he has created all things and set them in motion, but he's made himself subject to these very things he created, like nature and so on.

Right, right, which has serious implications for one's theology. In either case, the way that the typical free will theists, which would include

Arminians and Opentheists and Molinists as well, the way they would answer this question is called the free will defense.

And basically, essentially what they're saying is that God grants that all creatures have libertarian free will, and in doing so,

God risks the fact that they could make choices that are evil.

But in order for human beings to have moral responsibility, free will theism and libertarian free will suggests that you must have the opportunity to make either good or evil choices, otherwise we are not morally responsible for our choices.

And the assumption is that if we were only limited to making good choices, or were somehow determined to only make the choices that God wants us to make, then those choices are not truly free, and if they're not truly free, then we cannot be truly responsible for our choices.

And so in order for us to be responsible for any choice that we make, we must have the ability to either act in any situation, either in a good or evil fashion.

And so when God grants this libertarian free will, He takes a risk that people are going to make evil choices, and therefore

He will not intervene lest He coerce them and violate their freedom of choice, and therefore violate their moral responsibility.

So that is the standard answer to the problem of evil. It is called the free will defense, and I think it's problematic because there are all kinds of problems with free will.

And even the open theist would find the

Arminian's answer nearly equally, if not equally, repugnant to our answer as Reformed Christians, because the open theist would say if God knew these things were going to happen, if He knew the

Holocaust was going to happen, if He knew that terrorists were going to fly into the

Twin Towers in the Pentagon building and did nothing, that demonstrates just as much evil on the part of God as if He, according to us, the

Calvinists, ordained them before the foundation of the world. They see no real difference, major difference, because in one sense they are right.

If you're going to have a complaint with God ordaining evil acts, how can you defend the fact that He knew about them and yet did nothing?

Am I right in that little description? Yes, exactly. So one of the primary objections of open theism to the

Arminian position is what is known as gratuitous evil. So what is gratuitous evil?

Well, in the philosophical literature, gratuitous evil is evil that seems to have absolutely no good purpose for existing.

You know, the rape of little children, the Holocaust, you know, all the innocent lives that died in the 9 -11 terrorism act upon the

Twin Towers and so forth, things like that. We wring our hands and we say, why, why?

Surely God, if He had known all of the millions of people that would be slaughtered in concentration camps and sent to the incinerators and so forth, surely if He had known this beforehand,

He would have no good reason for not stopping it. And so this is the charge against the

Arminian that God knows all these things are happening and yet He's essentially the

Arminian position is, well, we can't stop Hitler. God will not stop

Hitler or any other psychopath that would choose to engage in such horrific acts of violence and murder and mayhem.

God can't stop that person because He would be violating that person's free will and God must always respect the free will of His creatures and therefore

He can't do that. And so God has to really just stand by and wring

His own hands when the Holocaust happens because there's nothing He can do about it unless He wants to violate our free will.

So free will and really all versions of free will theism is a sacred, what

I call the Arkenstone of the sacred Arkenstone of free will theism.

It is so important that they must maintain it at all costs. And we're going to go into what you believe to be the biblical response, otherwise known by us as the reformed response to the mass shootings that have occurred in schools and other kinds of atrocities.

We're going to hear that when we come back from our first break. If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Please, as always, give us your first name, at least your city and state of residence and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. And I could readily understand a subject like this that involves evil acts,

I could readily understand that there may be some listeners who are either the victims of an evil act, perhaps the past perpetrators of evil acts.

They've repented but are haunted by them or any kind of situation that would compel them to remain anonymous.

We understand that. We will grant you the respect to allow you to remain anonymous.

But if it's just a general theological question, please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence.

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This is Chris Armson. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with about 90 minutes to go is

Scott Christensen, Associate Pastor of Kerrville Bible Church of Kerrville, Texas.

We are addressing his new book, What About Evil? A Defense of God's Sovereign Glory.

Would you say this falls under the category of the theodicy,

Pastor Scott? Well, yes. Theodicy is a term that was coined in the early 1700s that simply combines the

Greek word for theos and dike. Theos is the

Greek word for God. Dike is the Greek word for justice. And the idea is how does one justify

God's ways or purposes in the face of evil?

And so the theodicy is an attempt to defend God's purposes or what

God is doing or how God interacts with evil in the world. And so, yes, my book is an attempt to present a positive theodicy, a positive explanation as to why

God has not just simply allowed or permitted evil to take place in the world, but in fact has ordained it to take place.

In fact, yeah, that's the key word that you used there or phrase that you used there is something that's going to come up in a question from a listener soon because there are many

Christians, including Reformed Christians. I don't know if they are mistakenly, you know, accidentally saying this by not carefully wording their statements or if it's actually a part of their theology.

But there are even Reformed Christians who talk about God allowing evil rather than ordaining it and orchestrating it.

In fact, I even know a dear brother, I love him to death, is a theologically

Reformed pastor who believes there are certain scenarios or events in history where God allowed evil, permitted evil, and I have disagreed with him over the use of those terms.

But we could get to that in a moment, get back to it, I should say. But please, if you could now give the biblical answer or the

Reformed answer to why such a horrific and seemingly senseless event such as a mass murder at a school would occur if God is indeed in sovereign control over all things and he is at the same time a loving, gracious, merciful, patient, and benevolent

God. How does this happen? So the standard

Reformed answer to the problem of evil is what is called the greater good defense or the greater good theodicy, which essentially is a broad way of saying that God would never ordain anything that did not serve some greater purpose in God's, in the grand scheme of things.

So in other words, God would prevent evil from happening if it did not serve some good purpose, some greater purpose, than if the evil had not happened in the first place.

Okay, so for example, if we think of the evil that occurred in Sodom and Gomorrah, God determined at a certain point that the evil that unfolded in that city could not serve any good purpose for it to continue, and therefore

God stopped it. He put a stop to the evil there by destroying the city. We can say the same thing prior to the

Noahic flood, in which every intention of the heart of every human being was always evil continually.

Genesis 6 tells us that therefore God saw fit to bring destruction to the world because he could see no good coming out of continuing to allow such evil to proliferate the world.

So we have instances in Scripture where God does stop evil from happening, so evil that does occur must serve some greater purpose of God.

And perhaps the greatest passage of Scripture that really zeroes in on this notion would be in the book of Genesis.

It's the story of Joseph and his brothers, and we know from that story, starting in Genesis 37 and taking us to the end of the book, chapter 50, that Joseph's brothers hated their brother

Joseph. They threw him into a pit, and then a caravan came along, a slave -training caravan, and they sold him into slavery and committed this evil.

Of course, later on, Joseph goes to prison after becoming a servant of Pharaoh, of Potiphar, and one of the servants in Pharaoh's household.

And then, of course, Joseph ended up in prison because he was wrongfully accused of sexual advances on his wife, on Potiphar's wife, and so forth.

He ends up in prison, and then eventually he interprets the dreams of Pharaoh himself.

He is then exalted to this place of what we might call a prime minister -type position.

In the land of Egypt, they have this great famine. Joseph's brothers come to Egypt and meet

Joseph, not realizing who he is. They become reunited, and they recognize their evil that they had done.

They recognize their moral culpability for what they had done, and they tremble before Joseph, and Joseph essentially says to them, do not fear, for even though you feel bad about doing this, you must know that it is

God, ultimately, that sent me here, that I might save our family and the known world at that time from this famine.

And so, in Genesis chapter 15, verse 20, we have a very key verse in Scripture in which

Joseph speaks to his brothers, acknowledges once again their moral culpability for sending him, for selling him into slavery, and he says to them, what you intended for evil,

God intended for good. And so essentially you have Joseph giving a dual explanation for the same event, the event of selling them into slavery, which was evil because of the evil intentions of Joseph's brothers.

And yet God sovereignly superintended that same event, ordained that event to happen in order to bring about some good purpose.

And so, what man intends for evil,

God always intends for good. And we see that in numerous places in Scripture, but that is probably the clearest example where it is explained that human beings can intend something evil, and God can superintend and ordain that same event, but always has good intentions.

And so, that is a basic explanation of how God can ordain evil and yet not be culpable for it.

So basically, Scripture indicates that our culpability for evil always lies in the intentions of the heart.

Jesus said it is out of the heart that come forth murders and adulteries and thefts and so forth, that it's the heart and the intentions of the heart that are the ground for moral responsibility.

And therefore, when God ordains something that is evil, he must always have some good purpose for it.

Otherwise, he would not ordain it or he would prevent it from happening. I have a question for you before I go to a listener question.

There is a text, I think a very important passage of Scripture, that reflects on God's sovereignty over evil acts, and I have never myself heard any kind of adequate, even close to adequate response to someone who rejects the idea that God would ever ordain an act of evil, because they think that that defies his goodness, his grace, his mercy.

They would say that that is a teaching that God is the author of evil and we cannot stand for that.

And I'm speaking specifically of the passages in 2 Samuel 12, and this is the text that most

Christians know about in regard to Nathan the prophet, after he reveals to David, King David, how

God is going to chastise him for his wickedness in regard to his adultery with Bathsheba, and even arranging the assassination of Bathsheba's husband,

Uriah the Hittite, in order to cover up Bathsheba's pregnancy by David.

And if we go to verse 10, 2 Samuel 12, Nathan the prophet speaking in the voice of God, Now therefore the sword will never depart from your house, because you despised me, and took the wife of Uriah the

Hittite to be your own. This is what the Lord says, Out of your own household

I am going to bring calamity on you.

Before your very eyes I will take your wives and give them to one who is close to you, and he will sleep with your wives in broad daylight.

You did it in secret, but I will do this thing in broad daylight before all

Israel. Then David said to Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. Nathan replied,

The Lord has taken away your sin. You are not going to die, but because by doing this you have shown utter contempt for the

Lord, the son born to you will die. Now that's pretty clear that God himself is not just allowing some horrible things which involve adultery and which involve the death of a baby.

He is not just allowing them, but he is actually ordaining them to happen. Have you ever heard how

Armenians respond to that, or those who are not reformed in their understanding of God's, for ordaining all things that occur even, even likes?

Yeah, I'm not sure that I have heard any particular Armenian explanation of this passage, but you could multiply passages like this as you look in other places.

For example, in the book of Exodus you see God hardening the heart of Pharaoh whereby he prevents the sons of Israel from leaving

Egypt to go to the Promised Land to worship

God and so forth, and increases their hard labor and their oppression, which no doubt led to the death and misery of the

Israelites in intensified form. God continues to harden

Pharaoh's heart. It says, I will harden his heart. He tells Moses, I will harden his heart.

But what is interesting is that in that context, I believe from about chapter 9 of Exodus up to around chapter 17 or so, that about an equal number of times we read that God hardens his heart, and yet interspersed within that at the same time, we see that Pharaoh hardens his own heart.

And so what we have there is what I believe, and I deal with this extensively in my first book,

What About Free Will, is we have a clear example of compatibilism, in which the same event, just like Joseph and his brothers, when they sold him into slavery, it was a single event, and yet God had a purpose in his interaction with that event as the one who ordains it and ensured that it would take place, and that his brothers had their own finite, human, earthly response to that same circumstance in which they committed deeds of evil.

In fact, we have to go to our midway break, and we'll have you pick up again on Joseph when we return.

And folks, this is the longer than normal break. Please be patient with us, because Grace Life Radio in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show, because they have to, in accordance with FCC regulations, they have to localize their programming, including

Iron Sharp and Zion Radio, to Lake City, Florida, and so they air their own public service announcements and other local things to do that.

We simultaneously air our globally heard commercials while they do that, so please use this time wisely, write down as much of the information as you can for as many of our advertisers as you can, so that you can more frequently and successfully patronize our advertisers, so that they remain happy and continue to renew their advertising contracts.

That will enable us to remain on the air for a longer future, because we absolutely positively depend on our advertisers' finances to exist.

We could not exist without these advertisements. So please try to keep our advertisers happy, and even if it just means when it's impossible for you to patronize them by purchasing products or using services or even visiting a church because it's too far away, at least contact them and thank them for sponsoring

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We'll be right back after these messages with more of Scott Christensen. Iron Sharp and Zion Radio depends upon the financial support of fine

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In Psalm 139 verse 14, the psalmist offers praise to the

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Our congregation is one of a growing number of churches who love and support

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If you live near Franklin, Tennessee, and Franklin is just south of Nashville, maybe ten minutes, or you are visiting this area, or you have friends and loved ones nearby, we hope you will join us some

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This is Pastor Bill Sousa wishing you all the richest blessings of our

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Before we return to my guest today, Scott Christensen, on his book,

What About Evil? I just have a couple of announcements to make. First of all, folks, if you love this show and you do not want it to disappear from the airwaves, please,

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Folks, I don't have any way of explaining this, but we have tens of thousands of listeners that download this program every single month.

And yet, a tiny trickle of people donate every month.

And I don't understand that. I don't know if they're just always fast -forwarding these pleas for donations.

When they're listening to the recording, that is. I just don't understand it.

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Don't put them in jeopardy if you're really struggling to survive. You're really falling behind on bills.

You're really having a hard time making ends meet. Those two things are commands of God in Scripture, providing for your church and your family.

Providing for my radio show is obviously not a command of God. But if you're financially blessed above and beyond, your ability to obey those two commands, and you love this show, and you don't want it to disappear, and you're one of those tens of thousands of people that listen every month and download the

MP3 every month, please help us out. Please let us know how much this show means to you by donating frequently and generously to www .irontripandsionradio

.com click support, then click click to donate now. Also folks, if you are not a member of a local

Bible believing church, and you need help finding a church no matter where on the planet earth you live,

I may be able to help you because I've already helped people find churches in all parts of the world that are biblically sound, sometimes right around the corner from where they live.

They didn't even know these churches existed. So, send me an email if you are in that category.

ChrisArnson at gmail .com ChrisArnson at gmail .com and put, I need a church in the subject line.

I've helped many people in our audience find churches near where they live that they didn't know existed, and they've also found churches through me from the lists that I have for their loved ones who don't have a church or where they're going on vacation and so on.

So, send me an email to ChrisArnson at gmail .com ChrisArnson at gmail .com and put,

I need a church in the subject line. It's also the email address where you can send in a question to Scott Christensen on his book,

What About Evil? A Defense of God's Sovereign Glory. That's ChrisArnson at gmail .com

As always, please give us your first name, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

We still have people sending in questions without giving us their city and state of residence, and I'm not talking about anonymous listeners.

I'm talking about people who are giving their identity, but they're not giving us the city and state of residence or country of residence.

Please provide that in your email. So, if you could, Scott, pick up where you left off. You were once again addressing

Joseph in the Old Testament and how his brothers attacked him and sold him into slavery and so on.

And if you could, pick up where you left off. Well, yes. The thing we have to understand about, and you brought up the very fascinating passage in 2

Samuel 12 where God, in rebuking David, says that he will raise up evil against him from his own household.

So here, God is saying that he himself, God himself, will raise up evil. And so, of course, this flabbergasts

Christians when they read this, and they say, well, then is God somehow responsible, morally responsible, for evil actions?

And, of course, he's not. And this is where we need to see that Scripture portrays for us a dual explanation for every event, every choice that involves human beings and angels as well, we could add.

There's always a dual explanation for those events. Number one, God is its primary cause.

God is the primary cause of all things. And humans are the secondary causes of the choices that human beings make.

God is the primary cause. And so God always uses secondary means by which to accomplish his purposes.

And so in the case of raising up evil, of course, we know later on that David's son

Absalom engaged in adulterous relationships with David's wives on his roof in full public and so forth.

And so God ordained this as a means of judgment to bring upon David, to bring judgment to his house, to discipline him, even though he did forgive him.

And yet it was Absalom's evil that is responsible for those things in terms of moral culpability.

God is responsible for ordaining that, but in this case he ordained it as a means of judgment, which was a good thing even though it involved evil.

We see the same thing with Joseph and his brothers. We see the same thing with Pharaoh when

God hardens his heart, and yet Pharaoh is hardening his own heart. You look at, for example,

Isaiah 10, which is a fascinating passage where God raises up the king of Assyria whom he calls his rod of anger, whereby he perpetrates evil upon Israel as a form of judgment.

And so we see this tension between God's sovereignty and human responsibility.

My pastor likes to call it the twin towers of Scripture. You see on the one hand that God is sovereign, ordains good and evil, and humans are responsible in the choices that they make.

And there's a lot that we can unfold in terms of what all that looks like.

But oftentimes you only see one side of that picture. So, for example, in 2

Samuel 12, we see God's ordaining of this evil, though in this particular instance

Absalom was not brought into the picture. The fascinating passages are when we see that both

God and the evil perpetrators are spoken of in the same passage, such as Genesis 50 -20.

I would like to point out that probably the most pertinent passage in which

God clearly ordains evil and yet is not held culpable for it, in fact, it is shown to be an extremely great thing, is in the book of Acts.

In Acts chapter 2, for example, we see Peter preaching on the day of Pentecost, and in verse 22, he says,

Listen to these words, Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders, signs which

God performed through him in your midst, just as you yourselves know. This man,

Jesus Christ, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God.

So right off we see that Peter is indicating that Jesus was delivered over to the authorities by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God.

And then Peter goes on to accuse these men who were part of the conspiracy to kill

Jesus and cast moral culpability upon them. He says, You nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put him to death.

So here you see this dual explanation for the same event. God predetermined it, and because he predetermined it, he knew precisely what was going to happen, and yet all of it happened via the hands of godless men.

We see the same incident drawn attention to in the prayer of the church in Acts chapter 4, and in verse 27, it says,

Truly in this city as they are praying to the Father, truly in this city they were gathered together against your holy servant

Jesus, whom you anointed both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the

Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and purpose predestined to occur.

So here the believers in the upper room in Acts chapter 4 name names. They say specifically

Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, did whatever the hand of God purposed and predestined to occur.

So when you go back to the 2 Samuel 12 passage where God says, I will raise up evil, we see it here too.

God raises up evil men, Gentiles and Jews, rulers who do not have good intentions.

Herod was an evil man. Pilate did not have pure intentions.

He wanted to please the people. He didn't really care whether Jesus died or not. He didn't think he was guilty.

But nonetheless, from his perspective, he had no good intentions in seeing that Jesus was crucified.

And yet all of that happened because God predetermined that it would happen.

And of course all of this happened because without the death of Christ the greater good of redemption would not have occurred.

And so God uses evil to accomplish his greater purposes and God will never ordain any evil that does not serve some greater good that God has in mind.

Now of course we don't always know what that might be in any specific instance. So for example, we look at these school shootings and whatnot.

We don't know exactly what all good God might be bringing out of some instance of horrific violence, but the point is that from Scripture we can understand that God never ordains anything that is gratuitous.

God never ordains any evil event that will serve no good purpose whatsoever.

Now to us, we may not be able to see that. When God ordained evil to unfold in Job's life in which seven of his children were killed, in which all of his possessions were wiped out, either by natural means or by evil raiders that came and stole his property, we see that even though Satan was an instigator and a direct cause of the evil that happened in Job's life,

Job didn't see any of that. He never saw the conversation that happened between God and Satan, and yet ultimately

Job understands that God is the one that ordained all of this. God gives, God has taken away, blessed be the name of the

Lord. He tells his wife in Job chapter 2, he says to her, when she looks at him and says, why don't you curse

God and die? Right? This is precisely what Satan wanted Job to do. When all this evil befell

Job, Satan thought that Job would curse God to his face and God said, well have at him.

Right? God gave if you want to call it this, permission to Satan to do what

God determined to happen. And when this did happen and Job's wife says, why don't you curse

God and die? He says, shall we accept good from God and not evil?

And the inspired narrator says that in saying this, Job did not sin with his lips and earlier he made a similar statement, he says, nor did he blame

God. So even though he acknowledges God's sovereign responsibility in terms of determining the evil that happened in Job's life, he does not assign moral culpability to God.

And so there is a certain mystery in God ordaining evil while remaining free of moral culpability for it, even though secondary agents such as Satan and angels and humans are always culpable, but once again that's because culpability in scripture is always tied to one's intentions.

God always has good intentions, can never have an evil intention in his heart, and therefore he can only have good purposes for the evil that he ordains.

There's no question there's mystery in all of that, and yet that is the clear testimony over and over again in scripture.

Yes, and we have an anonymous listener who says, I have been in my life the victim of many evil acts and must confess that I've perpetrated some of my own, especially before becoming a

Christian. One thing that I have never heard a Reformed Christian explain, and I don't mean that some haven't,

I'm probably just not reading enough, but does God preordain our thoughts as well as our actions?

Well, yes, you could say that when God hardens the heart of Pharaoh, what is being addressed there is his heart.

So it's the thoughts of his heart that are ordained. Now what we need to be careful of is saying that somehow

God infuses evil thoughts into the hearts of human beings.

So D. A. Carson and others have made an important distinction in God's sovereign relationship to good and evil, and what he says is that God's relationship to good and evil as the one who sovereignly ordains both good and evil is that it is asymmetrical.

What he means by that is that God stands behind good in such a way that he can be considered the direct cause of that good, but he stands behind evil in such a way that he can never be considered the direct cause of evil.

In other words, God does not infuse evil thoughts or intentions in the hearts of men, even though he ordains that they have those thoughts.

So we need to make that distinction that God can ordain something to take place, and yet he is not the actor of it.

Jonathan Edwards makes this very clear when he talks about what is meant by God being the author of evil.

Sometimes we use this phrase, the author of evil, and I think it's very misleading. The Westminster Confession uses that, and we need to understand what is meant by that.

When the Westminster Confession says that God cannot be the author of evil, they're saying that he cannot be morally culpable, or he can't be the direct cause of evil, yet he still ordains evil.

I don't like to use the phrase author of evil to speak of moral culpability, because I think that ultimately

God is the author of evil. John Frame and Wayne Grudem use this kind of language in their systematic theologies in which

God is likened to an author like Shakespeare, who can author a play like Macbeth, and he'll have good characters and evil characters, and Shakespeare as the author will determine what those characters will say and do in the play, and yet when we read that play, and we read, for example, the evil actions of a

Macbeth, we don't attribute those evil actions or moral culpability to Shakespeare as the author.

Shakespeare authored the play, but we attribute the moral culpability to the actors in the play. And I think that's a good model for us to think about the sovereignty of God.

It's what I call God as a transcendent author. In other words, he stands above and beyond the plane of his providential actions in creation and in the actions of human beings as the author of those actions, and yet as the author, he remains free of direct culpability for those actions.

So yes, there's a certain mystery there. You know, when you consider how did God pardon the heart of Pharaoh, we don't have any explanation of the actual mechanics of that.

All we know is that God could not infuse actual evil thoughts in the heart of Pharaoh, even while he can ordain them.

There is certainly some mystery there. And there's some tension there that we have to grapple with.

Nonetheless, we can't escape the fact that the Bible's very clear that God does ordain these evil things to take place.

Yeah, people make, especially if they're not Reformed, they make the error of thinking that man is somehow morally neutral, and they would slander those who are

Reformed with the caricature and the outright lie that we are saying

God is making morally neutral people, forcing them to do, to think and do evil things that they otherwise would not have done.

And what is clear from the Scriptures is that we are all born into this world children of the devil.

We are all from the same lump of clay and worthy of hell, and God in his sovereignty chooses to rescue some of us, not because of anything good we've done, not because of any foreseen goodness even in our beliefs, but for the reasons that he alone knows.

He chooses some of us and gives us new hearts, and we follow him and obey him, although imperfectly, but we are not morally neutral people who either are forced against our so -called wills to either believe or reject

Christ. Am I right? That's right. All of our actions proceed from our fundamental nature as human beings.

So if we have a corrupted nature, right? In the language of Jesus, if the root of the tree is bad, it's going to produce bad fruit.

If the root of the tree is good, it's going to produce good fruit. Right? And so he's talking about human nature there and liking it as to trees.

So a bad tree is going to produce bad fruit, a good tree is going to produce good fruit. And he says you must make the tree good in order for good fruit to be produced from it.

And so when we apply that to the Bible's anthropology, its understanding of the nature of man, then we understand that because we are under the curse of sin, because we are under the curse that Adam propagated upon the whole human race, we are born into corruption.

We are born with a corrupt nature that can only make corrupted choices. It is not possible for one in this state to make choices that are truly pleasing to God.

The only way that they can make truly pleasing God glorifying choices is if God transforms that heart.

In other words, He regenerates it. And that's why Reformed theology says that regeneration precedes faith.

One could not act in faith unless God had first regenerated the heart. One cannot see the kingdom of God, as Jesus says in John 3, nor enter the kingdom of God unless they have first been born again.

So you must be born again before you're even capable of making choices that are pleasing to God. Paul deals with this in Romans 8, when he says that the mindset on the flesh is hostile toward God, for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so.

There's two things that Paul is saying there. First of all, he's saying that people don't want to subject themselves to the law of God, meaning that they voluntarily, of their own will, reject the things of God.

They reject anything that would seek God's glory. This is really what I believe Paul means earlier in Romans 3 .23,

when he says, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. In other words, sin is not seeking that which brings glory to God.

And all of us fall short of that in our natural, unregenerate state. And so we don't want to seek

God's glory, but Paul is also saying, we're not even able to do so. So not only do we not want to do it, we are not willing to do it, we are not even morally capable of doing it unless God changes our hearts and regenerates us and draws us to Himself by His grace.

And that's why salvation must be wholly, sufficiently, and necessarily by grace and by grace alone.

Through Christ alone. Through the means of faith alone. And that's why the five solas of the

Reformation are so, so important. Well, thank you, Anonymous. And you have won a free copy of What About Evil?

A Defense of God's Sovereign Glory by our guest Scott Christensen. Compliments of our friends at PNR Publishing.

And if you want to find out more about this book, go to prpbooks .com prpbooks .com

This book will be shipped out to you providing that you give us off the air, of course, your full name and your full mailing address so that our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com

so that they can ship that book out to you at no cost to you or to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

So please make sure you get us that email with your full name and mailing address so that you can take advantage of this gift that you've won from PNR Publishing.

And let's see here. We have a question from one of our listeners that I actually hinted about earlier.

Let's see if I can find this question. Where are you? Yes, Lou from Sharpsburg, Georgia.

Do you believe Romans 9 22 through 24 is a key passage in understanding why

God allows evil? First, address that passage again.

I know that we've already alluded to it, but and then address the use of the term allows.

Is this really a correct understanding of the way God brings evil things about in this earth?

Yeah, I spend a significant section in one of the chapters of my book going through Romans 9 because I do believe it is a very crucial passage to understanding a biblical theodicy, that is why does

God ordain evil? And you notice that earlier in the passage in verse 18 it says, so God has mercy on whom

He desires and He hardens whom He desires. Or the

ESV translates that wills. He has mercy on whom He wills and He hardens whom

He wills. Then Paul brings in this hypothetical challenge to this notion.

He says in verse 19, so why then would you say to me, why does He still find fault for who resists

His will? And this is the classic question. If God determines who He's going to have mercy on and who

He's going to harden, then what does it matter what we do? You know, why does

He still find fault? Why does He still find us morally culpable for who resists His will? Right?

This is the classic question. On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, why did you make me like this, will it?

Paul doesn't answer the question. He actually goes to what is at the root of this question, which is the desire for human autonomy.

And really it is a question that I want to be autonomous. I do not want God to be the ordainer and the

Lord, if you will, of the universe and of my particular life. And so I'm going to challenge this notion, and really

I think this is what stands behind all challenges to God's sovereignty, and that's what Paul is dealing with here.

Verse 21, he says, does not the potter have the right over the clay to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use?

What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?

Now it's interesting that this is in the past there, the word prepared there, indicating that men are already in a state of being sons of wrath, of being dead in their trespasses, and since they're already on the path to hell.

Right? By virtue of the curse that has been, that has rested upon them through Adam.

And he did so in order to make known, verse 23, the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy which

He prepared beforehand for glory. This is an active. So there is, so God actively prepares vessels of mercy for glory.

This is an allusion to election, and whereas those who have been prepared for destruction is in the passive tense.

Yes, God is in the divine passive, but God did not actively choose these individuals for destruction.

They're already on the path of destruction. Right, that would be equal ultimacy, correct? For election.

That would be equal ultimacy to believe that God is equally active in both extreme ends.

Yes. Which we reject. Yes. And if you want to pick up where we left off, you may do so, but we have to go to our final break right now.

And our email address is ChrisArnson at gmail .com. ChrisArnson at gmail .com. If you have a question, send it in immediately, because we're rapidly running out of time.

Don't go away. We'll be right back with Scott Christensen. As host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, I frequently get requests from listeners for church recommendations.

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This is Pastor Bill Sousa wishing you all the richest blessings of our

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We have Eric in Mahomet, Illinois, who asks, in James 1, verse 13, we read,

Let no one say, When he is tempted, I am being tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.

Is there a difference between saying, I am being tempted by God, and saying, God has ordained all evil acts, including my own sinful actions?

Yes, this goes back to the same question that we discussed earlier, that God does not infuse an evil intention or motive within someone, and doesn't directly tempt them.

God cannot tempt anyone toward evil. That would suggest that God has some kind of evil intentions himself, yet he ordains these things.

How he ensures that they happen remains a mystery, but we know that God's intention in ordaining them is always good, could be nothing but good, because it must proceed from the everlasting, infinite goodness of God himself.

We have another anonymous listener. Oh, by the way, Eric, give us your full mailing address in Mahomet, Illinois, because you've won a free copy of What About Evil by Scott Christensen, compliments of PNR Publishing and compliments of CVBBS .com,

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. We'll be shipping it out to you. Another anonymous listener has to say,

I am surrounded mainly with Arminian friends and family, and I have repeatedly told them if they really want to be consistent, logically, with their theology, they could never rest their heads on their pillows at night and sleep peacefully, knowing that people that they personally know died without Christ, because they would have to take some of the blame for those people being in hell, whether it be the infrequency of their evangelism of these people, or the inadequacy of their evangelism, or any other reason, they would have to take part of the blame.

Do you think I'm being correct in the way that I approach this, as far as their inconsistency and leaving

God out of the equation, where they deny his sovereignly ordaining these things?

Yeah, I think there's a kind of cognitive dissonance at times with many Arminians. I think a lot of Arminians are very genuine in their desires and whatnot, and yet there's inconsistency in their thinking and their theology, and they don't really connect the dots.

And yes, I think this reader and this listener is correct in that Arminianism really shifts salvation to a very man -centered approach, both in terms of not only our response to the

Gospel, but also evangelism, the propagation of the Gospel, so that the response, you know, evangelism largely depends on us and getting people to make a decision, and so this often leads to very manipulative kinds of tactics in evangelistic endeavor, you know, such as, you know, altar calls and things like that.

They're meant to emotionally manipulate people, instead of just preaching the pure Gospel and allowing

God's Spirit to use that to work on people's hearts. Ultimately, God is responsible for salvation.

We are just simply his instruments to proclaim the truth, and that frees us up, really, to focus on the purity of the

Gospel message. And I'm sorry, we're out of time, and if anyone wants to find out more about this book that we have been discussing with our guest,

Pastor Scott Christensen, What About Evil? A Defense of God's Sovereign Glory, you can go to CVBBS .com,

where you can purchase that book. Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com.

And once again, we want to thank our friends at P &R Publishing for providing us with free copies of this book that we gave away today.

To find out more information about this book and other titles that they carry, go to PRPBooks .com,

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Kerrville Bible Church in Kerrville, Texas, where our guest is the Associate Pastor, go to KerrvilleBibleChurch .org,

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I want to thank you so much, Pastor Scott, for being such a wonderful guest today. I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who took the time to write, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater