ilosophy of Religion 2 4 : 3 - 2 0 (1988) uwer Academic Publishers

Evil and moral agency

R.Z. FRIEDMAN

Department of Philosophy, University College, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada MSS 1A1

The problem of evil surfaces, or so it would appear, in the confrontation between philosophy and religion in their historical roles as antagonists in a long struggle for a single coveted goal - the truth. With the problem o f evil, philosophy goes on the offensive, interrogating religion and apparently finding a problem of which religion was unaware, a problem so damaging that it undermines religion's claim to the truth. "Look round this universe," Hume's Philo admonishes Demea, as if Demea never had, "What an immense profusion of beings ... How insufficient all o f them for their own happiness! ... The whole presents nothing but the idea o f a blind nature, impregnated by a great vivifying principle, and pouring forth from her lap, without discernment or parental care, her maimed and abortive children!'1 "Is [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able?" Hume asks, invoking Epicurus' formulation o f the problem, " t h e n is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil? ''2 The problem o f evil so formulated appears to put the theist on the horns o f a dilemma: He must give up the goodness o f God or the goodness o f His creation, and to do either, in the eyes o f the critic, is to admit, as Mackie contends, the rational indefensibility o f theism, a conclusion from which the theist can escape only by a "rejection o f r e a s o n " ) Religion under attack rouses itself from its "dogmatic slumber", accepts the Epicurean formulation o f the problem, and erects a theological fortress o f a rather predictable kind, a theodicy, a defense o f God against the charge o f evil. This argument takes the form: God is

omnipotent; God is wholly good; evil exists but it exists for a good purpose, such that one might say that if perceived from the correct perspective evil is, in some sense, good. Hegel argues, in effect, that when one abandons the individual and subjective point o f view one sees that the world is, as Leibniz puts it, the best o f all possible worlds and is moving toward the realization of good. Such is the "cunning o f Reason", or perhaps one might say the cunning o f God, that evil is the chrysalis out of which good emerges. 4 With this, religion seems to sink back into its slumber, but its fortress is more like an intellectual Maginot Line. In an attack which is moral in tone as well as content, Hume argues that anyone who has been to a hospital knows there are evils out of which comes no discernible good. Hume is right, but the problem o f evil is more complex than his analysis allows. The theist's inability to defend God against the charge of evil might be thought to constitute an admission of the rational indefensibility of the religious position as such and the denial of the applicability of moral categories to nature. But Hume's analysis and others like it serve to deny not only God but evil as well, which may be victory bought at too high a price, for it may deny the possibility o f moral judgements. Neither defender nor critic wins the day. Patterson Brown is struck by the odd character of the problem of evil. "Some persons are convinced that the evils of this world undermine theism," he notes, "while others are no less sure that those evils form one of the very cornerstone of Christian belief. It is indeed a singular situation where the selfsame evidence is used to support incompatible theories. ''s This singular situation, Brown notes, is also present in the position of the theist who denies evil in order to defend God and affirms evil in order to make intelligible the contention that God's redemption is precisely a redemption from evil. "There is obviously something logically odd about the problem of evil, some critical point which we have yet uncovered. ''6 Brown finds this point in an analysis o f 'religious morality', specifically in the way the term 'good' is understood. I think that what needs to be uncovered, however, is something broader, the conceptual framework out of which the concept of evil and the problem o f evil emerge. This paper is a contribution to that endeavour. It is neither a theodicy nor a critique of God and religion based on the presence of evil in the world. Both positions are, if not internally contradictory, then as I shall demonstrate in Sections II

and III, seriously flawed. The flaws in each point to a c o m m o n centre, however, namely moral agency, and it is with this that I am most concerned. Part IV finds in the Book o f J o b an insight into the problem of evil superior to those o f the theodicist and the anti-theodicist. Formulated within the context o f Scripture, the problem o f evil is not an embarrassing accident but an integral element within religion's attempt to establish a view o f man as a moral agent in a natural and hence amoral universe. The Book o f J o b points to the problem o f evil as an inevitable and insoluble problem within religion's attempt to establish moral agency.

II Theodicy is most successful where it is least necessary and least successful where it is most necessary. Theodicy is most successful in the socalled free-will defense, the defense of God against the charge of moral evil, the evil that human beings bring about through the exercise o f the will. It is least successful in its defense of what is usually called natural evil, the evil that human beings endure as a consequence o f human conduct or o f natural phenomena. According to the free-will defense, which finds its textual basis in the account o f the Fall in Genesis, evil is the necessary pre-condition o f the possibility o f choice. If man cannot choose evil he cannot be understood to choose at all. Hence the presence of evil in the world is compatible with the existence and goodness o f God. This is theodicy at its strongest. Even here, however, theodicy is not without its problems. Mackie argues that the free-will defense establishes the need to assume evil only as a condition of free choice but not as a consequence o f free choice. 7 The agent, in this way, can demonstrate the goodness or evil o f his choice without actually carrying out the action. The theist finds this an unacceptable limitation on the intent of the free-will argument. Freedom o f choice, in the theist's view, is the cornerstone o f the understanding of man as a moral agent but it is not the whole of that understanding. The moral agent is not understood merely to choose and not act but is, rather, understood to choose to act. "To create creatures capable o f moral good," Plantinga argues, God "must create creatures capable o f moral evil: and He can't give these creatures

6 the freedom to perform evil and at the same time prevent them from doing so. ''s The theist recognizes that the Fall establishes man's ability to choose something, not merely the ability to choose to choose. But in this way the theodicist is drawn from the rel~itive safety of the freewill defense to the more tenuous defense of natural evil. And it is here, in the defense of natural evil, that theodicy fails. I present my argument in four points. First of all, theodicy fails because it is clear that there is natural evil which is unjustifiable or irredeemable. An example: Children die from starvation in Africa. In the West these deaths are either ignored or accepted as part of the natural order of things. Suddenly the situation dramatically worsens; there is widespread drought and famine, complicated in certain regions by armed conflict. The number of children dying from starvation increases; one report, let us say, puts the figure at 100,000. The Western media pick up the story and, goaded by pictures of emaciated and dying children, people being to act and help begins to flow. The theodicist might argue that this illustrates how evil is actually an instrument of good. He might argue that as a result of this mass starvation fundamental problems in food distribution and agriculture will be addressed, production will be increased and, in the long run, more children will be saved than will die. Perhaps he has a point. But then, let us say, the situation worsens, not dramatically but noticeably. The death toll will not be 100,000 as predicted but 101,000. Will this increase actually serve to proportionally boost the amount of aid? Would 100,000 dead not 'do the job' of 101,0007 Would the impact on the world's moral sensitivities have been less h a d only one atomic bomb been dropped, or if only one Nazi death camp had been put into operation? The theodicist must show that not only does good come from evil but that there is no more evil in the world than is absolutely necessary to provide the context out of which good comes, that there is no unjustifiable or irredeemable evil. The theodicist cannot do this. Two. Theodicy depends on the contention that good consequences flow from evil, but this requires an insight into God's purposes and intentions which strikes me as an anthropomo~hization of God. The theodicist finds it easy to say, for instance, that if this child died there must have been a good reason for it. Perhaps God wanted us to be more attentive to the needs of medical research, or perhaps He wanted us to be more appreciative of what we have such that we will live with a

deeper appreciation for life, or perhaps He wanted to bring together those who mourn their dead to better experience the c o m m o n humanity that lies beneath their superficial differences and inevitable frictions. The theodicist's God is something o f a parent or teacher who wants His children or students to grow and is not afraid to give them that adversity that is the leaven of personal growth and maturity. In this vein, Swinburne argues that a creator who allowed men to do little evil, who "gave them only coughs and colds, and not cancer and cholera, would be a creator who treated men as children instead of giving them real encouragement to subdue the world. ''9 The theodicist in this case must believe that there is evil in the world, that God needs this evil, but that He uses it only for the very best o f reasons, and that w e can k n o w what these reasons are. Even if one could so easily attribute motives and purposes to God, would a wise teacher o f man give him the task o f conquering cancer when he has yet to demonstrate an ability to conquer the cough and the cold? Would a concerned Governor o f the Universe give a creature who has not survived the test of the rock and the spear a nuclear b o m b ? The theodicist defends God by putting Him 'on the couch' and showing us God as a parent who uses evil like a strap for the benefit o f his children. But can man so readily put God on the couch and still claim that He is God? Three. T h e theodicist argues that God produces good through natural evil, that even the suffering of the innocent has a beneficial consequence in some way to someone at some time. The end, in other words, justifies the means. Yet this is the complete antithesis of the moral task which religion gives to man. As moral agents we are enjoined to do unto others as we would have them do to us, a principle Kant believes to be identical to the moral law, one formulation o f which is "Act in such a way that y o u always treat humanity ... never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end. ''1~ But as theodicists we are to accept the idea that God simply uses human beings as means through which good is brought into the world. This forces a certain hypocrisy on the moral agent - he must judge his actions according to one principle and God's according to another. Furthermore, this duality of principle may well constitute a confusion within the moral knowledge of the agent. If he, as agent, must accept the principle o f respect for humanity while acknowledging that God 'subscribes' to the principle that the end justifies the means, then

8

might he not wonder whether his commitment to do good conflicts with the good that God intends to accomplish? Might the agent not wonder whether by doing good he actually inhibits the greater good that God might realize in the world had he chosen to do evil? Indeed the agent might lose hold of his moral understanding altogether, for it might prove to be an inadequate guide to conduct. Four. In the third criticism above I have pointed out that the theodicist may come into conflict with that morality which is also part of the religious position. This criticism could be more damaging than the first two, for it points to an internal contradiction in the theodicist's position which he can escape only by giving up either theodicy or morality. I wish to advance this line of criticism here. Theodicy undermines the contention, central to the morality of Scripture and religion, that man knows the difference between good and evil. Hegel responds to the charge that the good fare poorly while the wicked prosper by arguing that the fate of "isolated individuals cannot be regarded as an essential element in the rational order of the universe." "The actual world," which is not identical to the world we see and experience, he argues, "is as it ought to be ... God governs the world, ''11 In this view, the charge that evil exists in the world turns on a consideration of the standpoint of the one who makes the charge, raising the question, in effect, how much of the world does that individual, or any individual for that matter, see and for how long? According to this view, the more one sees and the longer one sees it the more one must become convinced that the world is the best that it can be and is moving toward the realization of good. Evil, then, is understood to be in the eye of the beholder who mistakenly believes that the little he sees for the short time he sees it is an accurate indicator of the nature of the totality of things which he does not see. Theodicy requires the individual to abandon his particular standpoint and adopt a higher or broader one. From this point of view the agent is not to shun evil but to appreciate that evil is the chrysalis out of which good comes, that the isolated individual with his moral complaint about evil in the world is himself only a moment, an element, through which good is realized. But is evil so conceived evil? Or is it good? Ought the ordinary individual to insist on his knowledge of good and evil as a guide to his choices and actions or ought he to avail himself of the standpoint of theodicy which presents itself as not only different but higher and closer to the truth than the individual point of view?

I return to the African example. Should I do something to aid the starving children of Africa? It seems to me that I am under an obligation to help them. But then, perhaps I should not merely think of this from my own standpoint as a particular moral agent but from the standpoint of theodicy. And what I see from this latter standpoint is, not surprisingly, remarkably different. I see not the horror of evil but its benefits. I might conclude that the best thing I could do about the starving children of Africa is let them starve, for more good may come out of this negative act than any contribution I might make. Perhaps the situation in Africa is part of God's attempt to make the West aware of Africa's plight in general, or the need for a re-allocation of resources to feed the hungry, or the need for a continent-wide campaign to transform agriculture, or perhaps what is happening in Africa is the beginning of a vast migratory process which will produce a better distribution of the world's population. As an individual in possession of the knowledge of good and evil I ought to act to alleviate the suffering of the innocent, but as a theodicist perhaps I ought to accept the power of evil to produce good and allow the process to run its course without my 'interference'. The theodicist's claim that evil produces good and is therefore not really a challenge to the existence and goodness of God may undermine the claim, central to that tradition which gives rise to this defense of God, that man knows the difference between good and evil. Another example: "A world without evils," Swinburne writes, "would be a world in which one could show no forgiveness, no compassion, no self-sacrifice. And men without that opportunity are deprived of the opportunity to show themselves at their noblest. ''12 If Swinburne is right, perhaps we ought not to lament the bad things that happen to people but think such people fortunate to have exceptional opportunities to achieve heightened states of nobility. I am reminded of the theist in H.J. McCluskey's "God and Evil" who must not welcome but rather "regret the discovery of the Salk polio vaccine because Dr. Salk has in one blow destroyed infinite possibilities of moral good. ''13 If we arrive at this point, and the logic of theodicy may force us there, we find ourselves in direct conflict with the view of moral agency contained in the Fall, that man having eaten of the forbidden tree is in possession of the knowledge of good and evil.

10 III It is difficult to speak of what I call, after Swinburne, the anti-theodicist position as a defined and determinate entity, for it is a position defined in opposition to another position, that of theodicy. The antitheodicist, who as such has nothing to defend, has more flexibility in the conduct of his attack than the theodicist has in the defense of his position. It is, therefore, difficult to speak of the 'archetypal antitheodicist position' or the common thread in this position other than to say that whereas a theodicy argues that evil is, in some sense, good, and that the goodness and the existence of God can be preserved against the charge of evil, anti-theodicy argues that given the presence of evil in the world the theist cannot argue that God exists or that if He exists He is good and worthy of worship. The presence of evil, the antitheodicist argues, constitutes a denial of God. In the preceding section I argued that theodicy seeks to defend the goodness and the omnipotence of God but does so at the expense of undermining moral agency. In this section I shall argue that anti-theodicy, paradoxically, encounters some of the same difficulties. Like theodicy, it establishes conclusions which have negative implications for our understanding of moral agency. I return to David Hume, whose position is as close to an archetype as I can find. I return to the quotation from Dialogue Concerning Natural Religion. Philo instructs Demea, the hapless though well-meaning theist: Look round this universe. What an immense profusion of beings, animated and organized, sensible and active! You admire this prodigious variety and fecundity. But inspect a little more narrowly these living existences, the only beings worth regarding. How hostile and destructive to each other! How contemptible or odious to the spectator! The whole presents nothing but the idea of a blind nature, impregnated by a great vivifying principle, and pouring forth from her lap, without discernment or parental care, her maimed and abortive children. 14

Think what you may about 'design' and the theodicy design facilitates, Demea, the truth of the matter is, according to Philo, that when you look at the world, what you see is life propogating and exhausting itself without the benefit of intelligence or order. Human beings are

ll not part of a well-ordered whole about which they ought to marvel. Observation reveals them to be maimed and abortive children, products of a blind nature. Evil, Hume argues, is not an accident or a flaw to be explained away by theodicy. Rather, evil is an essential feature o f the world as we experience it. Evil is irreducible and unexpungeable. Manicheanism, Hume suggests, is perhaps better suited to explaining the evil we see in the world than is the religion to which Demea subscribes, is Hume is obviously being ironic here; St. Augustine, himself the author o f a celebrated theodicy, embraced Christianity as a convert from Manicheanism. Hume no doubt believes that St. Augustine went from t h e frying pan into the fire, from an ideology in which there was no problem o f evil to one in which there is not only a problem of evil but no solution to it. According to the 'Manichean system', as Philo refers to it, the universe is to be understood in terms o f two warring forces or principles - those o f good and evil. Evil is built into the very nature of the physical universe. Manicheanism does not have a problem of evil, for, not insisting that nature is subject to morality, it does not have to explain why this domination does not actually take place. Hume, seemingly attracted to Manicheanism, is quick to reject it. As he sees it, Manicheanism constitutes a moralization of nature, for it uses the principles o f good and evil for the interpretation of the physical universe for which value terms are inappropriate. The "original source o f all things," Philo declares, "is entirely indifferent to all these principles, and has no more regard to good above ill than to heat above cold .... ,,16 Moral judgements are meaningless when applied to nature. Here, according to Philo, only description is appropriate. But is moral agency possible where only description prevails? The moralization o f nature is not the only problem to which Manicheanism falls prey. The usual rejection o f this position involves the contention that Manicheanism leads t o fatalism and resignation. In the Manichean view, the world is a great cosmic struggle between the forces o f good and evil. Human beings are elements in this struggle and observers o f it but not agents within it. In this view, one might say that the world simply is; neither man nor the world is in the process of becoming more than it is. The conclusion from a practical point o f view is that events in the world happen as a result o f a struggle far b e y o n d the power o f the individual to affect, and what is appropriate to man is acceptance o f the struggle rather than the insistence that he is somehow an agent in it. In what I would call the religious view, by contrast,

12 the world is the way the world is, but man is not. Here the dualism is not between good and evil but between man and nature. Nature, in this view, is demystified. The spirits that were thought to animate the physical universe have been banished, for nothing can be allowed to interfere with human agency and responsibility. Man alone is actor. The morally indifferent universe is a threat to religious consciousness, but it may actually be one of its most important creations. Nature lives but does not act. Resignation with regard to nature is appropriate, but, in the religious view, man ought not to be resigned with regard to himself. Quite the contrary, man is not what he ought to be; his life is understood to be the task of making himself what he ought to be. Man is responsible for himself, individually and socially, and, some would say, responsible for the whole of nature as well, for with the perfection of man will come the return of the whole of nature to the pristine state of the Garden of Eden. In religious consciousness' understanding of the world, God's agency sets the stage and human agency is placed in the middle of that divinely set stage. Manicheanism may boast that it has no problem of evil, but it must also admit that it does not provide for moral agency. Its cosmology makes man an observer, not an agent. I return to Hume's argument, for his anti-theodicy falls prey, ironically, to the same problems associated with Manicheanism. When the sceptic asks Demea to look around him, what is he actually inviting him to see? Surely he sees nothing but the physical universe about which one would, under the sceptical argument, make n o judgements of a moral kind. The consistent Humean sceptic would describe the world, not evaluate it. If the 'whole presents nothing but the idea of a blind nature' then in what sense can one speak of nature's maimed and abortive children? Ought we, perhaps, simply to recount what we see and perhaps allow ourselves to marvel, as a scientist might, that nature seems to insure the continuation of the species by producing creatures in such great numbers that nature's mistakes can be overcome? (Does nature really make 'mistakes'? By what standard would these events be judged to be mistakes?) Nature, one might say, acts in such a way as to insure survival through quantity where it cannot insure survival through quality. In this view, a form of social Darwinism might be the only acceptable interpretation of man's relationship with others. To be consistent, perhaps the next time we are asked to support famine relief for African children we should simply decline and respond that because of the birth rate in the world nature has already insured the survival of

13 the human species and does not really need these children for its purposes. A morally indifferent universe does not know o f moral distinctions, judgements, and designations. There is neither innocence nor evil in such a universe, only events. 17

IV As I have demonstrated in Sections II and III, there are problems in both the attempt to defend God against the charge of evil and the critique o f theism based on the presence of evil. The problems associated with each position overlap on the issue o f moral agency. And it is here, within the framework o f moral agency, that the problem of evil emerges for religious consciousness. In the philosophical tradition, especially in the Modern and Contemporary phases of the tradition which rely so heavily on Epicurus' formulation o f the problem, evil is understood as a design flaw in a creation purported to be the work o f a perfect designer who, being perfect, could allow of no design flaws. But this is not the problem as it emerges within religion. In religion the problem o f evil is generated out o f an analysis of man according to which man is understood to be the author o f his own actions, informed about what he is and is not to do, and responsible and accountable for his conduct. While Patterson Brown seeks the answer to the problem o f evil in 'religious morality', I think that it is to be found in the way in which the religious tradition (and here I mean Scripture and not philosophy from St. Augustine on) undertakes to establish moral agency, the only way religion thinks it possible to do so. In this section I shall sketch what I see as a line of development in Scripture from the Fall, in which moral agency and consequently moral evil are born, to the Book of Job, where the problem of evil is acknowledged (long before philosophy arrives to announce the problem) and addressed in a way I find more sophisticated and credible than either theodicy or anti-theodicy. The snake in the Garden o f Eden provides the opportunity for man's fall from bliss to moral struggle. Man disobeys God and eats the fruit o f the tree o f the knowledge o f good and evil. But he is swiftly confronted with his 'crime' and 'rewarded' with the perfect 'punishment' - a life whose content is precisely the choice between

14 good and evil. Man has 'done evil' and hence there can be no denying moral evil; nor would religion find moral evil a problem, for it is obviously a condition of the possibility of choice. The problem of evil does not emerge here, for man's fate has been determined in accordance with moral considerations. The story makes sense from a moral point of view; Adam and Eve have been dealt with justly, that is, morally, for they have been accorded the fate their actions merited. Furthermore, even 'in the world' they know that their fate will continue to be determined by their moral worth, for God has expelled them from the Garden but has not abandoned them to nature. The Genesis account preserves the moral coherence of man's experience in the world. This moral coherence is maintained in the story of Cain and Abel. Cain kills Abel and attempts to hide his act. The narrative tells us that Cain's evasions were in vain, that God knew what Cain had done and punished him by marking him as a murderer and expelling him from his home. (Scripture does not appear to take notice of Abel as the first innocent victim of evil for whom the crude principle "do good get good, do bad get bad" fails. Abel's experience pre-figures that of Job, but Scripture at this stage ignores the issues raised by the victim of Cain's action, confident, perhaps, that the moral coherence of the story is preserved with the punishment of Cain.) In the account of Noah and the flood the moral connection between what one does and what happens to one is again preserved. Evil, according to the narrative, has become so pervasive in the world that God brings a great natural calamity on all living things, reducing their numbers to those necessary for biological survival. Among the humans, only Noah, who is said to be a just and upright man, and his family are permitted to survive. The flood is not simply a natural event; it is a moral one. But according to the narrative, God declares that it will be the last event of its kind. The rainbow is the symbol of God's commitment, we are told. The rainbow is seen as a very positive affirmation of God's connection to the world, but it may also have a darker side. It may be a sign that God will no longer intervene in nature to insure moral coherence. The problem of evil does not emerge in Scripture where moral coherence is maintained. It is only when moral coherence begins to erode that the problem of evil surfaces as a discernible problem. This happens in the Book of Job. Evil may begin with the snake, but the problem of evil begins with the realization on the part of the moral

15 agent that he may be alone among the snakes, that the events of his life are out of step with the demands of a moral point of view, that his sense of moral responsibility is real but that morality's claim to subordinate nature is perhaps an illusion, leaving man as much an alien in the natural world as was the snake in the Garden. The Book of Job begins with a self-consciously theatrical episode in which God praises 'his servant Job' to Satan (the Temptor) who is unimpressed by God's remarks. Perhaps Job's righteousness is a function of the way God has protected him, insuring that only good things have happened to him. What if Job were rewarded not with good things (wealth, family, prestige, good health) but with bad things, or with the absence of the good things? Taking his cue from Satan, God agrees to test Job. God's test of Job appears to be this: 'Are you obediently and faithfully pursuing good because you recognize that this is your task or are you shrewdly and prudently pursuing that course of action most likely to fulfill your needs?' How will Job respond? He defends his righteousness, claiming that he has, in effect, done the right thing and has done so for the right reason. But Job does not promise continued unqualified adherence to the moral task. For a new fact has entered Job's world through his own experience - he now knows that the rightenous may suffer despite their righteousness. Job, who it appears is not only righteous and prosperous but smart and stubborn, turns God's test of him into a test of God. He asks, in effect, how it is that a good man can be made to suffer the fate which seems appropriate for the bad or evil man, while the evil man enjoys the fate appropriate for the good or worthy man. Job presents himself as a refutation of the contention that the individual can affect his fate and destiny through his actions. Job is proof that there is a problem of evil. Furthermore, Job's test of God carries with it the threat of rebellion. The logic of his position is clear: if the moral view is shown to be incoherent (and Job believes that his experience indicates exactly this) then the conclusion must be a rejection of the claim that the moral agency of man gives him power over nature, and an acceptance of the all-embracing agency of nature. God's test of Job moves to the background as Job wrestles with the problem of evil. Job's friends come to interpret his experience to him. In the eyes of these so-called 'comforters' there is no problem of evil, no erosion of moral coherence which might allow for the introduction of contingency between an individual's worth and his fate in the

16 natural world. Job's losses are clearly punishment, they say, which must reflect wrongdoing on Job's part. An individual's fate is always deserved, they believe, no matter how it may seem to him. Job refuses to accept this primitive theodicy. He also refuses to accept the somewhat more sophisticated views o f the young Elihu, who argues not that Job is mistaken about his own righteousness but that Job is ignorant of the events o f the world and does not really know which among them is good or evil. Job is unmoved by theodicy; he is certain o f his goodness and o f the injustice of his fate. Job's position can be called an anti-theodicy, and rebellion, the rejection o f God and morality, would seem to be its inevitable consequence. But according to the narrative o f the Book of Job, God intercedes, speaking through the Voice out o f the whirlwind. Let me begin by pointing out what the Voice does not say. (1) It does not say that this whole episode in Job's life was merely a test which Job has now 'passed' and which should not be construed as depicting the actual condition o f man in the world, that there is no evil as such, only divinely fabricated tests. The Voice does not say that Job's problem was to survive the test but that there is no problem o f evil as such. (2) It does not say that Job's comforters and the theodicy they argue are right, that if Job has been made to suffer it is because he deserves it, or that Job would be better advised to scrutinize his own conduct and choices than to call upon God for an explanation of his fate. The Voice might even have argued, but does not, that Job belies his goodness by his pride in himself and his contempt for his friends. (3) Nor does it say that Elihu, whose remarks are in certain respects similar to those of the Voice, is correct. It does not agree with Elihu that although Job may be able to affirm his own goodness it is impossible for him to understand whether what happens to him is good or evil. Man understands himself, according to this view, but only God understands his fate. The voice, a much less theatrical and more earnest Voice than the one we hear in the initial lines o f the Book, does not say the obvious. To counter Job's threat of rebellion the Voice does not defend the test of Job or the acceptance o f theodicy. It does not say that evil is good in disguise. What it says is that Job cannot expect an answer to the problem o f evil. There is an answer for God but not for man, and just as knowing that God knows does not alleviate man's ignorance so knowing that God 'knows the answer' to the problem of evil does not

17 make it less o f a problem for man. And the Voice emphatically affirms that it is a problem for man. Job's demand for an answer to the problem of evil is rebuffed, but his question, the problem o f evil, is not rebuffed. It is the comforters, those who do not see the question and who adhere to a simple formula in their defense o f God, who face the wrath o f the Voice out o f the whirlwind. The Voice deals with Job's problem of evil and with his threat o f rebellion and with the comforters' theodicy by denying theodicy and rebellion but affirming the problem o f evil. I find this a very surprising turn. Doesn't this conclusion, the affirmation o f the problem but the denial o f a solution, permanently sow the seeds o f disbelief and rebellion? Of course there are those who say this is quite the case and the real intent o f the Book - for it is only faith that can enable J o b and those who come after to deal with the harsh facts. In this view, J o b is not a rebel armed with a problem but an exemplar of faith. Perhaps, but the text does not entertain these thoughts. Why does the Voice speak as it does? First of all, I would say that the Voice wishes to be true to J o b over and against the comforters - for J o b emerges as the hero o f the work, a tough and independent person whose fidelity is worth more than the mechanical adherence o f the intoners o f simplistic dogma. I would call this the dramatic-artistic element in the answer, but there is a theologicalphilosophical element as well, or perhaps I should say an anthropological-philosophical element, for it is concerned more with the analysis of man than o f God. The Book is not simply the account o f a man but an allegory - a moral drama about the response o f a moral man to an immoral fate, that is, an inquiry into the problem o f evil from the standpoint of the man whose life is an instance of the problem. I think that the answer lies in the unacceptable consequences which each position would entail for Job's fidelity to the task o f morality. If Job's rebellion were not checked the result would be the denial o f morality; this conclusion seems quite clear. Less clear but equally important is that if the comforters were allowed their theodicy moral agency would also be dealt a fatal blow, for J o b must accept either that he does not k n o w whether what he does in terms o f his choices or actions is good or evil, or that he does not k n o w whether what happens to him is good or evil, or both. J o b must accept that he does not know the difference between good and evil as this applies either to himself or to the world or both. It is, I believe, to defend J o b as a moral agent,

18 to defend moral agency in general, that the Book of Job is willing to leave the problem of evil as a permanent threat to the contention that God exists and is good.

V Let me bring together what I have done in this paper. The problem of evil is present in religious consciousness before philosophy arrives to 'discover' it. The problem should be understood as it is generated in its pre-philosophical context, if for no other reason than to determine why the philosophical critique of religion in terms o f the problem of evil is of so little consequence to the religious believer. In its pre-philosophical religious context the problem of evil is not a design problem but a problem within an understanding of man as a moral creature and the relationship of this creature to a world understood to be natural. I have argued that theodicy does not succeed for a number of reasons, most important being that theodicy would succeed in its attempt to defend God only at the expense of undermining the contention, central to the moral view, that man can discern the difference between good and evil. I have also argued that 'anti-theodicy' is not without its serious problem in this same area. The refusal to apply moral categories to nature, the re-affirmation of the indifference o f nature, denies the possibility o f moral judgements with regard to the consequences of such natural phenomena as famine, disease, and so on. The Book o f Job is a pre-philosophical religious work at the centre of which is a discussion of the problem of evil that accepts both the failure of the theodicy of the comforters and the pointlessness of Job's rebellion. The Book ends with an acknowledgement of the problem and a refusal to enter into a resolution. In m y view, the Book o f Job affirms moral agency and for this reason accepts the reality of the problem and the impossibility of a resolution. Religion, one might say, falls into contradiction in the problem of evil, but it comes to this contradiction honestly enough. Rather than being thrown into yet greater irrationality in its attempt to defend itself, a consequence which Mackie thinks inevitable, 18 religion may argue that the cost o f resolving the contradiction at the heart of the problem o f evil is a price it is not willing to pay, for, as we see in the Book o f Job, this would involve the loss of moral agency.

19 Patterson Brown is right when he claims that "there is obviously something logically odd about the problem o f evil. ''19 What is logically odd is that the problem is insoluble and, I think, inevitable. It is certainly inevitable for religious consciousness which must deal with, even 'save' man the moral agent from a world understood to be natural, for without this man's alleged moral agency would be but a pointless oddity in an indifferent world. This may be, indeed I think it is, a serious problem for a n y attempt to understand moral agency, whether in a religious context or not. One misrepresents the problem o f evil to conceive o f it simply as a 'problem', which suggests something avoidable and/or resolvable. It might be more helpful to think o f it as an a n t i n o m y in a Kantian vein, that is, as a problem which reason cannot avoid falling into yet which it cannot solve. In this approach, t h o u g h t is directed not to the solution but to the conceptual framework which leads us to it. Or, one might think o f the problem of evil as neither problem nor a n t i n o m y but as what Kierkegaard would call a paradox, an impasse around which reason cannot go but toward which it must proceed, an explanation beyond which there is no further explanation which does not assume it. Seen in this way, the problem o f evil does not signal the collapse o f religion by way o f internal contradiction but rather the profundity o f religion's understanding o f man as a moral creature.

Notes 1. David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (New York: Hafner Publishing Co., 1962), pp. 79-80. 2. Hume, p. 66. This is the formulation of the problem of evil which is to be found in the contemporary discussion of the problem. See J.L. Mackie, "Evil and Omnipotence," Mind 64 (April 1955):200; H.J. McCloskey, "God and Evil," The Philosophical Quarterly 10.39 (April 1960):97; John Hick, Evil and the God o f Love (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1977), pp. 3-5; Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom and Evil (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), pp. 9-11; Richard Swinburne, "The Problem of Evil" in Reason and Religion, ed. Stuart C. Brown (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977), p. 81. 3. Mackie, p. 200. 4. G.W.F. Hegel, "Introduction" to Philosophy of History, trans. Robert S. Hartman as Reason in History (Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill, 1953), pp. 43-49. 5. Patterson Brown, "Religious Morality," Mind 72 (April 1963):236.

20 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19.

Brown, p. 236. Mackie, pp. 2 0 9 - 2 1 0 . Plantinga, p. 30. Swinburne, p. 100. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. H.J. Paton as The Moral Law (London: Hutchinson University Library, 1948), p. 96. Hegel, pp. 4 5 - 4 7 . Swinburne, pp. 9 0 - 9 1 . McCloskey, p. 108. Hume, pp. 7 8 - 7 9 . Hume, p. 79. Hume, p. 79. A contemporary anti-theodicy might argue that there is clearly a way around this problem. One does not need a certain metaphysics, cosmology, or theology to ground moral judgements, for these judgements belong to that social process whereby a society develops ways to deal with conflicts among its members. ' G o o d ' and 'evil' pertain to modes of conduct engaged in by members of a social group. I find this view of morality inadequate, but even if one accepts it it does not provide an answer to the problem I have raised in this section, namely the situation of people outside of my society, the children of Africa, who are victims not of the misdeeds of others but of natural phenomena. The social-contract view of morality would not explain this instance of evil. If one cannot make judgements of this sort then one has dealt moral agency a severe blow. Mackie, p. 200. Brown, p. 236.