David Bentley Hart’s Inconsistent Triad (3): Theodicy

In my final post on the inconsistent triad found in David Bentley Hart’s essay “God, Creation, and Evil: The Moral Meaning of creatio ex nihilo”, I’d like to talk about theodicy.

Let me say up front that, I don’t want to talk about “theodicy” as if it’s a fancy academic issue.  The word "issue" makes it seem optional, a subject for discussion within the safe confines of an ivory tower, as if we can choose when and wear to engage with it.  But we can only talk about "theodicy" in the context of a suffering and evil that humanity cannot seem to avoid, whether it be self-inflicted or not.  It is not academic or abstract.  It’s with that in mind that I hope to proceed.

Hart’s inconsistent triad:

1. God freely created all things out of nothingness
2. God is the Good itself
3. It is certain or at least possible that some rational creatures will endure eternal loss of God

In the previous post, I paralleled Hart's triad with Tom Talbott's triad.  Here, I'd like to do the same thing with a well-known triad involving the troubling question of theodicy.

The theodicy triad in its simplest form:

1. God is omnipotent
2. God is the omnibenevolent
3. Evil exists

The question is, can all 3 of these propositions be true?

As with Talbott, there are some distinct parallels between DBH’s triad and the theodicy triad.  (Note that Talbott touches on some of the differences and similarities between his triad and the theodicy triad in his Reply to Michael J. McClymond).   

If (as I proposed) Hart's 1st proposition (God freely creates out of nothingness) is an articulation (or at least closely related to) the matter of God's creative sovereignty, then we have a parallel with the first proposition in the theodicy triad (God is omnipotent).

Hart's 2nd proposition is, again, closely related to the 2nd proposition found in the theodicy inconsistent triad.  God is the Good itself is, at a bare minimum, close related to the statement that God is omnibenevolent.

But here’s the thing.  Theologians of all stripes and theological persuasions don't hesitate to pick apart this theodicy triad in ways that seek to demonstrate that the triad isn't actually inconsistent.  They argue that all 3 can be true.  If these 3 theodicy propositions can all be true, and these 3 are closely related in form to Hart's proposed inconsistent triad, is Hart’s triad not actually inconsistent?  Can the same arguments that make the theodicy triad not inconsistent be applied to Hart?  If not, what differentiates them? 

The forms that these theodicy arguments take may vary in their level of sophistication and intended audience, but they generally come back to the same thing: we can only answer the theodicy question in terms of the end, eschatologically.

In other words, God may permit certain evils for a time, but this temporal “permission” does not necessarily disprove God’s sovereign love and goodness.  While temporal evil is tragically real, it is temporal.  Evil is not eternal.  It is not permanent.  Given the reality of suffering and evil, any talks of its impermanence risks sounding trite and dismissive.  As true as that may be, what remains is that only the possible impermanence of evil saves the triad.  Only the possibility of the redemption of what evil and suffering have destroyed opens the possibility that the triad is consistent. 

Now this issue of permissive power may trip up those who possess a meticulous interpretation of divine sovereignty.  In the meticulous view, all things are the outworking of God’s will.  There can be no meaningful distinction between what God wills and what God permits.  So in this view, there is no difference between God permitting a child to die of cancer and willing a child to die of cancer.  They are one and the same, and it would be foolishness for humanity to judge God's "goodness" here based on our finite standards of goodness.  There is some truth to this of course, but the argument ultimately undermines God-talk and the possibility of faith.  Hart, having no sympathy for the argument, does not mince words:

But, when any meaningful difference between will and permission has been excluded, and when the transcendent causality of the creator God has been confused with the immanent web of causation that constitutes the world of our experiences, it becomes impossible to imagine that what God wills might not be immediately convertible with what occurs in time; and thus both the authority of Scripture and the justice of God must fall before the inexorable logic of absolute divine sovereignty.
(The Doors of the Sea, p 90)

The fact is, while (obviously) believing his own triad to be inconsistent, Hart also paints the theodicy triad as not inconsistent.  All 3 in the theodicy can be true.

How so?

It’s the distinction between the temporal/finite and the eternal.  Perhaps some answer can be offered to make sense of history, but the theodicy triad would not fare so well if evil and it's effects were given the last word.

We can all appreciate, I imagine, the shattering force of Vanya’s terrible question to Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov.  If universal harmony and joy could be secured by the torture and murder of a single innocent child, would you accept that price?  But let us say that somehow, mysteriously – in, say, Zosima’s sanctity, Alyosha’s kiss, the million-mile march of Vanya’s devil, the callous old women’s onion – an answer is offered that makes the transient torments of history justifiable in the light of God’s everlasting Kingdom.  But eternal torments, final dereliction?  Here the price is raised beyond any calculus of relative goods, and into the realm of absolute – or infinite – expenditure.  And the arithmetic is fairly inflexible.
(God, Creation and Evil, p 12)

There may yet be an answer for these “transient torments of history”.  For now, however, no answer has been given.

every death of a child, every chance calamity, every act of malice; everything diseased, thwarted, pitiless, purposeless, or cruel; and, until the end of all things, no answer has been given.(God, Creation and Evil, p 5)

I have to confess, I want an answer.  I want reason.  Justification.  And yet, independent of want I think I want, a “bare choice” remains, one that strikes me as profoundly true:

As soon as one sheds the burden of the desire for total explanation -as soon as one has come to see the history of suffering as a contingency and an absurdity, in which grace is ever at work but upon which it does not depend, and has come also to see the promised end of all things not as the dialectical residue of a great cosmic and moral process, but as something far more glorious than the pitiable resources of fallen time could ever yield -one is confronted with only this bare choice: either one embraces the mystery of created freedom and accepts that the union of free spiritual creatures with the God of love is a thing so wonderful that the power of creation to enslave itself to death must be permitted by God; or one judges that not even such rational freedom is worth the risk of a cosmic fall and the terrible injustice of the consequences that follow from it. But, then, since there can be no context in which such a judgment can be meaningfully made, no perspective from which a finite Euclidean mind can weigh eschatological glory in the balance against earthly suffering, the rejection of God on these grounds cannot really be a rational decision, but only a moral pathos.     (The Doors of the Sea, p 68)

 So in the end, the final consistency of the theodicy triad (all 3 can be true) is contingent upon the non-finality of evil, the non-finality of all that is not well.  Hart’s inconsistent triad simply draws upon the implications of the hope of that proposition, the hope of the Gospel:

Rather than showing us how the tears of a small girl suffering in the dark were necessary for the building of the Kingdom, he will instead raise her up and wipe away all tears from her eyes – and there shall be no more death , nor sorrow, nor crying, nor any more pain, for the former things have passed away, and he that sits upon the throne will say, “Behold, I make all things new.”     (The Doors of the Sea, p 104)

David Bentley Hart’s Inconsistent Triad (2): Comparing DBH to Tom Talbott

In my previous post, I identified an inconsistent triad in the essay “God,Creation, and Evil: The Moral Meaning of creatio ex nihilo” by David Bentley Hart.

Here is Hart’s inconsistent triad:

1. God freely created all things out of nothingness
2. God is the Good itself
3. It is certain or at least possible that some rational creatures will endure eternal loss of God

The work of Thomas Talbott, author of The Inescapable Love of God, can also be viewed through and summarized by an inconsistent triad.  I’ve written about Talbott's inconsistent triad here.

Here is (a form of) Talbott’s inconsistent triad:

1. All humans are equal objects of God's unconditional love in the sense that God, being no respecter of persons, sincerely wills or desires to reconcile each one of them to himself and thus to prepare each one of them for the bliss of union with him. 
2. Almighty God will triumph in the end and successfully reconcile to himself each person whose reconciliation he sincerely wills or desires.
3. Some humans will never be reconciled to God and will therefore remain separated from him forever. 

Or to put it more succinctly:

1. God wants to "save" everyone.
2. God has the ability to "save" all that he wants to "save".
3. Some will be forever separated from God, the nature of that separation notwithstanding (eternal conscious torment, annihilation, etc.)

The parallels between Hart's and Talbott's inconsistent triads are striking.  Most striking to me, however, is how the (sometimes subtle) differences in phrasing enrich and elucidate the meanings of the first two propositions in each triad.

Hart’s 1^st proposition (that God freely created out of nothingness) corresponds with Talbott’s 2^nd proposition (that God can save all that he wants to save).  It clarifies a connection between the free creative act of God and the nature and substance of God’s “sovereignty”.  Neither of the triads argues for or against specific ways that God exercises this sovereignty, but the connection does cement the idea that creatio ex nihilo demonstrates that there is no created thing that exceeds God's creative act.  It connects beginning and end.  God is not simply sovereign overlord, God is Creator.  And not Creator meaning a sovereign overlord who has the functional power to make stuff from nothing, but Creator as the one who "calls us forth" and whose calling is grounded in an eternal telos that's never separable from the eternal nature of God.  In the words of Hart:

In the end of all things is their beginning, and only form the perspective of the end can one know what they are, why they have been made, and who the God is who called them forth from nothingness.  And in Gregory's thought, with an integrity found only also in Origen and Maximus, protology and eschatology are a single science, a single revelation disclosed in the God-man.     (God, Creation and Evil, p 16)

Hart’s 2^nd proposition (that God is the Good itself) corresponds with Talbott’s 1^st proposition (that God wants to save everyone).  It cements the connection between goodness and love, not just love as a general ideal of goodness, but as the particularity of willing the final good of the creation that God brought forth from nothing.  For many people the connection between love and goodness is perfectly obvious and goes almost without saying.  But for those who think that God's essential "goodness" need not entail a final love of all humanity, this one's for you.

So while these two inconsistent triads are worded differently, particularly the first 2 propositions, they could be combined to form a common argument: that goodness-as-love combined with sovereignty-as-creation-from-nothing means that the 3rd proposition, that some rational creatures will endure eternal loss of God, must be false.

Are DB Hart's and Talbott's inconsistent triads two ways of making the same argument?

In my next post, I'd like to look at DBH's triad in the context of theodicy.

continued

David Bentley Hart’s Inconsistent Triad (1)

It’d be hard to overstate how important the essay “God,Creation, and Evil: The Moral Meaning of creatio ex nihilo” by David Bentley Hart has been for me.  I’ve read it maybe 10 times and each time it yields some new insight that, having seen it, I can’t unsee it.    

Just recently I noticed something at the end of the essay that I hadn’t noticed before: an inconsistent triad.

While the essay itself is a fairly grueling (though highly rewarding) read for us non-academics, the triad itself is quite accessible.  Not only that, but in my reading the entirety of the essay is an exercise in sober semantic precision in support of the argument present in this sentence:

We are presented by what has become the majority tradition with three fundamental claims, any two of which might be true simultaneously, but never all three: that God freely created all things out of nothingness; that God is the Good itself, and that it is certain or at least possible that some rational creatures will endure eternal loss of God. (p 16)

To visually break up the three claims:

1. God freely created all things out of nothingness
2. God is the Good itself
3. It is certain or at least possible that some rational creatures will endure eternal loss of God

So the inconsistent triad is both a helpful lens through which to read the essay and the end to which the various arguments aim and find a simple and powerful expression.

Is Hart’s analysis sound?  That any two of these statements can be true but never all three? 

That’s the big question, of course.  What do you think?

In the next post I’d like to compare Hart’s inconsistent triad to that of another well-known and influential Christian universalist – Thomas Talbott.

continued

Creatio ex Nihilo and The Cosmic Christ (Jurgen Moltmann)

Ever since reading God, Creation, and Evil: The Moral Meaning of creatio ex nihilo by David Bentley Hart, the theological idea of creation ex nihilo has become an important one for me.  Subsequent readings, along with a few other essays (Theodicy, Hell, and David B Hart by Brian Moore being a notable one) have cemented it as foundational and formative.  The eschatological themes of heaven, hell and the destiny of creation, the connection between protology (beginnings) and eschatology (ends), the moral themes of theodicy and suffering, and the ultimate question of 'Who is God?' are all intimately germane to the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo.

For me, this doctrine (as implication of the Gospel) provides reason for hope and the occasion for faith.

I came across the same themes recently in the work of Jurgen Moltmann.  Moltmann, however, doesn't explicitly use the language of creation "ex nihilo".  Not here anyways.  For Moltmann, this line of thought falls within his theological expositions on "The Cosmic Christ".

The connection is amazing.  When we are talking about the meaning of Creation ex nihilo, we are talking about the cosmic Christ, the Alpha and the Omega.

Both of the citations below are taken from Chapter 6 (section 3) of Jesus Christ for Today's World by Moltmann.  The chapter is entitled 'The Cosmic Christ'.  Have a look:

If all things are created by one God, then a transcendent unity precedes their diversity and their historicity. It is not a matter of many worlds belonging to many gods or powers. This is the one creation of the one God. If all things are created by the one God through his Wisdom/Logos, and if they are held together in that, then an immanent unity in which they all exist together underlies their diversity in space and time. Their unity is not the outcome of some subsequent process, emerging from their relationships and the warp and weft into which they are bound. Everything has its genesis in a fundamental underlying unity, which is called God's Wisdom, Spirit or Word. The fellowship of all created beings goes ahead of their differentiations and the specific forms given to them, and this is consequently the foundation underlying their diversity. If God withdraws this foundation, everything disintegrates and becomes a nothingness. If God lends it fresh force, the various forms are renewed (Ps. 104.29f.).
--(Kindle Locations 996-998).


The Hebrew word roach is often translated Spirit, as it is here; but a better translation is 'wind' or 'breath'. The Hebrew word 'rahaph' is generally rendered 'hover' or 'brood'. But according to Deut. 32.11 and Jer. 23.9 it really means vibrating, quivering, moving and exciting. If this is correct, then we shouldn't just think of the image of a fluttering or brooding dove. We should think of the fundamental resonances of music out of which sounds and rhythms emerge. So in thinking about 'creation through the Word', we shouldn't think primarily in metaphors of command and obedience. A better image is the song of creation. The word names, differentiates and appraises. But the breath is the same in all the words, and binds the words together. So the Creator differentiates his creatures through his creative Word and joins them through his Spirit, who is the sustainer of all his words. In the quickening breath and through the form-giving word, the Creator sings out his creatures in the sounds and rhythms in which he has his joy and his good pleasure.
--(Kindle Locations 1004-1010).