Thinking Christian

Last week I included the Holy Spirit on a list of resources for thinking Christianly, with this qualification:  

God is certainly not a “resource” in the same sense as the rest of this list, yet the list would be incomplete without him. We can’t progress in any form of discipleship apart from the Holy Spirit’s work.

You’ll notice I am using “discipleship of the mind” and “thinking Christianly” almost interchangeably here. They’re not really the same, though. One of them—discipleship—is prerequisite for the other. Discipleship is following and learning from Jesus Christ. Growing in our ability to think Christianly is one fruit of that learning.

Our dependence on the Holy Spirit cannot be overemphasized (distorted, yes; overemphasized, no). When I was a very young Christian, a friend shared with me how to be filled with the Spirit. He used a booklet at the time; you can read the same life-changing material online. I strongly recommend it to you as a preface to what I say here. It has made all the difference for me!

If there is a locus classicus for Christian thinking, it must be 1 Corinthians 2:6-16:

Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written,

“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
  nor the heart of man imagined,
  what God has prepared for those who love him”—

these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.

I will only try to highlight the most relevant nuggets for our topic here. Paul speaks of a wisdom not of this age, decreed before the ages, which will not pass away. He calls it a “secret and hidden wisdom,” but it is not so in a gnostic sense (available only to the initiated few). When Paul writes of secrets and mysteries in his letters, almost always he is referring to something formerly hidden, now being made known. Thus he could say that he imparts this wisdom: it is something that can be passed along. And thus he can also say “these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit.”

Through the Spirit. The Spirit of God is he who guides Christ’s followers into all truth (John 14: 25, John 16:13). He “searches everything, even the depths of God,” which only God himself can plumb. To know God fully is God’s prerogative alone. Yet by his grace he has granted Christians the presence of the Holy Spirit within us. One of the Spirit’s purposes is to give us understanding. Paul even goes so far as to say “we have the mind of Christ”!

This contrasts with the experience of “the natural person,” the one without the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, the one (as it says shortly after in 1 Corinthians 3:3) who is “walking like mere men” (NASB translation). Christians, we do not need to live like mere humans! God lives within us, to guide us, teach us, empower us.

That is not to say that the Spirit pours knowledge into our brains unmediated. He can do that and does sometimes (rarely, in my experience), but normally, like everything else in the Christian life, there are disciplines associated with growth. In the case of Christian thinking, those disciplines include things like the list I posted last week. The Holy Spirit is not God’s shortcut to growth; he is our guide and helper along the path to growth.

(Some misunderstand 1 John 1:27 to mean we have literally no need of teaching, but that would be an odd stance for John to take in a letter that was clearly intended to teach. He was instead warning against certain claims of false teachers claiming to bring some proto-gnostic knowledge.)

So what does this mean in practical experience? (I refer you again to the message on how to be filled with the Spirit.) There must be a true desire in us to be filled by God and to follow where he leads. We must recognize our dependence on God, and confess our need for him, especially in light of our sin. Along with that we can gladly acknowledge that God is there for us: he loves us and is pleased to fulfill his promise to fill us with his Spirit. It’s a matter of knowing that it is his will (Ephesians 5:18) and that he will always answer when we pray according to his will (1 John 5:14-15).

From there it’s a matter of walking, not like mere humans, but still walking, a step at a time. As we study, God will reveal himself to us. Those of us who are walking that path know the truth of Jesus’ words (John 17:3) in his prayer to the Father: “And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

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A reference in J.P. Moreland’s modern classic, Love Your God with All Your Mind: The Role of Reason in the Life of the Soul, steered me toward another classic, this one by William Wilberforce: Real Christianity. The link there is to a modern language update published in 2007. I’ve been reading it in ebook form, so I won’t be able to supply you page numbers, and the passages I bring you will be as Wilberforce wrote them. In view of what I am going to quote, I have some qualms about even referring to a modern language update. You’ll understand what I mean as you read what he wrote. But one has to start somewhere, and I can’t object to some editor giving Christians an easy launching point. (I’ve been doing something similar myself lately.)

Wilberforce (1759-1833) is well known as one of the most influential Christian leaders of the past several hundred years. A British politician converted to Christ in his mid-20s, he devoted the rest of his life to two grand passions, one of which was abolishing slavery. His decades of persistence against slavery were met with partial success in 1807 when Britain’s slave trade was abolished by Parliament; and with final success (as far as Britain and her colonies were concerned) in 1833 when Parliament voted £20 million to be given to slaveowners in compensation for freeing all slaves. The outcome of that vote was assured just three days before Wilberforce’s death. (This story is told in Michael Apted’s 2007 film Amazing Grace.)

A man with such credentials has my attention: he understands what it means really to believe God’s word. Wilberforce’s second grand passion was to lead his country men to the same understanding. Speaking of himself in the third person, he explains in the Introduction why he wrote Real Christianity:

The main object which he [the author] has in view is, not to convince the Sceptic, or to answer the arguments of persons who avowedly oppose the fundamental doctrines of our Religion; but to point out the scanty and erroneous system of the bulk of those who belong to the class of orthodox Christians, and to contrast their defective scheme with a representation of what the author apprehends to be real Christianity.

Now, where do you suppose someone like Wilberforce, a man of social action and of worship, would begin his discourse on real Christianity? Moreland noted how striking this was. Wilberforce did not begin with prayer or piety, though he made both central in his life; nor did he begin with service, though he was such a great example of using one’s gifts to improve the world in Christ’s name. He began with the life of the mind, with apologetics, even.

View their [English Christians'] plan of life and their ordinary conduct; and not to speak at present of their general inattention to things of a religious nature, let us ask, wherein can we discern the points of discrimination between them and professed unbelievers? In an age wherein it is confessed and lamented that infidelity abounds, do we observe in them any remarkable care to instruct their children in the principles of the faith which they profess, and to furnish them with arguments for the defence of it? They would blush, on their child’s coming out into the world, to think him defective in any branch of that knowledge, or of those accomplishments which belong to his station in life, and accordingly these are cultivated with becoming assiduity. But he is left to collect his religion as he may; the study of Christianity has formed no part of his education, and his attachment to it (where any attachment to it exists at all) is, too often, not the preference of sober reason, but merely the result of early prejudice and groundless prepossession. He was born in a Christian country, of course he is a Christian; his father was a member of the church of England, so is he. When such is the hereditary religion handed down from generation to generation, it cannot surprise us to observe young men of sense and spirit beginning to doubt altogether of the truth of the system in which they have been brought up, and ready to abandon a station which they are unable to defend. Knowing Christianity chiefly in the difficulties which it contains, and in the impossibilities which are falsely imputed to it, they fall perhaps into the company of infidels; and, as might be expected, they are shaken by frivolous objections and profane cavils, which, had they been grounded and bottomed in reason and argument, would have passed by them, “as the idle wind,” and scarcely have seemed worthy of serious notice.

Wilberforce instructed me in a further reason for discipling our minds, one I should have included in my list last Monday: accountability and stewardship before God.

It were almost a waste of time to multiply arguments in order to prove how criminal the voluntary ignorance, of which we have been speaking, must appear in the sight of God. It must be confessed by all who believe that we are accountable creatures, and to such only the writer is addressing himself, that we shall have to answer hereafter to the Almighty for all the means and occasions we have here enjoyed of improving ourselves, or of promoting the happiness of others. And if, when summoned to give an account of our stewardship, we shall be called upon to answer for the use which we have made of our bodily organs, and of the means of relieving the wants and necessities of our fellow creatures; how much more for the exercise of the nobler and more exalted faculties of our nature, of invention, and judgment, and memory; and for our employment of all the instruments and opportunities of diligent application, and serious reflection, and honest decision. And to what subject might we in all reason be expected to apply more earnestly, than to that wherein our eternal interests are at issue? When God has of his goodness vouchsafed to grant us such abundant means of instruction in that which we are most concerned to know, how great must be the guilt, and how aweful the punishment of voluntary ignorance!

But let us not suppose this will come without some effort; and why should it, anyway?

And why, it may be asked, are we in this pursuit alone to expect knowledge without inquiry, and success without endeavour? The whole analogy of nature inculcates on us a different lesson, and our own judgments in matters of temporal interests and worldly policy confirm the truth of her suggestions. Bountiful as is the hand of Providence, its gifts are not so bestowed as to seduce us into indolence, but to rouse us to exertion; and no one expects to attain to the height of learning, or arts, or power, or wealth, or military glory, without vigorous resolution, and strenuous diligence, and steady perseverance. Yet we expect to be Christians without labour, study, or inquiry.

This all sounds eerily like 21st century America. Friends, we have some work to do

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To believe in God is to worship him. To do otherwise is impossible.

That’s not because it’s some rule he set up, like “If you’re going to move with the basketball you have to dribble it.” It’s more like, “If you add 2 and 2 you have to get 4.” If you really see who God is, there is no avoiding the response of worship. Consider these passages from the 89th Psalm:

Psalm 89:1-4

I will sing of the steadfast love of the Lord, forever;
with my mouth I will make known your faithfulness to all generations.
For I said, “Steadfast love will be built up forever;
in the heavens you will establish your faithfulness.”
You have said, “I have made a covenant with my chosen one;
I have sworn to David my servant:
‘I will establish your offspring forever,
and build your throne for all generations.’”

Psalm 89:8-11

O Lord God of hosts,
who is mighty as you are, O Lord,
with your faithfulness all around you?
9 You rule the raging of the sea;
when its waves rise, you still them.
You crushed Rahab [Egypt] like a carcass;
you scattered your enemies with your mighty arm.The heavens are yours; the earth also is yours;
the world and all that is in it, you have founded them.

God rules the earth. He sets up thrones. He founded the heavens and the earth, and they are his. He is mighty over the seas and the nations. He rules over the “hosts,” the angels of heaven. He is full of steadfast love and faithfulness. He has enemies — those who stand against his sovereign purposes — and he will rise up against them.

We, on the other hand, are his subjects. He rules over us. His kingship is one of goodness, love, and faithfulness, but it is decidedly his kingship and not ours. To see him in that position is to recognize that, though we have freedom to choose our steps, we are not in charge of our destinies. We are his creatures, created by him, in many ways the smallest of the small, in an unimaginably huge cosmos. And next to his holiness, we in our imperfection and sin are smaller yet.

To believe this is to see that he is a God of immense goodness, power, and worth. It is to see oneself as very small next to him. Psalm 8 recognizes this, yet adds a twist:

O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens.
Out of the mouth of babies and infants,
you have established strength because of your foes,
to still the enemy and the avenger.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?

Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under his feet,
all sheep and oxen,
and also the beasts of the field,
The birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!

We are small, yet not contemptible in his sight. We are flawed, yet he loves us. We rebel against him, yet he died for us.

Who can see this and not worship? The rebellious: those who rise up against a ruler they cannot manage, who hate that there is another who determines their destinies; whose view of the good is dark and twisted. Every one of us, in other words; for we have all risen up against God, we have all hated him, we have all had darkened hearts. But in that condition we do not see all of the truth of God; we do not see that it is both true and good that God is who he is, and that we are who we are.

God offers light and sight to those who will embrace what it reveals. It is a gift of his grace, not of their worthiness. Yet for those who see, to see is to worship.

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We’re in the season of expectancy, preparing to celebrate the birth of Christ. There was a season of expectancy before his actual birth 2,000 years ago–expectancy both on earth, where prophecies of a coming Messiah were passionately studied and only partly understood, and also in heaven, where the eternal God was preparing to break in to time and space and human life. It has been said that Jesus was the only person who chose to be born.

Matthew and Luke tell the story of Jesus’ birth “from the ground up,” through the eyes and ears of Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, and the Magi. John (John 1:1-14) gives us the view from the sky, as it were:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John [the Baptist]. He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. 8He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.

The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

The Word became flesh on that first Christmas. We use words to express meaning and to connect with one another. From the beginning there was meaning and there was relationship among the three Persons of the Godhead. From the creation of man, God’s intent has been that we would live with full understanding of meaning, and in close relationship with him, with one another, and with all of his creation. No one needs to be convinced that we have not lived out that ideal. The Word became flesh to restore us to it. Merry Christmas indeed!

He was and he is both life and light. By coming to live as a human among humans, he opened to us the door to true life in true light. John says his own people did not receive him, and tragically some still will not see his bright light. But those who do receive him are born into new life through him. It’s a life of grace and truth: truth to guide us, to show us what is real and what is right, and grace so that we can recover from our failures in living by what is real and right.

The message of Christmas is not just about a stable and a star, not just a mother and a child. It’s about the glory of God shining on earth, through one who became flesh to show us his great glory.

This is what heaven was looking forward to during that first advent season. Merry Christmas indeed!

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Dallas Willard, professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California, asks this question in his excellent book Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship With God:

How does a life in which one speaks the creative word of God differ from a life of voodoo, magic, and superstition?

Here is part of his answer (the section begins on page 137):

The word magic in this context refers to … the attempt to influence the actual course of events, as distinct from their appearance, by manipulation of symbolisms or special substances such as effigies and incantations….

Magic and witchcraft … are forms of superstition. They work from belief that some action, substance or circumstance not logically or naturally (or even supernaturally) related to a certain course of events does nonetheless influence the outcome of those events if “correctly” approached. Prayer and speaking with God must be carefully distinguished from superstition.

The word superstition is derived from words that mean “to stand over,” as one might stand in wonder or amazement over something incomprehensible…. Martin Buber rightly says that “magic desires to obtain its effects without entering into relation, and practices its tricks in the void,” the void of ignorance and selfish obsession.

Superstition, then, is belief in magic; and magic relies on alleged causal influences that are not actually mediated through the natures of the things involved. Suppose, for example, someone ways they can throw you into great pain or even kill you by mutilating a doll-like effigy of you…. It is superstition or magic, for there is no real connection between someone’s sticking a pin in a doll and your feeling pain….

In our faith we do not believe that the power concerned resides in the words used or in the rituals taken by themselves. If we did, we would indeed be engaged in superstitious practices. Instead we regard the words and actions simply as ways ordained in the nature of things as established by God for accomplishing the matter in question. They work as part of life in the kingdom of God. They enlist the personal agencies of that kingdom to achieve the ends at their disposal and are not mere tools by which we engineer our desired result. We are under authority, not in control….

It is the very nature of the material universe to be subject generally to the word of an all-present, all-powerful, all-knowing divine mind.

Three times in this excerpt Willard refers to the natures of things:

• Magic is not real because its “alleged causal influences are not actually mediated through the natures of the things involved.”
• Christian prayer (or speaking with spiritual authority, the real subject of this chapter) has its effect by working in concert with “ways ordained in the nature of things as established by God.”
• “It is the very nature of the material universe to be subject generally to the word of an all-present, all-powerful, all-knowing divine mind.

Although one specific recent controversy over the term “magic” has been resolved, this passage from Willard helpfully speaks to a larger question regarding the supernatural. Atheists generally consider belief in the supernatural to be not just wrong; to them it is mindlessness or idiocy. In one of the ellipses (omitted passages) of the above passage, Willard tells how Mark Twain’s Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court was able to get the superstitious Old Englanders to believe he had magical powers, when he was in fact working by natural methods known to 19th century science. Christians, according to the naturalists (this was not Willard’s point) are gullible in the same way, imagining there is more to the universe than the natural course of events, and misattributing natural effects to unnatural causes.

The consistent, supernaturalist theistic position is that supernatural causes and events actually are natural, though not in the sense of being susceptible to study by science or occurring within some closed system of matter, energy, natural law, and chance. They are natural in the sense that they involve the universe and its parts acting according to their natures; where the nature of everything is to be “subject to the word of an all-present, all-powerful, all-knowing divine mind.”

Whether using the term “magic” or the more acceptable “supernatural,” naturalistically-inclined atheists typically consider it risible that Christians believe in a “fairy-tale” view of reality. But it’s far from clear to me what’s ridiculous or even odd about this, if we view the supernatural and the natural as intertwined, all of it together subject to the word of God. It fits logically; it works; it’s not incoherent. Of course it is a strange, unfamiliar viewpoint for the mind trained to see nature (matter, energy, law, and chance) as a closed system. But what if it’s that training that’s confused? Is that not at least logically possible? If so, then it’s also logically possible that to mock supernaturalism might be to display one’s own confusion regarding the true nature of reality. And it might also be that this very confusion is what causes some to miss what’s really there.

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Matthew Anderson signaled this to us, and I want to be sure we all have opportunity to look at it: a continuing discussion on the question of God and his alleged acts of genocide in Philosophia Christi.

Two of the papers are available online, both by Paul Copan:

Is Yahweh a Moral Monster? The New Atheists and Old Testament Ethics

Yahweh Wars and the Canaanites: Divinely-Mandated Genocide or Corporate Capital Punishment?

For those who want the quick version, Jason at Thinking Matters has summarized the second of these, and fleance7 at Cloud Of Witnesses has provided abstracts to other papers in this issue of the journal.

The first of these papers, “Is Yahweh a Moral Monster” places the question where it belongs, in the context of the ancient Near East (ANE). Copan points out that while God’s actions are shocking to 21st-century Westerners, they were surprising in a completely different way in the ANE. He cautions us that “We must allow the OT ethical discussion to begin within an ANE setting, not a post-Enlightenment one.” It ought to be obvious but still it needs to be said (as Copan does), that “the ANE world is ‘totally alien’ and ‘utterly unlike’ our own social setting.”

Now, does this make a difference in an ethical discussion? Relativists certainly ought to be saying Yes! to that question. But we are not talking about relativism in the case of God. We are instead talking about God’s leading his people through (in Copan’s words) “Incremental ‘humanizing’ steps rather than a total overhaul of ANE culture.” Israel was surrounded by slavery, monarchy, patriarchy, war, and more. I will quote at length here:

Rather than attempt to morally justify all aspects of the Sinaitic legal code, we can affirm that God begins with an ancient people who have imbibed dehumanizing customs and social structures from their ANE context.[39] Yet this God desires to draw them in and show them a better way:

if human beings are to be treated as real human beings who possess the power of choice, then the “better way” must come gradually. Otherwise, they will exercise their freedom of choice and turn away from what they do not understand.

To completely overthrow these imbedded ANE attitudes, replacing them with some post-Enlightenment ideal, utopian ethic would simply be overwhelming and in many ways difficult to grasp. We can imagine a strong resistance to a complete societal overhaul. Think of the difficulty of the West’s pressing for democracy in nations whose tribal/social and religious structures do not readily assimilate such ideals.

(The second paragraph there is a quote from Alden Thompson.) Copan recognizes that some of the OT “reflects a less morally-refined condition;” yet he also notes that every questionable practice in the OT has “contrary witness” elsewhere, and that Scripture itself can guide us to discerning what was local/contextual, and what is universal.

The surprise that God’s law must have presented in the ANE was its humaneness. Copan compares the OT to other ANE codes, showing its marked superiority over the others in areas including slavery, punishment for crimes, warfare, and the sexes. Yet in keeping with the earlier point of “incremental humanizing,” there is a progression of moral expectation over the years throughout the OT period (culminating in Jesus Christ).

Copan speaks to warfare as well, and on this topic I am hesitant to summarize. It is the most involved and difficult question he tackles, and to shorten it would be to distort it, so I encourage you to read at least that much of it directly from the source. His perspective on God’s prerogatives over human life, and on the fact of the afterlife, are particularly important. They figure crucially in my own answer to the question we’ve been discussing, as is also “the seriousness of sin and the sovereign prerogatives of Yahweh.”

Copan closes the paper with three comments directed toward objections raised by “New Atheists:”

A. Naturalism’s foundations cannot account for ethical normativity; theism is better positioned to do so.

B. The new atheists ignore the sui generis [one-time only] status of Israel’s theocracy.

C. The new atheists wrongly assume that the OT presents an ideal ethic, while ignoring the OT’s redemptive spirit and creational ideals.

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Early this week we started to take a look at whether God is guilty of genocide, in various places in the Old Testament where he commanded Israel to destroy certain nations. The question was whether these acts of God were evil, as genocide certainly is in any normal instance. In that first post I bulleted-listed several factors that make genocide the evil that it is. If God is free of the guilt of genocide, then he must be free of guilt on each of those specifics.

And here we must take time to examine just what kind of case the Christian must make in order to show that God is not guilty of genocide. Lacking clarity on that, we would run the risk of a comment battle over irrelevancies. So allow me to explain the case that I intend to make.

(A) God is free of guilt with respect to the specifics listed in the first post.

God could be free of guilt with respect to those items in either of two ways. Either:

(A1) he has not committed the acts named there, or
(A2) if he has done one or more of them, he has done it in a way that is not morally blameworthy.

(B) God’s goodness in these acts is consistent with his character as revealed throughout the Scriptures.

Statement (B) actually flows from (A), but it has an importance to this discussion that is best shown by contrast. The Christian is not responsible (in this case) to demonstrate:

(~B1) that God’s goodness is consistent with any individual’s conception of goodness, or
(~B2) that God is actually good.

Let me explain each of these, beginning with (~B1). The Christian obviously has no commitment to any conception or definition of goodness other than that given by the Bible. God is not subject to human standards. For example, if the skeptic says, “God’s acts are clearly genocide, and genocide is obviously always wrong,” that is an external standard that the Christian need not accept; he may use God’s entire revelation to examine and possibly to reject it. Or if the skeptic says “Anything as horrifying and terrifying as this must be wrong,” that is likewise an external standard. The issue is not whether God lives up to any individual’s standard of goodness, it is whether God lives up to God’s standard of goodness. It is a question of consistency or coherence, or conversely, about whether God contradicts his own character.

This leads to (~B2). Obviously I affirm God’s goodness, as do all Christians. To demonstrate his goodness, however, or to prove that he is good, is not a part of this discussion. The skeptic’s question is not (or at least should not be), “Can you prove that God is good, even though he ordered Israel to wipe out other nations?” The problem with formulating the question that way is that there are two quite distinct sub-questions hidden in it:

(SQ1) Can you prove that God is good? and
(SQ2) Don’t the acts of genocide in the Old Testament contradict his goodness?

Both of them are worthwhile questions. But every experienced blogger and commenter knows what happens when you get two different questions running through a discussion without carefully distinguishing them. It’s confusing and fruitless. (SQ1) is a good question, but it’s not the question at hand. (SQ2), which is the question form of statement (B), is where we must focus for now.

The question on the table is one of internal consistency. An internal consistency discussion may take the form:

1. Assume characteristics x of person Y.
2. Y has done deed z.
3. Is z consistent with x?

It is perfectly legitimate in this case, it is not arguing in a circle, to start with a set of assumptions, because in the end those assumptions will be tested. Therefore to (A) and (B) we may add one more aspect describing the case Christians must defend:

(C) Assuming that God is good, and assuming that goodness itself is adequately and accurately defined by the Bible, it is no contradiction to God’s goodness that he ordered certain nations to be killed.

Combining statements (A), (B), and (C), we arrive at the three-part statement I intend to defend.

(D) Assuming that God is good, and assuming that goodness itself is adequately and accurately defined by the Bible, God’s ordering certain nations to be killed is no contradiction to that goodness; it is consistent with his character as generally revealed in the Scriptures. More specifically God is good (free of guilt) with respect to the issues listed in the first post in this series.

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