From David Bentley Hart’s Tsunami and Theodicy:
Famously, Dostoevsky supplied Ivan with true accounts of children tortured and murdered: Turks tearing babies from their mothers’ wombs, impaling infants on bayonets, firing pistols into their mouths; parents savagely flogging their children; a five-year- old-girl tortured by her mother and father, her mouth filled with excrement, locked at night in an outhouse, weeping her supplications to “dear kind God” in the darkness; an eight-year-old serf child torn to pieces by his master’s dogs for a small accidental transgression.
But what makes Ivan’s argument so disturbing is not that he accuses God of failing to save the innocent; rather, he rejects salvation itself, insofar as he understands it, and on moral grounds. He grants that one day there may be an eternal harmony established, one that we will discover somehow necessitated the suffering of children, and perhaps mothers will forgive the murderers of their babies, and all will praise God’s justice; but Ivan wants neither harmony—“for love of man I reject it,” “it is not worth the tears of that one tortured child”—nor forgiveness; and so, not denying there is a God, he simply chooses to return his ticket of entrance to God’s Kingdom. After all, Ivan asks, if you could bring about a universal and final beatitude for all beings by torturing one small child to death, would you think the price acceptable? . . .
I do not believe we Christians are obliged—or even allowed—to look upon the devastation visited upon the coasts of the Indian Ocean and to console ourselves with vacuous cant about the mysterious course taken by God’s goodness in this world, or to assure others that some ultimate meaning or purpose resides in so much misery. Ours is, after all, a religion of salvation; our faith is in a God who has come to rescue His creation from the absurdity of sin and the emptiness of death, and so we are permitted to hate these things with a perfect hatred. For while Christ takes the suffering of his creatures up into his own, it is not because he or they had need of suffering, but because he would not abandon his creatures to the grave. And while we know that the victory over evil and death has been won, we know also that it is a victory yet to come, and that creation therefore, as Paul says, groans in expectation of the glory that will one day be revealed. Until then, the world remains a place of struggle between light and darkness, truth and falsehood, life and death; and, in such a world, our portion is charity.
As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child I do not see the face of God, but the face of His enemy. It is not a faith that would necessarily satisfy Ivan Karamazov, but neither is it one that his arguments can defeat: for it has set us free from optimism, and taught us hope instead. We can rejoice that we are saved not through the immanent mechanisms of history and nature, but by grace; that God will not unite all of history’s many strands in one great synthesis, but will judge much of history false and damnable; that He will not simply reveal the sublime logic of fallen nature, but will strike off the fetters in which creation languishes; and that, rather than showing us how the tears of a small girl suffering in the dark were necessary for the building of the Kingdom, He will instead raise her up and wipe away all tears from her eyes—and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor any more pain, for the former things will have passed away, and He that sits upon the throne will say, “Behold, I make all things new.”
December 14th, 2012 | 1:59 pm
We live not by optimism in the ability of men to create a perfect society, but in a fervent hope that God himself will one day make all things new. Exactly right.
December 14th, 2012 | 3:02 pm
Wow. Thank you for this. Those words are truly beautiful.
December 14th, 2012 | 5:18 pm
I assume you posted this in response to the unspeakable act that has been in the news the last few hours, and if so, thank you. It provides a valuable perspective. I saw a headline that President Obama, who I believe meant what he said sincerely, called for “meaningful action” in response and I thought can’t we just mourn? Sometimes the best and only response is just grief and commiseration. I wish to God the anger, analysis, blame and explanation that are sure to follow could all just wait awhile.
December 14th, 2012 | 5:57 pm
Several Catholic blogs are urging people to pray the Divine Mercy chaplet today, either together or on one’s own. It’s a prayer that unites the suffering of Jesus with our own, and invokes His mercy on everyone who needs it.
You say this chaplet with a normal rosary or on your fingertips, and the central prayer on the 10 beads (instead of hail Mary’s) is:
“For the sake of His sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us, and on the whole world.”
And on the big beads, separating the 10′s, you say:
“Eternal Father, we offer you the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, of your dearly beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ – In atonement for our sins and those of the whole world.”
December 14th, 2012 | 6:12 pm
[...] Related: On the Suffering of Innocents [...]
December 14th, 2012 | 8:43 pm
keen words for today. Thank you.
December 15th, 2012 | 6:58 pm
There’s simply no adequate answer for why God allows evil, especially the evil that occurred at the school on Friday. Although I believe in God, the profound evil that occurs, makes atheism not an entirely unreasonable alternative metaphysic.
December 16th, 2012 | 8:39 pm
“There’s simply no adequate answer for why God allows evil.”
I think there is an adequate answer. God did not create puppets. Human beings all have free will, the freedom to choose minute by minute, day by day, every action we take both trivial and vital.
Adam Lanza chose actions that led to a final horrific evil act. Each choice he made up to that murderous morning was his to make. Did he choose not to take medication? Not to admit to out of control thoughts and seek therapeutic help? Who knows (we likely never will know) what steps throughout his sorry life he chose to take and not to take, but again, each choice was his.
The consequences of Lanza’s choices are horrific. What would you have God do though? Stop him? Okay, then God should be able to stop each and every person from committing any immoral act. He should stop people from choosing adultery, divorce, abortion, pick any choice that is less than “good,” and have God pull the puppet strings to prevent it.
He doesn’t control us like that. It doesn’t mean though, that He doesn’t weep at the horrible choices some people make, and the tragedies that result.
The recognition that humans can and do choose evil is not cause to disbelieve in God, it is cause to closely examine our own choices.
December 16th, 2012 | 9:57 pm
Speaking of “choices,” Obama and his fellow ghouls choose to exploit this horrific tragedy to further extend their control over We the People by abridging our rights, their followers choose to believe the lie that government can take care of them, and many choose to be helpless in the face of evil.
If even one person at that school had been armed, the tragedy might have been limited to one deranged and tortured soul.
How does evil justify making it harder for good people to resist evil?
December 17th, 2012 | 8:49 am
RandomThoughts –
Well, the theology is that choosing to commit a sin is a sin, even if circumstances prevent you from actually being able to carry it out. So sin would still be possible even if we lived in the universe of Jacques Clouseau, and people routinely survived attacks by improbable luck.
As a parent, I’ve sometimes allowed a kid to mistreat and break one of their toys, as a way of helping them learn some responsibility. But I don’t allow one kid to break another’s toys if I can see it coming – let alone break one of their siblings. That’s an odd way to parent.
http://thismodernworld.com/archives/7617
December 17th, 2012 | 11:24 am
Ivan’s rejection of salvation, as Dostoevsky knew, was not hypothetical, since salvation *is* predicated upon the torture and death of an innocent child — a child grown to manhood, but still a child more innocent than any other child actually has ever been or could ever be.
December 18th, 2012 | 10:42 pm
Ray, are we to understand from your link that you prefer the slaughter of innocents to the death of a murderer?
December 19th, 2012 | 9:16 am
Amillennialist –
“I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.” – Charles Babbage
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