[1] It is one of the oldest conundrums of human thought:
What is evil? What are the origins of evil-human, natural,
supernatural? What is the character of evil-sin, suffering,
catastrophe, death, oppression, war? How do we think about
and experience evil and how does the Christian tradition shape the
way we view evil and respond to it? Two extremes, it seems to
me, tend to mark the terrain within which these questions are
addressed in contemporary North American society.
[2] The first extreme uses the term "evil" excessively as a
political and religious tool to legitimate violence and vilify
one's enemies. There is a pervasive and expanding religious
and political sensibility that does not shy away from labeling the
other "evil," and therefore deserving or even inviting violence or
retribution. In the political sphere this is exemplified by
Reagan's "evil empire" to describe the former Soviet Union and
Bush's "axis of evil" to describe Iran, Iraq, and North
Korea. Most nation states bent on preserving their body
politic from alien viruses seek to pathologize and purge their
adversaries. Faced with a threat to identity and security,
the best mode of defense becomes attack. One thinks of
McCarthy's blacklists, the Soviet show trials and gulags, Mao's
cultural revolution and Tiananmen Square, and the introduction of
internment without trial in Ulster, Auschwitz, Sarajevo and
Kosovo. This list is inexhaustible.
[3] Again and again the national, ethnic, or religious "we" is
defined as good over and against the alien "they" that is defined
as evil. The phrase "you are either with us or against us" is
invoked as a battle cry and soldiers are saluted as they fight and
die in a struggle touted as good against evil. The term
"evil" has been and continues to be a very useful word in
justifying violence and discrediting one's
adversaries.
[4] The second extreme desires to discard the word "evil"
altogether because it has been used so often in oppressive
ways. One can argue persuasively that there has been so much
violence associated with the term "evil" to justify demonization
and attacks against others that we would be better off without the
term. Nazi Germany demonized Jewish people and then
slaughtered millions of innocent people. Osama bin Laden
demonized American people and then slaughtered thousands of
innocent people on September 11, 2001. The act of labeling a
person or group as evil tends to promote violence by maintaining
binary and exclusionary ways of thinking that divides the world
into "them" and "us," demons and martyrs. The word "evil" is
so laden with historical abuses, so theologically burdened, and
pervasively linked with the very atrocities it describes, that we
would do well to remove it from our vocabularies
altogether.
[5] Both of these extremes, I believe, avoid the tough questions
of grappling with evil: the former by thoughtlessly applying the
term "evil," the later by thoughtlessly discarding it. On the
one hand, "evil" is a useful word for justifying violence, and, on
the other hand, it is a dehumanizing term that creates more
problems than it solves. In both cases, a critical assessment
of what it might mean to call someone or something "evil," and what
might be achieved and/or avoided by such a categorization, remains
unexplored. This essay incorporates important resources from
Christian theology to navigate between these two extremes and
reminds us that we must also be willing to apply to ourselves
whatever criteria we use to define a person or an act as
evil.
The Multiple Shapes and Forms of Evil
[6] Before analyzing Christianity, evil, and public discourse it
is important to propose a few distinctions among different forms of
evil, distinctions that function to demonstrate the complexity that
accompanies any attempt to define evil.
1. Natural evil occurs in the form of natural disasters that may
negatively affect anyone and over which we have limited or no
control. Examples include earthquakes, floods, tornadoes,
hurricanes, and the like. Natural evil also highlights the frailty
and vulnerability of the universal human condition that always
involves suffering, disease and death. This form of evil is tragic
but not sinful because it is not associated with willful human
agency.
2. Moral evil refers to voluntary actions undertaken to inflict
harm or suffering on others in contravention of accepted moral
principles within a society. This form of evil is not viewed as an
essential quality of human beings, but is intentional action, the
result of the conscious reflection of actors and the free and
contingent decision to cause unnecessary suffering or cruelty.
These actions are sinful and therefore subject to social judgment
and punishment, and to repentance and forgiveness.
3. Radical evil applies to immoral behavior so pervasive in a
person or a social system that all moral scruples and constraints
have been utterly abandoned. The political, social, economic, and
institutional ethos of the Nazi Holocaust or the Soviet Gulag
belongs to this form of evil so extreme that it can no longer
recognize its own atrocity.
4. Metaphysical evil designates an assenting and approving
attitude toward moral and radical evil, as evidence of superior
will and power in a particular group of human beings. Thus, forms
of evil arising from human agency are given a status as inevitable
or a necessary part of God's created order, as in the patriarchal
idea that it is men's rightful role and responsibility to rule over
women and children. Assumed notions of racial, national, or
religious superiority would also fall under this category.
Metaphysical evil is often linked with cosmic myths of origin as
are found in the book of Genesis, for example.
Such definitions and distinctions supply us with terms and nuances
to guide our analysis as we turn to the Christian tradition and its
approach to evil and redemption.Christianity, Evil and Public
Discourse
[7] Paul Ricoeur in The Encyclopedia of Religion, summarizing
and extending his earlier work, describes four dominant cosmic
myths that have addressed the origin of evil: chaos myths, myths of
an evil god, myths of the exiled soul, and myths of a lost
paradise.1 Myths of origin
fall among the meta-narratives that come under suspicion in
contemporary thinking, but in Western cultures highly influenced by
Christianity the most powerful and persistent myth describing the
origin of evil is doubtless the vision of a lost
paradise.
[8] John Milton's epic Paradise Lost gave influential expression
to the classic Christian view that evil is an omnipresent threat
and central event in human history. The threat of evil is
felt as so powerful that Milton writes in effect within the formal
tradition of theodicies that explicitly set out to justify God's
ways to humanity, especially in creating or permitting evil.
Milton depicts human history, in contrast to the timeless innocence
of Eden, as beginning with the temptation scene and the triumph of
evil, when Adam and Eve disobey God and succumb to the wiles of the
serpent. Augustine's The City of God and Dante's The Divine
Comedy are examples of other epic portrayals of the classic
Christian cosmic story of God's creation of the world, the fall of
humanity into sin, the infectious spread of evil, and God's
providential guidance of the affairs of history toward the end of
salvation.
[9] Cosmic narratives often seek to explain the origin of evil
in terms of the genesis and natural order of the created cosmos
(metaphysical evil) but in the Adam and Eve story evil is not said
to be older than creation or even coincident with creation.
The first chapters of Genesis make it clear that creation is not
evil but good. Adam and Eve, although created and
destined for good, have committed evil and thereby have become
corrupted. It is through the voluntary actions of human
beings that evil enters the world (moral evil). The passage
from innocence to sin is narrated as an event that was not a
necessary part of the created cosmos (metaphysical) but rather free
and contingent (moral). From this vantage point a
significant element of the Adam and Eve story lies in its
separation of the origin of evil (human beings) from the origin of
being (God)..2
[10] The Adam and Eve story presents an anthropological approach
to evil, but it does not concentrate evil entirely in the Adam and
Eve figures. They have an adversary, the serpent. The
figure of the serpent establishes two important qualifications to
the anthropological approach to evil. First, Adam and Eve
together do not absolutely originate evil; they discover a
propensity for evil in the form of temptation and freely yield to
it. In other words, if evil is something we as humans do, it
is also done to us: something we inherit, something already
there. Second, while the serpent is Adam and
Eve's adversary, the serpent cannot coerce or compel, but only
provide temptation, or the occasion for sin. The yielding to
sin or evil is therefore not necessary or coerced; it is a free,
contingent act for which the human agent holds some level of
responsibility. A preexistent flawed and corruptible human
freedom appears to be recognized and portrayed symbolically in the
serpent figure of Genesis -3.3 It must be
stressed that this type of Hebraic interpretation of the Adam and
Eve story does not yet involve a myth of the "fall" of human beings
from the original perfection of Eden
[11] Differentiating evil as willful wrongdoing for which human
beings are responsible (moral evil) from tragic human suffering and
vulnerability (natural evil) or a necessary element of the created
cosmos (metaphysical evil) is one of the seminal insights of the
Hebraic tradition.4 This
differentiation allows us to see evil as the cause of unnecessary
human suffering that results, at least in part, from unique
individual choices and actions and from distinctive social
arrangements. The Hebraic peoples recognized that acts of
individual and social violations (evil) were not just fateful
inevitabilities, but called for resistance and
transformation. The problem of evil is, thus, not just a
tragic cosmic fate (metaphysical) but also an addressable
historical bondage for which human beings are morally
accountable. The Christian approach to evil and sin owes much
to these core insights of the Hebraic tradition.
[12] A principle architect of the classic Christian
understanding of evil is Augustine of Hippo. A full analysis
of Augustine's theological and anthropological view of evil is
beyond the scope of this essay. However, it should be stated
clearly that for Augustine creation is good, and hence human beings
are created good and desire to fulfill the genuine good for which
God created them. It follows therefore that evil has no ontological
status. Evil is not a being or substance, but must rather be
understood as the corruption of being, the privation of
good.
[13] The idea that God created all things for a purpose that is
good forms the basis for Augustine's understanding of natural
law. The basic tenets of Augustine's natural law doctrine can
be summarized as follows: 1) God created all things out of
nothing; 2) God created all things for certain natural purposes
that are good; 3) So long as all things, including human beings,
fulfill the natural purposes that God created them to fulfill they
are good. Evil in human beings, therefore, arises from
the will's free choice to depart or turn from the natural purposes
God created us to fulfill.
[14] For Augustine, Adam and Eve's turning away from God is an
historical event and constitutes the first sin or the "fall" from
original perfection. Evil originates from a misuse of created
good, namely, a defection of human freedom from divine order.
After the fall, humankind is no longer oriented toward the genuine
good or the divinely established order of creation, but rather has
become disordered by sin. For Augustine, the disordering of
human nature by sin means that there is now a universally binding
bias toward evil that precedes and shapes all human choices
(original sin). Thus, Augustine's classical theology
interprets the fall as a punishment for human sin, a universal
human bondage spread through human propagation.
[15] Augustine's influence on the history of Christian theology
and practice is immense and his understanding of Adam and Eve's
fall from original perfection continues to shape contemporary
discourse regarding evil, particularly as it relates to gender
roles. Indeed, feminist biblical scholar and theologian
Rosemary Radford Ruether has described Augustine's theology as the
prototype for patriarchal anthropology.5 Augustine's
classic interpretation of the fall goes something like this:
Because Eve gave the fruit to Adam, she is viewed as the one who
caused the downfall of humanity, and he as the one who merely "went
along" out of his affection for her. Adam was then placed as
ruler over her (Genesis 3:16), and since "then" history has
accorded her the status of the "weaker sex," and described her as
"easily deceived" (1 Timothy 2:13-14). According to
Augustine's interpretation, all human beings are corrupted after
the fall, but somehow women are more disordered than men.
[16] Augustine's theological and societal understanding of the
fall also maintains the view that woman possesses the image of God
secondarily. Eve's work, therefore, was to aid the man in
procreation. In essence, the natural purpose for which God
created women was to bear children. For Augustine, Eve's
secondary creation was an explanation of a Divine natural order of
hierarchical domination and subordination of all women
(metaphysical evil). Unfortunately, Augustine, as one of the
most important theologians of Christianity, continues to shape and
influence society with his views of women as subordinate in
creation to men. Augustine's classic interpretation of the
fall and the accompanying notion of women's greater propensity
towards corruption and evil continues to shape contemporary debate
regarding issues of family headship, clergy ordination, parenting,
and other important issues regarding gender roles.
[17] Augustine's doctrine of natural law and its accompanying
notions of corruption and evil also influence our modern
understanding of human sexuality. Augustine espoused the view
that the major, if not the only valid, purpose of sexuality is
reproduction. Sexual activities not open to reproductive
potential such as sodomy and gay and lesbian sexuality are
discouraged or condemned as unnatural, detrimental to spiritual
development, and therefore are pronounced evil. Due to their
sexual orientation, gay and lesbian individuals in contemporary
society are sometimes disowned by their families, fired from their
jobs, evicted from apartments, beaten and killed on the streets,
and insulted by public legal, political, and religious
authorities. Some of this continues to be grounded in an
understanding that homoerotic sex is unnatural and therefore
ungodly. This is in spite of the fact that most people in
contemporary society have expanded their understanding of the
purpose of human sexuality to include issues of bonding, intimacy,
mutuality, pleasure and joy. Reproduction is, in fact, far
less frequently the purpose and outcome of sexual activity.
Even so, Augustine's linkage of sex with reproductive potential
continues to maintain considerable influence in public discourse
regarding evil sexuality.
[18] From a historical perspective, it is interesting to note
that unlike Christology and the doctrine of the Trinity, evil and
sin never obtained a technical and detailed creedal expression in
early Christianity. A Christian understanding of evil emerged
not from a positive formulation but from Augustine's repudiation of
both Pelagianism and Manicheanism in the Patristic period.
Against the Manicheans, Augustine maintains that God's creation of
the world does not include an ongoing necessary and antagonistic
struggle between dualistic cosmic forces of good and evil
(metaphysical). Augustine rejects Manichean cosmic dualism
that leads to the dualism of soul and body on the anthropological
level, and to the ultimate dualism of God and a second principle or
substance opposed to God. Augustine replaces the
Manichean cosmic dualism with a theological monotheism. There
is only one source to all created things (not two) and that one
source is God. Human evil stems not from oppositional
dualistic spiritual forces in a perpetual state of conflict but
from the imperfection and corruptibility of human freedom after the
fall.
[19] The Manichean division of the cosmos into antagonistic
forces of good and evil and Augustine's monotheistic rejection of
that claim continues to be heard in contemporary public
discourse. Indeed, the Bush administration's reliance on a
pure dichotomy between the forces of good and the forces of evil to
describe the ongoing war on terrorism utilizes classic language of
Manichean spiritual cosmic dualism. In the wake of the
terrorist attacks on September eleventh 2001, President Bush told
the world the following: "This is a battle between the forces
of good and the forces of evil." He also labeled whole
nations "evildoers," calling Iraq, Iran, and North Korea an "axis
of evil." Attorney General Ashcroft has said: "It is a battle
between good and evil, and…we know that God is not neutral
between the two."6 Osama Bin
Laden and Saddam Hussein have made similar Manichean statements
concerning the United States.
[20] The language cited above suggests an uncompromising
struggle against a demonic enemy one has no choice but to
destroy. When one is in a cosmic battle between good
and evil one's position is backed by moral certainty and, some
suggest, by the will of God. Cosmic war imagery provides a
religious context to legitimate violence and to transform the
killing of enemies into something both positive and
necessary. When one is acting with moral necessity against a
demonic enemy there is little need to be compromised by society's
laws and limitations. The distinction between good and evil,
therefore, allows the Bush administration to ignore longstanding
international alliances with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO) and the United Nations Security Council. In addition,
traditional American constraints on military power can be ignored
in favor of preemptive war.
[21] From a theological perspective, an ongoing necessary and
antagonistic struggle between dualistic cosmic forces of good and
evil is inconsistent with a strict monotheism that encompasses
everything ultimately within the sphere of God, as Augustine argues
against the Manicheans. Christian monotheism does not
recognize an absolute source of evil. Christian
monotheism argues that all (not some) human beings are created by
God and therefore granted a fundamental worth, dignity, and value
irrespective of nationality, ethnicity, race, or religion.
Manichean dualism functions to distort this fundamental
monotheistic claim by dividing human beings into martyrs and
demons, pure and impure, good and evil. Such an
understanding tends to view spiritual warfare as an ongoing cosmic
fate and perpetuates the idea that the battle against terrorism is
part of a larger war that is unending in scope and
duration.
[22] During the Patristic Period, following the thought of
Augustine, the ancient church condemned both the Manichean heresy
for its theological pessimism regarding evil and the Pelagian
heresy for its anthropological optimism concerning evil. The
Pelagians viewed each person as being in the same position relative
to sin and evil as Adam and Eve prior to the fall. Adam and
Eve corrupt only themselves, not their offspring. They set a
bad example, which is imitated and thus socially transmitted.
But such transmission implies nothing more than a socially acquired
bad habit. In short, there is no universality or necessity of
evil and human freedom remains unaffected by original sin. It
is possible to avoid sin and, in fact, some exemplary individuals
have done so. Against the Pelagians, Augustine maintains that
evil is not merely contingent in the sense that it might be avoided
altogether, but rather a corruption of human nature. Hence,
although evil is not synonymous with essential human nature, it
nevertheless appears as a kind of "second nature" which is
manifest in inordinate desire, a positive orientation toward
evil. After the fall, human nature and human freedom are
predisposed and inclined toward evil, according to
Augustine.
[23] The Pelagian orientation towards the possibility of human
purity or human perfection regarding sin and Augustine's rejection
of that possibility continues to be a part of contemporary
discourse today. Indeed, the Bush
administration's insinuation that the motivations grounding the
United States in the ongoing war on terrorism are somehow pure and
without blemish are Pelagian in tone. Such self-righteous
rhetoric reeks of unwarranted pride. Most Christian theology,
following Augustine, clearly acknowledges that the capacity for
corruption and evil resides in all human beings and is not somehow
absent in particular individuals or nations. Both good and
evil arises from the direction of an individual's or group's
will. To say that one person or group is absolutely good and
another person or group is absolutely evil obscures the fallibility
present in all human beings. Augustine rightly rejects
Pelagianism because it is an affront to Christian humility and it
distorts the corruptibility of all human freedom.
[24] The twofold negation of Manicheanism and Pelagianism
highlights two central features in the typically Christian
orientation to evil. These classical features approach evil
as a distorted theocentrism resulting in idolatry and evil as
corruption of being.
[25] Radical theocentrism is a central feature in the classical
Christian view of evil.7 Moral and radical
evil arise from a skewed passion for the eternal, in other words,
idolatry or placing one's ultimate concern in something other than
God.8 Idolatry involves
the estrangement and alienation of humanity from God, and it
results therefore in the self-imposed bondage of humankind to false
gods created by inordinate attachments to selfish
desires. Theocentrism recognizes that there is
something about the idolatrous desire to reduce the sacred to
particular things at hand in the world (a nation or money, for
instance) that contributes to the cultivation of cruelty,
hard-heartedness, oppression, and war. If that is the case,
the dynamics of moral and radical evil can be broken only by
worshipful obedience to a God who transcends all particular
national and ethnic boundaries, a God who unites, rather than
dividing, "the total community of being."9 A theocentric way
of viewing the world understands that God's love is directed toward
all of creation and is never reducible to any particular
self-interest or group-interest.
[26] When a theocentric orientation to the world is applied to
the war on terrorism we can clearly see that all sides in the
conflict are using idolatrous language. President Bush,
Saddam Hussein, and Osama bin Laden have all implied that God
favors and blesses them and those who are on their side of the
conflict. By implication, this suggests that God's will is
against their enemies. This is in spite of the fact that both
Christian and Islamic theologians have always argued that human
beings, in their finitude and frailty, cannot know the mind or will
of God. Indeed, to associate the will of God with the will of
a warring nation turns God into an instrument of the state.
From a theological perspective, it is clear that when religious or
political leaders transfer the sense of the sacred from God to a
particular nation or group they are engaging in idolatry.
Such idolatry can and does lead to the perpetuation of unnecessary
moral and radical evil parading under the banner of God's
will. Theocentrism suggests that human action is fraught with
idolatry if it intends the good for oneself or one's group against
the background of destruction and death for others who are
considered to be somehow beyond the reach of the
sacred.
[27] The second feature of the classic Christian perspective,
following Augustine, portrays evil as a reality present in human
experience-not synonymous with essential human nature as created by
God but a corruption of it. Descriptively, evil, as
corruption of being, presents several constitutive
features. First, evil results from a turning away from
God, a refusal to believe in the goodness of God's created
order. Second, the refusal to recognize one's dependence on
God fosters a perverse self-centeredness or pride.
Third, independence and pride corrupt the self's mode of being in
the world from a life lived in communion with and dependence on God
to an inordinate desire for finite goods or idolatry. These
three modes of corruption constitute the elemental features of
human evil which in turn is manifest in several different
modalities of evil (e.g., the seven deadly sins: pride, envy,
anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lust).10 Such sins are
not associated with specific acts or violations of rules so much as
they are dispositional tendencies or habits that serve the
fundamental corruption of humankind from its proper good and
order. In this understanding, evil is not just something we
struggle against (Manichean dualism) but also something we undergo,
something that erodes us from within. Evil as corruption of
being, therefore, acknowledges the depth and flaw of all human
freedom, while avoiding the extremes of Manichean cosmic dualism
and Pelagian perfectionism.
Contemporary Transformation of Evil and
Suffering
[28] The contemporary perspective considers that evil is less a
theological problem and more a secular problem with optimistic and
pessimistic variations. It is of particular theological
interest, however, that the types of views concerning evil against
which classic Christian thought struggled-the pessimistic Manichean
view and the optimistic Pelagian view-have tended to displace the
classic Christian view of evil. Hence the ancient debate goes
on, and theological response is necessary in order to join in the
debate and seek constructive alternatives.
[29] The optimistic secular perspective tends to view evil as a
problem of human institutional and social arrangements and
therefore amenable to intelligent human action and
management. The natural and social sciences and technology
are regarded as the instruments by means of which humans can
eliminate or at least mitigate evil as a social problem.
President Bush has cast the ongoing war on terrorism in Manichean
terms, but he has also insinuated that through precision strikes,
superior military technology, and the accompanying spread of
democratic social and political systems the United States can
somehow "rid the world of evil."11 These kinds of
statements view evil as a problem that will sooner or later yield
to an appropriate social or technological solution. So runs
the myth of historical and technological progress.
[30] The twentieth century, however, has seen widespread
pessimistic disenchantment with the myth of historical
progress. Two world wars, the Holocaust, and the ever-present
threat of nuclear annihilation are grim reminders that despite
technological progress evil has not disappeared from the
contemporary scene. Nor is it likely to do so. Major
intellectual movements such as Freudian thought and existential
philosophy have rediscovered the tragic side of human life and
culture. In these views natural and moral evil are perceived
to be coincident with the human condition. There is no
solution to the problem of evil; evil simply defies all
explanations and solutions. Moreover, the global problems of
overpopulation, environmental pollution, and resource depletion
have led some to argue that the very science and technology on
which modern industrial societies so heavily depend presents the
ultimate threat to the human prospect. Instead of being
instruments of progress, science and technology-the central
creations of progressive and enlightened Western culture-may turn
out to be the instruments of human self-destruction.
[31] Indeed, the twentieth century has witnessed catastrophes
(from war to genocide) so immense as to demand and, on occasion, to
receive serious discussion, such as Hannah Arendt's influential
treatment of Adolph Eichmann and the banality of Nazi
evil.12 Arendt's view of
Eichmann is especially helpful in suggesting that evil has not
disappeared but rather taken on distinctive new forms. She
detects a modernist transformation of evil in the Nazi employment
of such invisibly omnipresent inventions as the assembly line, mass
transit, and the bureaucratic routine. Arendt maintains that
the Nazi systems of social control radicalize evil precisely by
making unnecessary human suffering so mundane. Nazism creates
a disposition of human detachment so complete that people become
oblivious to the horrid and preventable suffering occurring in
their very midst (radical evil). A built-in position of
detachment turns suffering into a private, individual state of
solitary isolation. People suffer but they suffer
alone. And to acknowledge evil at all people must first
be able to acknowledge and respond to human suffering.
[32] Evil has long been understood by theologians and by popular
audiences as the cause of unnecessary human
suffering.13 Arendt
transforms this perspective by viewing unnecessary suffering itself
as evil. Whatever else evil may involve, evil always involves
first and foremost preventable human suffering. The noted
evolutionary psychologist Timothy Anders echoes this understanding
when articulates, "The ultimate source of all evil is the
biological capacity for suffering…"14 Here we see the
traditional relation between evil and suffering turned inside
out: evil is no longer the source of suffering, but rather
suffering is the source of evil.
[33] French-Jewish philosopher and theologian Emmanuel Levinas
provides an especially thought-provoking analysis of this reversal
in his essay "Useless Suffering." Levinas writes from a late
twentieth-century stance in which our awareness of massive cruelty
and suffering exceeds any possible justification the language of
traditional theology might provide. "This is the century," he
reminds us, "that in thirty years has known two world wars, the
totalitarians of right and left, Hitlerism and Stalinism,
Hiroshima, the Gulag, and the genocides of Auschwitz and
Cambodia."15 The millions of
victims crushed in all this torture and destruction cannot for
Levinas be explained away by mythical or theological explanations
of evil as originating in relation to God's creation or will.
Levinas calls for a radical rethinking of evil by starkly
asserting: "All evil refers to suffering."16
[34] For Levinas, suffering takes on the quality of evil when
destructive pain combines with solitary isolation and crushing
impersonal social force. Levinas finds the archetype of such
suffering in the Holocaust of Jews under Hitler: "the
paradigm of gratuitous human suffering, where evil appears in its
diabolical horror."17 Within this
context of utter evil redefined as an extreme and absurd suffering,
however, Levinas finds the hope for a saving transformation.
The source of this transformation lies in what he calls "the
inter-human order," or the ethical position of human beings (prior
to all practical politics or implied social contracts) as
inescapably interconnected. Suffering can only take on
meaning and purpose through the inter-human summons it makes upon
us as witnesses: suffering solicits us, invoking the obligation
that individuals have always recognized to help vulnerable people
who are in need. One's self becomes oneself-as-another and
one's other becomes another-as-oneself. The importance of
Levinas here lies not only in his association of evil with
suffering but also in his demonstration that contemporary suffering
is never wholly private and solitary; rather, suffering always
contains important public and social-or
inter-human-dimensions.
[35] A major change that typifies contemporary versions of
suffering and of evil can be identified, in part, with the concept
of social suffering. "Social suffering," as Arthur Kleinman, Veena
Das, and Margaret Lock contend, "results from what political,
economic, and institutional power does to people and, reciprocally,
from how these forms of power themselves influence responses to
social problems."18 Suffering,
when viewed in this contemporary perspective, is never strictly
private, inward, and individual. It is transpersonal, and
shaped by the public, social domain of narrative and cultural
discourse, or, as Levinas says, the inter-human. Its sources
lie not in some unknowable cosmic fate-like the operations of a
mysterious fall from paradise-but rather in social structures,
cultural practices, and human relations. Social suffering
allows us to understand that evil, no matter how deeply imbued with
ineradicable traces of mystery, at least in part is the outcome of
specific inter-human actions and distinctive social
arrangements.
[36] A Christian theological framework for the analysis of
social suffering and evil in the contemporary age is found in the
work of Gustavo Gutierrez.19 Gutierrez, known
as the founder of liberation theology, is a Catholic priest who
works in the slums of Lima, Peru. For Gutierrez, the
suffering of the innocent and impoverished masses who inhabit the
slums of Lima does not raise traditional questions about God's
will. He is not concerned with mythical explanations of evil
as originating in a lost paradise. For Gutierrez, we will
understand the suffering in the slums of Lima only by acknowledging
the historical oppression of the poor by powerful landowners who
often receive the support and blessing of the Catholic
Church. Gutierrez's point is that evil and human suffering
occurs in the realm of a particular socio-cultural context, where
concrete actions of wealthy landowners and the church hierarchies
can alter human suffering. A contemporary vision that
understands suffering as inter-human and historical (not solitary
and private) matter for Gutierrez precisely because it contains an
implicit imperative for mobilizing personal and social resistance
to evil. Here again, however, people must be able to
acknowledge the human suffering that occurs in the midst of
taken-for-granted systems of social control and routine religious
and cultural narratives.
[37] In the contemporary context then, human suffering is not
simply a raw datum that we can identify and measure, but a social
status that we extend or withhold. We extend or withhold it
depending largely on whether the sufferer falls within our
prevailing religious and cultural narratives of moral
community. For example, when Iraqi people (some of whom
certainly are innocent civilians) die or are maimed in a firestorm
of laser-guided missiles, the "precision strikes" play on American
television as one more proof of superior United States
technology. (Saddam Hussein seemed to find Iraqi civilians
equally disposable.) We do not acknowledge the destruction of
people outside our moral community as suffering, but detach
ourselves from their pain through the use of convenient impersonal
phrases like "collateral damage." This is the human position
of suffering, not fixed but fluid and mobile, set in motion or
frozen in place by the cultural narratives we construct.
Inside a specific moral community, we employ names like martyr and
hero to inscribe the suffering of our own party within narratives
of hallowed sacrifice and epic achievement. Outside of our
moral community, we demonize groups so that we do not have to feel
outrage or sympathy for the people we harm. A collective
demonic enemy hides the vulnerability of individual
suffering. The challenge, which terrorism and the war on
terrorism has dramatized so clearly, is to discover contemporary
cultural and religious narratives that authenticate all unnecessary
human suffering as evil, while, at the same time, seeking to
alleviate and oppose it without recourse to the dualisms of "us"
and them," martyrs and demons.
[38] Another contemporary example that highlights human
suffering as a social status that is extended or withheld based on
prevailing religious and cultural narratives is the illness of
AIDS. AIDS in the West emerged with an unmistakable link to
the recently and imperfectly liberated world of gay sex. It
was thus linked with a group that was for many years openly
oppressed and even despised, whose sexual practices religious
leaders and politicians reviled as unnatural, ungodly, and
unspeakable. The popular media first described AIDS as a "gay
plague" and some churches labeled AIDS as the "Wrath of God
Syndrome."20 Gays often find
themselves portrayed by prevailing cultural narratives in the role
of self-victimized victims who deserve whatever suffering they
undergo. They are viewed as responsible for their own
suffering because of their evil sexual practices and thus denied
the sympathy extended to heterosexuals infected through "natural"
means such as medical accidents, transfusions of tainted blood, or
the follies of a spouse or lover. Here again, we dispatch or
withhold sympathy and care based on binary and exclusionary
cultural narratives of moral community.
[39] Cultural narratives of evil become dangerous precisely when
they function to translate evil into something that commands our
fascination and admiration rather than invoking moral
concern. Indeed, evil has taken on a glamorous sheen in
contemporary pop culture. The increasing popularity of horror
and sci-fi movies, media attention on serial criminals, and the
theatricalization of war as it is occurring, to name a few
examples, suggest that our culture has a growing fascination with
evil. These popular representations of evil tend to relegate
it to the realm of the mysterious, the other, the enemy, and the
alien-in each case, to a realm beyond our acknowledged moral
community.
[40] Evil, from a contemporary perspective, is as malleable as
the suffering with which it has increasingly come to be
portrayed. Filmmakers, of course, continue to create stories
depicting evil as an indestructible cosmic force, breeding new
legions of alien invaders, or as a deathless legacy that lives on
in vampires. As we might expect, and should learn to live
with, there is neither a single contemporary voice of evil nor a
particular moral community that is free from evil. Indeed, the
malleability of evil ranks among its most ancient features: Satan
is the archetypical shape-shifter. Moreover, the near
identification between evil and suffering throws a new light on
suffering. Suffering is not simply a mystery of the human
condition but expresses much of what our cultural and religious
narratives have taught us. In the extended social history of
evil, one advantage the contemporary moment provides is the
implicit promise that we might, at least in part, address and
redress the suffering and evil that our cultural and religious
narratives have so thoroughly helped to shape.
Conclusion
[41] Evil, Christianity, and public discourse is a topic too
broad and complicated to summarize and conclude in any satisfactory
way. It is important to realize, however, that the classic
Christian understanding of evil does offer some important insights
that can help us to both acknowledge evil in ourselves and others
and respond to evil without falling into the traps of Manichean
cosmic dualism or Pelagian self-righteousness. Christianity
recognizes that the capacity for corruption and evil reside in all
human beings and all social systems and is not somehow absent in
particular individuals, groups, or political arrangements.
Christians and Americans struggle with corruption and evil as much
as any other religious tradition or nation. This basic
orientation towards evil helps Christians to resist the idolatrous
temptation to transfer the sense of the sacred from God to a
particular national affiliation and empowers Christians to resist
binary ways of thinking that divides the world into "them" and
"us," demons and martyrs. Christians are obligated to
acknowledge and respond to evil and suffering wherever they occur
and to expand our understanding of moral community to include the
total human family.
[42] A contemporary vision that understands evil and suffering
as inter-human and social (not solitary and private) matter for
Christians precisely because it helps us to recognize that faithful
discipleship in the world involves a struggle for both personal and
social transformation. Social suffering helps us to
acknowledge the need to pass from a purely theological explanation
of evil to a more practical resistance of evil in all of its
shapes. This move from speculative explanation to
moral-political action liberates the insight that evil is something
that ought not to be and ought to be struggled against. By
de-mystifying evil and making it a matter of contingency (social,
historical, political, personal) rather than necessity (cosmic,
theological, metaphysical), Christians are invited to turn our
passive lament in the face of evil into the possibility for active
complaint and resistance. Evil ceases to be a matter of
tragic inevitability and becomes instead an affair of human
responsibility.
1 Paul Ricoeur, The Encyclopedia of Religion, M. Eliade
ed. (New York: MacMillan, 1987), s.v. "evil." Ricoeur's text is
based in part on his well-known study The Symbolism of Evil, trans.
Emerson Buchanan (New York: Harper and Row, 1967).
2 Paul Ricoeur, Fallible Man, Charles Kelbley trans.
(Chicago: Regnery, 1965).
3 Ibid.
4 See Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, part two.
5 Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism and God-talk: Toward a
Feminist Theology (Boston: Beacon Prss, 1983), pp. 94-95.
6 Bendavid Naftali. "War Against Terrorism Takes on
Religious Tone." Philadelphia Enquirer. February 23, 2003.
7 On the theocentric element of evil, see H. Richard
Niebuhr, Radical Monotheism and Western Culture (New York: Harper
and Row, 1943), esp. chaps. 2 and 6.
8 On the theme of idolatry, see Wilfred Cantwell Smith,
"Idolatry," in John Hick and Paul F. Knitter, eds. The Myth of
Christian Uniqueness: Toward a Pluralistic Theology of Religions,
(Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis books, 1987).
9 Niebuhr, Radical Monotheism and Western Culture, p.
31.
10 See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Part 1a2ae,
question 84, answer 4; see also Henry Fairlie, The Seven Deadly
Sins Today (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1978); and
Sanford Layman, The Seven Deadly Sins: Society and Evil (New York:
St. Martin's Press, 1978).
11 Bendavid Naftali. "War Against Terrorism Takes on
Religious Tone." Philadelphia Enquirer. February 23, 2003.
12 Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the
Banality of Evil (New York: Viking Press, 1964).
13 See, for example, A.B. Pin, Why Lord?: Suffering and
Evil in Black Theology (New York: Continuum, 1995).
14 Timothy Anders, The Evolution of Evil: An Inquiry into
the Ultimate origins of Human Suffering (Chicago: Open Court,
1994), p. 334.
15 Emanuel Levinas, "Useless Suffering," trans. R. Cohen,
The Provocation of Levinas: Rethinking the Other, R. Bernasconi and
D. Wood eds, (New York: Routlege, 1988), pp. 161-162.
16 Ibid., p. 157.
17 Ibid.
18 A. Kleinman, V. Das, and M. Lock, "Introduction,"
Social Suffering, A. Kleinman, V. Das, and M. Lock eds, (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1997), p. ix.
19 See G. Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation: History,
Politics and Salvation, trans. Sister C. Inda and J. Eagleson (New
York: Orbis Books, 1973).
20 See Hunsaker Hawkins, Reconstructing Illness: Studies
in Pathography (West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press,
1993).