Friday Mentionables - Suffering, Molinism (again? ugh), Nietzsche, and patriotic atheism!

It's that time again. Your favorite time of the week - Friday mentionables!

Theology
Sentintias Why I'm not an Arminian
Paul Helm Shunning Middle Knowledge
Theology for the Church ROSES vs TULIP
Design of Providence Therapeutic Theology III: the lost context

Uncategorized
A View From the Right Atheism is Patriotic? What the...?
Nietzsche on the Deaths of Socrates and Jesus

Quotes on suffering from Sproul and Bill Craig

"God deserves to be trusted. He merits our trust in Him. The more we understand of His perfections, the more we understand how trustworthy He is. That is why the Christian pilgrimage moves from faith to faith, from strength to strength, and from grace to grace. It moves toward a crescendo.

and

The bottom-line assumption for anyone who believes in the God of providence is that ultimately there are no tragedies. God has promised that all things that happen—all pain, all suffering, all tragedies—are but for a moment, and that He works in and through these events for the good of those who love Him (Rom. 8:28). That’s why the apostle Paul said that the pain, the suffering, the affliction that we bear in this world isn’t worthy to be compared, isn’t worthy to be mentioned in the same breath, with the glory and the blessedness that God has stored up for His people (Rom. 8:18)."

Sproul, Surprised by Suffering

"Christ endured a suffering beyond all understanding:  he bore the punishment for the sins of the whole world.  None of us can comprehend that suffering. Though He was innocent, He voluntarily underwent incomprehensible suffering for us.  And why? - because He loves us so much. How can we reject him who gave up everything for us?

When we comprehend his sacrifice and his love for us, this puts the problem of evil in an entirely different perspective. For now we see clearly that the true problem of evil is the problem of our evil.  Filled with sin and morally guilty before God, the question we face is not how God can justify Himself to us, but how we can be justified before Him.

When God asks us to undergo suffering that seems unmerited, pointless, and unnecessary, meditation upon the cross of Christ can help to give us the moral strength and courage needed to bear the cross that we are asked to carry.  So, paradoxically, even though the problem of evil is the greatest objection to the existence of God, at the end of the day God is the only solution to the problem of evil.  If God does not exist, then we are locked without hope in a world filled with gratuitous and unredeemed suffering. God is the final answer to the problem of evil, for He redeems us from evil and takes us into the everlasting joy of an incommensurable good, fellowship with Himself."

William Lane Craig, The Problem of Evil