Animal Farm

Peter Enns just finished a radio interview on WHYY 90.9, the national public radio station based in Philadelphia. The interview brought clarity to a lot of issues that those outside the seminary may not have fully understood. The most interesting part came during the call in section where a man who identified himself as a catholic who had lost his faith said that after hearing about Dr. Enn’s ideas he might buy the book and reinvestigate Christianity. To this Pete, in a very pastoral tone, encouraged him to do just that — to reinvestigate his previous thoughts about God. Pete went on to warn that many Christians had developed a Platonic view of God who is removed from humanity and who is so utterly different that we almost can’t conceive of him. Pete encouraged the young man to discover the God of scripture, who is comfortable dealing in the messiness of humanity. A God who doesn’t shirk difficulties, but who communes with us even incarnating and becoming one of us.

                Here I don’t advocate a philosophical pragmatism, saying that since Enns seems to have reached someone with his ideas that his ideas are therefore orthodox or correct (although I personally believe they are both orthodox and correct). Pragmatism has often been use to justify very flawed methodologies and ideas, and I don’t wish to do that. However it should give some of Enn’s detractors pause. One of the repeated criticisms of Enns work is that the “target audience” is being created by the work instead of the work responding to an audience that already exists. In other words some have argued that trying to answer the messiness of scripture simply isn’t profitable.

                I would say that this interview somewhat destroys this criticism, if for no other reason that it gave a voice to one of those who could be helped by Enn’s work. There is a broad group of people who have trickled out of our churches precisely because they didn’t have a paradigm to honestly engage the various secular arguments they hear. Dr. Enns has provided a very workable methodology which is faithful to scripture and the reformed tradition; and yet he is being pushed outside of that tradition. Many of his detractors frame this issue as one of holding to the confessionalism instead of just being progressive. In fact the issue they have is that Enns is outside of the confession, he isn’t ‘reformed’ proper, but is just a garden variety evangelical. They see Enns as simply inventing answers to non questions; to things which ought not to bother a truly grounded reformed believer. They argue that he is making a stink where none is needed; fixing something that in their opinion is not broken.

                Over the course of about a week I have been debating on of Enn’s detractors, D.G. Hart, on the Conn-Versation blog. The topic has become the relationship between the gospel and social activism. His understanding of ecclesiology is that the Church ought to provide only for word and sacrament ministry (e.g. preaching and giving communion/baptism) and that social missions are best left in the hands of the government because the church’s only responsibility is to create faith. Furthermore he argues that …

 “Over the last century we have discovered that the government is much better equipped to engage in acts of mercy.”

On a political note I totally disagree with him, government bureaucracies are terribly inefficient when it comes to social “acts of mercy.” However something else occurred to me while having this discussion, and after listening to the radio interview today. D.G. Hart is another of Enn’s detractors, who doesn’t see much need for his work. I think there is a connection to this and Hart’s stated ecclesiology.            

In other words the disagreement shown for churches which are active in social reform seems to have creeped over into the theological understandings of Dr. Hart. The same socially aloof stance that Hart believes the church ought to hold in its physical interaction with society is repeated in its stated theology. The common denominator seems to be a church which is functionally removed from the world, only preaching, teaching and administering sacraments. All other functions are supercilious and detract from the ‘true nature’ of the church. Furthermore any theological movement which is meant as a way to help struggling souls or non-believers with finding a paradigm to confront their unbelief is probably unnecessary, since this is not the churches job. Rather the church just preaches the gospel – it has no room or time to contextualize it; to either the underdeveloped world or to the post modern world. Both feeding the poor and explaining Genesis 1 in light of Babylonian creation myths are just pointless endeavors which waste the time of the church. There seems to be a theological reductionism at work in this sort of thinking. It reduces the gospel to a stoic expression of belief; instead of an adaptive power which meets people where they are and speaks into their experience. This is the heart of the issue; if the church need not worry about social reform, why should it worry about placing its theology (within orthodox boundaries) inside of some new theoretical container to make the message relevant to struggling people. For someone like Hart the gospel is a static doctrinal position, and the church is likewise simply a replicator of this theological stone tablet, the presentation of which cannot and shouldn’t adapt to the needs of the people it aims to reach.

It may be the case that Enn’s beliefs go to the heart of the gospel, but not in the way his detractors often mean (or that he intended). Rather than exposing him as being heretical it brings clarity to the a theology of some sectors of the church which reduces the gospel by presenting it as a pledge of allegiance instead of a vibrant and adaptable ontic reality.

Several months ago there I saw a bulletin at Westminster announcing a paper on the topic of theodicy. The chosen text was Jephthah’s daughter; which hopefully is familiar to most of you. This began me thinking about the topic of theodicy.

             Now I am convinced that much of the friction in doing theology centers around misperceptions about the nature of time. The philosophy of time is the key, in my opinion, to unlocking some of the classical conundrums of theology; such as determination and free will and the doctrine of hell. By applying a new paradigm on how we view time we can consciously redefine theological categories to achieve a healthy paradox, instead of the friction which is normally felt when dealing with these subjects. This however is a topic for a later post; what is immediately important is how thinking outside of temporal paradigms relates to theodicy.

                To begin we should look at the issue of suffering in Jephthath’s life.  The first question I would want to ask is “What causes the suffering in Jephthah’s life?” There seems to be an obvious answer; the death of his daughter at his own hand. While obvious, this may be a bit too simplistic. Assume that you have the ability to change the narrative of Jephthah’s life. You can remove, at will, various parts of his life. You in essence can intervene as God can intervene. What portions of his life do you remove to prevent suffering?  While it is true that his daughter’s death occasions his suffering, it is equally true that the love he felt for his daughter is a causal agent of suffering. You, as divine editor, could just as easily remove the part of his emotional state that felt love towards his daughter. This would just as effectually prevent his suffering as would removing her death. You could also remove his daughter entirely, making her to have never been.  Again this prevents Jephthah’s suffering. You could have removed his tongue, so that he never could have made a vow; or language in general from the world. You could, in short, remove a myriad of things, all of which are co-causal agents in effecting the suffering Jephthah eventually feels because of his daughter’s death.

                So we have here a string of mediate causes, all of which work in concert to bring about suffering. For the sake of simplicity let us just deal with two and leave the others off for a bit. Let’s take as the ‘mediate’ causes of the event of suffering the “death of his daughter” and “his ability to feel emotional pain.” We, as divine editor, could prevent his suffering by removing either of the two things; so which do we choose to remove. The answer may not be as straight forward as it seems. Although intuitively we are drawn to the first choice, the second actually prevents more suffering. By removing Jephthah’s capacity to feel empathy and emotional pain, we secure him from suffering ever again. The death of his daughter is a mediate cause to one act of suffering, but the ability to feel emotional pain is a mediate cause towards every act of suffering he will ever experience. Instead of simply removing a second level causatory factor in his suffering (the death of his daughter) we have removed a first level causatory factor (his ability to feel emotional pain.) In short we have moved beyond the surface of the problem of his suffering to the root by removing the capacity, not simply the temporary cause, of Jephthah’s suffering.

                There seems to be a more involved problem here, however. If we remove his ability to feel emotional attachment don’t we also make it impossible for him to experience a certain sense of joy? When the shepherds play their sad songs, Jephthah can no longer cry and experience the emotional movement of the music; he can’t cry before God and worship in the same ways.  It would seem we have edited too much. Yet, to allow him the ability to suffer is to allow suffering in the world and to prevent it is to cause suffering as well! Even through Jephthah won’t experience suffering, he will miss out on much of the good uses of his emotional range. As it turns out the ability to feel emotion has both negative and positive consequence. In fact, all mediate causes of suffering; literally all things in the human experience have the potential for positive and negative interaction.

                Take death as an example. Suppose we left the world as it is and just removed the mediate cause of death. Certainly the death of a loved one is a negative example, something we would want removed but what about the death of insects? Imagine a world in which ants and flies never died and continued to populate the earth, where green vegetation was absent and where you could barely sleep because of the buzzing of wings. The death of insects is a decidedly positive thing! W world without insecticide is not a utopian world at all. Suppose you remove only human death; allowing insects and other forms of life to die. While this may seem to be a solution you would eventually face the same problem as the ants; and all of life would become a subway car packed to the gills with people who refused to die.

                So for every mediate cause of suffering let us posit that there is both a positive and a negative side to it. Death can be welcome or painful. The ability to feel emotion can be amazingly connective or extremely destructive. All mediate causes can occasion both happiness and suffering depending on some other factor; which we are about to discuss. None of the supposed causes of suffering (which we will term mediate causes) can be removed in order to affect a quick fix to the problem of suffering because they are also positive if occurring in a different way. If you remove one you cause another event of suffering; if you remove suffering itself you prevent a lot of positive aspects as well. If the prevention of suffering is possible, then one must remove the transcendental cause of suffering. We must find something which is the meta- causal agent of all suffering.  I would suggest we have just such a item in our theology, what we as Christians call the doctrine of the fall. The transcendental cause of suffering is the separation we experience from the creator. An event is not “suffering in itself” but the vessel by which suffering itself (separation from God) comes to us.

                One might protest here that I have simply inserted this metaphysical answer ad hoc. They are right, I have! Yet they may not protest. If you ask the question “How could God exists in a world marked by suffering.” You must allow me to posit a God into the world or the question is hopelessly unanswerable and is special pleading beyond what is bearable.  Furthermore I can give content to that God to answer the question at hand and can do so ad-hoc. Finally, I do have the precedent of my theology and scripture, so it is not entirely ad hoc. In short, if you ask a metaphysical question expect a metaphysical answer.

                Indeed the transcendental cause of suffering is separation from God and all other causal events are second level mediate causes. Let us posit two counterfactual worlds to help understand how this would work.  . In World “A” every conceivable mediate cause of suffering is absent. There are no rapes, murders, beatings, deaths, etc… but because the transcendental cause of suffering is present. We are separated from God spiritually. This world is full of suffering. Things which we normally term “good” such as hugs actually occasion suffering. Everything becomes a mediate conduit by which the transcendental angst of separation flows.  In World “B” there is a steady string of rapes and murders and thefts and parking tickets and taxes, but the transcendental cause is absent. Everyone is as happy as they can possibly be! There is no suffering, even if the “mediate causes” are present.

                In our world, the mediate causes are neither in themselves good or bad. Our current state of separation from God, which is only partial now (but becomes absolute at judgment), is occasioned by both suffering and joy. We have mistakenly identified suffering as the mediate thing, and joy as a mediate thing; but in reality both suffering and joy are transcendental. Proximity of connection to God is in itself joy and absence of him is in itself suffering. Mediate causes are just that; secondary mediators of transcendental realities.

                In closing, a few final remarks are in order. First, this is a blog post. I am currently working on a paper which flushes out these issues more completely. While any critiques are welcome; remember that this is not a full treatment of my thoughts on this. Secondly, this is not a blog post about how to alleviate suffering as far as real world events are concerned. It is a post to try and answer some thorny theological questions that many Christians struggle with. We should never become distant to suffering in this world and never cease to try and remove mediate causes of suffering such as war and crime. However we should also attempt to remove the transcendental cause of suffering (separation from God) from people lives by spreading the good news of reconciliation to God through Jesus Christ. Finally, I want to add a further interesting consequence. If as an atheist you try to posit this question of evil and the existence of God in order to deconvert the believer then you have become a mediate cause of suffering. The question of theodicy itself, if posed with the purpose of removing faith, contributes to the transcendental cause of suffering by creating further separation between God and Man.