The Following is a simplified/dummified version of a book review by Wyatt Graham
1. Comer on God and Evil
What Comer Thinks About God's Will: John Mark Comer disagrees with the traditional Reformed belief that God controls everything, including evil. He thinks God's will means His moral intentions, not that He controls everything. Comer feels Augustine and Calvin misunderstood this, making God responsible for all events, including bad ones.
Why Comer Finds This Problematic: Comer finds it troubling to say that God controls all things, including death and suffering. He argues that if God is good, how can He want bad things like disease or broken relationships? Comer believes these bad things happen because of human freedom, not God's direct control.
Comer's View of Evil and Free Will: Comer says death and evil are not God's will but results of human choices and free will. He refers to the Bible, like 1 Corinthians 15:25-26, which calls death an enemy of God, and 1 John 5:19, which says the world is under the control of evil forces. Comer believes God doesn't always get what He wants on earth because of human and satanic opposition.
The Five Wills at Work: According to Comer, five different forces influence events on earth:
- God's will (God is still sovereign but doesn't control every detail).
- Human free will.
- The actions of other people, including those who do evil.
- Satan's will, as he opposes God and causes harm.
- Chaos or random chance, which causes natural disasters or accidents.
Examples of God's Role: Comer suggests that sometimes God might allow or use bad events for good, like the Babylonian exile, but these are exceptions. He believes not everything bad happens because God willed it.
The Cross as the Answer to Evil: Comer sees the cross of Jesus as the solution to the problem of evil. He emphasizes the idea that Jesus' victory over evil (Christus Victor) shows that God is fighting against evil, not causing it.
Practical Application: Comer challenges the idea that "God is in control" explains everything. For example, if you lose your job, it might not be God's plan but could be due to human error, evil actions, or bad luck.
In summary, Comer argues that while God is sovereign, He doesn't micromanage every event, especially evil ones. Instead, many forces—like human choices, Satan, and chaos—play a role. For Comer, the cross demonstrates that God fights against evil and ultimately will make things right.
2. Comer’s View of God and Why It Matters
In his book God Has a Name and his sermon Why?, John Mark Comer describes God in a way that differs from traditional Christian beliefs. Comer believes that understanding who God is shapes how we grow spiritually—what we worship changes who we become.
Key Beliefs About God
- Comer teaches that God can change, experience emotions, and even get new ideas. He says God works alongside humans to shape the world and isn’t entirely in control of everything.
- He describes God as a relational being, someone who reacts and feels like we do. For example, Comer says God can "process His feelings" with people and "change His mind" quickly because of His relationships.
- Comer rejects the idea that God has already set the future and believes that God is open to human input, making decisions with us as partners.
Comer’s Definition of God as a "Person"
- Comer says God is a "person" because He relates to us like a friend or partner, with feelings and flexibility. However, this is different from the traditional Christian teaching that God is triune (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), who is both personal and unchanging.
- For Comer, God’s ability to change is central. He says, “God would be less of a God if He couldn’t change His mind or be open to new ideas.”
Comer’s Approach to the Bible
- Comer highlights stories in the Bible where God seems to change, like when Moses convinces God not to punish Israel (Exodus 32). But he doesn’t focus on other passages that emphasize God’s unchanging nature, like Numbers 23:19, which says, "God is not a man that He should change His mind."
- This selective reading leads Comer to portray God as emotionally reactive, without exploring deeper theological ideas about how God can relate to creation while remaining unchangeable.
Traditional Christian Responses
- Historically, theologians like Augustine and Reformed writers have wrestled with these questions. They teach that God can relate to us (immanence) while also remaining above and beyond creation (transcendence). For example:
- Augustine explained that God doesn’t actually change but reveals Himself in ways we can understand.
- Reformed thinkers have shown how God can be the ultimate cause of everything while allowing human choices to matter, as Ephesians 1:11 says, “God works all things according to the counsel of His will.”
- Comer doesn’t use these traditional ideas, which help explain how God interacts with creation without becoming part of it. Instead, he seems to merge God’s actions into the same level as ours, saying things like “God is open to suggestions” and that prayer changes Him.
Why This Matters
- Comer’s approach risks blurring the line between Creator and creation. Traditional Christian teaching emphasizes that God is distinct from us: He is unchangeable, all-powerful, and sovereign, yet He also works in our lives personally.
- By rejecting ideas like Aristotle’s "Unmoved Mover," which explains how God can cause change without being changed, Comer loses a framework that preserves God’s greatness while affirming human freedom.
3. Comer’s Ideas About Experiencing God
In his teachings, John Mark Comer emphasizes having a personal, emotional connection with God. However, his way of describing God differs from traditional Christian views in several ways.
How Comer Describes God
- Focus on Relationship Over Trinity: Comer rarely mentions the Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) in God Has a Name. Instead, he talks about Yahweh (God) and how Jesus interacted with people. While he does speak positively about the Trinity in his book Practicing the Way, his focus is more on entering into God’s love and feeling connected to Him emotionally.
- Feeling Like God: Comer believes that through our spiritual growth, we can enter into God’s inner life and even feel what God feels, like His generosity and love.
Traditional Christian Beliefs
- Classical Christian theology teaches that humans cannot fully enter into God’s inner life because God is infinite and beyond our understanding. For example, 1 Timothy 6:16 says God “dwells in unapproachable light,” meaning His essence is inaccessible to us.
- We know God through His works in creation and especially through Jesus, who became human to bring us into a relationship with God. Jesus allows us to relate to God without erasing the boundary between Creator and creation.
Comer’s Mystical Approach
- Comer’s ideas resemble some mystical traditions that speak of a deep connection with God. However, these traditions usually emphasize the mystery of God’s nature, acknowledging that while we can experience God, we cannot fully comprehend or merge with His divine being.
- Traditional theologians like Gregory of Nyssa describe this mystery poetically. For example, Moses, as he climbed closer to God on Mount Sinai, was surrounded by deepening darkness, symbolizing God’s incomprehensible nature.
A Key Distinction in Theology
- Comer often speaks of God as a "relational being," meaning He interacts with us and experiences emotions. Traditional Christian theology also calls God relational but focuses on the unique relationship within the Trinity: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These relationships are eternal and beyond human psychology.
- Comer seems to blur the line between God’s transcendent nature (being above and beyond creation) and His immanence (being present with us). Traditional theology holds both together—God is near to us, yet remains distinct and unchanging.
Why This Matters
- By inviting people to "feel like God," Comer risks oversimplifying God’s nature. God is spirit (John 4:24) and doesn’t experience emotions like humans with physical bodies. Instead, Jesus, who became fully human, allows us to connect with God in ways we can understand (Hebrews 2:14–15).
- Comer’s teaching could have been clearer if he focused more on Jesus’ life and actions in the Gospels, where we see God’s love and compassion in ways we can relate to.
Balancing God’s Nearness and Otherness
Traditional Christian teaching maintains a balance:
- God’s Transcendence: He is infinite, unchanging, and above creation.
- God’s Immanence: He is close, loving, and involved in our lives.
For example, 1 Samuel 15 illustrates this balance: one verse says God doesn’t change His mind like humans (v. 29), but another says He regretted making Saul king (v. 35). Both are true in their own way and reflect God’s greatness and His care for creation.
Conclusion
Comer’s emphasis on God as a personal, relational being invites people into a deeper connection with Him. However, traditional Christian teaching reminds us that while we can relate to God through Jesus, we cannot fully grasp or enter into God’s infinite nature. Understanding both God’s closeness and His greatness helps us honor Him as the Creator while embracing His love for us.
4. A Protestant Response:
Comer’s View of God’s Will and Evil
John Mark Comer argues that evil exists because there are competing wills in the world—God’s will for good and the conflicting wills of people, Satan, and even random chaos. He believes free will explains why bad things happen, and he insists that God doesn’t cause sin, evil, or death, though sometimes God can bring good out of bad situations.
What Comer Gets Wrong About the Augustinian View
- Comer criticizes the traditional Augustinian and Reformed understanding of God’s will, but his critique misunderstands their teaching.
- Augustine and Reformed theologians, like William Perkins and Peter Vermigli, explain that God is the First Cause—He sustains everything and allows free choices to exist (called “secondary causes”). This doesn’t mean God directly causes evil; instead, He allows free creatures to make choices within His overall plan.
- Augustine also made it clear that God doesn’t create evil. Instead, evil comes from humans twisting good things with their corrupt desires. For example, Augustine said, “The free choice of the will is the reason why we do wrong.”
God Is Not Like Us
Comer’s view of God seems to treat Him as just one being among many, with a will that competes on the same level as human or satanic wills. But classical Christian teaching says:
- God is beyond space and time. He isn’t a creature who acts like us but is the Creator who gives and sustains life.
- The Bible says, “In Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28) and “God works all things according to the counsel of His will” (Ephesians 1:11). God doesn’t just react to events; He upholds everything.
Satan and Evil Spirits
Comer argues that Satan and demons cause evil, pointing to examples like Paul’s “thorn in the flesh.” However, Augustine and other traditional thinkers also affirm that spiritual beings like demons can freely do evil. The difference is that God uses their actions for His purposes:
- For example, in the book of Job, Satan’s actions lead to suffering, but God’s justice is ultimately served.
- Gregory the Great explained, “Satan unknowingly serves the purposes of God’s hidden justice.” This shows that even when demons act, God remains in control on a higher level.
The Creator Is Different from His Creation
Comer’s argument misses the key Christian teaching about the distinction between the Creator and His creation:
- God’s will operates on a higher, divine level, not like the wills of humans or other creatures.
- God can guide all things, including evil actions, toward His good purposes (Romans 8:28), without being the direct cause of evil.
Why Comer’s Argument Feels Weak
Comer simplifies the idea of multiple wills on earth without fully considering the richness of biblical teaching or the insights of traditional theology. He criticizes Augustine unfairly and doesn’t integrate key truths, like God’s sovereignty and transcendence. As a result, his argument comes across as shallow and incomplete.
Comer’s View of God’s Will
John Mark Comer claims that Augustine changed the meaning of God’s will from simply being His moral intentions to being about His control over everything. However, historical evidence doesn’t support this claim. For example:
- Novation, an early Christian writer (200s AD), said that God controls all things through His wisdom. This doesn’t mean God directly causes everything that happens but that He sustains everything as the First Cause, enabling events to happen and people to make choices.
- Augustine didn’t redefine God’s will but emphasized how God’s grace works within His eternal plan.
How God Relates to Creation
Comer seems to describe God’s actions in the world like a chain reaction—God starts one event that causes others, like dominoes falling. But this view misunderstands traditional theology, which teaches that:
- God is beyond time and space, unlike a clockmaker who winds up the universe and lets it run. Instead, God sustains all things at every moment (Hebrews 1:3; Colossians 1:17).
- God’s transcendence (being above creation) doesn’t prevent Him from allowing free choices. He works as Creator on a higher level of causality than creatures.
Does God Suffer or Change?
Comer rejects the idea of God’s impassibility—the teaching that God doesn’t suffer or change like humans do. Instead, Comer believes God is “malleable” (open to change) because He’s a relational being, similar to how humans are relational and influenced by others.
Historically, Christians affirmed God’s impassibility to emphasize that:
- God isn’t like the pagan gods, who were fickle and driven by emotions like lust or rage.
- God is perfect and unchanging, not subject to the weaknesses of creation.
How God Suffered Through Christ
The early church faced debates about how God could suffer without contradicting His nature. For example:
- Nestorius argued that God was so separate from creation that only Jesus’ human nature, not His divine nature, suffered. But this divided Jesus’ two natures (human and divine) too sharply.
- Cyril of Alexandria explained that the divine Word of God (Jesus) suffered in His human nature—not in His divine nature. This means God didn’t change or suffer as God, but through the human body of Jesus, He experienced suffering for our sake.
Comer doesn’t make this distinction, so his teaching implies that God as God suffers and changes just like humans, which is inconsistent with classical Christian theology.
Balancing God’s Characteristics
Comer’s approach seems to focus on Bible passages that show God changing His mind or expressing emotions. But traditional theology balances these with other passages that show God as eternal, unchanging, and Spirit. For example:
- 1 Kings 8:27 says that not even the heavens can contain God.
- John 4:24 describes God as Spirit, not physical or emotional in the human sense.
To understand God fully, we need to affirm both His unchanging nature and His ability to relate to us. Traditional theology doesn’t privilege one set of Bible verses over another but seeks to honor the whole picture of God as revealed in Scripture.
The Core Issue
Comer’s view blurs the line between Creator and creation. He emphasizes God’s relational nature to the point of making God seem too human—suffering, changing, and responding like we do. Classical theology, however, upholds that God is above all creation and unchanging, yet He entered creation through Jesus Christ to suffer and save us in a way consistent with His divine nature.
The Problem of Evil (Theodicy)
In addressing evil in the world, I didn’t directly answer Comer’s question about why a good God allows evil. Even if God permits evil rather than directly causing it, how does this make Him good and just?
The bigger issue lies in how we understand God. Comer’s arguments about God seem based on a view that doesn’t match the teachings of theologians like Augustine or Calvin, whom he critiques. Because of this, his criticisms feel unconvincing to me.
How I Approach Difficult Bible Passages
The Bible contains challenging verses where God says things like:
- “I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal” (Deuteronomy 32:39).
- “I form the light and create darkness; I make peace and create evil” (Isaiah 45:7).
I can accept these verses because I follow the classical Christian understanding of God—a view held by theologians like Augustine, Gregory the Great, and John Calvin. This view sees God as the ultimate Creator and sustainer, who is just and wise even when we don’t fully understand His ways.
Why Our View of God Matters
How we think about God shapes who we become. Comer himself says that spiritual growth flows from how we see God, and I agree. My relationship with Christ and understanding of God help me grow spiritually, as Paul describes in 2 Corinthians 3:17–18: “We are transformed from one degree of glory to another as we behold the face of Christ.”
My Thoughts on Comer’s Work
While I appreciate Comer’s desire for a transformed life and his passion for knowing Jesus, I can’t recommend his books Practicing the Way or God Has a Name because of the way he describes God. His views differ significantly from the classical Christian understanding of God’s nature.
I do wish Comer had drawn more from rich spiritual traditions, like the writings of the Philokalia—a collection of spiritual teachings that he values. These could have deepened his understanding of God’s nature and how to approach the problem of evil.
A Final Thought
I’ve shared my perspective and hope it adds to the conversation. I plan to continue reading Comer’s work to better understand his views. If I’ve misunderstood anything, I welcome correction. And if John Mark Comer ever reads this, I’d love to discuss these ideas with him.
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Source: How John Mark Comer’s View of God Shapes His Spiritual Formation by Wyatt Graham