Justice isn’t an instigating act or will, hence why I see ‘wills’ in God that are prior to or that have nothing to do with justice. Justice comes after, when the righteous are rewarded and the wicked are punished. That is justice, or is what I would call justice. But as such justice can only be willed, or God’s will can only be called ‘just’, when it deals out these retributions. Justice is a response to a human will that is itself a response to a more prior divine will.
Thus in the case of Job, in God’s testing of Job, there is something other than ‘justice’ going on. (In fact, it is precisely justice that is temporarily revoked.) What is God’s will here? My suggestion is that God is trying to reconcile the satan and humankind. God is not willing justice but reconciliation. The satan, in wandering the earth, has lost faith in humankind. God is trying to bring them back together again. To create a connection, just as you said Job receives in the end with God.
So to further clarify, while I would say that God has a reason for testing Job, or that God’s action is justified, I would not say that God’s will is ‘just’ in this case. The word ‘justified’ is misleading here, for God’s will is in fact reconciliatory. (There is not necessarily justice in reconciliation. In fact, an important part of reconciliation is often forgiveness, which has a logic that defies the rigorous returns of justice.)
So if a tsunami wipes out an island of people it is not evil per se, but only evil because this is how human beings perceive it? That in truth, there is a grander scheme that could justify it all? You say this yet you go on to challenge my view of the anthropological origin of evil by calling upon the evil caused by natural disaster, which you just said isn’t evil.
For the sake of consistency, shouldn’t your response to the anthropological origin of evil be that evil is only in the perception of human beings? That evil per se does not exist and that it therefore has no origin either in human beings or in nature?
In regards to whether natural disasters cause evil I would say that they do not. Rather, the suffering they result in is part and parcel to a wild creation. We are told point blank that it is a wild world that must be subdued. That means danger lurks around every corner. There are seas that rise up and an earth that shakes. Also animals that bite.
It’s not evil when a lion eats a lamb or when a tsunami wipes out an island. There can be terrible unfortunate events in nature that may cause us to question God but they are not indicative of evil. Rather of wildness.
What is the difference? What makes human killing evil? I would say because in our being cultured we know better. Knowledge of good and evil and the power to discern between them are important qualities for human beings. (This is not to say that the animals and the elements don’t have wisdom/culture too, or can’t have wisdom/culture, but that part of their wildness means they don’t always know better, and aren’t culpable for what they do.
Yes and no right? It’s a delicate balance and at some point you’re going to have to let your daughter cook or cross the street or go out on her own. I believe the analogy is like learning to ride a bike. Yes, run behind and hold on as they start, but at some point you must let her go and risk her fall. There’s no escaping it unless you hold on forever. And that’s overparenting, an evil in its own right.
Depends what you mean by omniscent. Does God see into Job’s heart and know the quality of it? Absolutely. Does God know precisely how Job will react or what will transpire? I don’t think so.
Then why did God spare Noah? Why didn’t God wipe us out completely so as to start from scratch? Of course God keeps faith in humankind, or affirms that man could right himself.
Indeed, on the whole humankind is a let down. Hence Job’s fear that God has at last let us go or fired us. But there is a difference, for example, between Eliphaz’s idea that “human beings are born to trouble” and human beings, more often that not, being bad at what they were made/called to do. The latter leaves room for redeeming examples such as Noah, Job, and Jesus Christ. It is because of these that God holds on (versus letting go of us completely). It is because of these that God maintains our call to being tselem elohim. (These righteous few save the wicked many from the ash heap.)
Maybe. If the wife is not on board with God’s work of reconciliation then yes, she would be repulsed. If not, maybe she would understand and would be happy to take it.
I guess the question is, how else is the satan’s faith to be restored so as to be reconciled to humankind? How else than by the example that Job is made to set? There is no other way in this case.
The satan’s argument is that Job’s fear/obedience is out of desire for reward. Thus, if the reward is removed, so too will Job’s fear be removed. That is the test. Will Job keep fearing God when there is nothing in it for him? The satan, having no faith in humankind, thinks not. Human beings are only in it for themselves.
I agree though about covenants in the Bible. It’s justice that you describe. Job will be rewarded if he does what is right. That is God’s will (or one of God’s wills).
God restores Job’s sense of himself as humankind in the speeches from the whirlwind, not verse42:7 which you speak of here. God does it by, in the first speech, undermining Job’s knowledge, and thus Job’s resigned belief that he is destined to the ash heap. In other words, God gives Job hope in the resurrection of the dead. God also does it by, in the second speech (but in the first as well), encouraging Job to stand up in his righteousness/wisdom, like Behemoth and Leviathan, to God even.
These two basic points that God makes are a confirmation that Job is still tselem elohim. That’s the short of it anyways.
There’s a difference between the integrity and worthlessness of humankind. Integrity is having been perfect. Job’s record of fearing God and turning from evil is spotless. Whether humankind is worth anything, or is worth saving from the ash heap despite Job’s integrity, is a whole other matter.
He asks it in 5:17-18. “What is a human being that you watch him?..”
There are many instances of Job’s answer, i.e., he repeatedly says he is weak and will soon be no more and chapter 3 is an outright cursing of his human life but perhaps the best place is 2:8 where Jobsits in the ash heap.
Why would Job sit in the garbage unless this was his opinion of himself/humankind?
I know the standard answer. ‘The ash heap is indicative of lament. In doing it Job is basically telling us that he is lamenting.’ That’s BS. In truth it is Job’s estimate of himself/humankind and the paradigmatic expression of what troubles him.
I’ve read it your way and admit its merits. I’ve said from the beginning that I believe the book of Job leads us to your view. Try reading it mine. It has certain advantages. Namely, it does not deny our being tselem elohim as I believe your view does (note the disparity, versus potential equality, that you stress between humankind and God, how we can’t know the greater scheme where the evil we perceive is no longer evil).
Again, then why would Job sit in the ash heap? If he didn’t think he belonged there why would he go there? You have to reconcile a rather sharp discontinuity between a Job who is happy to protest in chaps3-31 and a Job who timidly resigns himself so meekly to the garbage and never gets up in verse2:8. (If what you say is true, wouldn’t we expect, at the start of chap3, for Job to arise from the dung heap in his protest? If this was his point, that he does not belong there?)