The Question of Theodicy

[Thomas]

This question has been posed by discussions elsewhere, and it led me to seek a sufficient response and, finding myself wanting, I looked to 'the usual suspects' for pointers. Theodicy is generally the attempt to justify the existence, goodness, and power of God in the face of evil and suffering in the world.

David Bentley Hart (in an interview in the NYT) offered this:
"... my first piece of advice on theodicy has always been to avoid theodicy, because any attempt to justify the ways of God to man in terms of why this (or that) happened already presumes a kind of moral teleology to evil. Here’s what I mean by that: theodicy tries to show how evil exists as part of a great plan to achieve some greater good, which of course justifies evil. It makes it seem as if, yes, it’s sad that little girl died of cancer, but in the end it was necessary.

That strikes me as obscene. Whatever one thinks of that, the New Testament never speaks in such terms. Rather, it treats evil in terms of a kind of provisional dualism. It sees evil simply as a contingent distortion and violation of creation, sustained by the arkhon of this kosmos, against which God is at war in Christ, and which is overthrown by Christ.

The New Testament speaks of creation as something broken and distorted and destroyed by spiritual freedoms gone astray, and the whole structure of reality that we know is in some sense alien to true creation." (Excerpted from an interview with Peter Wehner, sadly behind the NYT paywall.)

 

[Carlos]

I'm not sure but I think Saul (Paul the apostle) mentioned that we (as the ceramic work) are not to criticize the ceramic worker who created us.

 

[Thomas]

We comfortable Christians often tell ourselves "we have the mind of Christ" (1 Corinthians 2:16) but in adopting/adapting or even co-opting the language of the New Testament to ourselves and our situation, rarely do we embrace its idiom. That is, we tend to rationalise, to the point of dismissal, the story that the participants believed they were involved in – the cosmic struggle between good and evil – which frames Christ's 'descent from above', His triumph over the 'principalities of this world', and His subsequent ascent back from whence He came, becoming in Himself the means by which we all might follow.

The Logos became incarnate in this cosmos not simply to disclose its immanent rationality (logos), but to break down the barrier of its fallen nature, and to refashion creation after its ancient beauty (logos) – a cosmos wherein neither sin nor death had any place.

+++

The God of the New Testament is not, in any way or sense, the author, source or origin of evil.

Nor is evil a necessity by any measure necessary in creation.

The fact of its existence is not a claim to ontological status, and evil's metaphysical specification as privatio boni, 'the absence of good', has no bearing on the question of its causal power. "Cancer, for instance, is not an independent subsistence; it is an aberrant metastatic cell-growth in which normal cell-division has been corrupted by the loss of proper genetic signals of constraint, leading to the formation of neoplasms. It is an entirely parasitic reality. But that does not say anything about how pernicious and powerful it is. The claim that evil is not a substance but rather a corruption of substance has absolutely no implications regarding how powerful it is as a real force." (Hart, "Tsunami and Theodicy", First Things, March 1, 2005)

God is entirely free and suffers no limitation or constraint. That God allows evil does not mean that God wills evil, nor does it mean God cannot prevent evil. To prevent humans from acts of evil would be to constrain human freedom, it would reduce humanity’s essential nature to an empty caricature.

It is metaphysically incoherent to suggest that either God or God’s creature requires the experience of suffering and death to comprehend God’s Goodness. In fact any theory that poses an all-powerful Deity as the source of suffering cannot be termed 'good' in the absolute sense; a more accurate description would be cruel and capricious, or morbidly indifferent.

It is precisely sin that blind us to God’s true nature, and the truth of our own.

Any defence of evil as a theologically necessary or inevitability requires us to believe in a Deity for whom a child to die an agonizing death from some awful disease, or even more unimaginably, at the hands of some monstrous human entity. A necessity for natural disasters like volcanoes or tsumami, for plagues, floods and famines, for millions murdered in death camps and gulags and by sheer human indifference.

Such a Deity is as rationally unintelligible as it is morally loathsome.

+++

Christianity is a Religion of Resurrection. Everything else is, as a departed friend once said, “toothpaste”. Resurrection is the meat of it. Everything else is milk.

I do not believe that, as Christians faced with evil, we are obliged to console ourselves with vacuous aphorisms about the Mysteries of the Divine Depths or Hidden Purposes of the Divine Will. It’s neither acceptable nor palatable.

Christianity is a faith in a God who has come to rescue His creation from its current condition – the absurdity of sin and the emptiness of death. The New Testament says nothing other, nothing less.

That Christ takes the suffering of His creature into Himself, is not because it is in any sense necessary, far from it. Rather, it is because He will not to abandon his creature to the grave.

We know that the victory has been won, we know also that it is a victory yet to come, and that creation therefore, as Paul says, groans in expectation of the glory that will one day be revealed.

Until then, the world remains a place of struggle between light and darkness, truth and falsehood, life and death.

We should love this world and hate what we have brought it to.

 

[Thomas]

I'm not sure but I think Saul (Paul the apostle) mentioned that we (as the ceramic work) are not to criticize the ceramic worker who created us.

Nor do I. I rather criticise the monstrous representations of distorted images of the nature of deity.

 

[muhammad_isa]

It is precisely sin that blind us to God’s true nature, and the truth of our own..

Yes, I agree with that .. good deeds cause enlightement, and bad deeds the opposite.
It's psychological in nature.

 

[wil]

Theology is only necessary because of theo...constantly struggling with apologetics in order to keep the myth alive eh?

 

[RabbiO]

I'm not sure but I think Saul (Paul the apostle) mentioned that we (as the ceramic work) are not to criticize the ceramic worker who created us.

To defuse any impulse to argue with me, what I say here is only as a point of information - not to stir up the waters in this subforum.

We Jews have a very long tradition of arguing with G-d.

 

[Thomas]

Theology is only necessary because...onstantly struggling with apologetics in order to keep the myth alive eh?

'Only' ?

If I were to order the value of human-narrative genres, then I would place myth as first and foremost by a country mile.

 

[Thomas]

I'm not sure but I think Saul (Paul the apostle) mentioned that we (as the ceramic work) are not to criticize the ceramic worker who created us.

I'm pretty sure that the last word Saul, St Paul, would use to describe humanity is 'ceramic'.

 

[wil]

'Only' ?

If I were to order the value of human-narrative genres, then I would place myth as first and foremost by a country mile.

Absolutely....but ya gotta pick your myth and pick your interpretation. Interpreting myth as the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth is frought with issues. Utilizing it as parable and allegory, mystery and Mysticism which assists you in the foibles of daily interactions with other humans is extremely valuable.

And I apologize for my knee jerk reaction allowing my days happenings to bubble into the space....totally appreciate your measured response