Evil and the justice of God

No. 34, 25 May 2006

by Rowland Croucher

N. T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God (London: SPCK, 2006)

Sociologist and Catholic priest Andrew Greeley once said he had never had an unpublished thought. Greeley is author of over 50 novels and 100 works of non-fiction. Tom Wright is another who seems to publish every thought: in my view the most prolific living writer-theologian – perhaps matched only by Alister McGrath – in the English-speaking world.

This is a timely book in an era of international terrorism, sex slavery, pedophilia and massive natural disasters. Evil is everywhere and, because of television, “in your face” – whether famines in Saharan Africa, or a thousand rapes a day in the Congo, or a US teenager shooting his classmates.

Tom Wright is a first-class biblical scholar and theologian, and a bishop/pastor who writes in a straightforward, easy-to-read style. The main problem with this book for some – particularly those who’ve done some thinking beyond Philosophy 101 – is that he is almost dismissive of philosophical resolutions of the problem of pain/evil, and confines his apologetic to biblical/theological themes, without (in this small volume) giving us an adequate rationale for regarding the Bible as ultimately authoritative “for faith and conduct.”

His conclusion (p.108): “I have argued that the problem of evil, as classically conceived within philosophy, is not soluble as it stands, not least because it tends to postulate a god other than the God revealed in Jesus Christ. When we bring the Bible into the equation, not least the gospel accounts of Jesus, the picture becomes more complicated, but also ultimately richer, and the problem becomes relocated.”

Our security, he writes, is in knowing that whereas we cannot understand how and why radical evil invaded this universe, God will ultimately make a world in which “all shall be well, all manner of thing shall be well.”

The key to such assurance is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, together with the “powerful and strange” idea that forgiveness – God’s, ours and others’ – “is the knife which cuts the rope by which sin, anger, fear, recrimination and death are still attached to us. Evil will have nothing to say at the last, because the victory of the cross will be fully implemented.”

Here are some passages I underlined that will give you a sense of Wright’s style and range of thought:

“As Walter Wink has argued… there is a great deal to be said for the view that all corporate institutions have a kind of corporate soul, an identity which is greater than the sum of its parts, which can actually tell the parts what to do and how to do it… Some of [them] … whether they are industrial companies, governments, or even (God help us) churches, can become so corrupted with evil that the language of ‘possession’ becomes the only way to explain the phenomena before us” (p. 18).

“Somehow, strangely, and to us sometimes even annoyingly, the creator God will not simply abolish evil from the world. Why not? We are not given an answer. We are, instead, informed in no uncertain terms that God will contain evil, that he will restrain it, that he will prevent it from doing its worst, and that he will even on occasion use the malice of human beings to further his own strange purposes” (p. 30).

“In the grand narrative… we observe a pattern of divine action to judge and punish evil and to set bounds to it, without destroying the responsibility and agency of human beings themselves and, also, both to promise and to bring about new moments of grace, events which constitute new creation, however much they are themselves shot through with ambiguity. This is not, I think, exactly the same as the ‘free-will defence’ beloved of some who try to explain or to vindicate God (‘God gave us free will so it’s all our fault’); it is more a ‘commitment to action’ on God’s part, coupled with the settled affirmation of creation as still basically good” (p. 43).

“The supper was Jesus’ way of expressing and explaining to his followers, then and ever since, what his death was all about. It wasn’t a theory, we note, but an action (a warning to all atonement-theorists ever since, and perhaps an indication of why the church has never incorporated a specific defining clause about the atonement in its great creeds)… Having said that, I find myself compelled towards one of the well-known theories of atonement… the ‘Christus Victor’ theme, the belief that on the cross Jesus has won the victory over the powers of evil” (pp. 57, 59).

“It is wrong to think of the satan as ‘personal’ in the same way that God… is ‘personal.’ That’s not to say that the satan is a vague or nebulous force; quite the reverse. I prefer to use the term ‘sub-personal’ or ‘quasi-personal.’” (p. 71). “Thus, just as when we offer genuine forgiveness to someone else we are no longer conditioned by the evil that they have done, even if they refuse to accept this forgiveness and so continue in a state of enmity, so when God offers genuine forgiveness to his sinful creatures he is no longer conditioned by the evil they have done, even if they refuse to accept his forgiveness” (emphasis Wright’s).

Otherwise the grouch, the sulker, the Prodigal Son's older brother, occupies the implicit moral high ground for ever. This does not explain, as I said, the origin of evil. But it does, I think, help us understand how it will be that, when God makes the promised new world, there will be no shadow of past evil to darken the picture” (p. 92).

Wright occasionally uses quaint language (like “putting the world to rights,” “Saul went to the bad”), and he does not adequately address the big issues of “undeserved” suffering, animal pain, natural disasters, and why a good and powerful God created such a flawed universe in a slim 109 pages. But, read slowly and prayerfully, it offers the reader a rich experience.

Rev Dr Rowland Croucher is a former Baptist pastor and is Director of John Mark Ministries (http://jmm.aaa.net.au/).

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Soundings is a publication of the Centre for Christian Ethics, edited by Rod Benson. Soundings welcomes submissions of up to 1000 words that seek to facilitate debate and explore issues of religion, ethics and public policy in Australia and internationally. Previous columns give a good indication of the topical range and tone for acceptable essays. Columns may be quoted or republished in full, with attribution to the author of the column, Soundings, and the Centre for Christian Ethics, Morling College, Sydney Australia. Views expressed in Soundings articles are not necessarily those of the Centre for Christian Ethics, Morling College or the Baptist Churches of NSW & ACT.