When Bad Things Happen to Good People
by
by
Yet Another Anti-Semitic Trope
Recently another GR reader (whom I happen to know - a good Catholic boy at Oxford who’s trying really hard to demonstrate his faithful fervour) criticised Rabbi Kushner’s theodicy and called the contents of his well-known book “insulting to God” and “bad theology.” It is of course neither. In addition to being a highly edifying personal story about the suffering and death of his young son, it also has broader cultural significance in demonstrating the struggle that many have with the residue of our Western philosophical past.
Kushner, in his family’s crisis, was confronted by a dilemma for both his faith and his ethical principles. In simplistic terms the dilemma is this: if God has the regard theologians claim he has for his creation, he must not be able to help it to reduce its suffering in every circumstance; or if he is able to relieve suffering and doesn’t, then he must not be all that benign. Kushner comes down on the side of divine benignity rather than divine power. This seems to me not only comforting but theologically satisfying.
Ultimately Kushner, like many of us, was wrestling not with Judaic theological but with Greek philosophical ideas about God. The concepts of divine perfection - omniscience, omnipotence, etc. - are derived largely from the 3rd century BCE Stoics. These ideas were imported into Christianity in the Platonic interpretations of early Christians like Augustine and the latter Aristotelian ‘synthesis’ of medieval theologians like Thomas Aquinas. Similar roles were played in the Hellenisation of Judaism by Philo of Alexandria and Maimonides. The Arabic scholars al-Farabi and Avicenna introduced Greek thought into Islam as early as the late 10th century.
Nowhere in Jewish. Islamic or Christian scriptures do these Greek ideas of divine perfection appear. God is unknowable. The best human beings can do is ascribe him attributes (names) which constitute praise rather than description. There is overwhelming biblical witness in the Old Testament to God’s lack of perfection in the Greek sense: he has regrets from time to time; he clearly does not know the minds of his people; he craves reassurance; he rages and performs rash acts; he breaks promises. He is, in other words, deficient in every Greek virtue. And his power, although beyond the human, is not infinite. The Hebrew God simply doesn’t fit the philosophical mould.
In the New Testament the situation becomes downright scandalous: Jesus demonstrates that he can heal the lame, the blind, and the sick at will. But only to make a point, and not out of loving concern. Claiming sole power to solve all human problems, he needs to be cajoled into using it and then he does so often only grudgingly. Jesus, and his promoter Paul, are entirely wrong in their prediction of an imminent end of the world. The latter even appears to disenfranchise God by insisting, with no authority whatsoever, that the ‘eternal‘ covenant established by God was abrogated and that henceforth all power, infinite or not, is in the hands of Christ. Hardly an endorsement for Greek perfectionism.
Kushner’s issue therefore is, and should be, one that is of concern to all monotheist adherents. Respect for the man’s humanity alone demands a sympathetic understanding of what he is attempting in his book. But beyond that lies his courageous accomplishment in recognising that the logic that created his dilemma is neither Hebrew nor Christian but pagan and may be dispensed with as a source of unnecessary confusion and unwarranted pain in authentic Judaic thought. God is far too complex and strange to be captured definitively by words and an ancient dialectical rhetoric.
The untoward influence of Greek philosophy on Judaeo-Christian theology has been recognised and repeatedly documented over the last century. Only in the last 20 years, however, has a positive theology which avoids the Greek presumptions been forthcoming. I find the most compelling of these to be that of the Weakness of God whose principle champion is John Caputo.
Caputo‘ s theology rejects the fundamental concept of directive divine power and its very un-Christian glorification. His theology is certainly not insulting and provides a rather effective remedy for ridding the theological world of those who consider themselves coercive instruments of God. It also affirms Kushner in his very difficult theological choices.
So Kushner is neither insulting to God nor bad at theology. Rather he provides a human and humane opening to reconsider some very questionable presumptions that have wormed their way into moral thought. The ‘imperfection’ of God is not a flaw at all but an acknowledgement that, as the 11th century theologian, Anselm of Canterbury, put it, “whatever we think God is, he is not that.”
Postscript: it occurs to me that the power of ancient, or really any fixed, philosophy to cause human misery might need a more vivid example for some. Greek ‘perfectionist’ philosophy, for example, also considered the circle to be a ‘perfect form’. Consequently for centuries astronomical researchers refused to consider any other trajectory for the planets around the sun. Not until Johannes Kepler discovered elliptical orbits by dropping this perfectionist presumption could the science of astrophysics progress. Theology unfortunately is more tenacious about its least defensible ideas.
Post-Postscript: The GR reader who attacked Kushner has opted to delete our entire exchange. I think it’s appropriate to repeat my summary of that exchange here:
Post-Postscript: the issue of divine power is one that has plagued Christian thought ever since it adopted Greek philosophy. Very few have dared mess with the disastrous mistake. See here for one who has: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Recently another GR reader (whom I happen to know - a good Catholic boy at Oxford who’s trying really hard to demonstrate his faithful fervour) criticised Rabbi Kushner’s theodicy and called the contents of his well-known book “insulting to God” and “bad theology.” It is of course neither. In addition to being a highly edifying personal story about the suffering and death of his young son, it also has broader cultural significance in demonstrating the struggle that many have with the residue of our Western philosophical past.
Kushner, in his family’s crisis, was confronted by a dilemma for both his faith and his ethical principles. In simplistic terms the dilemma is this: if God has the regard theologians claim he has for his creation, he must not be able to help it to reduce its suffering in every circumstance; or if he is able to relieve suffering and doesn’t, then he must not be all that benign. Kushner comes down on the side of divine benignity rather than divine power. This seems to me not only comforting but theologically satisfying.
Ultimately Kushner, like many of us, was wrestling not with Judaic theological but with Greek philosophical ideas about God. The concepts of divine perfection - omniscience, omnipotence, etc. - are derived largely from the 3rd century BCE Stoics. These ideas were imported into Christianity in the Platonic interpretations of early Christians like Augustine and the latter Aristotelian ‘synthesis’ of medieval theologians like Thomas Aquinas. Similar roles were played in the Hellenisation of Judaism by Philo of Alexandria and Maimonides. The Arabic scholars al-Farabi and Avicenna introduced Greek thought into Islam as early as the late 10th century.
Nowhere in Jewish. Islamic or Christian scriptures do these Greek ideas of divine perfection appear. God is unknowable. The best human beings can do is ascribe him attributes (names) which constitute praise rather than description. There is overwhelming biblical witness in the Old Testament to God’s lack of perfection in the Greek sense: he has regrets from time to time; he clearly does not know the minds of his people; he craves reassurance; he rages and performs rash acts; he breaks promises. He is, in other words, deficient in every Greek virtue. And his power, although beyond the human, is not infinite. The Hebrew God simply doesn’t fit the philosophical mould.
In the New Testament the situation becomes downright scandalous: Jesus demonstrates that he can heal the lame, the blind, and the sick at will. But only to make a point, and not out of loving concern. Claiming sole power to solve all human problems, he needs to be cajoled into using it and then he does so often only grudgingly. Jesus, and his promoter Paul, are entirely wrong in their prediction of an imminent end of the world. The latter even appears to disenfranchise God by insisting, with no authority whatsoever, that the ‘eternal‘ covenant established by God was abrogated and that henceforth all power, infinite or not, is in the hands of Christ. Hardly an endorsement for Greek perfectionism.
Kushner’s issue therefore is, and should be, one that is of concern to all monotheist adherents. Respect for the man’s humanity alone demands a sympathetic understanding of what he is attempting in his book. But beyond that lies his courageous accomplishment in recognising that the logic that created his dilemma is neither Hebrew nor Christian but pagan and may be dispensed with as a source of unnecessary confusion and unwarranted pain in authentic Judaic thought. God is far too complex and strange to be captured definitively by words and an ancient dialectical rhetoric.
The untoward influence of Greek philosophy on Judaeo-Christian theology has been recognised and repeatedly documented over the last century. Only in the last 20 years, however, has a positive theology which avoids the Greek presumptions been forthcoming. I find the most compelling of these to be that of the Weakness of God whose principle champion is John Caputo.
Caputo‘ s theology rejects the fundamental concept of directive divine power and its very un-Christian glorification. His theology is certainly not insulting and provides a rather effective remedy for ridding the theological world of those who consider themselves coercive instruments of God. It also affirms Kushner in his very difficult theological choices.
So Kushner is neither insulting to God nor bad at theology. Rather he provides a human and humane opening to reconsider some very questionable presumptions that have wormed their way into moral thought. The ‘imperfection’ of God is not a flaw at all but an acknowledgement that, as the 11th century theologian, Anselm of Canterbury, put it, “whatever we think God is, he is not that.”
Postscript: it occurs to me that the power of ancient, or really any fixed, philosophy to cause human misery might need a more vivid example for some. Greek ‘perfectionist’ philosophy, for example, also considered the circle to be a ‘perfect form’. Consequently for centuries astronomical researchers refused to consider any other trajectory for the planets around the sun. Not until Johannes Kepler discovered elliptical orbits by dropping this perfectionist presumption could the science of astrophysics progress. Theology unfortunately is more tenacious about its least defensible ideas.
Post-Postscript: The GR reader who attacked Kushner has opted to delete our entire exchange. I think it’s appropriate to repeat my summary of that exchange here:
You have attacked Rabbi Kushner for “insulting God.” You then repeated this accusation in further comments.
This is the precise formula used by all fundamentalists - militant Islamicists, radical Buddhists, and American Evangelicals - to characterise their targets.
But God does not need defending from anyone, especially not from people like Rabbi Kushner. It is people like Rabbi Kushner who desperately need defending from those who claim inside knowledge about God, such as yourself.
Given the unsavoury and thinly veiled anti-Semitic character of your remarks, I have little doubt that you and your co-religionists would slip once again into active persecution if you only had the political power to do so.
So why not cut it out and recognise that your personal divine revelation is merely a justification for uninformed and irrational prejudice?
Post-Postscript: the issue of divine power is one that has plagued Christian thought ever since it adopted Greek philosophy. Very few have dared mess with the disastrous mistake. See here for one who has: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
posted by The Mind of BlackOxford @ December 17, 2017
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