The Problem Of Knowing Good And Evil, Part I

Perhaps this will not help at all.

Pope Benedict XVI stood at Auschwitz this past weekend. He entered death chambers. He knelt before the gates of death, and he prayed. And then there was a rainbow.

It is not that the several elements, the prayers and presence of a Pope and a rainbow, are causally connected. It is that we hope they are.

Auschwitz is that geographic point that exists like an oracular black hole. Oracles, as you know, were where pilgrims traveled to hear news from the divine, hopefully good news, though usually not. Auschwitz is like an oracle in reverse: there is nothing proclaimed there, only asked. But no answer comes in that crushing dark, the oppressive silence. Auschwitz is the place of questions, the abyss with no answers. We plead for God, and God hides behind veils of smoke, the smoke of burning bodies. Atop gas chambers, birds sing. God says nothing.

The problem of evil, at least in theology, is framed something like this: If God is all-powerful and all-good, He could or would stop evil. Since there is evil, God is either not all-powerful or all-good. Many philosophers have chosen to dismiss God as not all-powerful, needing God to be at least all-benevolent. Many have rejected the idea of God altogether in light of the facts of evil and suffering. And a few malcontents have chosen to see God as so much badness, a real sadist in the sky.

Those theologians and philosophers who believe that God must be both omnipotent and benevolent often defend Him by noting God's free choice to give humanity free will; as such, He permitted us to make a mess of things. And so we have. Of course, really shrewd thinkers note that if God did in fact design humanity and the cosmos this way He is still responsible for starting the whole thing in the first place. Free will arguments don't really absolve God of apparent culpability.

Pope Benedict XVI, like countless other people before him, stood at Auschwitz and asked, “Where was God in those days? Why was he silent? How could he permit this endless slaughter, this triumph of evil?" Of course, I recognize that the Holy Father is asking the question rhetorically; that he is revealing his humanity, his compassion, and his ability to identify with doubt, sorrow, pain. He is like the Psalmist, or like the prophets before him: How long, O, Lord, will you let our enemies prevail? Even the Christian Savior asked in His darkest hours, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" Women huddled in a gas chamber asked the question with perfect lucidity.

If readers will permit, I would like to confront the problem of evil (theodicy) in a few posts here at Contratimes. And the first place I would like to start is with the problem itself. For it strikes me as self-evident that the classic problem, that God can't be either omnipotent or benevolent before the facts of evil, is thoroughly wrong-headed.

Not long ago I called a radio talk program to join in on a conversation about this very problem. The guest was a former professor of mine, Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft, and I asked if anyone had considered whether perhaps an omniscient God, one knowing everything in a state of all-wisdom, would KNOW that the only way to overcome evil in the world is to overcome evil exactly the way we see things working out every day. For all any one of us knows, an all-wise God would say to us, "You know, I am destroying evil, I am alleviating suffering; and this is the ONLY way for me to do so. This is omniscience intervening." In other words, omniscience would know exactly how to destroy the evil and suffering that besets all creatures, and that destruction might be what we are witnessing in every breath and in every sunset. There can be no other way. Should God just step in and stop, for instance, Hitler from killing Jews, then a far greater evil may follow. Oddly, the talk show host would have none of this: She wanted to blame God for being weak or malevolent. She could not buy the idea of omniscience. And I believe that she could not buy it because she had never thought of it before.

Peter Kreeft, as would be expected of a philosopher, ran with the question. He added that some have speculated that if Hitler had not committed suicide, for example, and that he was instead arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to death, we might find ourselves living under the dreaded Nazi flag today. For a person cannot tell how one thing ultimately influences another; one cannot tell what is materially the less evil path in the long run. One can only hope; one can only stand on principles when confronting injustice and evil. But one cannot know, unless one is God, whether one's actions will have an ill or healthy effect on the world. Kreeft's words were engaging, and correct.

Hopefully Dr. Kreeft won't mind if I put his words differently. If it were up to us, our battle with evil might be a bit like administering antibiotics: they appear to work as a victorious solution to infections, but in the long run, antibiotics may in fact have weakened humanity's innate abilities to self-immunize. The infections we beat short-term may have been overcome long-term by themselves had we just waited long enough for the human immune system to evolve. One simply does not know. Nor does doltish humanity know what God's sudden "dramatic" intervention might look like, or what effect it might have.

But the assumption in all theological discussions is that God does indeed know. God is either omniscient or He is not. If He is not, it is awfully hard to call Him God. And if He is omniscient, then one can only conclude that the very reality we are in is the best reality for overcoming sin, evil and suffering. To return to the antibiotic image for a second, it would be wrong for a sceptic to conclude that because there is a battle between cells in a person's body the antibiotics are not working, for the battle is proof that they are. If anyone concludes that an antibiotic that does not work "fast enough" (for whom?) or "well enough" is neither potent nor good, that person should be reminded that there are plenty of measures one can take to instantly and completely eradicate an infection. Killing the patient is one such measure. But good doctors are a bit like God. They are wise to the idea that killing the bad often takes time so as not to kill the good. God could perhaps instantly wipe the earth clean of all evil, but what would be left, and where is the wisdom in that?

And yet there is one more thing that complicates matters, and it is a hard pill to swallow: God is that antibody that loves everyone. In other words, God, who is love as well as justice, and who exists as the only all-wise being, loves the very persons many of us consider evil. This is alarming for many of us, but it is Christianity's truest, boldest and most controversial assertion: God loved the Jews in the gas chambers as much as he loved Hitler outside them; God loves the victimizer as much as any victim. It is almost too difficult to even write, let alone admit into one's reflections on these matters. But it must be true. God cannot HATE what we might hate; His wisdom must not be void of love or justice, nor can His love and justice be void of wisdom. God loved Hitler, and all other disgusting tyrants, as much as He loves any of us. And we know Christ the Shepherd leaves the beloved flock to find the one beloved stray, even if that stray is a rebel. That is the most difficult problem in the eradication of evil: How does God eradicate it without destroying everybody, and everything? How does God purge humanity of evil without destroying the entire body?

Only an omniscient Being has the knowledge, and power, to do that. Or there is no such Being at all.

More tomorrow, I hope. (Part II begins here.)

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
[Related post at WI Catholic can be read here.]

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