On June 3rd, 2018, I met one of my favourite sheep and I shared with her my struggles as a minister. One of the things I told her, was that since mid-May, I have been struggling with the question: Why do people go to Church (worship places)? I have not yet formulated a conclusive answer but already I have realized that people have various needs and whether these needs are substantial or not is absolutely a relative issue.
Before I even get all the answers, am humble enough to admit that when people go to worship places, they have gone to meet their God and all their specific needs matter. I am now at a point where I have to confess that one worship centre in a specific service might not necessarily serve all the needs of an ordinary worshipper. I have centred my ministry on the importance of worshipping God in TRUTH and in SPIRIT because I think that whenever we get things wrong conceptually we become vulnerable to wrong belief systems and practices (Proverbs 23:7).
So my approach to ministry is to ensure that we understand what the Bible really teaches without biasing it to any particular religious doctrines. Not even my wishes but what it says independently. That is the role of a Theologian and that is why I insist that every church needs a resident Theologian to handle such issues which cannot be solved by fasting and prayer or pastoral threats when followers who ask difficult questions are told that: such questions exhibit unbelief or turn everything they cannot answer into a mystery to be avoided and stamping their ignorance with Deuteronomy 29:29.
My ministry, among other things, caters also for people who have questions about life and the Bible altogether. I don’t answer questions but I ignite a discussion and provoke one’s thinking and unfold one’s parachute-like mind that works better while open. Trust people are never the same after such an engagement and am sure this question about Isaiah 45:7 will not leave you the same.
The verse in the KJV says:
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.
The question then is: Is God the cause of everything, light and darkness, good and evil? If this is the case, then isn’t God the devil and the devil God himself? If God is the cause of everything good and evil, then does he have any moral authority? How do we reconcile this verse with other verses in the Bible about the goodness of God and him being incompatible to evil? These and perhaps more, are the questions that feature in the dust that such a text raises. My discussion of the text will approach it from three areas: 1. Context, 2. Translation and 3. Theological perspectives.
CONTEXT
Among other things, Context is central to how we get to meaning in communication. The text is found in Deutro-Isaiah, a prophet of the religious reformation period of Israel after the long reign of compromised Israel kings. This text is placed within a big speech that starts in Isaiah chapter 40 to chapter 53 where the Prophet has been building a counter-argument to an existing argument by the heathen prophets about who God is.
The false prophets from heathen nations had presented their gods as the ultimate gods and had actually prophesied the future based on who they had concluded the true God to be and do. Here is a brief summary of the chapters:
- Chapter 40 Isaiah stands up against these gods and establishes his God (Yahweh) as the only true God, no one like him and none beside him according to the special features presented anthropomorphically (40:12-25).
- In chapter 41, God is presented as the provider and the holy one.
- In chapter 42, Yahweh deserves our and all nature’s worship
- In Chapter 43, God is the only creator, deliverer and protector of his people.
- In Chapter 44, the chosen people motif is emphasized, unlike heathen worshippers who choose their gods and who actually sculpture their own gods and then bow and worship, ours is a God who created us and chose us (John 15:16).
- In Chapter 45 the one true God is punctual with the future of his people and mentions by name Cyrus a gentile but appointed redeemer of his people. As Dr Paul puts it: “One of the most amazing aspects of Isaiah and predictive prophecy is that twice God names this deliverer specifically by name: Cyrus. Thus, the God of Israel, not false gods, can reveal the future with such specificity; all other seers are “fools” (Isaiah 44:25)”.
The discourse about God continues until Chapter 53 and that is where we find this God doing the extraordinary that no idol god can and will ever do; which is, SUFFERING FOR HIS CREATURES. It is in this discourse that the Isaiah 45:7 text is situated.
If you read through these chapters you will realize that the context in which this verse is placed, is in a Defensive Discourse centred on who the true God is and what he therefore does based on who he is. So context already dictates that the verse is not about what God does (instrumentally) before we establish who this God is (identity).
We cannot formulate a conclusion on what God does before we get right who he is and how that affects us in history (by history I mean: past, present and future).
For light to symbolically represent good and darkness to mean bad, and to acknowledge what is ‘Right’ and what is ‘Wrong’, we must first establish a frame of reference and for us theists, that reference point is God. However, until we know who he is (identity), what he does and doesn’t is amoral and the good and the bad that happens to us and in this world has nothing to do with him. I will add flesh to this later, let me now jump to the issue of Translation.
TRANSLATION
I still have to remind my reader that our English Bibles and all other languages that our Bibles are written in are translations. And probably we all know the extent of the help that Translations offer. The Bible originally was written in Hebrew, Aramaic (some parts of the book of Daniel) for the Old Testament and Greek for the New Testament. So conclusions of what the Bible says and does not say should be founded on the original text (primary language) as opposed to the translations (recipient language). For example, different Bible versions present this text we are looking at differently:
- KJV= Isaiah 45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.
- NAS= Isaiah 45:7 The One forming light and creating darkness, Causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the LORD who does all these.
- NLT= Isaiah 45:7 I create the light and make the darkness. I send good times and bad times. I, the LORD, am the one who does these things.
- RSV= Isaiah 45:7 I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe, I am the LORD, who do all these things.
- I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things.
Did you notice that these versions agree on the Light, Darkness and peace but do not agree on the last word? King James Version uses Evil, New American Standard uses Calamity, New Living Translation says Bad Times, RSV says Woe, and New International Version says Disaster.
In the English language these are totally different words and while semantically the NAS, NLT, NIV and RSV might share in meaning, the KJV is totally saying another thing altogether and this is why you need a Theologian, not just a Lexicon to help you with the original text. We can hardly conclude that the KJV got it right and all these other versions missed it.
The Hebrew word that these versions translate is: ‘Ra’. In Hebraic language, the word ‘Ra’ cannot mean Evil (moralistic connotations) as the KJV mistranslated it. In English, there is a difference between ‘Bad/Disaster’ and ‘Evil’, Disaster/Calamity is amoral (it is not a moral issue), it is what happens to us regardless of our choices and contributions but Evil, is a moral issue. Evil is a systematic influential pole that stands between what is accepted as ‘Right’ and ‘Wrong’ and that is what makes it a ‘Moral Issue’.
I find the KJV translation of Isaiah 45:7 faulty due to three reasons:
- The Hebrew word ‘Ra’ does not suggest Morality but Calamity or Disastrous experiences. Floods are bad/disastrous and not necessarily wrong/right. The word ‘Evil’ as we perceive it today, has no Ancient Hebrew equivalent because, in the Hebrew conceptual perceptions, people are practically either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ but not innately evil, as modern philosophy would conclude.
- The KJV implicates Yahweh whom we know is the absolute moral advocate and campus, in the fabrication business of evil, something that dismantles the coherence of the entire Biblical theology. If God is the author of evil, then what moral authority has he over creation? Ra viewed within the context we saw, does not say that it is God who causes EVIL, but rather that the Evil that results into the Calamity that happens in the universe is not outside the sovereign knowledge of Yahweh.
- I appreciate the opposites approach in the text of Isaiah 45:7 that goes like this: the opposite of light is darkness, the opposite of Peace is Disaster according to other versions. When it comes to the KJV the opposite of Peace (Shalom) is Evil, really? This is not just a bad translation of ‘Ra’ but a wrong theology in the translation of the KJV.
Let me extend this discussion in the theological summary next.
THEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
Since chapter 40 Isaiah has been labouring to define who the God of Israel is, in contrast to other existing gods of other nations. The theological point of contention between the God of Israel and the gods of other nations is SOVEREIGNTY. Sovereignty means supra-status, supra-power and supra-authority over all Statuses, Powers and Authorities in the universe.
Divine Sovereignty is an independent and unlimited in time (immutable), power (omnipotent), knowledge (omniscience), and place (omnipresent) WILL under which all others wills function. The debate in Isaiah chapters 40-53 is about who the real God is, based on the concept of sovereignty. The pagan prophets insist that their gods are sovereign and they are the source of good and bad as well as moral and evil.
Their gods have what we call a DUALISTIC SOVERIENITY. Under this kind of sovereignty, a god is the active, immediate, and originative cause of not just all good and bad things/events but also of morality and ‘Evil’ (immorality) as well. Dualistic Sovereignty (DS) is where God gives life and takes life at the same time. A god like Molech took life through a child-sacrifice rituals performed by its worshippers (Leviticus 20:2-5).
Under the DS, the gods might forbid promiscuity but license the same in a worship order known as Temple-Sex Worship (Jeremiah 3:6). While Dualistic Sovereignty might advocate for a superior god, it has a provision for idol worship as an accepted norm (Ezekiel 14, Isaiah 44:9-20). Notice that child-sacrifice, Sex-worship and Idol Worship are not matters of good and bad, but issues of ‘right and wrong’ as well as moral and immoral/evil.
It is the Reason for the war and killing that determines whether the war and killing are either ‘Bad’ or ‘Evil’. Not all wars are Evil but Evil wars are always disastrous. There are justified wars and therefore fighting is not evil until the intentions of the fighters are probed.
Islamic scholarship is not divided on the issue of killing (to kill or not to kill) but the debate is on whether it is RIGHT/WRONG for one to kill in the name of Allah or not. Before we commend or criticize the modern jihadist (terrorists), the historical Christian crusaders, the Biblical Israelite wars and massacres all attributed to or performed in the name of a god, we must endeavour to answer two questions:
- Which god? (Did the perpetrators get the right god and did they get that god right?)
- What was the reason for the killing? (Was the war/killing an OFFENSE or a DEFENSE?).
The problem of dualistic sovereign gods and their worshippers altogether that prophet Isaiah is refuting in his discourse is that not-withstanding the good, Dualistic Sovereignty attributes both disaster and evil as innate activities of the deity.
In Christian Theology, unlike other belief systems, all the GOOD is the exclusive substance of God. God is, thinks and does nothing but GOOD. It is what defines him. God is only Good and only creates good (Genesis 1). In His sovereignty, evil is not original and neither is it part of his creation but a mysterious ideological corruption (read: SIN) of God’s creation.
In Isaiah 45:7 as in the Genesis 1 pre-sin setting, Day (light) is not moral and neither is night (darkness) immoral but part of the natural order. However, the ‘Ra’ (Calamity) of Isaiah 45:7 is the post-sin (a mysterious ideological corruption) Disaster in the creation of God as demonstrated in Genesis 3:7-22. This is the theological appropriateness of the term Ra in Isaiah 45:7.
Christian Theology insists that Evil (Sin or the evil one) is the source of the calamity and both evil and calamity are foreign to God and God, in his sovereignty, is opposed to both. Dr Shockley says:
“God is infinitely holy, glorious, and separate from all that which is morally wicked. Rather, evil is not an actual entity but a real corruption in a good entity (e.g., rotting teeth, rotting flesh, and rotting trees); evil is not a substance but a real corruption in a good substance that arose out of the abuse of creaturely free will (Genesis 1-3; Romans 5:12). Moreover, if God is the Author or Creator of evil, then why do we have the theme of a counterfeit kingdom in Scripture (e.g., Satan and his pestilence who operate a world system that is hostile to God)? There would be no need for one in Scripture if God is the Author or Creator of evil.”
We can, therefore, conclude on this matter concerning Isaiah 45:7 by pointing out two issues:
- 1. God’s sovereignty, unlike the dualistic sovereignty (inherently and intentionally moral and evil), is a PERMISSIVE SOVEREIGNTY. God is only good inherently and intentionally. However, the logic and objectivity (independence) of his goodness are demonstrated in his not suffocating the evil as well as not eradicating its fruits until human beings appreciate either side. In Genesis 2:17, God had known of the existence of evil but in his objectivity (independence) he did not eradicate it before the man he had created with a free-will had not acquired access to it in order to exercise an informed freedom of choice.
The difference between Yahweh and other gods is that while other gods are prohibitive, institutionalizing and dictatorial, Yahweh is informative, liberal and democratic.
In Genesis 2:17, God supplied information to man and that information was if you act contrary to the accepted logic of functionality, YOU SHALL SURELY DIE. The evil one on the other hand also had his own version of information and it was: YOU SHALL NOT DIE (Genesis 3:4). Ever since man exercised his freedom of Choice over the two alternatives, in retrospect, we can tell who can be trusted in the next communication. The God of Christian Theology is not informed enough so as to inform us but he is God all-knowing (Isaiah 40:13-14). It is the magnitude of how much he knows (In all tenses) that qualifies his Sovereignty to be what I call: Permissive Sovereignty.
This is the Sovereignty of an All-Powerful, All-Knowing, All-Places, Timeless and Independent God in whose charge the universe is but gives chance to an alternative will (against his) to be exercised fairly. This is what differentiates the Christian God from all other fallacious and subjective gods that do not ACT but REACT.
I have heard those who have lost their loved ones and precious goods say: it is the will of God (Allah Bw’aggezze, Mukama Bwayagadde). This is confusing God’s permissive sovereignty with the pagan dualistic sovereignty. God’s will to all of us is good (John 10:10), and he is in the viewer’s gallery knowing and seeing what happens to us due to our choices and his liberal and non-reactional sovereignty.
Permissive Sovereignty teaches us that; whatever happens in this universe is in his ‘know’ and never surprises him but God allows it to happen for purposes of clarification to conscious beings like us and that is what the book of Job in the Bible is about.
- 2. Another final point to accentuate as far as the question of Isaiah 45:7 is concerned is the fact that the text as we said earlier is placed within the Deutro-Isaiah apologia for Yahweh. Who the true God is, how sovereign he is and his historical intentional plan to resolve the issue of Evil as well as calamity once and for all is the agenda of Prophet Isaiah’s apologia. The sting of Evil is Death and Death is the opposite of Life. Evil, therefore, is not wrong because of the calamities it breeds, but evil is wrong because it is opposed to both the WILL of God and LIFE. Prophet Isaiah address this concept as he concludes his discourse in Isaiah 52:13-53:1-12 through his Suffering Servant (Ebed Yahweh) Motif.
- Isaiah, in conclusion, presents God as a moral, experiential and living God who directly involves himself in the affairs of this World. God is not just morally upright and therefore charging us his creatures, to attain his set-standards but God is a direct participant in the businesses of this universe. In his approach to solving the Evil problem, Yahweh (Christian God) is distinguished from other gods in a sense that, unlike other gods who to take lives to give life, our God is the suffering Servant who lays down his eternal life in exchange of our eternal death (Romans 6:33).
How we understand Isaiah 45:7 within the broad discourse of chapters 40-53 determines how we will appreciate God in this painful world. God is sovereign over nature (Light and Darkness) and he also superintends over periods of Peace, Prosperity and the horrible times are also not outside his knowledge.
I don’t know what you are going through, but I want you to know that there is a God in this universe who is the centre that holds and if you know him and trust him, evil will not consume you ultimately.
The good (success and peace) and the bad (failure and pain) that happens to us does not matter as the people we become within and after these situations. God cannot be the cause of evil and calamity and then come and tell us:
I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33 NLT)
God is incomparable, he is love and his love is not suicidal but sacrificial: Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:13 KJV)
God bless you, I invoke Truth, Wisdom and Faith (2Tim 2:7)
Priest Isaiah White (+256-775-822833) For Further Inquiries
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