Ship of Fools: Romans 9:20... Who are you to talk back to God?

Thread: Romans 9:20... Who are you to talk back to God? Board: Chapter & Worse / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Simon (# 1) on :

Verse nominated by Eliab

"But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? 'Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, "Why did you make me like this?"'" (Romans 9:20, in context)

Eliab comments: This verse says to me "Don't question, don't think, don't pay God the compliment of calling him to account for what seems injustice. Don't have the faith to challenge anything which is unworthily asserted of the supreme Good." It is morally and intellectually deadening.

It crops up in discussions about salvation and is always used as a lazy excuse for not questioning morality which, if asserted of anyone but God, would be rejected by everyone as atrocious. It reflects the sort of argument where debate and dissent are stifled because one side has managed to preface its ill-formed opinions with "God says..."

Who am I to talk back to God? One of his children, that's who. This prohibition has no authority over those who follow the faith of Abraham and demand, with him, that the Judge of all the Earth shall do right.

How much of a problem is this verse? Click "Vote Now" to cast your vote!

[ 31. July 2009, 10:58: Message edited by: Simon ]

Posted by Hawk (# 14289) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Simon:
Eliab comments: This verse says to me "Don't question, don't think, don't pay God the compliment of calling him to account for what seems injustice. Don't have the faith to challenge anything which is unworthily asserted of the supreme Good." It is morally and intellectually deadening.

To me, it says that God is in control, He is what He is and we cannot call Him to account because we have no authority over him. This is a blindingly obvious truism though. How can we take God to court, he is not bound by our laws, our judgments? He is not bound by the Universe, let alone our temporary notions of morality. And Eliab’s idea that we can somehow compliment God by ‘calling him to account’ is an inherently ridiculous notion. For us to think we have any means or capability of “calling him to account” over what He is or what He does is logically impossible. Terry Pratchett writes of a mad king who tried to sentence a cloud to death for casting a shadow. He then ordered the execution of the cloud by firing cannon shells into the sky. (It had no effect on the cloud but many bystanders were killed.) This act would be plainly absurd and this verse is also pointing out the obvious absurdity in us trying to question God.

This verse is very good scripture because, used as it was intended, it is useful for bringing people with fanciful ideas down to earth again. Any of your attempts to question God or ‘call Him to account’ are as pointlessly absurd as firing cannon shells at clouds.

But it certainly doesn’t stop us trying to understand God, or thinking about Him and His ways. And we can certainly still try to challenge anything “unworthily asserted of the supreme Good.” It is certainly not intellectually deadening. It just helps to make sure we don’t go off into flights of fancy that we are capable of something we are plainly not capable of. We cannot control God. We cannot demand anything of God. To claim that we can is to be entirely deluded.

Posted by Eliab (# 9153) on :

Yes, that's pretty much what I hate about it. To defend this verse you are driven to asserting that God is not bound by morality.

Yes, he is.

God doesn't get to be a bastard just because he is God. Might is not right.

If something is asserted of God which seems wrong, we ought to object, and fiercely. That means, sometimes, talking back to him, like Abraham did, and Job, and Peter. We won't always be right (they weren't always right) but it is by following what light we have, that we receive more. We learn absolutely nothing by accepting evil just because it has somehow attached to itself the name of God.

Posted by The Great Gumby (# 10989) on :

Hm. I think there are strong parallels with Job here. From Job 38 onwards, you get huge chapters of Divine Sarcasm, with God saying in paraphrase "Go on, then, as you think you can tell me how to do it - do you know how to make a star? Do you understand how a donkey works? Not so clever now, are you, sunshine?" But the kicker is that He then goes on to ream all the "Comforters" who were trying to explain why God wanted all this to happen.

It's certainly a dangerous verse in the wrong hands, but it's also a puzzling one, because it seems to go against the grain of so much of the OT in particular. It seems extraordinary that someone with even the most basic knowledge of the Psalms (and I'm sure Paul had much more than a basic knowledge) would say such a thing.

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

Paul's words are the classic "Coz God (through me) says so - now shut up and get on with it!" that you can hear from any dodgy religious leader of this or any other age. That they've made it into the Canon - and are therefore considered to be Words From God - is hugely regrettable.

Remove!

Posted by Bullfrog. (# 11014) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Paul's words are the classic "Coz God (through me) says so - now shut up and get on with it!" that you can hear from any dodgy religious leader of this or any other age. That they've made it into the Canon - and are therefore considered to be Words From God - is hugely regrettable.

Remove!

Then what are Words from God?

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Bullfrog.:
Then what are Words from God?

Well, that's the kicker. But if we ever genuinely had a chance to remove verses we didn't like from Holy Writ, this (and others like it) would be very very near the top of my list.

Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :

And here's the thing-- if you open the Bible (OT especially) at random and throw a dart at it, chances are you will find a story involving some patriarch talking back to God. Paul seems to be trying to be more Catholic than the Pope, if you'll pardon the expression.

Posted by churchgeek (# 5557) on :

It's remarkable how much Paul uses Wisdom of Solomon in Romans.

In this case, Wisdom 15.7 (NRSV):

quote:
A potter kneads the soft earth
and laboriously molds each vessel for our service,
fashioning out of the same clay
both the vessels that serve clean uses
and those for contrary uses,
making all alike;
but which shall be the use of each of them
the worker in clay decides.

Strangely, though, this is in the middle of a discourse on idolatry, and the potter here "With misspent toil ... form[s] a futile god from the same clay..." (v. 8)

I'm not sure if that could possibly shed any light on the Romans verse, but it seemed worth adding.

Returning to the theme of whether or not we can question God, there's a great book by Roy Eckhardt whose title I can't recall just now but it's about comedy and religion. He asserts that it's a part of the heritage of Hebrew religion & scriptures that you can call God "sonofabitch" (he adds, "and in these latter days, 'daughterofabitch'"). The reasoning he gives is that God can be laughed to shame; the devil can't. He compares God and the devil in several ways relating to comedy, and notes that only the devil can do theodicy - who else can justify evil?

I think this passage in Romans, if set in the wider biblical context which includes the very ambiguous Job (see above post) as well as characters like Abraham, Moses, Rachel, and others who have questioned God, serves more as a pole in a tension that is inherent in the paradox that we are called into close relationship with the One who is both wholly Other and closer to us than our own breath. It serves as a check on the tendency to disregard God when we don't agree with what we think God is up to; it calls us into relationship just as much as its opposite pole, which calls us to talk back to God. So I think the two poles of holding God accountable and humbly accepting God's will demarcate our relationship with God, and both poles will speak to different people at different times depending on their circumstances.

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

I agree that this one has value (or not) based on the circumstances in which it's being used. It's not for people who are already reeling under the weight of disaster and evil, or even, I think, for the righteously angry who are venting at God. Where it IS useful is with the self-satisfied little pricks who get too big for their britches and start demanding that God dance to their tune. (aside: so if you don't personally fall into that category, put down the flame thrower, kay?)

I'm going to draw a parallel. Most parents have had a child get mouthy on them at some highly inappropriate time. I certainly have. My usual response as an uber-cerebral weirdo is to talk it out--to painstakingly analyze just why that remark was inappropriate, what in the circumstances MADE it inappropriate, how said impropriety is to be avoided in the future, etc. etc. etc. by which point the mouthy child has expired of boredom--or at the very least, sworn to watch his tongue around Mom for fear of a repeat performance.

But there are a few occasions* where the impudence is so incredibly over the top (and in such inappropriate context) that the only proper response is Shock and Awe. You could slap them upside the head, but this is generally frowned upon. Short of that, you fix them with a beady eye and say, "DID I JUST HEAR THAT COME OUT OF YOUR MOUTH? WHO IS THE PARENT HERE, BUSTER?! IF I EVER HEAR YOU DISRESPECT YOUR MOTHER AGAIN,..." and so on, and so forth.

I had one last week, at an extremely difficult funeral (no details, think "attempted murder suicide" and you'll have some sense of the intensity though). And just as we were standing by the person most nearly concerned, Nameless Child (to protect the guilty) decided to come out with the most inappropriate wisecrack about the dead man you ever heard. Loudly. If that wasn't grounds for a slap, it was certainly grounds for a verbal one. And having been on the receiving end of such "slaps" as a mouthy child myself, I quickly learned some manners. And self-control, and concern for others.

And that, I think, is what Paul is up to. Romans is written in a kind of dialectical style, where his hypothetical audience is asking questions, arguing, etc. and that develops Paul's theme. Fine. But his hypothetical audience clearly includes some hecklers--not true questioners so much as smart ass SOBs. They get what they came for--and the only thing that might possibly crack their smart ass facade.

[ 11. August 2009, 01:31: Message edited by: Lamb Chopped ]

Posted by sanityman (# 11598) on :

I note that v. 22 starts "What if..?" Given the hyperbolic rhetorical style that Paul can employ, I wonder if this whole section may not be viewed as a bit of a digression - a hypothetical "well, if God were like that, you still wouldn't have any grounds to argue."

Reading v. 19, the "One who says to me" does come over as a bit self-satisfied and snide. As a put-down in this context only I can take the point. To this extent, I agree with LC, although the reading where Paul smacks down his opponents using God's direct authority rather than his own (as an apostle: isn't that enough?) leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

I think that if you read this in a "dictated by God" way, it becomes a big problem. If you read it as the rhetorical flourishes of a (by all accounts) irascible rabbi, it is a lot more understandable. I'll let others say whether this is permissible from a "high view" of scripture.

- Chris.

Posted by churchgeek (# 5557) on :

Found another source in wisdom literature, this time in Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) 33.10-13:

quote:
All human beings come from the ground,
and humankind was created out of the dust.
In the fullness of his knowledge
the Lord distinguished them
and appointed their different ways.
Some he blessed and exalted,
and some he made holy and brought near to himself;
but some he cursed and brought low,
and turned them out of their place.
Like clay in the hand of the potter,
to be molded as he pleases,
so all are in the hand of their Maker,
to be given whatever he decides.

This passage is also problematic: it is sandwiched between a section on God's providence, and a justification of slavery. There's a lot of problematic stuff in Sirach, though. Enough to make one extremely grateful for its status as deuterocanonical.

Interestingly, v. 16 sounds like something Paul would identify with: "Now I was the last to keep vigil; I was like a gleaner following the grape-pickers; by the blessing of the Lord I arrived first, and like a grape-picker I filled my wine press." So as with Paul, ben Sirach appears to have a sense of unworthiness and that any good in him (wisdom in ben Sirach's case; apostleship in Paul's) comes from God alone - so the principle expressed in Romans 9.20 applies to those who are good or find themselves in good circumstances as well.

FWIW

Posted by jacobsen (# 14998) on :

I don't think Paul is being Jewish here - was he a Jew? Rabbi Blue has noted that God's relationship with his people in the OT is that they are constantly slagging each other off - just like any other noisy and uninhibited family. "Oy, God, what the 'ell do you think you're playing at?" is certainly part of the tone. Just because Paul got immortalised along with the other protagonists of the NT doesn't mean the poor bugger was always right.

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

Oh, he's a Jew of Jews all right. But this particular kind of rebuke isn't confined to one culture. I'm thinking of Prospero in the Tempest, when his daughter backtalks: "What, my foot my tutor?" And Vietnam, where a child who smarts off to his elders gets the overly subtle observation, "The rain falls UP."

And there's the Italian joke where the old woman goes to church and starts praying before a statue of Mary, when suddenly Christ on the cross starts answering her. What does she say? "You shuddup, now, and have some manners; I'm talking to your mother."

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

quote:
Originally posted by jacobsen:
... was he a Jew?

What?

Of course Paul is a Jew!. He goes on about it all the time. Its just about his main topic!

Posted by CrookedCucumber (# 10792) on :

If you kick out Rom 9:20, it seems to me that you have to kick out most of the rest of the chapter. After all, a lot of it says the same kind of thing.

Posted by EtymologicalEvangelical (# 15091) on :

Here's an idea: compare Romans 9:19-24 with Isaiah 5:1-7. This is the parable about God's vineyard. He constructed his vineyard so that it would bring forth good grapes, but instead it brought forth sour grapes. God did not predestine the vineyard to bring forth either good grapes or sour grapes. The vineyard (i.e. God's people) used their free-will to resist God's grace.

Then in verses 3 and 4 God says: "Judge please between me and my vineyard. What more could have been done to my vineyard that I have not done in it? Why then, when I expected it to bring forth good grapes, did it bring forth wild grapes?"

So God is actually inviting people to judge him, and to assess his ways of justice. He is concerned that people see that he is actually just (see also Ezekiel 18). Now I know that there are a multitude of verses in the Bible which seem to call into question God's justice, and I am also aware that my argument will hold no water with some people, who will conclude that I have simply revealed a contradiction in the Bible. Fair enough, but at least it shows that there is some counterweight to Romans 9.

I think Paul is using rhetorical questions in Romans 9 to get people thinking. Certainly we are commanded to seek understanding (Proverbs 4:7). There's a lot more that can be said about Romans 9 and predestination, but I don't want to be up all night... Some other time maybe.

Posted by DagonSlaveII (# 15162) on :

Greek for who answers back in this verse. It sounds a lot like back-talk.

I think with this filter:

I Cor. 9:24-27

quote:
24 Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win. 25 Everyone who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things. They then do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. 26 Therefore I run in such a way, as not without aim; I box in such a way, as not beating the air; 27 but I discipline my body and make it my slave, so that, after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified.

Basically, I'm to be in control of me. I need to quit focusing on why I was made the way I am, and go about and prepare myself for what comes next. Which is a great way to deal with psychological issues of any sort. It's hard to be depressed and full of self pity if I'm not focused on the whole "why me?" thing.

But really, in context, he's talking about vessels of destruction.

Let's look at Hitler for a moment:

Many of you have run across the arguments on whether or not Darwin Natural Selection was the cause of the Eugenics program used in the concentration camps. More of you may have come across the information that he used Christianity to further the hatred of the Jews. (Just referencing, not opening debate on it, as that's not my real point.) Throughout all arguments about the man, we study his every evil facet, and some of his less monstrous aspects, and wonder how such a man could be tolerated by God for so many years, or why he was even born. We tend to forget that not long before we went to war against Germany, Hitler was Time's Man of the Year. Before there were concentration camps, his ideology was adored. Then something changed, and he started wars with his neighboring countries, and most of that love for him vanished, although many did not start seeing him as a monster until nearer to the end--when we found out about the concentration camps. The humanity that agreed with him on so many things had to look at what they were buying into and face that it stank of burning flesh. Hitler was an example of how some ideologies can be wrong, especially when taken to their extreme. He is the epitome of a vessel made for destruction. Sadly, he's not the only warning given to us these past 100 years. You can tell who they are by how much destruction they leave in their wake, and often by how they are taken care of in the end. I find it sad that we have got to have such examples to know that there is some things that are wrong.

Posted by BWSmith (# 2981) on :

Kudos to Gumby - there's nothing said in this verse that isn't stated better in Job, (and Job also comes with the resolution to the problem).

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