Christ and Horrors, Part 2: Horror Defeat (in a very particular way)

At the beginning of class I contrasted two different kinds of psychological needs that emerge as we approach the problem of pain and evil. The problem of evil presents us with a mess that needs some structure, some way to think about the situation. But what we find is that people need different kinds of structure. First, some people require non-specific structure. That is, all they need to make sense of the problem of evil is an answer, any answer. For some, this non-specific structure is enough. But for others, we require what is called specific structure. Specific structure demands a particular answer given the issues an individual considers most important and vital. That is, many people get hung up on particular issues regarding the problem of evil. Thus, broad, sweeping answers (non-specific structure) don’t tend to work for these people. Rather, what is needed is an answer that hits all the right spots for a particular person, spots that can differ from person to person.

I noted that I was drawn to Christ and Horrors because I am a person who has gotten “hung up” on different aspects of the problem of evil. And, to date, only Christ and Horrors has offered me answers to those particular hang-ups of mine. Of course, people will hang up on different issues (or none at all) and, as a result, Christ and Horrors is not going to scratch their itch. But Christ and Horrors does scratch my itch. And I proceeded to outline why.

As I have wrestled with the problem of evil I have tended to get hung up on the following issues:

1. I’ve always felt that horror, rather than sin, was the fundamental predicament of the human condition.

2. I’ve always felt that God bears the lion’s share of responsibility for our vulnerability to horror. Consequently, the burden is on God to get the situation fixed.

3. I think the issue of moral luck must be dealt with. That is, we all start in different places in life and death happens arbitrarily, ending the moral development of the person. In class I read a quote from Eric Fromm to highlight this point: “The tragedy in the life of most of us is that we die before we are fully born.” I feel that God has to somehow make up for this situation.

4.I think death, its sheer existence, is a horror that needs to be defeated. Not just ended, but retroactively dealt with on an individual basis (see #3).

5. Finally, horror defeat must be realized at the personal level. It does no good, in my mind, for God to defeat horror for the Few at the end of time. God must defeat horror in the lives of all horror participants, whether they are Christian or not.

Again, not everyone places these very particular demands on a proposed theodicy. However, many people do. And, to date, Christ and Horrors is the only theodicy I’m aware of that addresses each of these issues. The point is, if you, or someone you care about, does get hung up on any of #1-#5 then Christ and Horrors is an important formulation to work with.

With those issues out of the way, we outlined the basic proposal of Christ and Horrors. Specifically, with Christ as horror-defeater the horror defeat will move through three stages:

Stage 1: Divine Solidarity
In Stage 1 God's presence and participation in horror allows for the possibility for moments of intimacy/union with God in the midst of horror whether we know it or not. Stage 1 horror defeat was accomplished in the Incarnation. That is, by entering into the horrors, God has built a route for personal horror defeat. That is, due to the Presence of God the ability to make meaning out of horrors becomes, theoretically, possible.

Stage 2: Healing and Mothering
Although Stage 1 implies that, post-Incarnation, it is possible to find meaning in the midst of horrors, many, due to ruin inflicted by horror, will not have the capacity to make that move. Thus, in Stage 2 God must work within the individuals developmental history creating meaning-making capacities from the inside out. This involves intensive Divine healing and coaching. Or, as the church mystic Julian of Norwich says, mothering.

Stage 3: The End of Horrors
During the final Stage all the prior work in Stage 2 must be brought to fruition for every person and the entire cosmos must be reconfigured to allow for an existence that no longer is radically vulnerable to horrors.

We should again note that Stage 3 horror defeat is not at the level of the group, where horrors end for the few. Recall #5 above: Horror defeat must occur on the personal level and for all horror-participants (which, given the human condition, means all of us). Here are selections from Christ and Horrors that get after this point:

"I insist, God will be good-to each created person by weaving up any horror-participation into an unending relationship of beatific intimacy with God. In my judgment, grim realism is not inappropriately derogatory of human dignity, but rather serves to magnify the miracle of God's making good on God's cosmic project by benefiting each and every human being. (p. 51)

"Nevertheless, for an omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly good God, a future just society isn't good enough. What about the countless individuals sacrificed on the slaughter-bench of history? An omniscient and omnipotent God Who loved human beings would make it up to them, would guarantee that there was enough positive meaning in it to defeat their horror-participation and make their lives great goods to them on the whole and in the end!" (p. 207)

"Traditional doctrines of hell err again by supposing either that God does not get what God wants with every human being ("God wills all humans to be saved" by God's antecedent will) or that God deliberately creates some for ruin. To be sure, many human beings have conducted their ante-mortem lives in such a way as to become anti-social persons. Almost none of us dies with all the virtues needed to be fit for heaven. Traditional doctrines of hell suppose that God lacks the will or the patience or the resourcefulness to civilize each and all of us, to rear each and all of us up into the household of God. They conclude that God is left with the option of merely human penal systems--viz., liquidation or quarantine!

Traditional doctrines of hell go beyond failure to hatred and cruelty by imagining a God Who not only acquiesces in creaturely rebellion and dysfunction but either directly organizes or intentionally "outsources" a concentration camp (of which Auschwitz and Soviet gulags are pale imitations) to make sure some creatures' lives are permanently deprived of positive meaning.

My own view is that ante-mortem horror-participation is hell enough. Horrors constitute the prima facie destruction of the positive meaning of our lives; a destruction that we lack knowledge, power, or worth enough to defeat; a destruction that reasonably drives many to despair. For God to succeed, God has to defeat horrors for everyone. We have all been to hell by being tainted by horrors ante-mortem. We all meet the horror of death at the end. For some, life has been one horror after another between the dawn of personhood and the grave. In millions of cases, these horrors have been spawned by the systemic evils of human societies. To be good-to us, God will have to establish and fit us for wholesome society, not establish institutions to guarantee that horrors last forever in the world to come!" (p. 229-230, emphases in original)

Obviously, this last bit is not a common move in Christian churches. That is, Christ and Horrors will ask us to alter our notions of hell and its function. And yet, however controversial this move might be, we must note that if a theodicy is to satisfy #5 above then this is the only move available. And, given that some people do trip up on #5 it seems worth the effort to make the move made in Christ and Horrors available to those who need it to maintain theological coherence.

Christ and Horrors, Part 1: Horror as the Problem

The class began with me handing out an essay from John Hick entitled An Irenaean Theodicy. An abstract of Hick's ideas can be found here. I shared Hick’s essay because his argument shares a family resemblance to the theodicy of Christ and Horrors.

Specifically, we compared an Irenaean theodicy with an Augustinian theodicy. The general structure of an Augustinian theodicy is to posit an initial perfection of man that is subsequently corrupted by The Fall. Thus, in an Augustinian theodicy the movement is from good-to-bad with the responsibility falling heavily on human free will (i.e., Adam’s choice and our own in his wake). That is, the evils of life are the fault of humankind.

In contrast, an Irenaean theodicy posits a bad-to-good movement. That is, humankind’s past is steeped in Darwinian selfishness and aggression. But God is slowly working with Creation, redeeming it, moving it toward Perfection at the eschaton. In an Irenaean theodicy, the burden falls more heavily on God as God’s efforts are required to pull all of Creation toward a state of grace.

Schematically, then, we can compare the Augustinian and Irenaean theodicy positions:

Augustinian:
good-to-bad movement
burden/responsibility is on humans (evil is the product of human free will)

Irenaean:
bad-to-good movement
burden/responsibility is on God (to perfect Creation at the eschaton)

In broad outline, Christ and Horrors follows the Irenaean rhythm.

After these preliminaries we dipped into Christ and Horrors.

At Highland, we tend to begin conversations about salvation by defining our predicament as sin. Thus, the work of the Christ is to save us from our sin. But Christ and Horrors begins in a different place. Specifically, Christ and Horrors begins not with sin but with our vulnerability to horror. Horror, rather than sin, is taken to be the Fundamental Human Predicament. Thus, the book is preoccupied with the question: If salvation is to be rescued from horrors what would Christ have to do to accomplish that work?

To begin to understand how Christ might defeat horror, we first must understand Adams’ definition of horror.

What are horrors? Adams (p. 32) centers them upon existential concerns about meaning: "horrors as evils the participation in (the doing or suffering of) which constitutes prima facie reason to doubt whether the participant's life could (given their inclusion in it) have positive meaning for him/her on the whole."

Just to be clear, Adams (p. 32-33) gives examples, "Paradigm horrors include the rape of a woman and axing off her arms, psychological torture whose ultimate goal is the disintegration of personality, schizophrenia, severe clinical depression, cannibalizing one's own offspring, child abuse the sort described by Ivan Karamazov, parental incest, participation in the Nazi death camps, the explosion of nuclear bombs over populated areas, being the accidental and/or unwitting agent in the disfigurement or death of those one loves best."

These events are horrors because they furnish "reason to doubt whether the participant's life can be worth living, because it engulfs the positive value of his/her life and penetrates into his/her meaning-making structures seemingly to defeat and degrade his/her value as a person" (p. 33). Adams summarizes (p. 34): "the heart of the horrendous, what makes horrors so pernicious, is their life-ruining potential."

Two further comments about horrors are in order. First, even if we do not participate in horrors (either as victim or perpetrator) we are all complicit in horror. Adams (p. 35-36, emphases hers) makes this clear: "Virtually every human being is complicit in actual horrors merely by living in his/her nation or society. Few individuals would deliberately starve a child into mental retardation. But this happens even in the United States, because of the economic and social systems we collectively allow to persist and from which most of us profit. Likewise complicit in actual horrors are all those who live in societies that defend the interests of warfare and so accept horror-perpetration as a chosen means to or a side effect of its military aims. Human being in this world is thus radically vulnerable to, or at least collectively an inevitable participant in, horrors."

A second point that Adams makes later in the book (p. 207) is that "death itself is a horror!" She continues (p. 208-209): "Death proves that there is not enough to us to maintain integrity, to hold body and soul together...It is in our nature and our calling as human beings to strive against the forces what would undo us, and it is in our nature surely to lose...Death mock our personal pretensions...If death is a horror, and death is natural to human being, then to be human is to be headed for horror. In cultic conceptuality, human being is a prima facie cursed kind of thing to be."

In sum, this is our Condition: God made a world where we are radically vulnerable to or complicit in horrors. The world is saturated in horror. Thus, the Work of Christ must be, fundamentally and foundationally, involved in horror defeat (p. 52): "If non-optimality is construed in terms of God's setting us up for horror-participation by creating us personal animals in a material world such as this, then the Savior's job is to be the horror-defeater. Our next question is: Who would Christ have to be, what relation to God and humankind would Christ have to have, to accomplish this saving work?"

Approaching Christ and Horrors

Before starting Christ and Horrors we took this class to lay some groundwork. The class had two main sections:

i.
First, we noted that Christ and Horrors is a work of theodicy. Stephen Davis, in his preface to Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy, defines theodicy narrowly and broadly.

Davis's narrow definition: A theodicy is a demonstration that God is righteous and just despite the presence of evil in the world.

Generally, this narrow definition is focused on reconciling the following propositions:

1. God is omnipotent (i.e., all-powerful)
2. God is perfectly good (omnibenevolent)
3. Evil exists.

The classic articulation of this perspective comes from David Hume: "Is [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both willing and able? Whence then is evil?"

But that is a narrow and logic-centric view of theodicy. Most theodicies are more existential in nature. Thus:

Davis's broader definition: "Any response to the problem of evil from the perspective of Judeo-Christian religious belief."

That is, theodicy doesn't have to focus narrowly on propositions but can be broadly construed as any attempt--existential, personal, epistemological--that confront the problem of evil from a (for our purposes) Christian perspective.

Davis points out that different facets of evil create different kinds of problems. I'll simplify by calling these the problems of existence, degree, and surd evil.

The Problem of Existence: For some, the very existence of evil is the problem.

The Problem of Degree: For some, it is not the existence of evil, per se, that is the problem. Rather, it is the amount or degree of evil in the world.

The Problem of Surd Evil: For some, it is not the existence or amount of evil that is the problem. Rather, it is the senseless, random, and inexplicable nature of evil.

Overall, then, theodicies deal with these questions and problems. Christ and Horrors is a part of this strain in theology.

ii.
Before beginning any study of theodicy we need to recognize the differences among us. Specifically, people are "satisfied" at different points in theodicy conversations. To illustrate this, I trotted out a model for describing people at church to describe how we deal differently with theodicy issues. I call the model First-, Second-, and N-Order Complaint.

To start, everyone, at some point, confronts the issues of theodicy. We all suffer and we need to understand. Sometimes our questions are acute and personal (e.g., personal trauma). Sometimes our questions are historical (e.g., the Holocaust). Sometimes existential (e.g., pain in the human condition). Thus, believers are particularly keen to hit upon a suite of answers to all these questions. How can a good and all-powerful God allow these things to happen?.

The first round of these questions I call FIRST-ORDER COMPLAINT. Thus, the answers that arise to meet this first round of questions I call FIRST-ORDER RESPONSES. There are a variety of first-order responses. Typical ones include free will, human sinfulness, Satan, or how the relational potential inherent in love implies the dark side of possible pain.

At this point in the conversation people start to sort themselves into two different groups. One group is generally satisfied with these first-order responses. They see the first-order responses as, generally speaking, adequate. However, there is a second group (and I am among them) that looks over the first-order responses and is partly or wholly unsatisfied. All these responses do is succeed in creating another round of questions. This second round of questions, in response to the first round, I call SECOND-ORDER COMPLAINT.

There are responses that can be offered at this second level of complaint. We can call these SECOND-ORDER RESPONSES. However, and I bet you guessed this, the process can continue. We can have another wave of THIRD-ORDER COMPLAINT with THIRD-ORDER RESPONSES. And forth-order. And fifth-order. And so on.

Thus, what I call N-ORDER COMPLAINT, is round upon round of complaint-response.

The point for community living is that there are different kinds of people in our classrooms. Some people are FIRST-ORDER COMPLAINT people while others are N-ORDER COMPLIANT people. And, if we are not careful, these two groups of people can quickly find themselves in the thick of misunderstandings and hurt feelings. Specifically, the FIRST-ORDER group will see the N-ORDER group as nihilistic and faithless. Conversely, the N-ORDER group will see the FIRST-ORDER group as pollyannaish and shallow.

This outcome is unfortunate and unproductive. So, we need to be alerted to these possible conflicts. As we go forward we need to allow room for people different from us.

Agreed?

Paul's Third "Theme" - Gospel and Empire

This post will summarize the third "theme" that NT Wright believes can be prominently identified within Paul's writings, that of Gospel and Empire.

This is a simple, fairly demonstrable theme that has radical implications. Here is how it works:

Dominating the world in Paul's day was the Roman Empire. At the head of that Empire was Caesar himself. At various points in time, Caesar had claimed to be the one who brings "peace" (remember the pax Romana?) , to be the "savior" of the peoples whose leaders he conquered, to be the "Lord" of the world, and to be the "son of God." Also, whenever a military victory was announced, people would ride through the streets of a city announcing "good news" or the "gospel" of his victory.

Do these claims sound familiar? In fact, they are the same claims that the writers of the New Testament generally, and Paul more specifically, continuously use to refer to Jesus. The claim that "Jesus is Lord" (a phrase which Wright interprets to be a summary of Paul's gospel) is, in fact, a political claim - it indicates that, as God reclaims his world, true authority is to be found in Jesus and not in Caesar or any other Emperor, king, dictator, or (in modern terms) constitutional body.

Thus, in Romans 1, when Paul says he is eager to preach his gospel (i.e., to announce that "Jesus is Lord") in Rome, and then follows that by stating he "is not ashamed of the Gospel," he means it. Paul intends, it seems, to march right into the seat of Caesar's power, and announce that Caesar is not - as he claims - in charge of the world.

There is a new Lord in the world, and anyone else who claims to hold authority over creation should take note.

Paul, Week Three - Messiah and Apocalypse

This post will summarize one of two Pauline "themes" that were the focus of our third class: that of Messiah and Apocalypse. A post on the second theme (that of "Gospel and Empire") will hopefully follow in a few days.

In Paul's world, there was a belief that a Messiah would come and accomplish the task of restoring Israel and God's world. Among other things, it was believed that Messiah would serve as Israel's representative to the world, that he would defeat the pagan kings which occupied Judea, and that he would re-build the temple.

NT Wright argues that Paul saw Jesus as this Messiah, though it was necessary to "reinterpret" some of the things that the Messiah was supposed to do in light of the events of Jesus' life. For example, Wright says, Paul believed that the temple was re-established within the church, such that God's spirit is now present within and among God's people, whose bodies are now the temple.

Where our translations will generally refer to "Jesus Christ," Wright prefers to use the phrase "Jesus, the Messiah" in its place. This reduces the temptation to think of "Christ" as Jesus' last name, and puts the emphasis on the meaning of the title "Christ."

While the concept of Jesus as Messiah is not that controversial to us, by refining our understanding of what was expected of the Messiah, we can better come to understand some of the things that Paul is saying. When Paul goes out of his way to point out how Jesus' death and resurrection was a defeat of the "powers and authorities," for example, he is telling us something about how Jesus did, in fact, do the things that were expected of the Messiah.

Paul also lived in an age when "apocalyptic" literature was popular. Apocalyptic literature developed during an age where God seemed largely silent. There was no explanation as to why he was not fulfilling his promises to restore Israel. This literature assumed that there must be an "unveiling" or "revelation" of the purposes of heaven, which are mysterious to man. Often these "apocalypses" involved grand stories of great catastrophes and images of angelic warriors coming into the earth to restore God's authority.

When we think of the apocalyptic, we tend to focus on a grand, Armageddon-like ending to the world. However, Wright tells us that Paul believed the great "apocalypse" had already occurred in the events concerning Jesus. Thus, when he speaks of God's mysteries, previously unknown, being revealed in Christ, he is saying that God's "apocalypse" or "unveiling" has happened in the death and resurrection of Jesus. In a sense, the "unveiling" is yet to come to complete fulfilment, but God's plan and purposes can now be readily seen.

Paul in Fresh Perspective, Class 2

During our second class in this series, we walked few multiple texts that deal with the theme of creation and covenant, both in the Old Testament and in Paul's writings. Here are the texts that we reviewed:

• Psalm 19
• Psalm 74
• Deuteronomy 28:1-14; 15-19
• Isaiah 51:12-16
• Colossians 1:15-20
• I Corinthians 15
• Romans chs 1-11

The theme of creation and covenant is most succinctly seen in the Colossians text, which reads as follows:

[Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

In this text, we see Christ both as the means by which creation is renewed ("firstborn over all creation") and the means by which covenant is fulfilled ("God was pleased...through him to reconcile to himself all things"). Wright tells us:

[Paul] believes that Israel’s God, the creator, has acted decisively to fulfil the covenant promises and to renew both covenant and creation. Paul thereby understands himself to be living at a different moment in the story….The new age has already begun, though the old age continues alongside it….

…[T]he twin themes of creation and covenant offer a context, an implicit narrative, within which we can grasp Paul’s understanding of what has gone wrong in the world and in Israel and how it is put right…

For Paul, God's "project" is to fulfil his covenant promise to renew creation. Everything that God is doing through Jesus serves the purpose that he has held all along - that of rescuing the world from bondage to sin and death and bringing it into new life.

Next week, we will look at two additional themes in Paul's writings: (1) that of Messiah and Apocalypse and (2) that of Gospel and Empire.

Paul in Fresh Perspectve, Class 1

July 11 marked our first class on NT Wright's book Paul in Fresh Perspective. For those who missed it, or who want a refresher on what we covered, this post will serve as a quick overview of the discussion during the first class.

During this class, we introduced the distinctive ideas that Wright brings to the table when reading Paul's letters, and we then focused on the first major theme that Wright recognizes in Paul's letters: that of Creation and Covenant.

Here are some of the differences between the traditional ideas about Paul and the ideas that Wright will discuss in the book:

1. Paul's Opponents. In the past, I have thought of Paul's opponents as people who professed that you could "earn your way into God's favor." But Wright contends that no one in Paul's world - even the most self-righteous Pharisee - would think such a thing! Instead, he believes that Paul's opponents were those who believed the Gentiles should be "marked" as the people of God through the requirements of the Mosaic law (for example, by circumcision or by the type of diet that is observed).

2. Paul's Message. Likewise, Paul's extensive discussion on such subjects as faith, works, and grace are not present merely to explain the mechanics of salvation. Instead, Paul is showing how God is "marking" his people through, for example, faith - rather than through the Mosaic law.

3. God's Righteousness. Christians have often thought of the phrase "the righteousness of God" to refer to the way God imputes his righteousness on us. But Wright thinks this phrase normally (always?) refers to God's righteous act in reclaiming his world.

4. God's Future. We tend to think of God's "project" as getting people into heaven after they die, but Paul uses the language of resurrection and new creation to describe God's future. These two concepts bear some similarities, but they are dramatically dissimilar in other ways.

Wright believes that, in order to understand Paul, we must understand his world and his questions. Paul, he tells us, finds himself at a particular point in history - and it is necessary to understand the questions of his people and of his day to understand his letters.

Wright identifies three major themes/narratives in Paul, the first of which is the theme of Creation and Covenant. Here is the short version of the "Creation and Covenant" story/theme:
1. God created the world; it was good
2. Creation became marred by sin and death
3. God made a covenant with Abraham to restore creation; pursuant to this covenant, Abraham's children were to become lights to the world
4. Abraham's children failed to fulfil the covenant; instead, they decided to treat the covenant as an exclusive privilege

Our tendency is to move straight from point #2 to the crucifixion/saving act of Jesus on the cross. But, Wright tells us, Paul wrestles with #3 and #4: how will God act to fulfil the covenant now that Israel has failed in its assigned task? The need to explain Israel's "failure" and the ways that God will nonetheless move forward with his covenant are an important feature of Wright's interpretation of Paul.

Next week, we will have a look at the way the theme of Creation and Covenant is developed (a) in the Old Testament and (b) in Paul's writings.