Christ and Horrors, Part 4: Why?

This is my final post reviewing Marilyn McCord Adams' book Christ and Horrors. In this last post we turn to the Big Question: Why?

Why would God make us so vulnerable to horrors?

To start, Adams makes a distinction between justifying reasons and explanatory reasons. Explanatory reasons offer explanations as to why God might, for one reason or another, make us vulnerable to horrors. Two common and traditional explanatory reasons include the following:

1. For love to exist there must exist, necessarily, the possibility of pain. (I think C.S. Lewis makes this argument in The Problem of Pain.)

2. God allows Creation a degree of autonomy so that true relationship between God and Creation can emerge.

Justifying reasons are different. Justifying reasons are explanations that justify God's choices to Man. For example, in the prelude to this series Jack Miles claimed that "the world is a great crime." Framed that way, was God justified in creating a world vulnerable to horrors? Should he have refused to create in the first place?

Justifying reasons are hard to find for God. But Adams is concerned with how they frame the conversation about God. That is, they are prone to set up and bias the conversation to smear God. Given that I tend to seek justifying explanations from God, this caution from Adams is well-taken. That is, we must take care not to conduct theodicy discussions in ways that set God up to play either the fool or a monster. (Personally, I often do this. Given my issues with God and general sense that people go way too easy on God in church, I tend to come out with both barrels blazing. I recognize this, and Adams' comments help make me more reflective about this tendency of mine.)

Adams summarizes all this (p. 43, emphases hers): "My own view is that talk of theodicy--of justifying the ways of God to humankind--is misleading, because God has no obligations to creatures and hence no need to justify Divine actions to us. Personal though God is, the metaphysical size-gap is too big for God to be drawn down into the network of rights and obligations that bind together merely human beings. Elsewhere, I have argued that horrors are so bad that no candidate reason-why that we can think of is remotely sufficient to exhibit the compatibility of horrors with Divine goodness-to created horror-participants, and that any attempt to construe one or more of them as sufficient underestimates how bad horrors are and caricatures God into something monstrous."

This, I think, is an interesting observation. That is, theodicy, simply by trying to offer an explanation for horror, may poison the well right from the start. That is, theodicy may always end in a very unsatisfactory way by either minimizing the horrors or turning God into a monster. It's a razor edge. (I believe this is the danger George has been pointing out in the comments to this series.)

So, where does this leave us? Ultimately, with no great answers. And, if what Adams says above is correct, that the whole theodicy project can't really produce good answers, we are left with a lot of mystery. But Adams does offer an interesting metaphor (p. 40-41): " My proposal is inspired by the following analogy. Soldiers who become fast friends in World War 1 foxholes might admit that they would never have prospectively willed the horrors of war as means to the end of friendship. Yet the value of the relationship thus occasioned is such that they would not retrospectively will away those wartime bonding moments from their lives. So also victims of horror from the vantage point heaven, when they recognize how God was with them in their worst experiences, will not wish to eliminate any moments of intimacy with God from their life histories."

I don't know if that holds up in the end. But it's progress. Christ and Horrors is progress. For these reasons. First, Adams makes theodicy the central work of Christ. And further, in her hands, theodicy and horror defeat is no longer a generic, abstract, cosmic project. Rather, horror defeat occurs in the very particular, unique, and personal lives of horror-participants. It's God and the Individual. Theodicy, salvation, and horror-defeat is worked out in that very intimate, relational space. For that focus, I owe Adams a warm debt of gratitude.

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6 thoughts on “Christ and Horrors, Part 4: Why?”

  1. Richard:

    You say: "It's God and the Individual."

    I would say: "While not wishing to minimize the Individual, it's God and we and I." Donne wrote: "Every man's death diminishes me . . . we are part of the main . . . Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. . . ." As Paul said: "We are members of one another."

    George Cooper

  2. "My own view is that talk of theodicy--of justifying the ways of God to humankind--is misleading, because God has no obligations to creatures and hence no need to justify Divine actions to us. Personal though God is, the metaphysical size-gap is too big for God to be drawn down into the network of rights and obligations that bind together merely human beings."

    Sorry, but I don't buy it. If God is personal, then that entails certain ethical obligations to other persons, even persons that were created by God and are far inferior to God.

    But let's suppose a person is desperate enough to protect their theology that they're willing to present this theodicy, and it is a theodicy: "God allows people to suffer because God has no obligations to them." All we've managed to do is annihiliate the Christian message. We claim God to be loving, and a God acting according to love would treat the beloved far better than a God acting according to obligation.

    "theodicy, simply by trying to offer an explanation for horror, may poison the well right from the start."

    Certainly, theodicy is not appropriate within a crisis. "He's in a better place" is not the sort of thing you want to be saying to a grieving parent. But outside of crisis, people confronted with the brute horror of the world need some hope that God really is loving. I think that this, rather than explanation or justification, is the goal of a good theodicy.

  3. George,
    I understand your point. However, I think Adams' point is to offer a corrective to most systematic theodicies. That is, generally theodicies are overly impersonal, too cosmic in scale. God ends pain and suffering in the eschaton and that functions as horror defeat. But Adams insists, rightly I believe, that horror defeat must occur, for it to count as a true victory, within each individual autobiography. This piece is often missing in theodicy discussions (I believe because it entails some post-mortem work on God's part) and Adams rightly corrects this problem.

    Matthew,
    I think you are overstating Adams' point. I don't think she is saying God has NO obligations to humans. What she is saying is that when we try to embed God in those networks of obligations something is both gained and lost, theologically speaking. What is gained is leverage on an abstract topic (i.e., we use our ethical categories to gain some traction on God's activities). What is lost is a diminishment of God (i.e., God becomes just another guy who can be judged righteous or criminal based on our ethical discernment).

    I don't think Adams is trying to get God a get out of jail free card. She's just pointing out that penal categories when applied to God embed theological assumptions that have consequences. And we should be aware of those assumptions.

  4. Matthew-If you've not already read it, you may enjoy Jurgen Moltmann's book The Crucified God. It provides a christological, trinitarian answer to the questions you're asking, although he questions the assumptions of a personal God in some places. Nevertheless, he may be a helpful conversation partner in this regard.

  5. @Richard:
    "I think you are overstating Adams' point."

    I'm going to have to to trust you on this one, as you've read her and I haven't. It just feels like she's punting. Because I don't see any way we can decide whether God is good if we can't use our ethical discernment. And if we can't decide whether God is good, then we can't decide whether it is more morally justifiable to submit ourselves to this God, or, like Dostoyevsky, hand in our ticket.

    @Krister:
    I'm a little suspicious of an answer that leans on something as doctrinal as the trinity, but I'll definitely look into it. =)

  6. Matthew,
    I agree that the answer is kind of a punt. As you see in my post, I interact with her comment as a good reminder/caution rather than offering an unequivocal endorsement of it.

    Krister,
    I have not read Moltmann but have seen his name pop up a lot. I'll have to check him out.

    Peace to you both!
    Richard

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