EVIL & EVOLUTION: A THEODICY

Chapter 4

The Reality of Evil

Christ on the Cross, the greatest harm inflicted on the greatest good: if one loves that, one loves the order of the world. (Simone Weil)

Simone Weil, the late French philosopher and authoress, Jewish by birth, Christian by conviction, and churchless by choice, was also, at least in her own mind, one of the last pure Platonists. Yet her shattering remark, rife with the cry of protest, is most revealing. If the classical myths of evil fail to explain evil and only succeed in restating the problem in all its human intensity, the only alternatives remaining are either to deny or explain away evil or to embrace it as the ultimate tragedy of the universe. The mystical Christian Platonism of Weil paradoxically attempted both.

When we speak of Platonism we are dealing with both the last of the great myths of evil and the first great bloom of the perennial flowering of philosophical idealism. Idealism in this sense is not merely a matter of holding high ideals, although philosophical idealists are also generally committed to upholding humanity's greatest aspirations. Rather, this idealism is one that would, beginning with a division of the world into conflicting forces of good and evil, end up, as far as possible, rejecting the world of materiality, change, and suffering -- in a word, repudiating the harsh world of reality as we know it and substituting the realm of ideals in its place.

Obviously, such idealism in the full blown sense of the word seems to be an attractive alternative to grappling with the horrors of the world as we know it and accepting them as being somehow part of the world that was destined or ought to be. However, the myths of evil also imply that the world ought to be other than it is. Are we to believe, then, that philosophical idealism has succeeded where the myths have failed? Perhaps for many people it has. Yet, for many Christians as well as many others who have believed, like Simone Weil, that the power of evil has full sway over this world we experience, does not the answer of idealism end up becoming the basic problem itself? For rather than solving the problem of evil, would not idealism only throw us into deeper conflict with and alienation from the world in which we must live?

Christianity has been accused, perhaps not without cause, of being world denying and of having taught generations upon generations of its faithful that we have here, on earth, "no lasting city." The implication of this charge is that Christians, almost by nature, are incapable of taking the world and its evils seriously or, almost paradoxically, of taking the world so seriously as evil as to lead to a total indifference to the world and its capacity for good. I will not deny this charge, for there is ample evidence that it is, at least in part, all too true. Yet I will deny that what is true in this accusation is exclusively or even specifically Christian; it is a great deal older and more widespread than that. The question of how much older and more universal deserves serious consideration, for until we recognize the basic lines of this thought in all its major forms, we will not be able to fully recognize it in our own. This vein of philosophical idealism is, Ricoeur maintains, the final great myth regarding evil, and may represent the philosophical refinement of the existential statement behind them all. If so, then we must come fully to grips with it and wrestle with it. Unless we do so, we shall, as a result of our tendency to deny the reality of evil, end up immobile beneath its weight.

A. Idealism and the World of Evil

Recall, for a moment, the Babylonian chaos myths, particularly the ones that see the origin of the world in a battle between two gods, one good, one bad. The material part of the universe, all its physical parts, are seen as taking their origin from the slain body of the bad god; and while spiritual forces of evil, in the form of devils continue to harass the human race, the main source of its woes is inherent in humanity's existence as physical, corporeal beings. Now it very well may be that philosophical idealism took its immediate origin, as Ricoeur suggests, as an explanation for the Greek tragic myth of mankind's futile struggle against death or that the tragic myths, themselves, were but popular stories designed to convey the meaning of what was already a widely held but still only a half-articulated philosophy or attitude toward life. But such a "chicken or egg?" debate may be pointless for our purposes in view of the fact that such a view of life did not remain confined to Mesopotamia or Greece but seems to have spread even farther eastward. The Aryan peoples, moving into India at least several thousand years before the time of Christ, appear to have incorporated this same line of thought into the native Indian nature religions to produce that religious-philosophical amalgam we call "Hinduism," or more properly Vedic Religion. Later, but almost simultaneously, in the fifth and sixth Centuries B.C., both Greek philosophical idealism and Buddhism began reworking this ancient vein of thought.

I call attention to this not as simply a curious historical footnote but rather to stress the fact that the most significant civilizations of the time, intellectually speaking, with the exceptions of Egypt, China, and, of course, Israel, were rapidly coming under the influence of this idealism or its dualistic roots. However, even the exceptions, like Judaism in its later Wisdom Literature, would feel its attraction. Greek civilization and its thought would later spread over the whole Mediterranean and Near-Eastern world. Buddhism was to take over all Southeast Asia and to influence, with strong modifications, both Chinese and Japanese thought. Even Christianity could not be expected to be entirely immune to the lure of idealism or even dualism.

NOTE: The reader should be cautioned that the use of such terms as "realism" and "idealism" is rather relative. The same is perhaps even more true for the opposites "dualism" and "monism". Not only are the latter terms applicable to ethical, metaphysical, and other categories meaning, but very often they interrelate in a paradoxical fashion. Metaphysical idealism, its stress of the superior or primary function of the spiritual, often simultaneously expressed itself in a dualistic antithesis of spirit and matter. However, it is perhaps just as apt ultimately reach a point where the spiritual aspect becomes so emphasized as to subsume ; reality as mere (or more or less) illusory aspects of a single all-embracing (hence monistic) principle. Monistic pantheism, generally associated with Hindu mystical philosophy, probably most typical of this trend, with its stress on all, particularly the human atman or soul, being one with the divine (Brahman). Western or more typically "nature" pantheism, on the other hand, tends to stress the particularity of each individual being as nevertheless interrelated in a divine "all". If for the latter "All is God," for the former "God [or his equivalent in nontheistic systems] is all.

Despite Paul's appeal to the somewhat pantheistic words suggestive of Epimenides of Gnossos ("in him that we live, and move, and have our being,". Acts 17:28), he seems to have lost his audience, containing, as we are told, both Epicureans as well as Stoics, upon his mention of the Resurrection of Christ. Apparently whatever pantheistic leanings his audience may have had, the dualistic tendencies that accompanied it, whether the stress be more on the material, as with the Epicureans, or on the spiritual, as Stoicism may have been evolving (as evidenced by the direction of later Christian stoics), Paul's biblical realism was too much.

If I have begun to speak of "dualism" as a significant component of this philosophical and religious trend, it is because the kind of idealism I have in mind is that which ultimately finds its roots as well as its expression not just in an ethical dualism of good and evil but in a metaphysical dualism of spirit and matter. The most obvious and widespread symptom of such thinking is belief in reincarnation where the soul is seen as a separate spiritual being that takes up residence in a succession of bodies, living one life after another, as was widely held in ancient Greece, or even in animal bodies, as is believed in popular Hinduism. Buddhism, as we shall see, attempted to break with this idea, but it seems to still permeate a great deal of the Buddhist world.

Less obvious, but perhaps even more widespread than belief in reincarnation is the general idea of the soul as a kind of substance that is imprisoned in the body, to be released from its earthly existence by death. Despite the fact that this concept sometimes included a belief in the preexistence of that same soul before its life in the body, a view that was repudiated by Christian orthodoxy, it is quite clear that Western religions even today tend rather strongly to such a platonic idea of the soul.

It should be noted that the basic biblical idea is something else; in fact the Old Testament writings, at least in the original Hebrew, know no such word as soul or its equivalent: The nephesh (often mistranslated as "soul") designates simply the living being in its entirety; the bashar or flesh which has been given life by the ruah or spirit/breath of God. Consequently, although in the New Testament the Greek word "psyche" is often used, especially by St. Paul, it generally refers to the mental (as well as often the emotional and volitional) functions of the human body. This is not to deny outright the idea of an immortal soul in the common way of speaking, but again, it must be stressed, any real life after death is, at least in the sense that we can look forward to, the result of the granting of the "spirit" or the Holy Spirit, the pneuma (the Greek New Testament word corresponding to the Hebrew ruah).

If all this seems a bit complicated it is nevertheless of vital importance, for I think that the contrast between these two ways of speaking about the human "soul" show us just how far Christian thought has been influenced by Greek concepts, so much in fact that the New Testament has been generally misinterpreted by means of ideas drawn more or less directly from metaphysical dualism rather than remaining true to the integrated, holistic view of human life, even life after death, that the Scriptures represent. This basically non-dualistic view found its more developed expression in the doctrine of "resurrection" where any form of life after death must be seen to be, at least in some form, a total restoration to life and not just as the nebulous existence of a disembodied soul. Skeptical realism which borders on materialism (as was the case of the Sadducees of Jesus' time) would of course reject this concept - but so too would philosophic and spiritualistic idealism. Paul's scoffing audience at the Athenian Acropolis most likely represented both extremes.

Such divergent ideas about the nature of the human being have strong implications regarding the problems of evil, particularly physical evils and the meaning of death, Yet the influence of dualistic thinking does not stop merely at the consideration of these problems as they effect human life. It also greatly affects our thinking about the world as a whole. If physical all evil, while spiritual reality represents and embodies the highest good, then which of these realities is really real?

This may sound like a tautology or a begging of the question, but it is not entirely so. At least we must ask, if we assume that both the material and spiritual sides of existence are part of reality, which is the more important? We all know what we have been taught, and yet we all know what generally assumes more importance in our lives. However "spiritual" our hopes and aspirations, it seems that most of us live our lives almost totally immersed in the "mire" of physical, earthy existence.

Whether we find the question as posed in such terms to be congenial or repugnant, the fact that such terms are common in Western "spiritual" literature surely indicates how far down the road of dualism we have, in fact, travelled. We may not have gone so far as a Hinduism in which the word maya, which originally meant "change," has generally come to be understood to mean "illusion" or the illusionary side of reality. Yet more than two millennia's worth of Western thinkers, including even some contemporary scientists, have repeated Plato's famous argument, one way or another, that things, especially physical things, aren't what they seem to be. "Now you see it- now you don't:" Can this be reality? Or is it a case of such material things being, as Plato said, mere "icons" or images of reality, a reality that is immaterial, belonging to the realm of pure ideas, reflections of an ideal or spiritual world? Could it be that what we take to be real, in our common-sense view of things, is nothing but an illusion, a dream produced by an eternal thought, a will-o-the-wisp conjured up by an ultimate, all-embracing Mind.

There is a great attraction, and perhaps a good deal of truth, in such a view. We must "seek the things that are above" and strive to rise above what is merely sensual and prone to corruption. This, indeed, is "the perennial philosophy" which has given the human race its greatest impetus to the soaring achievements of art and culture. But what about the world "below?" Is it only to be used, abused, and finally to be discarded? Is it only a second rate reality, as the great Hindu philosopher Shankara taught, one which is prone to capture the mind in the morass of illusion, preventing us from the realization that indeed "we are that"-- that the true self, Atman, is identical with the ultimate reality, Brahman or God? For if that is true, or at least if we have come to the conviction that it is, then we have passed beyond the realm of ethics, beyond the conflict between good and evil, into the pure level of undifferentiated being, where neither life nor death, sin nor suffering, nor even the illusion that we exist in our own right, as independent personalities, can any longer touch us. To fail in this saving realization, to not achieve the great liberation provided by such enlightenment into the ultimate Advaita or "nondual" truth of existence is to be condemned to repeat the endless cycle of rebirth and death, with all the suffering it entails, at least until such a time one has finally seen the light and finds release from the world of self-delusion.

NOTE: Shankara or Samkara, who lived somewhere around the eighth or ninth century of our era, still remains a very controversial figure. His system of "non-dualism" (Advaita) is manifestly an attempt to modify the pure doctrine of metaphysical idealism that was current in the Vedantist philosophy of his time, with the intent of allowing for a modified form of realism regarding the phenomenal world. For this attempt, among other things, he was denounced as being a "crypto-buddhist" of sorts, while others, even such modern innovators in Indian philosophy as Sri Auribindo Ghose (1872-1950), continue to reject Samkara's philosophy as unadulterated idealism. For more on this, see R. Puligandla, Fundamentals of Indian Philosophy, (Nashville, New York: Abington Press, 1975).

If classical Hindu thought and its Vedantist refinements represent the Indian solution to the problem of evil by minimizing the metaphysical reality and ethical significance of the present life, except insomuch as it represents a barrier to our existence in a state beyond all materiality and change, Buddhism, at least in some of its purest forms, represents in an even more radical form, an all-out attempt to come to terms with the specific problem of suffering. "To live is to suffer," said Siddartha Gautama, the Buddha or "Enlightened One," its founder. But "suffering is caused by desire." Hence the solution is to eliminate all desire, at least all selfish desire. To accomplish this, the Buddha proposed a totally different approach. Forget self, even a supposed higher true self (thus the Buddhist doctrine of anatta or "no-self" as against the Hindu doctrine of the atman) . Forget all attempts to describe the indescribable Brahman and instead aim for the great void of nirvana. In this alone will all desiring and suffering be overcome.

It may be argued interminably, and it has been, whether or not Gautama was actually a materialist who denied the reality of the soul and of God, or a spiritual idealist who proposed a radical psychological break with all metaphysical and self-concerned thinking. What is clear is that he did, in fact, find a solution to the problem of suffering and death which has proved convincing to countless millions, even billions, of people. Even when his teachings became strongly modified, especially in the Mahayana or "Greater Vehicle" forms combined with the more down to earth Taoist world-views of China and Japan, Buddhism in its many forms has provided a way of coping with life, suffering, and death that even Christianity might envy.

But should we? Or maybe the question should be "Haven't we already come close to (too close to according to some) adopting the same solution ourselves?" According to Arthur C. Danto, Buddhism, failing to overcome much of its metaphysical roots in Indian dualism or the idealist escapes from this dualism, can never take suffering and evil with any ultimate seriousness. Despite its apparently direct psychological confrontation with the problem of suffering, Buddhism would release a person from pain by having him escape or by-pass the whole "illusion" of personal existence in the body. According to strict Buddhist teaching, our imagined "self" is (in terms not much different from those proposed by the rationalist philosopher Hume) merely "a bundle of sensations." Moral evil, or its principal cause, according to Buddhism is nothing but our own complicity in our own self-delusion in taking life seriously. Good, or the highest expression of doing good (Buddhist "love" or "compassion") consists in leading others to this self-realization of the non-existence of the self: As Trungpa Rimpoche, the Tibetian ex-lama who taught Buddhism in the United States has been quoted as saying, Americans are surprisingly happy to learn (from him) that "they do not exist!"

NOTE: This last remark, reported in TIME magazine some years ago, illustrates well the danger of distortion that popularizations (as well as critiques) of ancient philosophies are all too apt to undergo when taken out of their original cultural milieu. Indian, as well as Buddhist philosophy (although in somewhat different terms) is certainly prepared to admit the phenomenal reality of the individual person (the jiva of Hindu thought). Christianity too is replete with warnings against the " false self. " More reflections on these matters are contained in Raimundo Panikkar's Myth, Faith, and Hermeneutics: Toward a Cross-cultural Religious Understanding (New York: Paulist Press, 1980).

This is not to say that the mass of Christians or even less the total population of the Western World is in mortal danger of forgetting its all-consuming passion for self-fulfillment or quest for personal happiness; we might even welcome a bit of this Buddhist antidote to our mania of self-preoccupation. But is a metaphysical denial, even only an implied one for healthy psychological reasons, any real solution to the problem of evil? Have we not already had enough, even in our own Western religious traditions, of the attitude that this life is not really what "counts" or that the millions upon millions who suffer in this world should really consider themselves "blessed" or "happy" for their reward is great in heaven?

I realize that in saying this I am coming perilously close to contradicting the words of Jesus in his "Sermon on the Mount." But what he offered as consolation to the poor and suffering does not constitute the ideal of justice for "the Kingdom of Heaven." Jesus was considerably more violent in his denunciation of those who caused such suffering and especially of those who invoked "the Will of God" to justify it. On the other hand, while the way of the Christ would eliminate needless suffering, as Buddhism would do, its means of doing so differs even more radically from the Buddhist way than did Gautama's from classical Vedic Hinduism. Jesus would not escape suffering or evil through a path of enlightenment. Rather, he defeats the power of moral evil, the positive power of prideful human rebellion, by entering most directly into the process of human suffering which sin has produced as well as all the other pains which belong to the struggle of emerging life. Perhaps deeper insights, especially in the psychological realm, can detect a common ground of agreement between what lies beneath both the Christian and Buddhist attempts to overcome evil, but somehow the Cross itself remains the great sign of contradiction. Could there be any more significant contrast than in the deaths of the Christ and the Buddha? Jesus, who died in his prime on the most hideous instrument of torture that era could devise, seems to have suffered even a blackout of that "enlightenment" or sense of oneness with the Father that was the mainstay of his faith. Gautama, on the other hand, slipped quietly into his Nirvana at an advanced old age, complicated, it is said, by a slight case of indigestion.

This is not to say that we should wish a death like Christ's particularly his suffering and abandonment, for all Christians. I myself would much prefer to die as did the Buddha, and as did many Christian saints -- peacefully. Unlike the Buddhist, however, I would hope not for a Nirvana of emptiness, nothingness, or whatever (the nearly untranslatable term -- originally pronounced nibbana in Gautama's Pali dialectic -- literally means "a snuffing out"), but rather, emptied of all self-pretense, as effectively as any Buddhist might be, I would also hope to be "filled with the fullness of God."

It may very well be, as the Zen philosopher D. T. Suzuki constantly insisted, that the Buddhist "emptiness" of Nirvana is really an enigmatic way of speaking of the fullness of the ultimate, that "zero equals infinity and infinity equals zero", but somehow such enlightenment, while it might lift me above the vicissitudes of life, at the same time would weigh me down. It would not only make me indifferent to my own troubles or sorrows, but also, I fear, to the pains of others. If so, as the Buddhist might object, I would fail to have that compassion Buddhism would demand of me. But how could I have compassion unless that passion or suffering of others is real and I really make it mine? Is suffering or compassion only a state of mind and that only of a mind that imagines it exists?

I don't think so. I do not believe that one view of evil and suffering which Christianity can accept and still remain true to its revelation in the person of Christ, is that suffering and evil are but an illusion or at most a changing phenomenon with no lasting significance. On the contrary, in accepting this world as the real world, Christianity is constrained to accept the tragedies and sufferings of this world, and even its moral failures, as part of a process in which this world, the only one that exists, achieves its fulfillment in God.

NOTE: This is not to deny outright the theoretical possibility of the existence of other worlds or "universes", however unlikely that might be. It is only to reiterate the assertion made, in Chapter 3, that the kind of world that we have, in which evil, at least as we understand it, is inevitably mixed with the good, is in C.S. Lewis' words "the only possible" kind of world.

B. The Nature of Evil

If Christianity, as well as Judaism and Islam, has been influenced by or at least tempted to deal with evil along the lines of the various solutions offered by metaphysical dualism, it has nevertheless been forced, ultimately, to reject them. Any view which holds that the material, as well as the spiritual, side of reality is not only real but also basically good, can only, at the very most, adopt some limited psychological approach to the problem of suffering which in any way resembles, for example, the Buddhist solution to the problem. But at the depths of the problem, despite any surface similarities in the manner by which we cope with evil, lies a vast metaphysical difference. Suffering is more than simply the result of self-deluded ego-consciousness. Despite its constant state of change, the universe is not simply maya or a realm of illusion or unreality. Death, not the misfortune of being born into life, remains the great barrier which seems forever to bar the way to the unlimited fulfillment of all good.

If all this is true and we are determined to reject all views of evil which would subvert our view of the world as a totally good expression of God's love, then the major problem still remains. What, in fact, is evil? No doubt, perversion of the human will (moral evil), chaotic disorder (physical evil), and suffering, at least unnecessary, useless suffering (psychological evil)-- are all expressions and varieties of evil. Even the metaphysical dualist or outright idealist will admit as much. Still, if we hold that even these are but negative or disordered elements in what is otherwise basically good, can evil be said to be anything in particular?

This may seem to be a totally futile and useless question. It may also prove to be ultimately unanswerable. Yet it is an important question, even if the answer eludes us, for we shall find that the way we ask the question as well as the way we attempt to answer it will determine, to a large extent, our basic attitude toward creation, life, and ourselves.

One basic approach to this question which has dominated Western thought since St. Augustine's time is that evil is, in fact, nothing, that is, not a created entity or a being in the concrete sense of the word. Starting with the basic biblical assertion that all creation is good, as well as with the metaphysical premise that being or existence in itself is a perfection, Augustine concluded that evil is basically a lack or privation of the good. It is a kind of vacuum, a non-existence where there should be existence. It is a lack of order or an imbalance in what is otherwise good.

Such a notion may seem rather odd at first glance, or even inadequate upon further examination; but it has its advantages, so much so that the great medieval theologian, St. Thomas Aquinas, took over Augustine's idea with very little modification. After all, take physical evil. Is there anything wrong in itself, as we asked before, with alcohol, despite the rantings of some religious moralists on the subject? No. Even Scripture says that God gave man wine "to gladden his heart." What is wrong is the abuse of alcohol. Likewise, but on a more purely physical level, what is the evil in a flood or an earthquake? Is not the evil in the interruption of the more usual or predictable behavior of the earth? But are even these interruptions an absence of "order"or "balance"in nature? Earthquakes seem to be a necessary part of that on-going process by which the crust of the earth was formed and continents took their shape. Floods may likewise seem to be a disruption of natural tranquility, but without them the fertile soils of the flood basins would not be renewed - as the Egyptians have found out to their dismay since the building of the Aswan Dam. Clearly, from this point of view, many physical "evils" are, for the most part, only evil from a human perspective, and, as these last examples show, often a very time-bound perspective.

This same ambivalence affects our understanding of what is good or evil in our own life process. Biological evolution is built on the two foundations of genetic mutation and death. The tragic element in human psychological suffering, to a large extent, comes from our own unwillingness to accept these facts of life. Certainly, disease and innocent suffering, even in animals, present special difficulties which we cannot minimize. Yet viewed through the broad spectrum of biological life, it is more a question of imbalance or temporary disorder -- for example, too many individuals for the available amount of food, or a rampant multiplication of microbes in a weakened host population, rather than a question of individuals, microbes, or anything else being evil as such.

As for sin, while we may very well see something diabolically malicious in human perversity, still it is not the human will that is evil, but rather the disordering of the will. The essence of sin, as Augustine carefully analyzed, is the disorder that results when the will chooses some limited, relative good in preference to a higher or even the absolute good. Even pride, at the level of basic self-esteem is not all bad, but rather it is the pride that is based on a lie which is bad. Yet, despite the uniquely human quality involved, what is a lie in most cases (even in the case of pride) but a defect, a deformed element, in what is otherwise the truth?

However, the question still remains as to whether or not this view of evil as being merely a defect in what is otherwise an organized harmony is adequate. Is there not something a little too optimistic about it? Like Socrates' claim that no one does anything except by being drawn toward the good (a view also adopted by Augustine and Aquinas) and that evil only occurs when we fail to take in the whole picture of what is really good for us, the "privation of good" explanation of the nature of evil seems just a little too simple. It just doesn't seem to fully account for the enormity of the evils we see around us. What was the disordered good that, even in a perverted way, motivated the genocides perpetrated by Hitler and Stalin? Is it possible for even one man to so delude himself as to the true nature of what is good on such a massive scale as to never once entertain a serious doubt about it all? Is there not something about evil that is a kind of law unto itself to such an extent that even consciousness of good ("The Law" as St. Paul described it) gives a kind of mysterious new power and existence to that same evil? Does not the evil born of simple ignorance become, in the face of the full disclosure of the truth, not just mere disorder, but true perversity?

It is for reasons such as these that the story of the original Fall in the Bible must be understood in a much deeper sense than its apparent mythical simplicity first suggests. So too, St. Augustine's visualization of Adam's sin as a sudden turning away from a primeval perefection would seem to contradict his view of wrongdoing as a mistaken choice of a lesser good, for if our first parents were perfect in all respects, how could they have been trapped by a bold-faced lie? How can perfection be squared with prideful self-deception? Perhaps St. Irenaeus was closer to the truth when he naively pictured Adam and Eve as children (at least psychologically speaking) or as innocents in a paradaisal wonderland, whose half-sleeping awareness was destined for a rude awakening as their eyes were opened to the realities of their existence.

Even in such a view, which lends itself easily to an evolutionary reinterpretation, the question remains -- what, in itself, is evil? The early Alexandrine school of Christianity, perhaps influenced by Platonic notions (so we should be careful here), speculated on a "precosmic fall", not simply in terms of angelic beings falling from grace, but even in terms of a possible fall of God himself. By this they were implying that the act of creation itself represents a kind of precipitous slide of "pure being" in and bu itself (which is God in his solitary existence) into a state of shared existence with a multiplicity of as yet unorganized and half-formed being. God steps down from being simply and purely God (or "Godhead", as some would put it) to becoming the Creator, with the consequence of becoming involved in all the evil as well as the good that creation implies.

We can perhaps already see how such an interpretation is, for all its philosophical sophistication, close to the creation myths of chaos. It also seems to imply a distinction similar to the Hindu one between God as the Absolute (Brahman), impersonal and unmoved, and God as the Creator (Brahma), personal and active in the universe. This would allow, at least for Hindu thinking, making this Creator responsible, in a direct way, for all evil as well as good in the universe, while leaving the eternal Godhead uninvolved. Whether the authors of Genesis intended a rebuttal of such an idea of creation being itself a kind of fall (and there is good reason to think so in light of the repeated insistence on the goodness of creation), there is even more reason to think that they would have had objections to any attempts to distinguish a Godhead from a creator God or to define evil as a mere privation of the good. The personification of the tempter as the serpent can be seen as a naive, perhaps crude, attempt to depict evil as a positive force to be reckoned with. True, this personification has its own negative symbolism (the sentencing of the serpent to become legless and henceforth to crawl in the dust) but, on the whole, the symbol of the serpent is that of a positive and objective embodiment of evil at its very source.

Of course, the problem with this "realism" is that, while it maximizes the fact of evil as a counter-force opposed to God, it also maximizes the problem of ultimately blaming God for evil's existence. Clearly, if we are to understand evil as a positive force, even if there is a great deal of insight to be gained from seeing it as metaphysically negative" (a real being, but a legless or disordered one for all that) we have to reread the story of the fall in another light. But how?

If we may follow the earlier suggestion that the Genesis story of humanity's paradisal existence should be read backwards, as a revelation of the possible future rather than as prehistory, we might go a step further. Why not apply this reverse approach not just to the possibilities of future good but also to the consequences of future sins and even to our understanding of the source and power of evil itself?

If paradise is yet to be achieved, might it not also be that its opposite is also yet to be realized? If this could be true, then might not the cause of our woe, its full personification, have yet to take its final and full form? Indeed, this is more or less hinted at in the apocalyptic Book of Revelation with the "Anti-Christ" or the succession of those who wield the destructive powers of this world.

If this is possible, then I would also suspect (as did Teilhard de Chardin) that the original sin is not really to be found so much at the dawn of the human race (unless we take it to simply be concupiscence or all the tendencies toward disorder with which evolution has left us) but rather it will be found most of all in the twilight or dusk of the human race before the final darkness falls. If there is something positive about evil, something malicious, even diabolic, it has not diminished since the first appearance of humankind but has increased. Compounded by generations of ignorance and stupidity, but even more by the dreams of empires both personal and universal, human pride feeds upon itself until in its madness it would have for itself "all the kingdoms of this world and their glory," or else, frustrated in its pretense to self-proclaimed divinity, reduce the cosmos to nuclear ash. Having unlocked nearly all the secrets of life (and death) we imagine ourselves the captains of our own ship but we may only find that we have run aground or worse. Most of all, we aspire, not only to be simply "as gods, knowing good and evil" for what they are, but to be God, deciding for ourselves what shall be right and fit, without reference to the Source from which we came.

At this point I may seem to have disposed of the existence of Satan as a personal, fallen, angelic being entirely. It is not my intention to do so. I would only relocate him in time. Like its vision of paradise, humanity's vision of itself is to "be as angels" unencumbered by the limits of bodily existence, impervious to weaknesses of passions and ignorance, exempt from disease and death. Very possibly some day we shall achieve this, but not without a price, for what may be turned to good may just as surely turn out for ill. Man's creation of the devil in his own image and likeness has just begun.

What, then, is the nature of evil? Who can say? Surely it is negative, non-being, disorder, pure nothingness where being, order, and harmony should exist. Just as surely it is positive, for it is equally something, anything or anybody that stands in opposition to the self-donation of God in love. Disorder, non-being, and "nothingness" are abstractions. Disordered beings, evil persons, deformed societies are not. They are real, they exist, and we shall probably see more of them and worse in time to come.

Did God then create evil? In one sense, yes, he is responsible. He is the source of all good or bad. Disorder and nonbeing can be thought of as standing outside of or as opposed to God and his creation insofar as "being in itself" is God and "ordered being"shares his existence. There is, however, such a thing as disordered being and God has allowed it to exist, as well. One of our main problems has been to read the process backwards and to assume that the disorder that we have engendered and encountered in ourselves in its worst, even diabolic form, was also God's idea instead of our own.

C. How Bad Is Evil?

The question I am posing may seem like a silly one, almost like asking, in another way, "How good is bad?" Yet there is definitely a serious question to be faced here, for in any true estimation of the reality of evil, beyond its actual existence and metaphysical nature, lurks the question, "but in the end, is it really all that bad?"

This question can occur in several forms and be approached several ways. For one, does not the division of evil into kinds (physical, psychological, moral) also imply that there might be a certain hierarchy or grading of evil? For example, a modern French Catholic writer has claimed that "there is only one real tragedy in life, and that is not to have become a saint." This position, a popular Christian sentiment, implies that physical and psychological evils (suffering) are not to be compared with the reward of having escaped or overcome the moral evil of sin. Had not St. Paul said as much, or even Jesus himself when he warned us "Do not fear those who kill the body... fear him who, after he has killed, has the power to cast into hell... ." (Luke 12:4-5)

Likewise, was not Gautama's doctrine of negating all selfish desire to eliminate suffering also something more than simply a way of reducing psychological evil to mere physiological pain? The whole Eastern tradition, both in the Hindu as well as the Buddhist form, seems to agree that the ultimate evil is ignorance. The loss of, or the failure to discover, the nature of the true self, however it be conceived, remains both the source and culmination of all evil. Indeed, such a disaster is, in Eastern thinking, the equivalent of a total separation from ultimate reality or God.

So too, Socrates, the sage of ancient Greece, calmly underwent his self-inflicted death, confident that the life of his soul would not be diminished, but rather enhanced, by his devotion to the truth for which he had been sentenced.

In the minds of these men, commonly held to be among the world's greatest thinkers, moral evil (however it may be envisioned) is worse than physical evil, and the sufferings of the body are minor in comparison to the sufferings of the unfaithful spirit, and temporary torment is far preferable to eternal loss.

In much the same way, but for more immediate and even "worldly" reasons, the whole science or study of ethics and the art of politics are founded on a similar set of assumptions: a hierarchy of values and a recognition that some evils have to be tolerated for the sake of greater good. When it comes to evil experienced as purely physical pain, although sometimes the cure seems worse than the disease, do we not put up with the pain (the dentist's drill, the surgeon's scalpel) rather than suffer the longer term consequence of neglect?

Such a line of thought suggests another, perhaps false, solution to the problem of evil. If the reality of evil is not to be denied, perhaps then the ultimacy of evil can be. If physical pain can be considered to be less serious than psychological suffering, which in turn, is less evil than moral depravity, is it not possible that this ultimate depravity, which we call sin, is also canceled out? Would not even moral evil lose permanent significance in the light of some overall purpose and victory of goodness in the universe?

Certainly the temptation to see this as the final way out of the problem of evil is very strong. Some have suggested that the gradual emergence of belief in an immortal soul was evolved simply to make it possible to see all evils canceled out through belief in a heavenly reward. In fact, we can see that the Hebrew prophets struggled mightily with the dilemmas of evil and divine justice in the absence of any clear idea of an afterlife. Prosperity, long-life, a good name, the honor of generations to come, each of these was given prominence at one time or another as the reward of a just life. Yet none of these proved adequate. So no doubt there is probably a strong element of truth in this accusation. The belief in an afterlife made possible through a resurrection of the just was the culmination of a long process of struggle with the riddle of divine justice in the face of evil. However, along with this belief there also emerged a corollary belief in a resurrection of the wicked to further delayed punishment in retribution for a sinful life. Nor was this punishment seen only as corrective; for some it was deemed to be eternally punitive. Thus, for all but the "Universalists" (those who believe that everyone will be saved, despite what they've done) the usual doctrines of an afterlife predict eternal damnation for the wicked.

One of the more persistent criticisms of orthodox Christian teaching in this matter is that despite the threat of such an ultimate tragedy as eternal damnation, certain theologians such as Augustine, Luther, and Calvin have nevertheless seen such damnation as a kind of triumph of God's goodness and power. Thus, in effect, the critics say, there would be no real evil in the universe because all evil would be considered relative to the absolute and the ultimate -- the triumph of the Kingdom of God. That this is no minor or outdated objection is evident from objections leveled against the thinking of such modern Christians as Karl Rahner or Teilhard de Chardin. Along with criticism of Teilhard's alleged minimalization of evil is paired the condemnation of Teilhard's view of hell as part of the Pleroma or fullness of God's creation (he likened it to the dump of a well-planned city!). More subtle criticism is reserved for Rahner's concern for the possibility of "anonymous Christians" who are saved without explicit belief. Does not this concern for the salvation of unbelievers also amount to admitting the possibility of damnation as well? In either case the implication of the critics is that to accept even the possibility of eternal damnation is to somehow trivialize the ultimate tragedy it would represent.

Yet to face this objection squarely, it must be asked if such protests against the doctrine of eternal punishment do not contradict themselves. Orthodox Christianity, as well as all biblical religion, sees God's kingdom as ultimately triumphing, but one should hesitate to claim that all its principal theologians (at least the more saintly ones) rejoice in the failure of those who don't make it. Origen's famous espousal of a universalistic belief (for him, even the devil would be saved in the end) may have gotten him into serious trouble with the bishops, but at least it proved that his intentions were good. Can we not then suppose that most orthodox writers, whatever their views on the victory of God's goodness and his saints, at least secretly mourned the tragedy of those who threw away their chance?

In addition to the limitation that the doctrine places upon belief in the otherwise total triumph of God, we must also consider its opposite implication, the partial victory of evil. Even in this victory there is something of a natural good, for whatever else one may think of a doctrine of eternal punishment, it remains the last bastion of defense of belief in free will, at least in the context of immortality. Just as there could be no meaningful salvation without the wish to be saved, damnation is the last and not entirely feeble protest of the creature who would insist on its own will against that of God, no matter what the cost. One can not but suspect that the real reason for the widespread rejection of a belief in hell is not a reaction to the distortions of medieval painters or preachers, or even simply a tender-hearted view of God. At the root stands, more likely, a modern disinclination to accept any ultimate human responsibility for tragedy in the universe -- indeed, to accept the possibility of any lasting tragedy at all. For rather than minimizing the tragic potentiality of human freedom, belief in at least the possibility of eternal loss protects it, even at the cost of diminishing the final success of God's plan. If anything, those who damn themselves to isolation from divine and human love, are "tragic successes." They are, in C. S. Lewis' words "in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside."

What more can be said about the reality and tragedy of evil in the universe? Perhaps Weil in her Jewish-Christian Platonism said it all in a form calculated to outrage us or at least to refute whomever among us claims to be an optimist.

God has created a world which is not the best possible, but which contains the whole range of good and evil. We are at the point where it is as bad as possible. For beyond is the stage where evil becomes innocence.

Can this be true? Can it be, that while formerly the world had been passing through eons of evolution, that now, with the emergence of the human race, there has been only a moral devolution? If so, must we then accuse of God having deliberately created the worst possible world or simply one in which the fullest range of possibilities for good or for ill, exist? If it is the latter, then it must be, in fact it can only be, that God so values the higher good of human freedom that he allows things to come to such a pass - even if the next stage would be one where evil has become so pervasive that it would be a kind of perverted innocence,a kind of diabolic ignorance of even the vestiges of good or evil. Few of us (thank God!) have had to live through what Simone Weil did, or have experienced her extreme hypersensitivity to evil, nor have we deliberately gone out of our way to share, to the extent she did, the sufferings of the unfortunate, yet I think that we all can sense the outrage which she felt. Despite her avowed Platonism no one can accuse all idealists (especially all Christian ones) of minimizing the problem of evil.

At the same time I question her statement that things are as bad as possible. She wrote over three decades ago. She died before Nagasaki or Hiroshima. Did she have any inkling of the extent of brutality at Auschwitz or Dachau or other extermination camps where one-fourth of her own race would be eliminated? Perhaps she did sense what was happening and it was these things that prompted her to write as she did. But have things gotten any better since then or have we even begun to slow that head-long plunge into a ghastly innocence in which we no longer even want to know, much less judge the extent of, the difference between good and evil?

In effect, Weil's vision of evil is that of an Eden in reverse. Just as we should perhaps see paradise as a possibility to be realized in the transcendent future, and just as the full dimensions of evil are yet to be measured, perhaps, too, the terrible possibility of the total dehumanization of the human race still awaits us in the complete loss of all moral sensitivity. If this should happen, we shall have reached the end. Evolution will have exhausted all its possibilities in a stillbirth -- the total wreckage of God's hope for this favored child of his creation. Is this possible? Christian belief holds that it could not be so, that the victory over evil and sin is, in principle, already ours, that Christ has already prevailed. But the casualty lists have not yet been revealed. Unfortunately, they are not even yet complete.

Proceed to Chapter 5

Return to Table of Contents

File:Ee4.htm 3/17/2000