I always feel pressured when I do these things. If I had more time to think, maybe I could come up with better answers. But, oh well, here goes…

The One Movie Meme

1. One movie that made you laugh
There’s Something About Mary

2. One movie that made you cry
Mystic River

3. One movie you loved when you were a child
Willow 

4. One movie you’ve seen more than once
Top Gun - I’ve seen this more than any person should ever watch a single movie

5. One movie you loved, but were embarrassed to admit it
Wimbledon

6. One movie you hated
Mr. Brooks

7. One movie that scared you
The Exorcist - I know, I know, totally cliche. But this is the only movie that I have seen that has given me consistent nightmares.

8. One movie that bored you
The Hulk - The newest one with Eric Bana. I have higher hopes for the sequel

9. One movie that made you happy
A River Runs Through It

10. One movie that made you miserable
I’ve never been made miserable by a movie…

11. One movie you weren’t brave enough to see
Brokeback Mountain - I got a play-by-play from my mom… weird and sufficient for me…

12. One movie character you’ve fallen in love with
Princess Buttercup

13. The last movie you saw
There Will be Blood - Half of it anyway

14. The next movie you hope to see
The Dark Knight and the other half of There Will be Blood

15. Now tag five people: I don’t even know how to tag…

I guess I have been tagged by Christian, so I better follow the meta-rules of blogdom and play my part.

The One Movie Meme

1. One movie that made you laugh
The Big Lebowski - Perfect picture of what it is like to be a slacker in L.A.

2. One movie that made you cry
City of God

3. One movie you loved when you were a child
The Empire Strikes Back - I spent one summer watching it almost every day.

4. One movie you’ve seen more than once
Monty Python and the Holy Grail - At least 50 or 60 times.

5. One movie you loved, but were embarrassed to admit it
Dead Alive

6. One movie you hated
Armageddon - Ugh…

7. One movie that scared you
Before the Devil Knows Your Dead - Lumet slaps the audience in the face with these one-dimensional characters.

8. One movie that bored you
Van Helsing

9. One movie that made you happy
Love & Death

10. One movie that made you miserable
Se7en - First saw it when I was 13 or so.

11. One movie you weren’t brave enough to see
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer - The first 15 minutes disturbed me so much that I had to turn it off and send it back to Netflix immediately.

12. One movie character you’ve fallen in love with
Claudia Cardinale in Once Upon a Time in the West - ‘Nuff said.

13. The last movie you saw
Murder on the Orient Express - I have been on a Sidney Lumet binge lately.

14. The next movie you hope to see
The next Indiana Jones sequel - I hope that it is not just a series of self-deprecating old age jokes and one-liners.

15. Now tag five people: I don’t think that I know five people in the blogosphere, so I guess I tag… Austin.

One of my favorite bands, MeWithoutYou, has been gaining ground in the indie music scene for the last couple of years. I can vividly remember seeing them at the Whisky in Hollywood about 3-4 years ago before the release of Catch for us the Foxes. It was one of the best performances I have ever seen, and that is a compliment directed principally towards their enigmatic vocalist Aaron Weiss (here are some live videos of the band playing an acoustic set in a record shop). He is my favorite contemporary lyricist, and quite a good guy, to boot. You can read an enlightening interview with him here concerning matters spiritual, physical, environmental, and musical. Here’s a quick excerpt:

Everyone has a story. Some have seen him walking around the festival grounds, picking half-eaten sandwiches out of the garbage and finishing them. Others talk about how he and his friends live in a commune in Philadelphia, sharing their possessions and profits from the band to live a life similar to those in the early church. Most who’ve met him say you haven’t felt a real hug until you’ve experienced his bone-cracking embrace. Everyone swears there’s something different about him, something beyond guitar riffs and record sales.

Without a doubt, the Jewish perception of God has been fundamentally one of terror. It is not as though the Jewish people did not also have a profound love for their Creator–because this is also evidently true. But in a very real sense, to the Jew, God has always been utterly Transcendent, Wholly Other, the Real, the Unapproachable, the Un-image-able. This is indicated no more clearly than in the first two commandments of the Decalogue:

You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.[1]

 In these two commands we are exposed not only to the preeminence of Yahweh over other “gods” but we also see the terror that is threatened for those who refuse to recognize such preeminence by “imaging” Him. The Apostle Paul, a strict Jew, continuously affirmed this idea into the NT epoch. Paradoxically, he also asserted that Jesus was the image of the invisible God. In Paul therefore, the OT axiom that God is un-image-able is inviolably collapsed in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, the implications of which give the Incarnation soteriological and aesthetic value.

Judaism’s Exclusive Monotheism

First-century Judaism was exclusively monotheistic. Although the term “monotheism” could be liberally applied to the Greco-Roman religious world of the first century, the monotheism of the Jews was quite particular. Greco-Roman monotheistic rhetoric has been found in non-Jewish sources during the Greco-Roman era. But as Larry Hurtado has shown, this “pagan monotheism” was nothing more than “the recognition of all gods as expressions of one common divine essence or as valid second-order gods under a (often unknowable) high god, and, as such, as worthy of worship.”[2] Such a definition would not suffice for Judaism, whose God was “represented as one and unique, as creator, ruler and king, residing in heaven, all-powerful, all-seeing, omniscient, as father of Israel, as savior, as judge, as righteous, terrible, merciful, benevolent and forbearing.”[3]

In his book God Crucified: Monotheism & Christology in the New Testament, Richard Bauckham maintains that not only were the first-century Jews monotheistic but they were adamantly, self-consciously monotheistic. He evidences his thesis in two ways: (1) by asserting that the Jewish insistence on reciting the Shema twice daily was a self-conscious reminder that their allegiance was to God alone and (2) by showing that keeping the Decalogue ensured pure allegiance to Yahweh.[4] The Shema went as follows: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deut 6:4). And as Bauckham notes, it continues with the requirement of total devotion to this one God: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deut 6:5).[5] Both the Shema and the Decalogue therefore served to assert the absolute “uniqueness of Yahweh as the one and only God.”[6] But this uniqueness was not merely intellectual assent. It was also, and perhaps primarily, an accord of belief and praxis that emphasized exclusive worship and obedience to Yahweh.

In recent years, not a few scholars have disregarded the traditional perspective of Jewish monotheism in favor of alternative non-Unitarian models. Most notably, Peter Hayman claims that even through the Middle Ages Jewish religion maintained a “dualistic pattern” and that “functionally Jews believed in the existence of two gods.”[7] The first God was “the supreme creator God, the other his vizier or prime minister, or some other spiritual agency, who really ‘runs the show’, or at least provides the point of contact between God and humanity.”[8] In rejecting the majority belief that Jewish monotheism made a decisive break with pagan polytheism, Hayman proposes an auxiliary account, invoking support from five[9] axioms: (1) indications that a doctrine of creation ex nihilo is not found until well into the Middle Ages; (2) references to the possibility of mystical unity with God and to ideas of metamorphosis of human figures (e.g., Enoch) into heavenly/angelic beings; (3) the prominence of angels in ancient Jewish texts, and prohibitions against worshipping them; (4) evidence of Jewish practice of magic involving the invocation of a variety of heavenly figures (usually named angels) along with God as sources of magical power; (5) the alleged survival of a divine consort of Yahweh in post-exilic references to Wisdom and Logos.

Of these five axioms, only the last four will here elicit any discussion.[10] However, for the purposes of this paper axioms 2,3, and 4 will be amalgamated. Therefore, the remaining two axioms (axiom 2-3-4 and axiom 5) represent two categories[11] of intermediary figures in Jewish religion. The first might be called “principal angels and exalted patriarchs.” These are figures such as Enoch and Moses; even the angels Michael and Gabriel could be included. They are figures that are given important parts in God’s economic action over the world. Hayman insists that the theme of self-identification with God and the exaltation of these patriarchal and angelic figures are found “virtually everywhere in Judaism.”[12] Drawing largely from Jewish mysticism, Hayman even asserts that Daniel 12:3 resonates with ideas of mystical apotheosis.

The second category includes personifications of God Himself (e.g. Logos and Wisdom). In Hayman’s mind, “Wisdom is a primordial being… the mother of all things,” who becomes known as a “second god” in Philo, legitimizing the dualistic pattern and functional two-god theology of Second Temple Judaism.[13]

Responding to the former category, Richard Bauckham accuses Hayman and others of a less-than-careful reading of the disputed texts. While it is true that the principal angels enjoy rank and responsibility over aspects of the created order, they never participate in God’s rule over it. In fact, there are many accounts in Jewish literature where these angels are clearly identified as servants of God, not co-regents of the universe.[14]

Turning to the latter category, both Bauckham and Hurtado adamantly claim that scholars like Hayman have misunderstood the thread of thought in the Jewish mind concerning Wisdom and Logos. Bauckham prefers to call these figures personifications or hypostatizations of aspects of God. Hurtado simply uses attributes. Regardless of the language employed, both men agree that the Word and the Wisdom of God are not to be viewed as other-than God but rather as “intrinsic to His own identity.”[15] And while Hurtado is comfortable with claiming that Wisdom was God’s “vice-regent for the guidance and care of his elect people,”[16] at the same time Bauckham asserts that Wisdom is placed within the unique identity of Yahweh, leaving room for a real distinction within God’s identity without compromising Jewish monotheism.

Jewish monotheism was something that was regularly proclaimed from pre-exilic Jewish writings through Second Temple literature. And while there may be rhetorical anomalies in the writings that seem to imply the existence and worship of multiple beings, perhaps it’s best to “take people as monotheistic if that is how they describe themselves.”[17] The patriarchal and angelic beings should not be considered as vice-regents or viziers of God. They were highly respected figures but always considered as distinct from the unique identity of God. Wisdom and Logos on the other hand surely should, without stating that they are somehow depicted as subordinate beings. Rather, they ought to be viewed as aspects of the very hypostatized unique identity of God, aspects with real distinctions within God’s strict monotheistic identity.

The reactions against liberation theology from both the right and the left are misguided. Hannity acts as though liberation theology is inherently racist – ‘how dare they actually make a distinction between white and black’! The Conservative acts as if racial prejudice is simply a thing of the past. If anyone brings the issue of race into the conversation, then they must be a racist, even if they represent that minority. The race issue, in this case, has been moved to the unconscious realm. Prejudice still exists; blacks are imprisoned in droves, are kept from the better paying jobs, and are generally looked down upon in certain circles, but since the superficial issues of the “separate but equal” doctrine have been nullified, the white man has been cathartically satisfied. He feels as if he’s done his part.

On the other hand, Colmes reaction is no better. He simply wants to dismiss the real problems that liberation theology brings to the fore. He wants to excuse the ‘separatism’ as a necessary component of ‘angry black man’ syndrome, pacifying its true intent. He sees liberation theology as a healthy form of ‘community formation’, rather than the radical foray into socio-political critique that it is.

Here is where we need a true grasp of what Liberation theology really is; and we must distinguish between two different kinds: what I will call ecclesial Liberation theology, and radical Liberation theology. First, let us look at ecclesial Liberation theology through the eyes of Gustavo Gutierrez.

Gutierrez’s view of a proper liberation theology is founded upon the life of the church. Unlike the historical materialism of Marxism, Gutierrez wants a revolution founded upon the life and deeds of Christ – and that means a quiet revolution, but not in the sense of volume. As Gutierrez himself has said, “The Eucharist is the first task of the church.” The irony is that it is a revolution, but the weapons of our warfare are bread and wine, not guns and knives (or butter). As Karl Barth was fond of saying, “To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.” Because of the advent of Christ, the world has been changed forever. When God entered the world at the Incarnation, eternity was brought into our temporal existence. When God granted us the benefits of adoption through faith in Christ, He effectively nullified the necessity of violent revolution. Christ created a new path. If we are to live a cruciform life, a life that resembles the passive resistance of Christ and the apostles, then we must first pray, and then love. This is our revolution – when we are weak, then He is strong.

On the other hand, radical Liberation theology takes its cue from the violent revolutionary politics of the French and Russian Revolutions of the mid-19^th century. Lenin and Robespierre are its heroes – not Peter and Paul. This is a theology that refuses to break down the dividing wall of Jew and Gentile, or rich and poor, or black and white, etc. It wants to create divisions, and it wants to do so violently. Unfortunately, I believe that Jeremiah Wright’s comments often fall under this rubric. This revolution will ultimately end just like the world’s other revolutions, with the guillotine. Violence rejects the peace of Christ, even though His peace does come packed with a sword. It returns back to the shadowy covenant of Moses, where God shows favor to nations and people groups rather than to sinners.

What we need is a new hermeneutic for understanding the social - a sort of theo-epistemology which leads to a theological social structure with theologically-centered living within. When we look to God, rather than utility or capital, to determine how we must live, we will come close to something radical – and possibly even socialist. Jesus Christ died because of His radicality, yet it was a radicalism that has not yet been duplicated. In the western academic realm, it is easy to speak as if we wish to throw down our pens and pencils and pick up a sword. It’s in our nature to react with hostility when we feel subjugated. But how difficult it is to pray for our enemies, and love those who despise us. This is why Herbert McCabe says that “Christianity alone, because it is the articulate presence of Christ, the future of mankind, cannot (however hard it sometimes seems to try) wholly betray its mission. As it seems to me, like St. Peter and the twelve, we remain Christians because there is nowhere else to go: if Christianity is not the revolution, nothing else is.”[2]

“God can be called the truth only when ‘truth’ is understood in the sense of the Greek word aletheia. God’s being, or truth, is the event of his self-disclosure… Just as his oneness consists in the unity of his life as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, so in relation to the reality distinct from him he is free de jure and de facto to be the God of man. He exists neither next to man nor merely above him, but rather with him, by him, and most important of all, for him. He is man’s God not only as Lord but also as father, brother, friend; and this relationship implies neither a diminution nor in any way a denial, but, instead, a confirmation and display of his divine self-essence itself. ‘I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and humble spirit,…’ (Isaiah 57:15.) This he does in the history of his deeds. A God who confronted man simply as exalted, distant, and strange, that is, a divinity without humanity, could only be the God of a dysangelion, of a ‘bad news’ instead of the ‘good news’. He would be the God of a scornful, judging, deadly No. Even if he were still able to command the attention of man, he would be a God whom man would have to avoid, from whom he would have to flee, whom he would rather not know, since he would not in the least be able to satisfy his demands.”

________
~ Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology: An Introduction, pgs. 9, 11.

I’ve recently had a few Francis/Edith Schaeffer books assigned to read before I graduate in a couple weeks. I read all of Schaeffer’s theological/philosophical works in high school, and they almost single-handedly provoked my interest in the subject. However, like many who share my story, Schaeffer’s fundamentalism and lack of knowledge of the primary sources of the philosophers he critiqued eventually turned me off.The most recent book that I have had the privilege to skim through is Edith Schaeffer’s What is Family?, of which I have mixed reactions. Mrs. Schaeffer’s compassionate view of family life is immediately engaging. She consistently writes with a humble air that is impossible to resist. You can almost see an old grandmother sitting by her bedside, tilting her spectacles and quietly reminiscing about her past experiences and other anecdotal occurrences.

The best chapter by far in the book is the one entitled “A Shelter in the Time of Storm.” In this chapter Schaeffer warmly, but penetratingly writes about how to utilize the tough times in family life in order to make them worthwhile; in a word, to have no regrets. The section where she speaks of taking care of the sick was especially benign. For example, in one section she writes “When illness hits we should remember that this period of time is part of the whole of life. This is not just a non-time to be shoved aside, but a portion of time that counts. It is part of the well person’s life, as well as part of the sick person’s life.”

This sentiment has had a particular impact on me given my current family situation. A few months ago, prior to the beginning of my final semester, my grandfather, with whom I was very close, died somewhat suddenly. It was the most traumatic period of my entire life, as well as for my mother and brother (who spent every day after school with him, just as I did as a child). The couple of weeks when he was in the hospital before his death were seen, at least by most of my family, as a sort of non-time. It was a time to be forgotten as a soon as possible, an instant regret. It seemed as though there was nothing that could redeem the Absolute Evil of this period. However, I see now that there is a different way to treat this stage of life. I can at least say that my grandfather himself would have wished for the same dynamic that Schaeffer proposes in this book: to not waste any time with regrets, but to live for the moment, but in a Christian sense. It is about redeeming the time for the sake of the sick as well as for the well.

Yet there is another aspect that has affected my reading of Mrs. Schaeffer. I have recently been engaged in reading Frank Schaeffer’s family memoir, Crazy for God (you can read a great interview with Frank here). With all politics aside, I believe Frank to be completely honest in his portrayal of his family life, the good and the bad. For example, his alleged “outing” of his father’s abusive relationship with his mother is actually defended as being due more to true belief than hypocrisy. Even his recounting of his father’s suicidal depressions is written with a sympathetic air. Through all this, however, I think we should see a silver lining, but not a naïve one. At one point Mrs. Schaeffer delivers the most profound line in the entire book, summing up how the reader, and especially the reader that knows the Schaeffer’s dark secrets, should synthesize this seemingly contradictory information: “People throw away what they could have, by insisting on perfection which they cannot have, and looking for it where they will never find it.” I really do hope that both Francis and Edith really believed this as much as I do.

The famous Lutheran theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once remarked that “the one empirically verifiable Christian doctrine is the doctrine of original sin”[1]. He said this in order to empathize with the fact that very few people will go so far as to deny the infamous “problem of evil”. Some have attempted to do so (e.g. Mary Baker Eddy), but a flat out denial of what is most basic to our being is bound to be less than existentially satisfying. If one believes in a traditional monotheistic conception of Divinity, then one must grapple with the existence of evil in the face of this God. If He is omnipotent and omnibenevolent, then how can evil exist in His world? If He has the ability and He has the motivation, then why do we, especially those who are deemed His chosen people, still suffer? This is the dilemma we face.

One way to reconcile this supposed logical inconsistency is to radically redefine the term “omnibenevolence”. Many so-called “determinists” do exactly this. Determinism is the belief that what is “good” in God is simply what He does by nature. Murder is wrong because God does not murder; and lying is wrong because God does not lie. Therefore, the statement “God is good” is a logical tautology. Since “good” is defined as “what God does”, then God can do no other than be good; or “be Himself”. While this seems prima facie to allow moral relativism (couldn’t God one day decide lying is good?), many Christians have latched on to this uber-sovereign notion of God’s character. If God is completely “above” our finite moral categories, then He can, and should, commit atrocities in order to further His plans. After all, “who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, ‘Why have you made me like this’? Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?”[2] Thus the problem of evil is eradicated. Unfortunately, however, this theological move makes God into the devil. Such a re-definition forces the problem of evil to become the problem of God. As Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart observes,

”There are those who suffer from a palpably acute anxiety regarding the honor due the divine sovereignty. Certainly many Christians over the centuries have hastened to resituate the New Testament imagery of spiritual warfare securely within the one all-determining will of God, fearing that to deny that evil and death are the “left hand” of God’s goodness in creation or the necessary “shadow” of his righteousness would be to deny divine omnipotence as well.”[3]

Determinism fails to account for the goodness of God and the freedom of man that the Scripture seems to assert. Not the goodness of God that turns the Infinite God into a divine Santa Claus, nor the libertarian freedom of the philosophers that turns finite man into a little autonomous god; but that of the Scriptures: “As I live, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live”[4]. The goodness of God that is thoroughly kenotic and incarnational: the Infinite becoming finite in order to make the finite, like Him, infinite. The freedom of man that makes mankind responsible for his actions rather than making God a sovereign schoolyard bully that takes pleasure in pilfering our proverbial lunch money for His own ends (as if He needed such a thing?). Allowing God to be the Hegelian synthesis between good (thesis) and evil (antithesis) only pushes the problem back further. In fact, it might be said that the problem becomes no more. For, if God is the problem, how can there be a solution?

Many theologians agree that re-defining God’s goodness in this way ends in nihilism. In contrast, some maintain that we must keep God out of the equation and allow man’s freedom to bear the blame for evil and sin. The best expression of this “Free Will Defense” comes from Notre Dame philosopher Alvin Plantinga:

“A world containing creatures who are significantly free (and freely perform more good than evil actions) is more valuable, all else being equal, than a world containing no free creatures at all. Now God can create free creatures, but He cannot cause or determine them to do only what is right. For if He does so, then they are not significantly free after all; they do not do what is right freely. To create creatures capable of moral good, therefore, He must create creatures capable of moral evil; and He cannot give these creatures the freedom to perform evil and at the same time prevent them from doing so. As it turned out, sadly enough, some of the free creatures God created went wrong in the exercise of their freedom; this is the source of moral evil. The fact that free creatures sometimes go wrong, however, counts neither against God’s omnipotence nor against His goodness; for He could have forestalled the occurrence of moral evil only by removing the possibility of moral good.”[5]

This free will defense has strengths, and they are legion. First, the free will defense places the blame for sin squarely where it belongs: on those who have sinned. Second, it places God in the role of Judge rather than the dual roles of Judge-Defendant, having perpetrated the crimes Himself, a la determinism. And finally, the free will defense makes the gospel beautiful again by having God deliver man from his self-made predicament. Despite all these strengths, however, free will defenders still have one major difficulty: the problem of permission.

God is not directly responsible for evil; to this we agree. But is God indirectly responsible for it? Did he “allow” or “permit” evil in order to showcase all of His divine attributes? Many theodicies bank on this turn in God’s divine psychology. This view holds that God allows evil to occur in this world in order to ensure that the greatest good is achieved in the end. Following Leibniz, it is believed that God is obligated by His nature to create the best of all possible worlds. According to Leibniz, this would require a certain amount of evil, for some goods cannot be achieved without presupposing the existence of some evils. Forgiveness, mercy, grace, and justice are all thought to be attributes of God that necessitate the subsistence of evil in order to be dispensed.

Following Bentham and Mill’s Utilitarian ethics, God creates a redemptive-history that will balance itself out in the end. Here, the biblical notion of the providence of God becomes 19^th century continental moral philosophy with a dark twist. Hart describes this problematic view in stating that

“Many Christians clearly seem to wish to believe there is a divine plan in all the seeming randomness of nature’s violence that accounts for every instance of suffering, privation, and loss in a sort of total sum. This is an understandable impulse. That there is a transcendent providence that will bring God’s good ends out of the darkness of history - in spite of every evil - no Christian can fail to affirm. But providence (as even Voltaire seems to have understood) is not simply a ‘total sum’ or ‘infinite equation’ that leaves nothing behind.”[6]

Ivan Karamazov, the great atheist in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, responds to this notion directly when confronting his monk brother: “It is not God that I do not accept… I merely most respectfully return him the ticket”.

D.Z. Phillips, the great Wittgensteinian scholar, suggests that “to rescue sufferings from degradation by employing cost-benefit analysis is like rescuing a prostitute from degradation by telling her to charge higher fees”.[7]

The main problem with this method (despite its many strengths) is that it attempts to justify the existence of evil aesthetically. It makes the mistake of making evil necessary. If Augustine is right, and evil is a negation, a cancer, a nothing, then we should not explain evil in this way – if at all.

And thus we see the real problem in theodicy; what I will call the problem of correlational theodicies[8]. On one side we have an Aristotelian God who is so overly sovereign that He finds it necessary to contemplate only Himself for all of eternity, completely oblivious to all of the suffering that transpires on the earth. On the other side, utilitarian ideas of “goodness as utility” help interpret God’s process theology-like history. What we need to do in problem of evil studies is re-define our terms Christianly rather than first and foremost philosophically. Only in this way can we understand the puzzle of evil as Christian theologians.

When we speak of God’s sovereignty, which is most definitely a biblical concept, we often mix our categories. Our Evangelical theology often utilizes cosmological-scientific terminology in order to further explain our theological concepts. This is correlational theology. We need to take the advice of Wittgenstein and understand that each and every language-game can help solve its own puzzles, but it must solve these puzzles within its own language-game. Therefore, we must speak theologically about theology and cosmologically about cosmology[9]. The Bible (the grammar of our language-game) speaks of God’s sovereignty in redemptive-historical and, ultimately, theological terminology. When we speak of sovereignty we should do the same. Neither microcosmic determinism nor macrocosmic indeterminism will do the job. We need an entirely new picture of Christian reality in order to work out our theodicy.

If we, as Christians, are to understand God’s relation to evil, then we must first look to Christ, the Logos; that which enables us to know God. A Christocentric starting point leads us to one unambiguous conclusion:

“If it is from Christ that we are to learn how God relates himself to sin, suffering, evil and death, it would seem that he provides us little evidence of anything other than a regal, relentless, and miraculous enmity: sin he forgives, suffering he heals, evil he casts out, and death he conquers. And absolutely nowhere does Christ act as if any of these things are part of the eternal work or purposes of God… Yes, certainly, there is nothing, not even suffering or death, that cannot be providentially turned toward God’s good ends. But the New Testament also teaches us that, in another and ultimate sense, suffering and death - considered in themselves - have no true meaning or purpose at all; and this is in a very real sense the most liberating and joyous wisdom that the gospel imparts.”[10]

“Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.”[11]

Inevitably, I hold that we cannot fully explicate evil. The problem of evil is eschatological in nature. There is always more to come. We look back to the cross in order to know the promise and we look forward to the end (actually, the real beginning) in order to know the answer. In this sense, as Wolfhart Pannenberg would say, truth is eschatological. We are always looking ahead to its arrival. When we are resurrected and our deaths are finally reversed, then we will know the solution to the problem of evil. God has already made the promise; now we must wait in faith for the doctor to enter into the waiting room and call our name.

Before Christ and the salvation that He brought was revealed to us, a man named Job struggled with the existence of evil. He tore his clothes and wept and complained, yet no answer came his way. His friends and neighbors tried to tell him that he must have done something wrong. After all, God is sovereign and God is fair. He punishes in accordance with the crime committed and rewards according to the degree of unswerving obedience shown. “Isn’t that how it is?” - Job’s friends must have wondered. Job could only say with existential despair, “I know that my Redeemer lives”. We can say much more now that Christ has been revealed. God has answered our prayer against evil in Christ. He became like us in order to suffer under the subjugation of the devil. He died the death that is ours to die so that we might live the life that is His to live. The world will always try to explain evil through victimization mechanisms and genetic manipulations, but Christ on the cross is our theodicy. Can we join the chorus of a groaning world: ‘How long, O Lord?’ - forfeiting the luxury of the easy resolution?

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One of the most interesting features of archaic civilization was its view of time. In archaic societies, time is generally governed by supernatural forces. The precision necessitated by pagan ritualistic practice produced both a regimented focus on “calendar-time” as well as the cyclical fatalism commonly associated with pagan religion. In essence, time is the power of the gods.

In the era of the medieval church, we see a decisive split between the powers of the church and the powers of the state. No longer do the gods rule over “things”, for it is now understood that mankind has been given certain things of which he is now a steward. Money is now in the hands of man. However, time is still seen as originating in the realm of the supernatural – the church still controls time. The historical bifurcation between money and time was a direct result of the medieval mind. Scholastic Christianity understood some things as existing under the purview of man, and other things as under the purview of God – the natural/supernatural distinction. This is most evident in the thought of Aquinas (and I do not believe that this division was overcome until De Lubac). Reason is univocally man’s ability to understand God’s creation, while Grace derives solely from God. This is why, in Aquinas, reason can enable man to know of God (e.g. the theistic proofs), even if it is unable to reveal the method of salvation that He has wrought (that is Grace/Revelation). In this way, we can understand that, in medieval Catholicism, time is grace, but money is reason – the authority of the state. In essence, time is the gift of the gods, but money is the power of man.

After the Enlightenment, we have another decisive move in this dialectic. The Age of Reason denounced the gods’ dominion over the realm of Grace. If the gods had decided to give man a taste of freedom through the authority of the secular, then they must allow him to have more. If you give a mouse a cookie, he’s going to want a glass of milk. Man will not be satisfied with a bargain between the secular and the sacred – he wants it all. Therefore, we have the rise of nascent capitalism. But how is the emergence of the free market any different than the medieval idea of secular control of the economy? Because, in the post-Enlightenment world, the secular now has control of both time and money – and this is seen in the artificial creation of what we know as “clock-time”. The church-ruled time of yesteryear, with its saints and holidays, are gone. The market rules time now, and since it is no longer either the power or the gift of the gods, time can now be sold (the essence of the concept of “interest”).

And here is where we arrive at today – our nation’s Day of Atonement. Modernity will tell you that progress has brought us to the era of the globalised market, but, in reality, it is just another paganism. Just as the priest would go into the temple year after year to offer a sacrifice to and receive propitiation from the gods (and this was how time was measured), so on April 15, year after year, we enter into the virtualized temple of the market, offering our sacrifice to the Lacanian Big Other in hopes that it will again accept our offering, allowing our crops to grow and our children to remain healthy. The meta-narrative of Reason is just another form of archaic religion – only this time, time and money are neither the power of the gods, nor the gift of God, but the dominion of man. Man has realized that his once beloved idols are, in fact, deaf and dumb. He has raided the temples of his gods and placed himself in the palace of the pagan deities. Now he rules both time and money – a terrifying thought, indeed.

“These days, the prominent point of view is that of the innocent gaze confronting unspeakable Evil which struck from the Outside - and again, apropos of this gaze, we should summon up the strength to apply it to Hegel’s well-known dictum that Evil resides (also) in the innocent gaze itself which perceives Evil all around… it means that the justice exerted  must be truly infinite in the strict Hegelian sense - that, in relating to others, it has to relate to itself: in short, that it has to ask how we ourselves, who exert justice are involved in what we fight against. When, on September 22, 2001, Jacques Derrida received the Theodor Adorno award, he referred in his speech to the WTC attacks: ‘My unconditional compassion, addressed at the victims of September 11, does not prevent me from saying aloud: with regard to this crime, I do not believe that anyone is politically guiltless.’ This self-relating, this inclusion of oneself in the picture, is the only true ‘infinite justice’.” (Slavoj Zizek, Welcome to the Desert of the Real, pg. 56-57.)

I am very sympathetic to Zizek’s analysis here. I think of the Christian prohibition against judgment of the Other. When we step into the role of judge, we act as if we are not in a similar position as the accused - in effect, we become God. What we need is a sort of Husserlian turn in our ethics - we must understand ourselves as having a being whose subjectivity is constituted relationally. Any notion of an individual, ontic (consumer) subject is phantasmatic. “No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” (Luke 13:5)

This has brought up another tangent in my mind, so bare with me here. If we were to consider the biblical drama (OT more specifically) as a form of the Hegelian “bad infinity”, then would the Incarnation be an example of this Hegelian solidarity with Evil? Did Christ become like us, and suffer like us in order to deliver us from this eternal return of dialectical Evil?

In addition to this, when evangelicals speak of God as Judge, are we falling into the use of the Lacanian “Master Signifier” (that which represses the Real through ungrounded and arbitrary violence)? I often think that this kind of language (and many of the pictures of God in the OT; e.g. Job, Habbakkuk, etc.) is exactly that. How can we solve this? Maybe Barth’s picture of the atonement (the Judge judged in our place) will aid us here. If we see this through the lens of divine actualism (God’s being is identical with God’s decision/action), then perhaps God’s free choice of forgiving the sins of mankind through Christ erases the charges of the Master Signifier. Maybe the beauty of God, the divine Judge, is that He categorically refuses to Judge at all - is that not the beauty of the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”?