Eschatology and The Problem of Evil
For my final undergraduate theology course, a seminar on Christian Eschatology, I had to write a short paper as my final exam. I decided to write on Christian eschatology as a response to the problem of evil. Since the problem of evil has been a popular discussion topic in this community I thought I'd share it here.
The problem of evil is an ancient formulation of a theological problem which asks: How can we assert the existence of a God who is all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful in light of the existence of evil? Many attempts have been made over the centuries to address this question, and it has approached from a variety of theological perspectives. I propose in this paper that one of the most powerful and rational responses to this question of theodicy is precisely the articulation of the Christian eschatological vision. In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of this response I will examine eschatology in relation to God's omnibenevolence, omniscience, and omnipotence. I will also demonstrate how the theological response of Christian eschatology to the problem of evil is not merely an academic exercise but is pastoral, as well, as it both assists the person struggling with faith on account of the existence of suffering and informs the proper response to the suffering that exists in our time.
The first theological objection to the existence of evil vis-à-vis the existence of God is that if God were truly all-loving then He would desire our good, and thus would not allow evil to exist. C.S. Lewis addresses this in The Problem of Pain by first confronting the popular notion of love, which Lewis explains is too commonly described as entirely synonymous with kindness. He writes:
There is kindness in Love: but Love and kindness are not coterminous, and when kindness…is separated from the other elements of love, it involves a certain fundamental indifference to its object, and even something like contempt of it. Kindness consents very readily to the removal of its object - we have all met people whose kindness to animals is constantly leading them to kill animals lest they should suffer. Kindness, merely as such, cares not whether its object becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering1.
Love certainly will always be concerned with suffering, but true love will not be willing to prevent suffering at all costs. The question of human suffering vis-à-vis the existence of a loving God must discern what the cost would be in order to entirely eliminate suffering and evil2, as well as what response that loving God might make in the light of suffering's existence.
With regards to the first question, the cost of preventing the possibility of evil, we must consider first what is the cause of evil, or what action would prevent its possibility. Human beings possess the capacity to cause evil because of the fact that we possess the faculty of free will. In order then to posit an omnibenevolent God who creates us with free will, which allows for the possibility of evil, then we must consider the purpose of free will. Augustine argues that freedom of the will is necessary in humans in order that we may live rightly3, and that to the rational human being, to live rightly necessitates the ability to love God and to love neighbor. This capacity for love is impossible without freedom of will, for if something akin to love were a forced manner of one's nature then it would merely be instinct, and thus would belong equally to the irrational animals and could not be considered love. Love necessitates choice and freedom, and thus in order to eliminate the evil that is possible through free will God would also necessarily eliminate the ability to love.
Some will still object at this point, arguing that even if choice allows for the greatest good of all, the good of love, would not a good and loving God act in some way to respond to this suffering, act in some way commensurate with His goodness and power? This especially is where Christian eschatology offers a response. Just as God created human beings with the freedom of will because of the good it allows, with the knowledge of the suffering that would come along with it, so too did God respond from the perfection of His love to the very suffering itself. In the manner in which the Son of God appeared on earth, interacted with humanity, participated in human suffering and death, was raised from that death, and then ascended into heaven and sent forth His Spirit into the world, through all of this the suffering that exists because of man's sin now takes on redemptive possibility, and indeed is potentially imbued with the very act of divine love.
Furthermore, by rising from the dead and assuring humanity that this same resurrection is the eschatological destiny for those who believe and trust in Him, God has re-characterized human suffering so that now, instead of being an action that removes us from God, it profoundly unites us with God through the suffering of Christ. In the face of evil, the promise of our own resurrection and the ultimate redemption and regeneration of all creation now allows for the experience of the light hope that prevents suffering from ever becoming an all-encompassing abyss of darkness, and provides strength to endure even the most formidable of evils. Suffering might be unendurable if it were constantly accompanied by despair, but the loving God prevents that despair from being victorious. Pope Benedict XVI writes in his encyclical letter Spe Salvi:
In the New Testament this expectation of God, this standing with God, takes on a new significance: in Christ, God has revealed himself. He has already communicated to us the "substance" of things to come, and thus the expectation of God acquires a new certainty.
It is the expectation of things to come from the perspective of the present that is already given. It is a looking-forward in Christ's presence, with Christ who is present, to the perfecting of His body, to his definitive coming4.
Indeed, the Christian eschatological hope of Christ's return, our own resurrection, and the redemption of all of creation, not only sustains us in the face of present suffering, but indeed, through faith we are able to bring something of that future expectation into the present, and thus not only does God work to redeem our suffering, but through faith in God we are strengthened to participate in that redemption. Finally, when we, united to Christ's suffering through faith, work to alleviate the suffering of others, love grows all the stronger. Because of all of this, after admitting that allowing the possibility of suffering was necessary in order that a greater good not be prevented, we have discovered that God's response to human suffering offers a profound experience of His loving nature.
Next we must consider the response that Christian eschatology offers to the charge that evil negates the possibility of God's omniscience. The objection here is that if God were all-loving and all-powerful then the only way to reconcile the existence of evil with the existence of God is to conclude that God is not all-knowing, and thus did not have the knowledge that evil would exist in the world that He created. I suggest that it is precisely because of God's omniscience that, knowing as He did that human beings would sin and experience evil if they were created with free will, and knowing also that free will is a necessary condition for the possibility of love, God created the world in such a way that would lead towards the redemption of that very suffering. Thus the incarnation of Christ was from the beginning included in the plan of creation, and the redemptive death and resurrection, too, as well as the ultimate redemption of the entire world. God did not create and then react to an unforeseen circumstance, but rather included in His creative plan from the beginning the means by which He would respond to the suffering that He foreknew.
Origen speaks of this when he argues that Christ was already present in those who prefigured Him before His incarnation. He writes:
And by the words of Christ we do not mean those only which He spake when He became man and tabernacled in the flesh; for before that time, Christ, the Word of God, was in Moses and the prophets. For without the Word of God, how could they have been able to prophesy of Christ5?
Precisely because of the omniscience of God was the world created through the Word of God with the inclusion in that plan of the means of redemption through that self-same Word made flesh. While the precise meaning of St. Paul's recognition that Christ is the "first born of all creation6" and the "first-born from the dead7" can be argued, at the least we can ascertain from this that the incarnation of Christ was always conceived as part of God's plan for creation, and because of God's omniscience we can know that it was always known that His incarnation would bear a specifically redemptive character. It must be concluded, then, that the existence of evil does no violence to God's omniscience, as we can see that from the beginning, before any evil was manifest, He was acting in recognition of its future reality in a way that would bring its redemption.
The final characteristic of God that requires examination in the face of the existence of evil is God's omnipotence. If we permit that God is all-loving and all-knowing, must then the existence of evil lead to the conclusion that God is impotent against it? Based on the previous arguments we see why it would not be good for God to remove those conditions that allow for the possibility of evil, but in the end, does this not still lead to a situation where ultimately evil triumphs? Again, it is precisely Christian eschatology that most perfectly responds to this dilemma.
In Christian soteriology, it is not just the case that God liberates man from suffering, from evil, but indeed that God Himself in the person of Jesus Christ takes on suffering and evil and destroys it Himself. The action of Jesus Christ dying on the cross and rising from the tomb not only deals with evil from the perspective of justice, but adds to this a further dimension to God's plan for human suffering, which is the dimension of redemption8. This dimension of redemption is included in the eschatological hope that the Christian faith articulates, for death itself is included in the suffering and evil that is to be redeemed. By entering into human death, being raised, and ensuring that human beings participate in this resurrection, God ensures that the suffering of our own death is totally redeemed and that in the end it is life that is victorious.
The dual dimension of redemption and justice inclusive in God's eschatological response to evil and human suffering is perhaps best described by C.S. Lewis in The Great Divorce. The protagonist's Spirit guide explains to him:
That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, "No future bliss can make up for it," not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say, "Let me have but this and I'll take the consequences": little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man's past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man's past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness9.
Thus it is that in the eschatological fulfillment God's victory over suffering and evil will be so complete, the redemption of creation so perfect, that for the saved, the sins and the sorrows will be known as blessed, and for the damned, the pleasures of sin will be tainted with damnation. In this way we see both the salvific and redemptive dimension of God's response to evil.
For as long as he has been aware of God and has experienced evil in any way, the question of the theodicy has been on the forefront of man's theological reflection. Religions have historically responded in a variety of ways. It is the eschatological promise of salvation and redemption inherent in Christianity that demonstrates how not only does the existence of evil do no violence to God's omnibenevolence, omniscience, and omnipotence, but indeed through the existence of evil and God's beautiful response to it, these very characteristics are illuminated magnificently.
1 Lewis, C.S. The Problem of Pain. New York: HarperCollins, 1996. 32
2 In Pope John Paul II's Apostolic Letter Salvifici Doloris he points out that in the Old Testament suffering and evil are used as one concept. "In the vocabulary of the Old Testament, suffering and evil are identified with each other. In fact, that vocabulary did not have a specific word to indicate 'suffering.' Thus it defined as 'evil' everything that was suffering." In this way I will typically use "suffering" and "evil" interchangeably throughout this paper.
3 Cf. St. Augustine, De libero arbitrio voluntatis II.180
4 Benedict XVI, encyclical, Spe Salvi 11
5 Origen. "De Principiis." The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Volume IV - Fathers of the Third Century. Ed. Rev. Alexander Robers, Sir James Donaldson & Arthur Cleveland Coxe. New York: Cosimo, 2007. 239
6 Col 1:15
7 Col 1:19
8 John Paul II, apostolic letter, Salvifici Doloris 14
9 Lewis, C.S. The Great Divorce. New York: HarperCollins, 1973. 69
The problem of evil is an ancient formulation of a theological problem which asks: How can we assert the existence of a God who is all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful in light of the existence of evil? Many attempts have been made over the centuries to address this question, and it has approached from a variety of theological perspectives. I propose in this paper that one of the most powerful and rational responses to this question of theodicy is precisely the articulation of the Christian eschatological vision. In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of this response I will examine eschatology in relation to God's omnibenevolence, omniscience, and omnipotence. I will also demonstrate how the theological response of Christian eschatology to the problem of evil is not merely an academic exercise but is pastoral, as well, as it both assists the person struggling with faith on account of the existence of suffering and informs the proper response to the suffering that exists in our time.
The first theological objection to the existence of evil vis-à-vis the existence of God is that if God were truly all-loving then He would desire our good, and thus would not allow evil to exist. C.S. Lewis addresses this in The Problem of Pain by first confronting the popular notion of love, which Lewis explains is too commonly described as entirely synonymous with kindness. He writes:
There is kindness in Love: but Love and kindness are not coterminous, and when kindness…is separated from the other elements of love, it involves a certain fundamental indifference to its object, and even something like contempt of it. Kindness consents very readily to the removal of its object - we have all met people whose kindness to animals is constantly leading them to kill animals lest they should suffer. Kindness, merely as such, cares not whether its object becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering1.
Love certainly will always be concerned with suffering, but true love will not be willing to prevent suffering at all costs. The question of human suffering vis-à-vis the existence of a loving God must discern what the cost would be in order to entirely eliminate suffering and evil2, as well as what response that loving God might make in the light of suffering's existence.
With regards to the first question, the cost of preventing the possibility of evil, we must consider first what is the cause of evil, or what action would prevent its possibility. Human beings possess the capacity to cause evil because of the fact that we possess the faculty of free will. In order then to posit an omnibenevolent God who creates us with free will, which allows for the possibility of evil, then we must consider the purpose of free will. Augustine argues that freedom of the will is necessary in humans in order that we may live rightly3, and that to the rational human being, to live rightly necessitates the ability to love God and to love neighbor. This capacity for love is impossible without freedom of will, for if something akin to love were a forced manner of one's nature then it would merely be instinct, and thus would belong equally to the irrational animals and could not be considered love. Love necessitates choice and freedom, and thus in order to eliminate the evil that is possible through free will God would also necessarily eliminate the ability to love.
Some will still object at this point, arguing that even if choice allows for the greatest good of all, the good of love, would not a good and loving God act in some way to respond to this suffering, act in some way commensurate with His goodness and power? This especially is where Christian eschatology offers a response. Just as God created human beings with the freedom of will because of the good it allows, with the knowledge of the suffering that would come along with it, so too did God respond from the perfection of His love to the very suffering itself. In the manner in which the Son of God appeared on earth, interacted with humanity, participated in human suffering and death, was raised from that death, and then ascended into heaven and sent forth His Spirit into the world, through all of this the suffering that exists because of man's sin now takes on redemptive possibility, and indeed is potentially imbued with the very act of divine love.
Furthermore, by rising from the dead and assuring humanity that this same resurrection is the eschatological destiny for those who believe and trust in Him, God has re-characterized human suffering so that now, instead of being an action that removes us from God, it profoundly unites us with God through the suffering of Christ. In the face of evil, the promise of our own resurrection and the ultimate redemption and regeneration of all creation now allows for the experience of the light hope that prevents suffering from ever becoming an all-encompassing abyss of darkness, and provides strength to endure even the most formidable of evils. Suffering might be unendurable if it were constantly accompanied by despair, but the loving God prevents that despair from being victorious. Pope Benedict XVI writes in his encyclical letter Spe Salvi:
In the New Testament this expectation of God, this standing with God, takes on a new significance: in Christ, God has revealed himself. He has already communicated to us the "substance" of things to come, and thus the expectation of God acquires a new certainty.
It is the expectation of things to come from the perspective of the present that is already given. It is a looking-forward in Christ's presence, with Christ who is present, to the perfecting of His body, to his definitive coming4.
Indeed, the Christian eschatological hope of Christ's return, our own resurrection, and the redemption of all of creation, not only sustains us in the face of present suffering, but indeed, through faith we are able to bring something of that future expectation into the present, and thus not only does God work to redeem our suffering, but through faith in God we are strengthened to participate in that redemption. Finally, when we, united to Christ's suffering through faith, work to alleviate the suffering of others, love grows all the stronger. Because of all of this, after admitting that allowing the possibility of suffering was necessary in order that a greater good not be prevented, we have discovered that God's response to human suffering offers a profound experience of His loving nature.
Next we must consider the response that Christian eschatology offers to the charge that evil negates the possibility of God's omniscience. The objection here is that if God were all-loving and all-powerful then the only way to reconcile the existence of evil with the existence of God is to conclude that God is not all-knowing, and thus did not have the knowledge that evil would exist in the world that He created. I suggest that it is precisely because of God's omniscience that, knowing as He did that human beings would sin and experience evil if they were created with free will, and knowing also that free will is a necessary condition for the possibility of love, God created the world in such a way that would lead towards the redemption of that very suffering. Thus the incarnation of Christ was from the beginning included in the plan of creation, and the redemptive death and resurrection, too, as well as the ultimate redemption of the entire world. God did not create and then react to an unforeseen circumstance, but rather included in His creative plan from the beginning the means by which He would respond to the suffering that He foreknew.
Origen speaks of this when he argues that Christ was already present in those who prefigured Him before His incarnation. He writes:
And by the words of Christ we do not mean those only which He spake when He became man and tabernacled in the flesh; for before that time, Christ, the Word of God, was in Moses and the prophets. For without the Word of God, how could they have been able to prophesy of Christ5?
Precisely because of the omniscience of God was the world created through the Word of God with the inclusion in that plan of the means of redemption through that self-same Word made flesh. While the precise meaning of St. Paul's recognition that Christ is the "first born of all creation6" and the "first-born from the dead7" can be argued, at the least we can ascertain from this that the incarnation of Christ was always conceived as part of God's plan for creation, and because of God's omniscience we can know that it was always known that His incarnation would bear a specifically redemptive character. It must be concluded, then, that the existence of evil does no violence to God's omniscience, as we can see that from the beginning, before any evil was manifest, He was acting in recognition of its future reality in a way that would bring its redemption.
The final characteristic of God that requires examination in the face of the existence of evil is God's omnipotence. If we permit that God is all-loving and all-knowing, must then the existence of evil lead to the conclusion that God is impotent against it? Based on the previous arguments we see why it would not be good for God to remove those conditions that allow for the possibility of evil, but in the end, does this not still lead to a situation where ultimately evil triumphs? Again, it is precisely Christian eschatology that most perfectly responds to this dilemma.
In Christian soteriology, it is not just the case that God liberates man from suffering, from evil, but indeed that God Himself in the person of Jesus Christ takes on suffering and evil and destroys it Himself. The action of Jesus Christ dying on the cross and rising from the tomb not only deals with evil from the perspective of justice, but adds to this a further dimension to God's plan for human suffering, which is the dimension of redemption8. This dimension of redemption is included in the eschatological hope that the Christian faith articulates, for death itself is included in the suffering and evil that is to be redeemed. By entering into human death, being raised, and ensuring that human beings participate in this resurrection, God ensures that the suffering of our own death is totally redeemed and that in the end it is life that is victorious.
The dual dimension of redemption and justice inclusive in God's eschatological response to evil and human suffering is perhaps best described by C.S. Lewis in The Great Divorce. The protagonist's Spirit guide explains to him:
That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, "No future bliss can make up for it," not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say, "Let me have but this and I'll take the consequences": little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man's past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man's past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness9.
Thus it is that in the eschatological fulfillment God's victory over suffering and evil will be so complete, the redemption of creation so perfect, that for the saved, the sins and the sorrows will be known as blessed, and for the damned, the pleasures of sin will be tainted with damnation. In this way we see both the salvific and redemptive dimension of God's response to evil.
For as long as he has been aware of God and has experienced evil in any way, the question of the theodicy has been on the forefront of man's theological reflection. Religions have historically responded in a variety of ways. It is the eschatological promise of salvation and redemption inherent in Christianity that demonstrates how not only does the existence of evil do no violence to God's omnibenevolence, omniscience, and omnipotence, but indeed through the existence of evil and God's beautiful response to it, these very characteristics are illuminated magnificently.
1 Lewis, C.S. The Problem of Pain. New York: HarperCollins, 1996. 32
2 In Pope John Paul II's Apostolic Letter Salvifici Doloris he points out that in the Old Testament suffering and evil are used as one concept. "In the vocabulary of the Old Testament, suffering and evil are identified with each other. In fact, that vocabulary did not have a specific word to indicate 'suffering.' Thus it defined as 'evil' everything that was suffering." In this way I will typically use "suffering" and "evil" interchangeably throughout this paper.
3 Cf. St. Augustine, De libero arbitrio voluntatis II.180
4 Benedict XVI, encyclical, Spe Salvi 11
5 Origen. "De Principiis." The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Volume IV - Fathers of the Third Century. Ed. Rev. Alexander Robers, Sir James Donaldson & Arthur Cleveland Coxe. New York: Cosimo, 2007. 239
6 Col 1:15
7 Col 1:19
8 John Paul II, apostolic letter, Salvifici Doloris 14
9 Lewis, C.S. The Great Divorce. New York: HarperCollins, 1973. 69