What do we think of when we consider the end of the world? Nuclear war, robots or computers taking over the earth with humans as their slaves, a meteor strike blocking the earth’s sunlight and causing living things to die, climate change gone awry, exhaustion of the earth’s resources? Or perhaps the devil attacking everyone, pitting brother against brother, inspiring a ruthless dictator, and finally eradicating all human life? Whatever it is, it is probably a mega-nightmare scenario. One imagines oneself, as a mere human being alone, or even in a large family, completely overwhelmed and unable to begin to cope with the life-threatening challenges.
John W. Martens writes that Hollywood movies have repeatedly shown such scenarios on the silver screen, and they attract large audiences. I wonder what attracts people to such movies. They portray the apocalypse, but God is either absent or inactive. A few people fight against it, but evil is well organized, powerful, and relentless. Could it be that many people today can identify with the protagonists in these movies, though perhaps not consciously? Do not many experience life as an ongoing series of unjust and hurtful challenges, threats to their well-being or even their survival? They struggle to get by, and maybe they beg God for help over and over, but it seems there is no response. The struggles of our small lives are certainly not the apocalypse, but like the people in the films, we are often beset by suffering and evil and cannot find a way out of it.
If struggling people are theologically minded, they find themselves racking their brains about why it happens, why God does not help, what they might be doing wrong in their relationship with God. Or they may wonder why God allows suffering. Why doesn’t God do something to stop evil actions that are hurting people? These are questions about the area of theology called theodicy. And they may be the toughest theological questions of all. To be sure, questions about the Trinity, or about how Christ can be both fully divine and fully human, encounter profound mysteries and lead us to a contemplative silence; they can be answered only a little at a time, and only in part. But the questions about God, suffering, and evil arise from a heart full of anguish. They tear at our faith in an age when faith seems weak anyway. We may wonder: What did Christians say about these questions in the early days of the church, a time of persecution and missionary expansion when faith was strong? Can the church fathers and mothers offer us any convincing answers?
The purpose of this book is to show some of the different answers that church fathers and mothers found to these kinds of questions. The chapters are written by authors with different perspectives, and they discuss different perspectives among the early Christians. So by reading them, we can approach the questions of theodicy from a variety of angles. Perhaps each one of us can find at least the beginning of an answer that will satisfy our own questioning heart.
The first two chapters are introductions to the book. Paul Gavrilyuk’s essay provides a road map of the theological framework on which early orthodox Christians agreed: God did not create evil, it arose from free choices by people and fallen angels, and God will destroy evil in the end. John Martens then discusses the book of Revelation and other ancient apocalypses. Unlike cinematic nightmares, they end not with Satan destroying humankind but with God destroying evil and restoring paradise.
The rest of the book is about that long period between the beginning and the end, the time in which we presently live, beset by suffering and evil. The chapters are arranged historically. A number of them are about how Christian people responded to suffering, while others discuss how God responds to suffering in the human world he created. James Skedros examines the early martyrs and describes how the church in later generations learned from their examples. John Behr explores Irenaeus’s teaching that people can learn from their own wrong choices, sufferings, and mortality so that they turn to God. Here we also see how God oversees people’s educational process as they learn to serve him, so that finally death brings their sinfulness to an end: they share in the resurrection and become God’s likeness. Dennis Quinn discusses Lactantius’s writing to show how some in the early church saw persecutions in the “pagan” Roman Empire as caused by demons and saw Constantine as called by God to defeat those evil spirits. In Gary Anderson’s essay, we see three Syrian theologians offering different explanations of how Christ gets rid of the debt people owe because of their sins. Nonna Verna Harrison then discusses how three Greek theologians had differing analyses of the causes of social injustice.
The next two chapters focus on John Chrysostom’s use of Scripture to address the problem of suffering. Douglas Finn examines on how Chrysostom found strengths in Job that enabled him to endure great suffering with integrity and made him an example that others can follow, while Nonna Verna Harrison discusses the strengths Chrysostom saw in the man born blind (John 9) and commends his critique of discrimination against people with disabilities. The following two chapters turn their attention to Augustine. Regina Walton describes how two exemplary women, Gregory of Nyssa’s sister Macrina and Augustine’s mother Monica, each faced death and counseled their loved ones on how to handle their grief. David Hunter then examines Augustine’s changing ideas about the root of sin, earlier as sensuality and later as self-centeredness that fractures human community.
The final four chapters address specific theological and christological questions related to human suffering. Eric Phillips draws on the writing of Theodore of Mopsuestia to discuss how God guides people to let go of bitterness toward those who caused their sufferings and to learn how to wish them good. According to Theodore, God trains people to let go of bitterness and choose good even when they are in hell, with the result that in the end everybody will be saved. Brian Daley’s essay on the christological reflections of four Greek theologians and J. Warren Smith’s essay on the soteriology of Cyril of Alexandria show how the divine Word incarnate as Jesus Christ experienced human sufferings so as to overcome them within himself through divine life and human strength; then he could share his divine life and human strength with other sufferers, enabling them to overcome along with him. In the concluding essay, Bishop Kallistos Ware offers his own perspective on how God suffers, drawing on early Christian and contemporary theologians. He says that God suffers in his love for humankind, yet he overcomes human suffering because his suffering love is active, powerful, and creative.