485 - God, Power, and Evil: A Process Theodicy
Good and Evil: Interpreting a Human Condition

God, Power, and Evil: A Process Theodicy

By David Ray Griffin

Lanham, Md., University Press of America, 1991. 336 Pp. $19.75.

 

Good and Evil: Interpreting a Human Condition

By Edward Farley

Minneapolis, Fortress, 1990. 295 Pp. $19.95.

Modern philosophical theology is perplexed by the problem of evil: How can an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good God allow evil to exist in the world? Griffin tries to answer that question, and Farley explores what one of its terms--evil--means.

 

486 - God, Power, and Evil: A Process Theodicy
Good and Evil: Interpreting a Human Condition

The 1976 edition of God, Power, and Evil is back in print, supplemented by a preface in which Griffin clarifies some of his arguments and nuances some of his positions. Basically, Griffin argues that the concept of an omnipotent God who can unilaterally bring about states of affairs in the world is incoherent. God's power over the world cannot be not omni-coercive, but is best understood as omnipersuasive. Entities within the world can resist divine power, so God is finally not responsible for all the evil in the world. God enables order to emerge from chaos and, thus, is responsible for the sufferings and conflicts that unavoidably result. But without the price of such tragic evil, the good that only higher orders of being can develop could not have emerged. Much evil, however, results from entities' refusal of God's persuasion. Even an all-powerful God could not control such evils. Thus, the reality of evils does not count against belief in God, properly understood.

Griffin responds to critiques in his forthcoming book, Evil Revisited: Responses and Consideration, and, thus, chose not to revise the text of God, Power, and Evil. I have elsewhere argued that theodicy is a discourse that should be abandoned. That debatable point aside, University Press of America is to be commended for reprinting this first fully developed process theodicy, although some might prefer a new edition integrating new insights and overcoming oversights.

The new preface shows that the differences between Griffin and more traditional theodicists are not so much about the concept of divine power, but about the metaphysics of creaturely freedom and creativity. Alvin Plantinga has demonstrated that even an onmi-potent being logically cannot make an entity freely choose the good or freely do what is right. In Griffin's metaphysics, not only human entities, but all entities, are free. While traditional believers find creation ex nihilo coherent, Griffin does not. Divine creation is luring order out of (creative) chaos, not the impossible task of making something out of nothing. Save for these two substantial issues, Griffin's theodicy seems at least formally much closer to classical theism than it did fifteen years ago.

Good and Evil is a phenomenological exploration of the spheres of human existence (agential/individual, interpersonal, and social). Farley provides a nuanced and provocative account of human life as embodied and passionate, enhanced by virtues proper to each sphere and fractured by vices infecting each and all of them. In each sphere, Farley distinguishes the tragic from the evil (e.g., benign alienation from malignant alienation in the social sphere). The tragic is a necessary, but human evil is the sin-laden intensification of the tragic, rooted in idolatry. Redemption is not "out of' each of these spheres, but the reconstruction of them to eliminate or reduce the evils generated in them.

Farley beautifully deploys the concept of "face" developed from E. Levinas. Our "face" is that depth of us that is exposed in the

 

488 - God, Power, and Evil: A Process Theodicy
Good and Evil: Interpreting a Human Condition

interpersonal sphere. It is our call to the other, our own vulnerable beauty, developed in the between (zwischen) of Buber and open to the healing of divinity. The "communities of the face," where the Zwischen is a prime value, work to overcome evils in each of the spheres and in the conflicts between the spheres.

Although Farley develops a unique idiom and writes at a rather high level of abstraction, his clean prose and numerous illustrations make this accessible to those seriously interested in modern philosophical theology. He has learned deeply from the social and natural sciences as well as phenomenology. He rarely argues with or criticizes other contemporary theologians, but one can occasionally see how he would appropriate their insights or disagree with aspects of their views. His recognition of the multiplicity of goods and evils in all the human spheres and his refusal to reduce all evil to sin and the result of sin are refreshing.

If one accepts his approach, which evokes echoes of Tillich and other liberal correlationists, one might yet wonder if his hard distinction between the tragic and the evil, central to this philosophical anthropology, is "artificial" or even sustainable. After all, whether the cause of something that debilitates or destroys us is tragic or evil, we hope for redemption, repair, or reconstitution. But for Farley, it seems that the tragic is not redeemed. If this be true, then we need to rethink the scope of redemption and divine love more deeply than Farley has here.

The least satisfactory part of his text is the methodological quarrel with deconstructionists in the introduction. He wants to maintain that it is yet possible to write an ontology despite their critiques. While he exposes inconsistencies in their views, he does not really seem to come to grips with the power of their critiques. Alas, a few flicks of the deconstructionist pen can collapse a claim that any specific discourse reflects reality by showing how that discourse, or any discourse, is an optional construct. The burden of proof is light on the critic, but has become so heavy on an ontologist that no one can bear it. One must show that what one writes is, somehow, not optional. Farley's response seems to dodge the force of the deconstructionists' critique.

While one may find faults with both texts, Farley and Griffin show that those who would dance at the funeral of philosophical theology generated out of liberal and progressive Protestantism may have long to wait for that music to begin. These are serious books, which evoke insight and will continue to provoke discussion.

TERRENCE W. TILLEY

Florida State University
Tallahassee, Florida