Cosmic Alienation and the Origin of Evil: Rejecting the “Only Way” Option
2015; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 13; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/14746700.2014.987994
ISSN1474-6719
Autores Tópico(s)Biblical Studies and Interpretation
ResumoAbstractFor many contemporary theologians, God could not have created the universe in any other way than leading inevitably to evil. First, this essay will argue that non-human evil represents genuine evil. Second, it will argue that if contingency leads inevitably to evil, then God is too closely implicated in the creation of evil. Finally, I will re-explore the occurrence of a primordial deviation from God's original plan logically prior to creation as the best explanation for the origin of evil, thereby placing the origin of evil back in the context of freedom rather than implicating the nature of contingent reality.Key words: EvilContingencyCreationOriginal sinSatanFallEvolution Notes1 “God had power at the beginning to grant perfection to man; but as the latter was only recently, he could not possibly have received it, or even if he had received it, could he have contained it, or containing it, could he have retained it … There was nothing, therefore, impossible to and deficient in God, [implied in the fact] that man was not an uncreated being … For the Uncreated is perfect, that is, God. Now it was necessary that man should in the first instance be created; and having been created, should receive growth; and having received growth, should be strengthened; and having been strengthened, should abound; and having abounded, should recover [from the disease of sin]; and having recovered, should be glorified; and being glorified, should see his Lord.” Irenaeus of Lyons, Refutation, 4, XXXVIII, 2–3, http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/irenaeus-book4.html (accessed December 11, 2013). John S. Romanides explains: “He was made needing to acquire perfection, not because he was made flawed in nature and morally deficient, but because moral perfection is achieved only in total freedom.” John S. Romanides, The Ancestral Sin, trans. George S. Gabriel (Ridgewood, NJ: Zephyr, 2002), 126.2 On the one hand, this Fall must be somehow temporal, since the angels, having a capacity for change, must exist in some form of temporality. On the other hand, since there was no time before the Big Bang, when might the angels have fallen? The best indication I can give is to point to Joseph Ratzinger's explanation concerning time in Purgatory, that “duration on the basis of temporal measurements derived from physics would be naïve and unproductive.” Joseph Ratzinger, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1988), 230, quoted in Brett Salkeld, Can Catholics and Evangelicals agree About Purgatory and the Last Judgment? (New York/Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2011), 16. I can only assert the same here. The angels’ experience of time as duration would have been quite different than mere physical sequence. Within the first sequential “moment” of the Big Bang, the angels’ experience of duration may have given them an experience of “extension” within that single moment such that they made their choice temporally simultaneous but logically and ontologically “prior” to the Big Bang.3 Alfred Sharpe, “Evil,” in The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 5 (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1909), http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05649a.html (accessed November 24, 2013); my emphasis.4 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. the Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benzinger Brothers, 1947), 1, q.49, a.2, quoted in Christopher Southgate, The Groaning of Creation: God, Evolution, and the Problem of Evil (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 40.5 Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, trans. Emerson Buchanan (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1967), 247.6 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, vol. 2, trans. Goeffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1994), 267.7 Ibid., 268.8 Southgate, Groaning of Creation, 13.9 Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Karamazov Brothers, trans.Ignat Avsey (1880; English ed., 1994; repr., Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), quoted in Southgate, Groaning of Creation, 13.10 Michael Lloyd, “Are Animals Fallen?” in Animals on the Agenda: Questions about Animals for Theology and Ethics, ed. Andrew Linzey and Dorothy Yamamoto (London: SCM Press, 1998), 149–50.11 John Alcock, The Triumph of Sociobiology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 209, quoted in Joshua Moritz, “Evolutionary Evil and Dawkins’ Black Box,” in The Evolution of Evil, ed. Gaymon Bennett, Martinez J. Hewlett, Ted Peters, and Robert John Russell (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008), 182–3.12 Moritz, “Evolutionary Evil,” 183.13 Ibid., 185.14 Celia Deane-Drummond, Christ and Evolution: Wonder and Wisdom (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009), 166.15 Ibid., 167.16 Ibid., 169.17 Moritz, “Evolutionary Evil,” 185, footnote 42. Moritz explains that the Hebrew word RXv (Basar) “refers to all living things besides plants, i.e., animals and humans.”18 Southgate, Groaning of Creation, 7.19 Ibid., 8.20 Ibid.21 Ibid., 40.22 Ibid.23 Ibid., 45.24 Moritz, “Evolutionary Evil,” 184.25 Patricia A. Williams, “How Evil Entered the World: An Exploration Through Deep Time,” in The Evolution of Evil, 209.26 Ibid.27 Ibid., 207.28 Robert John Russell, “Jesus: The Way of All Flesh and the Feather of Time,” paper for the JTF symposium, “Is God Incarnate in All that Is?” (Helsingør, August 26–29, 2011), under section 3, “The Depth of the Incarnation Explored Further: The Physics of Natural Evil and Natural Good.”29 Robert John Russell, Cosmology: From Alpha to Omega (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2008), 244.30 Robert John Russell, “The Groaning of Creation: Does God Suffer with All Life?” in Evolution of Evil, 129.31 Ibid., 130.32 Russell, “Cosmology,” 244.33 Ibid., 245.34 Ibid.35 Niels Gregersen, “The Extended Body of Christ: Three Dimensions of Deep Incarnation,” in Deep Incarnation: On the Scope of Christology, ed. Niels Henrik Gregersen (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2013).36 John 1:9. Along with Russell, Rene Girard has commented on the profound discontinuity between the Greek concept of Logos and the Johannine concept of Logos in Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World. According to the Greek vision, “The Logos brings together entities that are opposites, and it does not do so without violence” (265). Violence is always inherent in the operations of Logos. One of the great mistakes of much traditional exegesis on John, according to Girard, has been to confuse the Greek Logos with the expelled Johannine Logos, who never “brings together” with violence. Rene Girard, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, trans. Stephen Bann (Books II and III) and Michael Metteer (Book I), (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987). Elizabeth Johnson concurs with the danger of too closely equating the logos of this world with the Logos of God: “Borrowed from Hellenistic philosophy, this [logos] refers to a principle of order in the universe. But disorder, random events, and entropy are also characteristic of the universe and the story of evolution … The historical kenosis of incarnation; the characteristic words and deeds of Jesus challenging the prevailing order (‘whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all’ Mk 9:35 NRSV); and especially the disaster of the cross, run counter to the philosophical idea of order.” In Elizabeth Johnson, “Jesus Christ and Creation: Soundings in the Values and Limits of Incarnation,” paper for the JTF symposium, “Is God Incarnate in All that Is?” (Helsingør, August 26–29, 2011), under section II, “The Limits of Incarnation.”37 Nancey Murphy, “The Resurrection Body and Personal Identity: Possibilities and Limits of Eschatological Knowledge,” in Resurrection: Theological and Scientific Assessments, ed. Ted Peters, Robert John Russell, and Michael Welker (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2002), 217.38 Russell, “Cosmology,” 260.39 Lloyd, “Are Animals Fallen?,” 156.40 Russell, “Groaning of Creation,” 123, 139.41 Thomas F. Torrance, Divine and Contingent Order (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), 116.42 Robert John Russell, “Natural Theology in an Evolutionary Context: The Need for an Eschatology of New Creation,” in Theodicy and Eschatology, ed. Bruce Barber and David Neville (Hindmarsh, South Australia: Australian Theological Forum, 2005), 131, quoted in Southgate, Groaning of Creation, 48.43 Russell, “Groaning of Creation,” 139.44 Karl Rahner, “Why Does God Allow Us to Suffer?” Theological Investigations, vol. 19, trans. Edward Quinn (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 202, quoted in Russell, “Groaning of Creation,” 122.45 Russell, “Groaning of Creation,” 139.46 Southgate, Groaning of Creation, 16.47 Augustine, Enchiridion 12, in The Essential Augustine, ed. Vernon J. Bourke (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1974), 65.48 Augustine, City of God, trans. Gerald G. Walsh, S.J., et al (New York: Image Books, Doubleday, 1958), XII, vi, 253.49 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, trans. Vernon J. Bourke (New York: Hanover House, 1955–7), I, 85.50 Ibid., I, 71.51 Ibid., I, 72.52 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Christianity and Evolution: Reflections on Science and Religion, trans. Rene Hague (Orlando: William Collins Sons and Harcourt, 1971), 40.53 Ibid., 54.54 Ibid., 190.55 Ibid., 51.56 Stephen J. Duffy, “Our Hearts of Darkness: Original Sin Revisited,” Theological Studies 49 (1988), 619.57 Daryl P. Domning, Original Selfishness: Original Sin and Evil in the Light of Evolution (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006), 173.58 Teilhard, Christianity and Evolution, 33, quoted in Domning, Original Selfishness, 173.59 K. Schmitz-Moormann, (in collaboration with J.F. Salmon), Theology of Creation in an Evolutionary World (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 1997), 144, quoted in Domning, Original Selfishness, 155.60 Domning, Original Selfishness, 163.61 Ibid., 166.62 Michael Ruse, Can a Darwinian Be a Christian? The Relationship Between Science and Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 136, quoted in Russell, “Groaning of Creation,” 124.63 Russell, “Groaning of Creation,” 124.64 Ibid., 124.65 Lloyd, “Are Animals Fallen?,” footnote 19, 275.66 Deane-Drummond, Christ and Evolution, 171.67 Russell, “Groaning of Creation,” 130.68 Torrance, Divine and Contingent Order, 91.69 Russell, “Groaning of Creation,” 130.70 Joshua M. Moritz, “Animal Suffering, Evolution, and the Origins of Evil: Toward a ‘Free Creatures’ Defense,” Zygon 49:2 (2014), 348–80.71 Ibid., 349.72 Ibid.73 Ibid., 353–4.74 Ibid., 356.75 Ibid., 359.76 Ibid.77 Ibid., 360–61.78 Ibid., 373.79 Hans Urs Von Balthasar, Theo-drama, vol. 4: The Action, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994), 197.80 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1959), 311.81 Elizabeth A. Johnson, Ask the Beasts: Darwin and the God of Love (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 188.82 Ibid., 182–4.83 John Thiel, God, Evil, and Innocent Suffering (New York: Crossroad, 2002), 58, quoted in Johnson, Ask the Beasts, 185.84 Johnson, Ask the Beasts, 190.85 Ian A. McFarland, In Adam's Fall: A Meditation on the Christian Doctrine of Original Sin (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 7.86 Ibid.87 Lloyd, “Are Animals Fallen?,” 154–5.88 Anthony Kelly, Eschatology and Hope (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2006), 85, quoted in Johnson, Ask the Beasts, 207.89 Von Balthasar, Theo-drama, vol. 4: The Action, 194.90 Ibid., 197–8.91 C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York: MacMillan, 1943), 117.92 Ibid., 122–3.93 Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, vol. 2, 274.94 Torrance, Divine and Contingent Order, 117.95 Ibid., 117–8.96 Lloyd, “Are Animals Fallen?,” 154–5.97 Ibid., 155.98 Karl Rahner, “On Angels,” Theological Investigations, vol. 19, 272.99 Ibid., 273.100 Raymund Schwager, Banished from Eden: Original Sin and Evolutionary Theory in the Drama of Salvation, trans. James Williams (Leominster: Gracewing, 2006), 160.101 Lloyd, “Are Animals Fallen?,” 160.102 Ibid.103 Torrance, Divine and Contingent Order, 110.104 Ibid., 111.105 Ibid., 118–9.Additional informationBiographical NotesNathan O'Halloran, S.J. serves as Assistant Pastor of St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church in Grand Coteau, Louisiana. He completed a Master's degree in Philosophy while at Fordham University and a Master of Divinity, Master of Theology, and Licentiate in Sacred Theology at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, California.
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