Pathways in Theodicy

An Introduction to the Problem of Evil

Mark S. M. Scott

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781451464702
• eBook ISBN: 9781451469806
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

The problem of evil perennially vexes theology, but many theologians have abandoned the project of theodicy, or the theological explanation of evil, as either fruitless or hopeless. Academic studies on theodicy, moreover, typically succumb to theological deficiency and abstraction, often devoid of any concrete connection to Christian life and practice. In Pathways in Theodicy, designed for students and scholars alike, Mark S. M. Scott reinvigorates stalled debates in philosophy and theology through a detailed reassessment of the problem of evil and the task of theodicy and through a careful analysis of the major models and motifs in theodicy. Scott explores the strengths and weaknesses of classic and contemporary perspectives on the problem of evil and invites readers to assess the cogency and relevance of each on their own. Rather than promoting a single perspective, Pathways in Theodicy explores the plurality of options available to treat the problem of evil and the provisional and tentative nature of theodicy, which searches not for final, definitive solutions but for viable ways to move the conversation forward.

1

Rethinking Evil

From Ontology to Theology

“It is in suffering that the whole human question about God arises; for incomprehensible suffering calls the God of men and women into question. The suffering of a single innocent child is an irrefutable rebuttal of the notion of the almighty and kindly God in heaven. For a God who lets the innocent suffer and who permits senseless death is not worthy to be called God at all.”^[1]

The elusive term evil conjures up a vast array of images and emotions. It recalls horrific historical events, natural disasters, and personal losses. It refers to heinous acts of cruelty and violence. It expresses our sense of outrage at the worst that humanity does and the worst that it suffers. Evil, however, resists concrete categorization and simple definition. Despite the pervasiveness of the term in scholarly and colloquial discourse, the concept has different valences in different contexts. Most scholarly treatments of the problem of evil merely restate the standard philosophical formulations of the logical tension between the nature of God and the reality of evil, which calls traditional theism into question. In the first chapter, I rethink the concept of evil and reformulate the problem of evil for Christian theology specifically, rather than for theism generally.

At the outset, then, we will situate the salient questions about evil within a Christian theological matrix. As we reframe the stock philosophical concepts and categories of evil, we will strive to avoid excessive abstraction and generic formulations. I will focus my rethinking of evil on four distinct yet interrelated topics: the nature of evil, the categories of evil, the problems of evil, and paradigmatic evils. Throughout, I recommend a shift from ontology to theology as a way to reclaim the issue for Christian theology and, ultimately, to respond to it utilizing its distinctive theological resources. Theology must take ownership of the problem of evil in order to ensure its intellectual and moral credibility, and to do that, it must speak from within its own traditions.

What Is Evil?

What is the nature of evil?^[2] What do we mean when we classify someone or something as evil? Common expressions such as “evildoers,” “the axis of evil,” “pure evil,” and “acts of evil” intensify the question without substantially answering it. Despite widespread theoretical imprecision and ambiguity, the term “evil” permeates our vocabulary. In fact, it is so commonplace that we rarely subject it to careful scrutiny. In the media, film, literature, and the academy, it appears without any consistent definition. In colloquial discourse, evil usually signifies egregious immorality or extreme wickedness, something beyond the outer reaches of acceptable human behavior, but it can also signify suffering without any relation to morality. In academic philosophy and theology definitions of evil suffer from the same theoretical imprecision and ambiguity found in ordinary discourse. In his 2003 Gifford Lectures, philosopher Peter van Inwagen defines evil simply as “bad things,” which only raises further questions.^[3]EVIL: Classically defined as the “absence of the good” (privatio boni), evil denotes the depravation, corruption, and perversion of the good of creation. Just as darkness is the absence of light and silence is the absence of sound, so evil is the lack or absence of the good.What do we mean by bad? What criteria do we employ to make that determination? How bad must someone or something be to warrant the designation of evil?^[4] For the most part, discussions of evil, in both colloquial and academic discourse, dodge the issues and avoid a critical examination of terminology. Let us commence our rethinking of evil by asking about its nature or ontological reality. What precisely is evil?

Biblical Portrayals of Evil

When asked to define the reality of evil, philosophers and theologians reflexively turn to the language of metaphysics, particularly ontology, to engage the question. Evil, they say, denotes the deficiency or distortion of being. It is the privation of the good, the negation of the goodness of creation. Although ontological categories give us conceptual resources for theorizing the nature of evil, they often bypass biblical insights. Methodologically, reflection on the nature of evil ought to begin with scripture as its starting point, not with a preexisting ontological system. Thus, as a corrective, let us begin with the secure ground of scripture before we delve into the slippery footing of ontology.^[5]

Three qualifications will help forestall potential misconceptions. First, the Bible does not advance a singular notion of evil. We will not discover the biblical conception of evil because scripture does not admit of a uniform perspective on its nature or ontological status. Instead, it talks about evil in a plurality of ways and in a variety of contexts. Nor, secondly, does scripture define evil with philosophical precision. We will not encounter the language of negation and privation in the Bible because it does not strive for ontological clarity. Instead, it talks about evil in relation to the nature of God and God’s work in creation. Finally, I do not intend to undertake an exhaustive analysis of evil in the Old and New Testament, since that would take us too far afield from our focus. Rather, I will select representative passages and examples to illustrate the multiplicity of biblical perspectives on evil that will then inform our analysis of the standard ontologies and categories of evil below. In particular, we will focus on four central representations of evil in the Bible: evil as chaos, sin, satanic, and suffering. We begin with chaos.

Evil as Chaos

In the Old Testament, chaos signifies the evil and destruction that threatens or impairs creation. God creates the world, in the first place, by subduing chaos, as Genesis implies: “The earth was formless and void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind of God swept over the face of the waters” (Gen. 1:2). The sea or turbulent waters symbolize chaos in the Old Testament, both in Genesis and even more explicitly in other passages, especially Job 38:8-11, where God speaks of creation as victory over chaos. God “shut in the sea with doors” (Job 38:8) and “prescribed bounds for it” (Job 38:10) as part of the divine construction of the universe or cosmos (κόσμος = order) in the exact sense. Similarly, in Ps. 74:13-14, the creation of the world involves God’s mastery over the sea and, additionally, the destruction of the Leviathan, a mythical sea monster who personifies chaos, in concert with the symbolism of the sea or turbulent waters.

Talk of dragons and mythical monsters strikes modern readers as archaic and bizarre, but the writers of the Old Testament draw from Ancient Near Eastern creation mythology, not contemporary cosmologies.^[6] Theologically, however, the language of the monstrous resonates as much with contemporary audiences as it did with its ancient audience. It expresses the menacing, horrific, destructive nature of evil, as we will discuss below. The Book of Job provides the most vivid depiction of “chaos monsters” in the Old Testament. God affirms his sovereignty over creation through his taming of the land monster Behemoth (Job 40:15) and the sea monster Leviathan (Job 41). On one level, these creatures threaten the safety of mortals because of their great strength; on a deeper level, they represent the threat of chaos against the order of creation. Just as God tames these creatures, so God will push back the intrusion of chaos into creation.

Who makes the primordial sea and ancient sea monsters? Put differently, does God create chaos or does God conquer it? Both of these options engender further questions about divine power and goodness. Why would God create chaos rather than order? If God does not create chaos, where does it come from? Does it coexist with God, or does it emerge after creation? These questions allude to the intricate problem of the origin of evil. Mythological imagery does not afford us with straightforward answers. If, on the one hand, you affirm creation out of nothing (ex nihilo), then you have to account for the presence of chaos in the world. If, on the other hand, you affirm creation out of chaos, then you must account for the origin of chaos. Either way, creation and chaos stand in fundamental tension in the Old Testament, and God’s act of creating and sustaining the cosmos involves the initial and ongoing subduing of chaos.^[7]

Notice, however, that chaos does not stay within its divinely prescribed boundaries; it reemerges, even after its initial subjugation. Therefore, God must perpetually keep it at bay as it seeks to undo the threads of creation. But the cosmic battle between God and chaos does not continue indefinitely: God eventually destroys it. We see a hint of this in Isaiah’s portrayal of the “day of the Lord” when Leviathan will rear its head no more: “On that day the Lord with his cruel and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will kill the dragon that is in the sea” (Isa. 27:1). So, in terms of the chaos imagery of the Old Testament, the Leviathan harasses creation until the end of days when, to use Christian imagery, it is caught by the great fishhook of God, the cross, and destroyed forever.

What, then, are we able to glean about the reality of evil from the language and imagery of chaos and chaos monsters in the Old Testament? Chaos invokes a plurality of images: social and political unrest, the effects of natural disasters, the disorderly features of existence. These aptly correspond to the categories of evil we will discuss below (moral, natural, and metaphysical evil). Moreover, the language of the monstrous expresses the horror of evil, its power to frighten and destroy, and its threat to the order of creation. It jeopardizes the harmony of creation in its various manifestations. From the language of chaos and chaos monsters we begin to appreciate the ways in which the order and harmony of our lives and the world around us are constantly assailed by forces inimical to God’s good creation.

Evil as Sin

Scripture portrays evil primarily as sin or disobedience against God’s law, variously construed and conceived. Sin, in fact, becomes a major motif in the Old and New Testaments, beginning with the primordial sin of Adam and Eve. Their disobedience of the divine command results in their expulsion from the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3). Cain’s cold-blooded murder of Abel results in his exile from the lands he polluted with his brother’s innocent blood (Genesis 4). In both instances, sin or disobedience creates a relational rupture between God and humanity. Adam and Eve are driven out of Eden (Gen. 3:24), the place of intimate encounter with God (Gen. 3:8), and Cain is sent away from God’s presence (Gen. 4:16) as an endangered fugitive. These stories of archetypal disobedience set the stage for the story of the flood, which purges the earth of a hybrid race of humanity that had fallen into decadence and moral decay: “The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their heart was only evil continually” (Gen. 6:5). The Hebrew word for evil in this vers...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Table Of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Introduction
• Rethinking Evil
• Redefining Theodicy
• Free Will Defense
• Soul-Making Theodicy
• Process Theodicy
• Cruciform Theodicy
• Antitheodicy
• Beyond Theodicy
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index