Transcript

Perhaps the most difficult problem in theology is this.

Why does God allow evil?

If God is all good, all-knowing, and all-powerful, why is the world so marked by pain and loss?

These are not abstract questions.

They go right to the heart of our experience.

The ultimate answer offered by Christianity is the cross of Jesus, which is God's entry into suffering itself, His transfiguration of evil from within.

So we've seen what we mean when we use the word God.

We've seen certain rational paths that lead toward God.

We then looked at certain divine attributes, ways of naming God.

We saw the tension between the anti-grasping and the anti-hiding names.

Now we turn to what I think is the single most difficult question in theology, which is how does God relate to the world?

And here we're talking about issues of divine providence, especially the problem of evil.

This is where things get very complicated.

And I think, to be fair, where the atheists have their strongest case is in regard to the problem of evil.

I want to get at these questions with some care, realizing how central and significant they are.

My point of departure is going to be question 22 in the first part of the Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas.

I think one of the best analyses of providence in the great tradition.

Thomas first asks, is providence fitting to God?

Is providence something that God does?

Well, he looks at the history of the tradition, and he sees different responses to this.

Some people in the philosophical tradition have said, there is no providence.

I mean, things just happen dumbly by chance.

Think of chaos theory today would be close to that.

Things just dumbly happen.

Some say, well, no, God is providential, but just over kind of high important areas of his creation.

He doesn't descend into particulars.

I think here of, I'll date myself, but years ago when I was a kid watching the game of the week, and Joe Gargiola, remember that name?

Baseball announcer?

And a player got to the plate, and he crossed himself before he got in the batter's box.

And Joe Gargiola said, oh, come on, let God enjoy the game.

But his point was that God wouldn't descend into particulars like that.

I mean, maybe God is providential over high important areas, but not particulars.

Well, here's Thomas Aquinas' very interesting answer.

He says, look, whatever is good in creation comes from God.

So the being of creatures is good, the activity of creatures is good, but also the ordering of things to their end is good.

So creatures don't just dumbly exist, but everything is moving towards some purpose.

The idea of that pre-existing in the mind of God is what we call providence.

That God knows how things should be directed to their end.

He has that in mind and places that within creatures.

And so providence is fitting to God.

Now, more to it.

God is not just a celestial CEO. You know, a CEO that just worries about the high important matters but doesn't worry about particulars.

No, Aquinas says, God's providence extends to particulars.

Why?

Why?

Because of the manner of God's causality.

Think for a second.

Think for a second.

Now, my causal influence is real right now, but very limited.

What I mean is I'm having a causal influence on all of you.

I'm kind of compelling you for at least a few hours to think about the things of God.

Now, in a few hours, we're all going to go our separate ways, and I'll have zero causal impact on you at that point.

I don't affect your being in any way.

I'm affecting in a very limited manner your attention span for a few hours.

Okay, that's because I'm a very finite thing.

Now, consider God.

God who is ipsum esse, the sheer act of to be itself, in and through which all things come to be and are maintained in being.

God's causal efficacy extends to everything.

Thomas cites the book of Wisdom here.

God's wisdom orders all things sweetly and stretches from end to end mightily.

It's lovely, by the way, that God's stretching from end to end, ordering all things sweetly, mind you.

Not invasively, not interruptively, but sweetly ordering all things.

And so God's providence exists, and it extends to particulars.

Whenever I give a retreat, by the way, I usually begin with that line.

And I'll say, you know, the fact that we're gathered right now in this room is part of God's providence.

Oh, God doesn't care about us.

I mean, he's worrying about high important things.

No, no.

Right now, all of us in this room, we're ingredient in God's providential plan and action.

That's Aquinas' point.

Using a favorite trope, Aquinas says that God is like an artist.

It's really helpful here.

Think, for example, of the artist who made these windows.

He's a wonderful fellow from Milwaukee, and he designed every one of these windows.

Look at all the detail.

All the detail in the figures and the symbolism, the coloration, the design, everything.

Well, he was involved in all of it.

He planned the whole thing.

There's no aspect of any of these windows, even the little tiny details, that he wasn't concerned with.

Or think of a Dickens novel, you know, sprawling and complex and with hundreds of characters.

But yet Dickens was directly and personally involved in the writing of every aspect of that story.

So, Aquinas says, God is an artist.

What's his canvas?

All of space and all of time.

Is God indifferent to any aspect of it?

No. But like an artist, carefully designing and creating every detail of what he's made.

That's the modality of God's providence.

Okay, so once we see that, objections naturally arise, and Thomas entertains two in particular that I think are very important.

First of all, people say, look, if everything is subject to God's providence, every particular, how do you begin to explain things like luck or chance, or things just happening by accident?

That's the way the ball bounces.

Oh, no, everything's been determined by God.

What about luck and chance?

Well, here's a very important distinction Thomas makes, and a lot will hinge on it.

He says, in regard to particular causes, we can and should talk about accident, luck, or chance.

Let's say, for example, we're planning a bonfire, but bad luck, it rained, and so the rain interferes with the wood, we can't have the bonfire, bad luck.

Thomas says, only by the intervention of another competing cause can one cause's efficacy be affected.

And so we can and should talk about luck and happenstance in regard to the ordinary nexus of conditioned things.

However, when invoking the ultimate cause, the cause of the to-be-itself of the universe, we're talking about God now, now we shouldn't talk about luck and chance or happenstance, but we should see all things as ingredients in the providence of that ultimate cause.

Okay, I know it's very abstract.

Let me try to make it concrete with an example.

It's a beautiful day today, right?

Now, Chicagoans here, you know Tom Skilling, don't you?

For the sake of those who'll be watching later, Tom Skilling is a wonderful weatherman on Channel 9, WGN. And I always think of Tom Skilling as like a weather monk.

You know, he's just dedicated his whole life to the weather, and he loves the weather.

You know, it's just so obvious.

I've had the privilege of meeting him a couple of times when I've been down at WGN, and he's just a very sweet guy and seems to love what he does, loves the weather.

Okay, Tom gives the most thorough weather report you'll ever want.

So, he'll come on tonight to explain why it's a beautiful day today.

And he'll speak of probably a dome of high pressure coming from Canada.

He'll probably speak of something coming up from the Gulf of Mexico.

He'll talk about the jet stream.

You know, he'll go through all the causes that produce this day.

But could I stand next to Tom Skilling and say, I also want to thank God for this beautiful day?

Well, the answer to that is yes.

But notice now, Tom has a distinction.

What wouldn't Tom Skilling say?

He wouldn't come on and say, well, it's beautiful today because of the high pressure from Canada, because of God, and because of the jet stream.

See, what I'm saying is he wouldn't include God correctly as one of the competing causes in the nexus of conditioned causes.

He'd name all the conditioned causes.

God is invoked.

Think now of that whole collection of conditioned causes.

Now, put a great big triangle around that, symbolizing God's influence.

God is responsible for the whole shebang.

He's responsible for the fact that there is a planet Earth, the fact that there is a jet stream at all, the fact that there is this range of conditions at all.

How do you make a cherry pie?

Well, cherries and butter, I guess, or whatever, and the heat of the oven, the skill of the baker.

You're understanding now I'm not a cook.

But you'd list the various elements that go into making a cherry pie.

You'd never say, well, cherries, the heat of the oven, God, the skill of the baker, right?

But God is the condition for the possibility of that collection of conditioned causes.

And so, again, what do you see here, everybody?

You see the non-competitive causality of God.

That God can be involved in the totality of things, but in a non-competitive way.

So that we can say, yes, there are these particular causes that contribute, but God is the overarching or universal cause.

That's why John Paul II says, for people of faith, there are no coincidences.

It's a very interesting thing.

For people of faith who understand God's involvement, there are no real coincidences.

Thomas Aquinas uses the image of a king on the top of a hill, and he orders one servant to go this way, the other servant to go that way on separate missions.

His ultimate purpose is the servants might meet.

But as far as the servants know, they both have particular missions.

They have no idea they'll meet each other, on the bottom of the hill.

And they say, what a wonderful surprise.

What a happy accident that we meet.

And indeed, that would be true from their perspective.

Yet the king always knew his purpose was they might meet.

That's his example of how this thing plays itself out.

And that's his response to the objection.

When I mention John Paul, one of my heroes, I think of another hero of mine, Bob Dylan.

And Bob Dylan has this line, we're hanging in the balance of a perfect finished plan, like every sparrow fallen, like every grain of sand.

It's exactly John Paul's point.

It's exactly Thomas Aquinas' point.

We're hanging in the balance, all of us, of a perfect finished plan, like every sparrow fallen, like every grain of sand.

That's someone with a sense of divine providence.

Now, the second objection to this view, that God is providential over all things, brings us to the heart of the most difficult question in all of theology, and as I suggested, to the most powerful objection to belief in God.

Here's the way the objection is framed.

A wise provider excludes any defect from his work as much as he can.

I'm the rector of Mundelein Seminary.

My job is to exclude as many defects as I can from Mundelein Seminary.

If I allow a lot of defects, I'm a bad rector.

But, there are many defects in the realm of creation.

Thus, either God's not able to hinder these, but that seems to fly in the face of his omnipotence, or God does not have immediate care over his creation.

It's a good argument, by the way.

It's a very good objection.

You know how, in the 19th century, John Stuart Mill, the English philosopher, wrote an epithely.

Mill said, if evil exists, and it surely does, then God cannot be simultaneously omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent.

If evil exists, and God is all three of those things, it doesn't make any sense.

If he's omniscient, he'd know about it.

Omnipotent, he could do something about it.

Omnibenevolent, he'd want to do something about it, right?

So, if all three of those things obtain, how could there be evil?

Therefore, if there is evil, there's no God.

Again, darn good argument.

And I'll give the atheists, it's the best argument against God there is, is the problem of evil, the problem of suffering.

What does Thomas Aquinas say to this?

And here, it's from Augustine, it's a classical response of our tradition, that God is so wise, good, and powerful that he permits certain evils to bring about goods that would not exist otherwise.

God is so powerful, good, and wise that he permits certain evil to bring out goods that would not otherwise exist.

Now, example.

Well, maybe first a clarification about God's permission of evil.

It's a very important move.

God doesn't cause evil or create evil.

Why not?

Because evil isn't a thing.

Augustine saw this.

Evil is a privatio boni, a privation of the good.

It's a lack or an absence of a good that ought to be there.

Think of a cavity in a tooth.

Think of blindness in an eye, right?

It's the lack of a good that ought to be there.

And therefore, it's always incorrect to talk about someone creating evil as though it's a thing.

Or seeing evil as a force opposing the good.

No, it's always parasitic upon the good.

It's a defect of the good.

That's why we talk about God's permission of it, not creation of it.

Okay, but that still begs the question.

Why would God permit such a thing?

Why would God permit such a defect in his creation?

To bring about goods that would not otherwise exist.

Now, let me give you a couple examples from Aquinas, then I'll give some of my own.

Thomas talks about, I mentioned them earlier actually, the lion and the antelope.

Imagine now, a hungry lion hasn't eaten for days.

Suddenly sees an antelope.

What would he say if he had a mind like ours?

He'd say, thank God for sending me this antelope.

Right?

Now you're the antelope.

And you've been wandering around and suddenly there's this hungry lion looking at you.

If the antelope had a mind like ours, what would he say?

Why, oh God, have you allowed this to happen?

You see, Aquinas' point is in a finite conflictual world, certain goods cannot exist apart from certain evils.

It's also signaling, if you want, a certain relativity in regard to evil.

I don't mean in any way to denigrate evil or say it's not important, but to notice a certain relativity of good and evil depending on the perspective, the lions or the antelopes.

Here's another one from Aquinas, which I know is a bit troubling, but it's interesting to think about.

He says, without the cruelty of the tyrant, there would be no virtue of the martyr.

Think of a martyr whom we admire legitimately.

Think of him in these windows, Maxine Colbert over there, or Edith Stein, both of whom died at Auschwitz.

Now I know, I don't want this to sound glib, and it can sound glib, but no Hitler, no Edith Stein, no Hitler, no Maxine Colbert.

That particular form of the good would not have existed were it not for, admittedly, a great evil.

Does that explain Hitler, justify Hitler?

No, no, no.

But perhaps it's a ray of light of how God can work in allowing certain evils.

Now, can we see this sometimes?

Yeah, I think so.

Sometimes we can see, you know, if that bad thing had not happened to me, I would never have, now fill in the blank, met him, met her, had this experience, done this or that, realized this or that about myself.

Sometimes we can see this principle working, God permitting suffering or evil to bring about a good that wouldn't exist otherwise.

We can see it sometimes.

No Edith Stein and Colbert.

No Hitler, no martyr.

But very often, everybody, we can't see it.

Even as we acknowledge the truth of the principle, we can't see how it's working.

And with that, we turn to the great book of Job.

I tell my students here, I'd like pastoral people to memorize the book of Job because it's the greatest Old Testament wrestling and the basic story is that Job is visited with every possible suffering.

In one fell swoop, he loses his children, his family, his livelihood, his business, his friends, his health, everything.

Mrs. Job, who makes one of the great one-liner cameo appearances, comes upon the scene and says, why don't you just curse God and die?

She's not going to win any awards for pastoral sensitivity.

Her friends famously come and try to explain to him why this has been happening to him and they get nowhere with him and Job dismisses them and finally calls God into the dock as we're all tempted to do in the face of great suffering.

What this question is doing today, why, why, Lord, why would you permit this?

And then, I'll just read a little bit of God's famous answer.

By the way, the longest single speech by God in the Bible.

The longest single speech that God gives in the Bible.

Then the Lord addressed Job out of the storm.

Some translations have whirlwind.

Watch the Coen Brothers movie, The Serious Man, how it ends with a great whirlwind.

It's about the Book of Job.

Why is God speaking out of the whirlwind?

It's like a sandstorm, right, which kicks up sands that you can't see, blinded.

You think you've got it but you don't. God obscures his vision.

Who is this that obscures divine plans with words of ignorance?

Gird up your loins now like a man.

I will question you and you tell me the answers.

And then God says to Job, where were you when I founded the earth?

Tell me you have such understanding.

Who determined its size?

Surely you know.

Who stretched out the measuring line who laid the cornerstone?

Have you ever in your lifetime commanded the morning and shown the dawn its place?

And then God goes on and on exploring with Job the mysteries of this physical universe.

How strange and inexplicable they are.

How little Job knows about them.

What's the point now?

To explain away the problem?

No. But to take Job's suffering and place it within an ever greater context of the totality of space and time.

Remember God's canvas, God's novel is all of space and all of time.

What's he up to?

Well, you'd have to have a command of all of that to understand.

What Job looks at, what we look at, is our very, very narrow range of space and time.

Look at this now, toward the end of God's speech to Job.

I've always loved this section.

He's taking Job on a tour of the universe, all of its wonders and mysteries.

And here's how he concludes.

See, besides you, I made behemoth that feeds on grass like an ox.

Now, who's behemoth?

The scholars debate.

It could be a great crocodile or a great hippopotamus.

It could be an animal.

I made him, Job, as I made you.

It's fascinating, isn't it?

We tend to look at our suffering purely from our perspective.

God looks at the totality of his creation.

I made behemoth as I made you.

Behold the strength in his loins, the vigor in the sinews of his belly.

He carries his tail like a cedar.

The sinews of his thighs are like cables.

His bones like tubes of bronze.

His frame like iron rods.

I bet, Job, you've never even thought about this creature, and yet I made him as I made you.

He's ingredient in my providence as you are.

Then he goes on to describe a second animal, probably a whale.

Can you lead about Leviathan with a hook or curb his tongue with a bit?

Can you put a rope in his nose?

Will he then plead with you time after time and address you with tender words?

Here's this great whale.

Probably Job's never thought about him.

Think of, right now, a whale making its way through the Pacific Ocean.

But they're ingredient too in God's providence.

Do you think the whale's going to do what you want him to do, Job?

Will he make an agreement with you that you may have him as a slave forever?

Can you play with him as with a bird?

You see what God's speech is doing is he's teasing Job out of a certain self-preoccupation and opening him to a vision of the totality of God's creation.

Whatever is happening to us, good and evil, is part of a much bigger and stranger story.

Okay, let me close with just two images.

Both from my pastoral experience.

Years ago, I used to help out at a parish on the weekend and in the front pew, almost every week I was there, I'd see this family and she was profoundly handicapped, both physically and mentally.

And she was basically strapped into her chair and she was always in kind of a contorted position, always looked very uncomfortable and she would often get restless and she'd vocalize during Mass.

So I became used to her presence and knew the family a little bit.

But you know what always struck me was there was a brother of hers, young kid, 10 or 11, as she would struggle and she'd have difficulty, he would talk to her, he would wipe the saliva coming from her mouth.

Little kid, you know how little kids are usually self-preoccupied, he wasn't, he was very involved with his sister in a deeply compassionate way.

Now I've lost touch with that family, I moved away from that parish long ago, I have no idea what happened to them.

I've often mused about something.

That little kid, 11 years old, he's probably, that kid now is probably in his mid-20s.

Is he going to pass that compassion on to his children?

Who will pass it on to their children?

Who will pass it on to their children?

And one of those children will become a saint when the church most needs a saint.

You see how God is working across all of space and all of time.

We look at our little narrow bit of it and we say it doesn't make any sense what might God be about?

Now does that explain this little girl's suffering?

Of course not.

Of course not.

Does that justify it?

Of course not.

But does it shed a kind of light on the way God might work?

Here's the last one also from my pastoral experience.

A young father came to me, a guy about 30. He had a young son who was three and the son had a disease, and they had to do surgery on him.

Serious surgery.

And he said, Father, what broke my heart was I went to the hospital after the surgery and there was my son and he was in all the pain that you're in after major surgery.

And I couldn't begin to explain to him why he was going through this because he just wouldn't understand it.

But he knew somehow I was involved.

Here I am his loving father and why are you allowing this calamity to happen to me is what his eyes were saying to his father.

And the father said, it broke my heart because even in principle I couldn't begin to explain what surgery is about and all of that.

I remember as he told me that story I thought, what a wonderful metaphor for God vis-a-vis all of us.

The father couldn't explain because of the huge difference between his own mind and the mind of his son.

Now, now, think about the mind of Ipsum Ese, the mind of God himself that commands all of space and all of time.

Is it possible that the heart of God breaks because he can't begin to explain to us precisely why we go through the suffering we go through?

Because it's meaningless?

No, no, no.

From our perspective perhaps we can't take it in and that it breaks God's heart that he can't communicate this to us.

Is that why, this goes beyond the book of Job, what does Ipsum Ese do?

What did God do but became one of us and entered precisely into our suffering?

Think of the cross now as the limit case of meaningless suffering.

The son of God, the author of life came and you killed him, we hear St. Peter say.

The limit case of meaningless suffering.

Is that not to take it away but to transform it with his presence?

I think that's the ultimate answer to Job and that's probably the ultimate answer to this mystery of suffering.

God's providence fully manifested in God becoming one of us and suffering with us.