Skeptical Theism and Jude 22-23: Mercy Without Certainty
Short answer: Skeptical theism is the view that God's reasons for permitting evil or hiddenness may exceed what we can perceive, so we should be cautious about declaring what God can or cannot have a reason to allow. Jude commends a pastoral posture that fits this view without adopting every version of it. Jude 1:22-23 (WEB) says to show compassion to some, making a distinction, and to save others by snatching them out of the fire. The passage does not resolve the philosophical debate, but it refuses two errors: treating every doubter as an enemy, and treating every doubt as harmless. It calls for mercy with discernment, humility about what we know, and urgency about what is at stake.
What skeptical theism is and what it refuses to claim
The term skeptical theism is used in philosophy of religion for a family of positions rather than one agreed formula. Its core claim is modest: human cognitive reach may be too limited to judge whether God has reasons for permitting a particular evil or for remaining hidden in a particular life. The dispute usually turns on whether that limitation is reasonable or whether it becomes an excuse that makes God's goodness unfalsifiable. Christians who accept some form of the view often do so because Scripture repeatedly says God's thoughts and ways are not ours, and because Job's friends were rebuked for speaking too confidently about God's reasons. But the same tradition warns against using mystery as a shield for unbelief.
At its best, skeptical theism produces intellectual honesty. It says that a believer is not required to pretend to know why a specific tragedy happened. It also says that a skeptic is not automatically irrational for pressing the problem of evil. The position is not that evidence counts for nothing, nor that no argument against God's goodness has any force. It is that the inference from I cannot see a reason to God has no reason is unreliable when the subject is a mind greater than our own. That is a claim about the limits of inference, not a claim to have solved the problem. It is a posture of caution on all sides, including caution about one's own cleverness.
Skeptical theism refuses the role of explaining God's hidden purposes. That refusal is important because Christian history is stained with people who claimed to know exactly why a city fell, why a child died, or why a nation suffered. Such certainty has done real harm and has made faith look like an excuse for cruelty. The skeptical element here is not doubt about God's existence; it is doubt about our ability to read his private ledger. It leaves room for honest lament, for unanswered questions, and for the long silence that the psalms themselves model. It also warns against the opposite error: treating all religious language as equally unverifiable and therefore equally empty. The limit on our knowing is not a limit on God's being.
Critics warn that the position can become a strategy for never revisiting one's beliefs, a conversation-stopper that ends every debate with a reminder of human ignorance. That danger is real. The biblical response is that humility must be joined to obedience and to a willingness to be examined. Jude's letter does not admire vagueness; it contends earnestly for the faith once delivered. A person may say that God's reasons are beyond them while still holding firmly to what God has plainly revealed. The right posture is not paralysis but patience, and patience that keeps working, loving, and speaking the truth it does know. Skeptical theism, rightly used, makes a person slower to pronounce and more careful to listen.
Jude writes to a church under pressure
Jude is a short letter written to believers facing teachers who turned grace into license and denied the authority of Christ. The letter is urgent and sharp. It calls its readers to contend for the faith and warns that judgment is real. Then, near the end, it turns to how to treat people who are unsettled, stumbling, or already in danger. That turn is striking. The same letter that pronounces woe on false teachers tells ordinary believers to show compassion, to make a distinction, and to snatch some out of the fire. The pastoral instruction is not a softening of the letter's warnings; it is the shape those warnings take in relationships.
When Jude 1:22-23 (WEB) says, On some have compassion, making a distinction, the phrase about making a distinction is crucial. It means that not every doubter is in the same condition, and not every question comes from the same source. Some are weak and need mercy. Some are so far along in error that only a rescue will do. Some need fear, and some need gentleness. The church is not given a single technique for every person. It is given discernment, which means the leaders and members must actually know the people in front of them. A blanket policy is easier, but Jude will not allow it.
The letter's setting matters because it explains the tension. When a community is under threat from false teaching, fear makes people treat every questioner as an infiltrator. Jude will not allow that either. He wants the church to hate the error and love the erring. This is a hard combination and it takes spiritual maturity. The compassion Jude commands is not agreement with the error; it is a settled disposition toward the person. It is the difference between arguing with someone and despising them. A church that cannot tell the difference will either become hard and suspicious or it will become so open that it loses the faith it is meant to guard.
Jude's letter also ends with doxology, which is a clue about its pastoral aim. The point of contending for the faith is not to win arguments but to present people blameless before God with great joy. That end shapes the means. If the goal is rescue and joy, then contempt has no place. If the goal is simply to be right, then people become obstacles. Jude writes as a man who knows that God is able to keep his people from stumbling, which means the church can afford to be patient. Confidence in God's keeping power frees believers from the panic that turns every question into a crisis and every questioner into an enemy.
Making a distinction without a scorecard
The instruction to make a distinction is easier to state than to practice. It requires judging whether a person is asking because they are wounded, because they are confused, because they are testing, or because they have already decided against the faith and want cover for it. Only God sees the heart fully, so any human judgment is provisional. But provisional does not mean impossible. Jesus told his disciples not to give what is holy to dogs and not to throw pearls before pigs, and he also said to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Discernment is commanded, and it is exercised with fear and trembling because we may be wrong about someone.
Skeptical theism contributes here by teaching us to doubt our own read of a person's motives. If we cannot fully trace God's reasons, we should be even slower to claim we have traced our neighbor's. That does not mean pretending that actions have no meaning. Persistent, unrepentant teaching that denies Christ is not the same as a trembling question asked in private. Words have content and content can be assessed. But the assessment of a soul is a different task from the assessment of a doctrine. Jude tells us to make a distinction, and part of that distinction is the distinction between what a person says and why they are saying it. Only one of those is ours to judge with confidence.
In practice, making a distinction often looks like asking questions rather than issuing verdicts. Why does this person struggle here and not there? What has happened to them recently? Are they isolated from other believers? Are they reading anything besides the objections they raise? A doubter who is still praying, still in church, still listening to Scripture is in a different place from one who has cut off every channel of correction. This is not a permanent label. People move. The weak become strong and the strong fall. So the distinction is a working discernment for this season, not a census of the soul, and it must be revisited with humility.
There is also a distinction between doubts and unbelief. A doubt is a question a person carries while still wanting the truth. Unbelief is a settled refusal to have God reign. The line between them can be crossed slowly and unconsciously, and that is exactly why Jude says to make a distinction and to snatch some from the fire. The church's job is not to write people off based on a bad season, nor to treat every season as equally safe. It is to stay close enough to know the difference and to act with the mercy each case requires. That is slow, personal, unglamorous work, and it cannot be done from a distance.
Mercy that still fears the fire
Jude does not only say to have compassion. He speaks of saving others by snatching them out of the fire, and he speaks of hating even the garment stained by the flesh. These images are strong, and they are meant to be. Mercy in Jude is not the belief that nothing is at stake. It is the belief that people are in danger and that love moves toward them anyway. This is the opposite of the cold tolerance that says everyone is fine as they are. It is also the opposite of the harshness that says the endangered deserve what they get. Jude holds compassion and urgency together, and either one without the other becomes a distortion.
The fire language carries the seriousness of the letter's warnings about judgment. If there is no fire, there is no rescue, and mercy loses its meaning. This is why skeptical theism cannot be allowed to dissolve the clear warnings of Scripture. Whatever we cannot know about God's hidden reasons, we do know what he has revealed about sin and judgment. The same Bible that says his ways are beyond searching also says that the wages of sin is death and that Christ bore that death for his people. Awe at mystery must never replace obedience to what is plain. The hidden things belong to God; the revealed things belong to us and to our children, and Jude treats the revealed things as urgent.
And yet the snatching is not violent toward the person. The rescue is done with fear and with mercy, both words Jude uses. The rescuer is not the judge. Believers are told to fear contamination and to show mercy, which means they must be close enough to help but clear-eyed about their own vulnerability. This is why the church needs community rather than lone heroes. A person pulling another from a fire can be burned. So the work is done in plurality, with prayer, with Scripture, and with accountability. The mercy is real and the danger is real, and Jude refuses to let either truth cancel the other.
This is where skeptical theism's caution about our own knowledge becomes a gift rather than a defect. If I admit that I do not fully know the workings of God or the heart of the person in front of me, I can still act decisively because God has told me what to do. I do not need to know why the fire spread to know that people should be pulled out. I do not need to identify every hidden variable before I show mercy. Jude gives a command that is clear enough to obey today while leaving the accounting of all things to God, who alone sees the end from the beginning. Obedience does not require omniscience.
Paul's pattern of gentleness with the weak
The rest of the New Testament fills out Jude's instruction. Romans 14:1-3 (WEB) says, Now accept one who is weak in faith, but not for disputes over opinions. Paul is writing about food and holy days, matters of conscience rather than salvation, but the principle reaches further. He tells the strong not to despise the weak and the weak not to judge the strong, because God has received both. The category Paul uses is weakness of faith, not wickedness of heart. A person can be genuinely in Christ and still be limited, confused, or easily shaken on secondary matters. Skeptical theism often speaks to people who are wrestling with the problem of evil, and it is worth asking whether their struggle is a failure of faith or a weakness of faith. Paul says the weak are to be accepted, not debated into submission.
Paul's concern is that knowledge without love becomes destructive. He writes in 1 Corinthians 8:11-12 (WEB) about the brother for whose sake Christ died perishing through another believer's knowledge. The strong had correct information about idols, but their use of that freedom was crushing someone Christ had redeemed. This is a sobering warning for anyone who thinks being right is enough. Truth matters, but truth wielded without love can do the work of an enemy. If skeptical theism teaches anything useful here, it is that our confidence in our own position should never be so complete that we cannot see the person we are talking to. The goal is not to win the argument but to keep the brother.
First Thessalonians 5:14 (WEB) gives a cluster of different responses in one verse: Admonish the disorderly; encourage the faint-hearted; support the weak; be patient toward all. Notice that the commands differ. The disorderly need admonition, the faint-hearted need encouragement, the weak need support, and then the whole list is wrapped in patience toward all. This is exactly the pattern Jude describes when he says to make a distinction. Different people need different medicine. A church that only admonishes will wound the faint-hearted. A church that only encourages will leave the disorderly undisturbed. The verse also makes patience the broad backdrop, which is another way of admitting that change is slow and we do not control it.
Second Timothy 2:24-26 (WEB) adds correction about tone: The Lord's servant must not quarrel, but be gentle toward all, able to teach, patient. It goes on to say that God may grant repentance and that people may escape from the snare of the devil. This is a remarkable combination of gentleness and spiritual seriousness. The servant is not to fight like an argumentative person, but the aim is still repentance and rescue. Gentleness is not indifference; it is the manner in which a real rescue is attempted. Paul grounds the method in the hope that God will do what only God can do. Our task is to speak well and patiently; the giving of understanding belongs to the Lord.
The question of hidden reasons and honest lament
Skeptical theism often arises from the experience of suffering that has no visible explanation. A family loses a child, a faithful servant suffers for decades, a whole people is crushed, and no reason appears. The Bible does not shame such people for asking why. The psalms of lament are full of raw questions, and God did not rebuke them. Habakkuk asks how long he must cry out, and God answers with a vision that is still future. Job receives no explanation of the heavenly wager that began his story; he receives God's presence instead, and he is counted as one who spoke rightly. Mystery in Scripture is not always punished. Often it is met with a nearer knowledge of God rather than a tidy answer.
At the same time, the Bible refuses the conclusion that God's hiddenness means God's absence or cruelty. Isaiah says that God's thoughts are not our thoughts and his ways are higher. That is the seed of the skeptical theist's confidence: the difference between Creator and creature is not just a gap in information, it is a gap in kind. This does not make suffering good, and it does not make grief unfaithful. It means that not seeing a reason is not the same as there being none, and that the Christian can wait on God without demanding a full account. Waiting is not a failure of faith; in Scripture it is often its deepest expression.
Where the skeptical theist posture can go wrong is when it stops the ears. If a person decides in advance that no difficulty with their faith can be real, they stop listening to God and to people. That is not humility; it is a wall. True humility takes the questions seriously and takes the answers seriously, and it remains open to being corrected by Scripture. It also allows that some believers will reach different conclusions about the problem of evil and the extent of our knowledge. Faithful Christians differ here, and the debate is not the same as the gospel. What must not differ is the call to mercy, to patience, and to holding fast to what God has plainly said about Christ and the resurrection.
It is worth saying that the hiddenness of God is not only a problem to solve; it is a condition to live in. We walk by faith, not by sight. The church has always included people who could not make the darkness yield a reason and who still trusted. That trust is not naïve; it is placed in a God who demonstrated his character at the cross, where the worst suffering fell on the sinless Son. Whatever else remains hidden, the love of God has been made visible in Christ, and that is the anchor for a person who cannot see the reasons. Jude's closing doxology is for such people: kept by a God who is able.
How to care for someone who is skeptical
When a person in your life is wrestling with skepticism, the first task is not to fix them. Jude tells us to show compassion, and compassion listens before it speaks. Ask what they are actually asking. Ask what happened. Many people who say God makes no sense are carrying grief they have never voiced, and the argument is downstream from the wound. This does not mean their argument is false or that you should ignore it. It means the person is not only a set of propositions. Care for the person and take the argument seriously at the same time. That is the distinction Jude requires, and it is slow work.
The next task is to keep speaking what you do know without pretending to know what you do not. It is honest to say that you do not know why this happened. It is also honest to say that you know Christ was crucified and raised. The church does not need to have every answer to have a solid foundation. If someone demands an answer to every question before they will believe, they are asking for a place to stand that even the apostles did not have. Peter wrote about suffering without explaining each case; he pointed to the example of Christ and to the God who judges justly. Testimony to what is known is stronger than speculation about what is hidden.
Be aware of the danger in both directions. If you treat every skeptical question as rebellion, you will push away people who need patience. If you treat every skeptical question as harmless, you may leave someone drifting toward a settled rejection of the faith. The first error is more common in anxious churches and the second is more common in comfortable ones. Jude addresses both. He is urgent and he is merciful. Pray for the person, stay in their life, and keep the door of your church open. Rescue often happens over years, through ordinary faithfulness, not in a single conversation. God gives growth, and he is patient with us while we learn to be patient with others.
Biblical fidelity check
What Jude 1:22-23 establishes is a command about how believers treat people in the community who are unsettled and endangered. It establishes that some should receive compassion, that a distinction is to be made, and that others are to be rescued with urgency and with fear and hatred of sin. It does not establish a complete philosophy of divine hiddenness, and it does not define who counts as weak or as lost. It is a pastoral instruction, not a systematic treatment of the problem of evil. Using it as a proof text for any particular philosophical school, including skeptical theism, goes beyond what the passage claims to do.
A common misreading is to hear the command to make a distinction as permission to sort people into permanent categories and then withdraw from those judged hopeless. Jude's whole letter moves toward mercy, and his closing doxology celebrates God's power to keep people from stumbling. Another misreading is to hear the compassion in verse 22 as dismissing the fire in verse 23, as if mercy meant that nothing serious is at stake. Both readings miss the tension Jude intends. The faithful reading holds compassion and truth, patience and urgency, humility about our knowledge and confidence in what God has said. Where Christians disagree about the philosophical details, they can still obey the command together.
Other passages that speak to Jude 1:22-23
Jude's call to discernment and mercy connects to the wider New Testament teaching on unity and conscience. Paul's appeal for agreement in the church and his warnings against dividing over secondary matters shed light on how to handle differences. For a fuller study, see What Does 1 Corinthians 1:10 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application, and What Does 1 Corinthians 1:9 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application. The themes of calling and unity run through 1 Corinthians 1: Called, United, and Boasting in the Lord, while the balanced treatment of freedom and its limits appears in 1 Corinthians 10: Warnings and Freedom. Together these passages reinforce the pattern Jude gives: truth held with patient love.
Frequently asked questions
Is skeptical theism biblical?
Scripture repeatedly says that God's thoughts and ways are beyond ours, and Job's friends were rebuked for claiming to know God's reasons. That supports the cautious posture skeptical theism describes. But the Bible never develops the philosophical position as such, and different Christians apply the theme differently. It is more accurate to say that a limited form of it fits the biblical data than to say the Bible teaches the full modern formulation. The essential point is that not seeing a reason is not the same as there being none.
Does Jude 1:22-23 mean we should never confront false teaching?
No. The same letter commands believers to contend earnestly for the faith and pronounces judgment on false teachers. The instruction to make a distinction is about how to treat people, not about whether to address error. Some cases call for compassion, and some call for urgency and fear. What Jude forbids is treating every person the same way and forgetting mercy. Confrontation and compassion are not opposites in his letter; they are two parts of faithful care for people who are in real danger.
How do I help a friend who is losing their faith?
Listen before you correct, and do not pretend to know what you do not know. Be honest about your own questions and firm about what God has plainly revealed, especially the death and resurrection of Christ. Stay present over time rather than forcing a single decisive conversation. Paul tells Timothy that the Lord's servant must not quarrel but be gentle, patient, and able to teach, trusting God to grant repentance. Rescue is usually slow, ordinary, and carried out by several people rather than one hero.
