Evil and Creation (Studies in Historical and Systematic Theology)

Historical and Constructive Essays in Christian Dogmatics

David Luy, Matthew Levering, George Kalantzis

• Publisher: Lexham Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781683594345
• eBook ISBN: 9781683594352
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

In Evil and creation essayists investigating how the doctrine of creation relates to moral and physical evil pursue philosophical and theological analyses of evil rather than neatly solving the problem of evil itself.

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INTRODUCTION

Evil in Christian Theology

David Luy and Matthew Levering

The essays comprising this book consider evil in relation to the Christian doctrine of creation. A theological account of evil is not exactly the same thing as a response to the problem of evil, even if the former typically includes aspects of the latter. Some of the chapters in this book address the problem of evil (for example, chaps. 3, 7, 9), but the purpose of the collection as a whole is not to produce a theodicy. It is rather to reflect on the emergence of moral and physical evil from the standpoint of a particular doctrinal locus. In this introduction, we expand briefly on the nature of this task, calling special attention to the difference between a theological account of evil and a response to the problem of evil.

BEYOND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

For ancients and moderns alike, the question of God is deeply intertwined with the riddle of evil. “At least in the western tradition,” Herbert McCabe observes, “nothing so affects our attitude to God as our recognition of evil and suffering.”1 In the late modern West, evil happenings in the world may seem to awaken religious skepticism. For those living downstream of Voltaire and David Hume (and in the shadow of twentieth-century atrocities), the intrusion of evil appears to call traditionally Christian notions of God automatically into question.2 The recorded experience of Christian saints across the centuries bears witness to an alternate possibility, however. The endurance of bitter suffering can serve to deepen rather than enervate religious commitment.3 It is true, McCabe acknowledges, that suffering may cause us to “reject God as infantile, as unable to comprehend or have compassion on those who suffer and are made to suffer in his world.” But it is also possible, he continues, that suffering may cause us to find, “as Job did, that it was our view of God that was infantile; we may in fact come to a deeper understanding of the mystery of God.”4

The second response and existential posture described here by McCabe implies a theological construal of evil and suffering wherein the bitterness of affliction has been incorporated into the broader task of faith seeking understanding. Suffering relates to the experience of God here in two primary ways. First, it functions as a purifying agent. Existential trials bear a potent capacity to expose the superficiality of theological frameworks unable to prove their mettle in the face of calamity.5 As Martin Luther (1483–1546) so often insisted, the true theologian is one whose religious commitments have been tested and steeled in the fires of affliction.6 In this sense, suffering refines the church’s theological understanding. At the same time, however, suffering can achieve significance for religious piety only to the extent that it is itself understood theologically. Affliction on its own is at best ambiguous so long as it remains abstracted from a theological framework. One of the essential functions of Christian doctrine within the life of the church is that it gives direction to the way in which Christians reflect on their experiences of evil and suffering in the world. Doctrine supplies the decisive hermeneutical framework in relation to which suffering becomes endurable for the Christian, even if evil itself remains to some extent an impenetrable mystery.7 A theological account of evil locates trial and affliction within a theological context, acknowledging that suffering also often quickens, purifies, and refines the church’s theological understanding.

Such accounts are standard fare within the literatures of premodern Christian theology. Awaiting execution from his prison cell, Boethius (ca. 477–524) seeks consolation in his plight by reflecting on his experience in relation to a theological frame of reference (i.e., the mysteries of providence and divine eternality).8 Likewise, Macrina (ca. 330–379) ponders the immaterial soul and the bodily resurrection in conversation with her brother Gregory as she anticipates her impending death.9 In an exposition of Psalm 139 (138 in his Latin version), Augustine (354–430) situates earthly sorrow in more general terms by framing the volatility of human experience with a theological canvas.

During this night, during this mortal life, human beings experience both light and darkness: the light of prosperity and the darkness of misfortune. But when Christ has come and made the soul his own dwelling through its faith, when he has promised a different light, when he has inspired and granted patience, when he has counseled men and women not to be too happy over prosperity lest they be crushed by adversity—then believers begin to treat the present world with detached indifference. No longer are they elated when things chance to go well with them, nor are they shattered when things turn out badly. They bless the Lord in all circumstances, not only in abundance but also in loss, not only in health but also in sickness. The promise sung of in another psalm is kept in their lives: I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall be in my mouth always (Ps. 33:2/34:1).10

Notice here that Augustine is not advancing a theoretical explanation for why suffering exists in the world. His purpose is rather to recontextualize the experience of suffering by situating it within a theological context. For Christians indwelled by the Spirit of Christ and illuminated by the light of a glorious, eschatological promise, the volatile realities of this earthly life lose much of their bitter sting.

Johann Arndt (1555–1621) casts a similar vision. In his influential devotional text True Christianity (1610), Arndt writes:

A magnet draws a heavy piece of iron toward itself, and likewise a heavenly magnet, the love of God, ought to draw the burdens of our cross toward itself, so that it becomes light and easy. Why then should man’s heart be troubled? Sugar makes bitter food sweet. How much then, ought the sweetness of divine love to make the bitter cross sweet? Because of this, the great patience and joy of the holy martrys arose, for God made them drunk by his love.11

The purpose of these theological meditations on suffering is pastoral. The reader or hearer is not summoned by Boethius, Nyssa, Augustine, or Arndt merely to adopt some new theoretical understanding of evil. The theological architecture these authors supply in the course of their examination of suffering is meant to evoke a new existential posture in relation to worldly vicissitude. In this respect, these premodern writers may be understood as seeking to outline a theological account of evil.

Does such reflection need to be recovered in modern theological inquiry? To be sure, the impulse to make theological sense of suffering remains a constant for many faithful Christians living today. Surely it would be wrong to imply that such impulses receive no assistance whatsoever from the contemporary theological guild.12 Still, it has sometimes been the case in recent centuries that theological accounts of evil (as we term them) have been eclipsed by an abiding preoccupation with the so-called problem of evil. Susan Neiman has argued somewhat provocatively that the problem of evil is the defining theme of modern philosophy.13 From the devastation of Lisbon’s earthquake in 1755 to the atrocities of the Holocaust in the 1940s, modern philosophical discourse may be understood as a protracted struggle to rediscover a meaningful world after the collapse of the medieval synthesis. Since philosophy sprouts fundamentally from a “demand that the world be intelligible,” the emergence of evil in the world may thus be construed primarily as philosophical challenge.14 Radical evil evokes the grim possibility of a world governed by chaos.15

The challenge posed by evil in modern philosophical literature falls hardest on the classical Christian view, which insists even in the face of radical evil that Christians may affirm, on biblical and philosophical grounds, that the world is providentially ordered by a God who is maximally good, just, and powerful. For many critics, evil exposes such a notion as utterly absurd.16 As such philosophical criticisms have proliferated, it is understandable that the collective attention of modern theology has likewise migrated to the philosophical problem of evil and its modern permutations for the purpose of mounting a defense. The migration of attention is not by itself a problem. It becomes detrimental, however, when an elevated preoccupation with the problem of evil causes theological accounts of evil to wither from neglect or lapse entirely into desuetude.

Another potential hazard of the shift arises when sustained preoccupation with the problematics of evil and suffering leads to a fundamental reconfiguration of the architecture of theology. Such is the case, we (David and Matthew) contend, for a number of recent theological proposals that seek to account for evil in the world by suggesting that the existence of evil is a necessary entailment of the act whereby God creates the finite order.17 This approach seems to allow a preoccupation with evil to overwhelm the doctrine of God (his transcendent freedom) and the doctrine of creation (its original goodness). Even if the account succeeds at making evil intelligible to some extent, from a dogmatic perspective the possible gain comes at too steep a cost.

In a similar vein, some recent arguments in favor of universalism appear to rest on philosophical presuppositions concerning what God must do if he is to be vindicated in the final analysis as just and good. David Bentley Hart has recently outlined a sophisticated version of this position. He contends it becomes apparent in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov that “even if something like Gregory of Nyssa’s vision of the last things [whereby suffering exercises a purgative function for a redemptive economy in which all are saved] should prove true, it will still be a happiness achieved as the residue of an inexcusable cruelty.” After all, Hart points out, it is God who willed to create a world—or, at least, he chose to allow the ongoing existence of a fallen world—in which temporal creatures are subjected to all sorts of gruesome and horrific sufferings, often through no fault of their own. In order to justify the creation of such a cosmos with its incalculable number of torments, God must do more, says Hart, than simply resolve all things in a universal salvation at the end. Rather, God must reveal in the end that He has in fact actively rescued creatures from the consequents of sin and suffering, and that absolutely nothing is lost. Hart sums up, “If God is the good creator of all, he is the savior of all, without fail, who brings to himself all he has made.”18

This position requires of the Creator God something that God has not, in Christ, specifically revealed that he will do. Because theologians, indeed all humans, are limited as creatures, we suggest theologians must not determine what the Creator God must do in order to vindicate his own goodness. Certainly, the problems Hart means to address should continue to command our theological attention, but even in the face of conceptual dissonance we must resist the temptation when faced with the problem of evil to impose a philosophical solution that, however plausible, exceeds what we can know or require of God on the basis of what God himself has revealed.19

With these concerns having been registered, we readily acknowledge that a response of some sort to the philosophical problem of evil remains an indispensable task. After all, Scripture itself and the theological tradition prepare for just such a response, though naturally the response implicit within these sources is rooted existentially in the self-revelation of God and includes an affirmation of God’s personal presence and solidarity with sufferers. Without any response to the philosophical problem of evil, it will be impossible to demonstrate that the broader theological account of evil available among Christian thinkers might even possibly possess real intelligibility and value.20 We freely admit the premise that a view rightly deemed to entail a logical contradiction should not be retained even if it proves stimulating or useful in other respects. Still, even as we acknowledge the importance of such inquiry, a response to the problem of evil is not the same thing as a theological account of evil. Whereas the effort to respond to the problem of evil removes an important obstacle to the embrace of doctrinal Christianity, a theological and biblical account seeks to make sense of suffering by incorporating it within the larger, existentially contextualized task of faith seeking understanding, in which a living relationship with Christ in the Holy Spirit conditions human reasoning about the justice, mercy, providence, and love of God.

If our suggestion is accurate that an abiding preoccupation with the philosophical problem of evil has sometimes distracted modern theologians from the task of formulating a theological account of evil, it is important for contemporary theological reflection to correct the imbalance. It will always remain a necessary task for Christian intellectuals to reflect on evil within the context of a prosecutorial trial in which Christianity sits as defendant. This was already a task taken up by Job, Jesus, Paul, and indeed all the biblical authors, though, of course, the prosecutors were not Humeans (though some were thoroughgoing skeptics of the kind found in the opening chapters of the Wisdom of Solomon). At the same time, theologians and pastors must always leverage the full resources of Christian doctrine—rooted in the living realities of faith—within a more synthetic attempt to make existential sense of suffering in theological and biblical perspective. These two tasks are not mutually exclusive, but should rather be affirmed as distinct and complementary moments within a fulsome account of theological inquiry.21 Whereas the first moment considers the coherence of Christian theism primarily from t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Chapter 1: Introduction: Evil in Christian Theology (David Luy and Matthew Levering)
• Part 1: Evil in Early Christian Sources
• Chapter 2: Judgment of Evil as the Renewal of Creation (Constantine R. Campbell)
• Chapter 3: Qoheleth and His Patristic Sympathizers on Evil and Vanity in Creation (Paul M. Blowers)
• Chapter 4: Problem of Evil: Ancient Answers and Modern Discontents (Paul L. Gavrilyuk)
• Chapter 5: Augustine and the Limits of Evil: From Creation to Christ in the Enchiridion (Han-Luen Kantzer Komline)
• Chapter 6: Augustine on Animal Death (Gavin Ortlund)
• Part 2: Contemporary Explorations
• Chapter 7: The Evil We Bury, the Dead We Carry (Michel René Barnes)
• Chapter 8: Creation and the Problem of Evil after the Apocalyptic Turn (R. David Nelson)
• Chapter 9: Creation without Covenant, Providence without Wisdom: The Example of Cormac Mccarthy’s the Crossing (Kenneth Oakes)
• Chapter 10: “The Appearance of Reckless Divine Cruelty”: Animal Pain and the Problem of Other Minds (Marc Cortez)
• Chapter 11: Recent Evolutionary Theory and the Possibility of the Fall (Daniel W. Houck)
• Chapter 12: Intellectual Disability and the Sabbath Structure of the Human Person (Jared Ortiz)
• Contributors
• Subject Index
• Scripture Index
• Old Testament