I cannot begin to measure the amount of time I have spent over the years in conversations about the “problem of evil.” That problem, in short, is the impossibility of reconciling an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good God with the presence of suffering, injustice, and evil in the world. Those conversations often involve listening to a deeply felt pain. “Why does God allow…?” runs the refrain. The impossibility in the conundrum suggests that something is wrong in the question – or that there is no God.
The answer is that there is no such God.
The French philosopher, Paul Ricoeur, once described three men as the “Masters of Suspicion”: Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud. The term well describes their efforts to undermine the hidden motives of classical thought. Freud dismissed God as nothing more than a parental projection. Marx saw economic motives in religion, the “opiate of the people.” Nietzsche’s critique is too complex to explore in this setting. However, these men are but weathervanes in a cultural drive that has consistently sought to replace “God” with our own efforts. The serpent’s whispered suggestion, “You shall be like gods” echoes down through the centuries. My contention is that the Masters of Suspicion, and their many lesser figures, have all been arguing against a “straw God,” that is, a God who not only does not exist, but does not resemble the God Whom Christians properly worship. And, I should add, many Christians frequently forget this to be the case. We try to defend the God who is not there. We generally come up short and frustrated.
So, Whom do we worship?
St. Paul boldly wrote:
“For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” (1 Cor. 1:22–25)
“And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” (1 Cor. 2:1–2)
In recent times we have this wonderful declaration by Fr. Thomas Hopko, of blessed memory:
I believe we have only one thing to offer, and it is Christ as Christ really is. I think that’s what Orthodoxy really is. It’s a conviction about Christ as Christ really is. And that’s the Christ of the Holy Scriptures, the Christ of the sacraments, the Christ of the services of the Church, the Christ of the development of theological doctrine, it’s Christ as Christ is. And here Christianity, we have to remember always, is – all theology, the word of God – is for Orthodox Christians, stavrology [stavros=cross (Gk.)]. I like to say that theologia is stavrologia….The word of God is the word of the Cross. We witness to, preach, confess, make a defense of, Christ and Him crucified, as being the power of God and the wisdom of God….And that’s all we have to give and all we need.
In another place Hopko says:
The Cross for us is not God concealing Himself. God is revealed on the Cross, not concealed.
I have particularly drawn from Fr. Thomas’ words as a touchstone of Orthodoxy. Typical of his work – these are statements that are definitive in character. “The word of God is the word of the Cross.”
It remains, however, to think about what this means.
It would seem that, for many, the “God” whom they imagine is the God of the philosophers with the Crucified Christ as an interesting historical interlude. In the worst of such treatments, “God” is pictured as punishing His only Son for our sins. Christ becomes the victim of the Father.
However, we do not know God apart from Christ. It is Christ who has made Him known.
No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him. (John 1:18)
It is worth considering that even in the opening chapters of Genesis, the God in Whose image we are made is none other than the Crucified Christ. Thus, as the Fathers and the liturgies note, Adam is caused to sleep, and from his side Eve is fashioned. It is according to the image of Christ, who “sleeps” in death on the Cross, whose side is pierced. Blood and water flow from His side from which His bride, the Church, is fashioned. This is no accident, nor a mere coincidence of creative interpretation. This is how the Church reads the Scriptures.
There have been plenty of efforts across the Christian centuries to impose the philosopher’s God (or worse) on the Church. Christ says to the authorities:
You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. (John 5:39)
We read the Scriptures through Christ that we might see Christ and, in Him, be transformed. The transformation that we seek is to be conformed to the image of His crucifixion.
I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless, I live; yet, not I, but Christ lives in me. And the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. (Gal. 2:20)
More than anything, Christ Crucified is a revelation to humanity that God is love. However, it teaches us that love is not coercive. The philosopher’s God is expected to selectively coerce, controlling evil and rewarding the good. The scandal of the Cross is that it reveals the weakness of God who, in love, suffers Himself and His creation to endure evil, “overcoming evil by doing good” (in the words of St. Paul). It is not the God that many imagine themselves to want. It is, however, God as He has made Himself known.
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