Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

Volume 29 and Evil in Hindu and Christian , Myth, and Practice Article 6

2016

The Limits of : An Eastern Orthodox Perspective on Evil and Interreligious Theology

Rico G. Monge University of San Diego

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Recommended Citation Monge, Rico G. (2016) "The Limits of Theodicy: An Eastern Orthodox Perspective on Evil and Interreligious Theology," Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies: Vol. 29, Article 6. Available at: https://doi.org/10.7825/2164-6279.1629

The Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies is a publication of the Society for Hindu-Christian Studies. The digital version is made available by Digital Commons @ Butler University. For questions about the Journal or the Society, please contact [email protected]. For more information about Digital Commons @ Butler University, please contact [email protected]. Monge: The Limits of Theodicy: An Eastern Orthodox Perspective on Evil a

The Limits of Theodicy: An Eastern Orthodox Perspective on Evil and Interreligious Theology

Rico G. Monge University of San Diego

THIS essay is written from the vantage point of need to counteract evil; and second, religious a comparative theologian who is personally traditions more effectively encounter the steeped in the Eastern Orthodox Christian question of evil by teaching a path by which tradition and who primarily specializes in practitioners can mourn, reject, combat, and Christian-Muslim comparative theology. It transform evil. Accordingly, I will first briefly might seems curious, then, that the present examine two salient instances of comparative essay employs the comparative theological Christian-Hindu theodicy in order to method in order to focus on questions of demonstrate how my approach differs. Next, I theodicy in the Christian and Hindu traditions. will engage with key critics of theodicy, some of Perhaps even more curious, however, is that I whom are skeptical of religion (or even hostile aim not at articulating a comparative Christian- to it), and some of whom are religious adherents Hindu theodicy, but rather at suggesting that who maintain theodicy is an inherently the most productive path forward is a deleterious mode of thought. I will conclude by comparative theological rejection of theodicy as drawing from both Fyodor Dostoevsky and Paul a productive enterprise. Drawing from Ricoeur in order to suggest a more productive resources within my own Orthodox Christian trajectory for comparative theology and the tradition, as well as from the thought of Paul challenges posed by the existence of evil and Ricoeur, my essay will revolve around two suffering. primary arguments: first, theodicy functions Theodicy in its most narrow sense is a primarily to reconcile human beings to evil’s distinctive feature of the Abrahamic existence, thus legitimizing it and reducing the , perhaps Christianity most of all.

Rico G. Monge’s teaching and research focuses on comparative theology, continental (including theodicy), and the history of Christian theology (including Catholic, Protestant, and Eastern Orthodox theology). As a comparative theologian, Monge specializes in Christian and Islamic mystical and ascetic traditions. Holding degrees in literature, theology, and religious studies, he also explores religious and philosophical themes in literature and film. He is the founding co-chair of the Catholic Studies Group of the American Academy of Religion’s Western Region and an associate editor of the journal Medieval Mystical Theology. He has recently published the edited volume, Hagiography and Religious Truth: Case Studies in the Abrahamic and Dharmic Traditions (Bloomsbury, 2016). Monge is also an ordained deacon in the Eastern Orthodox Church.

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The Limits of Theodicy: An Eastern Orthodox Perspective on Evil and Interreligious Theology 37

John Milton’s Paradise Lost is theodicy in the bolstering a comparative project that uses form of an epic poem, for, as Milton plainly discourses on evil for the sake of a even greater states, his goal is to “justify the ways of God to good than the one that either theological men.” 1 The term theodicy itself, coined by tradition could have envisioned on its own.”5 In Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, etymologically doing so, Clooney highlights the practical suggests that the purpose is to render a import of theodicy; it does not serve primarily satisfactory justification of God.2 In this narrow simply to render in God/ logically and culturally specific sense, then, theodicy is coherent, but also to: 1) “put evil in its place”; 2) particularly a problem for the Abrahamic grant meaning to suffering; 3) give hope to the monotheisms, all of which maintain that there is suffering; 4) justify the goodness of God; and 5) only one God—and that this God is both promote the good. Clooney’s analysis here is omnibenevolent and omnipotent. 3 If these deeply insightful concerning the roles theodicy tenets are held to be so, theodicy becomes a overtly plays for the religious insider. We shall particular difficulty, for as David Hume (and return to the difficulties created by this classical others) have succinctly put it, “Is [God] willing approach below. In order to transition there, we to prevent evil, but not able? Then is he must first examine Clooney’s interaction with impotent. Is he able but not willing? Then is he Peter Berger on the question of theodicy in a malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence Hindu context. then is evil?”4 While Hume means this to be a In his 1989 article focused on Vedanta’s skeptic’s attack on the impossibility of a theology of Karma, Clooney adds much-needed satisfactory Christian theodicy, the issues he theological nuance to Berger’s sociological raises are the very issues that Christian (and reading of the kind of theodicy “karma- Islamic and Jewish theologians) have grappled samsara” provides.6 Drawing from Max Weber, with for millennia. Berger argues that exist on a Nevertheless, while the term theodicy has spectrum of how highly “rationalized” they are, culturally specific origins in the philosophical and argues that the principle of karma-samsara and theological traditions of Abrahamic in the dharmic religious traditions stands at the , meaningful attempts to explain most highly rationalized pole. Clooney notes the existence of evil and suffering exist in every that Berger does not “directly engage Vedanta major religious tradition. Francis X. Clooney, for thinking” in his analysis and thus misses that example, has engaged in nuanced comparative the Vedantic perspective is “not rationalistic,” theodicy between the Christian and Hindu “frustrates reason's quest for a neat explanation traditions. In his focused study on Vedanta by maintaining the irreconcilable poles of Desika and Thomas Aquinas, he argues that freedom and predestination,” and mitigates the despite their significant differences, “There is mechanistic aspects of karma by “reserving to no reason not to see Desika and Aquinas as allies brahman-who is pure intelligence and being and sharing the same goal of putting evil back in its joy-the efficacy of the system,” thereby subordinate place, giving meaning to suffering ensuring “that humans are not hopelessly lost in and hope to those who suffer, more forcefully the system or at the mercy of impersonal extolling the goodness of God, and, in the end, forces.”7 In short, Clooney argues that Vedantic

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38 Rico G. Monge

thinking accomplishes the classic goals of been “put in its place”; 2) suffering has been theodicy outlined in the paragraph above. While granted meaning; 3) hope has been given to Clooney is correct that a more nuanced those who suffer; and 4) the goodness of God has understanding of Vedanta would shift karma- been justified, has Berger not been largely samsara’s location on Berger’s spectrum, vindicated? Evil has certainly not been “put in Clooney’s analysis also paradoxically reinforces its place” other than intellectually. Granting that Vedantic theodicy is subject to the critiques meaning to suffering renders suffering leveled by Berger (as well as the critiques of the “moralized” according to Nietzsche’s most thinkers to whom Berger is most deeply potent critiques, potentially redoubling the indebted, Weber, Karl Marx, and Friedrich guilt of those who are already suffering and Nietzsche). unable to convert that suffering into moral Indeed, the very fact that Clooney places benefit.9 Providing hope to the suffering, if this Vedanta Desika and Thomas Aquinas so closely comes without addressing and eradicating the together itself strongly suggests Berger’s cross- root causes of suffering, offers little more than cultural analysis of the function of theodicy what Marx aptly identified as the “opiate of the remains as potent as ever. For Berger’s primary masses.”10 Finally, “justifying the ways of God to contention is that theodicy is central to a men” is, by definition, the attempt to religion’s ability to create a “sacred canopy” legitimize—even valorize—why an that binds a culture together and affords it some omnibenevolent and omnipotent God permits protection against the otherwise meaningless so much suffering and evil. chaos of the universe. For Berger, theodicy is We will return to Clooney’s fifth point, “to thus not ultimately about justifying God’s promote the good,” at the end of this essay. For goodness to human beings, but, rather, “the now, let us investigate further the question legitimation of anomic phenomena.” 8 Put concerning whether theodicy is helpful or otherwise, Berger argues that sociologically, harmful to themselves, and, more theodicy functions to legitimize why things that importantly, to their adherents. Western cultural norms and expectations would dictate Christian (i.e. Catholic and Protestant) theodicy “should not happen,” do, in fact, happen all the from Augustine to Leibniz (arguably its most time. Theodicy thus provides the way for human sophisticated expositor) has revolved around beings to accept why the “anomic” or “evil” can these very objectives of providing reassurance occur. Even more problematic, systems of and hope to human beings, and thus to reconcile theodicy provide paths by which these them to the fact that evil and suffering exist. occurrences can further be understood as both Augustine agonizes over why evil could exist legitimate and necessary. Four of the five points I throughout his Confessions, finally concluding distilled from Clooney’s comparison of Desika that it is Christianity that offers the only and Aquinas thus demonstrate Berger’s point; satisfactory answer. For him, the resolution (or theodicy provides human beings with the in Berger’s terms “legitimation”) of evil is to be reassurance and hope that things are as they found in his twin arguments that 1) evil does not should be, and, further, that they will work for exist, but is a falling away from God who is pure the best according to a higher plan. If 1) evil has Being, and 2) that human beings possess free

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will such that even our falling away towards world as it actually is. It devalues the world and non-Being is not God’s fault but ours.11 Several our present lives by deferring existence as it centuries later, Thomas Aquinas adhered closely “should be” to the next life.16 17 Building upon to Augustinian theodicy while tackling the Nietzsche and Weber, Berger, as we have seen, thorny issue of causality and responsibility. For argues that theodicy serves to make us Aquinas, God’s role as providential creator reconciled to the “anomic” phenomena we means that God is, in a certain causal sense, the would otherwise categorically reject. In the origin of evil (and human free will is not wake of the horrors of the 20th century, many sufficient to erase that fact). Free will, however, Christian theologians are beginning to ensures that “God is responsible for sinful recognize these deleterious aspects of actions, but not for sins,” or, in other words, God theodicy’s core functions. Karen Kilby, for is causally responsible but not morally example, argues that Christianity should not be responsible for evil.12 Leibniz, working out this engaged in theodicy, that theodicy has nothing paradox even more rigorously, posited that this to do with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and that world is the best of all possible worlds “not only theodicy makes us less likely to feel compelled for all in general, but for each one of us in to carry out one of the primary duties of the particular.”13 In each of these pivotal figures the Christian: to combat evil. 18 Moreover, Sarah bottom line affirms both Clooney’s and Berger’s Katherine Pinnock has gathered together analyses concerning the function of theodicy. contributions from leading Christian and Jewish And lest I give the impression that Eastern philosophers in an effort to move “beyond Christianity is immune to or free from engaging theodicy,” not because theodicy is inadequate to in theodicy, one need only look at Dionysius the make sense of the horrors of the Areopagite’s The Divine Names and John of Holocaust/Shoah (Leibniz would indeed have an Damascus’s The Orthodox for “adequate” answer), but because making sense recapitulations of Augustinian theodicy.14 Even of it, rendering it meaningful, and thus John Hick’s exposition of Irenaeus of Lyons’s legitimizing its occurrence is not remotely theodicy shows a deep Eastern Christian affinity desirable.19 for the idea that evil and suffering are necessary What then should be done? Are theology for moral growth. 15 We shall return to the and religion separable from theodicy? As question of Irenaean theodicy in the discussion Clooney observes with Desika, theodicy does not of Ricoeur below. always provide neat answers, and both One might naturally ask at this point, “so Christianity and Hinduism have robust mystical what’s the problem with theodicy?” For traditions asserting the ultimate unknowability Friedrich Nietzsche and Max Weber, theodicy of the divine. Does emphasis on divine demonstrates the human desire to impose incomprehensibility escape the problems meaning and value on what would otherwise be wrought by theodicy? David Hume, Ludwig senseless and random suffering. This endeavor Feuerbach, and Sigmund Freud each argue that to use human rational faculties to create while recourse to unknowability may indemnify meanings for suffering that are not actually God from critique, it also eradicates the very there reflects a childish inability to accept the thing—theodicy—that, in their views, makes

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40 Rico G. Monge

religion attractive to human beings in the first without abandoning his faith. 25 Furthermore, place. Hume, for example, maintains that those Alyosha’s spiritual father, the Elder Zosima, who uphold the unknowability of God are nowhere engages in theodicy, including the “atheists without knowing it.” 20 Similarly, section of the novel (Book VI: The Russian Feuerbach claims that the “theory that God Monk) that Dostoevsky openly referred to as his cannot be defined, and consequently cannot be response to Ivan. 26 Instead of a theodicy that known by man, is therefore the offspring of would impose meaning on evil and suffering in recent times, a product of modern unbelief.”21 order to render them “legitimate,” Alyosha and Freud draws out the practical implications Zosima embody a way of being in the world that rather succinctly when he asserts, “If you combats evil through radical love—a love that confine yourself to the belief in a higher has the power to transfigure everything it spiritual being, whose qualities are indefinable touches. When Alyosha asserts that the love of and whose intentions cannot be discerned, then life is of the utmost importance, Ivan is you are proof against the interference of incredulous and suggests that understanding science, but then you will also relinquish the the meaning of life is still more important, interest of men.” 22 Stripped of the hope, because only if life is meaningful is it lovable. comfort, and security that theodicy’s Alyosha’s pivotal response is that he must love legitimations provide, religion will lose its life first of all “and only then will I also psychological appeal for the majority of human understand its meaning.”27 The reversal here is beings. Augmenting these philosophical and more profound in its implications than it might psychological ruminations, Berger employs seem at first. For Alyosha, evil and suffering are empirical sociological evidence to demonstrate not things to be comprehended, tamed, and that the decline of a religion’s plausibility is rendered acceptable through logical, discursive directly proportional to the devaluation of its explanations. Rather, it is love, not logic, which corresponding theodicy. 23 It would seem then infuses existence with meaning and empowers that religion can survive neither with theodicy one to combat and transform evil and suffering, nor without it. rather than concocting an explanation for why The writings of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Paul it exists. Ricoeur present other options, however, ones This power of radical love is demonstrated that are particularly promising for comparative throughout Zosima’s discourses in “The Russian theological engagement with evil and suffering. Monk,” but perhaps nowhere more poignantly Curiously enough, their approaches have than in the story of his older brother Markel, significant resonances with aspects of Freudian who died of tuberculosis while still a teenager. thought.24 In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky Previously a skeptic, Markel undergoes a famously enlists the character of Ivan dramatic conversion in which he is filled with Karamazov to utterly destroy theodicy in the love for all of existence—for his fellow human chapters entitled “Rebellion” and “The Grand beings as well as for the natural world. Nowhere Inquisitor.” Quite strikingly, however, Ivan’s does Markel seek (or find) a rational explanation devout brother (and novice monk) Alyosha for why such a terrible fate should befall him. accepts Ivan’s dismantling of Christian theodicy When his doctor lies to him stating he will live

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for a long time yet, Markel dismisses the length this reading, Zosima asserts “what is great here” of his life as irrelevant: “But what are years, in the book of Job is its demonstration of the what are months! …. Why count the days, when possibility of healing in which “old grief, by a even one day is enough for a man to know all great mystery of human life, gradually passes happiness? My dears, why do we quarrel, boast into quiet, tender joy.” 31 To sum up, what before each other, remember each other’s Dostoevsky shows us is the power of Christianity offenses? Let us go to the garden, let us walk and not to explain evil and suffering, but rather to play and love and praise and kiss each other and combat it, transform it, and to learn how to bless our life.” 28 Even more forcefully, Markel productively grieve over it. asserts that such love reveals that “life is Though not himself Orthodox, the paradise, but we do not want to know it, and if Protestant Paul Ricoeur likewise rejects we did want to know it, tomorrow there would theodicy and expresses an ethos that resonates be paradise the world over.” 29 Nevertheless, heavily with Doestoevsky’s Orthodoxy. In his nowhere does Markel engage in even an essay, “Evil, a Challenge to Philosophy and Irenaean theodicy that would moralize and Theology,” Ricoeur surveys the history of validate his deadly illness because it allowed Christian theodicy and critiques it heavily for him to achieve this all-encompassing love. On the same reasons expressed throughout this the contrary, it is the transfiguring power of essay. He then sets forth his alternative vision of love that renders the question “Why me?” how the texts of the Bible address the challenge utterly irrelevant. of evil. Rather than offering a logical As compelling as Markel’s story may be, explanation of evil subject to “both the rule of Dostoevsky was a man intimately acquainted noncontradiction and that of systematic with the depths of human suffering, and totalization,” Ricoeur argues that Biblical texts Markel’s example alone does not convey the instead (1) enjoin us to act against evil, and (2) fullness of Dostoevsky’s response to Ivan’s offer us a five-stage path of wisdom through destruction of theodicy. Equally crucial are which we can learn how to grieve.32 Contrary to Zosima’s ruminations on the book of Job. While theodicy, which asks “whence comes evil,” Job is often viewed as the supreme example of Ricoeur argues, “the response, not the solution, Judeo-Christian scriptural theodicy, Zosima of action is to act against evil. Our vision is thus instead reads the text as a sort of manual in turned toward the future, by the idea of a task to learning how to grieve over suffering and evil. be accomplished.” 33 Ricoeur thus argues that Indeed, Zosima notes that the story of Job, read Biblical texts offer hope, but a hope that imposes as a theodicy explaining evil, is both ludicrous a responsibility on us. The potential of theodicy and offensive. “How could the hand over to make us complacent towards the evil it the most beloved of his saints for Satan to play legitimizes is thereby removed, and in its place with him, to take away his children, to smite him stands the burden to fight against evil with all with disease and sores so that he scraped the pus our might. But Ricoeur also recognizes that from his wounds with a potsherd, and all for action against evil is not enough in and of itself. what? Only so as to boast before Satan: ‘See what This is because evil is not merely something one my saint can suffer for my sake!’” 30 Rejecting “commits”; evil is also something one undergoes

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and from which one suffers intense trauma and learning how to mourn, Ricoeur (and I) would grief. answer with a cautious “yes.” In the fourth For this reason, Ricoeur sets forth the five- stage, a person may come to a place where they stage path he has gleaned from the Christian discern in suffering “some educative and scriptures for learning how to grieve. In doing purgative value.” 35 The crucial distinction so, Ricoeur acknowledges he is also indebted to between this fourth stage and theodicy is that Freud’s essay “Mourning and Melancholia.” In the fourth stage does not signify the the first stage of this “work of mourning,” construction of a totalizing system. The ability Ricoeur advocates for the exact opposite of to discern educative value in suffering is neither theodicy—the admission of ignorance. Only in an imperative to discover it, nor the assertion admitting to ourselves that we cannot make that such educative value necessarily exists in sense of suffering can we begin to heal from it. every instance of suffering. The fourth stage From this first stage of ignorance, we can then allows the individual to work out the particulars move to a second, perhaps even more surprising of his or her own grief, whereas theodicy runs stage: complaint against God. It must be stressed the risk of “leading the victim back along the that Ricoeur is not abstractly philosophizing route of self-accusation or self-destruction.”36 In here; he is following the example set forth by other words, it is good and proper to affirm what the psalmists who both profess ignorance of value a person can come to find in his or her why evil happens, and, at times, rage against suffering, while it is harmful and cruel to impose God for the fact that it does happen. Only by on each person the imperative to find meaning passing through genuine rage can we come to and value in suffering. In the final stage along the third stage, the realization that theodicy is the path of wisdom, one may ultimately come to not the reason or precondition for belief. “love God for naught” just as Job does at the end Instead, we come to find that “suffering is only of his tale of unfathomable suffering. In a scandal for the person who understands God to reaching this stage, a person can find an be the source of everything that is good in extraordinary degree of liberation and power creation, including our indignation against evil, over suffering and evil. As Ricoeur puts it, “to our courage to bear it, and our feeling of love God for naught is to escape completely the sympathy toward victims. In other words, we cycle of retribution to which the lament [of believe in God in spite of evil.”34 We find ourselves stages 1-3] remains captive, so long as the victim here far from both the security blanket offered bemoans the injustice of his or her fate.” 37 by theodicy and from the poor refuge of the Again, it cannot be stressed enough that this is unknowable God (and practical ) neither a moral imperative nor an explanation critiqued by Hume, Feuerbach, and Freud. of the “purpose” of evil. The fifth stage is about We might here pause for a moment to ask reaching a place of liberation and empowerment whether we have become too polemical and that has no need of theodicy whatsoever. thus blind to some of the insights theodicy Ricoeur concludes his essay with a genuinely has to offer. Does not the educative, suggestion for a productive future trajectory for Irenaean model of theodicy have some truth to interreligious reflection upon evil and suffering. it, at least? In the fourth and fifth stages of Having laid out his reading of the five-stage path

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of Judeo-Christian wisdom, he suggests, Christian reflection on evil and suffering? I will “perhaps this horizon of wisdom, at least as it close this essay by highlighting one recent appears in the West under the influence of constructive work of theology from within the Judaism and Christianity, overlaps the horizon Hindu tradition, Anantanand Rambachan’s A of Buddhist wisdom at a significant crossing Hindu Theology of Liberation: Not-Two Is Not point that only a long dialogue between them One.39 Like Dostoevsky and Ricoeur, Rambachan could make more conspicuous….” 38 While is wary of the way the term “theology” has been Ricoeur, without explanation, specifies used in the past, as well as the role it has played Buddhism here as a dialogue partner, it should in legitimizing suffering rather than promoting be clear that the same sentiment would hold the good and strengthening the ability of true for Vedantic wisdom. How might karma- religious practitioners to combat evil, be samsara show up radically differently if we were liberated from suffering, and to learn to grieve to focus on how it guides adherents in in ways that do not further compound one’s combatting evil and learning how to mourn? suffering.40 For Rambachan, the role of theology How might comparative theological is not to provide a theodicy that legitimizes evil engagement along these lines yield real, practical by “problematizing the world,” but, rather, to value in dealing with evil and suffering? With bring about “liberation.” In his words, Ricoeur, I suggest this is the most productive “Liberation is a new understanding of self and path forward in interreligious engagement with world. The consequence of knowing oneself to the question of evil. be a full being is freedom from greed. One shares The time is ripe for further comparative the most profound identity with all beings when investigations of the wisdom by which religious one knows oneself to be the self of all. Wisdom traditions guide adherents in the face of evil. In blossoms in compassion, that is, the seeing of doing so, we will not only avoid the dangers and oneself in the sorrows and joys of others, in pitfalls of theodicy, we will almost assuredly generosity, and in self-control.”41 With Clooney, empower people of all faith traditions to more Dostoevsky, Ricoeur, and Rambachan, a new effectively confront the evil and suffering that future for comparative and interreligious comes to us all. How might the insights of theological reflection is upon us—provided we Clooney’s fifth point, “to promote the good,” can continue to escape the limits and pitfalls of come to greater fruition through Hindu- theodicy.

Notes

1 John Milton, Paradise Lost, in The Riverside Milton, village and their homes and lives are ravaged by a ed. Roy Flannigan (New York: Houghton Mifflin, tsunami, the gods are neither omnibenevolent nor 1998), book 1, line 26. omnipotent. Poseidon could have chosen to do this 2 See Leibniz, Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of simply because he does not like his devotees. God the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil, trans E.M. Moreover, an antagonist of Poseidon (e.g. Athena) Huggard (New York: Cosimo Classics, 2010). could have been taking out her frustration with the 3 In Greco-Roman paganism, for example, village for aligning with Poseidon instead of her. theodicy is still operative, but with far fewer logical problems. If people are devotees of Poseidon in a sea

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16 4 David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural See, for example, Friedrich Nietzsche, The Religion, in Dialogues and Natural History of Religion Twilight of the Idols, in The Twilight of the Idols/The Anti- (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 100. Christ, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin, 1990), 5 Francis X. Clooney, "For Your Own Good": “Expeditions of an Untimely Man” §45, p.110; On the Suffering and Evil in God's Plan according to One Genealogy of Morals, in On the Genealogy of Morals and Hindu Theologian,” in Deliver Us From Evil: Boston Ecce Homo, trans. by Walter Kaufmann and R.J. University Studies in Philosophy and Religion, eds. M. Hollingdale, (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), §3.1; David Eckel and Bradley L. Herling, (London: and The Will to Power, trans. by Walter Kaufmann and Bloomsbury Academic, 2011), 184. R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1968) §12. 17 6 Peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” in From Sociology of Religion (New York: Anchor Books, 1990), Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, trans., ed. and with an 65-67. intro. by H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, 77-128 [New 7 Francis X. Clooney, “Evil, Divine , York: Oxford University Press, 1958]: 122, 126). and Human Freedom: Vedanta’s Theology of Karma,” Weber, “The Social Psychology of the World’s The Journal of Religion 69 (4): 535. Religions,” in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, 271. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/488203 Weber, “Religious Rejections of the World and Their 8 Berger, The Sacred Canopy, 55. Directions,” in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, 353. 18 9 See esp. the third essay of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Karen Kilby, “Evil and the Limits of Theodicy,”

On the Genealogy of Morals, in On the Genealogy of Morals New Blackfriars 84 (2003): 13-29. http://dx.doi.org/ and Ecce Homo, trans. by Walter Kaufmann and R.J. 10.1111/j.1741-2005.2003.tb06484.x 19 Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1989). Sarah Katherine Pinnock, Beyond Theodicy: 10 Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Jewish and Christian Continental Thinkers Respond to the trans. Joseph O’Malley (Madurai, India: Leopard Holocaust (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2002). It is worth Books, 2015), 7-8. noting here that many Jewish thinkers have shifted 11 Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, trans. John K. from using the word Holocaust (a “sacrificial burnt Ryan (New York: Image Books, 1960). See especially offering”) to the word Shoah (“the catastrophe”) in sections 7.4.6, 7.7.11, 7.11.17, 7.12.18, 3.7.12, and order to reject the theodicy implied within the term 7.15.21. Holocaust. 20 12 Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, in David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Selected Philosophical Writings, trans. Timothy Religion, in Dialogues and Natural History of Religion McDermott (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 61. 21 296. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, 13 Gottfried Leibniz, Monadology in Discourse on trans. George Eliot, (Mineola, NY: Dover and Monadology, trans. George R. Philosophical Classics, 2008), x. 22 Montgomery (New York: Cosimo Classics, 2008), 88. Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion, trans. 14 John of Damascus, Exposition of the Orthodox W.D. Robson-Scott (Mansfield, CT: Martino Faith, trans. S.D.F. Salmond (London: Aeterna Press, Publishing, 2010), 94. See also Freud’s observations in 2016), 159; and Pseudo-Dionysius, The Divine Names, in Civilization and Its Discontents, trans. James Strachey Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, trans. Colm (New York: W.W. Norton, 1961), 22-23. 23 Luibheid (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1987), especially Berger, The Sacred Canopy, 78-80. 24 sections 4.18-4.35. These resonances with Freud should not be 15 John Hick, Evil and the God of Love (New York: entirely surprising, given Freud’s extremely high Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 211-235. regard for Dostoevsky and Ricoeur’s self- identification as a Christian “master of suspicion”

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The Limits of Theodicy: An Eastern Orthodox Perspective on Evil and Interreligious Theology 45

31 standing in the critical tradition of Marx, Nietzsche, Ibid. 32 and Freud. Paul Ricoeur, “Evil, a Challenge to Philosophy 25 Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, and Theology,” in Figuring the Sacred: Religion, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New Narrative, and Imagination, trans. David Pellauer York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002), 288-290. (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1995), 249, 251-252. 33 26 See, for example, Harold Bloom’s inability to Ibid., 259. 34 make sense of Book VI: The Russian Monk because he Ibid., 260. 35 erroneously searches in vain for a compelling Ibid. 36 theodicy within it. Bloom, “Introduction” to Modern Ibid., 260-261. 37 Critical Interpretations: Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Ibid., 261. 38 Brothers Karamazov, ed. and with an intro. by Harold Ibid. 39 Bloom, (New York: Chelsea House, 1988). Anantanand Rambachan, A Hindu Theology of 27 Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 231. Liberation: Not-Two Is Not One (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 28 Ibid., 289. 2015). 40 29 Ibid., 288. Ibid., 2-6. 41 30 Ibid., 292. Ibid., 188.

https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/jhcs/vol29/iss1/6 DOI: 10.7825/2164-6279.1629 10