Andrew

The idea that responsibly developed prophetic discernment would determine which suffering is the consequence of sin and which is not, does not really solve the core problem. This is that, if it is true that God intervenes in earthly affairs to render judgement, then we must necessarily ask why He does not also intervene to stop the horrors which occur everywhere in human history- whether the result of man’s inhumanity to man or the consequences of natural catastrophe.

If you or I fail to render assistance to a child in a car accident we would be reviled as morally derelict. The charge against God would be much stronger if he could have stopped the Holocaust and did not.

You point out that “the notion of divine judgment is too central to the thought of the New Testament to be dismissed. We have to find some way of taking it seriously without, as Daniel says, constructing a grotesque caricature of God”.

I do not deny the importance of divine judgement. What I do say is that if God’s judgement is rendered in this world then it turns him into a heartless monster.

Your reading of scripture is (I think) that the divine judgement pronounced by Jesus is of a piece with Jahweh’s judgement on errant Israel, Babylon etc. In both cases the intervention is in earthly affairs.

As I said in an earlier comment, this is radically at odds with my understanding of the gospel as revealing a God who refuses to, and perhaps cannot, exercise political power. This, it seems to me, is a major discontinuity between the New and the Old Testaments.

Does Jesus during his earthly ministry anywhere use divine powers to bring down earthly punishment on sinners or to destroy the Godless Romans? Obviously he does not- I cannot think of any of his miracles which touch on earthly power structures at all. More, he deliberately renounces the use of his power for such purposes. He is content that divine judgement should be passed somewhere else than on earth:

“Your Father in heaven causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. (Matt 5.21ff)”

I am not sure whether my view of this difference between the New and Old Testament will stand up to systematic analysis. But I am sure that if God is conceived of as intervening in earthly affairs then it is very difficult to interpret him as a God of love.

Paul