The Jagged Journey. Barry Lee Callen

great B Minor Symphony is full of marching rhythms that move inexorably toward the end of tragic desolation. The composer described this music’s theme as “the haunting of life by death.” On the other hand, Brahms’ great Requiem, while still having death as a theme, lacks the pessimism. Its somber mood eventually merges into the great climaxes of peace and victory.

      Fatalism is always an option, a sad giving in to the awful abyss. Faith also is an option, a daring reach upward that allows the poor pilgrim to find God as guide, resource, and eternal home. These pages choose Brahms, faith, and the reach upward. This doesn’t make suffering and death evaporate, not in this world at least. But it does what we really need. It allows us to survive, even thrive in the midst of whatever. When things are falling apart, we can believe even before seeing positive results. God already is putting the broken pieces together into some new and yet unfinished masterpiece.

      God’s Sovereignty and Reasons for Suffering

      There’s a big theological divide not easy to navigate. Christians across the centuries have stood on both sides. The Bible doesn’t help us as much as it might. Again, it seems to give mixed messages, or at least allows two contrasting streams of its own interpretation by equally honest and careful readers. It comes down to a definition of God’s sovereignty.

      Divine “sovereignty” is a central subject of Christian believing, with two contrasting streams of biblical interpretation. The complicating fact is that, conscious of it or not, we tend to bring to our Bible reading preconceived notions that color what we read and how we understand. We bring our theology to the biblical text and read through our preset theological eyes.

      I experienced strong exposure to both streams of interpretation early in life. I studied Bible at Geneva College, a fine institution rooted in the Scottish Presbyterian tradition strongly influenced by the theologian John Calvin. Then I attended Anderson University School of Theology and Asbury Theological Seminary, graduate schools rooted more in the English tradition strongly influenced by John Wesley. These two outstanding Protestant thinkers and reformers had much in common theologically, with at least one significant exception. It centers in Wesley’s resistance to Calvin’s conclusion that God determined in advance that some persons would be saved and others not.

      Both of these Protestant leaders agreed that “nothing in heaven or earth is understood properly except in light of the divine Parent who brought it into being, who is its ground and goal, who is sovereign, fully able, fully faithful, full of justice and mercy.”17 Calvin’s logic concluded that God’s sovereignty must mean that God is always in full control of all things, including our daily affairs and future destinies. Wesley found this an unacceptable outcome of biblical logic, a picturing of God as other than seen in the coming of Jesus, the one who said that God deeply desires that all be saved.

      The core question is this. Does divine sovereignty, with unlimited capacities, imply that God retains and exercises full control of all earthly events? Are we “predestined”?

      Wesley and Calvin agreed on two things, but not a third. They agreed that fallen humanity is incapable of doing anything to merit salvation, and thus all salvation is by God’s grace alone. They disagreed, however, on one key point. Wesley insisted that God wants all to be saved and has provided the “prevenient” grace that enables all to choose salvation. Each person is enabled to respond and therefore responsible for the choice made. Any who do not choose salvation face damnation by their own choice and not by God’s advance decree.18

      The provision of such free choice, Wesley insisted, does not undercut divine sovereignty but defines it, dramatizing the preeminence of God’s love (see below the section “Love Trumps Power”). Such a preeminence of love is critical for how people should understand the source of their sufferings and their opportunity for salvation in spite of them.

      I have pictured this Calvin-Wesley divide as the clash of flowers. Calvin’s TULIP includes the “L” of “limited atonement.” Wesley’s contrasting ROSE sees the biblically revealed God as Relational, Open, Suffering, and Everywhere Active. His flower model is more relational, experiential, and loving in tone and manner, and it highlights the central role of suffering—ours, the world’s, and even God’s. Yes, even the sovereign God suffers.

      I was privileged to author the biography of prominent Canadian theologian Clark H. Pinnock, who traveled the jagged journey of first championing Calvin’s view of divine sovereignty and later being a prominent exponent of Wesley’s view.19 On this key subject, I am a Wesleyan along with Pinnock and many others. That influences my biblical understanding and these present pages.

      God willingly, out of the love that is God’s very nature, chooses to relate interactively and redemptively with this fallen creation. God is open to freely made human decisions and suffers along with the creation when the wrong decisions are made. God risks this awkward process by choice because the preeminent perfection of God’s sovereignty is love. God, being sovereign, is capable of acting only in ways consistent with his own nature and intentions. God’s nature is love and the loving intention is that all be saved.

      We fallen people are struggling in this failing world. We are on jagged journeys. We are enabled by God’s grace to choose for or against God, including choices that bring suffering to ourselves and others, and even our own damnation. God enables and allows, loves and suffers when poor choices are made.

      Where did the fallenness come from? Is God still in control? If so, does being in control mean that God is in charge of and even responsible for all events, even the most evil ones? The Bible is clear about God’s existence, but it’s interpreters have been less agreed on what it teaches about how God chooses to relate to the world’s fallenness. Several best-selling books highlight two contrasting options.

      Love Trumps Power

      Here’s the first option for understanding how the Bible says God deals with the results of human fallenness, and thus who is responsible for our present suffering. Jerry Bridges keys his thinking off of Isaiah 38:17 where King Hezekiah decides, “surely it was for my benefit that I suffered such anguish.” God’s presence and sovereignty are said to be always present and active and in full control of all events in human history, even when they are turning sharply downward. Presumably, all that happens is for the eventual benefit of God’s chosen people, even when events look quite otherwise. All was planned in advance. God has absolute independence and absolute control over the actions of all creatures.20

      Bridges also points to Lamentations 3:37, “Who can speak and have it happen if the Lord has not decreed it?” and to Isaiah 45:7, “I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things.” This is a power position. God has all the power and uses it to accomplish the divine will in this world. All is pre-planned and fully controlled.

      Here’s the contrasting option, one I think more biblical when the whole of biblical revelation is considered. When ultimate power is set forth as the primary attribute of God, no answer will be satisfying to the persistent question, why does God not eliminate awful suffering when God can with his power and should with his goodness? The answer is that Bible puts divine power in the context of God’s love relationship with his beloved.

      God is said to be love. Love is God’s primary perfection, not power. God’s use of power is disciplined by God’s loving nature. This implies that God tends to withhold acts of divine coercion in favor of the wooing of reaching and redeeming love. God is powerfully present in all events, to be sure, but without the choice of dictating and fully controlling them.

      Insists Douglas John Hall in contrast to Jerry Bridges, “There is no sword that can cut away sin without killing the sinner. . . . Freedom is of the very essence of the human creature. . . . Jesus is the Christ.”21 The implication of this final claim is that God works against evil in this world in the way portrayed in the crucifixion of Jesus. Divine wisdom is that of the cross (1 Cor 1—2). Therefore, “the only power that can address suffering humanity is the power of love, and that is a power ‘made perfect in weakness’” (2 Cor 12:9).

      Many