Beyond the Book with Dr. Welty: “40 Questions About Suffering and Evil”

In the following Q&A, Welty takes some time to answer a few questions about his new book.

What is the purpose of “40 Questions about Suffering and Evil,” and who is its target audience?

The book aims to provide a biblically informed intellectual toolkit for answering significant questions about suffering and evil, questions that range across the Bible, theology, apologetics, and pastoral application. While I argue for my own answers to these questions, I also want to expose readers to a wide range of important and influential views that have been articulated by many different Christians over the past two millennia. Entering this historical conversation with our Christian peers can help us avoid naiveté, narrowness, and intellectual isolation.

I think the book will be useful for college and seminary students, pastors, or just about anyone who thinks about these topics. I already have correspondents who say they are going to make the book required reading in their classes, and others who say they will recommend it to everyone they know! (Surely that will get annoying, no?)

What motivated you to write this book?

Well, I’ve regularly taught a class on suffering and evil at two different Southern Baptist seminaries for the past twenty-one years. It can be hard for professors to find a single volume that expresses their own views satisfactorily, especially on a topic that is both controversial and personal. So you know what comes next! You end up writing the book you need.

As part of the 40 Questions series, how does this book uniquely contribute to the philosophical conversation around suffering and evil?

As one of my friends put it, many books approach this topic from a purely philosophical perspective and entirely leave out any biblical perspective. Then there are the books where that gets reversed, that offer a biblical perspective uninformed by clear, accessible philosophy. I think this book includes both. There is something immensely satisfying about the fact that what we can know from one source (divine testimony) entirely agrees with and finds corroboration from what we can know from another source (reasoned argument independent of Scripture). I’m a firm believer in the power of philosophy to illuminate the cogency and power of the biblical perspective, and the problem of evil is no exception. In fact, I argue that some of the best philosophical answers to the problem of evil are wholly anticipated by what is suggested in the biblical material.

I’m a firm believer in the power of philosophy to illuminate the cogency and power of the biblical perspective, and the problem of evil is no exception.

If you want specifics about the philosophical conversation, the uniqueness of my perspective is that I treat the philosophical themes of theodicy (reasons God has to permit evil) and skeptical theism (our ignorance of God’s reasons) as mutually reinforcing. In isolation these approaches break down, but combined they make for a robust and defensible position. In addition, I trace the plausibility of theodicy to the biblical themes of God’s goodness and sovereignty in providence and trace the plausibility of skeptical theism to the biblical theme of divine inscrutability. So the leading philosophical approaches naturally arise from broad and deep trajectories of Scriptural teaching. I also discern a trio of principles that can be used to defend the permissibility of capital punishment, holy war, and Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac (as these are presented in Scripture). Finally, I discern a threefold use of reason that helps us navigate the issue of suffering and evil – what I call the interpretive, evaluative, and confirmative uses of reason. As a bonus, I argue that Scripture itself commends these three uses of reason! I’m not sure I’ve seen these approaches in other works, at least in the way I present them.

What are some of the greatest hurdles readers must overcome when addressing questions about suffering and evil?

One hurdle is avoiding a false dichotomy between listening to the Bible and listening to reason.  You cannot translate the Bible apart from reason, interpret the Bible apart from reason, defend the faith apart from reason, or apply the Bible to your life or to the lives of others apart from reason. Indeed, to argue that we can do without reason is to use reason, so rather than opt out of the reasoning game altogether, commit yourself to play the good reasoning game, rather than the bad reasoning game. I argue(!) that Christians have nothing to fear here, and everything to gain.

You cannot translate the Bible apart from reason, interpret the Bible apart from reason, defend the faith apart from reason, or apply the Bible to your life or to the lives of others apart from reason.

Another hurdle to overcome is ignorance about why our answers to these questions matter. Seriously investigating suffering and evil promotes Christian apologetics (defending the faith to a watching world), fosters Christian discipleship (equips Christians to persevere when tempted to apostasy), and even reinforces the Great Commission (by confirming the fundamental message of the gospel). The very first Question in the book touches on these matters, as a way of building motivation to read the rest.

A final hurdle to be overcome is a kind of contentment with vagueness, where we ask really big questions but we’re not very clear about what we’re asking. For instance, Question 13 is “Does God Cause Evil?” There are in fact at least three things people are wondering about when they ask a question like that. First, does God cause suffering… at all? Second, does God cause suffering by causing nature to cause suffering? And third, does God cause suffering by causing the defect of human will that causes suffering? Any of these questions can count as “what we really mean” when we ask, “Does God cause evil?” Once we’ve clarified the question, we can then get to work as to whether biblical, metaphysical, and ethical perspectives provide answers here, and if so, what they are.

Why is vocabulary so important in accurately and helpfully approaching these questions?

One of my most significant discoveries when researching for the book was that the key Old Testament and New Testament words commonly translated as “evil” in our English Bibles have a semantic range which includes “moral evil” and “natural evil.” These are the two main categories of “evil” in the contemporary philosophical discussion. So ra’ah (Hebrew) sometimes refers to what philosophers would call “moral evil” while in other contexts it refers to what they call “natural evil.” Something similar goes for the Greek terms kakia and poneros (also translated “evil”). I try to show all this via biblical word usage and the way important lexicons treat these terms.

In effect, “evil” is any significant case of pain and suffering, and “moral evil” and “natural evil” are then distinguished in terms of the immediate cause of the suffering: defect of will (murder, adultery, rape, theft, slavery, lying) or how nature goes on (hunger, disease, bad weather, poisonous food, rampaging wild animals, birth defects, plague, earthquakes, forest fires). Again, this seems confirmed by biblical word usage and the lexicons.

This is important for Christian apologetics, since the moral evil/natural evil distinction will affect the ways the problem of evil can be both raised and answered. The distinction is also important for counseling those who suffer, deepening our sympathy for such people and provoking wisdom in our response. Finally, it is important for conveying a fuller picture of both the fallenness of the world and the extent of God’s salvation. In reversing the curse, God turns back both kinds of evils.
That’s a lot to think about, and it starts with our vocabulary!

What mindset should readers have when approaching this book?

Be willing to follow the Scriptures where they lead. Take careful note of what the Scriptures say and do not say. Welcome clarity and eschew obscurity of thought. Pursue patience (with yourself and others). Recognize that God’s failing to provide an answer even when he has one can itself be a kind of answer. (Apparently, our flourishing as human beings doesn’t depend on getting every question answered. God not only knows this but gives us examples of it in the Bible.) Recognize that it’s possible for an idea to sound attractive and be popular but not really deliver anything useful. Don’t overemphasize the differences in theories of divine providence. (I argue that Calvinist/Molinist differences don’t really matter for the purposes of this book.) Finally, treasure the method and message of the cross of Christ as God’s double victory over evil: he uses the evil of the world (the cross) to overcome the evil of our hearts (our sin), thus putting evil in its place twice over.

How does this book equip readers to serve the church and fulfill the Great Commission?

We serve the church when we interpret and teach the Bible well, when we defend its message well, and when we counsel ourselves and others to live it well. The perplexity that descends upon us when we read of suffering and evil in the Bible or see and experience it in the world can be a roadblock to all of that. This book aims to remove that roadblock, or at least give you the tools to do it.

We fulfill the Great Commission when we make known to the lost the sufficiency of Jesus – in his death, burial, and resurrection – to save all who come to him by faith. One of the main themes of my book is that the cross of Christ is central and not peripheral to the storyline of the Bible. That cross reveals the supreme goodness, sovereignty, and inscrutability of divine providence. This threefold way of how God providentially relates to evil, seen supremely in the cross, is then repeatedly revealed in all the lesser narratives that point to and constitute that grand narrative of God redeeming the world in Christ. Our grasping this frees up the entire Bible to reveal to us God’s modus operandi (his “way of working”) amid evil. This is precisely the encouragement the messengers of Christ need to persevere in their appointed task: God’s victory over evil reveals that he is good and powerful but full of mystery. Truly this is a God who is worthy of our trust!

We fulfill the Great Commission when we make known to the lost the sufficiency of Jesus – in his death, burial, and resurrection – to save all who come to him by faith.

How has researching and writing “40 Questions about Suffering and Evil” shaped you spiritually?

I’ll be honest: after the manuscript was finalized and typeset, I began to read it repeatedly, simply for my own sake. Since the book has over a thousand references to Scripture drawn from almost every book in the Bible, it has a very stabilizing effect on me as I make my way through the chapters. I feel as if these portions of biblical wisdom, big and small, are greeting me once more and saying, “I’m here. Will you consider me yet again?” Yes, at an academic level, it’s nice to have a book that is “me” on this topic. It expresses what I really think, and I thank Kregel for giving me that freedom. But at the end of the day the book challenges me to regard God’s voice on these topics as much more important than my own.