Imagine There's No Evil

The fourth chapter of Wright's book, Evil and the Justice of God, focuses on how the crucifixion and the resurrection affect the world in which evil exists and does its damage. He believes the key is understanding that in Jesus the future has come forward into the present and the churches' task is "implementing that achievement and thus anticipating that future," the future where evil no longer has a place to do its destructive work.


I found his interlude in this chapter where he discusses in more detail his understanding of evil one of the most interesting parts of the book. Referring to an earlier comment on "thesatan" (meaning accuser) a phrase used several places in the Old Testament, he writes, "The satan, it seems, is a nonhuman being, a type of angel , perhaps in some accounts an ex-angel or fallen angel, and he or it...comes to be opposed to humankind, and then to Israel, and hence, not surprisingly, to Jesus." The satan not only opposes humans, but is fundamentally against creation itself and wants to undo God's good world. Above all, satan wants to deliver death to everything. Wright continues,

The biblical picture of the satan is thus of a nonhuman and nondivine quasi-personal force which seems bent on attacking and destroying creation in general and humankind in particular, and above all on thwarting God's project ofremaking the world and human beings in and through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.

Wright believes that we tend to fall into two errors. The first is thinking of the satan and evil as a myth. The second is thinking of the satan as personal like Jesus. "I prefer to use the term "subpersonal" or "quasi-personal" as a way of refusing to accord the satan the full dignity of personhood while recognizing that the concentration of activity...can and does strike us as very much like that which we associate with personhood."

When discussing evil further, building on the theology of Thomas Aquinas who defined evil as "the absence or deprivation of good," Wright says, "Evil is then the moral and spiritual equivalent of a black hole." He also refers to evil as a Negative Force.

Having made that digression concerning the nature of evil, he then returns to his central thesis for this passage that we need to imagine a world without evil and work backward from there. He writes,
The New Testament invites us, then, to Imagine a new world as a beautiful, healing community; to envisage it as a world vibrant with life and energy,incorruptible, beyond the reach of death anddecay ; to hold it in our mind's eye as a world reborn, set free from the slavery of corruption, free to be truly what it was made to be. This is the pole by which we must set our compasses so that we may find our way along the intermediate paths that lie before us.
What are the intermediate paths that lie before us according to Wright? "there are five quite disparate ways in which, I suggest, we should be working in the present time to put into practice--on the basis of the victory of Jesus Christ in his death and resurrection--the beginnings, the advance signs of that new world which we are called to imagine.

The first sign is prayer. By calling the invitation and summons to pray we become "more truly human" and we intercede for this world which God so loves. The second sign is holiness which is really living the present life according to the rule of the ultimate future. By politics and empire, the third sign, he means that we are "under obligation both to honor the ruling authority, whatever it may be, and to work constantly to remind that authority of its God-given task: to do justice and love mercy, to ensure that those who are weak and vulnerable are properly looked after." The fourth sign, penal codes, means working toward restorative justice not retributive justice. Concerning the fifth sign, international disputes, Wright notes, "There is such a thing as evil, and it is to be addressed and defeated not by ignoring it on the one hand or by blasting away at it with heavy artillery on the other--even with all the smart bombs currently available, still when the shooting starts hundreds of thousands of civilians get killed--but addressing it with the message and the methods of the cross."

He believes that an important aspect of capturing the Christian imagination is through art as well. He notes that art is a response to the creations goodness and beauty and is thus a pointer to God. "art at its best not only draws attention to the way things are but to the way things are meant to be, and by God's grace to theway things one day will be, when the earth is filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea."

He concludes the chapter with the statement that Christians are not only to understand the nature of evil, but, indeed, are to be part of God's solution.