A “Tummy Ache” –Really?
Over at First Things, Joe Carter is addressing the problem of evil –not, in my view, very successfully. It seems he’s treating it as if it’s a trivial philosophical problem, something that mature Christians with appropriate training in analytic philosophy grow out of intellectually, a problem to be dealt with by appropriate pastoral care for those bothered by the remaining emotional issues.
I’m actually not sure of where he’s coming from philosophically. He’s running together ontic evil and moral evil. I’m not sure the distinction holds any more, if it ever did, given what we are learning about the way one’s capacity to act morally is affected by social context and brain chemistry. Still, I think they raise different problems. And while I heartily proclaim my colleague Alvin Plantinga’s brilliance, I am not sure that all of philosophy (and philosophical theology) is kneeling at his feet for having laid the problem of evil to rest once and for all. (For one thing, that’s not how philosophers, analytic or otherwise, behave. For another, I think that would have made the Notre Dame webpage!)
The intensity of evil matters. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, as they say. But what kills you, kills you. A tummy ache doesn’t kill you. The plague–AIDS, or bubonic–does. And the snuffing out of an individual life-or the life of a family –or the life of a whole community–through disaster, disease, or mayhem–raises questions about divine goodness and power in ways that passing illness does not.
I am sure of this: trivializing the problem of evil, both ontic and moral, is not likely to be an effective strategy, on an intellectual or pastoral level, in evangelizing those who are grappling with far more than a tummy ache.
Certainly anyone seriously grappling with the problem of evil in their own lives would be outraged to see the issue reduced to a discussion of “tummy aches.” And of course there is at least a partial explanation for physical discomfort. Pain is a signal that something is wrong. If you can’t feel pain, you may have something like appendicitis. A normal person would feel pain and go to the hospital, but someone who feels no pain would not know anything is wrong and could die if the appendix ruptures.
The basic argument seems to be, “Who are you to make logical arguments about an omniscient, omnipotent being if you are not yourself omniscient and omnipotent?” But of course we make such arguments all the time, although they are not necessarily in the form of syllogisms and are not necessarily claimed to be logically conclusive. For example, the Catholic Church has argued for centuries that unbaptized babies don’t go to hell. One could argue that those in the Church who make those arguments are not omniscient, all-just, and all-merciful beings and have no business trying to figure out what such being would do.
The problem for believers, it seems to me, is that they hold that in some cases God does intervene miraculously in the natural world and prevent some evils but not others. So arguments that in order for there to be free will men must be allowed to do evil are weakened by pointing out that God is believed in some cases to prevent evil and hence thwart free will.
Arguing that the Fall introduced evil into the world (as at least one of the commenters did) is helpful only if you take Genesis literally, since those of us who believe in modern science (including evolution) know that earthquakes, floods, disease, predation, and so on, all existed before homo sapiens came on the scene.
The Catholic Church teaches that the Fall introduced death into the world and while it is true that suffering and death may at times be the result of evil, suffering and death became part of life after the Fall. The Good News is, for those who believe in The Truth of Love, in dying, we will be restored in Christ.
I thought the thread was about the problem of evil and not Nancy”s exigesis of Genesis.
Talking about the issues of creation both in terms of the laws of nature and the issues of freedom is complicated enough, but when there is some thought to many other worlds like ours or even other universes and how the loving God interplays with all that is immensely difficult.
Sorry Bob, I thought it was a self-evident Truth that the problem with evil is that it is evil;-)
Cathleen, why would you doubt that the distinction between ontic and moral evil still holds up? If moral evil is reducible to ontic evil, then what sense would it make to talk in terms of redemption?
I do agree that moral evil poses huge philosophical and theological problems, problems that are arguably insoluble by us humans. But that is no reason to doubt that there is moral evil.
It seems to me that Carter is not trivializing the issue of suffering by considering tummy=aches. His point is that intense pain is different in kind from minor pain, which may well be true.
But he ignores the findings of contemporary psychology which show quite clearly that the experience of *pain* is not the experience of *suffering*. Pain and suffering are two different realities. Suffering is our subjective reaction to pain, and it is the suffering we hate and which is the great philosophical problem. Specifically, the problem of the suffering of innocents is the greatest problem of all.
The Buddhists seem to have known all along that pain and suffering are not the same thing, and they know that meditative practices can reduce (and even eliminate?) suffering while the pain remains. (I myself know from my own meditative practices that this true at least to some extent.)
But the metaphysical problem remains: suffering, unlike a missing leg, is not a lack of a due good (a privation), but, rather it is a *positive* reality, and therefore one of the things created by God. (We can even distinguish different *kinds* of suffering.) However, we are taught that all creation is good, but there == staring us in the face — is the fact of suffering, and we know intuitively, without any reasoning about it, that it is a real evil. (We know that beauty is a real good the same way — intuitively, without reasoning.) Given this positive evil, and given the teaching that all creation mirrors God, we are left with the implication that suffering images, mirrors what God is in some way. (Some, myself included, think that God *is* somehow suffering.)
Then there is the moral problem of the suffering of innocent creatures. This is what causes so many to disbelieve in God: if God causes all positive realities, then God causes the suffering of innocent creatures, and it follows that God causes them to suffer unjustly.
Then there is the greatest of all problems, the theological one: how could God require His own Son, the most innocent of all, to suffer and die on the cross? There, it seems, is the Supreme Injustice.
For me, only the fact that Jesus tells us that His/Our Father is Love itself makes any of this make any sense at all. I also know that Jesus’ love for us is real, that His grace is unending, so against this the problem of suffering pales a bit. But philosophically I don’t think there is any answer at all, and I have the greatest sympathy for the agnostics and atheists who see this problem as the great stumbling block to belief, God’s own great scandal.
OOPs Carter’s point is that tummy-aches and intense tummy-aches are NOT different in kind.
” if God causes all positive realities, then God causes the suffering of innocent creatures, and it follows that God causes them to suffer unjustly.”
It can never follow that God is unjust. If we creatures come to that conclusion, it can only be certain that we have failed to comprehend the Bigger Picture. In the case of suffering, that must be that a loving God permits suffering for our long term good, not necessarily in this temporary life of pilgrimage, but always in our eternal home.
My point about ontic and moral evil running together is that if the capacity to cause great harm is connected with a chemical imbalance, it may be hard to separate in a particular case where the line is in a particular person.
It seems to me that Carter is not trivializing the issue of suffering by considering tummy=aches. His point is that intense pain is [not] different in kind from minor pain, which may well be true.
Ann,
I would say he is trying to trivialize the whole argument by an extended use of baby talk. Adults do not have “tummy aches.” Pain is not measured in TAs. Carter says, “By sneaking in the adjective intense, Rowe attempts to give the premise emotional resonance.” Well, if that is true, it is all the more true that by reframing the argument about pain in terms of “tummy aches,” Carter is trying to make the whole business seem silly. If he had truly wanted to make the point that all pain was the same, he wouldn’t have substituted “tummy ache” for “intense pain.” He would have simply said “pain.”
P. ==
I didn’t say that a God is not just. I said *it follows* that God is unjust from those premises. The problem is, where do the premises go wrong. If you know the answer to that you might be able to help the agnostics and atheists. There really *is* a problem.
David N. –
Yes, the language is childish. But I don’t think that affects his argument (which doesn’t make much sense to me in the first place, I must admit).
I think the problem with the argument is analogous to the problem with some forms of utilitarianism. It suggests there is a base unit of evil –defined in terms of subjective experience or unpleasant feeling — (the tummy ache) and that other harms and evils can thought of in terms of multiplying that base unit. I don’t think that sort of argument works in theodicy. For one thing, I think there are qualitatively different type of evil. (To understand the murder of a family in terms of 1000 tummy aches is not helpful). For another thing, I think the worst types of suffering can leave one numb. (And so, I suspect, do some types of pain.
Cathy ==
I don’t think we can always separate ontic and moral evil, assuming that we do actually sometimes choose evil.
As I see it, the actual choosing of an evil object is itself a positive evil — it does not simply lack a relationship to a good, though it does lack such a a relation. It is an activity which is intrinsically evil. All mental being is real in the sense of being actual, at least to some degree.
Hitler, it has been reported, enjoyed watching a film he had ordered to be taken of one of his traitorous generals dying slowly in agony. As I see it, *his act of wiling* to enjoy another’s suffering is both an ontic and a moral evil. Metaphysically it is similar to the ontic evil that is suffering itself — both are positive but evil realities.
“In the case of suffering, that must be that a loving God permits suffering for our long term good, not necessarily in this temporary life of pilgrimage, but always in our eternal home.”
And exactly how successful have you been in preaching this to someone dying from a painful terminal disease? Someone whose child was killed by a drunken driver? Any innocent who is maimed by warfare?
It can never follow that God is unjust. If we creatures come to that conclusion, it can only be certain that we have failed to comprehend the Bigger Picture.
P Flanagan,
We’re dealing with an attempted logical argument here. It’s fine for you to believe that if a logical argument leads to the conclusion that God is unjust (or doesn’t exist, which is actually the point of the argument) then there is something wrong with it. But if you can’t say what is wrong with it as a logical argument, then the argument still stands.
Cathleen, the fact that I cannot conclusively find empirical evidence to distinguish, in specific cases, whether x did something evil or rather was so afflicted that some ontic evil occurred in no way shows that there is no fundamental distinction between moral and ontic evil. (For what it’s worth, I don’t find the term “ontic evil” particularly felicitous. Are we not discussing whether the occurrence of something harmful is my fault [moral evil] or whether it happened because of natural forces that determine what I do [physical or psychophysical harms]?)
I am convinced that to collapse this distinction is to undercut any genuine notion of human agency or initiative or freedom.
Ann, why do you say that Hitler’s act of willing to enjoy another’s suffering is both an ontic and a moral evil. Is not the suffering the ontic evil and the willing the moral evil?
I don’t think Joe Carter is trivializing the problem of evil, I think he’s trivializing, if you will, this argument of the atheist: Because evil exists, God cannot exist.
Logically, I think Carter has a strong case. If the atheist’s assumption is that a good God would not permit great evil, why would such a God permit any evil, even tummy aches? Why not remove all suffering, all death? Why not let the Eagles win even one Super Bowl?
Bernard –
I think that the both Hitler’s *willingI and the *suffering& are ontic evils in that both are evil *actual realities*. That willing is a mental reality doesn’t stop it from being an ontic one as well. Such a willing is also a moral evil because it lacks a relationship to a good which it ought to have.
Mark, I don’t agree with you. Logically, its a reductio–ad absurdam, in my view. But the argument doesn’t hold, because it presupposes that the word “evil” is used in the same way when we talk about tummy aches and when we talk about the holocaust. It presupposes that there is some basic unit that can be summed–added to or subtracted from in order to hit the right amount. Conversely, it’s like trying to account for human flourishing in terms of units of ice cream cones.
What does the work here is precisely the scorn and the trivialization. “Poor pookoo, did God not fix your tummy ache?”
Now, of course, FT isn’t read by a lot of atheists. Any more than EWTN is listened to by a lot of non-believers. So the point of the missive is to shore up the commitment of those already in that particular fold.
Bernard, I think the distinction is necessary theoretically. After reading a number of pre-sentencing reports when I was clerking, though, I think the distinction is very hard to use in practice. There seems to be, as best as I can tell, a combination of predisposition or natural weakness (ontic evil) and human choice (moral evil) that is involved in some of the worst cases I saw.
Ann, the sheer act of willing surely is not any sort of evil. Rather, the object that is willed determines whether the act of willing in question is a moral evil or not. A willing concerned with alleviating suffering is a moral good because it properly addresses the suffering, the so-called ontic evil. N’est-pas?
Cathleen, I grant that there can be no Cartesian certitude in the use of this distinction in practical cases. Nonetheless, do we not have good practical reasons in many cases that make the imposition of penal sanctions on people convicted of crimes prudentially wise. Ought we not start with the presumption that the convicted person is a normal adult, one to whom his or her actions can rightly be imputed as good or bad? Of course, this presumption can be challenged and, in some cases, refuted by relevant evidence. So I think that, in fact, it is reasonable to bring this distinction into play in both legal and moral assessments of conduct of any sort.
Bernard –
While every positive reality has some ontic good, in the case of an evil act of the will I think it is the act itself that is evil. if it were not the act itself, then it would be something *other than* the act itself, and responsibility for evil done would lie in the evil done (usually an the objective fact). But it is my choosing, my effecting the object that is evil.
For instance, if you want to hurt your fat sister you might say to her, “You’re fat!” even though she isn’t fat. There is no objective fat reality out there, but the very *mental intention* to hurt her is evil, and I think that even children know this very well. Yes, her pain subsequent to the name-calling is an ontic evil. But the mental causation is also evil == it is itself mean. And it’s why we’re responsible for our effectuating of evil. It is this sort of intentionality in which sin lies. At least that’s how I see it.
Ann, I think we may be pretty close to agreement. Exercising my capacity to will is always o.k., provided WHAT I AIM TO DO is o.k. If what I aim to do by willing is not o. k. then I should either will something else or simply not will anything for the moment. So the aim TO HURT my brother (I’ve always regretted not having a sister) is what is wrong.
If I’m not mistaken, there is a scholastic distinction between “the liberty of exercise” (freely exercising my capacity to choose) and the “liberty of specification” (freely choosing x–here to hurt– rather than choosing some non-hurtful y). Moral evil is attached to the specification rather than to the exercise.
If it;s still the case that we disagree here, it is also the case that it’s good to have you to talk with .
The problem for believers, it seems to me, is that they hold that in some cases God does intervene miraculously in the natural world and prevent some evils but not others.
As “God on Trial” reminds us, God inflicts evil as well.
Check out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PP4i6tRGw7Q
Of course, each age shapes God to fit the requirements of the times.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, in its sketchy fashion, provides an interesting framework for thinking about evil:
Providence and the scandal of evil.
309 If God the Father almighty, the Creator of the ordered and good world, cares for all his creatures, why does evil exist? To this question, as pressing as it is unavoidable and as painful as it is mysterious, no quick answer will suffice. Only Christian faith as a whole constitutes the answer to this question: the goodness of creation, the drama of sin and the patient love of God who comes to meet man by his covenants, the redemptive Incarnation of his Son, his gift of the Spirit, his gathering of the Church, the power of the sacraments and his call to a blessed life to which free creatures are invited to consent in advance, but from which, by a terrible mystery, they can also turn away in advance. There is not a single aspect of the Christian message that is not in part an answer to the question of evil.
310 But why did God not create a world so perfect that no evil could exist in it? With infinite power God could always create something better.174 But with infinite wisdom and goodness God freely willed to create a world “in a state of journeying” towards its ultimate perfection. In God’s plan this process of becoming involves the appearance of certain beings and the disappearance of others, the existence of the more perfect alongside the less perfect, both constructive and destructive forces of nature. With physical good there exists also physical evil as long as creation has not reached perfection.175
311 Angels and men, as intelligent and free creatures, have to journey toward their ultimate destinies by their free choice and preferential love. They can therefore go astray. Indeed, they have sinned. Thus has moral evil, incommensurably more harmful than physical evil, entered the world. God is in no way, directly or indirectly, the cause of moral evil.176 He permits it, however, because he respects the freedom of his creatures and, mysteriously, knows how to derive good from it:
For almighty God. . ., because he is supremely good, would never allow any evil whatsoever to exist in his works if he were not so all-powerful and good as to cause good to emerge from evil itself.177
312 In time we can discover that God in his almighty providence can bring a good from the consequences of an evil, even a moral evil, caused by his creatures: “It was not you”, said Joseph to his brothers, “who sent me here, but God. . . You meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive.”178 From the greatest moral evil ever committed – the rejection and murder of God’s only Son, caused by the sins of all men – God, by his grace that “abounded all the more”,179 brought the greatest of goods: the glorification of Christ and our redemption. But for all that, evil never becomes a good.
313 “We know that in everything God works for good for those who love him.”180 The constant witness of the saints confirms this truth:
St. Catherine of Siena said to “those who are scandalized and rebel against what happens to them”: “Everything comes from love, all is ordained for the salvation of man, God does nothing without this goal in mind.”181
St. Thomas More, shortly before his martyrdom, consoled his daughter: “Nothing can come but that that God wills. And I make me very sure that whatsoever that be, seem it never so bad in sight, it shall indeed be the best.”182
Dame Julian of Norwich: “Here I was taught by the grace of God that I should steadfastly keep me in the faith. . . and that at the same time I should take my stand on and earnestly believe in what our Lord shewed in this time – that ‘all manner [of] thing shall be well.’”183
314 We firmly believe that God is master of the world and of its history. But the ways of his providence are often unknown to us. Only at the end, when our partial knowledge ceases, when we see God “face to face”,184 will we fully know the ways by which – even through the dramas of evil and sin – God has guided his creation to that definitive sabbath rest185 for which he created heaven and earth.
Angels and men, as intelligent and free creatures, have to journey toward their ultimate destinies by their free choice and preferential love.
Jim,
If it is true that most humans conceived die within a few days without their existence never having been known (I call these “David Nickol’s Children,” since I am the only one who talks about them), and if many more infants die or are killed before birth, what is their “journey”? Why do so few of us have to make the “journey” of life on earth if an all-wise God thought that the best world would be “in a state of journeying”?
Also, for those who believe prayers are answered, and miracle cures take place, and so on, the question I have for them is why does God prevent some evil and allow other evil? If God invented a world where humans have free will and are allowed to choose good and evil, why does God intervene sometimes to prevent evil? Why doesn’t he let things play out naturally all the time?
St. Catherine of Siena said to “those who are scandalized and rebel against what happens to them”: “Everything comes from love, all is ordained for the salvation of man, God does nothing without this goal in mind.”
I guess it was easier to believe that in the world of the 14th century.
Antonio: Why do you think it was easier to believe that in the 14th entury? Surely they had their own experiences of evil, physical and moral. It hasn’t been easy since before Job.
Why do you think it was easier to believe that in the 14th entury? Surely they had their own experiences of evil, physical and moral. It hasn’t been easy since before Job.
But the horizon of those experiences was much smaller then. Consider Elie Wiesel describing the execution by hanging of two men and a boy in Auschwitz:
Did St. Catherine ever bear witness to such evil in her time?
“If God invented a world where humans have free will and are allowed to choose good and evil, why does God intervene sometimes to prevent evil? Why doesn’t he let things play out naturally all the time?”
David, I struggle with the efficacy of prayer all the time. Especially since God never seems to want to take my suggestions.
On the other hand, I won’t know in this lifetime how often God has intervened to pull my fanny out of the flames without my knowing it.
So I’ve stopped asking God for things and instead ask for God to be with me and others as they face what seems likely to come along. That makes me take heart, and that, in turn, makes me choose better. And when the worst doesn’t happen, I feel grateful.
From “Theodicy: The Solution to the Problem of Evil, or Part of the Problem?” by Nick Trekakis.
God and evil enshrined in theodical discourse can only add to the world’s evils, not remove or illuminate them.
In my opinion, the Carter article fits that discription.
I don’t know whether St. Catherine witnessed such things, but then neither have I. But man’s inhumanity to man is very very ancient. In any case, the problem of evil is precisely that, a problem, and particularly for those who believe that God is both all-powerful and all-good. If God is not both, there is no problem, of course.
From Wikipedia, on St Catherine:
Born in 1347, she arrived when the black death struck the area; Siena was badly ravaged…
Her biographer Raymond of Capua also records that she was told by Christ to leave her withdrawn life and enter the public life of the world. Catherine dedicated much of her life to helping the ill and the poor, where she took care of them in hospitals or homes.
On the Black Death, Wikipedia says:
In Italy, Florence’s population was reduced from 110,000 or 120,000 inhabitants in 1338 to 50,000 in 1351… In 1348, the plague spread so rapidly that before any physicians or government authorities had time to reflect upon its origins, about a third of the European population had already perished. In crowded cities, it was not uncommon for as much as fifty percent of the population to die. Europeans living in isolated areas suffered less, whereas monks and priests were especially hard hit since they cared for the Black Death’s victims.
The first thing that came to my mind on reading the discussion here was her account of accompanying a convict to his beheading, and receiving his severed head into her arms. Her reaction is a bit unexpected, but shows her uncanny devotion to the faith being questioned, “Everything comes from love…” That attitude was born in the midst of a wide horizon of plaque and its consequences, of battles that threatened the Church and Europe.
In those days, the plague was often attributed to the Jews poisioning the wells, which led to the slaughter of thousands or, alternatively, as a collective punishment from God — hence the flagelation processions to appease a punitive deity (such as the procession recreated in Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal”). As in biblical times, collective punishment was an accepted form of divine retribution.
In Camus’ “The Plague”, Father Paneloux, the Jesuit, preaches the theodicy of collective punishment to a contemptuous congregation. Of course, he, himself, dies of the plague — in Camus’ words, ‘a doubtful case’.
Catherine of Siena seems, like Wiesel, to have found God in a place of execution. She writes about comforting a young man sentenced to die by beheading:
“I have just taken a head into my hands and have been moved so deeply that my heart cannot grasp it . . . I waited for him at the place of execution. . . he arrived like a meek lamb and when he saw me he began to smile. He asked me to make the sign of the cross over him . . . I stretched out his neck and bent down to him, reminding him of the blood of the Lamb. His lips kept murmuring only ‘Jesus’ and ‘Catherine,’ and he was still murmuring when I received his head into my hands . . .”
No, not the same as watching an innocent child hang for half an hour, but the Middle Ages wasn’t for sissies; I’d say the latter part of the 20th Century, with its sanitized funeral industry and tendency to whisk anything unpleasant into a hospital where people didn’t have to look at it, found it harder to deal with the realities of death–and perhaps the realities of evil as well.
“If it is true that most humans conceived die within a few days without their existence never having been known (I call these “David Nickol’s Children,” since I am the only one who talks about them), and if many more infants die or are killed before birth, what is their “journey”?”
Hi, David, I’ll join you in calling them David Nickol’s Children – I’m glad you talk about them and also believe it’s good to pray for them.
I don’t know what to say about their journey except that it is very short and ends, I hope, in happiness with God in some way. I’ve probably mentioned this once or twice before: the International Theological Commission issued an interesting document a few years ago on the destiny of children who die before baptism. For those with an interest in the topic, it’s filled with good stuff.
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20070419_un-baptised-infants_en.html
Two statements I can’t make with any certainty:
* I deserve every bad thing that happens to me
* I don’t deserve a single bad thing that happens to me
The Feast of the Holy Innocents is a good day to pray for David Nickol’s children.
As the mother of two of them, I don’t share Jim’s enthusiasm for the document linked above; it essentially amounts to a very roundabout way of saying, “Well, there’s some hope these kids aren’t frying in hell, but let’s not bank on it.”
I think Limbo was a much more comforting idea, but, then, religion isn’t designed to make us comfy.
Margerite Lederbergh, an attending psychiatrist at Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer hospital, observed the care and treatment of terminal cancer patients and noted the tendency of conscientious caregivers, loving family and even the patient to “blame the victim”. She came to the simple conclusion “that the need to give meaning to toxic events is universal”.
No, not the same as watching an innocent child hang for half an hour, but the Middle Ages wasn’t for sissies.
As Paul Fussel wrote, “Understanding the past requires pretending that you don’t know the present. It requires feeling its own pressure on your pulses without any ex post facto illumination.” Thus, I do not believe they had no experience of horror, only that in their world it was easier to believe stories of divine purpose and goodness.
But but…
Doesn’t “pretending that you don’t know the present” include an inability to compare past with present?
It may have been easier to believe, but belief was not like the literalist belief of the present. It was at least as messy as our beliefs, as difficult to grasp during the encounter with the horrors of life. After all, we are talking about a woman who died shortly after Easter, ie shortly after a penitential season when the whole world seemed to be collapsing on top of her.
This may be a crackpot theory, but I think the problem of evil may weigh more heavily on us than it did on those in the past (and especially the distant past) because we have a much clearer view of the difference between a life of ease and a life of suffering. To take one example, no matter how wealthy you were, up until rather recently, you and those you loved were nearly as vulnerable to disease as those who were much poor than you. Nowadays, the poor (particularly in places like Africa) suffer terribly from lack of vitamins or lack of the most basic medicines that even the poorest people in the United States take for granted. Life in general was more miserable up until quite recently, but inequality was not so extreme.
Doesn’t “pretending that you don’t know the present” include an inability to compare past with present?
In my opinion, the issue is not comparison but how we, living in the present, pass judgement on the past.
“Thus, I do not believe they had no experience of horror, only that in their world it was easier to believe stories of divine purpose and goodness.”
Sorry to keep pestering you about this, Antonio, but I wonder why you say that.
I suppose you could say that St. Catherine would not have been exposed to the free exchange of competing notions about God (or the lack of God) we have today. But would that necessarily hold back doubts? Would faith not waiver as a result?
If it was easier to believe stories of divine purpose and goodness (and the hellfires of perdition for those who didn’t believe) wouldn’t the history of the period have been dominated by people acting in a more Godly way? When, in fact, people were committing all sorts atrocities with the implments of destruction they had to hand, and were scheming and plotting pretty much like now.
“If I’m not mistaken, there is a scholastic distinction between “the liberty of exercise” (freely exercising my capacity to choose) and the “liberty of specification” (freely choosing x–here to hurt– rather than choosing some non-hurtful y). Moral evil is attached to the specification rather than to the exercise.
If it;s still the case that we disagree here, it is also the case that it’s good to have you to talk with .”
Bernard –
Sorry I sent off that unedited post — was hurrying to an MD appt. I do agree with a lot you say, but I think that the distinction you offer is part of where our disagreement lies.
Besides the object chosen (by *means of* liberty of specification), there is the act of choosing itself — and I think that this is what is morally evil. My brother’s suffering is an objective evil, and his suffering is not the sin — the sin is the *choosing* to make him suffer. Sin is a subjective reality, not an objective one.
Further, I think that even beyond the act of choice there is then usually the *implementation* (in the order of efficienct causality) by the will of the goal it has chosen, and this too is in itself sinful, i.e., a moral evil.
If the subjective acts are not evil in themselves, then sin just gets to be a matter of making a mistake or “missing the mark” as the Greeks and Hebrews (?) described it. Yes, sin misses a good mark — by choosing a bad mark and implementing it. In other words. Such acts do lack a relationship to a due good. But that’s not the whole story.
I think sin is more complex metaphysically that Aquinas described it. (Must go and check my book on Scotus on the will and morality. I think he’s much better about will acts that Thomas is.)
Hi Cathleen
I do believe our Catholic faith does have something to say about the origins of evil, and how a Christian should endure suffering. In fact, I think God sent his Son to teach us how to handle suffering and how to face evil. Our faith has never argued that suffering does not exist or is unimportant. Perhaps we all need to read up on our faith a bit more. In fact, in my opinion, I believe our faith teaches that in some ways our suffering is a partial indication and a reminder of God’s existence. We all need to remember the Covenant God made with Noah after the flood. We should all remember where we are going, if we stay true to the faith.
As for Mr. Carter’s article on why suffering and the problem evil does not sufficiently prove that God does not exist or that God is not All-Loving, I will only remind everyone that it is only a one page article. Your point that stresses that “the intenisty of evil matters” is compassionate even though it is not sufficiently argued. What Notre Dame University puts on its webpage is not really a sufficent way to back-up your own argument, although the statement was quite comical. It looks like everyone is engaged in a school yard game of “he said/she said.”
God bless everyone.
I wonder why you say that [belief was easier in St Catherine's time].
I suppose you could say that St. Catherine would not have been exposed to the free exchange of competing notions about God (or the lack of God) we have today. But would that necessarily hold back doubts? Would faith not waiver as a result?
I say it because not only would she not have been exposed to competing notions about God but neither would there be competing notions about the nature of the cosmos. The earth was the center of an ordered universe, populated by humans, spirits and malevolent demons. The visible and invisible realms were co-terminous. Comets were signs from God.
In the words of one author:
Or as Oliver Wendell Holmes put it:
Antonio –
There were alternative views of God. The Manichees (which Augustine was at one time) thought that there was a good God and an evil one, with the latter accounting for the evils of this world. It’s actually a very neat solution to the problem. An early medieval philosopher/theologian John Scotus Eruigena (NOT Duns Scotus) was an early pantheist who thought that the world emerged from God and was God (a precursor of Spinoza). And, of course, there was witchcrdaft for the common folk with all of those strange beliefs. Those people did not fare well with the Church, of course. Later, Giordano Bruno thought that the whole cosmos was one big sort of animal. (He was famously burned at the stake.) And the way I learned it, Ben Johnson, the playwright, was an atheist. Even the works of Shakespeare show little evidence of a belief in God (see for instance his sonnets).
By the time of the
Antonio, I’m willing to say I don’t know if people in the 14th century found it easier to believe and have faith. But I don’t think human nature changes that much in a few hundred years, and my inclination is to guess that people then struggled as much with their notons of God, but perhaps in different ways than we did.
I don’t get what your point is in offering the OWHolmes poem, but I’m sure that’s mostly a function of my very prosaic mind.
Will end my participation on this thread by noting that someone quoted Mark Twain today (talking about the Gribben edition of “Huck Finn,” specifically the scene where Huck decides that he’ll go to Hell rather than turn in Jim), that “a sound heart is a better guide than an ill-formed conscience.”
Seemed to me that that notion is germane to any discussion of the nature and origins of good and evil, and the matter of individual choice between them.
I’m willing to say I don’t know if people in the 14th century found it easier to believe and have faith. But I don’t think human nature changes that much in a few hundred years, and my inclination is to guess that people then struggled as much with their notons of God, but perhaps in different ways than we did.
Human nature doesn’t change but perceived reality governs attitudes and behavior. In that sense, I believe St. Catherine was a product of her times, which is not meant to deprecate her faith – a faith that’s a lot stronger than mine.
That said, I agree that people struggled with their notions of God but I believe the struggle was how to fit experience into a framework of belief where a beneficent God was near at hand and manifest in the perceived order of things — a cosmos where God and the angels kept the universe in motion and the earth was at the center of creation.
I don’t get what your point is in offering the OWHolmes poem, but I’m sure that’s mostly a function of my very prosaic mind.
To me, the Holmes poem reflected the view of that skeptic and curmudgeon that the Lisbon earthquake undermined such theodicy. According to Wikipedia:
Reality has a way of outflanking theodicy.
Antonio,
“the view of the skeptic and curmudgeon” is that belief has not encountered reality. It portrays intrusive events as if believers never knew about them.
That is not the case with St Catherine, whose belief flourished in the shadow of the plaque. She tended to the sick knowing that the population was dwindling because the sick, and those who tended them, were dying. She accompanied the condemned on their way to punishment. She mediated in wars, and stood firm during societal upheavals.
Her faith would not have faded because of an earthquake, because such crises were normal to her. The Reality she encountered was not just in the catastrophic, but impinged on her in other ways. Her vision of God as she rant as a child. A call to an unconventional life in religion. God pouring himself out as she received a severed head in her arms.
Even those visions did not keep her from doubt, from body-wracking existential doubts. But these were not the doubts of someone who did not know catastrophe. They were driven by moral and religious catastrophes that she tried to harmonize with her visions. She lived constantly with the knowledge the horse and shay could fail her, but persisted in her faith. The Church could fail her, split by rival Popes and international intrigue, but she persisted in reaching for a Church united in Christ. Embargoes would impede her progress, but she persisted in reaching out.
None of this makes for any easy answers on theodicy. I hope it brings us closer to another person who struggled as we all struggle with the horrible problems of evil and the terrible blessings of faith.
I recently read some exerpts from a homily of Benedict about St. Catherine of Bologna (15th century). She too was plagued by doubts. And, of course, in our time there was Mother Teresa who spent her adult life feeling abandoned by God except for some short periods when she had extraordinary mystical experiences.
I don’t see how anyone except the most hard-hearted and selfish can live an adult life and not encounter the problem of evil. Few generations have not been plagues by wars, or depressions or totalitarian leadership with all its irrationality, plus the usual deaths of children and parents of all ages that happened routinely in the eons before modern medicine. And certainly the priests heard such stories over and over from their parishioners.
in other words, no one with eyes to see is immune from the evils of this world. Oh, no doubt there have always been Pollyannas. But I’ve never known one myself.
There is also the argument of the philosopher Leibniz about “the best of all possible worlds”. Yes, Voltaire made fun of the argument, but Voltaire also misrepresented the argument. Leibniz did not deny the evils at all. What he argued was that given the nature of created things and given God as the good creator, there cannot be a better world than this one. The imperfection is intrinsic to creatures, not to God. God did the best that was possible to be done, and within the world there is also all the good that needs to be explained. Voltaire wasn’t just a skeptic, he was at times a cynic. There is a difference.
I believe that faith flourishes not because of but in spite of theodicy.
“the view of the skeptic and curmudgeon” is that belief has not encountered reality. It portrays intrusive events as if believers never knew about them.”
I think Holmes was not trying to debunk belief but what he thought of as a particularly smug theodicy that fell into disrepute as the result of the Lisbon earthquake — hence, the parson getting dumped unceremoniously on the side of the road. (I guess that brings us back to the point of this thread.)
“My own peculiar task in my Church and in my world has been that of the solitary explorer who, instead of jumping on all the latest bandwagons at once, is bound to search the existential depths of faith in its silences, its ambiguities, and in those certainties which lie deeper than the bottom of anxiety. In those depths there are no easy answers, no pat solutions to anything. It is a kind of submarine life in which faith sometimes mysteriously takes on the aspect of doubt, when, in fact, one has to doubt and reject conventional and superstitious surrogates that have taken the place of faith.”
“Faith means doubt. Faith is not the suppression of doubt. It is the overcoming of doubt, and you overcome doubt by going through it. The man of faith who has never experienced doubt is not a man of faith.”
Both from Thomas Merton.