Theodicy
Pronunciation Guide:
The the- in theodicy is pronounced like the the- in theology.
The -odicy in theodicy is pronounced like Homer's Odyssey.
Now we turn our attention to Theodicy, the justification of God in the face of evil, from the Greek words for God (theos) and justice (dikaios).
Theodicy goes right to the heart of the Problem of Evil.
And the Problem of Evil is this:
As Christians, we believe that God is benevolent and almighty, and yet evil is real.
So the logical dilemma is this:
If God is almighty and there is evil, then God is not benevolent; OR
If God is benevolent and there is evil, then God is not almighty.
The religious dilemma is this: is God good, or evil?
How can we begin to approach the Problem of Evil?
First, we need to admit that God is ultimately responsible because God initiated and continues to create everything.
Having said that, evil exists not because God isn't almighty, and not because God isn't benevolent; evil exists because God chooses to create Real People in a Real World.
Let's look at each of these aspects of Creation.
First, God chooses to create a Real World— a world which has an objective reality, a world which is predictable enough that we can speak meaningfully about "laws of nature."
If you have read Mary Poppins, you will remember her magical medicine: when she gives it to Jane, it tastes like Jane's favorite flavor; when she gives it to Michael, it tastes like his favorite flavor.
Of course, the Real World doesn't work that way.
When a batter hits a ball, she knows that if she hits it just right she'll get a home run; but if the catcher gets in the way of her swing and the bat strikes him full in the face, the bat will not cease being a bat for the catcher's sake.
There is also ambiguity in a Real World:
Water is necessary for life, and it can drown us. Fire warms us and cooks our food, and it can burn us.
All of this follows from God's creation of a Real World.
Second, God chooses to create Real People, and Real People must be able to make real choices.
A coerced choice is not a real choice.
In order to be truly free to choose what is good or holy, we must be truly free to choose what is bad or evil.
To be truly free to love, we must be truly free to hate.
God did not create us to be marionettes on strings, doing only what God manipulates us to do.
And because God chooses to create Real People in a Real World, we need to recognize the difference between what God permits and what God desires.
God permits evil so that Real People in a Real World may fulfill God's desire that we truly love one another and that we truly love God, and truly choose what is good over what is evil.
In short, God has given us freedom— a terrible freedom as well as a glorious freedom.
Here's what St. Paul says in his letter to the Galatians (5:1, 13-15):
"For freedom Christ has set us free. . . .
"For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another.
"For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'
"If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another."
Although God is ultimately responsible for evil because God initiated and sustains a creation of Real People in a Real World, Christians also know this:
In Jesus of Nazareth, God submitted God's very self to the consequences of God's own creation by taking on the same risk of life and suffering as we do.
Charles Williams, a brilliant British novelist and theologian, and member of the Inklings, who flourished in the 1930s and '40s, put it starkly. He began by quoting St. Paul in Romans 8:22, King James Version:
"'The whole creation groaneth and travaileth together.'
"This then is the creation that 'needs' justifying.
"The Cross justifies it to this extent at least— that just as He submitted us to his inexorable will, so He submitted Himself to our wills. . . . If he would not cease to preserve us in the full horror of existence, at least He shared it."
The Incarnation of God also means that we know that God knows from experience what it is to be human; what it is to be hungry and thirsty, what it is to be rejected and ridiculed; what it is to be abandoned, and even what it is to "die as one of us."
And the Incarnation also means that when-ever and where-ever human flesh suffers, God suffers.
In St. Matthew's Gospel (25:42-43), Jesus says this in one of his parables:
"I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me."
Monday: Two Kinds of Suffering— Unchosen and Chosen
In 1963, a racist bomb attack on an Alabama church killed four black girls.
John Petts, in Llansteffan, Carmarthenshire, designed this window,
with Jesus' words from Matthew 25:40: "You did it to me."
This window from the people of Wales was installed in 1965.
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