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The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami?
As news reports of the horrific tsunami in Asia reached the rest of the world, commentators were quick to seize upon the disaster as proof of either God's power or God's nonexistence. Expanding on his Wall Street Journal piece, "Tremors of Doubt," published the last day of 2004, David Bentley Hart here returns to this pressing How can the existence of a good and loving God be reconciled with such suffering? Hart clarifies the biblical account of God's goodness, the nature of evil, and the shape of redemption, incisively revealing where both Christianity's champions and its critics misrepresent what is most essential to Christian belief.
119 pages, Hardcover
First published July 1, 2005
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1474 people want to read
About the author
David Bentley Hart
44 books698 followersDavid Bentley Hart, an Eastern Orthodox scholar of religion and a philosopher, writer, and cultural commentator, is a fellow at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study. He lives in South Bend, IN.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 214 reviews
October 18, 2023
Short, smart, and thorough, Doors of the Sea is easily one of the best works on the market to tackle theodicy from a Christian vantage point (roughly, Christian theodicy posits answers to the question "if God is real, good, loving, and powerful, why is there evil and suffering in the world?"). As a book, its one fatal flaw is Hart's expansive vocabulary. His writing is stunning, his explication of Christian theology on the question of evil is nearly perfect, but I found myself reaching for a dictionary on just about every other page.
Curiously, I found that Hart isn't suffering from "twenty-dollar-word syndrome" like so many bad writers with good vocabularies do. Mostly, he selects obscure words with precisely nuanced definitions that are more accurate to his meaning than a plain-English alternative would be. So I can't quite cry "hubris" (although it might be warranted) - really, I'm in awe of the man's operative lexicon - but unfortunately, he's written a great book that will only be accessible to the verbally erudite or to the very patient.
Curiously, I found that Hart isn't suffering from "twenty-dollar-word syndrome" like so many bad writers with good vocabularies do. Mostly, he selects obscure words with precisely nuanced definitions that are more accurate to his meaning than a plain-English alternative would be. So I can't quite cry "hubris" (although it might be warranted) - really, I'm in awe of the man's operative lexicon - but unfortunately, he's written a great book that will only be accessible to the verbally erudite or to the very patient.
April 24, 2013
Here is a book that deserves three readings: once to get the overall picture and experience, twice to get into his argumentation, and thrice to engage his arguments thoughtfully. As a friend was recently told about another of Hart's books, you might want to grab a dictionary. The book is beautiful, hard, engaging, and important.
February 10, 2024
I've never heard of the view DBH and others share on the problem of evil. And to be honest, I haven't even read much about the problem of evil outside of hearing reformed thoughts (I suppose due to my cultural context) on the subject matter. If you're similar I'd say give this book a go and I think you'll be quite challenged by Hart to see the matter with fresh eyes. Not sure where I stand yet.
Hart's book is responding to a common question but after a specific event as per the title, "Where Was God in the Tsunami?" And so he speaks about what he perceives to be "the true scriptural account of God's goodness, the shape of redemption, the nature of evil, and the conditions of a fallen world." It's not a theodicy.
Makes clear his stance on the nature of evil, divine impassibility, and the distinction between divine will and divine permission. Contends with thoughts of limited atonement and double predestination which thoughts give way for an explanation for the existence of evil that diminish the true nature of God in Trinity and His self-revelation in Jesus Christ (yeah!).
Hart's book is responding to a common question but after a specific event as per the title, "Where Was God in the Tsunami?" And so he speaks about what he perceives to be "the true scriptural account of God's goodness, the shape of redemption, the nature of evil, and the conditions of a fallen world." It's not a theodicy.
Makes clear his stance on the nature of evil, divine impassibility, and the distinction between divine will and divine permission. Contends with thoughts of limited atonement and double predestination which thoughts give way for an explanation for the existence of evil that diminish the true nature of God in Trinity and His self-revelation in Jesus Christ (yeah!).
”The cross is thus a triumph of divine apatheia, limitless and immutable love sweeping us up into itself, taking all suffering and death upon itself without being changed, modified, or defined by it, and so destroying its power and making us, by participation in Christ, "more than conquerors" (Rom. 8:37)
For it is a faith that set us free from optimism long ago and taught us hope instead... rather than showing us how the tears of a small girl suffering in the dark were necessary for the building of the Kingdom, he will instead raise her up and wipe away all tears from her eyes - and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor any more pain, for the former things will have passed away, and he that. sits upon the throne will say, "Behold, I make all things new."
"We are to be guided by the full character of what is revealed of God in Christ. For, after all, 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."
June 27, 2021
This earlier book by D.B. Hart, of Eastern Orthodox notoriety, is an undeniably well-written but, at the same time, woefully underwhelming book. The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami? is a rejoinder to a problem perhaps as ancient as humanity itself, the philosophical problem of evil. This brief Christian apologia is a specific reaction to the tsunami disaster which thumped the island of Sumatra of western Indonesia in December 2004, laying waste to a quarter million people, 40% of which were children.
It's a short read, at just 104 pages in length, though the sum of Hart's theodicic denouements could be distilled to a trio of paragraphs, if not fewer. He fills the balance of the book with flowery prose and magniloquent diction which, while concordant with his other works, fails to elevate his reasoning to any higher significance. His cavernous vocabulary and polished writing are impressive in their own right, but ultimately serve no apparent purpose other than to cloak the tenuousness of his underlying arguments.
In responding to this greatest of theism's challenges, Hart eschews any qualms in addressing the broad marketplace of worldviews—from the atheist to the materialist, the deist to the Christian theist. He pays little attention to nontheistic appeals, reserving his greatest admonishment for aberrant Christian theology, which he believes to be the larger problem. Hart takes specific contention with Calvinism, assailing its declaratively 'unbiblical' soteriology of limited atonement and double predestination in not particularly amicable language, and assumes an avuncular posture toward the John Pipers of evangelicalism who attempt to derive divine meaning and signs from natural catastrophe. He also gives preferential treatment, and rightly so, to the pangs of Dostoyevsky's Ivan Karamazov as well as the deistic convictions of Voltaire.
The Privation Doctrine
Peeling past the layers of lofty speech reveals a frustratingly unsatisfactory and, indeed, historically banal strand of theology. While many of the classic approaches to the problem of evil are given their due, what is propounded here, at bottom, is an ectype of Augustinian theodicy circa 4th century, the idea that only good can come from God and evil is merely a privation of that goodness. Within this grid, evil is not viewed as a separate or distinct entity but relegated to various rungs in a hierarchy of goodness.
Leaving aside that this stands in direct contradiction with Isaiah 45:7, this of course begs the question. If God is the provenance only of good, from what or from whom does its inverse emanate? According to Hart, evil and suffering are the sole properties of the forces of evil, the “demonic powers” of one kingdom which are perpetually at war with the “angelic powers” of another. He cites a litany of biblical passages to support this claim (Col. 1:16, 1 Cor. 2:8, Eph. 1:21; 2:2; 3:10; 6:12, Gal. 4:3, John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11, 2 Cor. 4:4, and 1 John 5:19).
Concerns over biblical authority notwithstanding, what he has posited is that there exists a realm of disharmony completely sealed off from all human apprehension and sense experience, and the entirety of reality is characterized by this eternal conflict between mystical forces, evil and good. The problem I see with this argument is not only are the entities upon which it is based immune to verifiability or falsifiability (as all religious asseverations tend to be), but that it actually doesn’t explain anything; it only regresses the problem (and evil itself) to another ill-defined, nebulous entity or entities. It is but a sleight-handed, duplicitous attempt to disencumber God of his accountability for evil, conceding only that God permits suffering but does not will it.
There seems to be a more fundamental and manifestly conspicuous problem here, however, with attributing the source of evil to entities which are not God. If God is the creator of all, then these entities must have been part of that creation (unless of course one wishes to subscribe to paganistic and animistic religious traditions where the powers of good and evil have always coexisted in a state of existential turmoil). The implication by those championing this brand of theodicy is that the world could not have been created any other way. It is supposed that the entities responsible for evil and the physical forces precipitating natural disasters were somehow necessary elements of a free creation. The only remaining options are that God otherwise made a mistake and should not have created these entities in the first place, or that this all amounts to bloated theologizing in order to cover for an imaginary entity.
The Dilemma of Non-Intervention
If you swallow this theology in gross and thus ground human suffering in St. Paul's "mystical forces," one burdensome question looms just around the corner. This still does not explain why if God is in fact all-powerful does he not intervene in the most opportune of moments to relieve his creation of the undue misery and calamity knocking daily at our doors. Why–why indeed–did he not stay the cataclysmic waves of the Sumatran tsunami and "keep the sea within its appointed bounds?" (p. 2) The age-old dilemma continues to hold sway: either God is not omnipotent and is powerless at halting these atrocities or, if he is all-powerful, he is an inexplicably capricious being whose intervention in humanity is random, arbitrary or altogether absent. Epicurus espied this contradiction from the 3rd century BCE.
Instead of engaging this issue, Hart lambastes the impotent or evil dichotomy, saying it is a fallacious question to even ask, as it is “premised upon an inane anthropomorphism.” Hart writes:
His acrimonious stance toward this issue is beleaguered by a dual irony. First, he grounds his entire solution to the problem of evil in the Bible, which regularly speaks of God in human-centric language ("God is a jealous and vengeful God" - Nahum 1:2-8; "I regret that I have made [human beings]" - Gen. 6:6-7). The second shot of irony is that his attempt to promote a frictionless theodicy in this book is in fact an attempt at grappling with this intractable impasse. In a certain sense all of what we discuss about God and the supernatural are misguided anthropomorphisms, so why even endeavor to write a book if the very concept eludes conceptualization?
Hence we still do not have a reason for the abundant absence of intervention across history. Hart certainly doesn’t have an answer, urging us to "shed the burden of the desire for total explanation…” (p. 68) Rather, he assures us that it will all be worth it in the end. According to Hart, it is the God of Christianity that will intervene in the end of days to execute a final and universal harmony among his creation and the powers beyond our purview.
It is certainly a chipper thought. But is this notion—the long con of redemption—sufficient to expiate the suffering endured by the victims described in Dostoyevsky’s writings, or for the unfeeling reprobates who inflicted such undue harm, or for the untold desolation and agony to which life has been subjected across the vast expanse of geologic time? This final question is one which resonates fully with Hart, and he proceeds to engage it accordingly. He tells us either we accept that we're accompanied by evil and all will be brought to light and restored in the end, or we must conclude that evil is too execrable a byproduct of freedom of the will to warrant the creation of life in the first place.
Hart then offers a silver lining stemming from the ubiquity of evil, but one that won't be fully realized until the end of the natural order. It’s the idea that the depths of good cannot be apprehended without first realizing the depths of evil, a sort of metaphysical catch-22. He tells us our eternal happiness will be amplified tenfold once final victory in Jesus is accomplished as, without our exposures to evil, we would be unable to fully appreciate the extent of the infinite goodness awaiting us.
One point which refuses to fade from rational consideration, and which can scarcely be overstated, is the utter lack of evidence for the ethereal entities upon which all such belief systems are predicated. This static reality is one with which all patrons of faith must continually come to terms, from the layperson all the way up to the ivory-towered theologian. A well-reasoned, copacetic theology is, at its core, still merely an attempt to reconcile and reinforce its underlying assumptions, which have nary a shred of evidence. Each successive paroxysm like the one endured by the Indonesian peoples demands those of faith reevaluate their worldview and ask how a supposedly omniamorous God fits into the equation of life's drama.
Moreover, the loftiness of a theological argument has no bearing whatsoever on its truth value. One cannot make a myth true by developing more sophisticated polemic. Hart seems to acknowledge this, midway through the book: "To put the matter starkly, nature is a cycle of sacrifice, and religion has often been no more than an attempt to reconcile us to this reality." (p. 52) Indeed, though man's religious beliefs and theological acrobatics have grown more nuanced, more refined and ever more balkanized all at the same time, the amount of evidence for the underlying beliefs has remained unchanged.
Closing Thoughts
In closing, The Doors of the Sea is a provocatively written treatise on the problem of evil but one which ultimately fails to capture anything new that hasn't been propounded several times before. Were it not a targeted response to the devastating Indonesian tsunami event of 2004, this might be mistaken for a facsimile, more or less, of far earlier theodicic works littering the libraries of those of us well-seasoned in dialogues of this variety. That said, for those never before exposed to these types of arguments, or to Eastern Orthodox theology writ large, this may very well represent a beacon of perspicacity among the glut of pro-materialist accounts being pushed today.
D.B. Hart is one of the more eloquent religious philosophers of our time, but a book of theology should do more than double as a pocket thesaurus. A well written book fails to be something more when it is bereft of substance, new knowledge, or fresh approaches to old knowledge. Newness and freshness are not what you’ll find here. The Christian still subscribes to the idea of an omnipotent master, a personal deity intimately concerned with human affairs, yet the earth is still riven with evil and suffering of the highest order, with no apparent intervention of any kind.
To be sure, this is a book not on the existence of God but on the nature of God. But before it is deemed purposeful to theorize one’s nature or eternal plan, shouldn't we first confirm that such an entity is even there? As the late Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman declared when asked what he would say to God if given the chance: “You should have given us better evidence."
Note: This review is republished from my official website. Click through for additional footnotes and imagery.
It's a short read, at just 104 pages in length, though the sum of Hart's theodicic denouements could be distilled to a trio of paragraphs, if not fewer. He fills the balance of the book with flowery prose and magniloquent diction which, while concordant with his other works, fails to elevate his reasoning to any higher significance. His cavernous vocabulary and polished writing are impressive in their own right, but ultimately serve no apparent purpose other than to cloak the tenuousness of his underlying arguments.
In responding to this greatest of theism's challenges, Hart eschews any qualms in addressing the broad marketplace of worldviews—from the atheist to the materialist, the deist to the Christian theist. He pays little attention to nontheistic appeals, reserving his greatest admonishment for aberrant Christian theology, which he believes to be the larger problem. Hart takes specific contention with Calvinism, assailing its declaratively 'unbiblical' soteriology of limited atonement and double predestination in not particularly amicable language, and assumes an avuncular posture toward the John Pipers of evangelicalism who attempt to derive divine meaning and signs from natural catastrophe. He also gives preferential treatment, and rightly so, to the pangs of Dostoyevsky's Ivan Karamazov as well as the deistic convictions of Voltaire.
The Privation Doctrine
Peeling past the layers of lofty speech reveals a frustratingly unsatisfactory and, indeed, historically banal strand of theology. While many of the classic approaches to the problem of evil are given their due, what is propounded here, at bottom, is an ectype of Augustinian theodicy circa 4th century, the idea that only good can come from God and evil is merely a privation of that goodness. Within this grid, evil is not viewed as a separate or distinct entity but relegated to various rungs in a hierarchy of goodness.
"This is not to say that evil is then somehow illusory; it is only to say that evil, rather than being a discrete substance, is instead a kind of ontological wasting disease.” (p. 73)
Leaving aside that this stands in direct contradiction with Isaiah 45:7, this of course begs the question. If God is the provenance only of good, from what or from whom does its inverse emanate? According to Hart, evil and suffering are the sole properties of the forces of evil, the “demonic powers” of one kingdom which are perpetually at war with the “angelic powers” of another. He cites a litany of biblical passages to support this claim (Col. 1:16, 1 Cor. 2:8, Eph. 1:21; 2:2; 3:10; 6:12, Gal. 4:3, John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11, 2 Cor. 4:4, and 1 John 5:19).
“The cosmos, then, is divided between two kingdoms, that of God and that of death.” (p. 66)
Concerns over biblical authority notwithstanding, what he has posited is that there exists a realm of disharmony completely sealed off from all human apprehension and sense experience, and the entirety of reality is characterized by this eternal conflict between mystical forces, evil and good. The problem I see with this argument is not only are the entities upon which it is based immune to verifiability or falsifiability (as all religious asseverations tend to be), but that it actually doesn’t explain anything; it only regresses the problem (and evil itself) to another ill-defined, nebulous entity or entities. It is but a sleight-handed, duplicitous attempt to disencumber God of his accountability for evil, conceding only that God permits suffering but does not will it.
There seems to be a more fundamental and manifestly conspicuous problem here, however, with attributing the source of evil to entities which are not God. If God is the creator of all, then these entities must have been part of that creation (unless of course one wishes to subscribe to paganistic and animistic religious traditions where the powers of good and evil have always coexisted in a state of existential turmoil). The implication by those championing this brand of theodicy is that the world could not have been created any other way. It is supposed that the entities responsible for evil and the physical forces precipitating natural disasters were somehow necessary elements of a free creation. The only remaining options are that God otherwise made a mistake and should not have created these entities in the first place, or that this all amounts to bloated theologizing in order to cover for an imaginary entity.
The Dilemma of Non-Intervention
If you swallow this theology in gross and thus ground human suffering in St. Paul's "mystical forces," one burdensome question looms just around the corner. This still does not explain why if God is in fact all-powerful does he not intervene in the most opportune of moments to relieve his creation of the undue misery and calamity knocking daily at our doors. Why–why indeed–did he not stay the cataclysmic waves of the Sumatran tsunami and "keep the sea within its appointed bounds?" (p. 2) The age-old dilemma continues to hold sway: either God is not omnipotent and is powerless at halting these atrocities or, if he is all-powerful, he is an inexplicably capricious being whose intervention in humanity is random, arbitrary or altogether absent. Epicurus espied this contradiction from the 3rd century BCE.
Instead of engaging this issue, Hart lambastes the impotent or evil dichotomy, saying it is a fallacious question to even ask, as it is “premised upon an inane anthropomorphism.” Hart writes:
“Unless one can see the beginning and end of all things, unless one possesses a divine, eternal vantage upon all of time, unless one knows the precise nature of the relation between divine and created freedom, unless indeed one can fathom infinite wisdom, one can draw no conclusions from finite experience regarding the coincidence in God of omnipotence and perfect goodness.” (pp. 13-14)
His acrimonious stance toward this issue is beleaguered by a dual irony. First, he grounds his entire solution to the problem of evil in the Bible, which regularly speaks of God in human-centric language ("God is a jealous and vengeful God" - Nahum 1:2-8; "I regret that I have made [human beings]" - Gen. 6:6-7). The second shot of irony is that his attempt to promote a frictionless theodicy in this book is in fact an attempt at grappling with this intractable impasse. In a certain sense all of what we discuss about God and the supernatural are misguided anthropomorphisms, so why even endeavor to write a book if the very concept eludes conceptualization?
Hence we still do not have a reason for the abundant absence of intervention across history. Hart certainly doesn’t have an answer, urging us to "shed the burden of the desire for total explanation…” (p. 68) Rather, he assures us that it will all be worth it in the end. According to Hart, it is the God of Christianity that will intervene in the end of days to execute a final and universal harmony among his creation and the powers beyond our purview.
“...all wounds will at the last be healed, all scars will disappear, all discord will vanish like a mirage, and that such will be the splendor of the finale of all things, when that universal harmony is established.” (p. 38)
It is certainly a chipper thought. But is this notion—the long con of redemption—sufficient to expiate the suffering endured by the victims described in Dostoyevsky’s writings, or for the unfeeling reprobates who inflicted such undue harm, or for the untold desolation and agony to which life has been subjected across the vast expanse of geologic time? This final question is one which resonates fully with Hart, and he proceeds to engage it accordingly. He tells us either we accept that we're accompanied by evil and all will be brought to light and restored in the end, or we must conclude that evil is too execrable a byproduct of freedom of the will to warrant the creation of life in the first place.
“One is confronted with only this bare choice: either one embraces the mystery of created freedom and accepts that the union of free spiritual creatures with the God of love is a thing so wonderful that the power of creation to enslave itself to death must be permitted by God; or one judges that not even such rational freedom is worth the risk of a cosmic fall and the terrible injustice of the consequences that follow from it.” (p. 69) He concludes that “the rejection of God on these grounds cannot really be a rational decision, but only a moral pathos.”
Hart then offers a silver lining stemming from the ubiquity of evil, but one that won't be fully realized until the end of the natural order. It’s the idea that the depths of good cannot be apprehended without first realizing the depths of evil, a sort of metaphysical catch-22. He tells us our eternal happiness will be amplified tenfold once final victory in Jesus is accomplished as, without our exposures to evil, we would be unable to fully appreciate the extent of the infinite goodness awaiting us.
“…thereby in the profoundest mystery of redemption, and advancing the venerable homiletic conceit that our salvation from sin will result in a higher beatitude than could ever have evolved from an innocence untouched by death.” (p. 28)
One point which refuses to fade from rational consideration, and which can scarcely be overstated, is the utter lack of evidence for the ethereal entities upon which all such belief systems are predicated. This static reality is one with which all patrons of faith must continually come to terms, from the layperson all the way up to the ivory-towered theologian. A well-reasoned, copacetic theology is, at its core, still merely an attempt to reconcile and reinforce its underlying assumptions, which have nary a shred of evidence. Each successive paroxysm like the one endured by the Indonesian peoples demands those of faith reevaluate their worldview and ask how a supposedly omniamorous God fits into the equation of life's drama.
Moreover, the loftiness of a theological argument has no bearing whatsoever on its truth value. One cannot make a myth true by developing more sophisticated polemic. Hart seems to acknowledge this, midway through the book: "To put the matter starkly, nature is a cycle of sacrifice, and religion has often been no more than an attempt to reconcile us to this reality." (p. 52) Indeed, though man's religious beliefs and theological acrobatics have grown more nuanced, more refined and ever more balkanized all at the same time, the amount of evidence for the underlying beliefs has remained unchanged.
Closing Thoughts
In closing, The Doors of the Sea is a provocatively written treatise on the problem of evil but one which ultimately fails to capture anything new that hasn't been propounded several times before. Were it not a targeted response to the devastating Indonesian tsunami event of 2004, this might be mistaken for a facsimile, more or less, of far earlier theodicic works littering the libraries of those of us well-seasoned in dialogues of this variety. That said, for those never before exposed to these types of arguments, or to Eastern Orthodox theology writ large, this may very well represent a beacon of perspicacity among the glut of pro-materialist accounts being pushed today.
D.B. Hart is one of the more eloquent religious philosophers of our time, but a book of theology should do more than double as a pocket thesaurus. A well written book fails to be something more when it is bereft of substance, new knowledge, or fresh approaches to old knowledge. Newness and freshness are not what you’ll find here. The Christian still subscribes to the idea of an omnipotent master, a personal deity intimately concerned with human affairs, yet the earth is still riven with evil and suffering of the highest order, with no apparent intervention of any kind.
To be sure, this is a book not on the existence of God but on the nature of God. But before it is deemed purposeful to theorize one’s nature or eternal plan, shouldn't we first confirm that such an entity is even there? As the late Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman declared when asked what he would say to God if given the chance: “You should have given us better evidence."
Note: This review is republished from my official website. Click through for additional footnotes and imagery.
June 10, 2013
After working my way through The Beauty of the Infinite by David Bentley Hart and being incredibly impressed, I sought out more of his books. He wrote a short book , The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami, on the problem of evil and suffering in light of the 2004 tsunami in Asia that killed thousands. Hart seeks to defend Christianity from its secular critics, but along the way he also argues against a divine determinism that makes God the author of suffering. He brings in a lot of Dostoyevsky, which I love! He argues that God is all good and thus never wills evil. Evil is abhorent and horrific. God allows it to happen, though one day God will no longer allow it.
Here is where my one question lies, and where I think the secular critic could make a good point. Against Christians who imply (or outright say) that God does more than permit it, Hart successfully shows that God never causes evil, God merely allows it. In the face of all the evil and suffering though, why is God so slow in bringing it to an end. Is the argument, “one day, some day, God will no longer permit suffering” not somewhat questionable in the face of suffering now? God could end it now, why wait? I am sure Hart has an answer, and I would be curious to hear it.
Here is where my one question lies, and where I think the secular critic could make a good point. Against Christians who imply (or outright say) that God does more than permit it, Hart successfully shows that God never causes evil, God merely allows it. In the face of all the evil and suffering though, why is God so slow in bringing it to an end. Is the argument, “one day, some day, God will no longer permit suffering” not somewhat questionable in the face of suffering now? God could end it now, why wait? I am sure Hart has an answer, and I would be curious to hear it.
January 23, 2018
Hart’s theodicy is indispensable. I finished this book filled with gratitude and more tears than I expected a book was capable of.
Hart’s answer for suffering in light of a good God is personally revolutionary, and I would recommend it to anyone searching for God in tragedy.
Hart’s answer for suffering in light of a good God is personally revolutionary, and I would recommend it to anyone searching for God in tragedy.
September 13, 2023
If you have ever lost someone you dearly loved, suffered some terrible malady, found yourself plagued with a phobia or anxiety over the abyss of your fate, or survived a natural disaster — please read this book.
For the sake of your own hope and joy, please read it.
I started it a couple years before my father died so young in 2021, but didn’t really get far. It was also pre pandemic in NYC, though I had survived the Joplin tornado, had left Tunisia before the Arab spring, my wife is from Ferguson, I moved to NYC right after Sandy, the list goes on. All of these things made everything in it — the reporting, the poetry, the Karamazov quotes I have just read this last year, and especially the philosophy — all the most poignant and real to me. I was laughing and pushed intellectually an cried multiple times. Had a crepuscular sleep last night so I was finishing it at 1am here in Brooklyn, weeping for hope, weeping for joy.
If you’ve ever encountered an atheist friend who offers a heartless and callous “that’s just the brutality of nature” to your suffering or a muslim or Calvinist friend who says of your dying child “it’s all a part of God’s plan,” this book will make both look like idiots, vindicate your rage over the evils of death, and ultimately give you deepest hope for your deepest longings in your grief.
Or at least it did for me. Miss you every day dad. See you soon.
For the sake of your own hope and joy, please read it.
I started it a couple years before my father died so young in 2021, but didn’t really get far. It was also pre pandemic in NYC, though I had survived the Joplin tornado, had left Tunisia before the Arab spring, my wife is from Ferguson, I moved to NYC right after Sandy, the list goes on. All of these things made everything in it — the reporting, the poetry, the Karamazov quotes I have just read this last year, and especially the philosophy — all the most poignant and real to me. I was laughing and pushed intellectually an cried multiple times. Had a crepuscular sleep last night so I was finishing it at 1am here in Brooklyn, weeping for hope, weeping for joy.
If you’ve ever encountered an atheist friend who offers a heartless and callous “that’s just the brutality of nature” to your suffering or a muslim or Calvinist friend who says of your dying child “it’s all a part of God’s plan,” this book will make both look like idiots, vindicate your rage over the evils of death, and ultimately give you deepest hope for your deepest longings in your grief.
Or at least it did for me. Miss you every day dad. See you soon.
January 13, 2009
This brilliant man wrote a painfully inadequate book.
April 21, 2020
The Doors of the Sea is a profound, beautifully written book that helps one grasp the horror of evil and the goodness of God. David Bentley Hart wrote The Doors of the Sea as a response to the tsunami that struck Asia in December, 2004. The earth moved; it brought devastation; and God did not confine it.
Some people use disasters such as this to discredit the idea of an all-powerful, just and loving God. Many of these arguments fail to understand God as shown to us by Jesus Christ. Still, such arguments shouldn't be lightly dismissed because these arguments are often responses to how many Christians habitually speak about God. Hart observes that underlying these arguments is a legitimate moral horror at misery, a desire for justice, a refusal of easy solutions, and an unwillingness to accept evil.
Christians can contribute to misunderstandings about God by over-simplifying God or by rationalizing situations. Hart offers some examples. It is an oversimplification to say that everything is a direct expression of God's divine will. It is a rationalization to say that suffering allows us to see attributes of God that we would otherwise be unable to see or to suggest that suffering brings a more glorious salvation. Such oversimplifications and rationalizations assume that everything that happens must be part of God's plan, but this is not a good understanding of providence and ignores God-given free agency within creation.
Christian tradition teaches that God is the source of all being and that he is ultimate goodness, truth and beauty. Because of this, all that God creates also must be good, true and beautiful. Christianity also teaches that we live in a corrupted world, a world called out of nothingness to a fullness of creation that has not yet been reached. Christianity denies that God created suffering, death and evil and that these things lack any ultimate value or meaning. God created rational creatures with the freedom to resist him and these created wills are responsible for the corruption of this present world. But God’s goodness, truth and beauty are in no way hindered by this present corruption. God will ultimately show that suffering, death and evil are powerless against him and will bring in the full goodness of his creation.
Because of this, Hart concludes, Christians are permitted to hate evil, but they are also to see, with eyes of charity, the hints of ultimate goodness that are in this present world. Christianity is a religion of salvation. "God's gracious will for his creatures--his willing of all things to his own infinite goodness--is the creative power that makes all things to be and the consummate happiness to which all things are called" (pp. 97-98).
Some people use disasters such as this to discredit the idea of an all-powerful, just and loving God. Many of these arguments fail to understand God as shown to us by Jesus Christ. Still, such arguments shouldn't be lightly dismissed because these arguments are often responses to how many Christians habitually speak about God. Hart observes that underlying these arguments is a legitimate moral horror at misery, a desire for justice, a refusal of easy solutions, and an unwillingness to accept evil.
Christians can contribute to misunderstandings about God by over-simplifying God or by rationalizing situations. Hart offers some examples. It is an oversimplification to say that everything is a direct expression of God's divine will. It is a rationalization to say that suffering allows us to see attributes of God that we would otherwise be unable to see or to suggest that suffering brings a more glorious salvation. Such oversimplifications and rationalizations assume that everything that happens must be part of God's plan, but this is not a good understanding of providence and ignores God-given free agency within creation.
Christian tradition teaches that God is the source of all being and that he is ultimate goodness, truth and beauty. Because of this, all that God creates also must be good, true and beautiful. Christianity also teaches that we live in a corrupted world, a world called out of nothingness to a fullness of creation that has not yet been reached. Christianity denies that God created suffering, death and evil and that these things lack any ultimate value or meaning. God created rational creatures with the freedom to resist him and these created wills are responsible for the corruption of this present world. But God’s goodness, truth and beauty are in no way hindered by this present corruption. God will ultimately show that suffering, death and evil are powerless against him and will bring in the full goodness of his creation.
Because of this, Hart concludes, Christians are permitted to hate evil, but they are also to see, with eyes of charity, the hints of ultimate goodness that are in this present world. Christianity is a religion of salvation. "God's gracious will for his creatures--his willing of all things to his own infinite goodness--is the creative power that makes all things to be and the consummate happiness to which all things are called" (pp. 97-98).
December 24, 2012
Hart is an Eastern Orthodox Christian and writes from a perspective that is a little different than what we usually hear. The book is rich is philosophy, theology, and literary references, and will sometimes take a second or third reading of a passage to understand. Hart interacts extensively with the writings of Voltaire and Dostoyevsky in building his theodicy.
Although Hart states that he is not trying to make Reformed theology "the bad guy", he freely admits that certain elements of Reformed theology are simply not compatible with Eastern Orthodox theology. As an Arminian, I found it refreshing to find a work that is so rich and deep.
Since it seems that tragedies come at a fairly regular pace, this is a highly recommended work in understanding God and suffering. As noted, some passages take effort - but you will be rewarded richly for the effort.
Although Hart states that he is not trying to make Reformed theology "the bad guy", he freely admits that certain elements of Reformed theology are simply not compatible with Eastern Orthodox theology. As an Arminian, I found it refreshing to find a work that is so rich and deep.
Since it seems that tragedies come at a fairly regular pace, this is a highly recommended work in understanding God and suffering. As noted, some passages take effort - but you will be rewarded richly for the effort.
January 9, 2018
Brief essay about the problem of evil by David Bentley Hart, Orthodox Christian theologian. Some parts I really liked, some others went too much in the detailed, technical philosophical reference for my taste and level of knowledge.
April 5, 2024
Recommended to me by my dear friend Kyle.
I think this book has changed my life. It’s been a life raft through one of the darkest seasons. It’s one I’ll likely read annually.
I think this book has changed my life. It’s been a life raft through one of the darkest seasons. It’s one I’ll likely read annually.
January 16, 2012
Hart is not completing a theodicy here, but instead reacting to the idiocy of the theodicy of others. I appreciate it is a severe rebuke to some Reformed talkers who uphold a certain divine sovereignty and thus make God the author of evil for some alleged higher good. It is a sophisticated conversation, I do wish he could have said more about Dostoyevsky (I will have to reread the Brothers Karamazov now) and many other things that he just hints at, but his description of the unreality of evil, the impassibility of God, and the distinction between divine will and divine permission are clear. A pleasure to read and think along side, with, and against. Now I need to pull out Wright's Evil and the Justice of God again.
March 12, 2022
"..we are permitted to hate these things with a perfect hatred (Hart is speaking of evil in the world like that of the Tsunami) and we are required to believe that time is a shadow of true time and that this world is only a shadow of the fuller, richer, more substantial, more glorious creation that God intends and to believe also that all of nature is a shattered mirror of the Divine beauty, still full of light, but riven with darkness" - DBH
This was an excellent book that I will hopefully read again to glean more of what I yet do not fully understand but am bewildered by the picture Hart paints of the vastness of who God really is.
My takeaway from the book is that we Christians tend to put God in a box and try to explain away tragedies by saying that they some higher purpose. That in our commiseration we hope to consul ourselves this way but in doing so we only make the picture more blurry. Like saying "everything happens for a reason" - that saying never sat well with me, with the evil that I have seen in my life. No God is not the author of evil.
Hart argues that there is no ultimate purpose because of your pain or a great tragedy but that we live in a broken world filled with people, powers and principalities that have gone rogue and that Jesus is "the conqueror of evil by the power of the cross" and that one day He will make all things new.
"A faith that has set us free from optimism, but taught us hope instead." David Bentley Hart
This was an excellent book that I will hopefully read again to glean more of what I yet do not fully understand but am bewildered by the picture Hart paints of the vastness of who God really is.
My takeaway from the book is that we Christians tend to put God in a box and try to explain away tragedies by saying that they some higher purpose. That in our commiseration we hope to consul ourselves this way but in doing so we only make the picture more blurry. Like saying "everything happens for a reason" - that saying never sat well with me, with the evil that I have seen in my life. No God is not the author of evil.
Hart argues that there is no ultimate purpose because of your pain or a great tragedy but that we live in a broken world filled with people, powers and principalities that have gone rogue and that Jesus is "the conqueror of evil by the power of the cross" and that one day He will make all things new.
"A faith that has set us free from optimism, but taught us hope instead." David Bentley Hart
February 13, 2021
“(description of tsunami)...At such times, to see the goodness indwelling all creation requires a labor of vision that only a faith in Easter can sustain; but it is there, effulgent, unfading, innocent, but languishing in bondage to corruption, groaning in anticipation of a glory yet to be revealed, both a promise of the kingdom yet to come and a portent of its beauty.
Until that final glory, however, the world remains divided between two kingdoms, where light and darkness, life and death grow up together and await the harvest. In such a world, our portion is charity, and our sustenance is faith, and so it will be until the end of days. As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child, I do not see the face of God but the face of his enemy. Such faith might never seen credible to someone like Ivan Karamazov, or still the disquiet of his conscience, or give him peace in place of rebellion, but neither is it a faith that his arguments can defeat: for it is a faith that set us free from optimism long ago and taught us hope instead.”
A thought provoking read. Well worth the time invested. Four stars instead of five because author was a bit superfluous and could have condensed some parts.
Until that final glory, however, the world remains divided between two kingdoms, where light and darkness, life and death grow up together and await the harvest. In such a world, our portion is charity, and our sustenance is faith, and so it will be until the end of days. As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child, I do not see the face of God but the face of his enemy. Such faith might never seen credible to someone like Ivan Karamazov, or still the disquiet of his conscience, or give him peace in place of rebellion, but neither is it a faith that his arguments can defeat: for it is a faith that set us free from optimism long ago and taught us hope instead.”
A thought provoking read. Well worth the time invested. Four stars instead of five because author was a bit superfluous and could have condensed some parts.
July 15, 2025
We should sit in silence.
DBH at his most amicable as far as I’ve seen. Everyone he critiques he also has a redeeming quality about them — even Calvin. That’s not to say the boy ain’t bullish in this one, but it feels surprisingly reserved.
Anyways. The book. Hm. I mean it’s a free will defence of theodicy to preserve true love in freedom between humans and God. I guess that’s fine, it’s just not novel. Idk maybe I have a high bar for David, but I was underwhelmed by that.
I really appreciate, however, how much emphasis he places on impassibility and omnipotence without comprising on the evils of this world. The reality that this world is an order separate from the true order of God is a neat trick, but who knows if it has any merit. Doesn’t feel the best — not that he pretends that he’s solving the problem satisfyingly.
I will say that the way he ties Christology into this and basically calls out the panentheistic Moltmann reading of the cross of God sharing and taking in our sufferings as inadequate and implying God requiring evil to become full is… quite strong. I have to take the argument there seriously because I am quite process-y that way. Maybe we really do need to take impassibility seriously if we want to say God is all good.
DBH at his most amicable as far as I’ve seen. Everyone he critiques he also has a redeeming quality about them — even Calvin. That’s not to say the boy ain’t bullish in this one, but it feels surprisingly reserved.
Anyways. The book. Hm. I mean it’s a free will defence of theodicy to preserve true love in freedom between humans and God. I guess that’s fine, it’s just not novel. Idk maybe I have a high bar for David, but I was underwhelmed by that.
I really appreciate, however, how much emphasis he places on impassibility and omnipotence without comprising on the evils of this world. The reality that this world is an order separate from the true order of God is a neat trick, but who knows if it has any merit. Doesn’t feel the best — not that he pretends that he’s solving the problem satisfyingly.
I will say that the way he ties Christology into this and basically calls out the panentheistic Moltmann reading of the cross of God sharing and taking in our sufferings as inadequate and implying God requiring evil to become full is… quite strong. I have to take the argument there seriously because I am quite process-y that way. Maybe we really do need to take impassibility seriously if we want to say God is all good.
March 14, 2023
I took awhile to finish this short book, but there was an abundance of things to sit with inside its pages. Hart’s writing is admittedly difficult to fully digest while simultaneously being deeply captivating. Hart (relatively) succinctly answers a question that has been answered poorly time and time again. His take on the justice of God was simply beautiful. I don’t know where I stand on many of the ideas he presents, but Hart has given me much to think about.
July 2, 2025
Page 61 along with page 91 lay it on a silver platter.
January 23, 2022
An interesting book on the problem of natural evil, but overall rather disappointing considering the author is usually on ball in his other works. In this piece however, I found his arguments to be rather lacklustre and off topic at times. Watch my YouTube review/analysis here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frlC6...
July 21, 2021
And yet Ivan's argument still cannot be set aside, for a number of reasons: because it is in fact a genuinely moral pathos to which it gives expression, which means that it is haunted by the declaration in Christ of God's perfect goodness; and because it is precisely the finite Euclidean mind that is meant to be transfigured by God's love and awakened to God's mercy, and so the restlessness of the unquiet heart must not be treated as mere foolish unfaithfulness; and because, simply said, the suffering of children remains real and horrible and unjust, and it is obscene to seek to mitigate the scandal of such suffering by allowing hope to degenerate into banal confidence: in "God's great plan.” Anyway, Such confidence all too easily blinds us to the spiritual universe of the New Testament. For the secret of Ivan's argument (as I have already hinted) is that it is not a challenge to Christian faith advanced from the position of unbelief; more subtly, it is a challenge to the habitual optimism or pagan fatalism or empty logical determinism of many Christians advanced from the position of a deeper, more original, more revolutionary, more "Christian" vision of God and understanding of evil. For behind Ivan's anguish lies an intuition- which is purely Christian, even if many Christians are insensible to it that it is 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.
December 3, 2019
I'll probably end up re-reading this at some point. It was enjoyable to chew over some very, very dense sentences, reading them several times to try to think through the ideas he presented. But having to do that with paragraph after paragraph had me lost in the weeds and difficult to try to capture his overarching points. After finishing the book, I'd be hard pressed to put together a short summary of how he himself would answer the question he puts in the title. My best guess would be that he would say that:
1) God is fully good, and nothing evil can come from him
2) Evil and suffering still exists, and God can intervene, and at some point in the future, God will, and will wipe away everything in a huge intervention
3) I'm not sure why that hasn't happened yet, and how to reconcile with suffering still happening if it is not from God, God doesn't desire it, doesn't require it to fulfill his will.
Some sections spoke meaningfully to me, so I wish I understood more. Maybe I'm the problem! Hoping to bump this up after a re-read.
1) God is fully good, and nothing evil can come from him
2) Evil and suffering still exists, and God can intervene, and at some point in the future, God will, and will wipe away everything in a huge intervention
3) I'm not sure why that hasn't happened yet, and how to reconcile with suffering still happening if it is not from God, God doesn't desire it, doesn't require it to fulfill his will.
Some sections spoke meaningfully to me, so I wish I understood more. Maybe I'm the problem! Hoping to bump this up after a re-read.
February 8, 2019
Wow. This little book is a categorical expander. Hart elucidates the Christian view of the "cosmic situation" and shows how evil fits into that understanding. A Christian specific theodicy. Very good, if only to expose yourself to Hart's mode of thinking.
May 26, 2024
You know I did enjoy what it had to say, but the author's writing style and the way information was presented just could not keep me super engaged. Not really what I expected, but still has important things to shared!
Read
October 11, 2020Since I agree with the author of Qohelet and with Aristotle that there is nothing new under the sun, I have no problem repeating the old notion that sometimes a short book can proclaim as much, if not more truth and in a more beautiful than a sizeable tome. This happens to be the case with The Doors of the Sea by my favorite philosophical theologian, David Bentley Hart. This is a short work of only a little over 100 pages divided into 2 chapters with 5 sections each. Be that as it may, this book was definitely revolutionary for me – one of those rare books that actually changes your life and worldview. The way he does this is even more astonishing – the thing I find most compelling about most of Hart’s theological writing is that he really seems to embody the Orthodox teaching of tradition – that it is living and dynamic, not a static regurgitation of what others have said. What Hart discusses here is also nothing new; he is not attempting to respond to the problem of evil with some novel innovation of his own invention. Instead he brings the leader to the light once held by the torches of the wise men of old and he does so in an intriguing way – weaving the disparate ancient views into a cohesive and beautiful tapestry that is both new and yet faithful to his forebears. Not only did this book enlighten my intellect, but it gave great comfort to my heart and surprisingly delivered me to the heights of prayer in some moments, so beautiful was the prose and even more delightful the eternal truth behind the contingent words.
This book had its beginnings in a brief Wall Street Journal article in response to what Hart considered the many inane and confused musings of both mistaken Christians and village atheists alike. This in turn was extended into an article for the journal First Things and then he expanded even more, and this is the book here being reviewed. The title is in reference to one of the worst natural disasters in history (~250,000 dead), the Boxing Day tsunami that occurred on Boxing Day in 2004. Every time a severe catastrophe on this scale occurs there are always a variety of opinions on display and invariably most are mistaken and confused, if not downright repellant and morally horrifying. Hart gives a catalog of these and notices that in the immediate wake of tragedy the most anyone should do is to maintain silence – words have no force and can even be nigh blasphemous in the light of such monstrous evil. Comfort is more needed than explanation – but nevertheless nothing can quite comfort a rational being more than knowledge so Hart felt the need to engage the conversation and not be content with silence forever.
In the first chapter Hart begins by defining theodicy as the attempt to reconcile the evil in the world with the all-powerful, all-loving, and all-knowing God proclaimed by Christians. He thinks not just that some particular theodicies are flawed, but that theodicy itself – the mere attempt to reconcile evil with God’s goodness is fundamentally flawed from the get-go. That’s precisely because the God professed by Christians does NOT reconcile Himself to evil—He instead subverts, overthrows, and conquers it. Theodicy inevitably leads to one of two opposite errors. The first is the reduction of God to a voluntarist monster by saying that He directly causes the evil and, in the end,, we will see why it was “meet and right” for them to occur. The second limits God’s power by stating that He sincerely does want to stop evil and never wanted it to occur, but He can’t stop it. They both share the mistaken premise that we need to deny the pointlessness of suffering, that our suffering must somehow be meaningful. To do this we must posit some mysterious divine plan that somehow makes sense in a way we can’t possibly comprehend. This lowest stage of the religious imagination views God as the divine account balancer.
The next rung on the latter showcases the view that correctly sees that all the horrifying and pointless evil is morally unintelligible and so shouldn’t happen. This often leads to an atheistic rebellion, which can be purifying for the soul as Dostoevsky showed clearly in The Brothers Karamazov through Ivan and that Paul Evdokimov, as a good student of Dostoevsky, demonstrated in his theological writing, such as Ages of the Spiritual Life. The reason why this can be good is that the atheists and deists who reach this point do so, most often unbeknownst to them, based on a fundamentally Christian intuition – that since God is perfectly good, all-powerful, and infinitely free to create things as he wants he must therefore not depend on evil whatsoever to accomplish his ends. God refuses to be reconciled to evil and so too does this type of atheist or deist and that is admirable in that regard and can lead to a greater faith, if the obstacle is surmounted, than that held by the heretical Christian who believes God to be a cosmic accountant. The problem lies in the fact that this sort of atheist doesn’t see that not only is this evil unintelligible, but that it would be far worse if it were—this is the highest stage in the religious imagination. This is what the NT proclaims – God utterly opposes and destroys death, suffering, and evil – he does NOT attempt to reconcile us TO IT, he came to save us FROM IT. Also, the atheist position is not a logical proof so much as a refusal of God’s salvation since it is impossible from our limited vantage point to know if it will be worth it in the end.
The second chapter begins with an extended meditation on the difference between the modern, disenchanted view of nature as mindless mechanism vs. the more ancient view of the cosmos as alive and charged with intellect – mind is at the center of all things. The reason he brings this up is because this modern view of nature has shaped theodicy. Theodicists tend to look at how nature is currently, which is an endless and pitiless cycle of random life and death and then project that back into God’s eternal counsels. Hart contends that this is nothing but a lack of imagination Sure, in the world the lion doesn’t lay down with the lamb and we may not see what purpose God would have in creating viruses or mosquitoes, but the failure to see that is both a failure of imagination as well as logic while also being against Scripture, to boot. This attempt to extend the logic of the present evil age into eternity invariably ends up proving that paradise isn’t even possible – the 2nd law of thermodynamics becomes the god of theodicists and natural theologians rather than the God revealed in Jesus Christ.
The fundamental error shared by atheists, theodicists, deists, and natural theologians is that they see one world where they should see two. This current world is but a shadow of the real world – we are strangers and pilgrims on the earth as Hebrews 11:13 claims. Hart says that this is best modelled conceptually as two concentric circles. If we picture that in our minds we see that this shadow world is always situated in the larger, true world and this explains why this world isn’t either pure darkness nor pure light but a mixture of the two. The presence of the pure, undefiled world is always accessible to us, and at many points in time becomes shockingly clear to us. The tradition is unanimous as to how we can see the glory of the Kingdom more clearly in the here and now. As the Lord tells us in the beatitudes, and as Evagrius, St. Maximus the Confessor, and George MacDonald also confirmed the way to see God’s mysteries requires a pure heart, cleansed of all defilement by the limpid and disinfecting light of selfless love.
This two-world model may be disconcerting to some because it is a dualism and logic abhors a dualism, but we can take comfort that it is only a temporary and provisional dualism and one that does NOT extend into eternity. Many of us are so inundated in the Christian story emblazoned in the NT that we lack the ability to see its utter strangeness. Paul’s letters, the gospel of John, and the catholic epistles especially seem to envisage this age as replete with spiritual warfare between us and our hostile governors – the rebellious angels and demons who seek to destroy and pervert us. But luckily God sent His only Son to judge this evil government and its Archons as false, subjugate them beneath his feet, and will eventually be all in all.
Next, Hart relates to us the classical definition of evil as privation boni and all this entails. If evil has no substance then God can’t depend on it whatsoever The reason for this definition of evil is because if it were false, then God would be the author of both evil and good and so he would logically have to be beyond both, which is basically evil. We know, however, that it is logically impossible for God to be evil since He is the Good as such. This means that Calvin was definitely wrong when he stated that God willed the fall (Institutes III.23.8). It also means that those who think that drama of fall and redemption makes the world better than it would have been are also wrong. You don’t have to have a PhD to realize that it would be better if there were no suffering at all. This also means that those theologians who say that God can’t reveal some of his good traits unless evil things happen are also wrong. They think it is beautiful when a man courageously gives his life to save another in battle, but what they forgot that any marine or soldier can tell you is that it would be infinitely more beautiful if their friend were still alive and never had to show such courage.
This view of evil organically leads to the doctrine of divine apatheia or impassibility which entails that God doesn’t change at all, he doesn’t react to us or anything in the world and doesn’t need the world or us whatsoever. He is perfect and as such, is infinitely sufficient in Himself. Some think this is a callous and unfeeling perspective of God, but they are not thinking clearly. This doctrine is quite beautiful as well as being true since it avoids the crude anthropomorphism of viewing God as like one of us and also is the basis for God’s unchanging love for us sinners. He loves us no matter what we do – His love, due to apatheia, is utterly unconditional. He didn’t create us because of some codependent need to have people to keep him from being lonely or due to some despotic need to force other creatures to bend to his will. Our existence is an utterly free gift that he bestows in abundance.
Hart then shows the difference between providence and fate. Fate, determinism, and fatalism all suppose a universal teleology that seeks to find a 1:1 correspondence between every single action that occurs and the divine will. This collapse of the transcendence of God would entail that we are mindless robots in a pantheistic universe and so make the creation of truly free rational creations an impossible fiction. Yet this is precisely what theodicy seeks to do. What we as Christians need to do is back away from theodicy and the deterministic universe it entails and seek to take refuge in divine providence which holds that God will have his will come to pass despite the rebellion of his creatures. As such, we can let go of the frustrating and false need to imagine that every single event needs to be explained in relation to God’s will. Many things that happen are NOT his will and in fact, it is very difficult to discern what is God’s will and what isn’t. The distinction between divine will/primary causality at the transcendent level of God’s eternal counsels and the divine permission given to the derived and contingent secondary causality of his creatures must be maintained to avoid logical and moral shipwreck.
This does naturally lead to the question, so then if God is infinitely free and hates evil and is not dependent on it, then how did it get here? Well for there to be free and rational beings, this requires some amount of indeterminism at the level of secondary causality. Indeterminism introduces randomness and pointlessness into the mix. Another classical answer is that evil is born in the will and that the choice to turn towards destruction and nonbeing is what evil is. At the current moment we inhabit a hellish half-creation that is in the middle of a history that started out in absolute nothingness, is striving towards the plenitude of being in the union of the soul with God, and is in the midway point between the two. We are halfway between being and nonbeing, light and darkness, the world can’t be said to have been fully created until the end when all things are reconciled to God in the apokatastasis pan ton. In the end, God will not tell us that all this horrifying death and suffering had meaning and that our tears were necessary. The NT has always proclaimed something far more radical and wonderful – everything sad will come untrue, God will wipe every tear from every face and will tell us “Behold, I make all things new” (Rev 21:5).
I hope this essay convinces some to pick up this remarkable and short little book. It is a good way to pass the time, especially under the evil besieging the world currently in the pandemic. It may also change the way you think, the greatest feat an author can hope for. I cannot describe in words how highly I recommend this book – I would just urge the reader that they also keep a dictionary nearby.
This book had its beginnings in a brief Wall Street Journal article in response to what Hart considered the many inane and confused musings of both mistaken Christians and village atheists alike. This in turn was extended into an article for the journal First Things and then he expanded even more, and this is the book here being reviewed. The title is in reference to one of the worst natural disasters in history (~250,000 dead), the Boxing Day tsunami that occurred on Boxing Day in 2004. Every time a severe catastrophe on this scale occurs there are always a variety of opinions on display and invariably most are mistaken and confused, if not downright repellant and morally horrifying. Hart gives a catalog of these and notices that in the immediate wake of tragedy the most anyone should do is to maintain silence – words have no force and can even be nigh blasphemous in the light of such monstrous evil. Comfort is more needed than explanation – but nevertheless nothing can quite comfort a rational being more than knowledge so Hart felt the need to engage the conversation and not be content with silence forever.
In the first chapter Hart begins by defining theodicy as the attempt to reconcile the evil in the world with the all-powerful, all-loving, and all-knowing God proclaimed by Christians. He thinks not just that some particular theodicies are flawed, but that theodicy itself – the mere attempt to reconcile evil with God’s goodness is fundamentally flawed from the get-go. That’s precisely because the God professed by Christians does NOT reconcile Himself to evil—He instead subverts, overthrows, and conquers it. Theodicy inevitably leads to one of two opposite errors. The first is the reduction of God to a voluntarist monster by saying that He directly causes the evil and, in the end,, we will see why it was “meet and right” for them to occur. The second limits God’s power by stating that He sincerely does want to stop evil and never wanted it to occur, but He can’t stop it. They both share the mistaken premise that we need to deny the pointlessness of suffering, that our suffering must somehow be meaningful. To do this we must posit some mysterious divine plan that somehow makes sense in a way we can’t possibly comprehend. This lowest stage of the religious imagination views God as the divine account balancer.
The next rung on the latter showcases the view that correctly sees that all the horrifying and pointless evil is morally unintelligible and so shouldn’t happen. This often leads to an atheistic rebellion, which can be purifying for the soul as Dostoevsky showed clearly in The Brothers Karamazov through Ivan and that Paul Evdokimov, as a good student of Dostoevsky, demonstrated in his theological writing, such as Ages of the Spiritual Life. The reason why this can be good is that the atheists and deists who reach this point do so, most often unbeknownst to them, based on a fundamentally Christian intuition – that since God is perfectly good, all-powerful, and infinitely free to create things as he wants he must therefore not depend on evil whatsoever to accomplish his ends. God refuses to be reconciled to evil and so too does this type of atheist or deist and that is admirable in that regard and can lead to a greater faith, if the obstacle is surmounted, than that held by the heretical Christian who believes God to be a cosmic accountant. The problem lies in the fact that this sort of atheist doesn’t see that not only is this evil unintelligible, but that it would be far worse if it were—this is the highest stage in the religious imagination. This is what the NT proclaims – God utterly opposes and destroys death, suffering, and evil – he does NOT attempt to reconcile us TO IT, he came to save us FROM IT. Also, the atheist position is not a logical proof so much as a refusal of God’s salvation since it is impossible from our limited vantage point to know if it will be worth it in the end.
The second chapter begins with an extended meditation on the difference between the modern, disenchanted view of nature as mindless mechanism vs. the more ancient view of the cosmos as alive and charged with intellect – mind is at the center of all things. The reason he brings this up is because this modern view of nature has shaped theodicy. Theodicists tend to look at how nature is currently, which is an endless and pitiless cycle of random life and death and then project that back into God’s eternal counsels. Hart contends that this is nothing but a lack of imagination Sure, in the world the lion doesn’t lay down with the lamb and we may not see what purpose God would have in creating viruses or mosquitoes, but the failure to see that is both a failure of imagination as well as logic while also being against Scripture, to boot. This attempt to extend the logic of the present evil age into eternity invariably ends up proving that paradise isn’t even possible – the 2nd law of thermodynamics becomes the god of theodicists and natural theologians rather than the God revealed in Jesus Christ.
The fundamental error shared by atheists, theodicists, deists, and natural theologians is that they see one world where they should see two. This current world is but a shadow of the real world – we are strangers and pilgrims on the earth as Hebrews 11:13 claims. Hart says that this is best modelled conceptually as two concentric circles. If we picture that in our minds we see that this shadow world is always situated in the larger, true world and this explains why this world isn’t either pure darkness nor pure light but a mixture of the two. The presence of the pure, undefiled world is always accessible to us, and at many points in time becomes shockingly clear to us. The tradition is unanimous as to how we can see the glory of the Kingdom more clearly in the here and now. As the Lord tells us in the beatitudes, and as Evagrius, St. Maximus the Confessor, and George MacDonald also confirmed the way to see God’s mysteries requires a pure heart, cleansed of all defilement by the limpid and disinfecting light of selfless love.
This two-world model may be disconcerting to some because it is a dualism and logic abhors a dualism, but we can take comfort that it is only a temporary and provisional dualism and one that does NOT extend into eternity. Many of us are so inundated in the Christian story emblazoned in the NT that we lack the ability to see its utter strangeness. Paul’s letters, the gospel of John, and the catholic epistles especially seem to envisage this age as replete with spiritual warfare between us and our hostile governors – the rebellious angels and demons who seek to destroy and pervert us. But luckily God sent His only Son to judge this evil government and its Archons as false, subjugate them beneath his feet, and will eventually be all in all.
Next, Hart relates to us the classical definition of evil as privation boni and all this entails. If evil has no substance then God can’t depend on it whatsoever The reason for this definition of evil is because if it were false, then God would be the author of both evil and good and so he would logically have to be beyond both, which is basically evil. We know, however, that it is logically impossible for God to be evil since He is the Good as such. This means that Calvin was definitely wrong when he stated that God willed the fall (Institutes III.23.8). It also means that those who think that drama of fall and redemption makes the world better than it would have been are also wrong. You don’t have to have a PhD to realize that it would be better if there were no suffering at all. This also means that those theologians who say that God can’t reveal some of his good traits unless evil things happen are also wrong. They think it is beautiful when a man courageously gives his life to save another in battle, but what they forgot that any marine or soldier can tell you is that it would be infinitely more beautiful if their friend were still alive and never had to show such courage.
This view of evil organically leads to the doctrine of divine apatheia or impassibility which entails that God doesn’t change at all, he doesn’t react to us or anything in the world and doesn’t need the world or us whatsoever. He is perfect and as such, is infinitely sufficient in Himself. Some think this is a callous and unfeeling perspective of God, but they are not thinking clearly. This doctrine is quite beautiful as well as being true since it avoids the crude anthropomorphism of viewing God as like one of us and also is the basis for God’s unchanging love for us sinners. He loves us no matter what we do – His love, due to apatheia, is utterly unconditional. He didn’t create us because of some codependent need to have people to keep him from being lonely or due to some despotic need to force other creatures to bend to his will. Our existence is an utterly free gift that he bestows in abundance.
Hart then shows the difference between providence and fate. Fate, determinism, and fatalism all suppose a universal teleology that seeks to find a 1:1 correspondence between every single action that occurs and the divine will. This collapse of the transcendence of God would entail that we are mindless robots in a pantheistic universe and so make the creation of truly free rational creations an impossible fiction. Yet this is precisely what theodicy seeks to do. What we as Christians need to do is back away from theodicy and the deterministic universe it entails and seek to take refuge in divine providence which holds that God will have his will come to pass despite the rebellion of his creatures. As such, we can let go of the frustrating and false need to imagine that every single event needs to be explained in relation to God’s will. Many things that happen are NOT his will and in fact, it is very difficult to discern what is God’s will and what isn’t. The distinction between divine will/primary causality at the transcendent level of God’s eternal counsels and the divine permission given to the derived and contingent secondary causality of his creatures must be maintained to avoid logical and moral shipwreck.
This does naturally lead to the question, so then if God is infinitely free and hates evil and is not dependent on it, then how did it get here? Well for there to be free and rational beings, this requires some amount of indeterminism at the level of secondary causality. Indeterminism introduces randomness and pointlessness into the mix. Another classical answer is that evil is born in the will and that the choice to turn towards destruction and nonbeing is what evil is. At the current moment we inhabit a hellish half-creation that is in the middle of a history that started out in absolute nothingness, is striving towards the plenitude of being in the union of the soul with God, and is in the midway point between the two. We are halfway between being and nonbeing, light and darkness, the world can’t be said to have been fully created until the end when all things are reconciled to God in the apokatastasis pan ton. In the end, God will not tell us that all this horrifying death and suffering had meaning and that our tears were necessary. The NT has always proclaimed something far more radical and wonderful – everything sad will come untrue, God will wipe every tear from every face and will tell us “Behold, I make all things new” (Rev 21:5).
I hope this essay convinces some to pick up this remarkable and short little book. It is a good way to pass the time, especially under the evil besieging the world currently in the pandemic. It may also change the way you think, the greatest feat an author can hope for. I cannot describe in words how highly I recommend this book – I would just urge the reader that they also keep a dictionary nearby.
February 27, 2022
This book is best enjoyed and understood if it is seen less an exercise in apologetics, or as application of philosophical theology to the problems of evil (see pgs 92-93, where Hart says this explicitly). Rather, The Doors of the Sea is an account of what Christians 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 said about suffering, what they 𝗰𝗮𝗻 say about suffering, and what they 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 say about suffering. It is within those boundaries that Hart writes this book as a short account of the classical understanding of God and creation, from which certain paradigms for understanding evil are rendered legitimate or illegitimate. Here, then, is the least and most we can say about God, creation, and evil:
"God's gracious will for His creatures - His willing of all things to His own infinite goodness - is the creative power that makes all things to be and the consummate happiness to which all things are called; but this does not (indeed, must not) mean that everything that happens is merely a direct expression God's desire for His creatures or an essential stage within the divine plan for history" (97).
To me - and I say this with fear and trembling that I may have misread him - Hart's book begins and ends in that sentence. Everything else is merely a classically Christian, historically informed, philosophically sensitive way of understanding the content of that sentence. Hart does, however, go on to explain how he essentially (and with some nuance) shares his understanding of evil with thinkers much older than himself, chiefly St. Augustine of Hippo.
Readily embracing an Augustinian theodicy, Hart sees evil as "a 𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘨𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶 or 𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰 𝘣𝘰𝘯𝘪, a privation of the good, a purely parasitic corruption of created reality, possessing no essence or nature of its own" (73). In other words, evil is not a "thing," a "substance" or a "force" in competition with God and the "good" as some sort of cosmic villain - but is rather a way of talking about creation's postlapsarian will and desires. "Evil is born in the will," (73) concludes Hart, as Augustine smiles. If that point interest you, don't read this book - go read Augustine. And if you have already lost interest in the book, don't keep reading this review, because we are now onto the finer points.
***
Hart grounds his theodicy in the best question anyone has asked of the Christian God's relation to evil and suffering. The question occurs in Dostoevsky's masterful and thoroughly Christian novel, The Brothers Karamazov; and comes from the lips of one of its protagonists, Ivan Karamazov. Ivan, in the Grand Inquisitor story, asks of the Christian God: "...if you could bring about a universal and final beatitude for all beings by torturing one small creature to death, would you think that price acceptable?" (Doors 42).
Two paths emerge from Ivan's question. One can pursue such paths "As soon as one sheds the burden of the desire for total explanation - as soon as one has come to see the history of suffering as a contingency and an absurdity, in which grace is ever at work but upon which it does not depend, and has come also to see the promised end of all things not as the dialectical residue of a great cosmic and moral process, but as something far more glorious than the pitiable resources of fallen time could ever yield..." The two paths lead to the following conclusions about the presence of evil in the world:
1) "...either one embraces the mystery of created freedom and accepts that the union of free spiritual creatures with the God of love is a thing so wonderful that the power of creation to enslave itself to death must be permitted by God..."
2) "...; or one judges that not even such rational freedom is worth the risk of a cosmic fall and the terrible injustice of the consequences that follow from it" (68-69, paragraph breaks mine).
The dye is cast. Which option is more coherent, true to the Christian God, and grounded in the ontology God sets, rather than the ontology we think our epistemology creates? Ivan choses the second option, but is he write to do so? Hart accuses him of an almost "demonic compassion," writing:
"...there is a sense in which Ivan's love of that little girl is always in danger of becoming a kind of demonic compassion: a desire that she not exist at all, a conviction that it were better had she never been summoned into the wounded freedom of cosmic time or called to rational union with God than that she suffer the wrongs done to her at the hands of fallen creatures" (88).
I find this to be a stirring insight. We are right to wrestle with the problem of evil - but in doing so we must never risk cursing creation, consigning it to Sheol or Hades or to whatever place things that should not be should go. Our theodicies should never lead us to a destructive nihilism, because the origin and (therefore the end) of all things is a well-spring of love and pure actuality - which draws, unrelentingly, all creation into Themself and redeems it.
So much can be written about this book, and I have left much unsaid. Suffice to say that Hart has gifted us with our own intellectual tradition - and charged us with actually reading it.
"God's gracious will for His creatures - His willing of all things to His own infinite goodness - is the creative power that makes all things to be and the consummate happiness to which all things are called; but this does not (indeed, must not) mean that everything that happens is merely a direct expression God's desire for His creatures or an essential stage within the divine plan for history" (97).
To me - and I say this with fear and trembling that I may have misread him - Hart's book begins and ends in that sentence. Everything else is merely a classically Christian, historically informed, philosophically sensitive way of understanding the content of that sentence. Hart does, however, go on to explain how he essentially (and with some nuance) shares his understanding of evil with thinkers much older than himself, chiefly St. Augustine of Hippo.
Readily embracing an Augustinian theodicy, Hart sees evil as "a 𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘨𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶 or 𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰 𝘣𝘰𝘯𝘪, a privation of the good, a purely parasitic corruption of created reality, possessing no essence or nature of its own" (73). In other words, evil is not a "thing," a "substance" or a "force" in competition with God and the "good" as some sort of cosmic villain - but is rather a way of talking about creation's postlapsarian will and desires. "Evil is born in the will," (73) concludes Hart, as Augustine smiles. If that point interest you, don't read this book - go read Augustine. And if you have already lost interest in the book, don't keep reading this review, because we are now onto the finer points.
***
Hart grounds his theodicy in the best question anyone has asked of the Christian God's relation to evil and suffering. The question occurs in Dostoevsky's masterful and thoroughly Christian novel, The Brothers Karamazov; and comes from the lips of one of its protagonists, Ivan Karamazov. Ivan, in the Grand Inquisitor story, asks of the Christian God: "...if you could bring about a universal and final beatitude for all beings by torturing one small creature to death, would you think that price acceptable?" (Doors 42).
Two paths emerge from Ivan's question. One can pursue such paths "As soon as one sheds the burden of the desire for total explanation - as soon as one has come to see the history of suffering as a contingency and an absurdity, in which grace is ever at work but upon which it does not depend, and has come also to see the promised end of all things not as the dialectical residue of a great cosmic and moral process, but as something far more glorious than the pitiable resources of fallen time could ever yield..." The two paths lead to the following conclusions about the presence of evil in the world:
1) "...either one embraces the mystery of created freedom and accepts that the union of free spiritual creatures with the God of love is a thing so wonderful that the power of creation to enslave itself to death must be permitted by God..."
2) "...; or one judges that not even such rational freedom is worth the risk of a cosmic fall and the terrible injustice of the consequences that follow from it" (68-69, paragraph breaks mine).
The dye is cast. Which option is more coherent, true to the Christian God, and grounded in the ontology God sets, rather than the ontology we think our epistemology creates? Ivan choses the second option, but is he write to do so? Hart accuses him of an almost "demonic compassion," writing:
"...there is a sense in which Ivan's love of that little girl is always in danger of becoming a kind of demonic compassion: a desire that she not exist at all, a conviction that it were better had she never been summoned into the wounded freedom of cosmic time or called to rational union with God than that she suffer the wrongs done to her at the hands of fallen creatures" (88).
I find this to be a stirring insight. We are right to wrestle with the problem of evil - but in doing so we must never risk cursing creation, consigning it to Sheol or Hades or to whatever place things that should not be should go. Our theodicies should never lead us to a destructive nihilism, because the origin and (therefore the end) of all things is a well-spring of love and pure actuality - which draws, unrelentingly, all creation into Themself and redeems it.
So much can be written about this book, and I have left much unsaid. Suffice to say that Hart has gifted us with our own intellectual tradition - and charged us with actually reading it.
March 25, 2023
In this work, David Bentley Hart explores the issue of theodicy from a Christian perspective. His thesis is not so much an argument that one should adopt a Christian worldview, but rather he aims to systematically refute some of the more vapid arguments of his co-religionists in order to reveal a philosophy that elucidates an understanding that preserves the concept of God-as-Love amidst the unspeakable agony of suffering.
Whether one believes or not, "one may be moved by a love of the good," and Hart's goal is to elucidate how a loving deity can be a philosophically comprehensible concept, a more modest focus than it would have been to argue that this particular premise should lead one to become a religious adherent.
Hart begins with a critique of atheists for not fully recognizing the Christian perspective, which is somewhat harsh, since they surely cannot be faulted if the believers they are denouncing themselves possess dubious views. Still, the non-Christian might find common cause with Hart, as he freely states that he finds himself "less perturbed by the sanctimonious condescension of many of those who do not believe than by either the gelid dispassion or the shapeless sentimentality of certain of those who do."
See, like Dostoyevsky (whose Brothers Karamazov is referenced often), Hart faces the horrors of suffering head-on without falling prey to flimsy attempts to downplay or hand-wave away even the slightest injustice. Ultimately, he contends that "the moment the spectres of absolute teleology and insipid metaphysical optimism have been exorcised, a genuine hope in the subtle workings of saving grace becomes possible – intellectually and morally." The hope that Hart expresses is indeed an admirable sentiment that can elicit respect whether or not one shares his worldview in toto.
If I seem somewhat stingy in doling out approbation, it is not so much a fault of Hart and more that I have more Ivan Karamazov in me than I might have imagined. Suffering is such a dreadful thing that I am hesitant to say that I can even approach enough of an understanding of the scope of issue enough to intelligently weigh in on the topic.
Whether one believes or not, "one may be moved by a love of the good," and Hart's goal is to elucidate how a loving deity can be a philosophically comprehensible concept, a more modest focus than it would have been to argue that this particular premise should lead one to become a religious adherent.
Hart begins with a critique of atheists for not fully recognizing the Christian perspective, which is somewhat harsh, since they surely cannot be faulted if the believers they are denouncing themselves possess dubious views. Still, the non-Christian might find common cause with Hart, as he freely states that he finds himself "less perturbed by the sanctimonious condescension of many of those who do not believe than by either the gelid dispassion or the shapeless sentimentality of certain of those who do."
See, like Dostoyevsky (whose Brothers Karamazov is referenced often), Hart faces the horrors of suffering head-on without falling prey to flimsy attempts to downplay or hand-wave away even the slightest injustice. Ultimately, he contends that "the moment the spectres of absolute teleology and insipid metaphysical optimism have been exorcised, a genuine hope in the subtle workings of saving grace becomes possible – intellectually and morally." The hope that Hart expresses is indeed an admirable sentiment that can elicit respect whether or not one shares his worldview in toto.
If I seem somewhat stingy in doling out approbation, it is not so much a fault of Hart and more that I have more Ivan Karamazov in me than I might have imagined. Suffering is such a dreadful thing that I am hesitant to say that I can even approach enough of an understanding of the scope of issue enough to intelligently weigh in on the topic.
April 29, 2020
"God's gracious will for his creatures...is the creative power that makes all things to be and the commensurate happiness to which all things are called; but this does not (indeed, must not) mean that everything that happens is merely a direct expression of God's desire for his creatures..." (98).
Hart does not attempt to provide a complete and final answer to the problem of natural evil in our world, but he offers meaningful reflections on philosophy and soteriology rooted in the New Testament in the context of a natural disaster. Ultimately, he explains the importance in believing in God's gracious providence in the face of natural evil, but also explains that in the context of someone else's suffering, rather than trying to make our own explanation for WHY it happened (usually to make ourselves feel more pious), the best course of action is to just reflect on the fact that "...unless one possesses a divine, eternal vantage point upon all of time...one can draw no conclusions from finite experience regarding the coincidence in God of omnipotence and perfect goodness" (13). As uncomfortable as it may seem, ours is a faith seeking understanding, and the complete understanding of God's omnipotence, omniscience, and the problem of evil will never be fully grasped in this lifetime
Hart does not attempt to provide a complete and final answer to the problem of natural evil in our world, but he offers meaningful reflections on philosophy and soteriology rooted in the New Testament in the context of a natural disaster. Ultimately, he explains the importance in believing in God's gracious providence in the face of natural evil, but also explains that in the context of someone else's suffering, rather than trying to make our own explanation for WHY it happened (usually to make ourselves feel more pious), the best course of action is to just reflect on the fact that "...unless one possesses a divine, eternal vantage point upon all of time...one can draw no conclusions from finite experience regarding the coincidence in God of omnipotence and perfect goodness" (13). As uncomfortable as it may seem, ours is a faith seeking understanding, and the complete understanding of God's omnipotence, omniscience, and the problem of evil will never be fully grasped in this lifetime
October 28, 2020
I had this book from some time already but did not read it. The pandemics brought it to my attention. So i took it and read it. Was really impressed With the authors attitude not trying to push down some dogmas down my throath. He shows the futility of arguments like those that in two milenias Christians did not take into account the problem of pain and suffering in a world created by an all benevolent Creator. God is not to be reduced to an finite ethical agent with mesurable purposes. One can still hate God for the suffering he sees but he cannot disprove him on those grounds. Hart speaks also against absolute determinism and predestination. One of his prefered subject is that of Ivan s aproach to pain and suffering from Dostoievski s work. He also points out that God cannot be the hidden sourse of pain and evil. The christian view of the world is not a rational deduction from empirical experience but a moral and spiritual attitude or labor. Not everything that happens is a direct expression of god s desire. Rather there are forces that oppose God. Malevolence and imbecile chance are not his partners.
So what attitude should a Christian have in front of tsunamis? Or pandemics?
A moment of slicence, a recognition that God is God, an understanding that pain and suffering exist but will be not part of the new creation. A moment to have faith, hope.
So what attitude should a Christian have in front of tsunamis? Or pandemics?
A moment of slicence, a recognition that God is God, an understanding that pain and suffering exist but will be not part of the new creation. A moment to have faith, hope.
June 30, 2025
I read this book to see if he had “answer” to the problem of evil, but found that this was largely a refutation and rebuke of, in his view, inferior stances. There is exposition on his own view of how God interacts with evil (or rather, does not), and I do think he makes several good points, however it’s not possible for him to fully expound upon them in 100 pages. Given that limitation, he lays out enough ground work to start thinking about God and the evil in this world, but not enough, in my opinion, to convince me of his view.
On top of the brevity, DBH writes as a scholar for other scholars. For some, this is appealing and will make the work feel rigorous in its exploration of this topic. For others, it will be a dense forest of words that feels cold and calculating when considering a question that feels intimidating and, for some, incredibly close to home. For anyone actively experiencing the evil of this world, this book may be better read once that moment has passed and you’re not in the midst of questioning why something has happened. It may be difficult to fairly assess the arguments made within.
On top of the brevity, DBH writes as a scholar for other scholars. For some, this is appealing and will make the work feel rigorous in its exploration of this topic. For others, it will be a dense forest of words that feels cold and calculating when considering a question that feels intimidating and, for some, incredibly close to home. For anyone actively experiencing the evil of this world, this book may be better read once that moment has passed and you’re not in the midst of questioning why something has happened. It may be difficult to fairly assess the arguments made within.
July 26, 2023
Always interested in theodicy attempts as they form a window into their author's actual religious beliefs, and as such are never fully 'absolute' in formulating an answer to 'evil'. As expected from David Bentley Hart, this is well argued, well written and extremely well thought through, but in effect (with regard to what has to be done), in the end Hart's beliefs are in essence not different from a basic humanistic stance in life, which in a strange way, I find reassuring .
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