Issue Twenty Eight | November 2012 Fear and Trembling: Teaching the

No person is an abstraction And this has to be imparted Elie Wiesel, Holocaust Survivor to our students.

The Welsh philosopher Dewi It’s 9.05 am on a Tuesday morning and Zephaniah Phillips wrote: Year 12 are hungry for the Problem of Evil. Philosophizing about Mercifully, most of them don’t know what real the Problem of Evil has evil is, and understand it as a ‘thing out there,’ become commonplace an event that they know happens but perhaps and abound. not to them. Let’s hope that this appealing However, such generalisation is as true as it can be, for as philosophising should many as it can be. always be done in fear At the age of seventeen one should, very and trembling! Fear that, largely, be inured from evil. So all is well…. in our philosophising, until, that is, one comes to the very real we’ll betray the evils problem of teaching ‘The Problem.’ Because people suffer and have if there is no real apprehension of evil, then suffered and in that way sin against them; and there is no compelling need to reconcile it ...betrayal occurs every time with a of love – or not – and understand, trembling, because betrayal occurs every intellectually and with good reason, why one time explanations and justifications of explanations and justifcations cannot. If there is no real apprehension of evil are offered which are simplistic, of evil are offered which incredible or obscene.1 the scale of what is being talked about, evil are simplistic, incredible or remains a little abstracted, a little academic, a Phillips’ words are true, not just for little removed. And hence, any involvement philosophers or theologians penning obscene. with the debate retains that same feeling of theodicies in ivory towers, but for teachers being removed or anaemic; a tussle held at of Philosophy and Religious Studies on that arm’s length. Tuesday morning with Year 12. His words saying that any – or lesson for that are a summons to empathise with those The Problem of Evil raises complex and matter – needs to be acutely sensitive to who suffer and have suffered on what Hegel profound questions and by its very nature the fact that it’s essentially dealing with real calls ‘the slaughter bench of history’ and, by demands that we confront them head on. people, real suffering and real pain. rejecting abstraction and intellectualisation, Why doesn’t God accomplish his purpose So, how best can we present this most make some inner movement towards without the immensity of suffering that exists? profound and perplexing of problems – the empathy and compassion. While Phillips Is a God who tolerates it even worthy of problem of reconciling an omnipotent, insists on the need to be philosophically worship? What sort of ‘Purpose’ could this omniscient God with the fact that evil exists coherent and academically rigorous, he’s also suffering justify? (or in other words a theodicy), to young people? Such questions deserve to be embraced, explored and understood with all that we The new Ethics Online ‘Problem of Evil’ films are. This is the challenge: to engage the Why doesn’t God accomplish are a sincere attempt to respond to this mind and the emotions as we face up to his purpose without the challenge, documenting as they do the main the appalling, horrifying power of evil and its theodicies and the problems they present, in a consequences for theistic . Its existence immensity of suffering that careful but dramatic way. And, by juxtaposing tests, to the limits, traditional views about God, exists? Is a God who tolerates startling cinematography with extracts from and leads more people to abandon their it even worthy of worship? some of the world’s greatest literature than for any other reason. This is not a mere concerning “evil,” the student is immediately intellectual or theoretical objection. People feel What sort of ‘Purpose’ could awakened to the scale of the suffering we are it. People live it. this suffering justify? talking about.

Dialogue Australasia 1 The Lisbon Earthquake 1755 One-hundred thousand unfortunates devoured by the earth Possible Christian Solutions Who, bleeding, lacerated, and still alive, (Theodicies) to the Problem of Evil Buried under their roofs without aid in their anguish, End their sad days! Sin is a Punishment In answer to the half-formed cries of their dying voices, This solution was put forward At the frightful sight of their smoking ashes, by Augustine and is called the Will you say: “This is result of eternal laws . Directing the acts of a free and good God!” Augustine says that everything WAS Will you say, in seeing this mass of victims: perfect before the Fall of Man as “God is revenged; their death is the price for their crimes?” described in the Genesis Creation What crime, what error did these children, story. Crushed and bloody on their mothers’ breasts, commit? Did Lisbon, which is no more, have more vices • We have inherited the Than London and Paris immersed in their pleasures? original sin of Adam and Lisbon is destroyed, and they dance in Paris! Eve who were tempted to do Voltaire2 wrong by the devil disguised as a serpent, who himself was a rebellious angel. “Night” • Suffering exists through our own fault and it is now up to I shall never forget Auschwitz, a death camp that forever murdered each of us to try and ‘climb up to God’ through doing our my God and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget best to minimize suffering around us these things I saw, never shall I forget. Blessed be God’s name? Blessed because in His Great Might He created Auschwitz and so many other factories of death? Blessed because He caused Suffering is a Test for millions of human beings to die in His mass graves or burn in Making His crematoriums? How could I bless Him as an Almighty Loving This solution was put forward by Master of the Universe? How could I bless Him as our parents, Irenaeus in the 2nd Century and is brothers, sisters and children were tortured and slaughtered day called the Irenaen theodicy. and night? Every fibre in me rebels! • Suffering helps us to grow and Ellie Wiesel3 mature While his parents and siblings were murdered at Auschwitz, Elie Wiesel • Suffering is necessary for us survived to tell his story and dedicate his entire life to working for to be able to become better peace, and, in 1986, was awarded the Nobel Prize. In his Acceptance humans. If we didn’t know Speech he said: what evil was we wouldn’t be If someone had told us in 1945 that, in our lifetime, religious wars able to choose to be good would rage on virtually every continent, that thousands of children • We could not be genuinely good if we were pre- would once again be dying of starvation, or that racism and programmed by God to be good fanaticism would flourish once again, we would not have believed • Therefore God has to allow us to have freewill in order that it. After the war we reassured ourselves it would be enough to read we can really decide our own fate the world a poem, written by a child in Auschwitz, to ensure that no one anywhere would ever again have to endure hunger or fear. A naive undertaking? There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. The Talmud tells us that by saving a single human being, is part of the challenge of the topic. For, however much we, as teachers 4 man can save the world. and adults know that we can never afford to be indifferent to evil, and Wiesel’s incredulity that evil still exists, even after Auschwitz, is an that silence about suffering implies consent to it, it is not the role of an important point. One can imagine, standing with him in the yard academic subject to preach good works. Young people will make up recently liberated by the Allies, thinking that evil was now a thing of the their own minds and come to their own conclusions as to why evil in past. It was inconceivable that it could be otherwise. And, strangely, this all its forms – hidden and beguiling or brutal and unattractive – should not be tolerated. That is not the principle role of these films, although it may provide a valuable undercurrent. There may be times when we are powerless to The principle role is to teach/revise/impart/explore the main thrusts of the various theodicies, so that their taste stays in the mouth of the prevent injustice, but there must never be a time viewer – at least until the exam and hopefully, long beyond! In the films when we fail to protest. the theodicies are powerfully visual.

2 Dialogue Australasia Like great literature, or subliminal stories, the The world isn’t designed for the Activities theodicies were born with imagery attached to maximization of pleasure and the 1. Categorise the following into natural their navels. minimization of pain, but is rather well (moral) evil and non- (non- adapted to the quite different purpose Although nowhere near as popular as they moral) evil: of soul making. The most loving once were, Augustine’s ideas – ‘Privatio parents enjoy providing their children • A spontaneous forest fire in which a Boni,’ ‘The Aesthetic Theme,’ ‘The Principle of pleasures, but at the same time realize young deer is burned and takes several Plenitude,’ ‘Original Sin’ and ‘Soul -Deciding’ there are times when a child must be days to die – raise intriguing metaphysical questions denied immediate pleasure to gain capable of engaging today’s most indifferent • An earthquake that kills tens of greater values, such as unselfishness, of classes. Despite Darwin, could it be that the thousands of men, women and children compassion, courage, humour, reverence world was once perfect and flawless? After for the truth, and perhaps above all, the • The stoning to death of a toddler by two him, in what sense might it still be so? Is evil children aged 10 and 12 capacity for love. the mere absence of good, as darkness is John Hick5 • The deaths of six million children every the absence of light? Why, if everything was year from hunger perfect, did free-willed beings disobey God? Hick’s polished prose provides an attractive ‘solution,’ as all good theodicies do. Yet of • Auschwitz The questions go on and on, prompted as course, questions remain. Does evil always the film suggests, by many a capable critique, • The medieval practice of boiling alive a provide an opportunity for the development of and one of the great strengths of these films cook who poisons their master mercy, sympathy and love, or does it equally is the way in which the students are not just elicit cruelty, hatred and despair? What of the • Allowing every one of your children to ‘left hanging.’ Our subject is often criticized wanton cruelty of nature, or the child whose die when you could have prevented it as being ‘all questions and no answers.’ We pain-filled and short life offers little time for would reply that the skill comes from offering • Animals that kill and eat other animals to ‘growth?’ And doesn’t the world often seem cogent, logical criticisms, in the Socratic survive more like a vale of soul breaking rather than a of testing everything and accepting nothing. vale of soul-making? • A well fed cat who tortures a mouse True, the result may be another set of before killing it impossible questions, but there is a value in The final film in the series is a history of the their asking and a value in their debate. Holocaust as told in images and words. It is • A tsunami, possibly caused by global not offered lightly and it should be shown warming At first glance, the offers a with the greatest of caution. But it is, we more palatable option in our post-Darwinian • Nuclear war hope, a genuine addition to the film because universe. A cynic might say that the idea of • Ice on the road that causes a coach to here – in one engulfing landslide of suffering ‘soul-making’ accords with our individualism crash, killing all of the students inside – evil is perhaps encapsulated. And, more and our heightened sense of self. In any case, than any other, it is the plight of suffering 2. If you were God, list the order in which you students often prefer it! And, while making the humans, albeit through the medium of a film, would prevent the tragedies. film, news came through that John Hick, the that will speak to Year 12 on that Tuesday great British philosopher, had passed away. His 3. Which (if any) of the above would God not morning. Not to shock or cheapen or view as astute, yet systematic analysis of the problem be guilty of and why? a privileged outsider, but to bring the problem of evil in Evil and the God of Love, provides home. And make it as much their problem a) According to the Augustinian Theodicy a dynamic and compelling reformulation of that they will engage with and wrestle with the Irenaean theodicy, bringing this century’s b) According to the Irenaean Theodicy and debate, long after the bell has sounded old idea to life and ensuring that it still carries c) According to you and they have got up and gone on their way. weight today. 4. There are several premises and And so more questions. Are we to agree consequences in both the Augustinian and with Hick that as humans have evolved from Irenaean theodicies (and their modern primitive life forms into more psychologically Nicky Hansell is a Graduate of Trinity reformulations), in addition to the essential complex creatures, so our moral and College, Cambridge and an experienced assumption that God exists, is omnipotent spiritual development should be seen in and that evil is real. They are muddled up. teacher of Philosophy and Ethics. She has the same evolutionary light? The student See if you can identify them with an ‘A’ or been assistant Head of Sixth Form, an who adopts Hick will see the world as a an ‘I’. Are there any of the statements that Oxbridge Coordinator, and is an Examiner and difficult place; a vale of soul making rather can be applied to both the Augustinian and Chief Consultant at Ethics Online. than a lost paradise. If, as per Irenaeus and Irenaean theodicies (identify these with a Shakespeare,’All the world’s a stage,’ then it’s Joe Jenkins has taught Religious Studies ‘B’)? a place where our most valuable potentialities for 30 years and is the author of popular • That humans need to have the capacity are drawn out and developed by the classroom resources. He is currently a teacher for spiritual growth challenges, brutal and distinct, of the play we of Philosophy & Ethics at Hereford Sixth Form find ourselves in. College and Director of Ethics Online. • That the world was created ‘good’

Dialogue Australasia 3 • That God’s goodness couldn’t be better • That man is ultimately responsible for the “Abstracting, decontextualizing and isolating expressed in a `monochrome` or less existence of evil evil is an abiding sin of the ethics brigade, diverse world as if evil were some specific gene whose • That God is ultimately responsible for the toxicity we don our white coats to examine” • That human beings are unaware of the existence of evil George Walden whole picture • That a world of good and evil is the world • That completely content human beings is the best for man’s To order The Problem of Evil and other films would seek something beyond that state moral development and accompanying teaching resources from • Epistemic distance is necessary for free • That humans have not evolved – rather Ethics Online see: www.ethicsonline.com will to exist they are static or have declined Endnotes

• That it will all be ‘alright’ in the end! • That the Adam and Eve story is factually 1 Dewi Zephaniah Phillips, The Concept of Prayer, ‘true’ Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965 • That good humans were still endowed with the possibility of choosing evil 5. Discuss 2 http://geophysics-old.tau.ac.il/personal/shmulik/LisbonEq- letters.htm • That evil is ‘just’ the absence of good “Sometimes I want to ask God why he 3 Elie Wiesel, Night, translated from the French by Marion allows poverty, famine and injustice in the • That a perfectly loving God is happy with Wiesel, first published in France by Les Editions, 1958 world when he could do something about providing a hell into which imperfect it, but I’m afraid he might ask me the 4 Elie Wiesel, Acceptance Speech, Nobel Prize Winner, humans might fall same question” 1986 • It is better to choose to be good than to Anonymous 5 John Hick, Evil and the God of Love, Macmillan and be forced to be good Company Limited, London, 1966

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL Years 10-12

The Problem of Evil is available on DVD for $140 {including delivery} by sending a cheque, or a purchase order to DAN, 34 Douglas Ave, South Perth,WA 6151, [email protected]

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