Contra Robertson, Augustine, Calvin and Luther OR "God was not in the earthquake"

As many of us are watching in dismay at the emerging evidence of tremendous and sudden loss of life in Haiti’s recent earthquake, it is inevitable that persons will ask the perennial question, “Why?” Also very predictably, we find a religious fundamentalist like Pat Robertson who offers a theory about this.  His theory: while under French rule, the Haitian people made a pact with the Devil (capital D intended) for deliverance. Since that time, they have been “cursed” (presumably by God) with many disasters and misfortunes.  Also predictably, “softer” interpreters of our religious traditions have cried “foul” and once again, we find ourselves impaled on our own sword by the  intrinsic illogic of the affirmation of a supernatural all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good creator deity and the seemingly paradoxical existence of evil, both natural and human.

To give Pat credit, he would have made a good Jew in the Babylonian exile. As we read the redacted Torah and Judaic national history as it was assembled at that time, we find a particularly clear message that the conquest of Jerusalem and the exile were the result of the behavior of the Judeans and God’s punishment for the same.  Simplified, they disobeyed God’s commands, were not “faithful” to him, “went after” foreign gods and thus deserved the wrath of God and his punishment-hence, the exile. Lesson: disobedience to God brings on disaster, and this is not just particular punishment for individual sins, but also corporate punishment for societal and national sin. If we take this “word” as “authoritative,” then there is no doubt that big national disasters come about because of societal sin.  “Sodom and Gomorrah” is another lesson on the same lines, particularly gleefully sited by those who see this destruction as a punishment for sexual immorality.  Although we get a little relief with the “bargaining” part where Abraham is ultimately unable to find enough “good” people to persuade God to spare the poor Sodomites and Gomorrans, the implicationis that “really” they’re all "guilty" and God’s punishment is, therefore, “just.”  

This idea of inherited and corporate guilt has been heavily incorporated into Western Christianity particularly since the time of St. Augustine.  Just like the Jews in the exile, who lived in bad times, the African Bishop Augustine lived at the end of the Roman Empire and experienced the invasion of Africa by the Vandals, a particularly "bad" time in the west.  Furthermore, Augustine had a personal history as a Manichean, a non-Christian gnostic religion that accepted one of the common teachings of gnosticism about the “evil” nature of the world and creation as a whole. It has been this dual history that some have suggested accounts for the rather pessimistic view of humanity that Augustine seems to have held.  At the time of the reformation, Luther and Calvin, combining and expanding these ideas to embrace a “total depravity” idea of humanity along with their “Pauline” justification “by faith,” made this the centerpiece of Christology and indeed, the entire point of the Christian faith, at least in most of mainline, post-reformation protestantism. As modern biblical scholarship has advanced, however, most of us have come to see the Adamic creation story as not literal but “mythologized” history.  We have, however, retained all of the “conclusions” that were reached about the significance of “THE FALL” and its “effects” on our present situation and world.  We seldom note that the slender thread of making this conclusion (that neither Jews nor Muslims make) rests on the theologizing by persons who did literally believe the story of Adam to be true and historical.  Furthermore, the Pauline “blessing” of this doctrine derives primarily from his teaching on general resurrection such that death entered the world through the man Adam and by the man (I could not resist italicizing that) Jesus, resurrection to life entered the world in a kind of “fitting parallel” of events. This is far, to my eye, from a certain confirmation of “original sin” and the “total depravity” of human nature, let alone a “justification” for an all-powerful deity to wreak havoc on his disobedient creation. The only other dubious scriptural support for the doctrinal formulation of original sin and the “Fallen” world comes from a couple of quotes from the Psalms.  There is, however, absolutely equal argument against this concept of inherited or corporate “guilt” in the prophetic writings  (Ezekiel for example) as well as the “criticism” in Job of the idea that misfortune and natural disaster come as a punishment for human sin, either particular or corporate, and its correlate that obedience brings wealth and prosperity and safety. 

In a derivative blog posting (quoting from yet another blog), The V. Rev, Nicholas Knisely (dean of Trinity Cathedral Phoenix) quotes the modern theologian , David Bentley Hart as writing: 

“...if it is from Christ that we are to learn how God relates himself to sin, suffering, evil, and death, it would seem that he provides us little evidence of anything other than a regal, relentless, and miraculous enmity: sin he forgives, suffering he heals, evil he casts out, and death he conquers.  And absolutely nowhere does Christ act as if any of these things are part of the eternal work or purposes of God.” 

It is hard to argue with this statement as it is phrased, but in essence, all that it does, in and of itself, is to reaffirm the belief in the “goodness” of the God of traditional theism.  It does not, however, offer a solution to the problem of evil. 

I believe that it is time, quite frankly, for the church to reconsider the entire schema of sin/original sin, and the divine Jesus as the vicarious sacrifice/penal substitution model of redemption.  To quote/paraphrase the Rt. Rev. Spong, the doctrine of the fall and original sin is “pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.” 

For the questions of the issue of “natural” evil, a closer and more nuanced answer needs to be sought.  For geological processes like earthquakes, Tsunamis and the like, it is clear that these are mechanistic processes that derive from our planetary structure.  This structure itself (plate techtonics and the like) is intimately tied up with the emergence and evolution of life on this planet.  They are, in fact, part of the natural processes that gave “birth” to humanity and other entities with which we co-inhabit our planetary biosphere. One might fault the “intelligent design” of a planet in which such processes were “necessary,” but attributing to them a “moral” or “sin” meaning is patently ridiculous.

Beyond even this, however, if we tackle the encompassing position of “faulty design,” then we need to decide if we can live with a God who is “a little less than omniscent/omnipotent/all-good” or affirm the necessary limitation imposed by the idea that this is the “best of all possible worlds” meaning that God is limited to the degree of his ability to create perfection, provided that we wish to persist in supernatural theism as the foundation of our religious belief.  I, however, think that the problem is not the world itself that is the problem, but the whole concept of supernatural theism itself.  If we take, for example, the possibility of God’s “existence” as Tillich's “being” or “ground of being” or possibly something along Marcus Borg’s suggestion of panentheism (I would take it another step, for logical reasons, to panendeism, but that is a whole other and extended discussion), then we can drop the obsessions about natural and particular evil and their "problem" completely.

“How long” will it be for us until we find as Christians a substitute for supernatural theism? God only knows : )

As a postscript, the scope of the humanitarian disaster in Haiti does not diminish as we learn more details.  The best way that we can act now is by a money donation.  If you have not already donated to some allied cause to help, then I strongly recommend that you do so.

Jeffrey.