Archives: Product Reviews

The nature and meaning of evil in the world have troubled religious thinkers throughout the centuries. Particularly vexing is the suffering endured by those who seem innocent of guilt or blame. If the person of Christian faith takes seriously the experiences of seemingly innocent victims of pain, a question naturally surfaces: How might one understand theologically innocent suffering (i.e., suffering out of proportion to human guilt)? God, Evil, and Innocent Suffering responds to this question, beginning with an exploration of the possibility of innocent suffering: “Does anyone suffer innocently?” From the author’s perspective innocent suffering is real and serves as the measure of all evils because of its radically unjust nature.

Classical theodical projects deny the realness of innocent suffering in part, Thiel argues, because such a denial allows for a clear and strong belief in the goodness of God in that suffering has merit or it is deserved punishment. Treatments by church leaders such as Augustine as well as Jewish doctrine are heavily reliant on “traditional doctrines of covenant and original sin” respectively, and as a consequence are guided by notions of implicit/explicit guilt. However, moving beyond abstract notions of sin and evil, can the suffering endured, for example, by Holocaust victims or children be attributed to wrongdoing by the victims? Does the implicit/explicit guilt paradigm work? At the very least these examples point to suffering that is out of balance with any sin the two groups, Holocaust victims and children, could have committed.

Theil finds modern theodicies just as problematic as classical responses to suffering. Beginning with attention to versions of the “Best-of-All-Possible-Worlds” theodicy, Thiel argues that Leibniz’s classic presentation of divine justice is never fully jettisoned by John Hick in his “vale of soul-making” theodicy. In either case, the presence of evil in the realm of a good God is explained in that “God willed a world open to evil in order to manifest fully God’s goodness”. For Hick this includes the ability of humans to grow through the pedagogical benefits of suffering. In a similar vein, Swinburne denies innocent suffering by arguing that “passive evil suffered” provides opportunity for human accountability and the fostering of strong moral agents of great character, who are strengthened through the pedagogical moment suffering entails. In the final analysis, all three theodicies do damage to innocent suffering by transforming it into something beneficial: “divine and human goodness cannot be what they are apart from a world in which evil really exists” (p.47).

Process theodicies-“Best-of-All-Possible Gods” theodicies-fare no better. Whereas Hick, Leibniz, and Swinburne work to maintain the omnipotence and goodness of God over against evil, process responses to evil involve a surrender of omnipotence because it is “inconsistent with the finite and temporal character of reality” (p.47). God, like humans, is faced with the “ordinary conditions of existence”. Consequently, God’s power is exercised within certain limits in that God’s work in the world involves the attempt to persuade humans to behave in productive ways. Whereas liberation theologians have traditionally found this depiction of God woefully inadequate for the demands of justice, Theil objects for a different reason. Process depictions sanitize innocent suffering, he argues, by removing the weight of the “pain, loss, grief, and injustice” involved. While “Best-of-All-Possible Worlds” theodicies erase innocent suffering by rethinking the world’s constitution, Process theodicy does so by reworking the nature and purpose of divine movement in the world. In either case, innocent suffering becomes a non-reality because it points beyond itself to new possibilities of moral growth and a moral future.

In contrast to the theodicies examined, God, Evil, and Innocent Suffering does not seek to transform innocent suffering into something less troubling. But its realness does not damage Theil’s doctrine of God, which is premised on the attributes of absolute goodness, omnipotence, and omnipresence. Furthermore, these traditional attributes of the divine are held in creative tension with the undeniable integrity of innocent suffering as unjust and tragic.

In order to develop and hold this position, the author appeals to a faith-based response to suffering that is not philosophical in nature (not a theodicy), reflecting instead “on God’s relation to evil theologically”. “Faith”, Theil continues, guides “reasoning here, and scripture and tradition, understood as divine revelation, will supply the evidence for faith-oriented reflection” (p.ix). The author does not make use of a hermeneutic of suspicion in reading scripture and tradition, and so his theological interpretation can easily fall prey to the perspective of the privileged over against the experiences of the oppressed. (It becomes tempting to take scripture at face value.) At times, the author’s theological response to innocent suffering seems best suited to those who do not bare the bulk of misery and pain-those who can speculate from a “safe” distance. And, oddly enough, this resembles his charge against Hick.

The idea that God’s will operates through instances of pain and suffering offends the author’s perception of God and the substance of faith because “the prospect of God’s purposeful willing of death” opposes the “expectations of faith in how God’s providence is disposed toward the world” (p.73). Innocent suffering is not the result of divine activity and it cannot be explained simply in terms of human guilt. There is a troubling distance from the source of innocent suffering in the author’s theological interpretation of evil.

One might raise questions concerning the source of evil that is not of God and not from humans. Yet, oddly enough from the author’s perspective God, Evil, and Innocent Suffering is not obligated to provide an answer. In fact, theological formulations are incapable of satisfying this desire for information on the genealogy of innocent suffering. Readers, hence, are quickly told that the book is not concerned with a full explanation of how evil and a good God can exist in the same space. Instead, God, Evil, and Innocent Suffering seeks to take faith seriously by “chart[ing] another viable course through the tradition’s basic beliefs” (p.3). In this sense, Theil’s work, unlike the theodicies presented, creatively uses resources from the Christian faith to both affirm the attributes of God and the reality of innocent suffering: God is good and innocent suffering remains unjust and the “most dramatic symptom of evil” (p.67). This modality of suffering simply is, and the Christian theologian must recognize its existence in strong terms while doing no damage to the character of God. Theological truth rests on the maintenance of this tension. Nonetheless, how does one speak of justice when the origin of innocent suffering cannot be (and need not be) ascertained?

The author’s proposal is provocative, but not convincing. This is particularly the case for readers who share the theological sensibilities and sociopolitical outlook of liberation theology. His limited attention to black and womanist theologians, for example, who have given a great deal of thought to issues of moral evil seems odd considering Theil’s concern with issues of justice and injustice. Dialogue with theologians of liberation may have assisted Theil in grounding his notion of innocence within concrete instances of oppression in part by recognizing the sociopolitical, economic, and cultural context of the Christian faith. (The Holocaust and vaguely presented suffering of children are used only to critique theodicy.) From the perspective of liberationists, why even speak of a God whose causal agency is distanced from the most horrific form of evil? What does it mean to say God has a preferential option for the oppressed (innocent sufferers) in light of Theil’s postulation of God’s non-relationship to innocent suffering? Furthermore, how do those who suffer unjustly raise a protest in light of the author’s framing of God’s position relative to innocent suffering? What happens to human accountability and responsibility-the drive for improvement-when innocent suffering is not the consequence of misdeeds? Is it enough to recognize the unjust nature of innocent suffering? Where is the consolation in that?

Furthermore, the author’s position does not seem to do justice to the emotional response to suffering he critiques others for diminishing. In fact, the author seems more concerned with protecting God from participation in evil than in addressing the plight of those who suffer. At times it seems Theil’s theological response flirts with theodicy in an effort to safeguard God from charges of wrong doing: Theodicies alter doctrine of God in ways that give meaning to innocent suffering, and Theil protects God by shrouding innocent suffering in “an admission of ignorance”. Who, within the community of innocent sufferers, can be expected to embrace ignorance with regard to the source of their misery? At best this approach works in theory, but not with respect to the pastoral emphasis Thiel says is vital for good theology. The author enters a call for patience in anticipation of God’s ultimate triumph over evil. However, until then, it is not clear how we are to hear, respect, and embrace the emotional response to evil coming from the oppressed. What is the nature and meaning of praxis?

The author’s position is unconvincing at times, and it will leave those committed to liberationist theological principles frustrated. But that is fine. This book tackles an important issue and whether or not one agrees with Theil’s conclusion, his text should be read. It provides a provocative-whether satisfying or not-discussion of our most vexing dilemma.

The emergent Christian tradition saddled itself with the problem of evil (that threat to credibility that has ever yet haunted the faith) when it rejected the path of Marcion by claiming the Hebrew Scriptures as its Old Testament based on the identification of the God of Israel, whom those very Scriptures named the (creator, With the God of Jesus, whom he had called “Father”-the god Christians believed had raised him from the dead. Augustine Would later opine that suffering was tile just dessert of all who inherited the sinful distortedness of postlap-sarian Adam, believing in turn that God showed His mercy by so transforming some that they escaped the general perdition deserved by all. He apparently believed that if babies who died in infancy could not be shown to somehow deserve their fate, then the world could not he viewed as a just order and faith in a just and merciful creator god would be rendered vain.

It is just this theological denial of innocent suffering represented by Augustine that John Thiel refuses to accept. He is eloquent in arguing that the sense of justice involved founders on the shoals of proportionality. But it Thiel refuses the solution of premodern traditional theology, he equally rejects approaches that he labels postmodern and modern, respectively. Apparently, Lakeland, Thiel’s colleague at Fairfield, reads God’s “Where were you …?” speech to Job as justification for thinking that Good is not the kind of reality who micromanages the small-scale events of life. For Thiel, such a postmodern view seeks to separate the notions of sin and guilt, on the one hand, from natural events, on the other. Suffering caused by natural causes has nothing to do with punishment but, instead, is “statistically expected misfortune distant from the divine concern” (53). Thiel dubs Hick’s famous “Irenaean” theodicy an example of the “best-of-all-possible-worlds” option within modern theodicy, a classification shared by Leibniz, and Swinburne. For Hick, the world needs to be something like the world we inhabit lest it foil to be the vale of “soul making” that God has intended it to be. It took the evolutionary process to bring forth creatures capable of specifically moral maturity. Moreover, because virtue lies in overcoming temptation, we must have the capacity of moral error, even its we need to be vulnerable to suffering at each other’s hands so that we can learn to say no to harmful urges. Ultimately, any excess individual suffering contributes to the general awareness of the unacceptability of suffering and thereby meaningfully subserves our moral growth. Process thinking exemplifies the “best of all possible gods” option. Although some “evils” seem to be it necessary attendant of arty creation God might bring into existence because divine power is limited to persuasion, God might be responsible for the existence of a world containing the evils that it does, but He cannot be held blameworthy for what the world has made of itself. Debilitating evil is taken up into the divine memory and made a meaningful part of God’s interactivity with the world with the result that no evil is suffered in vain but, indeed, contributes to the whole even as it might destroy the individual. For Thiel, such modern approaches, in seeking to make suffering “meaningful,” ultimately undermine- as do the premodern and postmodern options-the unacceptability of such evil and the validity of protest against it.

Thiel argues that similar difficulties haunt traditional approaches to death. Classically, God allows death as punishment for sin but so contextualizes it in a providential order that it contributes to the salvation of some. At the level of piety, the recognition that God uses death to accomplish His purposes leads to speech about God “taking” those who die unto Himself. In Thiel I think we can hear an echo of the far less guarded indictment of a Camus, for whom such a God is a cosmic murderer. Explicitly Thiel charges that the idea that death is divinely sanctioned risks positing a double will in God, either by making the same divine act an act of both retribution and blessing or-in a thinker like Calvin, for whom retribution and blessing are unmixed- by making God’s treatment of different people unequal. It would seem, by either account, that God is not wholly love. Modern approaches, in their turn, seek to undermine the legitimacy of any moral protest against death by making of it a purely natural thing, the working out of the laws of nature That God established and which He does not contravene. For his part, Thiel refuses to allow natural necessity or the laws of nature to he identified with the will and law of God. Rather, he seems to want to do justice to the very old motif that death and suffering are unambiguous enemies of God.

While Thiel refuses to compromise the traditionally recognized attributes of God in the manner of process theology, his innovation is to seek to avoid the attribution of divine complicity in death and in innocent suffering entirely. He admits that the scriptural warrant for such a line of thinking might be less than“overwhelming” (79). Yet .scriptural warrant may not be as weak as Thiel implies. For example, Thiel might very well recognize an ally in Jon Levenson, whose work on the idea of creation in the Hebrew Scriptures has shown the extent to which biblical categories reflect the idea of a God engaged in trying to limit-and in apocalyptic times, Completely plaster-chaos. For his part, Thiel exploits the analogous scriptural characterization of God as the “living God” who exercises His creative power unambiguously on behalf of life and the living, drawing on the work of Ronald Thiemann in viewing revelation as promissory of a final victory over evil.

If evil does not originate with Gods, then whence? Unlike Karl Barth, who traced evil to the metaphysical drag of Das Nichtige, and unlike the contemporary thinker Gregory Boyd (whose “warfare theodicy” has some parallels wing Thiel’s approach), who ultimately appeals to the agency of a devil to account for the efficacy of evil in the world, Thiel is Content to leave the source of evil mysterious, implying that the seeming omission is more than mule up for in the gains made in rendering Christian faith coherent and commendable to morally sensitive people. Thiel insists that he does not intend to argue a dualistic perspective inconsistent with Christian faith. If evil is something unwilled by God that nevertheless haunts Creation, then evil is not necessarily something substantial. Indeed, Thiel suggests that evil might very well still be thought of as a deprivation of good, as it is in much traditional theology. But in wanting to claim that the sobering and death to which humans are vulnerable are not attributable to the direct or indirect agency of God, Thiel recognizes that he runs the risk of dualism, but he argues that it is a risk worth taking “in order to allow fin- innocent suffering to enter theological explanation and to describe cod’s saving work in such a way that remove any hint of a double will in God’s relation toward death” (98.).

Thiel admits that his hook is realty a systematic theology in nuce. Anselm famously argued that God required the death of the God-man Jesus to exhaust His anger at sinful humanity and restore His otherwise wounded sense of honor so as to free humanity horn its otherwise deserved fate. But note, says Thiel, how such a view perpetuates the idea that death is an instrument of God. Instead, Jesus-in his total innocence-should he understood as God’s innocent engagement with “precedent sin” (the evil that humans enact, the presence of which in each generation infects the succeeding one) and “precedent evil” (tile evil of human mortality and the suffering undergone because of it)-in the light of which precedent evil and sin are revealed to be the evils that they are. Jesus resurrection, in turn, is God’s pledge that life will swallow up evil and death in victory-even for those of us who are compromised by sin in ways that Jesus was not. Correspondingly, discipleship lies in the imitation of Jesus’ innocent engagement with evil on the part of his not-so-purely-innocent followers.

The brevity of this very persuasive and clearly argued book belies its weight and significance. It answers to the need to begin to speak of God in ways that avoid the attribution of divine complicity in evil and death. AS such, it deserves a place on the bookshelf of every Contemporary theologian and a place on the syllabus for every course in contemporary ideas of God and the problem of evil. Some years ago, the philosopher James Muyskens called for an authentic theology of hope. John F. Thiel has finally given us one.

John Thiel has written a sometimes fascinating and challenging book, but one that, in the end, is misguided. Thiel’s concern is: How can one actually allow for innocent suffering in the context of a good God? (p. ix). The problem within traditional Jewish and Christian theology is that, in order to uphold the goodness of God, innocent suffering was denied. ‘Guilt’s universality is imagined to be so utterly complete that innocent suffering evaporates without remainder’ (p. 116, see pp. 2-3). Augustine intensified Paul’s view of sin and so ‘all human beings are guilty perpetrators, and so the evil suffered by them in any way is God’s just punishment for their evil actions’ (p. 8). However, in the light of the Holocaust and other acts of untold violence and injustice against ‘the innocent’, how can one, Thiel asks, any longer deny that there are those who are indeed innocent and who do suffer in their innocence?

‘[I]nnocent suffering’, then, ‘presents the greatest threat to faith in God, since this suffering particularly forces believers to face the possibility of God’s complicity in evil’ (p.11). God’s complicity in evil, Thiel argues, is even found within the Old Testament. After a rather lengthy exposition and commentary on the Book of Job, Thiel concludes that ‘the God of Job is a capricious perpetrator of innocent suffering that, in a world of theistic belief, only God could inflict’ (p. 28). The suffering of the innocent and the existence of a good God appear to be incompatible. Yet, it is this seeming incompatibility that Thiel wishes to reconcile.

While Thiel is critical of the Christian/Augustinian tradition, he is equally dissatisfied with the modem and the postmodern approaches to the issue of innocent suffering, such as those of Leibniz, Hick, Swinburne, and Process Theology. Since all positions want to deny that God is responsible for innocent surf ring, he concludes his analysis of these thus: ‘[T)he pre-modern position denies innocent suffering by regarding all human persons as guilty before God; the modern position denies innocent suffering by rendering it meaningful within God’s creative providence; and the postmodern position denies innocent suffering before God by removing God’s personal, providential presence from natural suffering, thus rendering such suffering amoral, neither innocent or guilty’ (p. 54).

Thiel himself wants to uphold, firstly, the traditional view of God; that he is all-good, all-powerful, eternal, etc. Only such a God can he a providential God. Secondly, he equally wishes to uphold the reality of innocent suffering. Thirdly, he argues that God ‘neither permits, nor wills, nor causes any kind of suffering or death at all’ (p. 59). Because of this third point, Thiel argues that the Bible demonstrates that God is completely opposed to all evil and the innocent suffering that evil causes. Thus, for Thiel, suffering and death cannot be even willed by God as the consequence of sin. By eliminating God as a causal agent in relation to all evil, suffering and death, Thiel believes that he now has sure grounds for finding the goodness of God. From whence then does evil come? ‘My answer can only be an admission of ignorance’ (p. 98).

Thiel argues against the traditional doctrine of Original Sin in which every human being is born into a state of sin and thus is no longer innocent. Such a doctrine immediately implies that ‘God brings about suffering and death as humanity’s deserved punishment for the sin of Adam’ (p. 103). Thus Thiel believes all human beings are born innocent, but because of the history of sin that has enmeshed itself with societies and cultures, everyone is bound to sin. He refers to such an understanding as a ‘functionalist understanding of original sin’ (p.123, see pp. 121-25). However, this still leaves unanswered from where the initial source of evil comes. He speaks of a ‘precedent evil’ prior to volitional sin, and, despite its seemly un-Christian ring, latches on to Moltmann’s use of the Jewish kabbalistic doctrine of zimzum, where God withdraws his presence in order to make room for creation (see p. 134). However, such a divine withdrawal leaves a vacuum that can he filled by evil. ‘Precedent evil, we could say, is the prevailing, random consequence of an evolutionary process that the omnipotent God risked and with which the same God of life is eternally disappointed’ (p.137).

Thiel completely denies that Jesus’ death on the cross is a sacrifice because this would acknowledge both the guilt, and thus non-innocence, of humankind and the judgment of God that human beings are guilty and so in need of offering a sacrifice in reparation for their guilt (see pp. 15 5.63)- Rather, Jesus’ death is it manifestation of innocent suffering in solidarity with all those who also suffer innocently. What is important is that Jesus’ resurrection is the triumph of the Father’s promise that evil, sin, suffering and death will ultimately be overcome not only for Jesus but also for the whole of humanity. Thus, for Thiel, there is innocent suffering and the good God ultimately triumphs over it. He has vindicated his thesis! Or has he? I would like to raise a few issues, some of which Thiel himself raises at the end of his hook but does not adequately answer.

Firstly, I believe that Thiel presents a very simplistic and often warped account of the traditional understanding of sin and its repercussions, such as suffering and death, and the need for sacrificial reparation. It is true that no one is innocent in that all have inherited the sin of Adam and have, subsequently, freely committed their own sins. However, saying this is not to deny that sometimes people who are not innocent do suffer innocently, that is, suffer through no fault of their own. Moreover, it is precisely because all of us are equally guilty of sin (no one, except Jesus and Mary, is ever merely an innocent sufferer of evil) that reparation needs to be made. Secondly, Thiel is so caught up in verifying the truth of innocent suffering that he fails himself to see what purpose it may have other than that it is innocent. He forgets, unlike Job and the Saints, that innocent suffering can manifest the courage, the love and the holiness of a person. God does indeed test us, despite Thiel’s denial, in order for us to display the glory of who we really are just, courageous and loving people in the face of sometime horrendous evil. Thirdly, Thiel needs to learn the difference between primary and secondary causality when it is applied to God and human beings. As creator, God is the primary cause of all that is, but he is not the primary cause of sin and evil. Human beings are the primary cause of sin and evil. Thus, God is the secondary cause of evil only in the sense that he holds in existence those who freely choose to do evil. Fourthly, to appeal to the concept of ‘precedent evil’ that is willed by no one, not even by God, is all a bit philosophically naive and theologically abhorrent. Fifthly, having rendered the biblical notion of sin almost entirely meaningless, Thiel sees Jesus as ultimately doing nothing for us. He is merely the innocent tool the Father employs to manifest his triumph over death through the resurrection. Thus huge portions of the Old Testament sacrificial prefigurement and its New Testament fulfillment are rendered completely redundant. Finally, the whole Catholic understanding of the sacraments as participating in the sacrificial death of Jesus, especially in the Eucharist, no longer have any meaning. In dealing with an admittedly perplexing topic, Thiel would appear to have drifted far from the Christian tradition.

John Thiel teaches at Fairfield University. His response to innocent suffering proceeds by holding together three assumptions that many claim to be incompatible: 1) the traditional understanding of God’s eternity and the absoluteness of all divine perfections, 2) the injustice of innocent suffering as a tragic fact of moral life, not to be attributed to human guilt or the need for moral development, and 3) the truth that God neither permits, nor wills, nor causes any kind of suffering or death, He explains how these assumptions can stand together, surveys the opinion of other theologians and philosophers through the ages, and answers objections.