theodicy: A vindication of God’s goodness and justice in the face of the existence of evil.

I never heard the word theodicy until I started reading James Morrow’s book “Blameless in Abaddon” but I had been aware of various theodicies my entire life. A theodicy is, as mentioned in the definition, an argument intended to explain the seemingly contradictory concepts of a just, merciful and loving God and the obvious facts of human suffering and death. The theodicies discussed in Morrow’s book (which is possibly the only popular fiction novel I am aware of that has theodicies as a central part of it’s plot…) are:

  • The Disciplinary Defense: Suffering is a tool God uses to teach humankind. It’s for our own good.
  • The Hidden Harmony Defense: What appears terrible only appears that way because we are unaware of God’s bigger plan.
  • The Eschatological Defense: Oh sure there is pain today, but a reward awaits in the future (heaven, a paradise, etc) that will more than make up for it and therefore it’s just.
  • The Ontological Defense: Because God is the only perfect thing and because perfection can only be perfect relative to imperfection, imperfection must exist or the perfect creation would itself BE God.
  • The Free Will Defense: Pain and suffering are a result of free will. Free will, by definition, allows some to choose to do evil.

The theodicy I was raised with and used to teach other people was a combination of the Hidden Harmony and Eschatological defenses. It went something like this:

When God created the universe he created everything perfect. There were no wars, famines, earthquakes, volcanoes or diseases. God is, of course, perfect and unchanging and therefore would not have given up his plans for a perfect universe simply because humanity and the devil rebelled. He still has this plan in mind, however, he needs to prove for once and for all that his laws are the best laws, that he has the right to make the rules. Humanity itself is not on-trial, but it’s right to govern itself is being tested. Therefore, in due time, God will bring about the end of death and suffering and disease and wickedness, restore the lives lost and return everything to a perfect state. After having answered, for once and for all, the question of whether or not mankind can rule itself God can rule over the perfect creation in perfect justice. The end.

Notice the use of the Hidden Harmony and Eschatological defenses and the implicit involvement of the Disciplinary defense. Suffering is part of God’s bigger plan (his vindication of his soveriegnty and the eternal well-being of the whole universe that will result from his divine rulership). This is the Hidden Harmony. Sure, God’s allowance of evil seems terrible but on the larger scale it’s for the greater good. The Eschatological defense is partnered with the Hidden Harmony defense by promising that even the evil itself will be negated in the future paradise. This means that there was never really any evil attributable to God at all, just the temporary illusion of it. Some, but not all, evil that takes place is actually Godly justice in action, or discipline. This may seem like suffering to those who experience it but it is, of course, for the betterment of all. The remainder of suffering is the fault of mankind and of Satan, not God, and is therefore not disciplinary.

This theology (I now realize) allows no room for either the free-will or ontological defenses because it posits an initially perfect creation. The ontological defense claims that evil is required to understand good, that the imperfect must exist in order for the perfect to be appreciated. This is directly undermined, however, by the Biblical concept that God made the creation perfect and intends to return it to perfection. How else are you supposed to understand a scripture like Revelation 21:3, 4 which says, roughly: ‘The tent of God will be with mankind and they will be his peoples. And he will wipe out every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, neither mourning, nor outcry, nor pain will be anymore. The former things have passed away.’ If the creation hadn’t fallen into imperfection, it would have stayed perfect just like God. If returned to perfection in the future the state would still be true. Does this mean that God would stop being perfect and just if the creation was no longer imperfect? No. So, logically, if God plans to return the universe to perfection than imperfection is not necessary for the existence of perfection. Either it is necessary and permanent or unnecessary and temporary and the Bible claims it’s temporary so either goodbye Bible or goodbye ontological defense.

Free will also falls in this theology. I mean, it still exists, it simply is not an excuse for suffering and pain. According to this view, free will was given to Adam and Eve and Satan and everybody else (angels, as-yet-uncreated-beings-on-other-planets-in-the-future) and is not responsible for evil and suffering. Had God chosen to, he could have immediately destroyed Adam and Eve and Satan when they all sinned. They exercised their free will to sin, he exercised his to kill them for it. The reason he did not kill them immediately was because there had as yet been no legal precedent set for the action. The creation was new and while free will was allowed, the consequences of it had not been fully explored yet. By allowing people to use their free will however they wanted for a limited time, God was laying the groundwork for his right to use divine justice in the future. Free will is not to blame and in the future, a perfect world without suffering and death will not come about because of the removal of free will. Rather, God will be free to (for example) kill a person just before he murders another person, knowing that that person had used their free will for murder but sparing the victim the consequence of the act. By legally establishing his right to rule (the Hidden Harmony behind the suffering and death) he will be able to function not as a controller who destroys free-will, but rather as a super-cop to stop it’s negative consequences. You’ll remain free to try to shoot your neighbor in the head but a) you’ll be perfect so you won’t want to and b) even if you did, God could stop the bullet and smite you for trying. So, yes, free will leads to some evil but it’s not the fundamental cause and evil can be abolished while free will continues to exist, at least according to this particular theology.

Now, I don’t personally believe in God and if you read my blog you probably already know that. So, why bother discussing these things? Mostly I like working through conceptual problems and this is a biggie. Also, I’ve spent many years of my life using this particular defense of God and believing both in Him (I always think it’s funny that you capitalize the pronouns when referring to God, but it’s generally accepted as correct English) and in the rightness of what He was doing. I mean, stepping back from our little planet here and trying to see the REALLY big picture (by which I mean the entire cosmos) all the human suffering ever to occur is nothing compared to the idea of trillions of populated planets with quadrillions of sentient creatures, living for all eternity under divine rule. If lovely lonely little earth is the cosmic court case, the proving ground for the establishment of universal justice, than individual human rights are fairly meaningless. The suffering and pain and death are just teeny-tiny temporary blips on the face of a teeny-tiny little planet in a teeny-tiny stretch of time that only appear to be a big deal to us because we too are so teeny-tiny. I couldn’t just reject such a comforting and apparently rational explanation for all the worlds ills without reason and I am writing this because I want to explain and explore those reasons. I’ve given a lot of thought to this question and I’ve found that despite it’s initially satisfying appearance, this solution to the problem of evil doesn’t work, and here’s why.

In order for the Hidden Harmony involved in this theology to make sense, the key issue of the perfect justice of God needs to be established for once and for all. If this issue fails to be established, then the court case is a failure and the suffering of humankind is meaningless. So, is the court case being conducted fairly? Is the issue that is supposedly on trial actually being tested by the suffering of humanity? Well, let’s look at the culprits in the drama, Adam, Eve, Satan and any angels who agreed with their decision to test God. They supposedly raised an issue, via their rebellion, of whether or not God had a right to rule. God then removed his divine support and sin and imperfection followed. Inevitably death followed on the heels of sin because as Romans 6:23 says, death is the wage paid for sinning.

The first thing that needs to be identified in order to see why this conception fails is to get at the core question which has always, in my experience, been generally phrased as “Can man successfully rule themselves without God or do they need him?” The question should really be rephrased, however, as, “Could perfect man successfully have ruled themselves without God or did they need him?” See, if the conception of a “perfect man” were a reality, if the universe was really created in perfection, than Adam, Eve and Satan were perfect at the time that they “sinned” (on a side note: the definition of sin apparently was, in this case, exercising their free will in a manner that was not according to God’s will). So, you see, they did not raise the question of whether imperfect, flawed humanity could make it’s own decisions successfully since they themselves were not imperfect or flawed until after God made them so. But wait, you might ask, couldn’t making a decision that was not in harmony with God’s will cause imperfection automatically as a side effect perhaps? Maybe God wasn’t threatening punishment, but simply warning them about how things were? This argument fails because if using free will in a way inconsistent with God’s wishes automatically causes imperfection than free will can’t possibly exist in a perfect universe. The moment somebody (even by accident) makes a decision that goes against the divine will, the universe is no longer perfect.

No, making a decision that is not in harmony with God’s express will cannot have (in and of itself) the ability to cause imperfection in any universe where free will actually exists so God had to have inflicted the imperfection on them as punishment. This means that the issue related to mankind’s sovereignty versus God’s was only relevant to perfect mankind. By cursing humankind with imperfection, by causing it to be inheritable, God was staging a mock trial. He was trying a different question altogether, the question of “Can imperfect, limited and crippled mankind rule itself?”. Furthermore, he didn’t stay hands off in the affair, according to the Bible, but actively participated in it. He played favorites, smote those he wished to, killed, redeemed, judged and fooled around with the course of human events to get the results he wished. This is not a just trial.

Let me illustrate. If somebody came to me and said, I can run the 100 meter dash in under 10 seconds, I could say, “That’s impossible. Let’s put that to the test” and allow them to run the race. If they were successful I would have to admit that their claim was a true one, if unsuccessful the matter would be decided that they could not do it. (Yes, I’m over-simplifying, since they could train and try again, but let’s just stick with the example). Now, let’s say that just before they decided to run I switched their track shoes with lead boots filled with shards of broken glass and covered the track in burning pitch? Would I be putting their claim to the test? What if I instead redefined the definition of a meter or a second to be say, twice the length for the former and half the length for the latter? Would this be a fair test of their claim? Obviously not. The deck would be stacked against them. Perhaps on a normal track in normal track shoes without lacerated feet they could actually run 100 meters in under 10 seconds, but a flawed test does nothing to settle the question.

In a similar way it makes no sense that God could create sentient beings with free will who are made both a) in his image and b) in perfection, punish them for using their free will contrary to his wishes, place their descendants under a fundamental state of imperfection from birth and allow the imperfect descendants to suffer and die in order to prove that he has the right to rule over a perfect creation. This “test” doesn’t put the central question to the test at all. It is contrary to logic, reason and basic human justice that God can change all the initial conditions in which the question was raised and call it a legitimate solution to the question when it (obviously) fails. Not only does the central question not get put to the test by this situation, but God even tampers with the test according to the Bible by choosing favorite people to bless, enemies to punish, killing babies and children, drowning Pharoahs and all sorts of other stuff. He is in no way “hands off” and humanity is not immune from His influence (both positive and negative). Again, by being involved in all aspects of the history of an intentionally flawed humanity God (according to the Bible) completely screws up any chance of answering the question posed by the rebellion in Eden. Who knows if perfect humankind could possibly have governed themselves? The situation has never been put to the test, God has never let humankind live in their initial perfect state and stayed hands off. The whole concept is contradicted by the very Bible story from which it is drawn.

Where does this leave what I like to call the “Court Case” version of the Hidden Harmony theodicy? If it were true, if this were really in essence a universal court case, then it would be a mistrial. The test is wrong, the defendant has changed all the rules and mucked around with the proceedings, the issue cannot possibly be decided by the sufferings and deaths of millions of flawed humans.

The best news of all, for what it’s worth, is that we human beings are not descended from some sinning pair of people in a garden. There is no divine court case. The story is a myth and the whole concept of inherited sin is a Judeo-Christian construction of ideas to try to make us feel better about why we go against our own natures and why we do things that lead to bad consequences, why natural disasters and illness kill people and why the universe seems to be conspiring against us. It may seem sad to think that perhaps it is just chaos and apparently random cause and effect that are behind the difficulties of life but it’s a lot more tolerable than to think that we’re suffering unjustly in a cosmic miscarriage of justice just to give God the right to kill us if we use our free will in a way he disapproves of. That story paints a bad picture of God the merciful and just and also paints a bad picture for us as human beings. Feeling as if we are cursed from the cradle to the grave is a horrible disincentive to do things with our lives. It makes life feel pointless until such time in the future as we are rescued. There is no evidence we will ever be rescued so isn’t it better to feel that life has a real point right now? Isn’t it better to feel that what you do today for your fellow humans matters?

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RyanSutter has content marketing with Arkayne Socialize.

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