/ mentors
Where was God in this brutal national war? An unbaptized non-churchgoer came up with a profound answer.
Like a figure from Israel’s ancient history, Lincoln was arguing with God. But it was no longer a domesticated deity, an American God, but the ruler of the nations. The truth had begun to dawn to Lincoln that this God was not at the nation’s beck and call, but the nation at his. His thinking was beginning to diverge from the paths followed by Beecher, Dabney, and the overwhelming majority of his contemporaries.
The stunning Second Inaugural
These notions developed more profoundly as the lists of casualties grew. They reached their climax in words Lincoln prepared for his second inauguration as president in March 1865. That address stands as the most remarkably Christian public statement by any American president.
The critical section of the address, complete with citations from Matthew 18:7 and Psalm 19:9, deserves to be quoted in full:
“Neither [side] anticipated that the cause of the conflict [i.e., slavery] might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. ‘Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!’ If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bondman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’ “
How could Lincoln point to the commanding sovereignty of a great God, while professional clerics spoke almost exclusively of a “house god” completely in league with the North or the South? How could such a profound grasp of God’s grandeur come from an ordinary lawyer and politician, who during his lifetime was scorned for lack of culture?
The eminent historian Mark Noll, from The Puzzling Faith of Abraham Lincoln. See his The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, during the writing of which he spoke to us at Saint Francis in an adult forum.
Mark Noll, the leading Church historian (and a friend of Saint Francis Church) on how the size of the North American continent affected its religious developments. Via Mars Hill Audio.
"I do not know the answer."
- [Nicholas Wolterstorff is Noah Porter Professor of Philosophical Theology at Yale University. He has been president of the American Philosophical Association and of the Society of Christian Philosophers.]
- Christian Century [magazine]: You are perhaps most widely known for your moving book Lament for a Son, about the death of your son Eric. That book ends with a vision of God bearing the suffering of the world in tears. Perhaps that vision is the end of theodicy, or the dissolving of theodicy. In any case we wonder how you might respond to a classic theodicy question: Why did God create a world that God must endure in tears?
- Nick Wolterstorff: My little book Lament for a Son is not a book about grief. It is a cry of grief. After the death of our son, I dipped into a number of books about grief. I could not read them. It was impossible for me to reflect on grief in the abstract. I was in grief. My book is a grieving cry. In the course of my cry I hold out the vision of God as with me in my grief, of God as grieving with me; God is with me on the mourning bench. I know that one of the attributes traditionally ascribed to God is impassibility—the inability to suffer. I think the traditional theologians were mistaken on this point. I find the scriptures saying that God is disturbed by what transpires in this world and is working to redeem us from evil and suffering. I do not see how a redeeming God can be impassible.
- The traditional question of theodicy is, Why does God permit moral evil and permit suffering that serves no discernible good? If we hold that God is not impassible, then in addition to that question we have another. Why does God permit what disturbs God? Why does God allow what God endures in tears? I do not know the answer. In faith I live the question.
On the Feast of Epiphany, Jaroslav Pelikan on The Need for the Creeds
Jaroslav Pelikan on the Creed
- Krista Tippet: So, what is it about Christianity that has needed creeds?
- Jaroslav Pelikan: Well, what it is about religious faith that needs creed is that religious faith in general, prayer addressed to “to whom it may concern”, sentiment about some transcendent dimension otherwise undefined does not have any staying power. It’s OK to have that at ten o’clock on a Sunday morning when you’re out with your friends somewhere, but in the darkest hours of life you gotta believe something specific. And that specification is the task of the creed. Because, much as some people may not like it, to believe one thing is also to disbelieve another.
- Tippet: Huh.
- Pelikan: To say yes is also to say no.
