I asked Richard Murray this question a week ago. He sent me three of his previous posts on the topic. Two of them are reprinted here. The first focuses on “practice.” The second on “theology.”
I think these are the best and truest answers, theodicies as they are called. They do not answer the uber question of “why did God create in the first place?” I don’t think there’s ever been a fully satisfactory answer to that.
If you’re like me and “need” answers to the “big questions,” this may help.
WHY DO WE SOMETIMES APPEAR TO LOSE PARTICULAR “FIGHTS” OF FAITH? (2017)
Faith is a “fight” according to Paul. Never against flesh and blood for sure, but against evil impulses, against faithless ideas, against oppressive circumstances, and against dark angels. And in this spiritual fight, Paul says we are to endure hardness as a good spiritual soldier of Jesus Christ, wear spiritual armor, wield spiritual weapons and defeat spiritual enemies.
But here is the thing. Sometimes when we fight…we lose. There are very few undefeated fighters. Some fighters have great records, winning up to 90% of their fights– but they still lose a few.
Poor fighters, by contrast, may lose more than they win, but they still have a puncher’s chance to win many of their fights. Lack of experience, lack of courage, lack of confidence, lack of desire, and lack of training are all factors which can cause the fighter to lose fights.
Does the Lord promise we “will” be undefeated in all our faith fights? No, I don’t think so. But I do think He promises we “can” win each fight in which we engage by acquitting ourselves valiantly.
I think we can get discouraged because we don’t overwhelmingly win EVERY battle. And that is wrong. Sure, those types of complete victory are great and should not be uncommon, especially where the community of believers is dynamically working together in the unity of the faith. But, in this delicate spiritual ecosystem where the secondhand smoke of others’ individual and corporate free wills often befogs our situations with stubborn unbelief, satanic oppression, and worldly resistance, defeats still occur.
There are battles where the Lord’s best simply does not manifest in this temporal realm. There are just too many variables, too many waves clashing violently together in this pond of causation, too many unseen dynamics which to various degrees help or hinder the Lord’s best from openly and fully manifesting in any particular circumstance.
The freedom of angels and men often combine to form interference patterns of resistant force with which we must diligently deal. The Lord is always willing to manifest, but He often needs our synergistic cooperation to fully penetrate the situation at hand. He won’t (and can’t) coercively rape reality with His interventions. He travels on the active faith of men. This allows Him the consent He needs, the cosmic elbow room to deliver the situation by catalyzing it with the delivering energies of Christ.
The question is NOT “whether” or “why” God intervenes or not in human affairs.
Rather, the question is “whether” or “why” WE (both individually and corporately as the body of Christ) intervene or not.
God’s interventions of deliverances need OUR synergistic faith, catalyzing prayer, and enabling action for His deliverances to fully manifest here on earth as they are already manifest in Heaven. God has already intervened to the max in every past, present and future situation. His Spirit fills all things (Ephesians 1:23; 4:7-10). His pre-destinies (Ephesians 2:10) swirl around us like butterflies coiled in potentiality, eagerly waiting to be sprung into actuality by our prayers of faith.
John Wesley said, “It seems as if God is limited by our prayer (faith) life. He can do nothing upon the earth unless a man prays.” We are the spigots that release the omnipresence of God unto manifest presence. Our faith doesn’t create the victory, it only recognizes and releases it FROM Heaven TO earth.
And here is another major factor which often resolute in fights-of-faith being lost. Sometimes the Lord would have others join the particular fight we are in as our allies, but for whatever reason, they don’t. “One can put a thousand to flight, but two can put ten thousand to flight.” What do we do when face a hundred thousand deadly circumstances alone? Well, we fight tenaciously, fervently believing and heroically interceding with the positive energies of faith, and THEN we call call for back-up. But, if back up doesn’t come, then we do what we must to survive. But, at least we stood and contended for the faith.
Jesus is the only one who won all His battles. Paul won many battles. Some big ones. But He also lost some. He died alone, imprisoned, and abandoned. But, his “good fight of faith” was not judged by the Lord on how many absolute and complete victories Paul won, but rather on the resolute stance Paul maintained in not ever going down to the spiritual mat. Maybe he was outscored on points in some of these battles, but he was never KO’d (knocked out). He fought the good fight, always believing the Lord’s best toward every situational need, regardless of whether or not it fully manifested in the moment.
The good news is that the Lord has assured us the overall war has already been won. Jesus, through the cross, His subsequent descent into Hell, and His victorious ascent into Heaven, in order that He might fill all things, has delivered the death-stroke to the heart of the dragon. The tail of the enemy may be thrashing to and for upon the earth today in its death throes, but he is eternally defeated and defanged.
And please, don’t get me wrong. We should ferociously fight to win EVERY faith-battle we encounter: every healing we pray for, every oppression we resist, every crippling circumstance we pray to change, every satanic influence we seek to dispel. Fight to win, always to win. And, if we appear to be on the losing side of the particular temporal battle in question, then so be it. But, at least we lose in full battle array, always wholeheartedly contesting and resisting very appearance of evil, never surrendering or capitulating our hope or trust in God.
Whatever the reason for the loss, it wasn’t because of God’s lack of ability, lack of readiness, or lack of willingness. Rather, the culprit was the individual and/or corporate “neglect” of the members of Christ’s body in not resisting evil as a unified army of interceding faith-warriors.
I am convinced that suffering largely exists because the church corporate doesn’t pray in unity of heart and purpose. The church bride is here to relieve and/or cure the world’s suffering, but we are too busy disagreeing and blaming rather than agreeing and blessing. Ephesians 1:22-23 tells us that God already “has put all things under [Jesus’] foot,” and that He has “given the church to be head of all things, which is His body, the fulness of Him that fills all in all.” What a magnificent promise we have yet to magnificently fulfill.
Christ, for His part, is always ready, willing and able to manifest His rescuing power into every situation of need. But, the church is His spigot of release here on the earth, a spigot which we haven’t yet learned to corporately open full throttle.
I believe the throttle/faucet of the spigot is on our side of the equation. I believe that spigot is what James called “effectual fervent prayer,” both individual and corporate.
I certainly agree we can’t ever trivialize suffering, but on the other hand we also mustn’t trivialize prayer. I also agree that the sheer weight of suffering is mind boggling, but, on the other hand, the power of prayer is even more mind boggling, at least if we are to believe Jesus in Mark 11:22-25 and many other like passages. Earnest prayer should be our first and instant response to an outbreak of suffering of any kind, just as water is our first and instant response to outbreak of fire.
John’s Wesley taught that out prayerLESSness inhibits and obstructs God to fully manifest His A-game deliverances. He needs our organic faith-consent on some level. This occurred in Mark 6 when He, though fully willing, could do no mighty works because of their corporate unbelief.
God does teach us things in the wake of our suffering, even though He didn’t bring the suffering itself. But He can also teach us wonderful things apart from suffering if we remain humble and wholehearted in prayer. Until the church hits on all cylinders, many will continue to be vulnerable to satanic and circumstantial suffering. And because of this neglect, some fights of faith will be lost, or at least not fully won. But, when the church rises to corporate unity, that rising tide will lift all our boats.
But, always remember this champion truth. Our heavenly Abba “hath put all things under His (Jesus’) feet , and gave Him (Jesus) to be the head over ALL THINGS TO the CHURCH. Which is His (Jesus’) body, the fulness of him that fills ALL IN ALL.” Ephesians 1:22-23.
The original Greek of Matthew 18:18 and 16:19 both clearly say that we have the authority to bind on Earth that which is already bound in Heaven. Interlinear translations agree that these verses convey the idea that, “whatever you might bind on the Earth will be, having been bound in the Heavens already.” It gets even better. Not only has the demonic been demolished, but we have also already been completely healed of all our sins, sorrows and sicknesses. Jesus again completed this healing long ago through His Cross and Resurrection: “Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.” 1 Pet. 2:24.
But, if demons are defeated and all our sins and sicknesses healed, then why don’t we see this “always already” victory right now? “How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him; . . . Thou HAST [already] put all things in subjection under his feet. For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him. But NOW WE SEE NOT YET all things put under him. But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man.” Heb. 2:3, 8-9.
This passage is clear that all things have already been put under Jesus, but we don’t yet see them put under Jesus. The reason? Because of our individual and corporate “neglect” of “so great a salvation.” Both Satan and Evil have no gasoline left in their tank because Jesus drained it all away at the Cross. They are functioning today solely off of the fumes of our neglect of Jesus’ great salvation. What makes this salvation so great is its “always already” aspect. The ministry of the Holy Spirit is to convince us of the accomplished benefits of this great salvation. “Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.” 1 Cor. 2:12.
GOD DOES NOT ALLOW EVIL, HE DISALLOWS IT. Jesus Christ is God’s total disallowance of evil. In fact, Jesus has ALREADY disallowed all evil. Be of good cheer, Jesus has ALREADY overcome ALL the things of the world: the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life (Jn 16:33; 1 John 2:16). Jesus’ incarnation reveals the will of God toward evil: “with respect to Jesus from Nazareth, that God anointed him with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went around doing good and healing ALL who were oppressed by the devil, because God was with him.” Acts 10:38.
So keep believing on Jesus, keep resisting Satan, keep hoping for better, keep loving with the light of God, keep learning the ways of peace, and keep fighting against anything that rises up against you knowing God’s virtue better and better. Diligently avoid the interior neglect of your so great a salvation. Remain steadfast and immoveable in the faith, abounding always in the energies of God’s goodness!
SPIRITUAL WORLDVIEW (2019)
It’s important that we choose our spiritual worldview carefully. Our spiritual worldview determines our theodicy, our cosmology, and our core beliefs as to God’s nature.
There are really only two types of Christian worldviews when it comes to issues of theodicy and the problem of evil. The “Blueprint Worldview” sees God as omni-causative, being ultimately the one who is behind all good and evil events. Or, simply put, God ordains ALL events 24/7. Nothing occurs without His express stamp of approval. His permissions ARE His purposes.
Many believe this regardless of what they call themselves. Some add various nuances and tweaks, but this is their spiritual worldview: God is ALWAYS in meticulous control of all events. The freewill of men and angels here is seen as ultimately illusory. Every rape has a higher good, every child molestation has a higher purpose, every murder a higher cause.
The other spiritual worldview, the predominant worldview of the early church, was the Warfare Worldview. It sees this existence as a ravaged war zone in the aftermath of a cosmic clash. The meta-narrative of the Bible is Christus Victor, the story of Christ’s victory over the rebellious principalities and powers, and our subsequent enforcement of that victory. This worldview incorporates the individual and corporate misuse of angelic and human freewill as the only cause of evil. Evil here is not a sculpting tool for God to chisel us into perfection, but rather evil is a malignancy of the soul to be healed and overcome by Christ’s will to all goodness.
The strange thing is that many vacillate between these two worldviews as it suits them. In some areas of their thinking they seek to attribute evil to the misuse of angelic and human freewill, but in other areas they still attribute all evil events and circumstances to God’s sovereign hand. Augustine, who was a discursive writer and often changed positions when he saw his own error, frequently vacillated between these two world-views as his conscience moved him. Calvin, by contrast, never vacillated from the Blueprint Worldview.
My view of God’s sovereignty resonates with the Warfare Worldview. This was also the predominant view of the early church.
The real danger of the Blueprint Worldview is that it presents a God who is Himself ETERNALLY dualistic in nature– the source of BOTH good and evil, BOTH love and wrath, BOTH forgiveness and eternal torture, etc. And, since God NEVER changes, then He will ALWAYS be Janus-faced and ETERNALLY dualistic. Under the warfare paradigm, however, the war is temporal, non-eternal, and actually is already over. Jesus is now at the right hand of the Father expecting until we rise up as a cohesive church-bride and diligently endorse and enforce that victory.
Regarding God allowing” versus God “causing” evil, Calvin was clear there is absolutely no difference. Hence the well known Calvinistic assertion that God’s permissions ARE His purposes. This is why Calvin was consistent with his worldview. It takes guts to say that. If God’s necessary stamp of affirmative approval must be given for any event to occur, the God IS the cause. If it can’t happen without His sobering stamp of approval, then He is the cause behind the cause (rather than the misuse of creaturely freedom of men and angels). For the evil thought or suggestion to arise in any human or angelic mind, God had to first expressly approve it. Thus He is the ultimate cause of all horror and all beauty.
Consider Calvin’s claim: “that thieves, murderers, and other evildoers, are instruments of divine providence, being employed by the Lord himself to execute the judgments which He has resolved to inflict.” Institutes I, 17, 5. Consider Calvin again: “The devil, and the whole train of the ungodly, are, in all directions, held in by the hand of God as with a bridle, so that they can neither conceive any mischief, nor plan what they have conceived, nor how they may have planned, move a single finger to perpetrate, unless in so far as He permits, nay, unless in so far as He commands; that they are not only bound by His fetters but are even forced to do Him service.” Institutes I, 17, 11.
The idea that Jesus allows us to be tested with evil is contradicted by New Testament theology, specifically James 1:13-18, which says God doesn’t use “evil” to “tempt” men and to “let no man say” He does. The Greek word in this passage for “tempt” is “periazo” and means “to test, entice, discipline, prove, tempt or try.”
Thus, God doesn’t test man with evil, entice man with evil, discipline man with evil, prove man with evil, tempt man with evil, or try man with evil. And James says to let no man “SAY” that God “DOES” do these things.
Our ultimate view of reality can ultimately determine our theology as to whom we assign evil. Let me explain.
Augustine laid some of the conceptual groundwork for what other generations would call the “blueprint model” of reality where God is seen as omni-causative of EACH and EVERY event. His NECESSARY sovereign stamp of approval is necessary for ANY act, be it evil or be it good, which occurs. Some, like Calvin, call His allowances His express purposes, so that if a child was murdered Calvin would say God expressly commanded the murderer to kill as one of the necessary judgments of God. Other Calvinists don’t go that far, but they would still say God expressly pre-allows the child’s murder for a greater reason. Calvin was intellectually honest enough to call a spade a spade: if an all powerful God ALLOWS all events, then He DOES cause them because it could not happen WITHOUT His EXPRESS permission. When speaking of an all-powerful God, according to both Old Testament Judaism and Hyper-Calvinism, there is no functional difference between causing and allowing evil.
In sharp contrast to this Augustinian “blueprint view,” the early church fathers had a “warfare model” which saw this creation as ravaged by a dark and hostile force, a force that Christ both engaged and overcame through the cross and Pentecost. We, as His body and bride, are currently called to continue the engagement of that enemy force by endorsing and enforcing Jesus’ past victory– today– here– and now! Jesus defanged the devil as the lamb slain since before the foundation of the world. However, WE can still neglect to diligently believe and vigilantly apply the reality of that victory over the lintel of our beings. Hebrews confirms that it is our “neglect of our so great a salvation” which keeps us from escaping the sin and death traps of this world. Jesus now eagerly waits, expecting until His enemies be made His footstool BY us.
As many, like the aforementioned Augustine, vacillate between these two positions, it is unknowable to say the “majority” of Christians are strictly of “this” worldview or strictly of “that” worldview. There is no bureau of spiritual statistics which we can access that gives us any true measurement of what the true majority of Christians over all time and space believed.
So here is the key issue when it comes to God’s sovereignty.
God IS all-powerful, but only within the context of His character. There are certain qualities that are NOT in the divine nature, a nature which God won’t EVER violate. Men certainly violate these qualities, but not God, not Jesus, not the Spirit.
For instance, Scripture says that it is impossible for God to lie. Titus 1:2. But, some would say, “Sure God can lie, He is all-powerful after all.” But, no, it is impossible for Him to act outside of His flawless nature of love, light, Spirit, truth and grace. He won’t lie because it is AGAINST His nature.
This is easy to see in the context of lying, but what about other qualities which are NOT to be found in the divine nature of God? What if violence, coercion, brutality, manipulation, coercion, and pettiness are NOT in His character? Well, there can be only one conclusion: God’s omnipotence must always be defined within the context of His character. He is all-powerfully good, all-powerfully forgiving, all-powerfully healing, all-powerfully truthful, all-powerfully patient, all-powerfully restorative, etc. But, He is NOT all-powerfully cruel, all-powerfully condemning, all-powerfully vindictive, all-powerfully violent, all-powerfully coercive, etc.
Thus, God wont lie to us, kill us, coerce us, manipulate us, brutalize us, abuse us, threaten us or terrorize us. God will protect us, bless us, correct us, teach us, convince us, strengthen us, encourage us and deliver us. Consider the following passage from Saint Anselm:
“How can you be omnipotent, O God, if you cannot do all things? How can you do all things if you cannot sin – – if you cannot lie, if you cannot make false what is true? If you are unable to sin, you cannot claim to be able to do all things. Or is it that sin stems not from power, but from powerlessness? For those who commit sin have so little power over their own natures that they actually harm themselves. They are at the mercy of forces which they cannot oppose . . . .The more people have power to commit sin,the more they are powerless. So, Lord God, you are in fact more truly omnipotent because you cannot act through powerlessness.” Proslogion, Chapter 7.
So, the next time somebody pulls out the worn out argument that if God is all-powerful, He would immediately zap to oblivion all evildoers with His Zeus-like lightning bolts, THEREFORE whatever happens must be His permissive will or He would have zapped it into oblivion, you know what to say. Jesus is God. God is all-powerful LOVE. Anything outside of LOVE is not in God’s nature. God does save us to the uttermost, but ONLY by His limitless virtue. He always overcomes evil one way and one way only, with patience, love, and goodness.
So, I think we are left with two possibilities.
1) BOTH good AND evil are traced to God.
2) ONLY good is traced to God. ALL Evil is traced to the misuse of freewill by humans and angels.
Many Old Testament writers chose ‘A.’ (Amos 3:6; Isaiah 45:7).
The New Testament writers choose ‘B’ (James 1:12-17; I John 1:5).
Let’s accept the conceptual promotion. Let’s go with the New Covenant “better” (Hebrews 8:6) over the Old Covenant “letter” (2 Corinthians 3:6).
The worst type of theology, from the angle of developing a coherent theodicy (the justification of God’s goodness in an often evil creation) , says that whatever IS must be God’s will or else He would change it.
This is the mother of all cosmic cop outs. This line of thinking says that since all aren’t instantly healed when they rub their magical genie-lamps of “wishing” prayer, God’s will is that they remain sick. This tyrannical God allegedly says a resounding “NO!” to healing the vast majority of the time. Since this allegedly Zeus-like divinity doesn’t immediately hurl lightning bolts of healing the second we snap our fingers, God’s will MUST be that we suffer.
This dizzy theology has to claim the following: “The Jesus who so freely ‘healed all who were oppressed by the devil’ as revealed in the Gospels (Acts 10:38) is NOT the same Jesus who now reveals Himself to us. He has either changed, or the Gospel stories are just fiction. That was then, this is now! If Jesus truly wanted us healed, then He would heal us. Since we are not healed, his will is obviously that we be sick.”
Hmmmm. Using that same line of thinking:
Since children are molested daily and God doesn’t coercively stop it, then child molestation is God’s will.
Since women are raped and abused daily, and God doesn’t coercively stop it, then rape and brutality against women is God’s will.
Since wars, disasters, terrorism, plagues, famines, all continue to occur and God doesn’t coercively stop them all the exact moment we indignantly insist, these horrors must all be His will.
What blame-shifters we mortals be. When Adam and Eve misused their freewill to fracture themselves from God, Eve blamed Satan while Adam blamed BOTH Eve and God: “It was the WOMAN who YOU gave me!”
No, there is another dynamic at work here. God is growing a harvest of love through this creation age. This cultivation necessitates the spiritual Co2 of creaturely freedom. True love can’t exist where true freedom isn’t allowed. And where the freedom of men and angels exist, its subsequent misuse APART from the divine will becomes feasible.
I think whatever we believe about God should, above all else, honor His nature. Our theology should be based on affirming the highest view of God’s character we can think or imagine.
Let me give you an example. My stance on whether or not there exists SOME level of human freewill, is NOT based on whether or not its existence offends our traditional doctrines of God’s grace and sovereignty.
Rather, I base my opinion on the issue of “freewill” on what implications it brings to God’s character.
Let me explain.
If there is NO freewill at ANY level, then God IS the only author of evil. He has to be. And THIS hard and horrible thought of God is simply abhorrent and unacceptable, therefore I won’t believe it.
Without ANY creaturely freedom, God HAS to be the omni-causative ruler who plans all evil, births all evil, energizes all evil, and empowers all evil. If angelic and human misuse of freewill is NOT the source of evil, then God alone IS. If God alone has freewill to act and determine reality, then He alone is responsible for ALL that occurs– rapes, child molestations, murders, kidnappings, torture, terrorism, etc. And this is simply unthinkable.
If angels and humans have NO level of freedom to misuse, then evil exists and thrives according to the only causative force remaining, the freewill of God.
In other words, IF, IF, IF there are NO causes of sickness, NO causes of destruction, and NO causes of oppression outside of God’s express will, then there is NO freewill. For evil to be “outside of” the divine nature, and therefore not traceable to God, there HAS to be a measure of creaturely freedom, here during this earth age, capable of producing a vacuum of neglect in which evil can spark and burn without God’s participation.
God’s character, then, HAS to be our guide. Before ALL else, any thought or theology which traces evil to God has to be wrong. So this is my litmus test for any spiritual idea. It must FIRST honor and align with the idea that God is light and in Him is NO darkness.
This dynamic is revealed in his amazing parable below. If God swoops in and coercively pulls out the “evil tares” BEFORE the harvest, then the “love wheat” will likewise be corrupted because the Co2 of freedom will have been removed. The source of these evil tares is not God, for Jesus resoundingly informs us, “An enemy hath done this!” Elsewhere in other seed parables we know this “enemy” to be Satan (Mark 4).
“Another parable put he forth unto them , saying , The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field : But while men slept , his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat , and went his way . But when the blade was sprung up , and brought forth fruit , then appeared the tares also . So the servants of the householder came and said unto him , Sir , didst not thou sow good seed in thy field ? from whence then hath it tares ? He said unto them , An enemy hath done this . The servants said unto him , Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up ? But he said , Nay ; lest while ye gather up the tares , ye root up also the wheat with them . Let both grow together until the harvest . . .” Matthew 13:24-30.
Consider these confirmatory quotes by C. S. Lewis:
“The sin, both of men and of angels, was rendered possible by the fact that God gave them free will; thus surrendering a portion of His omnipotence (it is again a deathlike or descending movement) because He saw that from a world of free creatures, even though they fell, He could work out (and this is the re-ascent) a deeper happiness and a fuller splendor than any world of automata would admit. (Miracles, chap. 14, para. 20, pp 121-122).
“God has made it a rule for Himself that he won’t alter people’s character by force. He can and will alter them – – but only if the people will let Him. . . . He would rather have a world of free beings, with all its risks, than a world of people who did right like machines because they couldn’t do anything else. The more we succeed in imagining what a world of perfect automatons would be like, the more, I think, we shall see His wisdom.” (God in the Dock, “The Trouble with ‘X’ . . .” (1948), para. 5, pp 152-153).
“God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go either wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong; I cannot. If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible.
Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata [of creatures that worked like robots] would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they must be free.
. . . . If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will – – that is, for making a live world in which creatures can do real good or harm and something of real importance can happen, instead of a toy world which only moves when He pulls the strings – – then we may take it if it is worth paying.” (Mere Christianity, bk.II, chap. 3, pp. 52-53).
Here are some quotes by Greg Boyd on this same dynamic.
“Jesus tied up the strong man so that he (and later, his church) could pillage the strong man’s kingdom (Lk. 11:20-22). In fact, this is what Jesus’ teaching about the kingdom of God is all about. In the context of Jesus’ ministry, it is a warfare concept. ‘If it is by the finger of God that I cast out the demons,’ Jesus teaches, ‘then the kingdom of God has come to you’ (Lk. 11:20). Where God reigns, Satan and his demons cannot. Put otherwise, if the earth is to become the domain in which God is king (the kingdom of God), then it must cease being the domain in which Satan is king. This is what Jesus came to accomplish. He came to ‘destroy the works of the devil’ (1 Jn. 3:8; cf. Heb. 2:14) and to establish God’s domain on earth.
Every exorcism and every healing – the two activities that most characterize Jesus’ ministry – marked an advance toward establishing the kingdom of God over and against the kingdom of Satan. Consequently, in contrast with any view that would suggest that disease and demonization somehow serve a divine purpose, Jesus never treated such phenomenon as anything other than the work of the enemy. He consistently treated diseased and demonized people as casualties of war. Furthermore, rather than accepting their circumstances as mysteriously fitting into God’s sovereign plan, Jesus revolted against them as something that God did not will and something that ought to be vanquished by God’s power.
When confronted with a woman who had a deformed back, for example, Jesus did not wonder why God had allowed this to happen. Rather, he immediately diagnosed her as being bound by Satan and freed her from this bondage (Lk. 13:11-16). Indeed, many times Jesus diagnosed illnesses as being directly caused by demons, as when he cast out demons of muteness or deafness (Mk. 9:25; Lk. 11:14). In other cases no exorcism was performed, but Jesus nevertheless opposed the illness as something that was not part of God’s kingdom. He assumed that it was at least the indirect result of Satan’s pervasive influence in the world. Hence Peter later summarized Jesus’ healing ministry by noting that he ‘went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil’ (Acts 10:38). All sickness and disease was considered a form of Satanic oppression, and so in freeing people from it Jesus demonstrated the presence of the kingdom of God.”
Satan and the Problem of Evil, Gregory A. Boyd, pp. 36-37.
“In sum, the world of the New Testament authors was a world at war. Granted, they expressed great confidence that Jesus had in principle defeated Satan and that Satan and all who followed him would eventually be defeated when Christ is enthroned as Lord of the cosmos. But they were just as certain that in this present fallen world order God does not always get his way. He desires all to be saved, for example, but many will perish (1 Tim. 2:3-4; 2 Pet. 3:9). Similarly, God wants believers to be conformed to the image of Christ, but our minds and behavior are usually to some degree conformed to the pattern of the world and under demonic strongholds (Rom. 12:2; 2 Cor. 10:3-5). God’s Spirit can be, and frequently is, resisted by our wills (Eph. 4:30; 1 Thes. 5:19). Clearly, the Lord and His church continue to face strong opposition in carrying out God’s will as we seek to establish His kingdom on the earth.
The warfare world view of the Bible was adopted and even expanded by the first generation of believers who succeeded the apostles. Their reflections on evil differ significantly from the theology of the post- Augustinian church. They generally assume that the final explanation for evil is to be found in the free wills of Satan, fallen angels and human beings, as opposed to concluding that every particular evil has a divine purpose behind it.”
Satan and the Problem of Evil, Gregory A. Boyd, p. 39.
“If indeed the world is presently plagued by a menacing force mighty enough to be called the ‘prince’ and even ‘god’ of this age as well as the ‘principality and power’ of the world’s spiritual realm (Jn. 12:31; 14:30; 16:11; 2 Cor. 4:4; Eph. 2:2), and if indeed this being exercises a significant influence over the whole world (1 Jn. 5:19; cf. Acts 26:18; Rev. 12:9), then we should not be surprised to find that the ‘natural’ order under his influence exhibits diabolic qualities. A creation that is under the strong influence of a cosmic ‘roaring lion’ (1 Pet. 5:8) is going to become ‘red in tooth and claw.’ When a ‘cosmic Herod’ exercises power over the Bethlehem of God’s ‘natural’ order, a perpetual ‘slaughter of the innocents’ can be expected.”
Gregory A. Boyd, Satan and the Problem of Evil, p. 291
At Rest In Him 