Comments on Does God Love Us

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Divine Evil?: The Moral Character of the God of AbrahamMichael Bergmann, Michael J. Murray, and Michael C. Rea

Print publication date: 2010Print ISBN-13: 9780199576739Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: Jan-11DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199576739.001.0001

Comments on ‘Does God Love Us?’

Eleonore Stump (Contributor Webpage)

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199576739.003.0004

In her chapter Louise Antony has issued an indictment of God. He is ‘aterrible parent’; he is psychologically and physically abusive to humanbeings. He is a liar or a bully. He commits crimes against human beings.He is a sociopath. He is merciless. He is sadistic. And so on. Her chapteris the answer to the question that is the chapter's title: ‘Does God LoveUs?’ Certainly not, is Antony's answer. What's more, she says, ‘Anyone whosuggests that we ought to love him is displaying the psychology of an abusedchild.’ (30)

Her evidence for her thesis that God does not love us is a concatenationof readings and interpretations of stories in the Hebrew Bible. She beginswith her interpretation of the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis, andshe interweaves that interpretation with a variety of shorter or longerinterpretations of many other stories, including the stories of Noah's flood,the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the binding of Isaac, the sufferingof Job, the plagues on Egypt, the Ten Commandments, various episodesinvolving Moses, the slaughter of the Amalekites, and various episodesinvolving David. In each of these cases, she gives her reading of the textand her interpretation of the story as she reads the text. In the process,she relies on earlier philosophical work of her own on legitimate authority,duties to parents, and other related issues. On this basis, she argues that, asportrayed by each of the stories, God should be disdained and repudiated.The summing of her interpretations of all the stories is meant to give adamning picture of God.

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I want to begin by saying that in very many things I agree with Antony. Hereis a partial, not a complete, list of those things.

I agree that not all authority is legitimate and that not all disobedience isbad. No good person is more concerned with his own glorification than withthe well-being of his children. Children are not the property of their parents,and certain kinds of acts and practices on the part of parents vitiate someor even all of the obligations children typically owe their parents. Mutatismutandis, these points also apply to God. It is not true in the case of Godthat God has a right to do anything at all to human beings or that anything (p.48) God does counts as good just because it is God who does it. It is notright for a parent, even a divine parent, to treat other human beings unjustlyin any way, including entrapment, lying, bullying, physical brutality, orpsychological cruelty. And, in general, it is not right for any person, even adivine person, to use a human being just as a means to some other end withno care for that human being's own well-being.

In addition, I share Antony's affect about these things. Abuse of children isloathsome, in my view; cruelty to human persons of any age is too. It's worthbeing passionate about these things, as Antony obviously is.

Finally, I also share with Antony some interest in a certain kind ofmethodology. I think, as she also seems to think, that philosophers canbenefit from bringing stories into their philosophical reflections. In myview—but this may be going further than Antony wants to go—storieshave something to contribute that cannot be gotten without the stories.Sometimes it is helpful to employ on issues in philosophy a methodologycombining ordinary philosophical techniques with the study of narratives.

Where I disagree with Antony is first in her use of such a methodology andthen in the conclusions she draws as she uses that methodology. I thinkthat I also disagree with the thesis she takes to be supported by theseconclusions, although I am not sure about this because I am not entirely surewhat that thesis is. If its scope is modified as I think it needs to be, then infact I agree with the thesis of her chapter; but I disagree with her about whatthat thesis implies.

Let me begin with Anthony's use of the methodology that brings stories intophilosophical reflections.

Philosophical work, especially in the analytic tradition, commonly has acertain sort of tight order to it because it is structured around arguments;




philosophical discussion typically proceeds in an orderly way designed totry to command agreement. By contrast, interpretations of narratives—forthat matter, interpretations of people and their actions—do not admit ofrigorous argument. We can definitively rule some interpretations out, butit is hard to make a compelling argument that only this interpretation isright. Even a carefully supported interpretation of narratives is, in effect,only a recommendation to look at a text in a certain way. It invites readersto consider that text and ask themselves whether after all they do not seethe text in the way the interpretation recommends. Interpretations present,suggest, offer, and invite; unlike philosophical arguments, they cannotattempt to compel. Because this is so, it is especially important in presentingan interpretation of a text to consider alternative readings. To support oneinterpretation is to support it over others. But then those others need to becanvassed, and something needs to be done to show why they are to berejected.

(p.49) Furthermore, the interpretation of narratives is itself an art. Fornarratives, as for philosophy, there is an expertise and a community ofscholars in whom that expertise is vested. Although communal expertisecan certainly be mistaken, it is not generally wise to jettison it wholesale.It represents the results of many minds working in community over aconsiderable period of time. This is the case for the study of narrativesjust as it is for the study of philosophy. In the case of narratives, one thingthis communal expertise typically gives us is a plethora of interpretationsof a text. It shows us the range of interpretations possible as regardsthat text, and so it makes us more thoughtful and more sophisticated inour interpretation of that text. It also shows us what needs to be done tosupport a particular interpretation of a text. It helps us understand whatinterpretations need to be argued against if one particular interpretation is tobe put forward as the right one.

These remarks apply to narrative texts in our own culture and language, butthey are especially pertinent when the narratives in question are writtenin a language very different from our own and stem from a culture verydifferent from our own. In the case of such texts, even before the difficultiesof interpreting the text, there is the difficulty of finding the right reading ofit. Just understanding what a line means can take considerable expertise.For such texts, the work of generations of linguists, historians, and literaryscholars can yield insight into readings and interpretations that would behard to come by otherwise. Think of a Greek tragedy such as Sophocles'Philoctetes or a Chinese novel such as Dream of the Red Chamber, and




you see the point. In the case of the stories in the Hebrew Bible, the textshave been studied for centuries by some of the best minds in the Jewishand Christian traditions; and many of the commentaries of those scholars,with their philological and literary competences, are still available to us. Asfar as that goes, the Hebrew biblical texts in question are still very muchunder discussion today, not only by historical biblical scholars and literarycritics but even by philosophers, even by analytic philosophers. I myself havewritten extensively on some of them.1

Finally, many ancient and contemporary studies make clear to us thatthe Hebrew biblical narratives in particular have neutron-star density.For example, Eric Auerbach has famously contrasted the narratives ofthe Hebrew Bible with the narratives of Homer, to bring out the biblicalnarrative's ability to convey an enormous amount with a tiny bit of detail(1953). The noted literary scholar Robert Alter has made contemporaryreaders aware of what can be done with the Hebrew narratives when theirdetail is unfolded by (p.50) someone trained in the analysis of narratives andattentive to the nuances of ancient Hebrew poetry and prose.2

These considerations highlight the problematic character of Antony's attemptto bring narratives into philosophical reflection. She runs through manybiblical stories in short space with scant attention to the details of the text.She gives little consideration of alternative interpretations. And she availsherself of very little of the vast communal expertise that has been devoted toboth the reading and the interpretation of these narratives by scholars fromdifferent disciplines, times, and world-views. What is needed for employingwell a methodology combining philosophy and ancient Hebrew biblicalnarratives is missing in her chapter, in my view.

I also disagree with the conclusions Antony draws as she employs thismethodology. In the case of the stories Anthony canvasses, very many ofthe available commentaries read and interpret the narratives differentlyfrom the way Antony does, and I do not find her readings of the texts or herinterpretations of the readings she provides compelling.

Sometimes the issue has to do with the way in which Antony reads a line. Totake just one small example, consider the line about the creation of Adamthat in the translation Antony uses is rendered into English this way: ‘therewas no one to till the ground.’ Commenting on this line, Antony says that

God seems to have created Adam to be a worker, or rather,since there appears to be no question of securing Adam's




consent to the arrangement, a slave. God, the text tells us,simply needs a gardener.

Although Antony is confident about what the text tells us, in fact otherreadings are possible. The traditional Jewish commentary, the BereshithRabbah, reads the same line very differently. The word Antony takes torefer to gardening can have connotations of religious worship or service,and the commentary in the Bereshith Rabbah highlights this sense of theword. It reads the line as commenting that there was as yet no human beingto engage in religious service of God. It recognizes that the biblical textseems to imply that human beings were created for work, but it emphasizesthat work in religious service of God is a blessing for human beings. Ininterpreting the biblical line at issue, the commentator says, ‘Happy is theman whose toil is in the Torah!’ (Midrash Rabbah. Bereshith 103).

Whatever one may think about the reading that the Bereshith Rabbah givesto the biblical line, it ought at least to call to our attention that the biblicalline can be read in highly various ways. It is hasty to suppose, as Antonydoes, that (p.51) this line, or any line in an ancient Hebrew narrative, wearsits meaning on its sleeve. For my part, I do not find Antony's reading of thisline persuasive.

A similar point applies to Antony's interpretations of her readings of thestories. About the story of the creation of Eve, Antony notes the line in which,on the reading Antony provides, God says about Adam, ‘I will make him ahelper…corresponding to him.’ Based on her reading of this line, Antonyinterprets the story of the creation of Eve this way: ‘Eve…is created not torelieve Adam's loneliness, but to help him carry out his preordained duties.’

A different interpretation of the same story is given by Robert Alter, in hishighly influential study of biblical narrative. Alter calls attention to the factthat between this statement of God's and the actual creation of Eve, there isthe episode of Adam's naming of the animals. Alter comments,

The contrast between mateless man calling names to a muteworld of mated creatures is brought out by a finesse of syntaxnot reproducible in translation. Verse 20 actually tells us thatman gave names ‘to all cattle…to birds…to beast…to theman,’ momentarily seeming to place Adam in an anaphoricprepositional series with all living creatures. This incipientconstrual is then reversed by the verb ‘did not find’, which setsman in opposition to all that has preceded. (1991: 30)




Having noted these nuances of the prose, Alter argues that one point of theepisode of the naming of the animals is to elicit from Adam an awareness ofhis loneliness right before the creation of Eve. And Alter calls attention to thefact that, in the narrative, the first thing Adam does after the creation of Eveis to name her, so that, by highlighting Adam's use of language in naming,the narrative connects the episode of the creation of Eve with the episode ofthe naming of the animals. On Alter's interpretation, the loneliness of Adamand Eve's creation to assuage that loneliness is central to the story of thecreation of Eve.

For my part, I find Alter's reading much more compelling than Antony's. And,in general, by contrast with the alternative readings and interpretationsI know, I do not find Antony's construals of the stories plausible. So Idon't accept the particular conclusions Antony draws from her use of themethodology that interweaves philosophy and narrative any more than Iaccept the way in which she uses that methodology.

Finally, there is the question of the thesis that Antony means her work inthis chapter to support. The title of her chapter is a question, ‘Does GodLove Us?’, and her chapter is meant to be a resounding negative answerto the question. But since the chapter focuses just on some narratives inthe Hebrew Bible, it is hard not to suppose that her thesis has to be muchnarrower than the title suggests. To take just one example of a Christianphilosopher whose work I know well, Aquinas supposes that God loveshuman beings. But this (p.52) view is not one that emerges for Aquinason the basis of his interpretations of stories in the Hebrew Bible. On thecontrary, he gives philosophical arguments for this view. His case is made,inter alia, on the basis of metaphysical considerations having to do withgoodness and being. Nothing in Antony's chapter is so much as germane toarguments such as these for taking God to be loving.

So even if we grant Antony all she wants in this chapter, as I have beenunwilling to do, her chapter does not constitute an argument for the claimthat God does not love human beings. The title of Antony's chapter would bemore accurate if it were phrased this way: ‘Does the God of the narratives inthe Hebrew Bible love us?’ But even this version of the title wouldn't be quiteright. That is because the biblical narratives canvassed by Antony admitof multiple interpretations. On at least some of those interpretations, thetexts support the claim that God loves human beings. Since Antony has notconsidered such interpretations, it is too strong to claim that her chaptermakes a case that the God of the Hebrew Bible's narratives does not love




human beings. The title of her chapter would therefore be correct only if itwere something like this: ‘Does the God of the Hebrew Bible's narratives, as Iread and interpret those narratives, love us?’

At most, then, what Antony is entitled to claim is that her chapter shows thatthe God of her readings and interpretations does not love human beings. Andin this thesis she seems to me entirely right. The God who emerges from herreadings and interpretations is cruel and evil, as she says, more worthy ofhuman hatred than of human love. So if we take Antony's thesis in this highlycircumscribed way, then I agree with it.

But now there remains a question about what this thesis shows. What followsfrom this thesis? I take it that Antony supposes her thesis shows somethingto the detriment of at least two of the major monotheisms. But, of course,this is not the only conclusion possible. Another possible conclusion is thatAntony's interpretations of the narratives in the Hebrew Bible are mistaken.Antony has argued that the God of her readings and interpretations isunloving. But she has not argued for her readings and interpretations. Andso although she has shown that two things are incompatible—her readingsand interpretations, on the one hand, and the claim that the God of thestories is loving, on the other—she has not given arguments to show whichof these two incompatible things ought to be rejected. On the evidenceavailable to me, including the evidence of the alternative interpretations ofthe narratives, I would not hesitate to choose her interpretations as the thingto be rejected.

Here, then, is where I think we are left. The thing Antony finds worthy ofexcoriation, I do too. And so do most other interpreters in the mainstream ofJewish and Christian commentary on these stories. The God who emerges (p.53) from her interpretations is not one they accept; the God theyworship is not the God Antony is concerned to repudiate. That is at leastin part because their readings and interpretations of the stories are verydifferent from hers, and so is the God whose nature is illuminated by theirinterpretations. Consequently, in the thesis of her chapter, if it is suitablycircumscribed, Antony is not at odds with Jewish or Christian thoughtbut actually solidly in the mainstream of it: the God of her readings andinterpretations is not loving and is not worthy of love or worship in return.

Notes:

(1) See, for example, Stump 2010.




(2) See, for example, Alter 1991.


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