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He Takes Back the Ticket . . . for Us: Providence, Evil, Suffering, and the Vicarious Humanity of Christ Christian Kettler Friends University, [email protected]

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He Takes Back the Ticket . . . for Us: Providence, Evil, Suffering, and the Vicarious Humanity of Christ Christian Kettler Friends University, Kettler@Friends.Edu Journal for Christian Theological Research Volume 8 Article 4 2003 He Takes Back the Ticket . For Us: Providence, Evil, Suffering, and the Vicarious Humanity of Christ Christian Kettler Friends University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.luthersem.edu/jctr Part of the Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons Recommended Citation Kettler, Christian (2003) "He Takes Back the Ticket . For Us: Providence, Evil, Suffering, and the Vicarious Humanity of Christ," Journal for Christian Theological Research: Vol. 8 , Article 4. Available at: http://digitalcommons.luthersem.edu/jctr/vol8/iss2003/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ Luther Seminary. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal for Christian Theological Research by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ Luther Seminary. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Journal for Christian Theological Research 8 (2003) 37–57 He Takes Back the Ticket…For Us: Providence, Evil, Suffering, and the Vicarious Humanity of Christ Christian D. Kettler Friends University 1. The dilemma is stated well by Ivan in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. In his argument with his saintly brother Alyosha, Ivan makes it clear that he is all too aware of the absurdity of believing in the providence of God in a world of needless suffering, especially the suffering of children. So, in disgust, he returns the ticket of “eternal harmony” to God. 2. Do we dare keep the ticket ourselves today? How can we do that in all honesty? My proposal, building upon Karl Barth’s argument that providence should proceed from Christology, considers the biblical emphasis of what T. F. Torrance has called the vicarious humanity of Christ. This means that Christ in his humanity believes when we fi nd it diffi cult, if not impossible, to believe, especially when it comes to facing human suffering. Jesus lived a life of perfect faith in, worship of, and service to the Father, even at the cross, yet still believed in the providence of God. His belief is not simply a model of faith, but it is also vicarious faith. He believed (and believes) for us, as our representative, and in our place, as our substitute. The Son believed in the providence of the Father, as diffi cult as that is to do in a world of evil and suffering, so that we might believe as well. 3. Beginning with some introductory remarks on the issue and the proposal, I will then present four theses exploring the implications, promise, and problems of the vicarious humanity of Christ for providence, suffering, and evil. Introductory Remarks with Fear and Trembling: How Do We Discuss the Mystery of Evil? 4. Do I really need to persuade anyone that there is a problem of evil? For those like Ivan, the skeptical brother in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, the indictment of a loving omnipotent God is obvious in the light of dysteleology, needless, gratuitous evil, most obviously seen in the suffering of innocent children.¹ Even if a kind of “eternal harmony” might result in such suffering, Ivan will hand back his “ticket” to such a world. It is not worth it. And in that refusal, he is refusing the morality, if not the existence, of a God who would create such a world.² ¹ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Constance Garnett (New York: Vintage, 1955), 291. ² Kenneth Surin, “Theodicy,” in The Turnings of Darkness and Light: Essays in Systematic and Philosophical Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 82–83. Kettler, He Takes Back the Ticket…For Us 5. This is our world, too. It is a world of injustice. In Albert Goldbarth’s poem, “Even, Equal,” he describes the “two schoolgirls” found “under half-receded ice, the bruises frozen, into lustrous broaches at their frozen throats.” Whoever did it is still out there, is free and maybe needing more. The word “injustice” doesn’t include the choking gall that burns through me…³ 6. In “Meop,” Goldbarth expresses for many what has been lost: the belief that “in some megamatrix substrate (God, or atoms, or Imagination) holds the infi nite unalike dots at its body in a parity, and daily life refl ects this.” Why? One need to look only at a scenario such as, …only yesterday, a girl, eleven, was found with the name of a rival gang, Lady Satans, carefully cut in her thigh and rubbed with drainpipe acid. Somewhere there may be a world where such as these are equally legitimatized, but not here in the thick and swirling mists of Planet Albert.⁴ “Planet Albert” is my planet, too. Our planet. 7. The doctrine of providence only muddies the water. The question becomes, not just how God can permit or allow evil, but how can we say such a thing if we believe that God controls, let alone, dare we say it, cares, for the universe?⁵ 8. Of course, not everyone is an Ivan. For some theologians, providence is the answer to the problem of evil. John Leith claims, “Christians all acknowledge that everything that happens is the will of God.”⁶ Maybe not “all Christians,” at least not myself, as strange as that may sound to many. But for some, God is not responsible for evil because, citing the Book of Job, God is not answerable to anyone.⁷ 9. All Christians acknowledge there is mystery in the relationship between providence and evil. The crucial question may be, How does one approach the mystery? From Luther to Barth, some have lamented that the Church rarely sees providence in a Christological light.⁸ For Barth, ³ Albert Goldbarth, “Even, Equal,” in Beyond (Boston: David R. Godine, 1998), 21. ⁴ Goldbarth, “Meop,” 40. ⁵ Paul Helm, The Providence of God (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1994), 25. ⁶ John Leith, Basic Christian Doctrine (Lousville: Westminster/John Knox, 1994), 25. ⁷ R. K. McGregor Wright, No Place for Sovereignty: What’s Wrong with Freewill Theism (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1996), 201. ⁸ John Stackhouse, Can God Be Trusted? Faith and the Problem of Evil (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 101–103; cf. B. A. Gerrish, The Old Protestantism and the New: Essays on the Reformation Heritage (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 131–149 and John Sanders, The God Who Risks: A Theology of Providence (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1998), 116. 38 Journal for Christian Theological Research 8 (2003) faith in Christ means that There is for it no obscurity concerning the nature and will and work of the Lord of history, no ambiguity concerning His character and purpose, and no doubt as to His ability to see to His own glory in history.⁹ Barth is fond of citing John 5:17: “My Father is still working and I also am working.” 10. The Christological implications for providence still remain to be unpacked it seems to me. One implication that does not seem to have been explored is suggested by T. F. Torrance’s doctrine of the vicarious humanity of Christ.¹⁰ The implications of Jesus Christ for providence, evil, and suffering are usually seen in one of two ways: One, in terms of Jesus Christ as the revelation of God, a God who is close to us, a God who loves us, as seen in the life and ministry of Jesus. As John Stackhouse says, in Jesus We see what we desperately need to see: God close to us, God active among us, God loving us, God forgiving our sin, God opening up a way to a new life of everlasting love.¹¹ ⁹ Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, trans. and ed. by G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance, 4 vols. in 13 parts (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1936–1969), III/3, 34 (hereafter cited as CD). ¹⁰ The most important writings on the vicarious humanity of Christ are found in T. F. Torrance, The Mediation of Christ, rev. ed. (Colorado Springs: Helmers and Howard, 1992); and “The Word of God and the Response of Man,” in God and Rationality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 133–164; James B. Torrance, “The Vicarious Humanity of Christ,” in The Incarnation: Ecumenical Studies in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, ed. T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: The Handsel Press, 1981), 121–147; Worship, Community, and the Triune God of Grace (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1996), and Thomas F. Torrance, James B. Torrance, and David W. Torrance, A Passion for Christ: The Vision That Ignites Ministry (Edinburgh: The Handsel Press; Lenoir: PLC Publications, 1999). The implications of the vicarious humanity of Christ for view of salvation are discussed in my book, The Vicarious Humanity of Christ and the Reality of Salvation (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1991). Pastoral implications are addressed in my essays, “The Atonement as the Life of God in the Ministry of the Church,” in Incarnational Ministry: The Presence of Christ in Church, Society, and Family: Essays in Honor of Ray S. Anderson, eds. Christian D. Kettler and Todd Speidell (Colorado Springs: Helmers and Howard, 1990), 58–78 and “‘For I Do Not Do the Good I Want…and I’m Tired of Trying’: Weakness and the Vicarious Humanity of Christ,” in On Being Christian…and Human: Essays in Celebration of Ray S. Anderson, ed. Todd H. Speidell (Eugene, Oreg.: Wipf and Stock, 2002). Elmer M. Colyer provides a helpful survey of the vicarious humanity of Christ in T. F. Torrance’s thought in How to Read T. F. Torrance: Understanding His Trinitarian and Scientifi c Theology (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2001), 97–126. Cf. Andrew Purves, “The Christology of Thomas F. Torrance” in The Promise of Trinitarian Theology: Theologians in Dialogue with T. F. Torrance, ed. Elmer M.
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