Some recent discussion of John Piper’s evil god
Halden Doerge has been making a few comments about John Piper, especially here, here, and here.
I can distinguish two conclusions in Doerge’s writing so far.
(1) John Piper’s theology is false/evil
(2) John Piper’s God is false/evil.
Now one of my favorite ways to attack a theology is to show that the God it proclaims is a wicked monster, resembling an omnipotent being more powerful and morally worse than Hitler. The best targets for this sort of critique are (a) double predestination and (b) most, if not all, answers to the problem of evil.
I wonder, however, if we can really know when (1) yields or causes (2) for any given believer. I disagree with plenty of ideas other people hold, yet without knowing if they worship a different God than me. I would actually be tempted to say that I’m not sure anyone has the right conception of God, rather than express certainty in the other direction. Surely our relations to real persons can be intertwined with false conceptions of those persons. In this respect, I don’t see why God is different than anyone else we might claim to know.
But surely a theology which – fairly straightforwardly, I might add – attributes (all!) horrendous evils to God, is uniquely problematic. There is certainly no shortage of scriptural reasons to be concerned. The first passage that comes to my mind goes like this:
Woe to those who call evil good
and good evil,
who put darkness for light
and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter.
So I strongly agree that the version of reformed theology put forward by Piper is severely problematic in this dangerous area. But for some reason I can’t say that this means he is guilty of idolatry, as Doerge happily announces.
Anyway, that being said, I am reading Doerge’s brief comments so far with delight. He makes the excellent point that
on Piper’s view of god it is actually immoral for Christians to be angry about suffering and death in the world. In fact, it is absolutely essential that Christians be delighted about it because anything that contributes to his god’s glory is worthy of delight.
It frustrates me that Piper-ish Christians fail to realize this extremely simple consequence of the position that evil is ordained by God for the glory of God. I can’t even find words to defend the inference, because it is so immediate, approaching tautological levels of obviousness. To evade it one needs to create painfully ad hoc principles (e.g. some invented principle that humans as a category should be sad about events when gods should not be) or pragmatic just-so stories (e.g. some invented idea that we need to practice horrified reactions to build up some sort of spiritual strength… predicated on a falsehood of course).
Doerge also makes the good point that if God is really like the divine psychopath Piper presents, then it behooves us to reflect these godly behaviors in our own lives. If “God’s glory would be incomplete without all of horrors that have taken place in the history of the world,” then who are we to try and limit God’s glory?
Another point that I quite like is that Piper-ish gods are basically “crazy sociopaths.” This is quite apt, although perhaps we should throw in narcissistic personality disorder. It’s clear to me that God has many reasons for doing things other than narcissism and self-love, e.g. the son of God is sent because “God so loved the world,” where the world is presumably not identical with himself. Yet for Piper-ish theologies this reduces to “God so wanted glory for himself that he sent his only son…”
My personal pious hope is that people like Piper don’t actually take their own ideas seriously, which is why they are always committing to egregious contradictions within their worldviews. Doerge points out one: that Piper-ish types think abortions are bad while being logically committed to abortions glorifying some psycho god. I typically suspect people just aren’t using words correctly or clearly. I think: Surely they don’t mean he ordains the evil? They must mean something else. And so on.
Joshua,
I hear the passion and sincerity in your words.
One very important aspect of critiquing someone well is to first understand the person’s viewpoint as well as possible from their perspective. For example, to be able to say, “Piper, let me rephrase what you are saying and then would you tell me if that is an accurate portrayal of what you believe.” And then when you are done to have the person say, “yes, you are stating my views correctly.”
I believe you and Doerge have failed significantly in being able to accurately restate Piper’s views in the area you are discussing. It seems to be more of a caricature of your own making. In which case your arguments are significantly dealing with straw men and have little weight with me.
I say this respectfully and not arrogantly. I urge your to try to understand Piper a little better before going after his views so strongly.
I have listened to Piper for 20-some years and I think I have a fairly good handle on his theology in general and so I feel there is some validity to what I am saying.
I wish you well.
David
My personal pious hope is that people like Piper don’t actually take their own ideas seriously, which is why they are always committing to egregious contradictions within their worldviews.
Bingo. And by “people like Piper” we should probably read “all of us at some point or another”.
I’m willing to go along with Halden’s concerns, even though I wouldn’t assert the extreme opposition to Piper that he does. But I often get the sense that people don’t know how to handle doctrine properly, and that this leads to half of our problems. It’s held on to too tightly, or amplified to extrapolate the inevitable consequences ten miles down the road. Which isn’t bad, I suppose. But it’s entirely too ideological and analytical, in my mind, to accurately reflect the contradictions of lived belief and explanation on the human level… preached, lectured, written, over the course of a person’s life.
Were the good rev’d Piper a computing machine that spit out a Gospel theory of sorts for mass consumption, then I think Halden’s concerns about “Piper’s god” might carry some more weight. And insofar as someone like Piper tries to articulate a very tight system of doctrine, revolving around a particular center such as “the glory of God” and depending on that propositional center for its coherence, then I’m perfectly willing to recognize that he approaches the danger of being such a computing machine, to which concerns about what his assertions imply for the immorality of grief or the morality of abortion are quite appropriate.
But it’s still a stretch to hold him to utter consistency when it’s empirically verifiable that he ain’t. Especially when (and here I think I disagree with you, Joshua) there are some rather plausible qualifications that would allow him to avoid the conclusion that it’s immoral to grieve or be angered by human suffering.
Piper’s problem, in my mind (and in light of David’s response I would qualify that I don’t know Piper’s work that well), is that he attempts to present too coherent an ideological account of the faith, with the danger of making God’s glory an idol that overtakes God. I suppose that if Piper has upped the ante by trying to be utterly non-contradictory, it’s fair enough to play the game of chicken (à la Halden) with him and carry his views out to their logical conclusion. I think a better way to approach him, however, is simply to question the helpfulness of his air-tight system in the first place. Because after all, he’s not wrong about the importance of the glory of God or the fact that it answers suffering and evil in a decided manner. He’s just wrong about what that means for our own life as established beneath the glory of God and within a situation of suffering.
It strikes me that Halden’s earlier critiques of non-pacifist pro-life responses to the murder of George Tiller might fall into this same sort of (in my mind) error of raising the stakes of theoretical consistency so damn high that his point ends up being unhelpful as a form of critical dialogue.
David, I’m almost certain that Piper would not agree with Doerge’s characterization, or mine, if I offer one.
However, I am yet to see any understanding of evil as being for God’s glory which does not make God out to be the sorts of horrible things suggested.
Certainly everyone has false beliefs, even beliefs with wicked consequences if taken to logical conclusions. For this reason I wouldn’t make any broad statements about Piper himself. Like any other public figure in religion (say, Jeremiah Wright), I’m sure listening to them for “20 years” or so would mean listening to a message that is 90% good most of the time. I (and presumably Doerge) focus on these beliefs, because they are so crazy.
I wonder, how would you/Piper construe God ordaining all evils for his own glory, in a way that isn’t repulsive?
I agree with the move toward a fuller understanding of the whole of a believer’s religion, and partially for this reason cannot judge Piper’s spiritual status or wider theology by this one example.
However when someone does try to systematize their theology in this fashion – and especially when they do so in the context of confidently answering such serious non-speculative issues as horrendous evil – the system opens itself up to criticism of outrageous consequences and other errors.
I’ll wait for Piper and his readers to declare that we just shouldn’t take too seriously their flippant employment of theological categories (e.g. “glory”) in answering sincere and substantial human questions.
Tangent: As a student of theology I’m sure you are aware of the “plausible qualifications” which justify being sad about divinely ordained and necessary God-glorifying evil. What are they? (You don’t have to discuss them here – a reference would satisfy my morbid curiosity)
Right, I think we actually agree on this. All I’m trying to say in the quote that you pulled is what you were saying when you wrote, “I wonder, however, if we can really know when (1) yields or causes (2) for any given believer.” But I also agree with you that Piper can’t expect to go out and systematize a theodicy the way he does without being called on it, whether or not he’s self-consistent.
On the plausible qualifications, I was actually thinking of something like the distinction between potentia absoluta and ordinata, but now that I think about it that’s not quite what you’re asking… these sorts of distinctions serve more to explain divine action than human responses to it. And they also attempt to explain things that are contingent rather than necessary, and your point is that necessary evil is what presents problems for human grief or anger over evil. So I’m not sure I have any answers for you. Certainly saying that all evil in the end serves to glorify God, yet should be nonetheless be opposed by us, has plenty of scriptural warrant. But that neither 1) asserts that the God-glorifying evil is necessary, nor 2) asserts that we grief at sin is not immoral in an especially theoretical way.
So perhaps I don’t have an answer for you there. Thanks for calling me on it. I’ll keep thinking about the possibilities. It seems to me that various theories of God’s will/power that attempt a plausible theodicy could easily be transformed to explain the appropriate human response to evil, but evil would still need to be understood as necessary rather than simply explainable to fit the situation that you’re describing here. (I’d also note that I think the impulse to articulate a theodicy in the first place is misguided, and by saying that these are “plausible qualifications”, I’m not trying to say that I’m convinced by them)
* yet should [--] nonetheless be opposed by us, has plenty of scriptural warrant.
* But that neither 1) asserts that the God-glorifying evil is necessary, nor 2) asserts that [--] grief at sin is not immoral in an especially theoretical way.
Sorry if the typos confused matters.
Joshua,
Unfortunately, Piper takes his opinions all too seriously. I have an article he wrote 26 years ago, in response to Tom Talbott’s evangelical universalism, which, he claimed, caused him to feel “sadness and loss”. He closes the essay with this:
Talbott refers several times to his own daughter. In one place he says, “If God has indeed-passed over her, how can the mother possibly believe that he is worthy of her worship?” (p. 14). I can hardly escape the impression from this and many other statements that God does not stand as the measure and judge at the center of Talbott’s thought and affections. I have three sons. Every night after they are asleep I turn on the hall light, open their bedroom door, and walk from bed to bed, laying my hands on them and praying. Often I am moved to tears of joy and longing.
… But I am not ignorant that God may not have chosen my sons for his sons. And, though I think I would give my life for their salvation, if they should be lost to me, I would not rail against the Almighty. He is God. I am but a man. The potter has absolute rights over the clay. Mine is to bow before his unimpeachable character and believe that the Judge of all the earth has ever and always will do right.
http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Articles/ByDate/1983/1582_How_Does_a_Sovereign_God_Love/
In other words, if God wants to send the kids to hell, he’s okay with it. I once posted a comment on Friendly Atheist, in a thread about Piper, questioning the boys’ mental state after having grown up in such an environment. One of his sons put in a brief appearance, and said along the lines of, “The question isn’t whether of not it’s reasonable, but whether or not it’s true.” The denial was palpable.
The worst thing about Piper is that he isn’t the worst thing out there. There are Calvinists who condemn Piper for being too soft! No matter how big a bastard you may think a fundamentalist is – there’s always a bigger one.
Jeff, that is a very disturbing and unfortunate quote from Piper. It’s interesting that no one is ever capable of providing me with quotes from Piper that mitigate the horror inspired by such quotes.
Here’s someone else who’s been discussing Piper recently: http://whydowebelieve.wordpress.com/category/john-piper/ . The young man who maintains it is an atheist (in the interest of disclosure, I must tell you that I am as well).
There’s another thread on that blog which isn’t about Piper, but I mentioned the quote above as it’s been much on my mind recently: http://whydowebelieve.wordpress.com/2009/09/06/wind-love-and-ray-comforts-wife-a-showdown-at-huntington-beach/ . As you’ll see, someone showed up to tell me, “The caricatures given of Piper’s beliefs are simply laughable, and I fail to see how anyone (other than someone with an axe to grind) would interpret in this manner.”