Re: Cobb County

This doesn't seem to have gone to the list yesterday so I'm resending it.
GLM

    ----- Original Message -----
    From: Vernon Jenkins
    To: George Murphy ; D. F. Siemens, Jr.
    Cc: asa@calvin.edu
    Sent: Saturday, January 22, 2005 5:04 PM
    Subject: Re: Cobb County

    George,

    In my email of 21 Jan I requested clarification of your recent claim that my position is "practically equivalent to the Manichaean one" and thus "tantamount to heresy". You now respond with "...I indicated the Manichaean tendency of your thought adequately in a previous post." It is helpful, therefore, that I remind you of what you wrote then: "If Satan has such complete control over the world and human minds to make the great preponderance of evidence point toward a false picture of origins then Satan is, for all intents and purposes, the creator of the world we inhabit and of which we are part. This idea has always been recognized as a heresy - Manicheanism - by the Christian church." (19 Jan)

    You have clearly misrepresented me, George, for nowhere have I claimed sovereignty for Satan. Rather, I have referred to that most instructive _case-study_, viz Job's life-shaking experience, where it is made clear that he (Satan) is neither a _free_ agent nor master of his own destiny. He is there portrayed as a _petitioner_ who, apparently, is constantly dreaming up schemes with which to afflict mankind - particularly those who have declared allegiance to the Lord. We are given to understand that God's response to each petition is perfectly in keeping with His ultimate, unsearchable and sovereign purposes; and we further observe that an assent may sometimes be conditional.

    It follows that I am neither a Manichean nor a heretic (unless, of course, you had something else in mind). Accordingly, I believe it is reasonable that I ask you to publicly withdraw the charge.

    In Job, Satan is not the leader of the forces of evil, the prince of darkness &c but something like God's over-zealous prosecuting attorney who gets the Lord to authorize a sting operation against Job. An unprejudiced reading of Job 1 & 2 is sufficient to show this. Satan is not even mentioned after Ch.2 & all Job's complaints &c are directed to God. Thus bringing Satan's role in Job into the present discussion - and considerations of theodicy in general - is a red herring. As far as the basic issue is concerned - why God allows evil things to happen - we can eliminate the middle man.

    Even if one understands Satan in Job anachronistically as the leader of the fallen angels &c, what happens in Job is very different from the kind of thing you're claiming with apparent age. In Job Satan is allowed to take very limited action against one person. You are making Satan responsible for a restructuring of the entire creation to make a misleading virtual reality for everybody. Regardless of what is then said about God's theoretical sovereignty, you reduce God to a deus otiosus, a kind of Merovingian king who just sits on the throne while the major domo makes all the decisions and does all the work. This is not formally the Manichaean heresy but amounts to it for practical purposes, which is why I used the technical phrase "tantamount to heresy."

    You are not the 1st person who's tried to make Satan - or some other evil figure, or the general effects of sin - responsible for thoroughgoing apparent age. The intention of course is to shield God from the charge of being deceptive. But it doesn't work. To the extent that God isn't responsible for deceiving appearances then Satan is in control, and to the extent that God's sovereignty is emphasized, God must be understood as deceptive. (Of course the correct solution is to drop the preposterous notion of apparent age!) You can't have it both ways.

    & to the extent that God has made the creation itself an instrument of deception, we again have one of the primary features of Manichaean & gnostic systems, the belief that the creation is inferior, bad, unworthy of our consideration, &c. So one doesn't really escape that way.

    But as I said earlier, I want to be careful about tossing around the H word. So let's do this: I'll withdraw the statement that your position is tantamount to heresy if you'll admit that your view makes God deceptive.

    I'm glad you are able to confirm that my reading of the biblical text is correct. The words appear to be unambiguous and clear enough. But where, then, does my train of logic fail?

    In thinking that scripture (& particularly early Genesis) can be inspired & true only if it is accurate historical & scientific narrative by modern standards.

    Shalom
    Vernon
    www.otherbiblecode.com
Received on Mon Jan 24 08:00:04 2005