Evil

The challenge of Evil is on that philosophers, theologians, and nearly anyone with a pulse has thought about at some time or another. Many books have been written about this subject to try to come to grips with how a loving, compassionate God can allow evil and suffering in the world in which he created. N.T. Wright offers his thoughts on the subject in slightly different light in Evil and the Justice of God. One of Wright's motivations in composing such a book was to attempt to "answer" the outcry of people mourning such tragic events as 9-11, Hurricane Katrina, the tsunami that devastated the Indian Ocean and other recent world disasters. He says that the problem of evil is not something which we humans can solve in the present reality of life, but rather we are "to bring signs of God's new world to birth on the basis of Jesus' death and in the power of his Spirit, even in the midst of "the present evil age."

As I read this book I was reminded yet again of the immensity of a heart and mind like Wright's to ask tough questions and find answers in the mystery of creation, redemption, and new creation. Although I hadn't read anything by Wright until about 5 years ago, he has quickly become one of my favorite authors. His deep love for the bride of Christ, the church, and his commitment to plumbing the depths of God's riches revealed in the Living Word (Jesus) and the spoken word are an encouragement to me. I want to share a few of the insights that stuck out to me in a couple of posts (because there are so many). His thought his at once philosophical and simple so I will try to let him speak for himself.

God's justice is a saving, healing, restorative justice, because the God to whom justice belongs is the Creator God who has yet to complete his original plan for creation and whose justice is designed not simply to restore balance to a world out of kilter but to bring to glorious completion and fruition the creation, teeming with life and possibility, that he made in the first place. And he remains implacably determined to complete this project through his image-bearing human creatures and, more specifically, through the family of Abraham. p. 64


God chooses to bring the world back to rights through a family which is itself composed of deeply flawed human beings and thereby generates second- and third-order problems of evil--which have to be addressed and solved in their turn. p. 72


The story of Gethsemane and of the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth present themselves in the New Testament as the strange, dark conclusion to the story of what God does about evil, of what happens to God's justice when it takes human flesh, when it gets its feet muddy in the garden and its hands bloody on the cross. p. 74


On Satan as the "face" of evil...
And yet it is wrong to think of the satan as "personal" in the same way that God or Jesus is "personal"--which is not to say that the satan is a vague or nebulous force. Quite the reverse: I prefer to use the term "subpersonal" or "quasi-personal" as a way of refusing to accord the satan the full dignity of personhood while recognizing that  the concentration of activity (its subtle schemes and devices) can and does strike us as very much like that which we associate with personhood. p.112

On the false belief in universalism...
Grand-sounding statements of universalism are offered on this basis: it cannot be right, we are told, for the redeemed to enjoy their heaven as long as one soul is left in hell. Of course, by thus appealing to our sense of feeling sorry for the one left outside the party, we put that person in a position of peculiar power, able to exercise in perpetuity a veto on the triumph of grace. p. 140