Keywords

Now we turn to assessment of the two mentioned interpretative strategies: the Kamm-inspired triple-effect strategy and the substratum strategy. In this chapter, we show how these strategies operate with respect to a concrete instance, Joseph’s being sold into slavery. We offer various objections to the two strategies, and draw the reader’s attention to a certain sub-schema of the schema (P) of which instances, should they be found in the Scriptures, would make matters considerably more difficult for our opponents.

5.1 Joseph on His Being Sold into Slavery

In Genesis 50:19–21, Joseph says the following to his brothers about his being sold into slavery:

But Joseph said to them, ‘Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. So do not fear; I will provide for you and your little ones.’ Thus he comforted them and spoke kindly to them. (Genesis 50:19–21, ESV)

Here Joseph reassures his brothers that he has no hostile feelings towards them after his father’s death. Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery, and Joseph acknowledges that they had evil motives towards him, but counters that God meant it for good, so that Joseph could come to Egypt and save many lives from famine as Pharaoh’s second-in-command.

Recall again our schemata (P) and (Q):

  • (P) God chooses to bring it about that [a sin] occur in order that [a state of affairs] should obtain.

  • (Q) God brings it about that [a state of affairs] obtain in order that [a sin] should occur.

We propose, initially at any rate, that a proposition satisfying (P) can be derived from Genesis 50:20:

  1. (1)

    God brought it about that Joseph’s brothers sinfully sell Joseph, for the sake of saving many lives in Egypt.

5.2 The Substratum Strategist’s Response

The substratum strategist, however, would insist that it isn’t required that we suppose God intended that the sinful act described in (1) should occur; it is enough to suppose that God intended merely that the substratum of the act should occur. Arminius deploys such a reading of the verse as follows:

From the sale of Joseph resulted his removal to Egypt, his elevation to the highest dignity, in that land from which, food, necessary for his father’s family, could be procured, in a time of most direful famine. God declares that He sent him into Egypt for this purpose. All this resulted from the sale, not as it was a sin, but as an act. (Arminius 1853: 433)

In other words, the substratum strategist could say that God merely intended the bodily movement of Joseph to Egypt, and the concomitant bodily movements and gestures of his brothers and the slave traders, not the sinful act of their selling Joseph into slavery, even though, in that context, the bodily movements and gestures constituted the act of selling Joseph into slavery. This way of spinning the matter doesn’t involve God’s intending the occurrence of sin. Thus, if a proposition such as

  1. (1)

    God brought it about that Joseph’s brothers sinfully sell Joseph, for the sake of saving many lives in Egypt,

is thought to be derived from the Scriptures (cf. Genesis 37–45), the defender of the substratum approach would say that we don’t need to suppose on account of this that

  1. (2)

    God intended that Joseph’s brothers sinfully sell him into slavery as a means to get him to Egypt,

but only that, for example,

  1. (3)

    God intended that Joseph’s brothers make certain bodily movements as a means to get him to Egypt, and allowed them to sin in so doing.

The parsing we find in (3) removes the occurrence of the sinfulness of the brothers’ actions from God’s intentions. The sinfulness of their actions wasn’t necessary for the occurrence of the desired end; what was necessary was only the substratum, or part of it, that the brothers made certain bodily movements that ended up with Joseph’s being in Egypt. These bodily movements are in themselves neither good nor bad. (In this particular case, even the brothers’ evil intention seems not to have been strictly necessary.) If we believe that God, being perfectly rational, intends only what is necessary for his ends, as well as that God, being all-knowing, knows what is necessary for his ends, then it follows that God did not intend that the brothers’ actions be sinful.Footnote 1 This follows because—what is agreed by all—God does not intend as an end in itself that sin occur.

5.3 The Triple-Effect Strategist’s Response

How might the Kamm-inspired triple-effect strategist interpret Genesis 50:20? The Kammian triple-effect strategist seeks to replace the thought of God’s intending that sin occur for a good end with the thought of God’s acting because of that good end for which the sin is necessary, causally or otherwise. In other words, God (to speak in a human way) sets his sights on a course of action, realises that that course of action would result in a sinful occurrence that would otherwise give him reason to refrain from that course of action, but then realises that that sinful occurrence is necessary for the actualization of a certain good, and so proceeds with his original course of action, his permitting or bringing about of the sinful occurrence being because of the good that will result. This understanding does not imply that God intends that the sin in question occur.

One consequence of this understanding is that, when it comes to verses in the Scriptures that describe God as intending that a sin, S, occur for some good end, G1, the Kammian triple-effect strategist cannot suppose that G1 is the end that God seeks. Rather, they must think that there is some other good end, G2, for the sake of which God is acting. God acts because of G1, but does not act with the intention that G1 occur. That is the essence of the Kammian triple-effect approach.

So, the Kammian triple-effect strategist would deny that (1) should be derived from the verse, replacing (1) with something like,

  • (1′) God brought it about that Joseph’s brothers sinfully sell Joseph, because it would lead to the saving of many lives in Egypt.

But one curiosity about such an understanding is that it leaves unspecified God’s objective in acting—it cannot be, on this reading, the saving of many lives, for that would be to abandon this particular Kammian interpretation. The saving of many lives, on this suggestion, is merely a good event that gives God justifiable reason to pursue a separate objective even though the pursuing of that separate objective would lead to Joseph’s brothers sinfully selling Joseph. For that reason, a more illuminating parsing of (1′) would be as follows:

  • (1″) God chose to bring about a state of affairs, S, and God’s bringing S about brought about Joseph’s brothers sinfully selling Joseph, yet God nevertheless considered it good to choose to bring about S, because he knew so choosing would lead to the saving of many lives in Egypt.

As one can see, a Kammian triple-effect reading of passages that appear to suggest that God intends that sin occur has the implication that God’s intentions are really quite elsewhere. The sinful event (or events) and the good event (or events) are all side effects.

Recall again our schemata (P) and (Q):

  • (P) God chooses to bring it about that [a sin] occur in order that [a state of affairs] should obtain.

  • (Q) God brings it about that [a state of affairs] obtain in order that [a sin] should occur.

In general, the Kammian triple-effect strategist will hold that, for any verse or verses of the Scriptures from which it appears one may derive propositions satisfying (P) or (Q), propositions satisfying (X) and (Y) (which correspond to (P) and (Q), respectively) are equally satisfactorily derived:

  • (X) God chooses to bring about [a state of affairs1], which action has [a sin] and [a state of affairs2] as consequences,Footnote 2 and part of God’s reason for choosing to bring about [state of affairs1] is that it would lead to [state of affairs2].Footnote 3

  • (Y) God brought it about that [a state of affairs] obtains, and part of God’s reason for acting in a way that brought about that state of affairs is that it would help bring about the obtaining of a [sin].Footnote 4

It should be clear how (1″) satisfies (X).

5.4 Objections to the Substratum Strategy

It is the hope of the substratum strategist that any proposition derived from the Scriptures to show that God intends that sin occur could be handled via the substratum strategy. We make several points against the strategy.

First, such a strategy goes counter to the prima facie reading of the Scriptures. Even though it might be possible to suppose that the non-sinful substratum alone, perhaps together with the very act of the permission of the sin, was the intended means, the prima facie reading of the Scriptures must be overlooked in order for it to work. The natural reading of the Scriptures describes the occurrence of sin as the employed and intended means, and the natural reading of the Scriptures carries pro tanto force, that is, should be favoured on that account, other things being equal. The point might be put this way: if the Scriptures evidence no great concern to deny that God could ever intend that sin occur, and seem content to describe the occurrence of sin as a chosen means in God’s purposes, then why should we, in the construction of our ethics and theology, exhibit great care that such a suggestion be avoided?

At this point, it might be objected that we should not expect the Bible to speak with great precision in such areas. But note that that is not Jesus’s attitude. He frequently derives significant conclusions from textual minutiae, and we believe he should be an example for us in this regard. For example, in Luke 20:41–44 Jesus is recorded as saying:Verse

Verse How can they say that the Christ is David’s son? 42 For David himself says in the Book of Psalms, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, 43 until I make your enemies your footstool.’ 44 David thus calls him Lord, so how is he his son?

Here, Jesus derives a big conclusion from the easily glossed-over fact that the Messiah is called ‘my Lord’ by David in Psalm 110:1. See Matthew 22:31–32 and John 10:34–36 for other examples.

Secondly, the substratum strategy depends on a rather subtle piece of metaphysics: the Aristotelian distinction between matter and form. It is surely implausible to suppose that Joseph had such subtleties in mind when he claimed that the Lord intended his brothers’ selling him into slavery. Likewise for the other biblical writers we will go on to discuss. The distinction between the substratum and superstratum of an action is not part of the conceptual world in which the average human being thinks and moves. But the Scriptures are, for the most part, written in terms of that common, shared conceptual arena. Thus, when a biblical writer speaks of God as intending that sin occur, we should read that as being the whole of the sin, not merely the substratum.

Thirdly, the substratum strategy undermines the perspicuity of the Scriptures. The distinction between an event’s substratum and its formal aspect is, as we have seen, a very technical one. Most readers of the Scriptures are not cognizant of it. The substratum strategist’s suggestion is that whenever we see the intention of the occurrence of sin apparently imputed to God in the Scriptures, we must read God as intending only the substratum of that sin. But this is a meaning only the select few can grasp, and there is no indication of a technical meaning in the relevant passages.

Fourthly, we worry that God would be guilty of misleading people on the substratum strategist’s suggestion. God appears to violate norms of communication by making the meaning of the relevant passages hard to grasp in conjunction with the meaning of the passages being too much opposed to the natural, instinctive reading. If it is a great evil to suppose that God could intend that sin occur (as many of our opponents would indeed affirm), then it smacks of irresponsibility for God to place his authority behind words, such as Joseph’s, that appear to describe God as intending that sin occur. But the idea that God subscribes at least broadly to human norms of communication through the Scriptures is necessary for them to function as divine revelation.

5.5 The (P*) Schema

We grant, however, that the strength that one attributes to the foregoing points will vary depending on one’s doctrine of divine inspiration, as well as on the relation one thinks the Scriptures bear to other theological authorities.

But there is another important objection to be made against the substratum strategy. For most of the verses from the Scriptures that we discuss below, the sinfulness of the sin that God putatively chose in order to bring it about that the desired end occur is a logically required antecedent of the occurrence of the desired end. In other words, the occurrence of no non-sinful event, no matter how closely associated with the occurrence of the sinful event that God putatively chose in order to bring it about that the desired end occur, would be enough for the occurrence of the sought-after end.

To explain, recall our schemata (P) and (Q):

  • (P) God chooses to bring it about that [a sin] occur in order that [a state of affairs] should obtain.

  • (Q) God brings it about that [a state of affairs] obtain in order that [a sin] should occur.

The substratum strategist, as we saw, tries to avoid the implication from propositions satisfying (P) to the proposition that God intends that sin occur by suggesting a proposition of the following sort as an equally adequate derivation from the Scriptures:

  • (Z) God brings it about that [a substratum] occurs, and permits a sin, in order that [a state of affairs] should obtain.

But there is an important subclass of propositions under (P) for which that response will not be possible. They satisfy the following schema, which we mentioned briefly earlier:

  • (P*) God chooses to bring it about that [a sin] occur in order that [a state of affairs that can obtain only in virtue of the sin’s occurring] should obtain.

Propositions that satisfy (P*) are perhaps the strongest evidence that God intends that sin occur, for we know here that God requires the sinful act’s sinfulness, not merely its substratum or its being permitted, to satisfy his purpose. What sort of state of affairs is it that (P*) picks out and that can obtain only in virtue of the occurrence of a sin? Typical examples are states of affairs that involve things like mercy, forgiveness, and punishment. Each of those is something that logically requires, by its very nature, the occurrence of sin for its existence. If God is described as intending that what appears to be a sinful means should occur for the sake of the occurrence of an end like that, then we believe that one should infer that God intends that the sinful means, with all its sinfulness, should occur for his purposes.

5.6 Objections to the Kammian Triple-Effect Strategy

Now we bring objections against the Kammian triple-effect strategy. Many of them are restatements of the objections brought against the substratum strategy.

First, we worry that it would do an injustice to the authorial intent of the writers of the Scriptures to suppose that we can easily replace the Scriptural ‘so that’ in every case with the Kamm-style ‘because of’. Kamm’s triple effect is a very subtle idea, and she appears to be the first to have clearly articulated it. It is implausible to suppose that the human writers of the Scriptures wrote with that concept in mind when they described the Lord as employing sin as a means or as intending sin as his end. This suggests that we should read the ‘so that’ of the biblical authors as denoting the standard means–end relationship, not the Kamm-style ‘because of’—that would smack of anachronism.

It might be responded that the relevant Greek and Hebrew terms are ambiguous between the Kammian sense and the standard means–end relationship.Footnote 5 But we are suspicious of this suggestion. Surely the vocabulary of intention arises in human society and thought because of the need to distinguish between the effects of one’s action that one intended and the effects that one did not—mere by-products. But if that is so, the function for which those terms are introduced precludes room for ambiguity here. As evidence of this, consider the fact that the triple-effect relationship Kamm has introduced can’t be non-misleadingly communicated using the standard English terms relating to intention. That’s why Kamm reaches for ‘because of’. Kamm hasn’t discovered a new way of ‘intending’ something—the meaning we attach to the English term doesn’t permit that—she has discovered a new non-intending way of relating to a means or an effect, and that is why different language is required.

Secondly, we worry that the triple-effect strategy violates the perspicuity of the Scriptures. Prior to the advent of Kamm, everyone that read the relevant passages surely supposed that they referred in the normal way to means–end reasoning, and believed accordingly.Footnote 6 Even now, with the advent of Kamm, this fresh insight she has offered is unknown to everyone except a tiny minority. But the standard means–ends concepts expressed by ‘so that’ and ‘in order to’ are known to all the world. And those are the concepts that most people today that patiently attend to the teaching of the Scriptures in this matter would bring to bear. Only a philosopher, one might say, could offer a Kamm-style interpretation. It is surely to the disadvantage of the Kammian triple-effect strategy that only the enlightened few are capable of reading the Scriptures without being misled in this matter.

Thirdly, the point about people’s being misled leads to the concern that the triple-effect strategy implies that God is violating norms of communication in the relevant Scriptural passages. After all, if just about everyone, prior to the advent of Kamm, that sincerely attended to discerning the teaching of the Scriptures in this matter would have come to believe that God intended that sin occur, and this view is false, then the worry is that this implies that God has communicated irresponsibly. Although a natural reading of one of the relevant verses has God saying he chose to bring about a certain sin for the sake of some good thing, the triple-effect strategist insists that we must instead suppose that God’s objectives were something else entirely, and the fact that the course of action that God chose to achieve this something else gave rise to this good thing was just a reason in favour of that course of action. But if that is what the real facts of the matter are, then surely God should say that, or something like that. If it looks to all appearances as if one is asserting a standard means–end relationship, but one is not, then one is under pressure either to indicate this somehow or to refrain from making the utterance. But God does neither of those things in the relevant verses.

Fourthly, there is the concern that the Kamm-style interpretative strategy, if legitimate, would license a more general scepticism about divine intentions in the Scriptures. Consider, for example, Isaiah 48:9, where the Lord says, ‘For my name’s sake I defer my anger; for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you, that I may not cut you off.’ God is declaring that he is refraining from punishing the Israelites, from cutting them off, for the sake of his own glory. The means–end reasoning on God’s part looks clear enough. But if the triple-effect strategist is going to be suspicious of the natural, ready interpretation of the passage when it implies that God intends that sin occur, then, arguably, they should also be suspicious whenever the Scriptures attribute any intention to God, such as that in Isaiah 48:9. It would be odd for the triple-effect strategist to treat the natural reading of the first sort of passage with great suspicion and natural reading of the second sort of passage with easy acceptance, when the way matters are described in both cases has the same form.

Lastly, the triple-effect strategy arguably suffers when God’s intentions are declared too clearly in the text. One example would be Exodus 9:16: ‘But for this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.’ There, God’s intention is too explicit and pronounced upon, we say, for one to deny that Pharaoh’s being raised up was God’s intention. This doesn’t entirely preclude a Kammian reading, because Kamm has shown with her Party Cases and so on that one need not intend the means to one’s end. We address the possibility of such readings, in the case of Pharaoh and others, when we discuss the relevant texts below and in the following two chapters.

5.7 Combining the Kammian Triple-Effect and Substratum Strategies

The Kammian triple-effect strategy does, however, open up an interesting possibility for an objector. They may attempt to take the substratum strategy and combine it with the Kamm-inspired triple-effect strategy (call the result ‘the combined strategy’) and say that (1) the occurrence of the sin as necessary in order that a greater good should occur, (2) God intends that the substratum of the sin should occur, (3) God permits that the formal, sinful, aspect of the action should occur, (4) because God sees that the occurrence of the sin is a means to the greater good, while (5) not intending that the sin occur.

For example, this would suggest the following interpretation of Joseph’s remark:

  • (1‴) God chose to bring about the substrata of the sinful acts involved in Joseph’s brothers sinfully selling Joseph, and God considered it good to choose to bring about those substrata, even though he foreknew that bringing them about would lead to the formal, sinful, elements obtaining, because he knew that bringing them about would lead to the saving of many lives in Egypt.

There is a problem here for the combined strategy, however. Since every action of God’s is done for a specific intention, either as an end in itself or as a means to a further end, what is the object of God’s intention when he permits that the formal, sinful, aspect of the action should occur? We say that the object of God’s intention here must be the greater good for whose occurrence the formal, sinful, aspect of the action is logically or metaphysically necessary. (It cannot be a greater good for whose occurrence the formal, sinful, aspect of the action is merely causally necessary. Why not? This follows from God’s being all-powerful. His power is limited only by the laws of logic, mathematics, and metaphysics, if, indeed, these can be counted as limitations at all. It cannot be merely that the formal, sinful, elements are causally necessary for the object of God’s intention, since God has the power to change the causal laws so that the formal, sinful elements would no longer be causally necessary.) What can the combined-strategist say?

Suppose, first, that the combined-strategist says what we say, that the greater good for whose occurrence the formal, sinful, aspect of the action is logically or metaphysically necessary is the object of God’s intention. The problem now for the combined-strategist is to explain how God intends to bring about the occurrence of the greater good. As Kamm notes:

intending a goal […] may require that an agent be willing to intend some means (whether a necessary one or just a possible alternative) in order to bring the goal about, on pain of just wanting and producing an event, but not intending it. (Kamm 2007: 106)

So, the combined-strategist has to say that God intends some means towards the occurrence of the greater good. But what could be that intended means, given that the occurrence of the sin is logically or metaphysically necessary for it?

We say that it is the occurrence of the sin itself, or the occurrence of some larger state of affairs including the sin, that is God’s intended means. The combined-strategist, however, denies that God intends that sin, or any larger state of affairs including sin, occur.

It seems to us, then, that the combined-strategist is in a tight spot: they have to assert that there is some means, separate from the sin, that is a means towards the occurrence of the greater good for which the occurrence of the sin is logically or metaphysically necessary. Why does this put them in a tight spot? Because the texts do not hint at such a separate means, it seems to us. Now, of course, the combined-strategist can always insist that our finite minds cannot grasp what the means is, and we do not want to say that we can always know the means that God intends. But we do want to say that the texts in question strongly suggest that God’s means is the occurrence of the sin in question. This strong suggestion could be defeated by evidence of a different means that God intends, but no such evidence seems to be forthcoming from the combined-theorist.

The alternative supposition is that the combined-theorist does not postulate that the object of God’s intention in permitting it to be the case that sin occur is the greater good; God acts merely because of the greater good, rather than intending the greater good. The question is not now ‘what is God’s means?’, but, rather, ‘what is God’s end?’. If God does not intend to permit sin for the sake of the greater good for which its occurrence is necessary, for what end does he permit it? It would seem strange for God to know that there were a greater good for which the occurrence of sin were necessary, and yet to permit sin for the sake of a lesser good than the greater one, or to permit it for the sake of something neutral, that is, something neither good nor bad. This theory would leave as a by-product or side effect the fact that we are better off as a result of the occurrence of the sin and God’s action. But it seems strange that the greater good would be a mere by-product, while a lesser good, or a neutral state of affairs, the actual end and goal of it all. And the texts do not contain any hint of what such an end might be.

Finally, we note that whatever implausibility the substratum and Kammian triple-effect strategies carried individually, that implausibility is now at least doubled if the combined-strategist is going to force us to take every passage where it appears that God intends that sin occur as in fact involving so complicated an arrangement as God intending the substratum of the sin while having a triple-effect relationship to any goods that arise out of that sin considered in its sinfulness, with the intended means to these goods being unstated in the text.

We therefore consider appeal to the substratum strategy, the triple-effect strategy, and any combination thereof, to offer insufficient reason to overcome the natural force of the Scriptural passages. We do admit, however, that they do offer some resistance, and we therefore take note of how they could be deployed in the passages we go on to discuss.