Wheaton College Alumni Magazine Spring 2014 | Page 18

Q

biblical and theological studies faculty see
these questions as opportunities to foster growth
and Christian development.
“Theology is a dialogue, a conversation. Our
intention is to stir people to think theologically,”
says Dr. David Lauber ’89, associate professor of
theology, who notes it’s through asking questions
and arriving at answers that some students begin
to own their faith.
For everyone who longs for answers, these next
pages provide an opportunity to look over
the shoulders of Wheaton’s theologians, and to
read their perspectives on the answers to a
few common questions—answers they’ve arrived
at after studying God’s Word and centuries of
Christian thought.

Q

Are evil and suffering punishment for sin?
& A: Dr. Jennifer Powell McNutt, associate professor of theology and history of Christianity

Beyond identifying the fall as bringing evil into the

world, Christians of the past and still today have affirmed that
God’s providence includes causing natural disasters or disease, and
such events have been interpreted as God’s righteous judgment
for sin. The characterization of God in Scripture as the just judge
(Ps. 7:11) informs this outlook. For this reason, the most common
response of the church historically to occurrences of moral and
natural evil has been repentance and fasting. The New England
earthquake of 1727, for example, led to religious revival that
precipitated the fi rst publicized “awakening” prior to the Great
Awakening that began with Jonathan Edwards.
However, this interpretation presumes to understand exactly

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how God works through current events and why. Also, it
seems to demote if not deny the work of the devil in the
world. As the 19th-century French poet Charles Baudelaire
would later write in his prose-poem The Generous Player,
“The cleverest ruse of the Devil is to persuade you he does not
exist!” For this reason, in David Bentley Hart’s interpretation
of the tsunami disaster of 2005 for First Things, he writes,
“As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater
than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child
I do not see the face of God, but the face of His enemy.”
Indeed, the idea that God causes evil can be seen to confl ict
with God’s goodness when Scripture defi nes the endgame of
evil as “to steal and kill and destroy” ( John 10:10). In contrast,
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