For those engaged in pastoral or educational ministry, something has changed. There have always been “troubled believers,” but today they exhibit a higher profile.
Why? Deformed versions of religious faith, whether Islamic or Christian, have drawn the scrutiny of critics who have been emboldened in this new environment to cast a skeptical eye on faith of any kind.
Thoughtful laity cannot help but be influenced by the contemporary environment. They want to believe — but are bewildered about how to respond to the issues raised in the media. If those in the pulpit seem to be unaware of this new situation, they will lose credibility with people in the congregation who are tuned in to it. Even members who do not feel led to work through the big faith questions on an intellectual level are likely to expect their pastor to be able to do it.
Diogenes Allen, professor emeritus of philosophy at Princeton Theological Seminary, has written a book for thoughtful but troubled lay people.
One question has not changed over the centuries — Why do the innocent suffer? Allen’s book offers help.
The author reminds us what the “new atheists” seem not to have noticed: the Biblical narrators did not come to belief in God by reasoning backwards from the fact of the world’s existence. They began with their experience of God at work with and among them, only later identifying the God of their liberation as the Lord of the nations and the Lord of creation. Isaac Newton misled many by portraying God as a force within the universe rather than its creator. Remember the “God of the gaps?” As science fills in the gaps, God retreats, one gap at a time. It is, Allen declares, “only from that perversion [that] we find a conflict between science and religion” (p. 39).
God, in Allen’s description, is not best described in terms of impersonal characteristics, such as omnipotence or omniscience. “The biblical view of God’s power, wisdom, and goodness is quite different from what could be deduced from those abstractions” (p. 127). So when engaging questions about the fairness of life, the best place to begin is in the Biblical testimony to God’s holiness and love.
The author recalls Simone Weil’s amusing comments on Matthew’s parable of the laborers in the vineyard, in which laborers who began at different times during the day are all paid the same in the end. Weil points out “the reason they are paid the same is because the landowner does not have any small change. That is to say, God gives Godself to everyone who hears his call and responds; for that is all that God has to give” (p. 70). This book is not always easy, especially for the uninitiated. And why is the print so small? Yet it can be a substantial resource for fruitful and provocative group study.
RONALD BYARS is professor emeritus of preaching and worship, Union Presbyterian Seminary, Richmond, Va.
