The Wednesbury Unreasonable Gospel

The "Wednesbury Unreasonable" Gospel "… but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles…" - 1 Corinthians 1:23 -

Legally Certifiable Every now and then, people decide to do things that are so utterly bizarre or misguided that others can only conclude that they have lost their minds. With exasperation, they throw up their hands and ask, "what were these people thinking?" The legal term for such irrationality is "Wednesbury unreasonableness". As Lord Diplock notes in Council of Civil Service Unions v. Minister for the Civil Service Respondent1: [i]t applies to a decision so outrageous in its defiance of logic or of accepted moral standards that no sensible person who applied his mind to the question to be decided could have arrived at it.

While His Lordship said those words with the executive in mind, I must admit that I read this case with God at the forefront of my mine. Turning to creation, for instance, I often wondered why God created us. What prompted Him to create human beings whom He knew would fall into sin, such that He could only save them at the highest possible cost to Himself? The gospel did not make any sense at all; in fact, it appeared to be foolishness (1 Corinthians 1:18, 23). What was God thinking?

An Outrageous Defiance of Logic? It might be argued that God’s reasons are beyond us; that they defy all attempts at a logical explanation and that we should not attempt to make sense of the divine mystery of the unknowable God. The Biblical authority that is often quoted in support of this comes from Isaiah 55:8-9: "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts... "

On the other hand, we believe that we are rational beings, capable of logical thought. Any acknowledgement that God’s thoughts and ways are higher than ours must therefore also be an admission that God possesses a logical and rational mind that is far superior to ours. He must therefore have had good logical reasons for the creation and redemption of humanity. While we should accept that an infinite God will always be beyond our grasp, it is no use saying that God’s rationality is somehow beyond reason for that would be a contradiction in terms. It may certainly be beyond us as human beings2, but we can at least rest assured that it is not beyond reason. However outrageous God’s decisions appear, they are not in defiance of logic. So what logical reason lay behind God’s decision to create us? The closest the Bible comes to explicitly stating the purpose of creation is in Revelation 4:11: 1 2

[1985] A.C. 374, at 410. Just as most of mathematics is beyond me.

You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by Your will they were created and have their being.

It is by His will (or as the KJV translates, ‘His pleasure’) that we are created. This, admittedly, does not really answer the question. All that we can glean from this is that creation was no accident, but rather, was the a result of God’s deliberate and purposeful will. It was by His will (or as the KJV translates, ‘His pleasure’) that we are created. All that can be gleaned from this is that creation was no accident, but rather, was the a result of God’s deliberate and purposeful will. But it is a start. God’s decision to create was logical and deliberate. This helps to narrow the possibilities when looking at the three possible categories of reasons behind creation: a) Creation for its own sake b) The utility derived from creation c) The utility derived for creation Which option would the logical Creator deliberately pick? a) Creation for its own sake Let us deal first of all with the possibility that God desired to create simply for its own sake. Some philosophers like to deal with this scenario by using the story of a saucer of mud which goes something like this: A sits in a corner, holding a saucer of mud in his hands. B, finding this rather strange, proceeds to ask A why he has the saucer of mud. A looks at B and says, "Oh, no reason. " B, not satisfied with this answer, states indignantly, "But you must have a reason. Do you have the saucer of mud because you want to make something? " A replies, "No." Undeterred, B goes on, "Is it because you like the look of mud? Or perhaps because you like how it feels on your fingers, or maybe even because the very possession of such an object makes you feel content inside? " After a short pause, A responds, "No, no and no. I want a saucer of mud simply because I want it. " With a long sigh, B walks away, shaking his head with bemusement. I would submit that most of us would respond the same way as B did, finding A’s reasons for having the saucer of mud completely unintelligible. A person who wants something "simply because" is seen as senseless and irrational. We thus have to look at other possibilities.

b) Utility derived from creation The word utility is used here as a "catch-all" term to include any useful purpose, desire or need that can be derived from creation. Let’s start by dealing with the possibility that God "needed" to create us. Did God create us because He was lonely, or perhaps needed someone to love? The concept of the Trinity helps to explain that this is not the case at all. As Christians, we believe in the Triune God: God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Mike Reeves makes the point that we should see the Trinity as three persons, rather than three individuals. While an individual can be divided off and so stand on its own, a person can only be understood in terms of a relationship. "God the Father" is a relational term: there can be no Father without the Son, just as there can be no Son without the Father. Similarly, the Spirit is the Spirit of the Father and the Son. Each person of the Trinity thus exists in a relationship with the other two persons of the Trinity, and this relationship is characterised and united in love: As 1 John 4:16 makes clear: Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

God is love; it is the very essence of who God is – it always has been and always will be (Hebrews 1:12; 13:18). The three persons of the Trinity have therefore always existed in a perfectly othercentred, loving relationship with each other, from eternity past. God did not need to create other beings so that He could love them, for He already existed in a perfectly loving relationship prior to creation. As John Wesley notes: It is to the free, gracious and powerfully working will of Him who cannot possibly need anything that all things owe their first existence.

Perhaps God derived some other utility by creating us. As a human being, however, I struggle to see how God could derive any utility at all from humanity, for all have sinned and fall far short of His glory (Romans 3:23). Far from being of any utility or benefit to God, our mere existence offends the very holiness of His being. Peter Lewis points out that the holiness of God is utterly incompatible "with anything corrupt, anything unrighteous, in his creation." In contrast to the uncompromising holiness of God, we are filthy and despicable. It might be argued that we did not start out that way; that perhaps our eventual fall into sin spoiled God’s plans. Yet the all-knowing God must have seen this coming(Titus 1:2), and He would surely have known how costly it would be to Him, to reverse the effects of the fall. We can only be of any utility to God if the problem of sin is overcome. Could we perhaps save ourselves? The Bible makes it clear that this is not possible: we are trapped and enslaved by sin. Peter Lewis helpfully shows that the Bible represents the sinful state of men and women by many different pictures or metaphors. For instance, we are said to be: polluted by our sin needing to be washed in slavery to sin needing to be freed asleep in our sins needing to be awakened diseased by sin needing to be healed dead in sin needing to be raised

Lewis summarises by saying that "the message is clear: we cannot help or save ourselves; we need nothing less than God to save us." My experience is enough to tell me that this is true, and in Romans 7:24, Paul expresses the hopelessness of the human condition well: I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do… For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing… What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

Only God can save us, but how? As a perfectly loving God, we would probably expect Him to simply forgive us and be done with it. But we need to remember that God is also perfectly holy and just. Simply forgiving us would be as just as letting a cold-blooded murderer go free without punishment. A holy and just God must deal with sin. In a brilliant but enormously costly move, God solved this problem by sending His Son Jesus Christ to die on the cross for our sins, facing God’s holy wrath and judgment in our place. As it is written in Isaiah 53:5: But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.

God was able to demonstrate His perfect justice by exercising His holy and just wrath against sin, while at the same time demonstrating His perfect love for us by taking up the punishment upon Himself. As John Stott says succinctly, He chose to bear the judgment we deserved in order to bring us the forgiveness that we did not deserve. The redemption of humanity cost God His life, but it cost us nothing. If we were created for our utility to Him, then the price of that utility was enormous! It would surely have so much easier not to have created us at all in the first place. After all, God did not need to create us: the Trinity is completely self-sufficient and self-satisfying. Yet He created and redeemed us. Why? c) Utility derived for creation We are left with the possibility that creation was for our sake. Maybe this is why God created us: not for His own sake, but for the joy that we can derive from having a relationship with Him, made possible through Christ’s death on the cross. In an act of supreme grace and mercy, God saved us from our sins so that we could be a part of the inter-Trinitarian love of God as His adopted sons and daughters. It all makes sense. But was this, nonetheless, an outrageous defiance of accepted moral standards? An Outrageous Defiance of Accepted Moral Standards? As moral agents, we are admonished to love our neighbours and to apply the ‘golden rule’ of doing unto others what we would have others do unto us. Once in a while, we go beyond this give-and-take morality by risking our lives to save a loved one, or by fighting for the sake of our country. At such times, we move towards the very pinnacle of morality through our acts of altruism.

Yet even these acts of altruism are acts of selfless love and courage towards other human beings. We die for our fellow men and women; we sacrifice ourselves for the greater good of humanity. What then do we say of a God who would condescend to even think about dying for us? And yet Christ, who being in very nature God, made Himself nothing; and being found in the appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death – even death on a cross! (Philippians 2:7-8) But Paul goes even further in Romans 5: 6-8: You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Here was the almighty God of heaven, humbling Himself to die for sinners, the enemies of God; the same people who rejected Him and threatened to stone Him; who spit in His face, flogged Him, put a crown of thorns upon His head and crucified Him. Such is the love of God for us! Surely this surpasses all boundaries of accepted moral standards, going beyond all comprehension and human understanding. As Charles Wesley puts it: ’Tis mystery all: th’Immortal dies: Who can explore His strange design? In vain the firstborn seraph tries To sound the depths of love divine. Amazing love! How can it be, That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?

If ever there were a "Wednesbury unreasonable" decision, the creation and redemption of humanity would have to be it.