okay this is the second part of theme 2a the nature of god we've looked at can god be male now we're looking at this idea that can god suffer and in particular we're going to be looking at in this powerpoint the work of jurgen maltman and his views on this now traditionally the christian view of god is that he's all of the following he's only benevolent so all good he's omnipotent so all powerful he's omniscient all-knowing and he's transcendent outside of time and space the same time and these might be two new ones for you he is impassable so not able to suffer or experience emotion and he's immutable not able to change now why these two so important now if you think of the concept of god as being a perfect being if something is perfect as soon as it changes it cease to be perfect logically so if god is perfect he must be immutable at the same time it then logically follows on he must be impassable because if you suffer or experience emotion you have change within yourself and therefore you cease to be perfect that is the logical thinking behind it so impassability and immutability are very are linked to very closely into this theme okay so if you're passable you can experience emotion and if you're mutable you can change now if we look at the god of the old testament what we've clearly got there is an omniscient omnipotent and omni-benevolent god who transcends existence he's the creator of the world he's a god that exists at an epistemic distance he can never be truly known unless he reveals himself and even then you only find some aspect of him however if you look at some old testament verses we do get a hint that there may be a certain amount of possibility here now some have argued that actually this is not the case nothing causes a change in his inner emotional state because he consistently acts with compassion and mercy but outwardly he displays a range of emotions such as love grief compassion anger etc that cause him to repent or change his mind so we get quotes like from god i regret that i've made saul king because he's turned away from me he hasn't carried out my instructions we get the lord relented and didn't bring on his people the disaster he threatened so there's hints there but most christians would argue the inner emotional state of god doesn't change he's still got compassion and mercy so he is immutable and impassable but outwardly it's different quite a difficult concept to get across when we look at the new testament we've got god incarnate in jesus and jesus is clearly passable we get the shortest verse of the bible there's a trivia for you guys the shortest verse in the bible is john 11 35 it's two words and it's jesus wept so technically the easiest verse to remember for you so use it jesus wept so there we get jesus experience emotion so passability we get matthew 9 36 when he saw the crowds he had compassion on them because they harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd so despite the above the impassability of god's divine nature remains because god the father remains impassable the son god in human form god incarnate is passable experiencing human emotions but the father separate although combined remains impassable and it's part of god's plan anyway to overcome suffering through resurrection now this brings us on to the work of jurgen maltsman and his book the crucified god now over the last century or so several prominent theologians have challenged the traditional view of god that we've just looked at and that's genuine response to the fact that we've had two world wars the holocaust continuing conflicts and genocide etc and it's trenched in the view that christians can't have a faith in a god who's immune to suffering and so these theologians argue that god is passable and that he does undergo emotional change and that he can suffer so as i said before jurgen bolton is the key guy in the syllabus and crucified god is his key work now the textbook gives you about a page and a bit on multman so it's a very good summary but i've gone into a little more detail here and you can combine the two so what i suggest you do is get your head around the textbook first and then have a close look at this powerpoint which goes into a little more detail see what you think so before we look at mortman's work in depth there's two key things you've got to be aware of first of all is the traditional problem of evil called the inconsistent triad first put forward by epicurus then reiterated by human 2 000 years later and you can see in the picture below here's hume outlining the problem of evil if god's omnipotent omniscient and holy good where does evil come from if god wills to prevent evil but can't that he's not omnipotent if he can prevent evil but doesn't he's not good in either case he's clearly not god now this view is uh traditionally known as the consistent triad as i've said and it's traditionally addressed by christians through theodises such as those put forward by irenaeus and augustine and you'll study these in detail in the philosophy section of the course so i'm not going to allude to them at all because when you do them you should fully understand them and this slide should make perfect sense so theodicy is how christianity responds to the problem of evil and then you need to know a little bit about docetism which was a heresy uh and the heresy which so a heresy is something that goes against traditional beliefs is not seen as being correct and it's the heresy that jesus didn't suffer on the cross because his body wasn't human it was a ghost or a phantasm wasn't made of any sort of real stuff um only celestial substance therefore his sufferings were only apparent they weren't real okay and that's heretical because if jesus only seemed to be human then he only seemed to die and resurrect and jesus desert death and resurrection brought about salvation so if he didn't really die then humans aren't really saved and the christian teaching is very clear that jesus was really man and really god so that's why it's a heresy so let's look at mortman so take this bit by bit hopefully you can get your heads around it so the first thing you need to understand is you need to realize that his book the crucified god is profoundly offensive to certain christian world to a certain christian worldview okay so he contradicts a view held by a lot of christians and traditionally that worldview has a number of elements and these are that god can't suffer god's impassable for the reasons i outlined earlier on in this presentation you've got the concept of the trinity of the father son and the holy spirit they're separated by their function and not united in their feelings and experiences so their functions separate they're still all part all god but their feelings are not united so what the sun feels and experiences is not the father does not and that creates that that creates that um difference between god remaining impassable as the father that is passable as the son because he's god in human form and then of course the question of how god could be omnipotent benevolent omniscience is answered in a certain way by arguing that god needs to be true to himself and so can't change and feeling passability involves change as i stated earlier so that's the christian worldview that moltman contradicts so really as you could probably work it out he's gonna contradict all three of those bullet points and his work is rooted in the final words of jesus on the cross now we've got four gospel accounts here are the words the final words of jesus on the cross according to the various different gospel accounts so in mark's account and it's exactly the same in matthew you have this quote three in the afternoon jesus cried out in a loud voice which means my god my god why have you forsaken me in luke's gospel we just get jesus called out in a loud voice father into your hands i commit my spirit when he said this he breathed his last and in john's gospel we get when he received the drink jesus said it's finished with that he bowed his head and gave up his spirit now it is this passage mark 15 34 that baltman roots his work in so you have to know that quote guys if i was you i would um just learn this final bit my god my god why have you forsaken me now final cry of jesus on the cross now as i've said mortman grounds his theology firmly in that final cry in god in mark's gospel jesus the son of god utters what sometimes has been called a cry of dereliction in the loneliness and agony of crucifixion jesus seems to be asking of god the unanswerable question that's on the lips of every abandoned human being god god why have you forgotten me why have you given up on me why have you forsaken me and for mortman this crying mark and this is why he uses mark and not matthew is an un is unmitigated by any sense of relief there's no um there's no easing of it because as if to emphasize the point the author of mark really has no resurrection appearances either um jesus doesn't we don't get any accounts of jesus appearing to his disciples after death he leaves the disciples fearful confused bewildered and there's just a hint um an angel says to those that go to find the entity he's gone on ahead of you to galilee but we get no actual resurrection accounts whereas matthew has a bit more so that is why mortman focuses on mark and not matthew even though both in mark and matthew this cry of my god my god why have you forsaken me he's in both gospels but it's mark that he goes to because it's almost as if the disciples are left forgotten derelict lost heartbroken now it's interesting to know that that cry of jesus on the cross my god my god why have you forsaken me is a direct quote quotation from psalm 22 1. in the psalm though it's not an individual that's crying out to god it's the nation of israel pleading with god at a time of exile and disaster whereas in the market account it's jesus the person who claimed to be god's special son the messiah the anointed one the one born to be a king who's abandoned and so that cry is radically personalized this is what mortman says the cry of jesus in the words of psalm 22 means not only my god why have you forsaken me but also my god why have you forsaken yourself the abandonment on the cross which separates the son from the father is something which takes place within god himself it's the stasis within god is the state of god god against god particularly if we are to maintain that jesus bore witness and lived out the truth of god so that cry my god my god why have you forsaken me shows the utter separation of the son from the father but there's a paradox here there's something that doesn't make logical sense god the father and son are still united but are also separated by the sentence of crucifixion now part of the debate in theology exists in trying to understand how to the father and the son can be one and yet still distinct and we'll look at that in more detail when we go to look at the trinity so you've got the trinity father son holy spirit there are one but are all distinct and that's an issue that has to be debated mormon argues the father is still suffering with the sun and the spirit whereas traditional theology of the cross holds that jesus descends into a place about a desolation where there's no hint of unity with a father preserved so this is where mortman is going against that traditional world view for traditional christianity that crime my god my god why have you forsaken me is the separation of the son from the father jesus descends into a place of utter desolation that is the time when all the sin of the world is carried on him when sin cuts him off from god and he has been sacrificed for sin he is utterly separate there is no hint of unity for mortman look at that first sentence here the father is still suffering with the sun and the spirit so there's your difference between mortman and the traditional christian view so the cross and its cry signify the profoundest abandonment and profoundest depths of despair that are possible as mormon describes it's god against god just as the resurrection of the son abandoned my god unites god with god in the most intimate fellowship so the abandonment of the sun suggests the most agonizing separation so the abandonment of the sun from the father god knows what it is like to lose a son whilst at the same time remaining the two part of at the same time the resurrection also knows what it's like to experience the joy of knowing that your son is not dead so molten acknowledges that the death cry of jesus or god in human form god incarnate forces us to come to terms with our own suffering it strips away the pretense of concealment and the sufferings of our present time and asks why suffering what's to be done about suffering now traditionally christianity would respond to this problem through traditional theodicy but moltman's response is radically different and it's linked to that idea of god being passable and it's a theodicy of atonement but it's also linked to mortman's own life story so you need to understand this in order to see where mortman is coming from so he was born into an atheist family he was a german soldier in world war ii and at the end of world war ii he surrendered he became a prisoner of war and in the prison of war camps there was little for the germans to do but what the allies did is they showed pictures of the atrocities that the nazis had committed in concentration camps they were displayed for all to see horrendous images now the german soldiers didn't all know what was going on in these camps and this was a profound shock to mormont and he's famously said he would rather have died with the jews than face the shame of what his country had done and what by association he had been part of as part of the german army and then he was visited by an american chaplain and given a new testament and slowly through the new testament it showed him he could be free of his guilt find freedom with christ in faith a whole new life begins but despite the fact that he became a christian felt that his sins would be forgiven he was still bothered by that question now where was god in auschwitz how should we think about god after auschwitz now i've visited auschwitz with some students and it is an incredibly harrowing experience and that's 60 70 years after it happened there's not a lot left of the gas chambers they were dynamited but if you go to the museum and you see the hair and the luggage you you can't be failed to be moved by the sheer atrocity and scale of what went on and i defy anyone not to go to those museums and shed a tear in some form or another and right at the end of our visit to auschwitz we stood by the war memorial and there was a jewish rabbi who recited a prayer and it was almost as if you know despite what all you've done germans nazis we are still here you haven't succeeded and that finished our visit and we lit a candle placed it on the railway tracks and moved away went to the airport and flew back to britain and if you get a chance to go on the lessons from auschwitz project i thoroughly recommend it a life-changing experience but that had a profound effect on mortman and he tells the story uh that he heard from eli eisel camp survivor and weizel was forced to witness the hanging of two jewish men and one jewish boy now the two men died very quickly but the young lad for some reason struggled for half an hour dying on the gallows and as the jews were watching this this boy dying a long slow painful death death in this most horrendous um situation many of them were asking or muttering where is god where is he how can an omnipotent omnibenevolent omniscient god allow such suffering what is going on and that's traditionally what theodicy would try and answer but for mortman the answer is this it's god the father isn't just looking on he's involved in the suffering himself he's up there dying kicking and screaming with that poor jewish boy who is slowly being strangled to death so part of moltman's argument is to say that god allowed the suffering and gave jesus the strength through the spirit horrible death on the cross so the father allows the son to sacrifice himself through the spirit so the only way to understand the cross is through a theology of the trinity from altman but he pushes that idea further he argues that the father's not impassable or unfeeling he's not just sitting there looking down at all this but he unites with the son in this moment of dereliction so he knows himself what it is like to suffer and he dismisses as docetism any argument that it was only the human nature of jesus that suffered while the divine nature of jesus was unaffected god suffered there on the cross with jesus for mormon the cross for mortman's the start of the divine process where the death of the son and the grief of the father lead to the outpouring of the holy spirit so the form of the trinity these earth mortman's exact words which is revealed in the giving up of the sun on the cross appears as follows the father gives up his son to death in its most absolute sense for us the son gives himself up for us the common sacrifice of the father and son comes about through the holy spirit who joins us and unites the son in his forsakenness and his abandonment with the father so mortman's argument is not just that the event reveals the character of god but that the essence of god the father's included in the event and it's this point about the trinitarian nature of the cross whereby each part of the trinity father son and holy spirit share in the event which many christians find offensive they would go well you know how can an unchangeable god change in this way and experience human suffering how can it an eternal father be a part of chris of of human mortality how can an eternal thing die um how can the god beyond feeling plum the very depths of human feeling how can the impassable become passable doesn't make sense so mortman explains the apparent paradox in this way god's never more glorious than in the moment of self-surrender he doesn't see it as a limitation of god's power so to express the idea for christians in his most defensive form one might say the first person of the trinity the father casts out and annihilates the second mortman concludes a theology of the cross can't be expressed more radically than it is here so let's dig a little deeper into this mortman's words look at what he says here a god who cannot suffer is poorer than any man for a god who's incapable of suffering is a being who can't be involved he is so completely insensitive that he cannot be affected or shaken by anything he can't weep he has no tears but the one who cannot suffer cannot love either so he's a loveless being aristotle's god cannot love god is only omnipotent is in himself an incomplete being for he can't experience helplessness and powerlessness a man who experiences helplessness a man who suffers because he loves a man who could die is therefore a richer being than an omnipotent god who can't suffer can't love can't die therefore for a man who's aware of the riches of his own nature and his love his suffering his protest and his freedom such a god is not a necessary and supreme being but a highly dispensable and superfluous being so for mortman he's not a god worthy of worship so the abandonment of the sun in the crucifixion can be seen as the breakdown of the relationship that constitutes the life of the trinity if the father gives up abandons the son forsakes the son the son doesn't merely lose his sonship the father loses his fatherhood as well for mortman such divine fellow suffering constitutes the only possible way to vindicate god from the charge of cruelty and console grieving humanity without at the same time justifying and therefore perpetuating the injustices at the root of human grief so for mortman it is not enough that god according to traditional christianity just sacrifices his son in an act of love to save human beings from sin he demands more than that morton feels that god himself god the father has to suffer in order to fully be worthy of worship and i've put a quote from richard dawkins here who says you know the god of the old testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction god not worthy of worship for more than what makes him worthy of worship is the fact that he literally has suffered on the cross it is not the son that's there it's the father the son and the holy spirit all three parts of the trinity involved in suffering which for the nutritional view of christianity is not the case it's only the sun so suffering as we know is part of the human condition and in a sense the hardest part for a christian to explain if you're an atheist suffering just is you know there's an atheist who sees no meaning or purpose and suffering but to a christian suffering has a purpose because um god identifies with us in our suffering if god has experienced suffering he knows what it is for human beings to suffer and can therefore comfort us you know this is what mortman sees as being key it points towards the end when the judgment of the world will come upon us the word eschatology you know biggs the above quote where he put i'll miss the quote out sorry guys uh in the above quote it means the end time so he's talking you know when when morgan's talking about the end times uh that in the end everything will be all right it suddenly makes sense it points beyond the immediate to a higher purpose of transformation through suffering you know jesus's cross would say should never be seen in isolation it's a death and resurrection of christ he dies but he's born again there is victory over death suffering can end but god has to experience that suffering mortman presents us with a challenge of making all this relevant to a world which appears to reject god he says christian theology will show how far the christian confession of faith in jesus is true as seen from the outside and must demonstrate that it's relevant to the present day understanding of reality and the present day dispute about the truth of god and the righteousness of man in the world so remember this is this whole idea is couched in you know what history has been like since the second world war genocide it still continues so you morton believes his theology makes more sense so morton's conclusion is a powerful one god didn't put humanity on like we put on a shirt but he became human actually entering into the human condition with all its complexity and paradox and that is not what credit traditional christian belief would have so that is why he is at odds and also as i've said briefly mortman's attempting to address what the cross means for today's christians for mortmen christian identification with the crucified christ means solidarity with all the poor the oppressed the alien the foreign its power is agape for what's different alien ugly therefore being a christian is no longer a private spiritual matter but it's a political ideology for mormon because god has knows what it's like to suffer to be poor to be outcast to be rejected and so therefore we as christians if you are a christian we need to do something about that and more would argue that many christians don't understand what the cross symbolizes because the church has stripped away its true significance so such as the catholic concept of the mass of sacrifice denies the finality of jesus death because the mass there is jesus's blood actually bloody there his body actually there so one of the strengths of mortman's theology well god's no longer shown as glorious and powerful is that surely a weakness no he's the opposite of all worldly power rule glory beauty success the things we boast about in our lives are all shown up as false these are not important in the crucified god willing to be changed by human suffering we see that god's really love in seeing a god who suffers for love we've been given example of how to live for others as sufferers for love remember it's a political ideology for mormon in seeing jesus crucified we've got hope because if he judged as a criminal was resurrected so too can we god's taken our side as the suffering god man for wanting a better word but there are weaknesses how can god be creator if he's in creation and affected by it um and you could argue that there's a panentheism here the belief that uh that god is that should say creation is a visible part of god i need to change that sorry guys the belief that creation uh is a visible part of god miswriting sorry i do apologize can such a god guarantee or offer us an eternal life if he doesn't have the power to address pain in his life how can god save us if he's infected by the suffering and evil so it affects who he is in himself he would no longer be perfectly good he would no longer be free of evil himself and that's a contradiction of the traditional christian teaching all of these are weaknesses of mormon's view of course it clearly redefines the trinity the trinity is a unity one in being so jesus has lost his being then god as trinity's lost himself mortman's view means the imminent trinity god in himself as three persons has changed the world name now seems to have power over god it makes god appear as three different persons the father having to suffer in a different way from the sun which suggests tritheism three different gods which again is a heresy and then we've got the view that jesus is the second co-equal divine person of the trinity so when jesus suffered god did suffer god's love is supremely canotic and self-humbling how can we demand any more of his compassion but for mortman as we've said is not good enough god the father must suffer himself and that casts real doubts on the real divinity of jesus and that's an issue for christians and then you could argue that the resurrection no longer matters if the only thing that matters is that god suffers as we do and experiences death then that suggests the resurrection isn't that really important that really important didn't really change anything and death and evil are not defeated because death is now forever in god and then you could say well what actual good does it do to know god also suffered when he brings psychological comfort which is a weak sort of help when we call god our savior it's because we expect a real deliverance from his human condition if all god can do is suffer well that helps no one so another argument against that and my final three um weaknesses are outlined by thomas weinande there he is and he says what actual good does it do to know god also suffered if it only brings psychological comfort it's a weak sort of help when we call god our savior it's because we expect a real deliverance from the student condition if god all god can do is suffer that helps no one i put it on the previous side but i want to make sure you realize it is thomas weinande and he says it's perverse to find satisfaction in another person's suffering on your behalf someone shows you sympathy and compassion your grief their suffering doesn't make you happy also he would say god's suffering is not like ours since god's not like us and finally one andy says god's wrong in thinking that god has to feel like us in his divinity to know our pain god's knowledge does not have to be physical knowledge god's knowledge of his creation is far more intimate and immediate than human awareness can ever recognize so finally last slide what can we conclude what does theology gain from suggesting that god's passable well for mortman and a number of 20th century theologians it offers a powerful presentation of the depth of god's love if god can limit himself to be with his creatures in a way that involves his own suffering for others the benefits are an illusion they lead us to a picture of a god who can't save whose presence to humans is conceived of in human terms and which denies the incarnation suffering and death of the second person the trinity as an adequate response for a savior