god incarnate and the defeat of evil

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GOD INCARNATE AND THE DEFEAT

OF EVIL

PAUL A. MACDONALD JR.

Introduction

The project of theodicyso construed as a rational exploration into the ques-tion why God allows evil to existhas been subject to significant theologicalcriticism, particularly in recent years.1 A main criticism goes as follows: as adistinctly theoretical endeavor, theodicy treats evil writ large as an intellec-tual abstraction, or an intellectual problem to be solved, rather than as anempirical reality that actually afflicts individual human lives. Thus, not onlydoes theodicy misidentify the central problemthe experience of those forwhom evil is a lived realityit also seeks to justify (or render comprehen-sible) and thereby implicitly legitimate, evil as a lived reality. A further criti-cism goes as follows: the God who theodicy seeks to vindicate (like the evilit examines) is also an intellectual abstractionthe God of theism or theinfamous God of the Philosopherswho bears little resemblance to the Godof lived religious traditions, and in particular, Christian faith. Unlike theod-icy, Christian theology speaks of an incarnate God who suffers and therebyoccupies what Bonhoeffer calls the view from below, the finite perspectiveof those for whom evil is a lived reality. Thus, according to Kenneth Surin,theodicy in the hands of the Christian theologian must become a theologiacrucis, a speaking-out of the event of revelation, rather than a generalexercise in theoretical justification.2 More recently, John E. Thiel concurs: Atheological account [of Gods relation to evil], unlike a theodicy, will movewithin the language of scripture and tradition; its rationality will be governedby the most basic claims of faith.3

Marilyn McCord Adams, who identifies as both an analytic philosopherand a Christian theologian, also has challenged the traditional project of

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theodicy as variously conceived. More specifically, Adams claims that theod-icy ultimately founders on the rock of horrors, which she defines as evilsthe participation in which (that is, the doing or suffering of which) constitutes

prima facie reason to doubt whether the participants life could (given theirinclusion in it) be a great good to him/her on the whole.4 This class of evilsincludes, for example, rape and dismemberment, extreme psycho-physicaltorture, parental incest, child abuse (of the sort documented by Ivan Kara-mazov in Dostoevskys The Brothers Karamazov), and genocide. What makesthese horrors so horrendous in Adamss view is that our participation in them(either through our perpetrating or suffering them) completely underminesour attempt to make any sense or meaning of them: horrors not only afflicthuman life but actually ruin human life by devouring the possibility of

positive personal meaning in one swift gulp.5

If such evils truly ruin humanlife, and provide prima facie reason to doubt whether the lives ruined bythem are worth living on the whole, then clearly it becomes not only impos-sible but also immoral to justify their existence by appealing to variousmorally sufficient reasons-why, especially the sorts of generic reasons-whythat give horrors short shrift. Even presuming there are sufficient reasonswhy God allows horrors to persist, we are (like Job) simply too immaturecognitively, emotionally, and/or spiritually to grasp them; even possible can-didates for reasons-why that provide comprehensive explanation evade our

powers of identification and conceptualization. Moreover, proffering suchreasons-why for horrors only casts further suspicion on Gods goodness tohuman personhood (both collective and individual), and renders divine gov-ernment of the world at best indifferent, at worst cruel.6

Consequently, Adams also has argued that properly addressing theproblem of evil (for her, horrors in particular) requires making importanttheoretical and methodological shifts. First, she argues that Christian phi-losophers and theologians must abandon the fruitless and even treacherousquest for comprehensive reasons why God allows evil to exist, and instead

refocus attention on the critical question how God defeats evil not onlyglobally but also in the context of individual human lives. (We will exploreAdamss concept of defeat shortly). Second, in addressing that question,Christian philosophers in particular must cease to operate on arid value-neutral (and hence faith-neutral) grounds and instead draw on the richconceptual and doctrinal resources internal to the Christian faith.7 Thus,Adams also argues that a proper Christian approach to the problem of evilmust take the incarnation as a starting point for analysis: if the existence ofevilboth horrendous and non-horrendouscalls into question the nature

of Gods relationship to the world and human persons, and in particularGods goodness to human persons, then a proper articulation and defense ofG d l ti hi t th ld d h t b i h

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The overall goal of this article is to assess Adamss important incarnation-centered approach to the problem of evil in some detail. This is not the firsttime Adamss approach has been assessed critically in the contemporary

literature; and yet, I think her approachupon which she continues toexpand and press in more explicitly theological directionsis importantenough to merit further critical attention, particularly by Christian philo-sophical theologians. Since I already have expressed my sympathies forAdamss general theological method (albeit implicitly), I conduct a criticalanalysis of the content of her project, and in particular, her novel but alsoproblematic theological conceptions of creation, sin, redemption, grace, andeschatological consummation. My further goal is to use my critical analysis inorder to begin to articulate and defend an alternative approach to the

problem of evil that I argue is both immune to the criticisms that I bringagainst Adamss approach and also possesses a higher degree of explanatorypower. More specifically, via my analysis of my Adams, I begin to articulateand defend a privative conception of sin and evil and a model of divinedefeat of sin and evil based on a more classically orthodox incarnation-centered theory of atonement.

Adams on Divine Defeat of Horrors in the Incarnation

Although Adams is clear that she is not in the business of doing theodicy inits traditional form, she still proffers a partial reason why God permits eviland horrors in particular to persist; and this partial reason-why centers onhow God is good to each created person by insuring each a life that is a greatgood to him/her on the whole, and by defeating his/her participation inhorrors within the context, not merely of the world as a whole, but of thatindividuals life.8 The key concept here is defeat: in the case of horrors, it isnot sufficient that the goodness of a horror-participants life merely outbal-ance or outweigh the experienced horror in a relation of additive unity (i.e.

partially or totally cancelling each other out); divine goodness to a horror-participant requires that the experienced horror be organically integrated intothe participants relation to a great enough good. More technically, a horren-dous evil e can be defeated if it can be included in some good-enough wholeto which it bears a relation of organic (rather than additive) unity; e isdefeated within the context of the individuals life if the individuals life is agood whole to which e bears the relevant organic unity.9 By way of illustra-tion, Adams claims that a horror can be defeated within the context of anindividuals life in a manner analogous to the way, for example, in a Monet

painting the ugliness of the bilious green color patches is defeated by theirintegration into the vast beauty of the artistic design.10 The idea here is thatb i t f b i th i it i it t d h h l

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meaningful through positive and decisive defeat, without actually beingeradicated thereby, or being made any less horrendous.

With this philosophical framework in place, Adams deliberately digs deep

into Christianitys richer store of valuables in order further to explaindivine defeat of horrendous evil.11 On Adamss view, no created good (orpackage of created goods) is sufficient to defeat horrendous evil; rather, giventhe depth of horrendous evil, only face-to-face intimacy with God (who isGoodness itself) in the post-mortem beatific vision is sufficient to defeat suchevil. Not only does beatific intimacy with God engulf personal horrors withinthe context of an individuals life; through that unique relationship, Godactually defeats horrors and the suffering they generate by rendering themmeaningful (precisely where they threaten to destroy meaning) within the

context of the individuals own life. How does this defeat take place? Diggingeven deeper into her Christian store of valuables, Adams argues the follow-ing. If it is the case that God in fact participated in horrendous evil throughthe incarnationand specifically the passion and death of Jesus Christ, whois both fully God and fully human, along the lines specified by ChalcedonianChristologythen human participation in horrors and the suffering experi-enced thereby itself become a secure point of identification with the divine.12

Consequently, by virtue of participating in horrors directly in the person ofJesus Christ, God is able to interweave personal participation in horrors and

the suffering experienced thereby into the individuals relationship with God(again, given that horrendous evils and suffering are points of identificationwith the divine). And in so doing, God renders such experiences meaningful,thereby both ensuring that the individuals life is a great good to him/her onthe whole, and defeating the individuals participation in horrors within thecontext of his/her life:

God in Christ crucified cancels the curse of human vulnerability tohorrors. For the very horrors, participation in which threatened to undothe positive value of created personality, now become secure points of

identification with the crucified God. . . . Once again, I do not say thatparticipation in horrors thereby loses its horrendous aspect: on the con-trary, they remain by definition prima facie ruinous to the participantslife. Nevertheless, I do claim that because our eventual postmortembeatific intimacy with God is an incommensurate good for humanpersons, Divine identification with human participation in horrorsconfers a positive aspect on such experiences by integrating them intothe participants relationship with God.13

Adams admits that horrors are certainly not experienced as any less horren-dous, or recognized as any less horrendous (let alone experienced or recog-

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tion with the divine. And yet, she does make the further provocative claim thatfrom the postmortem vantage point of heavenly beatitude, victims of horrors,seeing then that their suffering was indeed a point of identification with the

divine, and thereby rendered meaningful (even while occurring), will notwish those instances of suffering away from their life histories. Perpetrators ofhorrors, seeing then that God, in Christ, became a blasphemy and curse forthem (and hence also identified with them, at least symbolically), will be ableto accept and forgive themselves; they also will be reassured as well ascomforted that God, through both engulfing and defeating the horrors thatthey perpetrated against their victims, miraculously has been able to forcehorrors to make positive contributions to Gods redemptive plan.14

Before moving on to consider more closely how the incarnation makes

possible divine defeat of horrors in Adamss account, it is important tosummarize and note a few other main features of that account. First, horror-defeat occurs through positive meaning-making: for each individual partici-pant, God interweavesthrough incredible resourcefulness and aestheticimaginationthe experience of horrendous evil (which is prima facieruinous of human life and meaning-making capacities) into a relationshipwith Gods self qua Goodness itself, a feat made possible because the Son ofGod incarnate participates directly in horrors particularly through his passionand death. Second, in order for divine defeat of horrors to be successful

within the context of each and every horror-participants life, it is necessarythat those participants see for themselves and enjoy the incommensurate goodof relationship with God, which includes recognizing and appropriating (intheir post-mortem careers) the ways in which God resourcefully and imagi-natively has rendered participation in horrors positively meaningful forthem. Third, as already may be clear, in order for divine defeat of horrors tobe successful within the context of each and every horror-participants life, itis necessary that both victims and perpetrators be saved by God, and henceexperience beatific intimacy with God. Thus, Adamss approach is avowedly

universalist in scope.

Adams on the Stages of Divine Horror-Defeat

In her most recent book, Christ and Horrors: The Coherence of Christology,Adams offers a more theologically nuanced description of the process ofdivine defeat of horrors, which unfolds in three main stages.15 In Stage-Ihorror-defeat, God converts human participation in horrors into occasions ofpersonal intimacy with God; this occurs objectively in the incarnation itself,

and hence within human history itself. In Stage-II horror-defeat, God healsand rehabilitates our meaning-making capacities so that we can begin to

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defeat, God brings horror-participation to an absolute end, and this happyending occurs when the relation of embodied persons to our materialenvironment is renegotiated so that we are no longer radically vulnerable to

horrors.16

We now need to consider the most important features of each ofthese stages of horror-defeat in more detail.According to Adams, the soteriological value of Gods becoming incarnate

is that through that act we are saved, primarily, not from sin, but rather, fromhorrors. Sin, for Adams, so understood primarily as something we do, is asymptom and consequence of a much greater problem, rooted in the humancondition itself: on Adamss view, God has created us as radically vulnerable tohorrors. In line with Gods assimilative aim in creationGods wanting thematerial world to be as Godlike as possible while still being other than

GodGod makes chemicals and stuffs dynamic, plants and animals vital,human beings personal.17 Human beings crown Gods creative, assimilativeefforts: but as embodied persons, personal animals, and enmatteredspirits, we straddle (very uncomfortably, as it were) the psychical and thematerial/biological. Thus, there is a metaphysical mismatch within humannature itself.18 Moreover, there is a metaphysical mismatch between humanpersons and the material world as we inhabit it, which is characterized byreal or apparent scarcity, driving us to engage in a Darwinian struggle tosurvive. Finally, there is a metaphysical mismatch (the greatest of all) between

human persons and the divine (the metaphysical size-gap) which in turnrenders communication [between human persons and the divine] difficultand trust hard to win.19

Adams repeatedly admits that by creating us as metaphysical straddlers(which entails letting us evolve into embodied persons) God has indeed setus up for participation in horrors: so the problem of horrors is rooted notprimarily in what we do but in who we are. We are fundamentally incompe-tent as meaning-makers to achieve functional harmony as psycho-somaticselves living in an environment of real or apparent scarcity; consequently, as

our efforts at higher functioning and meaning-making inevitably breakdown, we find ourselves inevitably participating in horrors that are primafacie ruinous of human life. But God does not entirely leave us to our owninept devices: Gods unitive aim in creationbeing as close to materialreality as possible, without violating its created integritydrives God toassume a particular human nature in the incarnation. And as we have alreadyseen, it is in the incarnation (now understood as the fullest expression ofGods unitive aim) that God also assumes direct responsibility for horrors inidentifying directly with both perpetrators and victims of horrors, thereby

rendering experiences of horrors meaningful for all those who participate inthem. In so doing, God also solves our non-optimality problems (or the

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low. In the person of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Divine Word not onlyunites Gods self to a particular human nature (the hypostatic union ofChalcedon); the Son of God, the Divine Word, unites Gods self to a particular

human nature qua metaphysically mismatched and hence vulnerable to humanhorrors. This also requires that God, in Christ, develop and struggle as ahuman being (just as we do, seeking functional coordination) in an environ-ment like ours characterized by real or apparent scarcity. Additionallyaswe already have seenGod in Christ must actually participate in horrors,which God does in Christ by living a horror-studded earthly career, cul-minating in Christs passion and crucifixion.20 Thus, not only is Christ anobvious victim of horrors (e.g. one who is betrayed, suffers, and dies a rituallycursed death); Christ is also a perpetrator of horrors within a divinely pur-

posed framework (e.g. one whose birth occasions horrors such as Herodsslaughtering of the innocents, and whose ministry provokes his enemies toprima facie ruinous levels of self-betrayal).

Stage-I defeat also clearly requires that it is God (and no one else or nothingless), in Christ, who participates in horrors. And this in turn requires that therelation between the human and the divine natures in Christ (while them-selves distinct and without confusion, according to Chalcedon) be meta-physical or ontological: the Son of God, the Divine Word, assumes anindividual human nature, and the assumed human nature, including a real

human body, soul, mind, and will, is ontologically dependent on the divinenature as its subject (like accidents are ontologically dependent on theirsubjects in medieval metaphysics).21 Construing the hypostatic union as onto-logical dependence of Christs human nature on Christs divine nature makesGod the author of human acting and suffering (and hence participation inhorrors) in the person of Christ.

If Stage-I horror-defeat occurs outside us in the life, ministry, and deathof God in Christ (objectively and historically), Stage-II horror-defeat prima-rily occurs, as it must, inside us (subjectively and presently) through divine

actionGod helping us, teaching us, and guiding us in our efforts to har-monize the material and spiritual dimensions of ourselves and to makepositive sense out of our lives.22 Adams thinks this sort of divine activitygoes on all the time already, even it happens below the level of our conscious-ness: Gods design for human agency essentially involves functional col-laboration with Divine agency, which has not only the wisdom, power, andresourcefulness to harmonize matter and spirit, but also the pedagogicalimagination to rear us up into conscious and willing participation.23 Thisprocess is sped up and intensified in the case of Stage-II horror-defeat; but the

base model of our working in functional collaboration with the divine, pri-marily Christ as the Inner Teacher, remains.

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human personality recognizes and appropriates many positive meanings inHis human career.24 In other words, it is because Christ recognizes andappropriates these positive meanings for his own horror-participation in his

own human career (given his Stage-I defeat of horrors) that we, in turn, areable to recognize and appropriateif only in an incipient manner in thislifepositive meanings for our own horror-participation in our own humancareers. As Adams also argues, the we here refers most broadly to allmembers of the human race, the Church universal for whom God in Christhas established Stage-I horror-defeat; more narrowly, it refers to members ofthe wrestling Church who are at least inchoately aware that God in Christhas established Stage-I horror-defeat; most narrowly, it refers to members ofthe congregating Church who gather to articulate, celebrate, and reinforce

their belief in Christs Stage-I horror-defeat, as well as members of themissionary Church who proclaim the message of Christs Stage-I horror-defeat to the world at large.

That Adams locates the beginning of ante-mortem Stage-II horror defeatwithin the Church is important, because a principal ante-mortem site whereStage-II horror defeat begins to occurand hence where positive meaning-making with God in our own lives begins to take place in this lifeis ourparticipation in the Eucharist. Given the crisis of meaning horrors pose forthose who participate in them, and given that positive meaning-making

with God is the antidote to horror-participation, then it makes sense thatGod would continue to meet us as embodied persons as an embodiedperson Gods self in the Eucharistic bread and wine of the altar. Thus, theEucharist becomes an apt place for horror-participants to begin to learnthe meanings: to enter into even deeper recognition of how Stage-I horror-defeat is accomplished through Christs Incarnation and passion, andthereby to take some steps towards Stage-II horror-defeat.25 In particular,by hypostatically uniting Gods self to the bread and wine natures (viaimpanation), or assuming those natures, just as God assumed a human

nature in Christ, so God in Christ makes it metaphysically possible for usto interact with Christ as with other embodied persons: to reach out forcomfort, to ingest for nurture, to strike out in anger and confusion, to graspand hold with desire, to gaze and gasp with amazement and awe.26 Thus,rather than remaining aloof, God once again presents Gods self to us in theEucharist by actually re-incarnating there, continuing to identify with usand hence availing Gods self to us as we engage with God in positivemeaning-making activities.

Adams agrees that horror-defeat must unfold largely after death, given that

deathitself a horrendous evil, one that we all inevitably faceputs a defini-tive end to meaning-making, cutting our efforts both individually and col-l ti l t li th t i l ( d h b G d lik ibl )

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ence horrors, so too must our post-mortem life be embodied so that God canbring about Stage-II as well as Stage-III horror-defeat (the latter of whichoccurs entirely post-mortem) in the context of our individual human lives. In

particular, Stage-III horror-defeatalready procured and anticipated byChrist as crucified and risenrequires that God recreate and place us in ahorror-free zone as wholly functional, integrated selves (those in whomanimal functioning [has been] domesticated into personal housing) nolonger vulnerable to horrors.27 This not only rules out hell as a place wherehuman persons continue to endure horrors, given that ante-mortem horror-participation is hell enough; more positively, it requires that we enjoy optimalrelations with God (including bodily vision of Gods own body) as well aswith one another (enjoying heavenly table fellowship with friends).28 More-

over, ultima facie defeat of horrors that are prima facie ruinous of personalmeaning entails deriving or downloading overwhelming personal mean-ings for our individual lives from the beatific intimacy we enjoy with Godand others, thereby allowing us to engage in resourceful meaning-makingactivities with God and others both retrospectivelylooking back over thecourse of lives as horror-participantsand ongoingly, since eschatologicalrelationship with God and others knows no end.

The Problem of Evil and the Problem of Sin

Having detailed the most important features of Adamss overall approach,we now need to conduct the requisite analysis. At the heart of Adamssincarnation-centered theodicy is the claim that God becomes a human beingnot in order to save us from sin, but rather, to save us from horrors. Horrors,she says, are the more fundamental problem. By nature, we are bad at achiev-ing functional integration with ourselves, with our environment, and withGod; consequently, like toddlers running amok without direct supervision,

we inevitably, despite our best intentions, find ourselves perpetrating andhence being victimized by horrors. Thus, we remain at best partially respon-sible for the suffering that we cause and what we ourselves suffer; in fact, theprimary responsibility remains with God, who Adams repeatedly claims hasset us up for horrors by creating us (or, more specifically, allowing us toevolve) as metaphysically mismatched, with non-optimality problems builtin to our created natures. In part, the language Adams employs here isunfortunate: she is adamantly clear that it is entirely consonant with Godsassimilative and unitive aims (her cosmological hypothesis) to create us as

metaphysically mismatched personal animals. So even if Gods assimilativeaim is prima facie self-defeating (given that we all inevitably participate inh ) G d iti i hi h d i t d l i ti ith



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willingness and ability to orchestrate horror defeat that provides a partialexplanatory reason why God permits horrors to persist.29

However, the problem of Gods setting us up for horrors remains.30 That

God would willingly engage in a project that is prima facie self-defeatingremains prima facie mysterious, if not altogether contradictory. The obviousquestion, to start, is why would God do this? On one level, Gods decision tocreate us as metaphysically mismatched is simply uneconomical. Precisely inorder to avoid enabling as well as eventually having to clean up the incrediblemess and devastation of our individual and collective horror-strewn histo-ries, why wouldnt God instead altogether avoid predisposing us towardshorror-participation from the start: creating us without built-in metaphysicalmismatches, non-optimality problems, and hence horror-vulnerability, pre-

suming God is able to do so? Moreover, on another level, why wouldnt Godwant to do this? Even more pointedly: shouldnt God do this? Thus, Godsdecision to create us in a metaphysically mismatched condition as vulnerableto horrors still seems less than commensurate (if not altogether incommen-surate) with perfect goodness, even if, on Adamss account, God is bothwilling and able to orchestrate horror defeat by incarnating Gods self andreintegrating horror-participation into ongoing and unending relationshipwith God.

Adams seems at best partially attuned to these real theological concerns, in

large part, because she remains preoccupied with horrors, and finds it evenmore implausible and problematic that God would not assume primaryresponsibility for horrors in the act of creation itself. According to Adams,classical free-fall theodicies that attempt to place primary responsibility forsin and consequently evil on human rather than divine agency fail for tworeasons: first, our inability to conceptualize horrendous evil means that wecannot be held fully responsible for perpetrating it (we know not what wedo); second, the most salient causes of horrors lie outside our deliberatecontrol in human nature itself as well as the environment, which God pro-

duces and for which God therefore bears the primary responsibility. Conse-quently, Adams rejects the traditional theological concept of a historical fallfor which human persons are directly responsible; she also rejects as wildlyunrealistic what she takes to be an overly inflated anthropology that equipshuman persons with incompatibilist free willthe sort of robust agency andfree will that enables human persons to perform a radical free fall fromgrace in the first place.31

And yet, Adamss reasons for rejecting both a historical fall and an accom-panying anthropology that places responsibility for the fall squarely on

human shoulders are far from convincing. First, the fact that we are unable toconceptualize the full depth of horrendous evil (we know not what we do)i t l li bl i t f h fi it d d di i i h d t d

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sin and willful self-deception. (I will expand on this claim shortly). Second,Adams unfairly caricatures the agency attributed to prelapsarian humanity.There is nothing wildly unrealistic about attributing human persons with

the capacity to sin and thereby also introduce evils (both horrendous andnon-horrendous) into the world: sin and evils for which they remain prima-rily responsible. Surely, God is responsible to the extent that God endowshuman persons with the capacity to sin, and places them in an environmentwhere they can sin; but in endowing created humanity with this capacity andplacing them in this environment, God was not exempting them fromprimary responsibility for its misuse.32 Nor, in endowing created humanitywith this capacity was God overstuffing human agency or created humanitygenerally. In line with Gods goodness and overall creative aims, God gave

created humanity exactly what it needed so that it could freely remain in rightrelationship with God, directing its entire self (all of its capacities and ener-gies) on Godwhich, in the prelapsarian state, was not arduous but easy. Infact, in this state, knowing and loving God was the easiest, most enjoyable,and freest thing created humanity could do. In making us this way, God wassetting us up not for horrors but rather for right relationship with God!

Consider, then, the following alternative (and I would argue, more tradi-tional and defensible) state of affairs. Since God is good, or Goodness itself,all that God creates is good. All of the created order, and hence all of material

reality, naturally expresses Gods goodness in its own way. More specifically,God creates human persons as conjoined to God as the Good, in a right andordered relationship with God, in a state of original justice. It was neverGods intent that that relationship be disturbed, let alone ruptured. Not only,then, was Gods will in creating the world directed solely on propagatingGods own goodness; our created wills were directed solely on propagatingGods own goodness, insofar as our created wills were directed solely on Godas the Source and Fount of that goodness. At bottom, then, if God is good, allthat God creates is good, and all created free agents are bent on doing the

good, then ultimately there is no answer to the question why evil exists,because there is no answer to the question why sin exists, that is, why humanbeings in particular freely, yet inexplicably, defected from God as the SupremeGood in the first place. As Augustine and Aquinas, for example, both argue,since God created us as good and for good, then there is no efficient (positiveor essential) cause for sin, only a deficient cause. Thus there remains nojustifying or explanatory reason for sin. It remains a contradiction, an absur-dity that remains entirely unjustified.33

This suggests, first, that evilso understood as rooted in sinnever has

been part of Gods good plan or will for Gods creation, and hence remainsopposed to Gods good plan or will for Gods creation. It was brought (and

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of being and goodness (privatio boni), or an utter lackof being and goodness,what contemporary Orthodox theologian David Hart provocatively calls anontological wasting disease.34 Evil was (and remains) an intrusion into the

created order, violating and corrupting the inherent goodness of the createdorder itself.35

Central to this traditional account, then, to start is a robust concept oforiginal sin, itself a privation of the original justice that in our primordial stateenabled us rightly to relate to God, one another, and ourselves.36 Even thoughhuman beings were created in a state of original justice, they inexplicablyrefused to retain that privileged status by maintaining a just will. As a result,all human beings, who are implicated in this primal fall not by their ownactions but by virtue of possessing a common nature, lack the requisite

ontological constitution or integrity (of both soul and body) to resist com-mitting sin and evil. Moreover, as a result of lacking that same originalontological constitution and integrity, we human beings are unable to bufferourselves against sin and evil. Badly aligned not only with ourselves (that is,internally) but also with others and our environment, we are simply leftvulnerable before the evils, both moral and natural, that inevitably infect andriddle our lives as well as the world. Thus, as fallen creatures, we are bothinordinately disposed to perpetrate evils (e.g. acts of malice and violence) aswell as suffer evils (e.g. disease), evils now understood as the most destruc-

tive consequences or effects of sin. Viewed from this theological perspective,therefore, the problem of evil is really a problem concerning who we havebecome as fallen creatures. Evil, both horrendous and non-horrendous, issimply an expression or effect of sin, or how sin most perniciously manifestsitself. In short: sin is the original horror (in fact, the horror of all horrors)insofar as it ruptured right relationship with God and hence ruptured cre-ation itself, rendering all of creation broken.

It remains a mystery on this account, of course, why sin and hence evilhappen in the first place; moreover, it also remains a mystery how original

sin, so construed as a fundamental ontological deficiency or privation,becomes constitutive of each and every created human nature in its postlap-sarian condition. Now, I take the former mystery to be inexplicable for adecisive theological reason: to affirm with Augustine and his classical heirsthat there is no efficient (positive or essential) cause for sin is to refuse toafford sin and evil any intrinsic or rational purpose in creation. Qua priva-tions of being and goodness, sin and evil remain without any theologicaljustification. I take the latter mystery to be essential to the Christian faith forsoteriological reasons (as Aquinas says, the more grievous the sin, the more

particularly did Christ come to blot it out) as well as for sheer explanatorypower, given that it provides the most compelling account of our inevitable

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horrors in the first place. So I take this mystery that Adams embraces con-cerning Gods creative purposes to be more theologically suspect and hencedifficult to defend than the mystery concerning the propagation of original

sin and our shared fallen naturea mystery and doctrine which, we shouldadd, has received novel and robust defenses within the history of Christianthought.38

There is also the mysterysome might say, the problemconcerning whensin occurred and entered the world and human history in the first place. Aswe have already seen, Adams denies a historical fall, traditionally conceived,so that she can locate our predisposition to horror-participation (what wecould deem original sin for her) in the human being as created, or evenmore specifically, as evolved. Thus, she thereby avoids having to locate the fall

as traditionally conceived within human history: in some sense, the fall wasalways in us from the beginning, whenever the human being appeared inthe process of biological evolution. However, Adams cannot renounce ahistorical fall entirely, or fail to include it in her own theological anthropology.On her modified account the fall (analogously understood) occurred whenpurely material beings (the human beings more immediate ancestors) atsome point in the course of evolutionary history came to possess a humanpsyche and thereby also began to straddle the metaphysical boundary of thematerial and the spiritual, or animality and personality, thereby becoming

radically vulnerable to horrors. Consequently, while Adams can deny oneversion of the fall, she cannot deny any historical fall altogether.

Adams might claim in response that she is not obligated to locate this fall(coming to possess an internal metaphysical mismatch) anywhere in particu-lar in the evolutionary process; she need only affirm, for her theologicalpurposes, that it occurred. But again, if this is the case, then her accountpossesses no more explanatory power than the traditional account that I amdefending. First, this account is, like Adamss, completely compatible withevolutionary biology, to a certain degree. God allows the human being to

develop through an autonomously existing order of secondary causes, orevolutionary process, and then, through a special act of divine power, crownsGods creative efforts by infusing the soul and furnishing the human beingwith the special grace of an original justicea state of harmony rather thandysfunction. Second, this account also affirms that a historical fall occurs inour primordial state, but for theological purposes, does not retain any obli-gation to state precisely when it occurred (because how could it?). It simplystates that it occurred, and how it occurredan inexplicable refusal by thefirst human beings to retain a just willthereby also offering major critical

leverage for better understanding our present ontologically wounded anddegraded condition, which we retain as a result of the fall.39

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since goodness is controvertible with being, such that a good thing attains (ornearly attains) the perfection, or fullness of being, that is proper to it, then evilis also a privation of beingwhat Aquinas defines as a lack of that which a

thing is designed by nature to have but does not have.40

Evil, then, does notretain its own independent existence (what could it exist as?) but only sub-sists, or inheres, in good things. Thus, evil primarily resides in humanpersons as a privation in the will, a will that fails to conform to the will ofGod, as expressed in an objective moral order that promotes human flour-ishing and guards against human degradation. Evil resides in actions, soconstrued as actual good things, as a privation of order in relation to the sameobjective moral standard. Evil persons and evil actions also cause evils, andhence privations, to reside in others. Personal injury or bodily harm, inflicted

by a privative will via privative moral action, is a privation of proper personalor bodily functioning, and therefore a deprivation of being (or full humanflourishing), a phenomenon most dramatically exemplified in death. Naturalevils, such as disease, too, are privations, even if they are not caused bypersonal moral agents. Moreover, pain, while not an evil in itself, accompa-nies and signals an underlying privation, so construed as mental or bodilydysfunction. And yet, pain, too, also can cause a privation when it is soexcruciating so as to disrupt normal mental and bodily functioning.41

Therefore, far from failing to capture what is essential to horrors, a priva-

tive conception of evil, which I take to accompany a classical view of creationand the fall, actually explains on an even deeper level why horrors in particu-lar are prima facie ruinous to human life. Drawing on particular conceptualand symbolic schemes (the purity and defilement calculus, the honor code,and the category of the aesthetic), Adams claims that horrors in particulardefile and stain, shame and hence degrade,aswellas deform and devalue the livesof those who participate in them, and it is because horrors afflict and ruinhuman lives in precisely these ways that human lives are left destitute ofmeaning. But Adams provides no further explanation as to why horrors

afflict and ruin human lives in these ways. So when she claims that horrorsdefile, stain, shame, degrade, deform, and devalue our humanity, what is itabout horrors that she is endeavoring to conceptualize and symbolize?

There is an answer to this question on the traditional view that I amarticulating and defending here: evil and horrors more specifically deprive usof meaning because, first and foremost, they deprive of us of being.42 Or putanother way: they create a crisis of meaning for us (and they surely do that)first and foremost because they create a crisis ofbeing in us. For example, wedegrade ourselves by committing demoralizing and dehumanizing crimes

against others because (and here is the explanation) we cause privation inourselves; and we are degraded by others as victims of the demoralizing andd h i i i th it i t b ( d h i th l

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of evil is not only existential but also ontological in the following sense: evilinfects and corrodes not only our meaning-making capacities but also ourbodies, minds, wills, and actions, which, by virtue of being infected with evil,

lack the being and goodness that is due to them.43

Thus, in concluding this section, I claim that a more traditional view ofcreation and the fall is superior to Adamss view on several counts. First, itdoes not make God complicit in evil and horrors, because it denies that Godsets us up for participation in horrors. Second, this account explains (even ifonly partially) why human beings are vulnerable to evil and horrors withoutmaking evil and horrors an inevitable consequence of our created design.Third, it does not grant evil and horrors any genuine ontological status orfoothold in creation, and hence rightly recognizes Adams claim that evil and

horrors possess no intrinsic positive value and hence are prima facie ruinousof human life.

Divine Defeat of Evil in the Incarnation

In light of our evaluation of Adamss anthropological claims, we now need toevaluate her Christological and soteriological claims. To start, I agree withAdams that radical problems require radical solutions. If God is going todefeat evil for us as we experience itthat is, individually, and not just glo-

ballyin both its horrendous and non-horrendous forms, then it seems thatGod must unite Gods self to us in being, not just will, in order to effect therequisite positive change or transformation: first, in the humanity of Christ,and second, in our own humanity via the ongoing agency of Christ (and Iwould add, the Spirit of Christ). Moreover, on Adams view, God defeatshorrors by healing us precisely where we have been wounded by evil, par-ticularly in those aspects of our lives where we have participated in horren-dous evil. In particular, in Stage-I and Stage-II, God procures positive,personal meaning and subsequently engages with us in meaning-making in

order to bring about healing within the context of our own lives. But if, as Iargued in the previous section, loss of meaning is merely a psycho-spiritualsymptom or manifestation of a greater privationa genuine loss of being inusthen it seems meaning-making cannot itself suffice as the main mecha-nism of divine defeat. Here, again, Adamss intuition is right: healing indeedneeds to occur in us, but how? Fortunately, there are rich resources in both thepast and present of Christian thought for answering this question.

Consider first Saint Athanasiuss classical defense of the incarnation as therequisite means by which God effects our salvation:

[An objector will say that] if God wanted to . . . save mankind, He mighth d t b Hi W d ti f b d b t H



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demanded to be healed, it followed as a matter of course that the Healerand Savior should align Himself with those things that existed already, inorder to heal the existing evil. . . . It was not things non-existent that

needed salvation, for which a bare creative word might have sufficed, butmanman already in existence and already in the process of corruptionand ruin. . . . You must know, moreover, that the corruption which hadset in was not external to the body but established within it. The need,therefore, was that life should cleave to it in corruptions place, so that,just as death was brought into being in the body, life also might beengendered in it.44

In this passage, Athanasius defends the incarnationthe Words assumption

of a bodyas the necessary means by which our bodies, subject as they areto corruption and death as a result of sin and the fall, are healed and thereforerendered incorruptible. Moreover, Athanasius claims that nothing short of theincarnation will do: since corruption is internal to the body, and not external toit, then salvation also must be wrought within the body, rather than externalto it. So while divine fiat is a sufficient means for creating human beings, it isnot a sufficient means for redeeming human beings. God recognized thatlife should cleave to [the body] in corruptions place, so that, just as deathwas brought into being in the body, so life also might be engendered in it.

Extrapolating Athanasiuss argument here for our present purposes, we canargue the following. In order to defeat evil, God must heal and purify us ofevils corrosive effects on our nature, and this is something that God cannotdo from the outside, so to speak (again, divine fiat is insufficient to effectthe requisite defeat). God must actually indwell our nature; in the incarnation,divinity comes into ontological contact with humanity through the hypo-static union, and it is through that contact that we human beings are healedand purified so that, in Athanasiuss words, life should cleave to [us] incorruptions place.

In order better to understand this alternative conception of divine defeat ofsin and evil, consider also the recent work of Kathryn Tanner, and specificallyher book Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity.45 Influenced in particular by earlychurch (especially Greek patristic) theologians, Tanner advances a brief sys-tematic theology based on a robust metaphysical conception of the Trinity asself-diffusing Goodness, or the giver of all good gifts whose intent increating the world and ongoingly relating to the world is to bestow thosegifts on itand more specifically, on human persons as creatures of Godateach major stage in salvation history: creation, covenant, and salvation in

Christ. What prevents the communication of divine beneficence is humanrebellion and resistance against God, or human existence under the condi-ti f i hi h th t l ti hi t it lf b th it f

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signifies Gods ultimate defeat of sin and all of the negative consequencesand effects of sin that plague human life as a result of sin. Thus, In unionwith God, in being brought near to God, all the trials and sorrows of life

suffering, loss, moral failing, and oppressive stunting of opportunities andvitality, grief, worry, tribulation and strifeare purified, remedied, andreworked through the gifts of Gods grace.46

The incarnation is the primary site where God defeats sin and communi-cates the life-renewing attributes of divinity to us because it is in the incar-nation that God relates to us most directly. And God accomplishes thisbecause it is again in the incarnation that divinity and humanity are hypo-statically united. It is God, the Son of God or the Divine Word, who assumeshumanity in Christ, making humanity, and specifically the humanity of Jesus,

Gods own. And yet, on Tanners view, the assumption of humanity bydivinity in Christ does not happen all at once: her soteriologically-drivenChristology is low enough to recognize that insofar as Jesus human lifeunfolds historicallyand hence, is characterized by the usual historical con-flicts and historical processes of human life as we moderns conceive itthen Gods assuming the humanity of Jesus also unfolds historically, andhence occurs over the whole course of Jesus life and death.47 Moreover,Gods assuming the humanity of Jesus is a conflictual process, insofar as thehumanity God assumes suffers from the effects of sintempted, anxious

before death, surrounded by sufferings of all kinds, in social conditions ofexclusion and political conflict.48 Since the goal of the incarnation is tosuffuse humanity with divinity, and humanity suffers from the effects of sin,then the Words assuming or bearing of all of this in Christ means a fightwith it, a fight whose success is assured by that very unity of the human withthe Word, but a genuine fight nonetheless where success is not immediate butmanifests itself only over the course of time.49

Tanners insights here are not remarkably new, but they still bring crispfocus to a more classically orthodox conception of how God defeats sin, and

hence the evil that results from sin, in the incarnation. First, God in Christdefeats sin and evil because God in Christ suffers the effects of sin, or whatwe identify as the evils that define so much of our experience as fallen humanbeings: anxiety and fear before death, culminating in existential crisis anddeath itself on the cross, rejection, exclusion, and of course pain and torment,both mental and physical. And while Gods suffering in Christ threatens todefeat God, or swallow up divinity itself, God in fact saves as God suffers:because divinity is hypostatically united to humanity in Christ, God in Christdefeats rejection as God experiences rejection. God defeats physical pain and

torment as God is caused physical pain and torment (via sinful human acts).God ultimately defeats death as God dies, and consequently lives again (viab i t d f th d d) A d G d d f t ll f th i f l ff t



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causes the divinization of humanity in a happy exchange of divine andhuman powers, a communication of properties, the interpenetration ofhuman and divine, in and through Jesus acts.50

My claim here is that the happy exchange of divine and human powersthat Tanner identifies (really, in line with much of the Christian theologicaltradition) as the soteriological effect of the incarnation constitutes a fullyadequate model for how divine defeat of evil, including horrors, takes place.Like Adamss model, this model adopts and employs a classical Chalce-donian Christology that is at once metaphysically high and materiallylow (since, as Gregory of Nazianzus argues, what is not assumed is nothealed); like Adams model, this model also understands divine defeat ofhorrors to entail divine healing of human participation in evil and horrors,

first, in the human nature of Christ, and subsequently in our own natures.Furthermore, it understands this healing to entail nothing less than fullhorror-reversal: being purified of any and all ontological contaminationthatis, the horrendous effects of our participation in evil and horrors within ourown natures. Thus, I argue that in the incarnation, God goes farther in orches-trating the defeat of evil than Adams imagines. Via the incarnation, God notonly procures new, positive meaning for us but actually confers new, positivebeing on us, so that we may share in the very attributes of divinity that aloneare capable of liquidating the privative effects of sin and evil on our lives.

The model of incarnation that I am pressing into the service of a genuinelyChristian theodicy (that is, a theodicy that truly has become theological) isthus superior to Adams model in another important respect, which weshould make more explicit. It fully explains how God defeats not only horrorsbut evil more generally in the incarnation, in the sense that God in Christdivinizes humanity precisely where there is ontological privation in human-ity as a result of sin: in the mind, body, and will. Now, that God in Christsuffers from these privative effects in Christs own humanity does not andneed not jeopardize Christs sinlessness. Christ can be vulnerable to priva-

tions such as intense pain and suffering (or more accurately, the privationsthat intense pain and suffering signal and cause), and actually experienceintense pain and suffering just as we do, even if the source of this vulner-ability is not human fallenness.51 Moreover, Christ can be tempted to commitprivative, disordered moral acts given that Christ possesses a human will thatoperates independently of his divine will, and hence sometimes comes intoconflict with his divine will (especially in Christs human development),even if it never overrides the divine will. Here, the privation lies in the conflictChrist experiences in being tempted, as he brings his divine and human wills

into alignment. Now, this is not to say that the privations Christ experiencesare not horrendous: Christs excruciating suffering and death on the cross, as

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severe degradation and diminishment of human functioning and flourish-ingthat exist in us, and are caused in us, both naturally and as a result ofdisordered moral acts that are committed against us.

On this model, it also remains the primary soteriological job of God inChrist to save human beings from sin, rather than horrors; but salvationunderstood as divinization also serves as the mechanism of divine defeat ofthe evil and horrors in which sinful human beings participate. So again, giventhe explanatory power of this model, we need to ask: why should we followAdams in subverting the classical Christian claim that God becomes incar-nate in order to save and hence heal us from the corruption in our natures thatsin causes? And given that humanity is divinized in the incarnation, whatother sort of healing do horror-participants and participants in evil more

generally need? How else can or should divine goodness towards horror-participants be shown? Furthermore, why should we follow Adams on thedangerous theological path of making Christ not only a victim of horrors butalso a perpetrator of horrors, even if, on Adamss view, Christ perpetrates or(less problematically) occasions horrendous events purposefully rather thanmaliciously? It is quite sufficient to say, as I have been arguing, that Christsuffers from a wide range of the effects of sin precisely as we suffer fromthem (both as victims and perpetrators of evil and horrors) without sinningor having to sin. Adamss claim that Christ perpetrates and occasions horrors,

and that Christ actually sinsalbeit humanly, rather than divinely, on herviewonly impugns Christs divinity and once again makes God in Christcomplicit in evil and horrors.52

Divine Defeat of Evil in Individual Human Lives and the Eschaton

Adams also argues that divine defeat of horrors (Stage-II) requires that Godheal and coach our meaning-making capacities so that we can recognize andappropriate the benefits of the incarnationthat is, the positive meanings

latent in our horror-participation that God in Christ procured for us. Divinedefeat of horrors (Stage-II) requires, therefore, that we participate with God,or Christ the Inner Teacher, in meaning-making. So while Christ is constantlyat work in us as the Inner Teacher, helping us to coordinate spirit andmatter, and influencing our meaning-making processes so that we can rec-ognize and appropriate divinely procured positive meanings for our partici-pation in horrors, it remains our responsibility to cooperate, to subjectourselves to divine pedagogy.53 But now we need to ask: what guarantee dowe have that this process in fact will be carried out effectively, since we

remain free not to participate with Christ in meaning-making; free to removeourselves from the meaning-making process at any point, whether pre-

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persons who are constitutionally or developmentally unable to participate?54

Adams seems convinced that God possesses all of the pedagogical resources(including time, both pre-mortem and post-mortem) necessary to raise all

human persons up into conscious and willing participation with God in thecollaborative process of meaning-making so that Stage-II horror-defeat, andsubsequent Stage-III horror-defeat, will be freely and universally embraced,rather than forced. But on her view, is such an unreserved optimism reallywarranted?

When pressed, I suspect that Adams would reply that God has to defeathorrors in the lives of each and every human being (since we all inevitablyparticipate in horrors) because God is responsible for setting up each andevery human being for horrors in the first place.55 Anything less than uni-

versal salvation and horror-defeat is incommensurate with divine goodnesstowards created human persons. But we have already found ample reasonsto reject Adamss claim that God set us up for horrors, which at the very leastmeans that God is not obligated to orchestrate universal horror-defeat, evenif, I contend, it remains Gods unabated will to orchestrate universal horror-defeat (as well as the defeat of evil more generally), and that this is preciselywhere divine goodness towards created persons is made manifest. However,I also remain convinced that God does not and will not (and perhaps cannot)save us or defeat evil and horrors without our free consent; divine grace

works for human agency rather than against it. And while this claim in itselfdoes not rule out universal salvationin fact, it is entirely consonant withitit certainly should temper our certainty concerning it. Of course, lack offull certainty on our end does not entail lack of full certainty on Gods end;from the divine perspective, we should hope, divine victory over evil andhorrors is already secure. So what, then, are we entitled to claim about thescope of this victory? Since God did defeat evil in the incarnation by divin-izing Christs human nature and hence healing it of the privative effects ofevil (and this claim remains an object offaith), then we do have every reason

to hope (the requisite theological virtue here) that God will accomplish thesame in each and every human being.56 In short: universalism, rightly under-stood, is indeed a central component of an incarnation-centered theodicy,even though it is not entailed (logically or causally) by it.

Now, as Adams rightly recognizes, an incarnation-centered theodicy mustnot only maintain that divine defeat of evil for individual persons occurseschatologically, but also maintain that it occurs presently, however fragmen-tarily, on this side of the eschaton and life before as well as after death. OnAdamss model, the mechanism at work here is both meaning-making and

functional coordination with the divine, since divine defeat of horrors withinthe context of our own lives requires that God pull us together in harmonious

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making or functional collaboration but rather through the grace that Godoffers us; a grace that communicates at least aspects of the relevant attributesof divinity to us, particularly divinizing goodness and power, as healing

balms for the ontological woundedness caused in us by our participation inevil. Thus, I also see no reason to abandon the classical insight, which hasalways informed the life of Christs Church, that God dispenses grace andhence divinizing goodness and power to us not only through the theologicalvirtues, which set us on a direct trajectory towards our supernatural beati-tude and eternal life with God, but also through the sacraments of the Church:tangible, material means in and through which God meets and heals us.

My differences here with Adams are more than mere points of emphasis.Consider, for example, her curious treatment of the Eucharist, or Christ in

the meantime. Adams defends a strong doctrine of the real, corporeal pres-ence of Christ in the Eucharist because on her view participation in theEucharist (which, for her, must be open and permissive) is a primary ante-mortem site where positive meaning-making with God occurs. In meetingGod in the Eucharist, we bring the confusion and pain of our horror-participation, and Godsimply by virtue of being materially present with usagain and again, all the way through our consumption of the bread andwineacknowledges that confusion and pain, thanking and consoling us forenduring it, as well as helping us recognize and appropriate the positive

significance of Gods act of solidarity with us in the incarnation.Now, presuming that this developmental process even takes place (and it

seems like a stretch to say that it does take place in actual Christian churchesand communities), the salvific effects of Eucharistic participation still seemobscure. The grace that we receive from God through consuming theEucharistic bread and wine is a positive meaning, that is, a better, surer gripof the positive significance of our own horror-participation in light of Godsown horror-participation. Where and how, then, does actual healing in ournature take place, beyond whatever therapeutic resolve and comfort we may

receive? In contrast, I contend that if God is, in fact, present in the bread andwine of the altar, then in receiving the bread and wine we also receivedirectly the divine gifts and specifically the divinizing goodness and powerthat God gave directly to the humanity of Jesus in the incarnation. It is byrepeatedly receiving the Eucharist, and hence repeatedly consuming thedivinized body and blood of the re-incarnated Christ, that our own humanitybegins to be suffused with Christs divinity; and the evil that degrades andthreatens to devour us, immediately within the context of our lives, isdefeated as we begin to be divinized.

That God would seek to orchestrate divine defeat of evil in this life throughChrists Church may strike some as excessively exclusivist, perhaps event i h li t D t di i d f t f il d h i Ch i ti



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into every human being in order to help us coordinate spirit and matter andmake positive sense of our actual participation in horrors; and I see everyreason to affirm as well, albeit in a different way, that the Spirit of Christ in

particular is relentless in drawing every human being, at every stage of life,into the fullness of life with Christ, since it is life with Christ that divinizes andhence heals us. Again, it remains the will of God to save and hence heal everyhuman being from participation in evil, and God will not stop until Godreaches this end. Empirically, of course, this fact is difficult to verify; wesimply dont see, or at best seldom have glimpses into, the work of God indefeating evil. Hence, given this fact (which I take to be an indication ofhuman resistance to divine efforts to save, rather than an indication of divineindifference or unwillingness to save), we do need to follow Adams in

extending the trajectory of divine defeat of evil beyond the grave. Catholicdoctrine suggests the following: Gods goodness to human beings in the faceof evil drives God to afford us post-mortem opportunities to overcome sin,grow in grace, and thereby be purged of the privations that afflict us as Goddraws us closer to Gods self. Again, the incarnation shows us that it is unitywith God, and specifically unity with Christ, and nothing less that saves andheals us.

There is a final component of Adams account that we need to analyze. ForAdams, Stage-III horror-defeat requires that God finish the collaborative

process of harmonizing spirit and matter in us, since in this life spirit andmatter run interference in us, making us radically vulnerable to horrors. Inthis life, the personal is allowed to spring up in the household of thematerial, but the material ravages it. In the age to come, Divine love formaterial creation will express itself by domesticating the material into thehousehold of the personal so that persons do not becomeby intimate asso-ciation with itradically vulnerable to horrors.57 This sort of domesticationyields optimal, harmonious bodily as well as an animal flourishing; by beingfurther domesticated into the divine household, we flourish even more in

optimal, harmonious relations with God (beatific intimacy in particular) aswell as one another in a bountiful material environment. Here, Adams clearlyunderstands eschatological defeat of horrors to entail an ontological trans-formation: if horrors are to desist, then God must reconfigure our very nature(our whole nature, body and soul) so that we become incapable of participat-ing in horrors, or radically invulnerable to horrors.

Now, it is still not at all clear on Adamss view how or why the incarnationin particular is necessary to procure Stage-III horror-defeat. As we havealready seen, Athanasius is sensitive to the objection that the incarnation is

unnecessary to procure our salvation: why cant God save human beingssimply by willing their salvation, via an extrinsic exercise of divine power,j t G d ill d th i t i t ? A l l Ad i

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special act of incarnation? In particular, since triangulated functional collabo-ration with the divine, or cooperating with divine efforts to coordinate spiritand matter in us, is the natural and normal state of affairs, or part of our

normative design on Adamss view, then why is the incarnation in particular,rather than a more general act of divine intervention more fitting with thenatural and normal state of affairs in fact necessary to effect Stage-III horror-defeat?58 Athanasius argues, and I have been arguing throughout, that Godsnormative design for created humanity has been corrupted, and that in orderfor that corruptionthat evilto be healed, God must bring all of the powersto divinity to bear not only on us but in us. Thus, the incarnation becomesnecessary, insofar as God desires to heal what has been hurt and save whathas been lost.

I suspect that Adams would reply as follows: the evil that needs to behealed does lie within us, since there are inherent metaphysical mismatchesin our nature, the root of our vulnerability to horrors, which God canrealign only by becoming human and beginning to recreate the humanityto which God unites Gods self. But even presuming this is the case, andStage-III horror-defeat does require incarnation, Adams still must answerthe same important theological question that I initially posed in my analy-sis: why is the incarnation necessary for Stage-III horror-defeat, when God couldhave made us radically invulnerable to horrors from the start? In other words, it

seems that God could have accomplished much if not most of what Adamsconceives of as Stage-III horror-defeat at creation. In fact, I have alreadyargued that God did do so: at creation (or, we certainly could add, througha creative process), God equipped us with all of the requisite capacitiesinthe requisite alignment and harmonious working orderso that we couldand would freely remain in right relationship with God, and hence neverexperience the horror of sin. In this created state, we remained radicallyinvulnerable to horrorsthat is, presuming we remained, willingly buthappily and easily, in right relationship with God. The incarnation becomes

necessary, then, not so that God can remove the evil that God placed withinus, but so that God can remove the evil we brought (and continue to bring)upon ourselves.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I argue that although Adams rightly focuses Christian philo-sophical and theological attention on the problem of evil in its mostintractable form, and offers a provocative, fresh, and important incarnation-

centered approach to the problem of evil, she raises more critical questionsthan she answers, especially where she departs significantly and often inex-

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classically orthodox theological context. In fact, I take such a concept to befoundational. Thus, ideally, my analysis has opened up theoretical possibili-ties for further exploring and constructing an alternative Christian theodicy

founded on a more robust theological conception of divine defeat of evil inthe incarnation.59

NOTES

1 See, for example, the authors cited below. Stewart Sutherland also talks about thoseuncomfortable with the ambitions of speculative theodicy (p. 486) in Evil and Theology,in Leslie Houlden (ed), Companion Encyclopedia to Theology (London: Routledge, 1995), pp.472489.

2 Kenneth Surin, Theology and the Problem of Evil (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), p. 142.

3 John E. Thiel, God, Evil, and Innocent Suffering: A Theological Reflection (New York: Crossroad,2002), p. 3.

4 Marilyn McCord Adams, Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God (Ithaca, NY: CornellUniversity Press, 1999), p. 26.

5 Ibid., pp. 2728.6 Ibid., p. 31.7 See Marilyn McCord Adams, Problems of Evil: More Advice to Christian Philosophers,

Faith and Philosophy, 5 (1988), pp. 121143.8 Adams, Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God, p. 55.9 Ibid., p. 28.

10 Ibid., p. 21.11 Adams defends this methodological move in Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God,

in Marilyn McCord Adams and Robert Adams (eds), The Problem of Evil (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1991), pp. 209221, in particular p. 220.

12 Adams first defended this view in Redemptive Suffering: A Christian Solution to theProblem of Evil, in Robert Audi and William J. Wainwright (eds), Rationality, ReligiousBelief, and Moral Commitment: New Essays in the Philosophy of Religion (Ithaca, NY: CornellUniversity Press, 1986), pp. 248267; and then later in Chalcedonian Christology: A Chris-tian Solution to the Problem of Evil, in Stephen T. Davis (ed), Philosophy and TheologicalDiscourse, rev. ed. (New York: St. Martins Press, 1997), pp. 173198.

13 Adams, Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God, pp. 166167.14 Ibid., p. 167.15 Marilyn McCord Adams, Christ and Horrors: The Coherence of Christology (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2006).

16 Ibid., p. 48.17 Ibid., p. 39.18 Ibid., pp. 3738. Drawing in particular on the work of Mary Douglas, Adams claims that

these metaphysical mismatches make us metaphysically unclean before God. See in particu-lar chapter five of Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God, Purity and Defilement, pp.86105.

19 Adams, Christ and Horrors, p. 38.20 Ibid., p. 69.21 For an excellent recent treatment of various accounts of the metaphysics of the incarnation

in medieval philosophical theology, see Richard Cross, The Metaphysics of the Incarnation(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

22 Adams, Christ and Horrors, p. 151.

23 Ibid., p. 161.24 Ibid., p. 189.25 Ibid p 282

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29 Ibid., p. 40.30 William C. Placher accuses Adams of collapsing the categories of finitude and sin or making

sin constitutive of our created nature; the classical Christian tradition, by contrast, assertsthat created humanity (and hence finitude) is good. See William C. Placher, An Engagement

with Marilyn McCord Adamss Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God, Scottish Journal ofTheology, 55/4 (2002), pp. 461467. In response, Adams claims to be unrepentant regard-ing her ontologizing of sin. She also asserts that creation is good insofar as it is orderedthe way God wants it, insofar as the creatures function (do and are) what God made them todo and be (Marilyn McCord Adams, Horrors in Theological Context, Scottish Journal ofTheology, 55/4 [2002], pp. 468479, and in particular pp. 472473).

31 For her specific claim that the classical portrait of incompatabilist-free moral agency iswildly unrealistic, see Adams, Horrors in Theological Context, p. 475.

32 I am not denying here that the action of sin is caused by God, only that God is the cause ofsin itself. Or, we could say, the act of free will is caused by God but its misuse (the deformityof the action) is attributed to us, or our own free will.

33 Augustine, who arguably remains the most authoritative defender of this position in the

tradition, explains and defends it as follows: Let no one, then, seek an efficient cause of anevil will. For its cause is not efficient, but deficient, because the evil will itself is not an effectof something, but a defect. For to defect from that which supremely is, to that which has aless perfect degree of being: this is what it is to begin to have an evil will. Now to seek thecauses of these defections, which are, as I have said, not efficient causes, but deficient, is likewishing to see darkness or hear silence. Both of these are known to us, the former by meansof the eye and the latter by the ear: not, however, by their appearance, but by their lack ofany appearance (Augustine, De civitate Dei 12.7, in R. W. Dyson [ed and trans], The City ofGod Against the Pagans [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998]). Aquinas reinforcesthe Augustinian position: regarding the cause of sin; Aquinas writes, the liberty of the willitself, thanks to which it can act or not act, suffices for this (Aquinas, Quaestiones disputataede malo 1.3, in John A. Oesterle and Jean T. Oesterle [trans], On Evil [Notre Dame, IN:

University of Notre Dame Press, 1995]). For a more recent defense of the Augustinian andmore specifically Anselmian position against Adams, see Katherin A. Rogers, The Aboli-tion of Sin: A Response to Adams in the Augustinian Tradition, Faith and Philosophy, 19/1(2002), pp. 6984. Adams reiterates and clarifies aspects of her position in response to Rogersin Marilyn McCord Adams, Neglected Values, Shrunken Agents, and Happy Endings: AReply to Rogers, Faith and Philosophy, 19/2 (2002), pp. 214232.

34 David Bentley Hart, The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami? (Grand Rapids, MI:Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005), p. 73.

35 Charles C. Hefling makes a similar series of claims in Christ and Evils: Assessing an Aspectof Marilyn McCord Adamss Theodicy, Anglican Theological Review, 83/4 (2001), pp. 869882.

36 See, for example, Aquinas, who defines original sin as an inordinate disposition, arising

from the destruction of the harmony which was essential to original justice, even as bodilysickness is an inordinate disposition of the body, by reason of the destruction of thatequilibrium which is essential to health. And again, original sin denotes the privation oforiginal justice, and besides this, the inordinate disposition of the parts of the soul (ThomasAquinas, Summa theologiae I-II.82.1 and I-II.82.1 ad 1 in Fathers of the English DominicanProvince [trans], Summa Theologica [New York: Benziger Bros., 1948]).

37 Aquinas, Summa theologiae III.1.4.38 For an excellent recent review of some medieval defenders of the doctrine of original sin

(including Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas), see Peter King, Damaged Goods: HumanNature and Original Sin, Faith and Philosophy, 24/3 (2007), pp. 247267. In his treatiseOriginal Sin, Jonathan Edwards expounds on a classical corporatist account of humannature by defending a conception of continuous personal and corporate identity, held

together by the immediate creative agency of God over time.39 I am not assuming polygenism (multiple origins of humanity) here; in fact, all the claims thatI make throughout this essay about the first human beings are compatible with monogenism



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Thomist, 64, no. 2 (2000), pp. 239269. Brian Davies presses a Thomistic conception of God,goodness, and evil as privation into his own response to the problem of evil in The Realityof God and the Problem of Evil (London: Continuum, 2006). Both Lee and Davies haveilluminated my own understanding of evil as privation. Also, to her credit, Adams mentions

the theory of evil as privation in her claim that the problem of evil is fundamentallyontological; but she ends up dismissing it, since she is not invested in any notion of evil asnon-being (Christ and Horrors, pp. 4950).

41 I am indebted here to Lee, who nicely exposits these points in The Goodness of Creation,Evil, and Christian Teaching, pp. 257260.

42 Following Paul Tillich, Adams argues that for the ancients, death was the problem; for themedievals as for both Protestant and counter-reformers, sin was the problem; for modernman, meaning is the problem (Christ and Horrors, p. 205). But there is still somethingstrikingly off-key, theologically speaking, about Adamss (as well as Tillichs) claim here thatmeaningrather than sin or deathis the primary problem to which the incarnation is thesolution. Moreover, dont the problems of sin and death raise the question of meaning, andhence entail, rather than exclude, the problem of meaning?

43 Against John Hick, I therefore argue that the doctrine of evil asprivatio boni makesremarkablesense of our experience of evil, and in fact enforces rather than undermines the way in which,empirically speaking, evil is a positive and powerful forcea positively and powerfullydestructive forcein our lives. For Hicks analysis of the doctrine of evil as privatio boni, see

John Hick, Evil and the God of Love, rev. ed. (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 5358.44 Athanasius, De Incarnatione Verbi Dei, in a Religious of C.S.M.V. (trans and ed), On the

Incarnation, rev. ed. (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimirs Seminary Press, 1998), chapter 7, section44.

45 Kathryn Tanner, Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity: A Brief Systematic Theology (Minneapolis,MN: Fortress Press, 2001).

46 Ibid., p. 2.47 Ibid., p. 26.

48 Ibid., p. 28.49 Ibid.50 Ibid., p. 30.51 As Oliver D. Crisp argues, fallenness inevitably seems to entail sinfulness; and the tradition

has always upheld that Christ is without sin. Relying on Augustine as an authority, Crispclaims that Christ is sinless and yet possesses a human nature affected by the Fall . . . . Butexemplifying the effects of the Fall is not same as being fallen (Oliver D. Crisp, Divinity and

Humanity: The Incarnation Reconsidered [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007], p.116). Aquinas says something similar: the penalties, such as hunger, thirst, death, and thelike, which we suffer sensibly in this life flow from original sin. And hence Christ, in orderto satisfy fully for original sin, wished to suffer sensible pain, that He might consume deathand the like in Himself (Summa theologiae III.1.4 ad 2).

52 Hans Boersma raises this point against Adams in his review ofChrist and Horrors in ModernTheology, 24/1 (2008), pp. 134137. Adams explicitly claims that we do not need to take ona commitment to Christs utter human sinlessness (Christ and Horrors, p. 79) since Godsaves through Gods divine nature (which is sinless), and identifies with us in Christshuman nature. Again, I think these claims create intractable Christological problems: ifChrist sins in Christs human nature, and Christs human nature is hypostatically united toChrists divine nature, then it still must be true that God sins in Christ.

53 Adams, Christ and Horrors, pp. 162163.54 Andrew Chignell explores a version of this question in The Problem of Infant Suffering,

Religious Studies, 34 (1998), pp. 205217. Chignell argues that since infants and children donot possess meaning-making capacities, or sufficiently developed meaning-making capaci-ties, then their participation in the worst evils cannot be defeated. Nevertheless, Chignell

also argues that since their participation is not horrendous according to Adamss technicaldefinition (it cannot be because infants and children do not recognize it as such), it still canbe balanced off or engulfed by beatific intimacy with God. I am more concerned, however,

184 Paul Macdonald


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55 Adams writes, For God to succeed [at horror-defeat], God has to defeat horrors for every-one (Christ and Horrors, p. 230).

56 For a further defense of this view, see Hans Urs von Balthasar in David Kipp and LotharKrauth (trans), Dare We Hope That All Men Be Saved?: With a Short Discourse on Hell (Ft.

Collins, CO: Ignatius Press, 1988).57 Adams, Christ and Horrors, p. 219.58 Ibid., p. 161.59 I am thankful for helpful feedback provided by an anonymous reviewer on a previous

version of this essay.



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god incarnate and the defeat of evil

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