The following was a conversation via email between Adrian Lovegrove and Bradley Jersak over the final weeks of 2022.
ADRIAN LOVEGROVE
I began formal theological study back in 2011. I could no longer buy the evangelical package deal, but I hoped there might be a theology for a good God somewhere. I guess I've now reached the place of "grumpy universalism."
By "grumpy," I mean in the sense of Ivan's argument in the Brothers Karamazov about the acquisition of truth not being worth the cost of the little child's suffering. Or, put another way, David Bentley Hart's argument concerning the moral implications of creatio ex nihilo, pretty much leaves God with the obligation to bring all he has freely created to its telos, if we're going to call him "good." Consequently, I'm currently finding it hard to feel grateful to God for sending Jesus to rescue everything because it currently seems to me it is entirely God's responsibility to fix the problem he – as the first cause – literally created.
I appreciate I'm talking as a blinkered and broken creature "looking through a glass darkly" at the inscrutable purposes of the Ground of all existence. I imagine if I were a proper Christian, I could do the "how long, O Lord," and "come quickly, Lord" without losing my temper. But right now, God just pisses me off, and -- though it is a denial of metaphysics since there can be nowhere where God isn't -- I'd really rather not be around him. I have sympathies with the one-talent guy. I guess I have a trust issue.
It's not that I don't like Jesus. It's not that I don't think (from all the ideas I have been exposed to) he has the best things to say about the most important stuff. It's not that I don't think his incarnation was infinitely costly. It's just that it currently seems to me that the things Jesus ultimately rescued us from – satan, sin and death – are all things of his own making.
Have you found ways of getting past this sort of thing to being a decent human being again?
Peace
Ade
BRADLEY JERSAK
Hi Ade,
What a good and important question.
Let me boil it down to your two punchline points...
- It currently seems to me that the things Jesus ultimately rescued us from—satan, sin, and death—are all things of his own making.
- Have you found ways of getting past this sort of thing to be a decent human being again?
On the first question, I see your point. And this is where Simone Weil saved my faith through her honesty and her cosmology.
First, she says that we are faced with two contraries... the Goodness of God and the affliction of humanity.
The two are a real contradiction. There's an infinite distance between the two. We'll come back to that.
In terms of cosmology, she does something similar. She speaks about (1) gravity and (2) grace or (1) the necessary and (2) the good.
And she regards these pairs as ways that God governs the cosmos. She says that ultimately, gravity and grace are both aspects of the GOOD, but humanity cannot conceive of their union. It's not possible from a human perspective. The GOOD transcends knowing. All we have is our experience, and in our experience, they appear as virtual opposites. To define them...
- Gravity / the Necessary: refers to the necessary and unbendable pre-conditions for Life and Love, which are why and how God creates the cosmos. Life and Love are the point, the arche (foundations), and the telos (endgame) of the cosmos. God is the first and final cause of life and love. But for life and love to be possible, he must make space (kenosis) for their secondary causes, without which, they cannot be. The necessary pre-condition for life is natural law. And the necessary pre-condition for love is human agency. Without natural law and human agency, there is no possible outcome where life and love come to be that reflects God's life and love.
From these preconditions, all beauty emerges. Beauty as such is manifest in natural law and human agency to such a divine degree that we are tempted to worship them. They are, after all, appearances or images of the God in whom they have being.
But there is a shadow side. For God to be Love, rather than coercive force, he cannot and does not violate natural law or human agency. If God did so, God would not be Love. And if God does so, God is lousy at it. The arbitrary violation of natural law or human agency would be a Deux Machina that would make all of creation an illusion and all God's creatures puppets.
The shadow side of natural law is tragedy. The tectonic plates that keep us from sinking into magma rub together and create earthquakes and tsunamis that wipe out cities. The gravity that prevents us from flying to our deaths in space also pulls us to our death when we step off a cliff. This is necessary. But it is not beautiful. It is tragic.
The shadow side of human agency is evil. The same freedom through which I can willingly turn toward love can be misused to turn willfully from love and toward indifference or hatred or violence. And we exercise this misuse of our passions all the time. That God makes space for this is necessary. In love, he consents to our freedom, and with our freedom, we defy him and wreak havoc.
This is necessary, but as Weil says, there is an infinite distance between the necessary and the good in our real experience.
And if we were to stop there, we would just be Deists and to be greatly pitied. Such a God offers consent without participation, and that is not love. So she continues:
- Grace / the Good: refers to God's willing participation in our world through the mutual consent (surrender, participation) of willing human partners. I explain all of this in more detail in A More Christlike God, but basically, God does not wind up the clock and leave us to our tragedies and evils. He enters the scene in the Incarnation and undergoes them to the nth degree (at the Cross), through which, enters the shadowy abyss, not as an intervention that violates the secondary causes, but as the divine Lover who participates in their healing at every level.
And there on the Cross, he spans the infinitive distance as our affliction and his goodness intersect in his own wounds. Is God the cause of tragedy and evil? Yes and No. He is not the direct cause of any tragedy or evil (that derives from the shadows of secondary causes), BUT because he is ultimately responsible for secondary causes, his only just response is full participation and unfailing mercy, revealed on the Cross. Further, it means that WE are completely responsible to participate in the restoration of all things through our willing surrender to that same cruciform life, as feeble and foolish as it seemed to Paul's opponents in 1 Cor. 1.
Ivan Karamazov gives what I think is the very best case against Christian faith.
But for Dostoevsky himself, co-suffering love is the only adequate and completely sufficient response.
I suppose Weil's theology is a metaphysical expression of Alyosha's kiss, for which Ivan could offer no real refutation.
This leads us to your final question:
Have you found ways of getting past this sort of thing to be a decent human being again?
Only by willing surrender to the cruciform way one day at a time, which for me has required a program of recovery outlined in the 12 steps. Which is to say, on some days. Which is to say, I have a lot of grumpy days but fewer days where I try to overcome through self-will, which is how I (we all) got into this mess in the first place. And I'm still pretty damn grumpy.
All of the above is an explanation of an experience.
I have not found the explanation satisfying, but I did find the experience transformative.
Thanks for reaching out.
ADRIAN LOVEGROVE
Hi Brad,
Thanks so much for having the grace, and for taking the time, to lay this out so clearly, fully, and candidly in response to my last rant-o-gram. In the wilderness wandering of de/reconstruction, it's always reassuring to encounter folks who have already been there, and who know what it is to score highly on the grump-o-meter.
It seems to me that Ivan and Alyosha represent the only two sane responses to the insuperable contradiction (from a creaturely perspective) of a good God and the suffering of his creation and its creatures. I can take Ivan's place of accusation – which was rather the tenor of my last email to you – or I can take Alyosha's place of faith.
I hesitate to use the word "faith" because I think what we are talking about here is deeper than anything I have heard presented in my Christian experience. I've never read Simone Weil, but here is how I think I now understand faith from your description of her helpful thinking. It is no blind thing. It stares down the barrel of the gun of the suffering of creation without denial or dissociation. It makes no trite claims about God "being in control," or "moving in mysterious ways," or "working all things for good." Instead, it anchors itself in the character of the God-with-us revealed to us in the Christ-event, and on that basis is willing to give that God the benefit of the doubt on the inscrutable question of whether it would have been better not to have created given the risks involved.
Of course, such faith also goes further: choosing to adopt the ways and means of love shown and taught by Christ as the only meaningful approach to existence, within one's small sphere of influence, for whatever short time one has. And in that mustard-seed-sowing, yeast-kneading way, it finds its rest – "the easy yoke." But I'm not sure this "going further" to the place of Alyosha is possible without having settled "the character of God" question. And I'm not sure it's possible to settle this question without going via the place of Ivan, because until we have been there we have not really seen what is at stake.
Two things strike me.
First, having been to Ivan's place, it is very hard not to be a universalist. If this journey doesn't ultimately end well, for everything that the Creator has freely brought into existence, then I can currently see no moral justification for it having been embarked upon in the first place. That is essentially Dr. Hart's argument from creatio ex nihilo again. Perhaps I am still bargaining with God here, rather than simply surrendering to his infinitely better judgment. But I would prefer to love a demonstrably good God than grudgingly comply with an apparently amoral one.
Second, in terms of "demonstrably good," I used to think "the cross as a demonstration of God's character" was one of the weaker Protestant theories of atonement. As it happens, I'm not especially enamoured of such theories now, given the grander vision of salvation that folks like you and Dr. Hart have exposed me to. But for what it's worth, I'm currently feeling like it is the most important "theory" of all. When one bottoms out to where Ivan is, the only hope one has is in the character of God in spite of everything. I'm not privy to the pros and cons of to-create-or-not-to-create. I'm no longer academically interested in what was administratively or legally accomplished on Good Friday. What my heart needs to know is that God is good and that I can trust him. Now. In my actual life.
Wishing you and yours a peaceful and grump-free Christmas,
Ade
BRADLEY JERSAK
Thanks Adrian,
I feel like you've made some important points here that I will reflect on.
First, YES, you are hearing me right re: Weil. Please read Weil, Awaiting God, chapter 2: "The Love of God and Affliction."
Second, she is my best example of your assertion that we only get to Alyosha via Ivan (a brilliant statement) and that this is precisely what she has done. Your restatement of how she does that is beautiful and it works. In a way, she represents the hypostatic union of Ivan and Alyosha (though I guess Dostoevsky already did).
Third, exactly this: "I would prefer to love a demonstrably good God than grudgingly comply with an apparently amoral one."
And therefore, "having been to Ivan's place, it is very hard not to be a universalist."
If God is good and good means anything at all other than evil, it simply can't be otherwise. And it isn't. And Jesus said so. "If I am lifted up, I WILL draw all people to myself." How? Via the Cross.
And finally, "What my heart needs to know is that God is good and that I can trust him. Now. In my actual life."
YES. He cannot just be 'caring,' but somehow must be a real 'caregiver' in real life.
In light of the real affliction that we witness and experience, arriving there is inexplicable... yet somehow, I did. And that involved seeing the mystery of the union of my affliction to his. Not an explanation or theodicy. A Mystery. But real.
Speaking of grumpy, I remember at one of my low points, mainly not functioning, binge-watching "House" with Hugh Laurie... my word of the year, stolen from him, was "Idiot!"
My son called 2008 "the year Dad became harsh." I had to make my way via Ivan to Weil, as my path followed from defiance through decreation to acceptance and surrender.
Blessed by your name,
Bradley Jersak
ADRIAN LOVEGROVE
Hi Brad,
You credit me with too much brilliance since, while I did originally write something like "I can only get to Alyosha via Ivan," I didn’t end up writing it quite so succinctly to you. Instead, I thought I had better explain what I meant by that. What I came up with was more long-winded, but that is the kernel of thought that you still picked up on, thankfully. It represents a take on the insight of Weil’s which is currently giving me hope in what I have euphemistically called my "grumpiness."
She has effectively stood, like me, in the place of Ivan and admitted that all he says is true. Yet she has also seen it is not the whole truth. Human suffering is real, and must be reckoned with, if any theological discourse is to have any credibility. But, to use your phrase, "self-giving, radically forgiving, co-suffering love" is also real, and also has to be reckoned with, as God's response in and through Christ, and in and through those trying to follow him. It can probably never provide the explanation my head needs, but it can provide the experience my heart needs, as you have found.
At least from a creaturely perspective, Ivan's place is legitimate. But so is Alyosha's place. And that was the hope that arose in me as I read your summary of Weil. I don't have to deny what Ivan sees in order to affirm what Alyosha sees. I don't have to disconnect myself from what is presently intolerable to also attach myself to what is ultimately restorative. And it is in that tension that, for me, the OT "how long, O Lord," and the NT "Our Lord, come," now makes better sense. They can only be prayed from the place of Alyosha, not from the place of Ivan (but only after having been there). And therein is my hope.
Peace
Ade
Thank you both, for your deep honesty. I resonate with Ade in everything he stated in his first post, and your subsequent conversation gives me some hope.
I will try to read Simone Weil too.
I am currently seeing patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and gentleness as real possibilities and experiences (of Christ/God/Spirit/salvation???), but love, joy peace, and self-control remain somewhat distant pipe dreams.
Brad, more of this form of teaching is always welcome.
Peace to you and your families.
Posted by: Philip O | December 31, 2022 at 02:53 AM