Evil and the Justice of God

The first chapter of N. T. Wright's book, Evil and the Justice of God, is entitled "Evil Is Still a Four-Letter Word." Wright argues that since the great Lisbon earthquake in 1755 the European philosophy has attempted to deal with the problem of evil. The direction that philosophy took, to his mind, was not in a good direction: it went in the direction of what he calls "automatic progress" which reached its peak in the philosophy of Hegel, but occurs in watered-down variations in a variety of current philosophies. He finds this belief in progress amazing given the blood-letting of World Wars I, World War II, and the Holocaust. He writes, "people still continue to this day to suppose that the world is basically a good place and that its problems are more or less soluble by technology, education, "development" in the sense of "Westernization," and the application, to more and more regions, of Western democracy--and, according to taste, of either Western social-democratic ideals or Western capitalism, or indeed a mixture of both."

This way of looking at the world, he believes, leads to three issues concerning what he terms the "new problem of evil." 1. Unless it hits us between the eyes, evil does not show up on our radar scopes. 2. If and when we are confronted by evil, we are surprised by it. 3. We respond to it in naive and dangerous ways. He concludes this section by saying, "We have discovered that evil is still, after all, a four-letter word; but we don't have a clue what to do with it or about it. And, let me add, ignoring it isn't an answer either.

In the middle of the chapter he turns to the issue of postmodernity and evil. What he appreciates about postmodernity is its addressing the modernist view of progress. "I regard the main function of postmodernity under God to be the preaching of the doctrine of the Fall (the truth of a deep and fatal flaw within human nature) to the modernist, post-eighteenth-century arrogance that supposes is has solved the world's problems." But postmodernity's analysis of the world fails on two accounts: it is dehumanizing and it does not allow for redemption. Postmodernism has done away with human responsibility and accountability and while it does acknowledge the reality of evil and its consequences, "it gives us no real clue as to what we should do about it."

He concludes the chapter by naming three factors that a Christian and Jewish view must take into consideration. The first factor is "the flaw in assuming that the Western type of democracy is perfect, complete, the climax of a long process of wise and noble libertarianism stretching back to Magna Carta." The second is that "there is such a thing as human evil and that it takes various forms. These forms include the state in which the people concerned are absolutely convinced, and will often argue very persuasively, that they are not only in the right but are the ones who are leading the way." The third is, referring to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's famous quotation, "the line between good and evil runs through each one of us."

He argues that society needs to strive to "integrate the various insights about evil which the greatest thinkers and social commentators have offered," and the church both critique these insights and offer in a mature fashion some of its own understandings. He concludes, "Evil may still be a four-letter word. But so, thank God, is love.