Isaiah 45:7 not a good text to use, in order to prove God as the author of evil.
This passage is often used as a proof text to prove that God causes evil. I know the Calvinist answer will be that God never causes evil, he just ordains all things. If you want to be logically inconsistent that is your decision, but this passage does not teach "strong determinism" here is why,
"I form the light and create darkness,
I bring prosperity (shalom) and create disaster (ra);
I, the Lord, do all these things."
The context of this passage is God illustrating how He has raised up Cyrus to do his bidding. Of course this is seen as in an international political light, which shows that God is the one true and living God of all the earth.
If we pay attention to the parallelism in this passage, and the language we will see why God makes this statement against the nations. The forming of light, and creating darkness in the first line, corresponds to the Shalom and Ra reference in the next sentence. Shalom is taken as peace or prosperity not "goodness" in some metaphysical sense, I would argue that Ra must linguistically be the opposite of Shalom, so it would be better to translate it disaster or calamity. Of course this is not a random or arbitrary action by God, but a punishment on the nations in particular Babylon via Cyrus.
Of course we know that Peace, or prosperity may not always be a good thing, especially when a nation is wicked. Therefore it is not an airtight case on the part of the Calvinist to take this passage to mean evil in a general all incompassing sense.
This text should be used only to argue that in certain circumstances God uses his power to create calamity for the purposes of punishing disobedient persons, or nations as this passage in its wider context will show.
I think that the confusion is that when biblical students see the word "ra" they automatically think of moral or ontological evil, instead of realizing that there maybe a rather wide range of meanings in context. We should remember, as Wittingstein argued, that words only get meaning from wider contexts.
"I form the light and create darkness,
I bring prosperity (shalom) and create disaster (ra);
I, the Lord, do all these things."
The context of this passage is God illustrating how He has raised up Cyrus to do his bidding. Of course this is seen as in an international political light, which shows that God is the one true and living God of all the earth.
If we pay attention to the parallelism in this passage, and the language we will see why God makes this statement against the nations. The forming of light, and creating darkness in the first line, corresponds to the Shalom and Ra reference in the next sentence. Shalom is taken as peace or prosperity not "goodness" in some metaphysical sense, I would argue that Ra must linguistically be the opposite of Shalom, so it would be better to translate it disaster or calamity. Of course this is not a random or arbitrary action by God, but a punishment on the nations in particular Babylon via Cyrus.
Of course we know that Peace, or prosperity may not always be a good thing, especially when a nation is wicked. Therefore it is not an airtight case on the part of the Calvinist to take this passage to mean evil in a general all incompassing sense.
This text should be used only to argue that in certain circumstances God uses his power to create calamity for the purposes of punishing disobedient persons, or nations as this passage in its wider context will show.
I think that the confusion is that when biblical students see the word "ra" they automatically think of moral or ontological evil, instead of realizing that there maybe a rather wide range of meanings in context. We should remember, as Wittingstein argued, that words only get meaning from wider contexts.
posted by Blake | 12:54 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home