Ricoeur on Evil

i'm still reading through Paul Ricoeur's Figuring the Sacred (Augsburg Fortress, 1995), but i really liked this on evil in the introduction:

While the Bible does offer a theodicy of retribution in which the victims, because of their faithlessness, are held responsible for the violence inflicted upon them, Ricoeur argues instead for a wisdom theodicy of lamentation and anger where the perennial cries of Why me? and How long? are seen as the most adequate responses to unmitigated evil.
Mark I. Wallace, introduction, Figuring the Sacred, p32.

having read David Bentley Hart on evil (the doors of the sea) and Miroslav Volf on forgiveness (exclusion and embrace), this is close to where Hart ends up (for whom God is always opposed to evil) - and quite different to Volf (who emphasises the responsibility of both the perpetrator and victim in seeking reconciliation).

i like the way he's not systematising, but using the bible's language we see in the context of suffering in evil.

praxis vs theology

chatting about evil again. reading david bentley hart's doors of the sea again.

but this time it's with others, including mark and steve, who have been interviewing christian counsellors for their pilgrims podcast.

the reason i mention this is not to promote them (they do enough self-promotion as it is), but to raise the question of how what we say to people relates to what we think - and particularly in the context of suffering.

if we believe evil is evil, an affront to God, an absurdity, then let us say this.

however, if we believe in a divine, universal harmony, where nothing happens but by the hand of God, and we are talking to someone suffering - why can we not say this? is this not the gospel of comfort to the suffering, the poor, the bound? but we realise that saying 'it's all a part of God's plan' is no comfort, and not pastorally appropriate.

my question is, if what we believe does not match with what we are willing and comfortable to say, are we too weak to say the truth that might hurt, or is our theology profoundly impersonal and thus leaving us in a schizophrenic state as we try to comfort the suffering?

what do counsellors do? what do you do?

can we in a clear conscience preach one thing from the pulpit and say another in the hospital room?

if evil is evil, it is evil. let us proclaim the goodness of God despite that evil.

love, providence & Doors of the Sea

love is not:

a reaction. in God, who is its transcendent origin and end, it is the one infinite and changeless act of being that makes all else actual, and so is purely positive, sufficient in itself, and without any need of contrariety to be fully vital and creative. As trinity, God [...] has not need of any external pathos to waken or fecundate his love. We are not necessary to him: he is not nourished by or sacrifices or ennobled by our virtues, any more than he is diminished by our sins and sufferings. [...] though he had no need of us, still he loved us when we were not. And this is why love, in its divine depth, is apatheia.

David Bentley Hart, Doors of the Sea 2005: p77

In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

1 John 4:10



providence is not:
a small town in the midwest. well, it might be. in fact it probably is. i need to go to bed so can't be bothered checking.
but the point is, i never really considered what providence meant until quite near to the end of the Doors of the Sea.
to paraphrase Hart, Providence is the idea that God will not allow evil to subvert the bringing about of his Kingdom. it is not to say that he must use evil to bring it about, for that would be to grant evil a place it does not deserve. nor does providence collapse the transendence of God, and the rest of the created order, into one homogeneous amalgam, where God is not only sovereign over, but also one with, the evil deeds.
i think this is starting to make sense of what i've been struggling with for a while; this book along with conversations with friends, has been really helpful in trying to nut some of this stuff out.

scroll down to look for other posts about my thoughts on this book. there should be one more soon - the last.

Doors of the Sea - Pt I

i must say, i'm loving this book.
starting to read it, it felt like the 1874 Australian classic, For the Term of His Natural Life, by Marcus Clarke, as he describes the scenery of tasmania as he begins his life as a convict.

with the breath-taking descriptions of the geography of the surrounding region, as well as his descriptions of the 1883 Krakatoa eruption, then the earthquake in Lisbon in 1755 from Voltaire's perspective. His deep interaction with this profound poem is very honest, trying to comprehend the horror of that day when so many died on All Saints day when their churches collapsed, and then many more died from the resulting tidal waves from the rivers, and then the fires, and then from the seas.
How are we to comprehend this God who brings such disaster on his creation, asks Voltaire.

Hart then moves to the Christian Dostoyevsky, specifically with his play, the Brothers Karamazov, as Ivan, trying to comprehend the horrendous deeds done to one man by another - not by an impersonal deist God as Voltaire decries, but by one creature to another. the callousness of man is incomprehensible, and as a non-Christian workmate confided to me, how can anyone say that acts of such bestiality are "In God's Plan"?

that is why Hart concludes this first half with the sentence,

Voltaire sees only the terrible truth that the history of suffering and death is not morally intelligible. Dostoyevsky sees [...] that is would be far more terrible if it were.

quite.

bring on part ii!

the problem of evil

are things as good as they can be?
no.
why aren't they?
God uses bad stuff for 3 reasons:

1. as judgement because of sin (c/f isa45:7 dan9, 1cor11:30)
   
2. to discipline us as his children (c/f heb12:10)
   
3. to test/make sure of our faith (c/f 1pet1)

therefore we should be satisfied that God is in control over all, knowing he works all things for good (Rom8:28)

right?
wrong.

reading this article by Matheson Russell, it was good to see his righteous indignation at this "ideology", this apathetic, laissez-faire view of the evil.

Theodicy [This idea of God using evil for good] misrepresents evil by saying that evil is necessary for the good; God is weaving a tapestry and he needs the light and the dark thread to make the picture beautiful. But the analogy won’t wash: while the weaver may need the light and dark threads, the creator of heaven and earth made a world that was good, very good without a drop of blood being spilt. And theodicy puts us in the wrong relationship to evil since it asks us to put our pain, outrage and opposition to one side and to see the bigger picture, the harmonious and rational whole of the universe in which evil has its place. But this does not do justice to victims of pain, loss and injustice. And even more importantly, it doesn’t do justice to the good news of the gospel [...]

and what is the good news of the gospel?
that God is seeking to right the wrongs.
that he will not be content with a world that is self-destructive, consuming itself in hatred.
that no price is too great a price to pay, that this world might be redeemed for that which he purposed it.