Evidence · Case 06 · Problem of Evil
The letter to the Hebrews on a sympathetic high priest
One exhibit from the free evidence repository at apologetics.pro.
Sources
Hebrews 4:15, NASB
Objections & responses
- If Jesus was God, he knew he would rise and was never in real danger. Doesn’t “tested in every way we are” ring hollow when the outcome was guaranteed?
The Gospels do not portray a serene Jesus. Gethsemane has him sweating and asking for the cup to pass, and the cross has him crying out that God has abandoned him. The Christian claim is that the incarnate Son experienced fear, pain, and abandonment from the inside as a human being, whatever the divine nature knew; that is what the doctrine of two natures is for. The objection is really an objection to the incarnation itself, which the Trinity case takes up. Here the point is simply that Hebrews presents God as having lived human weakness, not observed it.
- A God who suffers alongside us while having the power to prevent the suffering isn’t comforting; he’s complicit. A parent who lets a child be tortured and then cries with them is not admirable.
This is the emotional heart of the objection, and it should not be sidestepped. The Christian answer is not that presence replaces prevention. God’s presence in suffering is joined to a promise to end it and to a purpose in permitting it for now, which the other claims in this case lay out. The parent analogy assumes the parent could prevent the harm at no cost to anything the child values more; the free will and soul-making responses argue that God cannot prevent all evil without removing the conditions for love and moral growth. Whether that is true is the real question. God suffers too is only an answer inside that larger framework, and it should never be offered on its own.