The Goodness of God

by John William Wenham

The Goodness of God

Genres: Theology

223 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1974

Reviews

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

This--the first book published by a mainstream evangelical press (IVP) to defend "conditional immortality" (sometimes called, unhelpfully, "annihilationism" or, better, "terminal punishment")--remains one of the best books on the more general subject of the goodness of God: the combination in God of relentless resistance to evil and steadfast promotion of the good, holiness and love together in a single, simple benevolence.

Strangely, this basic idea of simplicity in God seems to elude Wenham at times. Even at the end of the book he sees God's wrath against sin and God's love of the sinner as an antinomy simply to be believed on the basis of Biblical revelation, while I (and many others, of course) see them as coherent within God's character. God is all good, so of course God opposes what is wrong and advances what is right. And God does more than merely make the world just: God adds the blessing of love, self-giving love, to increase the goodness of the cosmos. So God is utterly good in both respects: holy & loving.

Wenham works through a number of important topics in his exposition of God's goodness as encountered especially in Scripture, such as cursings (particularly, but not exclusively, the imprecatory psalms), imperfect saints, and the genocide of the Canaanites. He also offers some useful, if debatable, reflections on animal suffering before and after the Fall--a topic that is currently front and centre for many Christians.

Alas, he includes as an "additional study" a rather ragged chapter that attempts to catalogue and then refute a wide range of major ideological opponents to Christianity apparent to him in Britain in the early 1970s. Os Guinness's "The Dust of Death" would do a much better job of that, and the chapter provides a lesson to authors that one ought to be careful not to sacrifice one's rhetorical authority by attempting too much. For the rest of the book is pretty good, even 40 years after its publication, and this chapter merely dampens its effectiveness.

So three stars (from my stingy hand) plus another for its pioneering role in contemporary evangelical thought. We could use a new book that covers this ground as well, but in the meantime, this will serve admirably.

[Forrest · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hard read, and Wenham made it harder by his style. Although he warns that his book is written with a Christian audience in mind, those Christians posing the questions he discusses are likely to finish the book unsatisfied. Wenham essentially answers (after many laborious paragraphs) the antinomies with: God's ways are above man's. True, but there's no need for a book if that's the best response you can muster. There are interesting digressions which is why I rated this book 3 stars but if you're looking for a satisfying discussion of the problems of "the destruction of the heathen, the existence of evil or Jesus' teaching about hell", what the book is ostensibly about, you're probably gonna want to look elsewhere.

[Paul Dubuc · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a classic treatment of the problem of evil (theodicy) from a conservative Christian perspective. The author cites many examples from both Old and New Testaments showing that, in neither parts of scripture can the goodness of God be separated from his loving kindness and his severity. The Bible holds these in tension. He concludes that the goodness of God must, in view of Jesus and both Old and New Testament writers, transcend human ideals. He argues that attempts to simplify our image of God's nature in one way or another leads to more problems than it solves. The book is well written and highly readable. It has some interesting essays in the back on "The Doctrine of the Good God" and "Evil In the World of Nature." It also includes very complete biblical, author and subject indexes. Unfortunately the book is out of print, but it's still available from online book sellers. It was republished by Zondervan in 1985 under the title The Enigma of Evil. I think it's a "must read" for those who want to seriously consider these issues from a biblical perspective.