It Was Necessary

The Greek language has a word we translate into English as “necessary”. It is anagkē, and Strong’s dictionary says it refers to some obligation “imposed either by the external condition of things, or by the law of duty”. It refers to a thing that had to happen. One example of its scriptural use is in Hebrews, where the writer says, “It was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.”

It was required. It had to happen that way. There was no other.

God and Necessity

Of course, our minds rebel against the thought of anything being obligatory for almighty God. If he exists and is indeed omnipotent, as theologians say, surely — or so we think — he could have found another way to purify the heavenly things of which Hebrews speaks than through the blood sacrifice of an innocent victim. Perhaps he should also be able to make angels dance on the head of a pin. Or not.

I’ve been thinking a lot about God and necessity. It started with this post on animal suffering at the Stand to Reason blog, one of my weekly Christian internet check-ins. I don’t know if StR is winding down these days, but the team posted a mere five times in the last three months. This one was a doozy, however. Regular Greg Koukl found himself aggressively challenged by an atheist in public to give an account for gratuitous suffering — suffering with no moral justification — which he claims animals experience. He actually used the phrase “incalculable aggregate misery of sentient creatures”, an impressive rhetorical flourish.

Aggregate Misery?

As impressive as it may have sounded, it was also a red herring. There is no such thing as “aggregate misery”, at least not as far as experience is concerned. No single living creature experiences all the cumulative misery of a fallen nature, either human or animal. As Solomon said about human beings in Proverbs, “Each heart knows its own bitterness, and no stranger shares its joy.” Creature suffering is personal, not aggregate. I may sympathize with you when you suffer, but if I claim to be experiencing exactly what you are, I am telling porkies. Some part of me, however tiny, is actively grateful that I am not. The same is surely true in the animal kingdom. The peregrine falcon does not experience the suffering of the pigeon it tears to pieces for lunch. Even if it did, it would not pause and reflect on it.

So let’s not blame God for the “incalculable aggregate misery of sentient creatures”. It’s actually very calculable, though perhaps only by God or maybe an algorithm. Each creature’s life has a fixed length and its body a fixed number of nerve endings (which respond to pleasure as well as pain, a feature we should not overlook when extrapolating from circumstances to draw conclusions about the goodness of God). Moreover, the created mind has a built-in pain-processing limit, after which it can process no more. Days after an operation on another part of my body, I happened to notice my collarbone was also broken. Surprise! I only discovered it once the greater pain had subsided a little. Experts refer to the phenomenon as Conditional Pain Modulation or CPM: as one writer put it, “pain inhibits pain”. This is true in animals as well. There are upper limits to the pain any individual may experience.

Now, that’s not to say that the accusation that some suffering is morally unjustified poses no theological problems for Christians, but let’s consider it at the level it actually occurs in the world rather than at some fantastical, hyperbolic threshold where it really doesn’t.

The Bible Tells Me So

I found Greg Koukl’s answer to gratuitous suffering, such as it was, oddly unsatisfying, which is not to say that I expect to do better at it. Greg approached the problem with a pair of logical syllogisms in a form technically correct, but which left me a bit cold and unpersuaded, not least because it was an intellectual answer rather than a scriptural answer.

For me, the issue of so-called gratuitous suffering comes back to this idea of necessity. Some things simply have to be. The Bible says so.

Now, I’m not going to be able to tell you why certain things must be accomplished in certain rather constrained ways. That’s above my pay grade and possibly beyond my capacity to analyze. Why is there no remission of sin without the shedding of blood? Why couldn’t almighty God come up with an easier way of dealing with the sins of the world? I don’t know that, but I trust God and God says so, so I believe it to be the case.

But here’s the thing: nothing that is genuinely necessary can reasonably be called gratuitous.

Necessary Things in Scripture

Scripture declares many things “necessary”. They have to happen a certain way. For example, Hebrews again says, “When there is a change in the priesthood, there is necessarily a change in the law as well.” Jesus taught that it was “necessary that temptations come”. That’s a baffling statement. It won’t be true forever. Or again, “Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” It had to be that way. It could be no other.

These scriptures reveal another important feature of necessity: it is the product of preconditions. Changing the priesthood necessitates changing the law. If we assume the first, the second must also occur. Granted that the world is fallen, then temptations must come. They are necessary. They will not be necessary forever, but they are part of the package as the world currently exists. The one is a precondition to the other. Granted that humanity must be redeemed, then it was necessary for Christ to suffer to accomplish it. Things just had to be that way. The precondition creates the necessity. If we were to leave the priesthood as it is, no change to law is required. If we exclude the precondition of man’s fall, the necessity for temptation disappears. If humanity is to be left separated forever from God, then Christ need not suffer and die. But admit the precondition, and certain responses are now mandatory. Certain things become not just optional but obligatory.

That’s what the Bible teaches. I don’t have to be able to work that all out theologically to believe it. I simply acknowledge that’s what God says.

The Precondition That Birthed the Necessity

Now, it’s possible to imagine a perfect world in which no animal suffering ever occurred. Difficult, but possible. God could have stopped at verse 25 of Genesis 1, having created the beasts of the earth according to their kinds. He could have theoretically left man out of the picture entirely. As verse 25 ends, “God saw that it was good.” Good just the way it was. Humanity was a bonus on Day 6 of creation.

But he didn’t. God kept right on creating, making man in the image of God and giving him dominion over everything. That too was good. So says the scripture. But a precondition then birthed a necessity. That precondition was mankind’s authority. In putting everything under man, God also made the creation subject to and affected by man’s choices, just as your children are affected by their parents’ choices for good or ill. It was necessary that creation fall with man because creation was subject to man. As Paul puts it in Romans:

“The creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”

Let’s not miss that last sentence. What Paul seems to be saying is that there is a big payoff coming for God’s creation, currently groaning at the futility to which it is subject.

The Glory of the Children of God

The suffering animal kingdom is to be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. It sounds like there is some added value there for the world; that creation, by groaning along with you and me, has thereby entered into a promise of a world-to-be better than the original creation. At least, that’s how I read it. And it makes perfect sense. Would you rather have Christ or Adam as your federal head?

All this, the scripture teaches, was necessary. Moreover, if it was necessary, then the animal suffering of the present time is not gratuitous. Not at all. It’s essential to the working out of God’s authority in the world. It’s a product of what must be.

That may not convince an atheist, but that’s not my job or my objective. I’m just trying to work it out for myself.