Having thought a bit about the question of evolution and suffering and having reflected on the discussion that ensued, I thought I'd delve a little further into the idea of a "cosmic fall". The notion is not alien to Christian tradition but I suppose it does create some tension as regards the other, equally important doctrine to be affirmed: that the world was created good.
Traditionally, Christianity has worked with a two-fold typology for thinking about evil. Thus evil can be considered in its two forms - natural or ontological evil and moral/ethical evil. With this division in place, moral evil has typically been explained with recourse to the Christian doctrine of the fall. Man's nature, though not completely corrupted, has been wounded and his will, though free, yet tends to evil. A horror as monstrous as the holocaust, for example, is attributable to humanity's free will. The question of 'natural evil' presents a different problem for it appears to be no agent through which it comes about.
However, in this post I wish to investigate one avenue for explaining the evil that appears so rife in the 'natural' world: that natural evil itself can be attributed to the nefarious influence of malign spiritual beings. That this will appear an 'outdated' idea, one not fit for 'modern' men and women, I contend that such an understanding is necessary if Christians are to remain free from the sort of rationalizations of evil that seem so repulsive to 'protest' atheists and should seem equally so to Christians.
Of course, I do not wish to revive the ancient heresy of Manichaeism. Orthodox belief has always affirmed that creation is a gift from God who viewed it as "very good". Thus what I am maintaining here is not that creation is the result of the workings of a demiurge, or that it is the product of a pre-cosmic fall from the Pleroma. The doctrine that the world was created ex nihilo is a safeguard against such postulations. But the notion of a cosmic fall does not endanger this. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth": the angels too, were created ex nihilo. And even if such an emphasis on a catalcysmic fall strikes some as far too gnostic, it may well be that we need to discern the kernel of truth that gnosticism contains. As it is, I do not think that this element of truth is something which cannot be found with orthodox Christian belief in any case.
Aquinas deals with the problem of natural evil by arguing that from the perspective of God's perfect ordering of the universe these deficiencies in being are necessary. Now, I would not wish to say that a finite and limited being is in any sense 'evil'. Aquinas does not argue that in any case, rather he argues that evil signifies a privation in being. For a man not to be able to fly is not 'evil', but for a man to be born blind is, as the gift of sight constitues part of his nature. Thus in the passage cited in the discussion on the problem of evil, Aquinas states his view:
"God and nature and any other agent make what is best in the whole, but not what is best in every single part, except in order to the whole, as was said above (47, 2). And the whole itself, which is the universe of creatures, is all the better and more perfect if some things in it can fail in goodness, and do sometimes fail, God not preventing this. This happens, firstly, because "it belongs to Providence not to destroy, but to save nature," as Dionysius says (Div. Nom. iv); but it belongs to nature that what may fail should sometimes fail; secondly, because, as Augustine says (Enchir. 11), "God is so powerful that He can even make good out of evil." Hence many good things would be taken away if God permitted no evil to exist; for fire would not be generated if air was not corrupted, nor would the life of a lion be preserved unless the ass were killed. Neither would avenging justice nor the patience of a sufferer be praised if there were no injustice." (ST 1, 48, 2, rep to obj. 3)
For Aquinas then, such evils as cancer, whilst causing untold pain and suffering for the victim and those close to him, from the point of view of the ultimate perfection of the universal order, are not 'evil' in any meaningful sense, on the contrary, they themselves can contribute to this ultimate perfection by, for example, being the catalyst for someone to display great patience in their suffering, for another to visit the sick person in hospital and so forth.
Now, Aquinas is a theologian I very much admire, but in this instance I simply cannot agree with him. Does not Aquinas' rationalization of evil as a constituent part of a perfect cosmic ordering fall prey to Ivan Karamazov's argument against God? As D.B. Hart points out in The Doors of the Sea: Dostoyevsky's Christian genius lies not in the perception that the suffering and death in the universe is not morally intelligible but that it would be far worse if it were!
Aquinas' theology was forged to a large extent in the battle against Manichaeism which had reared its ugly head in the heresy of the Cathars. However, whilst it was entirely necessary for Aquinas to do battle on behalf of the doctrine that God's creation is good, it may be the case that in defending it, he underplayed the truth from which the Cathar heresy was a deviation: heresy being an overemphasis on one aspect of a truth.
It is not difficult to affirm Creation's goodness. One experiences countless instances of it in nature: a glorious sunset, a peaceful sea, the majestic flight of an eagle (as you can probably tell, I'm no poet). But it is far less easy to affirm it when one sees, for example, a young mother's body ravaged by cancer: I simply cannot accept that it is entirely natural and part of God's good creation that this should be the case. I believe that a stress on the goodness of creation whilst recognising said creation's fallen nature is absolutely necessary to avoid the Scylla of a cosmic order which entails suffering and death for its ultimate perfection and the Charybdis of Manichaeism.
As regards the question of how all this relates to evolution, it might be said that the fall need not have been an actual, temporal event but a 'mythological' expression for what we recognise to be creation's bondage. Thus whilst there may never have been a literal, 'golden age', the story of the Fall symbolises a cosmic catastrophe that has brought creation to its knees. Thus in Scripture, the enmity which exists in the animal kingdom is not what God intended and the Prophet Isaiah's eschatological vision of nature's redemption involves the cow and the bear grazing together and the lion eating straw with the ox. (Is 11:7-8) Man's redemption has ontological consequences for the whole of creation - as he will once again rule over nature without enmity either between himself and the animal kingdom or within the animal kingdom itself. A "cosmic fall" calls for a "Cosmic Christ" to redeem us. But even here the notion of a literal fall does not need to be discarded quite so easily as the fall of man could have occurred in the context of an already disordered creation (due to the rupture of sin into creation with the rebellion of the angels).
And before it is objected that this is simply a return to a mythological mindset we have long since left behind, the notion that animal predation is not 'natural' was held by none other than C.S. Lewis who associated it with the ancient Satanic rebellion in his book, The Problem of Pain. Lewis is especially interesting in this context because he saw there really was a problem with animal suffering. Again, Aquinas on this score, was unfortunately in tune with his age and saw no real issue with the suffering of animals, for they were merely dumb brutes, devoid of reason and placed on earth for the use of humans. Lewis also ties this in with the notion that humanity may have had a redemptive role to play in "subduing" nature and restoring its original order. Of course, the fall of man can only have exacerbated this problem.
I think it is also important to point out that the view of a Satanic distortion of nature and its processes is not necessarily inconsistent with a Thomist position. As E.L. Mascall (an Anglo-Catholic thomist) points out:
"Insofar as the evolutionary process may have been distorted before the advent of man, it is reasonable to explain this distortion by the common Christian doctrine that one of the functions which God has committed to the angels is the supervision of the lower creation, so that the defection of certain of the angels has had as one of its consequences a disorganization of the material world and the dislocation of its functions." (quoted in Andrew Linzey's Animal Theology). Aquinas held that creation was chiefly governed by angels.
Modern philosophers such as Alvin Platinga also subscribe to this view so one can see that it is not the sole preserve of "fundamentalists".
As I remarked in my post on evolution, the acceptance that God's will for creation includes predation, suffering and death leaves us with a very strange God indeed and one that will inevitably tie us up in theodicies that ought to leave us cold.
In an age where there are abundant calls for theology to shed its "false humility", to no longer let itself be cowered into proclaiming only what is deemed acceptable to secular reason, it may be time to bring the notion of a "cosmic fall" back.
Showing posts with label Animal Theology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Animal Theology. Show all posts
Monday, September 17, 2007
On the notion of a Cosmic Fall
Having thought a bit about the question of evolution and suffering and having reflected on the discussion that ensued, I thought I'd delve a little further into the idea of a "cosmic fall". The notion is not alien to Christian tradition but I suppose it does create some tension as regards the other, equally important doctrine to be affirmed: that the world was created good.
Traditionally, Christianity has worked with a two-fold typology for thinking about evil. Thus evil can be considered in its two forms - natural or ontological evil and moral/ethical evil. With this division in place, moral evil has typically been explained with recourse to the Christian doctrine of the fall. Man's nature, though not completely corrupted, has been wounded and his will, though free, yet tends to evil. A horror as monstrous as the holocaust, for example, is attributable to humanity's free will. The question of 'natural evil' presents a different problem for it appears to be no agent through which it comes about.
However, in this post I wish to investigate one avenue for explaining the evil that appears so rife in the 'natural' world: that natural evil itself can be attributed to the nefarious influence of malign spiritual beings. That this will appear an 'outdated' idea, one not fit for 'modern' men and women, I contend that such an understanding is necessary if Christians are to remain free from the sort of rationalizations of evil that seem so repulsive to 'protest' atheists and should seem equally so to Christians.
Of course, I do not wish to revive the ancient heresy of Manichaeism. Orthodox belief has always affirmed that creation is a gift from God who viewed it as "very good". Thus what I am maintaining here is not that creation is the result of the workings of a demiurge, or that it is the product of a pre-cosmic fall from the Pleroma. The doctrine that the world was created ex nihilo is a safeguard against such postulations. But the notion of a cosmic fall does not endanger this. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth": the angels too, were created ex nihilo. And even if such an emphasis on a catalcysmic fall strikes some as far too gnostic, it may well be that we need to discern the kernel of truth that gnosticism contains. As it is, I do not think that this element of truth is something which cannot be found with orthodox Christian belief in any case.
Aquinas deals with the problem of natural evil by arguing that from the perspective of God's perfect ordering of the universe these deficiencies in being are necessary. Now, I would not wish to say that a finite and limited being is in any sense 'evil'. Aquinas does not argue that in any case, rather he argues that evil signifies a privation in being. For a man not to be able to fly is not 'evil', but for a man to be born blind is, as the gift of sight constitues part of his nature. Thus in the passage cited in the discussion on the problem of evil, Aquinas states his view:
"God and nature and any other agent make what is best in the whole, but not what is best in every single part, except in order to the whole, as was said above (47, 2). And the whole itself, which is the universe of creatures, is all the better and more perfect if some things in it can fail in goodness, and do sometimes fail, God not preventing this. This happens, firstly, because "it belongs to Providence not to destroy, but to save nature," as Dionysius says (Div. Nom. iv); but it belongs to nature that what may fail should sometimes fail; secondly, because, as Augustine says (Enchir. 11), "God is so powerful that He can even make good out of evil." Hence many good things would be taken away if God permitted no evil to exist; for fire would not be generated if air was not corrupted, nor would the life of a lion be preserved unless the ass were killed. Neither would avenging justice nor the patience of a sufferer be praised if there were no injustice." (ST 1, 48, 2, rep to obj. 3)
For Aquinas then, such evils as cancer, whilst causing untold pain and suffering for the victim and those close to him, from the point of view of the ultimate perfection of the universal order, are not 'evil' in any meaningful sense, on the contrary, they themselves can contribute to this ultimate perfection by, for example, being the catalyst for someone to display great patience in their suffering, for another to visit the sick person in hospital and so forth.
Now, Aquinas is a theologian I very much admire, but in this instance I simply cannot agree with him. Does not Aquinas' rationalization of evil as a constituent part of a perfect cosmic ordering fall prey to Ivan Karamazov's argument against God? As D.B. Hart points out in The Doors of the Sea: Dostoyevsky's Christian genius lies not in the perception that the suffering and death in the universe is not morally intelligible but that it would be far worse if it were!
Aquinas' theology was forged to a large extent in the battle against Manichaeism which had reared its ugly head in the heresy of the Cathars. However, whilst it was entirely necessary for Aquinas to do battle on behalf of the doctrine that God's creation is good, it may be the case that in defending it, he underplayed the truth from which the Cathar heresy was a deviation: heresy being an overemphasis on one aspect of a truth.
It is not difficult to affirm Creation's goodness. One experiences countless instances of it in nature: a glorious sunset, a peaceful sea, the majestic flight of an eagle (as you can probably tell, I'm no poet). But it is far less easy to affirm it when one sees, for example, a young mother's body ravaged by cancer: I simply cannot accept that it is entirely natural and part of God's good creation that this should be the case. I believe that a stress on the goodness of creation whilst recognising said creation's fallen nature is absolutely necessary to avoid the Scylla of a cosmic order which entails suffering and death for its ultimate perfection and the Charybdis of Manichaeism.
As regards the question of how all this relates to evolution, it might be said that the fall need not have been an actual, temporal event but a 'mythological' expression for what we recognise to be creation's bondage. Thus whilst there may never have been a literal, 'golden age', the story of the Fall symbolises a cosmic catastrophe that has brought creation to its knees. Thus in Scripture, the enmity which exists in the animal kingdom is not what God intended and the Prophet Isaiah's eschatological vision of nature's redemption involves the cow and the bear grazing together and the lion eating straw with the ox. (Is 11:7-8) Man's redemption has ontological consequences for the whole of creation - as he will once again rule over nature without enmity either between himself and the animal kingdom or within the animal kingdom itself. A "cosmic fall" calls for a "Cosmic Christ" to redeem us. But even here the notion of a literal fall does not need to be discarded quite so easily as the fall of man could have occurred in the context of an already disordered creation (due to the rupture of sin into creation with the rebellion of the angels).
And before it is objected that this is simply a return to a mythological mindset we have long since left behind, the notion that animal predation is not 'natural' was held by none other than C.S. Lewis who associated it with the ancient Satanic rebellion in his book, The Problem of Pain. Lewis is especially interesting in this context because he saw there really was a problem with animal suffering. Again, Aquinas on this score, was unfortunately in tune with his age and saw no real issue with the suffering of animals, for they were merely dumb brutes, devoid of reason and placed on earth for the use of humans. Lewis also ties this in with the notion that humanity may have had a redemptive role to play in "subduing" nature and restoring its original order. Of course, the fall of man can only have exacerbated this problem.
I think it is also important to point out that the view of a Satanic distortion of nature and its processes is not necessarily inconsistent with a Thomist position. As E.L. Mascall (an Anglo-Catholic thomist) points out:
"Insofar as the evolutionary process may have been distorted before the advent of man, it is reasonable to explain this distortion by the common Christian doctrine that one of the functions which God has committed to the angels is the supervision of the lower creation, so that the defection of certain of the angels has had as one of its consequences a disorganization of the material world and the dislocation of its functions." (quoted in Andrew Linzey's Animal Theology). Aquinas held that creation was chiefly governed by angels.
Modern philosophers such as Alvin Platinga also subscribe to this view so one can see that it is not the sole preserve of "fundamentalists".
As I remarked in my post on evolution, the acceptance that God's will for creation includes predation, suffering and death leaves us with a very strange God indeed and one that will inevitably tie us up in theodicies that ought to leave us cold.
In an age where there are abundant calls for theology to shed its "false humility", to no longer let itself be cowered into proclaiming only what is deemed acceptable to secular reason, it may be time to bring the notion of a "cosmic fall" back.
Traditionally, Christianity has worked with a two-fold typology for thinking about evil. Thus evil can be considered in its two forms - natural or ontological evil and moral/ethical evil. With this division in place, moral evil has typically been explained with recourse to the Christian doctrine of the fall. Man's nature, though not completely corrupted, has been wounded and his will, though free, yet tends to evil. A horror as monstrous as the holocaust, for example, is attributable to humanity's free will. The question of 'natural evil' presents a different problem for it appears to be no agent through which it comes about.
However, in this post I wish to investigate one avenue for explaining the evil that appears so rife in the 'natural' world: that natural evil itself can be attributed to the nefarious influence of malign spiritual beings. That this will appear an 'outdated' idea, one not fit for 'modern' men and women, I contend that such an understanding is necessary if Christians are to remain free from the sort of rationalizations of evil that seem so repulsive to 'protest' atheists and should seem equally so to Christians.
Of course, I do not wish to revive the ancient heresy of Manichaeism. Orthodox belief has always affirmed that creation is a gift from God who viewed it as "very good". Thus what I am maintaining here is not that creation is the result of the workings of a demiurge, or that it is the product of a pre-cosmic fall from the Pleroma. The doctrine that the world was created ex nihilo is a safeguard against such postulations. But the notion of a cosmic fall does not endanger this. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth": the angels too, were created ex nihilo. And even if such an emphasis on a catalcysmic fall strikes some as far too gnostic, it may well be that we need to discern the kernel of truth that gnosticism contains. As it is, I do not think that this element of truth is something which cannot be found with orthodox Christian belief in any case.
Aquinas deals with the problem of natural evil by arguing that from the perspective of God's perfect ordering of the universe these deficiencies in being are necessary. Now, I would not wish to say that a finite and limited being is in any sense 'evil'. Aquinas does not argue that in any case, rather he argues that evil signifies a privation in being. For a man not to be able to fly is not 'evil', but for a man to be born blind is, as the gift of sight constitues part of his nature. Thus in the passage cited in the discussion on the problem of evil, Aquinas states his view:
"God and nature and any other agent make what is best in the whole, but not what is best in every single part, except in order to the whole, as was said above (47, 2). And the whole itself, which is the universe of creatures, is all the better and more perfect if some things in it can fail in goodness, and do sometimes fail, God not preventing this. This happens, firstly, because "it belongs to Providence not to destroy, but to save nature," as Dionysius says (Div. Nom. iv); but it belongs to nature that what may fail should sometimes fail; secondly, because, as Augustine says (Enchir. 11), "God is so powerful that He can even make good out of evil." Hence many good things would be taken away if God permitted no evil to exist; for fire would not be generated if air was not corrupted, nor would the life of a lion be preserved unless the ass were killed. Neither would avenging justice nor the patience of a sufferer be praised if there were no injustice." (ST 1, 48, 2, rep to obj. 3)
For Aquinas then, such evils as cancer, whilst causing untold pain and suffering for the victim and those close to him, from the point of view of the ultimate perfection of the universal order, are not 'evil' in any meaningful sense, on the contrary, they themselves can contribute to this ultimate perfection by, for example, being the catalyst for someone to display great patience in their suffering, for another to visit the sick person in hospital and so forth.
Now, Aquinas is a theologian I very much admire, but in this instance I simply cannot agree with him. Does not Aquinas' rationalization of evil as a constituent part of a perfect cosmic ordering fall prey to Ivan Karamazov's argument against God? As D.B. Hart points out in The Doors of the Sea: Dostoyevsky's Christian genius lies not in the perception that the suffering and death in the universe is not morally intelligible but that it would be far worse if it were!
Aquinas' theology was forged to a large extent in the battle against Manichaeism which had reared its ugly head in the heresy of the Cathars. However, whilst it was entirely necessary for Aquinas to do battle on behalf of the doctrine that God's creation is good, it may be the case that in defending it, he underplayed the truth from which the Cathar heresy was a deviation: heresy being an overemphasis on one aspect of a truth.
It is not difficult to affirm Creation's goodness. One experiences countless instances of it in nature: a glorious sunset, a peaceful sea, the majestic flight of an eagle (as you can probably tell, I'm no poet). But it is far less easy to affirm it when one sees, for example, a young mother's body ravaged by cancer: I simply cannot accept that it is entirely natural and part of God's good creation that this should be the case. I believe that a stress on the goodness of creation whilst recognising said creation's fallen nature is absolutely necessary to avoid the Scylla of a cosmic order which entails suffering and death for its ultimate perfection and the Charybdis of Manichaeism.
As regards the question of how all this relates to evolution, it might be said that the fall need not have been an actual, temporal event but a 'mythological' expression for what we recognise to be creation's bondage. Thus whilst there may never have been a literal, 'golden age', the story of the Fall symbolises a cosmic catastrophe that has brought creation to its knees. Thus in Scripture, the enmity which exists in the animal kingdom is not what God intended and the Prophet Isaiah's eschatological vision of nature's redemption involves the cow and the bear grazing together and the lion eating straw with the ox. (Is 11:7-8) Man's redemption has ontological consequences for the whole of creation - as he will once again rule over nature without enmity either between himself and the animal kingdom or within the animal kingdom itself. A "cosmic fall" calls for a "Cosmic Christ" to redeem us. But even here the notion of a literal fall does not need to be discarded quite so easily as the fall of man could have occurred in the context of an already disordered creation (due to the rupture of sin into creation with the rebellion of the angels).
And before it is objected that this is simply a return to a mythological mindset we have long since left behind, the notion that animal predation is not 'natural' was held by none other than C.S. Lewis who associated it with the ancient Satanic rebellion in his book, The Problem of Pain. Lewis is especially interesting in this context because he saw there really was a problem with animal suffering. Again, Aquinas on this score, was unfortunately in tune with his age and saw no real issue with the suffering of animals, for they were merely dumb brutes, devoid of reason and placed on earth for the use of humans. Lewis also ties this in with the notion that humanity may have had a redemptive role to play in "subduing" nature and restoring its original order. Of course, the fall of man can only have exacerbated this problem.
I think it is also important to point out that the view of a Satanic distortion of nature and its processes is not necessarily inconsistent with a Thomist position. As E.L. Mascall (an Anglo-Catholic thomist) points out:
"Insofar as the evolutionary process may have been distorted before the advent of man, it is reasonable to explain this distortion by the common Christian doctrine that one of the functions which God has committed to the angels is the supervision of the lower creation, so that the defection of certain of the angels has had as one of its consequences a disorganization of the material world and the dislocation of its functions." (quoted in Andrew Linzey's Animal Theology). Aquinas held that creation was chiefly governed by angels.
Modern philosophers such as Alvin Platinga also subscribe to this view so one can see that it is not the sole preserve of "fundamentalists".
As I remarked in my post on evolution, the acceptance that God's will for creation includes predation, suffering and death leaves us with a very strange God indeed and one that will inevitably tie us up in theodicies that ought to leave us cold.
In an age where there are abundant calls for theology to shed its "false humility", to no longer let itself be cowered into proclaiming only what is deemed acceptable to secular reason, it may be time to bring the notion of a "cosmic fall" back.
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