Book Reflection -The Doors Of The Sea- Pt. 1

A New Blog Venture; book reflections.

Anyone who knows me knows I love to read books. 

On top of that I love sharing whatever wisdom, insight, challenge or strange tidbit I get out of whatever I've read. That's when my lovely wife had the brilliant idea that I should write a book review when I finish a book.
I want to get better at blogging regularly, and this seems like a way to process ideas and keep up my writing chops...

I'm calling them book reflections because I don't necessarily want them to be limited to "reviews" in the sense of merely summarizing and critiquing. My hope is that I will be able to share what I received from the book and open up interesting subjects for further thought and discussion... because hey, isn't that what books are for?

So without further preface-ing...

The Doors Of The Sea by David Bentley Hart

Tragedy has a way of making people pause and think about the deep things of life, and in the wake of immense pain and loss, Christians (along with everyone else) yearn for some kind of explanation which will bring at least a glimpse of hope or solace into what seems like bottomless anguish.

This leads us to a perennial problem in theology and philosophy; 

Theodicy (/θiːˈɒdɪsi/), "The attempt to reconcile the idea of an all-powerful, just and loving God who intervenes in history...with the recurrence of catastrophic slaughter from 'natural' causes such as tsunamis and man-made evils such as genocides" 

This is something that believers in God have struggled with since the beginning, and it is a problem that demands some serious wrestling. I mean, if we want to be people of healing and reconciliation in times of tragedy we need to know how to speak about God's love and care in relation to whatever horrible thing has befallen our friends and neighbors. This leads us back to the question that is behind every question worth asking; "What is God like?"

The Doors Of The Sea is an expansion of two articles published following the tragic Indian Ocean Tsunami, which hit the South Asian coast around Christmastime, 2004. Reports indicate that up to 280,000 lives were lost after the whole ordeal was over.  

Hart begins his book by reflecting on the diverse commentaries which emerged shortly after the catastrophe, ranging from news outlets like the New York Times to pulpits across the country. Scores of people were clamoring for a way to make moral sense of this horrific event.

While many people could learn a lesson from the "miserable comforts" of Job's friends and just shut up in the wake of tragedy, we have a hard time simply being present, and almost inevitably we launch a clumsy philosophical excursion into theodicy.

Do tsunamis teach us about God, or reveal a world without God...or something else?

Some people see tsunamis (and the like) as sign that God either does not exist or if God does exist, God isn't good in any way we can comprehend. One might think that this book, written by a Christian theologian, might be directed at this sort of objection, but it isn't. 

In an interesting twist, the moral outrage of skeptics to a world in which children suffer is not the target of Dr. Hart's critique. In fact I think Hart has a wise response to this kind of "rage for justice";

"After all, at the heart of all such unbelief lies an undoubtedly authentic moral horror before the sheer extravagance of worldly misery...and an unwillingness to be reconciled to evil that no one who believes this to be a fallen world should want to disparage. For the secret irony pervading these arguments is that they would never have occurred to consciences that had not in some profound way been shaped by the moral universe of a Christian culture" (15)

No, the core of Hart's critique falls on those who express what Hart calls "theodicy's attempted moral justification of the present cosmic order" (66). This takes multiple forms;

One (a less fashionable enlightenment/diest) option Hart calls "sickley metaphysical optimism" (27) This justification tends to be pretty philosophical and calculated, it essentially says that the world is what it is because this is the best of all possible worlds. Suffering exists, but this is just a cosmic remainder which God decided was the best option available when reviewing the possible worlds in which he could have created. This argument boils down to "eh, it could be worse".

The second and, in Hart's view, most pernicious moral justification of evil and suffering is probably the one you have heard the most. "This is all part of God's bigger plan". 
This appeal to a grand determinism (usually referred to as sovereignty) seeks to reconcile ugly aspects of the world by saying that God has ordained them or allowed them to take place to display God's just wrath against sin, or to teach people a lesson, or somehow mysteriously to bring about a greater good in the future. 

This approach claims to offer comfort by asserting that God is in control of the tsunami and even though we don't understand it, God is causing or allowing the disaster for his ultimate glory. 

Hart does not mince words when it comes to this kind of theology, and he lets loose on deterministic views of God, I think for good reason.

"This exaggerated adoration of God's sheer omnipotence can yield conclusions as foolish as Calvin's assertion...that God predestined the fall of man so as to show forth his greatness in both the salvation and the damnation of those he has eternally preordained to their several fates. Were this so, God would be the author of and so entirely beyond both good and evil, or at once both  and neither... For, unless the world is truly set apart from God and possess a dependent but real liberty of its own...everything is merely a fragment of divine volition, and God is simply the totality of all that is and all that happens; there is no creation, but only an oddly pantheistic expression of God's unadulterated power." (90-91)

And here is one more spicy one for good measure;

"Even if the purpose of such a world is to prepare creatures to know the majesty and justice of its God, that majesty and justice are, in a very real sense, fictions of his will, impressed upon creatures by means of both good and evil, merciful and cruel, radiant and monstrous...Such a God, at the end of the day, is nothing but will, and so nothing but an infinite brute event; and the only adoration that such a God can evoke is an almost perfect coincidence of faith and nihilism." (30)

This is the kind of theodicy that skeptics (understandably) refuse to accept, and in the end, Hart believes that the skeptic who refuses to sooth himself with a balm of theodicy is acting (If unknowingly) in a protest; a discontent which issues a call for a deeper, more authentic, more radical Christian confession about the nature of God and the world, one that would offer genuine hope.

"For behind [the skeptic's] anguish lies an intuition - which is purely Christian, even if many Christians are insensitive to it - that is it impossible for the infinite God of love directly or positively to will evil (physical or moral), even in a provisional or transitory way: and this because he is infinitely free." (70)   

Hart finds these options to be false comforts because any justification for the evil and suffering of our world that makes God complicit in it misrepresents the perfect love and goodness of the God revealed in Jesus Christ.

The Theological Tune-Up

Hart believes that if we were to return to "classical Christian belief" meaning a more ancient, Patristic (and he would say ultimately) more biblical Christian understanding, we would see how unacceptable the deterministic view of God is and how unnecessary it's corresponding theodicy would seem in light of the genuine good character and truly just sovereignty of our God. 

But this has already gotten pretty in-depth, so I will leave it there and break this reflection into more bite-sized snacks!

Stay tuned for part 2 of my book reflection:

"The Death of Death"