Limiting and Delimiting the Pro-Life Cause--Scott Klusendorf's Case

 Some key articles and a video debate by Scott Klusendorf on understanding the limits of the pro-life operational goals.  Scott is also the author of The Case for Life: Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture--2nd ed. (Crossway, 2023).

What Does It Mean to be 'Pro-life?' (2018).

What does “pro-life” mean?

Jesus cared about all marginalized people, not just a few. As a Christian, then, my ethic should be broad and inclusive. I should do something to resist human trafficking, alleviate poverty, promote fatherhood, and welcome genuine refugees. But it doesn’t follow that the operational objectives of the pro-life movement must be broad and inclusive as well.

And yet critics like pastor John Pavlovitz confuse the two all the time. He insists that if pro-lifers were truly pro-life, they’d do more than prevent abortion. They’d take on hunger, poverty, illiteracy, child mortality, forced prostitution, racism, and homophobia—to name just a few. You see similar confusion in headlines like, “You Can’t Be Pro-Life and Not Be __________.” (Fill in the blank with some other issue pro-lifers are charged with resolving.)

Pro-life advocates should stop buying the premise that because we oppose the intentional killing of innocent human beings, we must take on other tragic societal ills under the banner of being “pro-life.” The criticisms are not only unfair; they are narrowly targeted. Is the American Cancer Society neglectful because it fights one type of disease rather than many?

______

Whole-life Objectives Harm the Pro-life Cause (2022)

Pro-life advocates just won a monumental victory. With Roe and Casey out of the way, pro-life legislation can move forward without being handcuffed by the federal courts. But the victory will be short-lived if pro-lifers let critics determine our operational objectives.

For years, pro-life organizations have routinely been told that saving children from abortion is not enough. To be truly pro-life, the argument goes, we must be “whole life,” meaning these organizations must show equal concern for all injustice and not single out abortion. After all, sex trafficking, poverty, the opioid crisis, and the unfair treatment of refugees are assaults on human dignity, and so they also qualify as pro-life issues. Anything less than a consistent whole-life witness is a betrayal of our fundamental principles and will fail to convert skeptics to the pro-life cause. This attempt to hijack the operational objectives of the pro-life movement is unfair and threatens to bankrupt organizations committed to saving unborn humans.

Suppose your church, eager to save young children from gang violence, opens an inner-city childcare ministry on the south side of Chicago. For three hours after classes on school days, you provide kids a safe place to go, taking them off the street and away from gang recruiters.

But instead of applauding your sacrificial efforts to save children, a television reporter slams your church with a hit piece.

If you truly cared about kids, you’d care about all kids, not just grade school ones. Middle school kids need help too, you know. Why are you only open for three hours on school days instead of 24-7? And what are you doing to address the underlying causes of gang violence such as gun sales and poor housing? Sorry, but if you’re going to call yourself a childcare ministry, you must care for all children K–12, not just cherry-pick the ones you like. After all, Jesus cared about all marginalized people, not just a few.

A reporter who said that about your childcare ministry would be sacked before the evening signoff. But if he conveys those same sentiments about a pro-life organization, he may win an Emmy. Pro-lifers should reject the unfair whole-life critique for at least five reasons.

______

Should the Pro-life Cause Encompass "Womb to Tomb" or Focus on the Womb?--A debate between Scott Klusendorf and Karen Swallow Prior (2022

A Letter on the Problem of Evil

I wanted to ask for your thoughts to a response you had to one of my claims. I was proposing yesterday that if god created good, evil, and the future. Then this would mean that he set Adam and Eve to fail since he placed the tree of knowledge of good and evil in an accessible area before giving them the command to not eat the fruit. Would you agree with this or disagree? –May 24, 2024

 

 

------------,                                                                  June 11, 2024

 

Thanks for the question and my apologies for taking so long to respond!  I haven’t been able to make the last few weeks of discussion but the two weeks I was there were good times interacting with each other.  I appreciate your willingness to enter spaces of disagreement and to dialogue with those who disagree.  I find you to be open and challenging.

 

Let me take your question a piece at a time.  The question you raise, and the attendant concepts are deep.  First, I want to go back to the passage you brought up and allude to in your question.  In the discussion you cited Isaiah 45.7.  I think you cited the King James Version (1611) which reads, “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.”  You drew attention to the fact that this passage states that God creates “evil.”  Many modern translations choose to translate the phrase in something like the following manner:

 

·      “creating calamity” (New American Standard 1995—NASB95)

·      “create disaster” (New International Version--NIV)

·      “create calamity” (English Standard Version--ESV)

 

An Old Testament scholar with a specialization on the book of Isaiah has helpfully written:

 

“The older translation made needless trouble by rendering ‘I create evil’; the NIV correctly has create disaster. Out of about 640 occurrences of the word ra’ (which ranges in meaning from a ‘nasty’ taste to full moral evil) there are 275 instances where ‘trouble’ or ‘calamity’ is the meaning.  In every case the context must judge.  In this passage, full of historical calamities coming on people through Cyrus [see Isaiah 45.1ff], this is what ra’ means.”[1]  

 

This meaning fits the larger context of Isaiah’s prophecies.  God is claiming sovereign control over negative consequences.  He has the sovereign right and power to bring judgment against nations who defy his majesty through wickedness and idolatry.  This is confirmed by the usage of ra’ in Isaiah 31.2, “Yet he also is wise and will bring disaster [ra’] and does not retract his words, but will arise against the house of evildoers and against the help of the workers of iniquity.”

 

I spend the time delineating this so as to avoid the impression that God is somehow claiming to make some evil kind of substance.  He does bring judgments and the Bible is not shy about attributing to him the authority and power to bring judgments.

 

I want to turn to your claim that God “set Adam and Eve to fail since he placed the tree of knowledge of good and evil in an accessible area before giving them the command to not eat the fruit.”  I don’t think this is an accurate manner of describing the situation.  God did not set them up to fail.  He did put a test in their midst, but they had resources to resist the temptation, according to traditional Christian theology.  Now God did foreknow that Adam and Eve would fail the test and some Christian theologians and philosophers go further and say that, in some sense, this was part of God’s plan.  This does not nullify the responsibility of humans, but I can see how the question of “why?” would come up.  Why would God knowingly (foreknowingly) allow (or even plan) for the fall of man into sin?  The fourth-century Christian theologian and philosopher, Augustine provides some perspective that might serve as a beginning point:

 

“He foreknew that some of the angels, in their pride, would wish to be self-sufficient for their own felicity, and hence would forsake their true good; and yet he did not deprive them of this power, judging it an act of greater power and greater goodness to bring good even out of evil than to exclude the existence of evil.”  --The City of God (22.1)

 

“Now God foreknew that man would sin by breaking God’s law through his apostasy from God; and yet, as in the case of the angels, God did not deprive man of the power of free choice, foreseeing, at the same time, the good that he was going to bring out of man’s evil.”  --The City of God (22.1)

 

“Then is there any reason why God should not have created men in the foreknowledge that they would sin?  For that made it possible for him to show in them and through them what their guilt deserved and what his grace could give; and with God as creator and disposer of all things, the perverse disorder of transgressors did not pervert the right ordering of the universe.”  --The City of God (14.26)

 

The existence of evil is allowed by God in order to bring a greater good out of it.  This is a version of a “greater-good defense.”  In allowing evil, this allows for the opportunity for God to pursue an even greater good in the defeat and overthrow of evil.  I think this “greater-good” strategy is a good one in pursuing the answer(s) to the problem of evil.  One of the preeminent philosophers of religion, Alvin Plantinga, has developed a variant of this greater-good strategy called the “Felix Culpa” theodicy.  Plantinga argues that a world with sin and suffering (like our own) and yet also containing the incarnation and atonement of the Son of God, Jesus Christ is a world with more good than even a world without sin and suffering.  The display of the character of God in his love is a central piece of this greater-good defense.  Here is how Plantinga states it:

 

“Given the truth of Christian belief, however, there is also a contingent good-making characteristic of our world—one that isn’t present in all worlds—that towers above all the rest of the contingent states of affairs included in our world: the unthinkably great good of divine Incarnation and Atonement.  Jesus Christ, the second person of the divine trinity, incomparably good, holy, and sinless, was willing to empty himself, to take on our flesh and become incarnate and to suffer and die so that we human beings can have life and be reconciled to the Father.  In order to accomplish this, he was willing to undergo suffering of a depth and intensity we cannot so much as imagine, including even the shattering climax of being abandoned by God the Father himself: ‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?’  God the Father, the first being of the whole universe, perfectly good and holy, all-powerful and all-knowing, was willing to permit his Son to undergo this suffering and to undergo enormous suffering himself in order to make it possible for us human beings to be reconciled to him.  And this in face of the fact that we have turned our back upon God, have rejected him, are sunk in sin, indeed, are inclined to resent God and our neighbor. Could there be a display of love to rival this?  More to the present purpose, could there be a good-making feature of a world to rival this?”[2]

 

Even a world without sin and suffering would not contain as much good as this incarnation/atonement-filled world! Plantinga, again:

 

“I believe that the great goodness of this state of affairs, like that of the divine existence itself, makes its value incommensurable with the value of states of affairs involving creaturely good and bad.  Thus the value of incarnation and atonement cannot be matched by an aggregate of creaturely goods.  No matter how many excellent creatures there are in a world, no matter how rich and beautiful and sinless their lives, the aggregated value of their lives would not match that of incarnation and atonement; any world with incarnation and atonement would be better yet.  And no matter how much evil, how much sin and suffering a world contains, the aggregated badness would be outweighed by the goodness of incarnation and atonement, outweighed in such a way that the world in question is very good.”  Plantinga, “Supralapsarianism, or ‘O Felix Culpa’,” 9.

 

I think that this framework provides the big meta-picture of why God allows evil.  This, of course, does not address the reason for any specific evil that one experiences or sees in the world.  There may be other micro-reasons why God allows these evils.  But the big macro-perspective of why God allows evil is so that he might demonstrate his glorious character in the incarnation and the self-giving love of Jesus Christ on the cross for people’s sins.

 

I have more fully laid out this approach in a lecture I did on the problem of evil.  You can find that HERE[3]—start at about the 18:00 minute mark.  More to be said but I hope that helps begin to lay out a cogent reason why God allows evil.

---

     [1] J. Alec Moyter, The Prophecy of Isaiah: An Introduction and Commentary (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 1993), 359.

     [2] Alvin Plantinga, “Supralapsarianism, or ‘O Felix Culpa’” in Christian Faith and the Problem of Evil; editor, Peter van Inwagen (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2004), 6.  Available online: http://www.andrewmbailey.com/ap/FelixCulpa.pdf.  Note: page numbers refer to online edition.  

     [3] https://whiterosereview.blogspot.com/2021/04/christian-challenge-apologetic-series_9.html

Systematic Theology: Atonement

 * Notes from a class on Systematic Theology I'm teaching at my church.

Systematic Theology: Atonement

 

·      Salvation involves the substitutionary nature of the cross of Jesus Christ

 

o   He suffers in our place

 

·      Four key images of what the atonement achieves[1]

 

 

Concept	Drawn from…	Problem addressed	Passages
Propitiation	Temple precincts	Wrath of God	Romans 3.25; 1 John 2.2; 4.10; Hebrews 2.17
Redemption	Marketplace	Captivity to sin	Mark 10.45; Galatians 4.4-5; Ephesians 1.7, 14; Colossians 1.14; 1 Peter 1.18-19; Titus 2.14; Hebrews 9.15
Justification	Courtroom	Moral guilt	Romans 3.24, 28; 5.1, 9; Galatians 2.16; Philippians 3.9
Reconciliation	Home	Enmity/hostility	Romans 5.9-11; Ephesians 2.11-22; Colossians 1.15-20; 2 Corinthians 5.18-21

 

·      Propitiation

 

o   Removal of the wrath of God against us by the removal of our sins by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ

 

o   “Propitiation presupposes the wrath and displeasure of God, and the purpose of propitiation is the removal of this displeasure.  Very simply stated the doctrine of propitiation means that Christ propitiated the wrath of God and rendered God propitious to his people.”  --John Murray[2]

 

o   Objection: “Cosmic child abuse”

 

§  Horrible metaphor  Jesus is not a helpless child who is a victim!

 

·      Jesus lays down his life willingly: John 10.11, 17-18

 

·      Foundation of propitiation is God’s love (1 John 4.8-10)

 

o   “[P]ropitiation is not a turning of the wrath of God into love… It is one thing to say that the wrathful God is made loving.  This would be entirely false.  It is another thing to say the wrathful God is loving.  That is profoundly true.”[3]

 

o   “We must therefore never say that Christ by his sacrifice had to change a hating God into a loving God.  Paul tells us here that God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement for us.  In other words, God himself provided the propitiatory sacrifice.  Behind the work of Christ is the love of God.  Think of 1 John 4:10, ‘This is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.’  Eternity will be too short for us adequately to praise both the Father and the Son for the amazing love by which we have been redeemed!”  --Anthony Hoekema[4]

 

·      Unity of the Trinity: Unity of the Father and the Son in the work of the cross

 

 

·      Romans 3.21-26  Major passage!  Watch the details here!

 

o   Images of salvation: justification, redemption, propitiation

 

 

o   Watch the flow of the lines!

 

§  Two lines from Christ Jesus

·   To the Father (Propitiation)

·    To the Believer (Redemption)

 

§  One line from Father to Believer (Justification)

 

§  No lines from the Believer  salvation is a “gift” we receive by faith

 

 

·      Redemption

 

o   “For at its most basic to ‘redeem’ is to buy or buy back, whether as a purchase or a ransom.  Inevitably, then, the emphasis of the redemption image is on our sorry state—indeed our captivity—in sin which made an act of divine rescue necessary.  ‘Propitiation’ focuses on the wrath of God which was placated by the cross; ‘redemption’ on the plight of sinners from which they were ransomed by the cross.”  --John Stott[5]

 

·      Justification—(NEXT WEEK)

 

·      Reconciliation: removes our alienation from God and restores a peaceful relationship

 

o   Colossians 1.19-22

 

§  Verse 20: “cosmic reconciliation”

 

·      “Reconciliation would then be understood in Col. 1:20 as referring primarily to the condition of peace in heaven and earth.  The universal scope of the reconciliation is thus an eschatological promise yet to be fulfilled from the standpoint of the author.  It is the time of final redemption when even the enemies of God will proclaim, ‘Your God reigns!’”[6]

 

·      “Consequently, a number of interpreters have appropriately described the reconciliation of the ‘powers’ in terms of ‘pacification’ or ‘subjection.’”[7]

 

 

·      Views of the Atonement (models)

 

o   Penal Substitution

 

§  “I define penal substitution as follows: The Father, because of his love for human beings, sent his Son (who offered himself willingly and gladly) to satisfy God’s justice, so that Christ took the place of sinners.  The punishment and penalty we deserved was laid on Jesus Christ instead of us, so that in the cross both God’s holiness and love are manifested.”[8]

 

o   Moral Example: 1 Peter 2.21-24

 

o   Christus Victor: John 12.27-33 (esp. v. 31); Colossians 2.15; Hebrews 2.14-15; 1 John 3.8

 

o   Not in competition with one another

 

§  Priority to Penal Substitution

 

§  Penal substitution “denies nothing asserted by the other two views save their assumption that they are complete.  It agrees that there is biblical support for all they say, but it goes further.  It grounds man’s plight as a victim of sin and Satan in the fact that, for all God’s daily goodness to him as a sinner he stands under divine judgment, and his bondage to evil is the start of his sentence, and unless God’s rejection of him is turned into acceptance he is lost forever.  On this view, Christ’s death had its effect first on God, who was hereby propitiated (or, better, who hereby propitiated himself), and only because it had this effect did it become an overthrowing of the powers of darkness and a revealing of God’s seeking and saving love.”[9]

 

§  “A comprehensively biblical exposition of the work of Christ recognizes that the atonement, which terminates on God (in propitiation) and on man (in forgiveness), also terminates on Satan (in the destruction of his sway over believers).  And it does this last precisely because it does the first two.”[10]

---

     [1] Drawn from the discussion in chapter seven (“The Salvation of Sinners”) in John Stott, The Cross of Christ (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 1986), 167-203.

     [2] John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied (Eerdmans, 1955), 30.

     [3] John Murray, Redemption: Accomplished and Applied (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1953), 31.

     [4] Anthony A. Hoekema, Saved By Grace (Eerdmans, 1989), 158.

     [5] John Stott, The Cross of Christ (Intervarsity Press, 1986), 175.

     [6] Clinton E. Arnold, The Colossian Syncretism: The Interface Between Christianity and Folk Belief at Colossae (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1996), 267.

     [7] Clinton E. Arnold, The Colossian Syncretism: The Interface Between Christianity and Folk Belief at Colossae (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1996), 269.

     [8] Thomas R. Schreiner, “Penal Substitution View,” in The Nature of the Atonement: Four Views, eds. James Beilby and Paul R. Eddy (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 2006), 69.

     [9] J. I. Packer, “What Did the Cross Achieve? The Logic of Penal Substitution,” Tyndale Bulletin 25 (1974), 20.

     [10] Sinclair B. Ferguson, “Christus Victor Et Propitiator: The Death of Christ, Substitute and Conqueror,” in For the Fame of God’s Name: Essays in Honor of John Piper (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2010), 185.