Yoder and Theodicy Pinches

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Modem Theology 5:3 April 1989 ISSN 0266-71777 $3.00 CHRISTIAN PACIFISM AND THEODICY: THE FREE WILL DEFENSE IN THE THOUGHT OF JOHN H. YODER CHARLES PINCHES I. Introduction In the contemporary setting, mention of 'theodicy' calls to mind a definite image: that of the cleanly swept landscape of numbered propositions found in the papers and books of the likes of Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne or John Hick. Against this, Kenneth Surin has recently contended that theodicy done in this way - what he calls "canonical theodicy" - "not only frustrates historically situated reflection on the manifold forms and occurrences of evil but also militates against a properly Christian response to the 'problem of evil/" 1 I share many of Surin's worries, worries we shall in a moment review. Initially, however, I am concerned that we not set the various forms of arguments we have grown accustomed to in "canonical theodicy" - for example, the free will defense - too far apart from a properly Christian theological response to the problem of evil. Sociologically it seems true that theologians of John Yoder's ilk and theodicists of, say, Plantinga's have done their work in different operating theatres, on problems that are by no means the same, and before audiences with quite different concerns. It is my hope, however, that the walls between the theatres do not go all the way up. I am interested in seeing how the light cast from one can illumine what is going on in the other. Any free will defense, I shall suggest, very much needs something like the treatment Yoder gives of God's (and Christians') concrete response to evil in the work and person of Jesus Christ. And further, Yoder's own work can itself be understood - hopefully better understood - as a "theodicy" of sorts 2 with roots in the free will defense. In the long run, I must confess that my interests extend beyond the Professor Charles Pinches, University of Central Arkansas, Conway, Arkansas 72032, USA

Transcript of Yoder and Theodicy Pinches

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Modem Theology 5:3 April 1989 ISSN 0266-71777 $3.00

CHRISTIAN PACIFISM AND THEODICY: THE FREE WILL DEFENSE IN THE THOUGHT OF JOHN H. YODER

CHARLES PINCHES I. Introduction

In the contemporary setting, mention of 'theodicy' calls to mind a definite image: that of the cleanly swept landscape of numbered propositions found in the papers and books of the likes of Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne or John Hick. Against this, Kenneth Surin has recently contended that theodicy done in this way - what he calls "canonical theodicy" - "not only frustrates historically situated reflection on the manifold forms and occurrences of evil but also militates against a properly Christian response to the 'problem of evil/"1

I share many of Surin's worries, worries we shall in a moment review. Initially, however, I am concerned that we not set the various forms of arguments we have grown accustomed to in "canonical theodicy" - for example, the free will defense - too far apart from a properly Christian theological response to the problem of evil. Sociologically it seems true that theologians of John Yoder's ilk and theodicists of, say, Plantinga's have done their work in different operating theatres, on problems that are by no means the same, and before audiences with quite different concerns. It is my hope, however, that the walls between the theatres do not go all the way up. I am interested in seeing how the light cast from one can illumine what is going on in the other. Any free will defense, I shall suggest, very much needs something like the treatment Yoder gives of God's (and Christians') concrete response to evil in the work and person of Jesus Christ. And further, Yoder's own work can itself be understood - hopefully better understood - as a "theodicy" of sorts2 with roots in the free will defense.

In the long run, I must confess that my interests extend beyond the

Professor Charles Pinches, University of Central Arkansas, Conway, Arkansas 72032, USA

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mutual illumination of the operating theatres of analytic philosophers like Plantinga and Christian theologians like Yoder. In this essay's final section I seize on new difficulties which emerge for Yoder's "theodicy," some which actually resemble difficulties typically discussed in canonical theodicies. But in so doing I mean to lean toward Yoder, not away from him. For if Christians are to take up a conversation about God, freedom, and evil it must be in a theological context such as the one Yoder's work provides; and, as Surin forcefully brings out, this is precisely what canonical theodicy has failed to do. So it is not just that attending to the Christian pacifism of John Yoder irons out creases in the canonical treatment of the free will defense; it points us beyond it to a fuller, more subtle and specifically theological conversation about evil and God's response to it.

II. Canonical theodicy and the problem of theology

Thus far I have rather freely referred to the deep difficulties of canonical theodicy without giving an account of what these are. Just what is it about canonical theodicy that makes it so dangerous as the opening quote from Surin suggests? To answer we turn to Surin's own work on the subject.

Surin's many arguments against canonical theodicy can be perhaps condensed into three central points. He charges that canonical theodicies are (1) ahistorical, (2) overly abstract and (3) rationalistic. The first of these charges is the source, in a way, of the other two; it is best understood when tied to his contention that canonical theodicy is the inheritor of the Enlightenment. (For Surin, Richard Swinburne and David Hume are brothers under the skin.) This Enlightenment connection is complex and ultimately ironic. For it was Newton's mechanistic model of creation - that the universe is well ordered and self-sustaining in its order - that made more pressing the problem presented by aberrant evil and disharmony. Philosophers who wished to adopt this Newtonian model but remain theists (e.g., Leibniz) were faced with "the need for a new form of theodicy, one which would enable us to circumvent the problem of reconciling the existence of evil with the existence of an increasingly 'absent' God."3 Hence (and ironically) the Enlightenment produced a swell in theodical activity, but of a certain peculiar sort. Today canonical theodicy rides this same wave, although now greatly diminished in size. But as Surin points out, doing theodicy in this Enlightenment mode is deeply problematic in the current time since it "may in fact presuppose an 'apparatus' which is no longer sustained by existing cultural practices."4 And this is so largely because the Enlighten-ment itself ultimately severed us from a social world in which talk of "cosmic order" made sense. So the ahistoricity of canonical theodicy is displayed first in its essentially anachronistic character. This is further

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accentuated by that canonical theodicists do not themselves appear to notice that this story - that of the Enlightenment - is the story of their own origins.

But the ahistoricity of canonical theodicy can be understood to be further linked to Enlightenment thought in the following and ultimately more disturbing way. Philosophical theism, one of the legacies of the Enlightenment and the inheritance of the canonical theodicists, is by its very nature committed to a reduction of the complex and historically specific story of Christianity - or Judaism, or Islam - to a few core beliefs which in their generality and lack of historical attachment can be displayed in the open market of philosophical ideas, a market closed to the messy mix of persons, ideas and histories of which these great religions actually are comprised.

In this context we can understand the following quotation:

[T]heodicy has an irreducibly historical core precisely because it is the product of the collision between: (1) theological narratives (i.e. certain historically and socially conditioned textual renditions of the (triune) reality of God); (2) the personal narrative of the theodicist (whose biography is itself a product and reflection of historical conditions), and (3) and the episteme or historical reality itself [for Surin, the Holocaust] (which, in this post-Enlightenment context takes the form of a narrative, or set of narratives, that, directly or indirectly,renders problematic the notion that there is a God who is omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent).5

Theodicy for Surin must be historical, which means it must be theological, practical/personal and open to challenge from new historical events such as the Holocaust. Canonical/Enlightenment theodicy fails to be any of these things; in fact it tries explicitly not to be, and therein lies the root of its difficulties.

Points (2) and (3) in this quotation can be linked to the second and third of Surin's general criticisms mentioned above. Canonical theodicy's abstractness resides in its failure to take seriously the perspective of those who are now currently engaged in combating evil and suffering, or who are victims of it. Theodices for Surin must address themselves to practical questions such as "What does God do to overcome the evil and suffering that exist in his creation?" or "What do we (qua creatures of God) do to overcome evil and suffering?"6 Only as such can they hope to speak to and in "personal narratives," ones which will be ofttimes (and most pressingly) the narratives of those who, encumbered by evil, seek to combat it. Similarly, if we are to in our theodicies engage evil in this way, we must be prepared - as Job before the whirlwind - to stand speechless before historical realities of evil such as the Holocaust acknowledging the inadequacies of formerly held theoretical construals of what evil is and how it is to be understood. Our vision, in other words, must be open to

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crisis and conversion occasioned by new historical occurrences, and the rationalism of canonical theodicy entirely precludes this as a possibility.

Surin's charges are serious ones. Precisely how the canonical theodicist might respond to them I cannot say. What I mean to display in what follows is a "theodicy" - that of John Yoder - that is not susceptible to them. It is theological, practical, and itself calls for a retelling of history from perspectives which have been radically transformed by suffering, by the Christian story, or both. Besides this, it shares significant features with the free will defense so widely used in canonical theodicy.

Before proceeding to a treatment of the free will defense in Yoder's "theodicy," I shall put forward a suspicion that must, for the present essay at least, remain only in the background. The so-called free will defense is itself an historical and theologically rooted set of claims. Its adequate display requires a turning to the biblical texts and their subsequent understandings in the hands of Jewish and Christian interpreters. Canonical theodicy's mistake is to abstract it or other defenses from this context in an effort to make it do the sort of work Enlightenment philosophers (such as Hume) required. Defenses such as the free will defense, if they are to continue to tell in any sort of interesting and substantial discussion of God and evil (a discussion I believe must continue), must be re theologized. Attention to the role of the free will defense in Yoder's work is perhaps a way to begin to do this.

III. The philosophical problem and philosophical response

We begin with the way in which the problem of evil is most frequently posed in canonical theodicies. From John Mackie:

In its simplest form the problem is this: God is omnipotent; God is wholly good; yet evil exists. There seems to be some contradiction between these three propositions, so that if any two of them were true the third would be false. But at the same time all three are essential parts of most theological positions; the theologian, it seems at once must adhere and cannot consistently adhere to all three.7

Now the most common response given by theist philosophers to the problem as posed is without a doubt the free will defense. It is often coupled with other defenses and, of course, comes in various forms. But its basic outline is relatively constant and simple. Alvin Plantinga has sketched this outline as follows.

A world containing creatures who are significantly free is more valuable, all else being equal, than a world containing no free creatures at all. Now God can create free creatures, but He doesn't cause or determine them to do what is right. For if He does so, then they aren't significantly free after all. . . . As it turned out, sadly

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enough, some of the free creatures God created went wrong in the exercise of their freedom; this is the source of moral evil.8

There are, of course, some standard objections to the free will defense. The first is that even if it is able to account for why "moral evil" exists, it is no help in explaining "natural evil." A number of things might be said in response to this, but in so far as the objection concedes a significant bit to the defense, i.e., that it explains moral evil, we shall pass it over without further comment.

A second set of objections challenges the defense more directly. To start, Antony Flew has claimed that God, if He is truly omnipotent, should have been able to create free creatures who always choose the good.9 Plantinga has painstakingly responded to this by attempting to show that while it is logically possible for such creatures to exist, God could not have fixed it so that as genuinely free creatures they always chose the good.10

Plantinga argues this point thoroughly - sufficiently so to at least give the objector pause in pressing the point that God's creating free beings who subsequently rebelled was necessarily something an omnipotent, wholly good creator could not have done. But for the objector another avenue of attack is open at this point. Even if an omnipotent, wholly good creator need not have prevented that evil arise as the result of the free choice of His creatures, He nonetheless is rightly expected to respond to that evil once it has arisen - powerfully confronting it and containing its spread, indeed ultimately removing it and its effects from His good creation. But, the objection continues, we have no evidence that God has been or is now currently engaged in any such activity. In fact, the evidence is just to the contrary, as witnessed to by the atrocities of our own century.

The objector's point is simply this: an omnipotent, wholly good God surely could find something to do about evil, human freedom notwith-standing. Since nothing has been done, we have every reason to doubt that such a God exists. The point is sharpened by considering one possible theological direction in which the free will defense might be thought to lead: deism. On this view, once God grants freedom to His creatures He leaves them entirely on their own. But as Brian Hebbleth-waite points out, deism flies in the face of traditional theism's affirmation of divine providence, the doctrine that "God is active in the world, caring for his individual creatures and bringing about his particular purposes within and for the created world."11 At best deism indefinitely postpones - if not entirely denies - God's active response to evil, refusing to identify any present or past (since creation) activity as what God is doing in the face of evil.

Surin himself makes this point in another way. He notes that while Plantinga's free will defense may provide a vindication of God's

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blamelessness, it falls far short of securing His moral perfection or benevolence. This is a particular problem for Christians since the

Christian faith affirms God to be the One who brings salvation, and this God has surely to be a divinity who does more than simply tolerate human evil as the unavoidable consequence of having granted human agents free will. The God of salvation, on this (Christian) view, is the divine mystery who overcomes human wickedness in and through the historical presence of the Son. Plantinga's deity, in contrast, seems to have detached himself from the world and left its inhabitants to work out their own moral and spiritual destinies. This deistic Demiurge is hardly the God of salvation.12

Surin goes on to call for the free will defender to

engage with the 'problem of evil' not just in terms of what it is logically possible for God and his creatures to be and to do, but also at the level of what the truth is about who God and we are, and what God and we can do and have done. Coming this far may require one more thing of the free will defender, namely that she abandons a purely theoretical or 'aesthetic' approach to the 'problem of evil,' and instead views it as an essentially practical problem.13

It is at this point that we turn to Yoder's work; it could be thought to speak directly to this major objection to free will defenses like Plantinga's and, as well, inadvertantly to follow Surin's recommendations.

IV. Yoder's "theodicy"

In one sense Yoder has no theodicy; he resists the very idea of it. (See note 2 below.) So we find no special portion of his writings that can be separated off as dealing specifically with the problem of evil as a thing in itself. In another sense, as I shall try to show, his entire theology revolves around questions regarding how God responds to evil. In what follows, with the help of quotations from various places in his writings, I shall attempt briefly to extract from his writings what I take his "theodicy" to be.

We begin with a passage in which Yoder is engaged in defending pacifism against charges that it shares responsibility for the evil it refuses forcefully to attack.

The apparent complicity with evil which the nonresistance position involves has always been a stumbling block to nonpacifists. Here we must point out that this attitude, leaving evil free to be evil, leaving the sinner free to separate himself from God and sin against man, is part of the nature of agape itself. . . . God's love for men begins right at the point where He permits sin against Himself and against

»

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man, without crushing the rebel under his own rebellion. The word for this is divine patience, not complicity.

But this gracious divine patience is not the complete answer to evil. . . . Just as the doctrine of creation affirms that God made man free and the doctrine of redemption says this freedom of sin was what led agape to the cross, so also the doctrine of hell lets sin free, finally and irrevocably, to choose separation from God. Only by respecting this freedom to the bitter end can love give meaning to history.14

This passage is striking, first of all, in its explication of the entirety of the Christian story - creation, redemption and eschaton - in the light of God's refusal to violate His creatures' freedom. Further, the moral justification for God's permission of evil is paralleled by and arises out of the Christian pacifist's moral defense of her own refusal to respond coercively and violently to the evil she encounters.

This connection between God's refusal to intervene coercively to stop evil and the Christian pacifist's similar refusal indicates at the start an important difference between a pacifist theodicy such as Yoder's and that of a nonpacifist, and in an interesting way points out how the former quickly becomes practical (to recall one of Surin's objection to canonical theodicy) as the latter does not. The nonpacifist assumes that it is a grave moral error for an agent who possesses the wherewithal to prevent some unjust aggressor from doing harm not to do so, even at the expense of the attacker's life of freedom. The pacifist emphatically does not. Indeed, she supposes herself to be morally obligated not to violate that freedom. So explaining why God, who possesses all power, refuses forcefully to interpose Himself to stop one of His creatures from doing evil is for the pacifist quite a different enterprise altogether. Her task is not to explain why God does not do what she might think she would and should do if she had God's omnipotence, as the nonpacifist must. Rather it is to explain why both God and she think such coercive interventionism ought not to be practiced.

It is worth noting at this point that the sort of theological pacifism present here in Yoder's writings is distinguishable from what we might call a divine command pacifism.15 In fact, the matter of whether these distinguishable understandings of pacifism are able to sustain a theodicy is helpful in displaying their essential difference. If one is a pacifist merely because God has commanded it, meaning by this that the sole reason for obedience is that it is commanded, then a theodicy becomes impossible. For God's reasons for commanding it may be entirely opaque to the one commanded. If, on the other hand, in being a pacifist one supposes herself to be following after God's essential character - as Yoder clearly thinks - then God's reasons for refraining from coercive intervention are essentially those the believer gives for her own pacifism.16

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To return to Yoder's "theodicy," it might be objected that his account of God's refusal forcefully to intervene to stop evil is compatible with a completely inactive God. This is to repeat the charge leveled earlier against Plantinga's "deistic Demiurge"(Surin's phrase). But to this Yoder has a strong theological answer. First, he consistently draws a distinction between passivity and active nonresistance. The correct Christian response to evil is the latter, emphatically not the former. Further, active non-resistance is the correct way systematically to understand the activity of God as revealed in the history of Israel and in Jesus as the story is told in the Christian Bible. This activity has been frequent in the history of Israel and the Christian Church, and most prominent in the cross of Jesus Christ.

Christ is agape; self-giving, nonresistant love. At the cross this nonresistance, including the refusal to use political means of self-defense, found its ultimate revelation in the uncomplaining and forgiving death of the innocent at the hands of the guilty. This death reveals how God deals with evil; here is the only valid starting point for Christian pacifism or nonresistance. The cross is the extreme demonstration that agape seeks neither effectiveness nor justice, and is willing to suffer any loss or seeming defeat for the sake of obedience.17

We must not miss how far this basic claim about the ultimate meaning and significance of Jesus and the cross extends. Yoder takes it to inform the entire New Testament witness, including even those passages which are generally interpreted as strongly incarnational or cosmological. Hence, in explication of the first chapter of the Gospel of John he says,

It is to this that the authors or the poets behind the high points of the New Testament witness respond when they proclaim that what happened in the cross is a revelation of the shape óf what God is, and of what God does, in the total drama of history. They affirm as a permanent pattern what in Jesus was a particular event. The eternal WORD condescending to put himself at our mercy, the creative power behind the universe emptying itself, pouring itself into the frail mold of humanity, has the same shape as Jesus. God has the same shape as Jesus, and he always has had. The cross is what creation is all about. What Jesus did was local, of course, because that is how serious and real our history is to God. But what the cross was locally is universally and always the divine nature.18

The cross functions for Yoder first and foremost as the cross: Jesus suffering at the hands of sinful men whom He refuses to overpower. But it is evident in this passage that it also functions as a pattern by which all of the divine activity in relation to humankind can be understood. As "local" it stands inside our history, but in so standing it is "universal" since it is God's manner of speaking to us, therein respecting our history

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and therefore our freedom which makes it our history. Extending the metaphor even further, standing as it does within our history the cross of Christ is open to innumerable other explanations; humankind is free to see the cross in other lights. So God leaves His creatures free to reject Him, as they are free to reject His Christ. If accepted, on the other hand, Christian revelation provides one with a whole history of God's redemptive activity - which is nothing less than His consistent and persistent noncoercive response to His creatures who have, in their freedom, turned from God to evil.

This vision of the problem of evil from the inside, as we might say - that is, the inside of Christian belief - allows Yoder to make one additional move for which he is able to find considerable support in scripture. As we noted earlier, viewed from the outside the question might arise whether and in what sense any idea of God's omnipotence can be salvaged if He is understood to be bound to respond to evil by being killed by it, as in the cross. Here, however, a well-known passage from Paul is apropos.

The language of the cross may be illogical to those who are not on the way to salvation, but those of us who are on the way see it as God's power to save . . . And so, while the Jews demand miracles and the Greeks look for wisdom, here are we preaching a crucified Christ; to the Jews an obstacle that they cannot get over, to the pagans madness, but to those who have been called, whether they are Jews or Greeks, a Christ who is the power and the wisdom of God. For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength. (I Corinthians 1:18-25, JB)

What Yoder draws from this passage - and surely he is not far from Paul's meaning - is that "the cross of Christ is in fact a new definition of truth, both as power and as wisdom."19 What apparently is the epitome of weakness turns for Yoder (and Paul) into the most graphic of all God's displays of power and strength. "In [Jesus'] very failure and death we confess that God was moving omnipotently to reverse the stream of history which since Cain had been under the sign of hostility."20 Given this revised notion of power, that God is omnipotent is not at all incompatible, as the philosophical objector supposes, with the continued existence of evil. For the most powerful response to evil is the "weak" and "foolish" response of the cross. And according to Christian revelation, God has responded and continues to respond to evil precisely in this way.

We see here that Yoder's "theodicy" calls for a transformation of our own notions of what God is, evil is, and how the latter is a "problem" for the former. That such a transformation is required precludes that Yoder's "theodicy" will receive wide acceptance by those outside the Christian

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faith. Like Paul, he supposes it will remain a stumbling block to most. He is not, however, what one might call fideistic about the accessibility of these Christian claims to the world at large. A case can be made that our entire culture has been hoodwinked to understand power as synonymous with destructive and coercive activity. As Yoder often claims, history is written by western historians from the perspective of kings and empires who have performed in this way; yet it is not clear at all that it need be so written. Conventional historiography, in fact, is challenged just in its failure to recognize power from other perspectives.21 The truly powerful forces in history are perhaps those which stand clear of the coercive mainstream and call noncoercively, as Jesus did, for a transformation of the human spirit. As Yoder puts it,

[H]uman understandings of power fail to recognize the real power of God in and for real historical experience, in and through the cross. People are proven wrong who believe that by escalating their capacity to destroy those one [sic] has ceased to dialogue with as fellow humans they will in fact make the course of events come out the way they want it to in their own territory on their own terms: "Where are kings and empires now of old that went and came?"22

What we see in Yoder's theodicy at this point is rather rare. For he is ready to claim not only that God is actively engaging evil religiously but politically as well; indeed the religious and political activity is one and the same. Equipped with the interpretive power of the cross we can see political history in a new light, and thereby come to an understanding of how history is in reality moving. Indeed, for Yoder there is, in a way of speaking, evidence which is relevant in constructing a response to the problem of evil. Unlike the Stranger in Basil Mitchell's parable who assures the partisan that he is on the side of the resistance and then supplies with his subsequent activities all sorts of "evidence" which seems to suggest he is a powerful enemy of the cause,23 God has been and is currently effectively working against evil in our world on the pattern set in Jesus.

Only in recent decades have social scientists begun to inventory the ways in which a soft answer turns away wrath, but it has always been true. It is only in our epoch of nationwide media and movements that charismatic leaders like Gandhi and King can develop a technology of nonviolent social struggle. But it was true before their time that the way to make peace is not to make war.24

Here we see all the more forcefully how Yoder's theodicy has direct relevance to the Christian's understanding of her own being in the world. For God's continued action in a world which has rejected Him, a

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world full of evil and rebellion, is itself the Christian calling. As such Yoder's theodicy goes beyond the level of explanation to that of training in Christianity. This, perhaps, is its most unique and powerful feature.

V. New difficulties Perhaps here we should stop. For in the thought of John Yoder we have uncovered a "theodicy" with groundings in something like a free will defense which is not susceptible to the charges leveled earlier by Surin. Yet I do not mean in this essay so much to answer an objection or set of objections about a particular defense of God's goodness in the face of evil, but rather to seek, as I believe Surin seeks, to revive theological discussion of what has been unfortunately thought an essentially philosophical set of problems.

So it is that we proceed in this final section to offer some critique of Yoder's "theodicy." In so doing we will note that the difficulties that arise for Yoder are not entirely dissimilar to some which have received attention in philosphical discussions of theodicy. It is, however, the theological context that is their rightful home, or so I wish to maintain.

Yoder is a remarkably consistent thinker. As we have seen, he has with a great deal of success offered an understanding of God's response to evil which is woven in and around one central claim, i.e., that God respects the freedom of His creatures to choose evil over good. With the help of the Christian story, he has deciphered God's redemptive activity in the world in the form of agape which suffers and dies at the hands of evil, thereby conquering it, not on its own terms but in the form of active nonresistance. This, he claims, is the supreme demonstration of God's character, a character which the Christian is called to mirror in becoming a true and faithful disciple of Jesus.

But it is perhaps partly as a result of the consistency of his account and its thoroughness in deciphering the character of God's past and present response to evil that difficulties arise in the notion of God's future activity as Yoder's "theodicy" is capable of understanding it. As John Hick has argued, a Christian theodicy "cannot be content to look to the past, seeking an explanation of evil in its origins, but must look to the future, expecting a triumphant resolution in the eventual perfect fulfillment of God's good purpose."25

Yoder, however, has made it difficult to have such a future resolution since he has explained evil so thoroughly in terms of freedom and since he has tied the divine character so firmly to the mode of response represented by pacifism. Jesus has quite clearly revealed the nature of God, this being to suffer at the hands of humans rather than to coerce them to accept the truth. And since this is fatal to the very nature of God, it is not something in which we can expect a change. The nature of God's

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eschatological agency cannot, therefore, deviate in any significant way from that revealed in Jesus.

Yoder sees this and explicitly incorporates it into his eschatology (he is far from having no eschatology; in fact he emphasizes its place in his theology) in the form of a strong doctrine of hell and an explicit rejection of universalism.

[U]niversalism affirms that either because man is ultimately too good to be lost or because God is too good to lose man there is no such thing as Hell in any sense of the word; everyone will, in the end, wind up in the right place. It sounds very loving of God to save everybody. But saying this really means He made a mistake . . . It means that human freedom is a farce, because however clearly and intentionally and evenly a man turns from God, he is sure in the end to find out that he could not do so. In other words this view denies that God ever wanted to make man free; or that if man is free, he is so only in an unreal sense.26

Liberal theologians might be aghast at Yoder's readiness to affirm a doctrine of hell. This is a sentiment I do not share. That some punishment might be appropriate and necessary in seme future life seems not at all incompatible with a good God, specifically the God revealed in the history of Israel and in Jesus. My concern at this juncture is rather that the doctrine of hell seemingly entailed by Yoder's account of God's activity in response to evil may itself entail significant compromises in traditional Christian notions of God's nature and purposes. That it does this is not enough to undermine entirely the persuasiveness and power of the account as it has unfolded in the preceding pages. But points arise which in any case demand further discussion and elucidation, three of which can be sketched as follows.

1. In Yoder's eschatology God is significantly limited in just what sort of world He can bring about, to the extent that His sovereignty might reasonably be questioned. He is constrained, effectively, to bring about one which involves the possibility of an everlasting hell. We know this to be true in Yoder's theology precisely because the revelation of God's character in the life, teaching and death of Jesus is so unequivocal and transparent. God's activity in Jesus understood as Yoder understands it tells us explicitly how He cannot and will not act in the future, or at any time: He will not coercively override human freedom to bring about the fullness of His kingdom. In the light of this commitment on God's part, it seems a necessary logical possibility that some of God's creatures never respond to His grace.

The problem here is not so much that God's activity in the past limits what He can and will do in the present or future. It is rather that His self-limitation as interpreted through Christian pacifist eyes entails the possibility that God's intentions for his creation (i.e., that it be reconciled

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to Him) might ultimately be thwarted. God is not easily thought of in the Christian tradition as intending that it come about that He be forever separated from some of His creatures; but His self-limitation in Jesus - or in the chosen characteristics of God which Jesus reveals - essentially forces that unintended consequence upon Him.

2. A further result of Yoder's insistence upon the eschatological existence of a hell is that the eschatological hope which Christians are to embody in their lives, and upon which Yoder himself otherwise places a good deal of emphasis, becomes somewhat unfocused. For it is not clear that the world of the future is significantly discontinuous and therefore in any way a triumphant resolution of the present world. Recall that Yoder thinks of hell as essentially a continuation of freely chosen human rebellion. In this his differs from views which would see hell as God's meting out punishment which in his mercy he had heretofore refrained from employing. While these latter views bring their own theological difficulties, they do attribute to God activities with respect to evil in the eschatological future which are unlike His present activities. Evil, therefore, is brought to some end: it is punished, justly. In contrast, in Yoder's hell the activities of rebellious humans are essentially what they were in previous worlds. Because God so respects human freedom He allows even endless rebellion. In hell human rejection of God and His purposes extends the pattern of current rejection; the eschatological hell is essentially continuous with the present. Since this is so, it is hard to see in what way the eschaton is to be hoped for and trusted in since it is not - at least with respect to the existence of evil and rebellion -significantly different from our own present time.27

3. A final difficulty with the everlasting existence of evil in hell as supported by Yoder's doctrine thereof is simply that it is not easily seen how a perfectly good God could have chosen to create a world containing free beings knowing that their freedom could (and did) birth evil and rebellion which, once birthed, has everlasting existence.28 (This difficulty is coextensive with that of (1) above, but points us toward the goodness of God rather than His sovereignty.) Yoder's affirmation of the doctrine of hell demonstrates just how far he is prepared to carry the value of human freedom. But the question arises: why is human freedom so important? And is its existence morally significant enough such that the existence of evil which (indirectly) follows from it can be thought to be morally justified? This is the sort of moral cost/benefit analysis often taken up in theodicies, with the important addition that in Yoder's case not only must the existence of present and past evils - such as the death of children tossed aloft and caught on the Turk's bayonet in Dostoevski's well-known description - be balanced by the good of freedom but also the intermin-able existence of evil as it takes the form in hell of the unrepentañt's unwavering rebellion and hardheartedness.

Yoder is not without a reply on this point. "God," he says, "is by

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nature a reconciler, a maker of shalom."29 Shalom in its true sense is impossible without freedom. The true community of peace is the community of servants; and one is no servant unless one is so willingly. Hence freedom for Yoder need not be taken as a value in and for itself but rather it stands as a necessary precondition for the possibility of the existence of the Kingdom of God - which is no less than the peaceable kingdom to which end all of creation was fashioned in the beginning by its gracious creator.

To this reply more questions can be addressed. For while the community of peace whose members are at once both friends and servants appears to us all a noble end, that community's exclusivity -exclusivity being a function of a doctrine of an everlasting hell - is all the more bothersome. The church, we trust, will become reconciled with the world in the coming kingdom; so her eschatological life will be distinguished from her present life, i.e. the life of ambassador for the kingdom in and to the world. Hell appears to prevent this since its inhabitants are not members in the community for which they were made, even if this fate has been freely chosen by them.

Whether Yoder or anyone else has a sufficient answer for this and the other two related points I have raised need not be determined at present. As noted earlier, my primary interest in interacting with Yoder's "theodicy" is less to expose its inadequacies and more to take up its implications in the context of a continuing theological discussion of the problem of evil. It is worth noting, surely, that a consideration of Yoder's "theodicy" has lead to a further discussion of such things as hell, eschatology and the kingdom of God, all essentially theological concepts. Evil, of course, is a theological concept as well, but it is easier to forget this, especially in the highly philosophical discussions we have 'grown used to having concerning it.

NOTES

1 Surin, Theology and the Problem of Evil (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), p . 3. Surin's "canonical theodicists" are specifically the three mentioned here (with the addition of Charles Hartshorne, who seems to me slightly different). I shall follow him in this; when I say "canonical theodicy" I mean specifically the theodicies of these three contemporary thinkers, although presumably there are others who could be classed with them. In his book Surin gives Plantiga, Hick and Swinburne individual treatment, and it is clear that he thinks more highly of the work of one (Hick) than another (Swinburne - with Plantinga falling somewhere in between). But the individual differences are not enough to blunt the fact that all three share a general understanding of how we should understand what we are doing when we do theodicy, and this is what Surin most wishes to attack.

2 In personal correspondence with me about this paper Yoder has repeatedly expressed objection to being thought of as having or doing theodicy. From one letter: "I am not sure whether there is a previous debate about whether theodicy should be the problem at all. Since you begin by using the phrase "the free will defense," the matter does have

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an apologetic coloration which I am personally not very interested in." And from another a month later: "I continue to consider it odd to be used as a specimen of a theodicy when other people have been intending to do theodicy before me and that was not my intention." It is important to remember throughout this essay that Yoder himself never explicitly does a theodicy. I, in a way, am constructing one from various bits and peices of his writings - although I want strongly to maintain that these are not incidental to what Yoder is doing theologically, but at its center. Further, it seems correct to say that "theodicy" - perhaps largely because of the strength of "canonical theodicy" - carries with it the coloration Yoder alleges, although it is my hope (and I believe Surin's) that it need not. To remind us of all of this, when I refer to Yoder's "theodicy" in what follows I will continue to place that term in scarce quotes.

3 Surin, p. 42. 4 Surin, p. 44. 5 Surin, p. 48. 6 Surin, p. 60. 7 "Evil and Omnipotence," in The Philosophy of Religion, Basil Mitchell, ed. (London:

Oxford University Press, 1971), p . 92. 8 God, Freedom and Evil (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1974), p . 30. 9 "Divine Omnipotence and Human Freedom," in New Essays in Philosophical Theology,

A. Flew and A. Maclntyre, eds. (New York: Macmillan, 1955), p . 150-153. 10 See his article "The Free Will Defense," in Philosophy in America, Max Black, ed. (Ithica,

NY: Cornell University Press, 1965), pp. 204-220. 11 Evil, Suffering and Religion (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1976), p. 82. 12 Surin, p . 76. 13 Surin, p . 77. 14 The Original Revolution (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1971), pp. 61-62. 15 The label I apply here, "divine command pacifism," has the danger of being somewhat

misleading. Yoder's own emphasis upon obedience, which runs throughout his work, could be thought compatible with some versions of divine command morality in a broader construal of that term. (For a taste of the variety of forms divine command morality historically has taken see Janine Marie Idziak's Divine Command Morality: Historical and Contemporary Readings (New York: Edwin Mellon, 1979).) One might wish to include in "divine command theories of morality" other views than those I allude to here which, while emphasizing God's moral goodness and our capacity to know that He is good and why, seek to maintain nonetheless that morality is dependent in one way or another on Him - a class into which Yoder's views would fit. If so, my distinction here could be rephrased in terms of types of divine command theories: on the one hand those which claim that God's will is inscrutible and that nothing more can be said in religious morality than that God commanded, and on the other those which suppose we can to some degree understand the goodness of God's character and therefore the good reasons He has for commanding us as He does. For an exemplification of how the differences between these types count see Yoder's own discussion of Karl Barth's Grenzfall in his Karl Barth and the Problem of War (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1970), particularly pages 64^74.

16 This analysis should perhaps be taken one step further. For one might argue that God's pacifist character, which Christians are called to emulate, itself is arbitrarily so. In this case, theodicy and pacifism based on the character of God would once again diverge. A response to this position would need further to explore the biblical notion of discipleship, seizing on the fact that a reduplication of Jesus life is not true discipleship, rather as disciple the Christian must engage in the task of interpreting the gospel which Jesus taught and lived in the new world the Christian currently inhabits. Interpretation of this sort is impossible if Jesus was arbitrarily pacifist, loving, just and so on.

17 The Original Revolution, p . 56. 18 He Came Preaching Peace (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1985), p . 85. 19 He Came Preaching Peace, p . 43. 20 He Came Preaching Peace, p . 44. 21 Yoder thinks Christian pacifists should engage in their own counter-historiography. He

himself does so briefly in a number of places. See in particular The Original Revolution, pp. 162-176. We might note also that the concern for a writing (or rewriting) of history lends itself well to Surin's contention, mentioned earlier, that a theodicy must collide

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with "historical realities" themselves - such as the Holocaust. No one can say beforehand how a history could be written of the Holocaust from this other perspective, but the commitment to writing it - or attempting to write it - is a crucial one. This point is brought out near the end of Surin's book where he wraps the non-canonical "practical theodicies" of Soelle, Moltmann and Forsyth around graphic accounts of actual events in the Holocaust itself.

22 He Came Preaching Peace, p . 45. 23 See further "The University Discussion" in New Essays in Philosophical Theology,

pp. 103-106. 24 He Came Preaching Peace, pp. 45-46. See also Yoder's What Would You Do If? (Scottdale,

Pa.: Herald Press, 1983), particularly section three entitled "But Does It Really Work?" 25 Evil and the God of Love, (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), p . 376. 26 "The Wrath of God and the Love of God," Unpublished*paper, copies distributed by the

Mennonite Central Committee, p . 3. 27 It is important to note that Yoder has something to say here. He does think there is

discontinuity between things as they are presently and as they will be in the future. We live in the "age of the church" in which "[e]vil is potentially subdued, and its submission is already a reality in the reign of Christ, but the final triumph of God is yet to come. The consumation will mean the fulfillment of the new aeon and the collapse of the old. The world in the sense of creation becomes after purgation identical with the new aeon, after having been the hostage of the old. It is in the light of this promised fulfillment that life in the new aeon, which seems so ineffective now, is nevertheless meaningful and right." (The Original Revolution, p . 60.) At the very least, then, the coming aeon will vindicate the Church's current alien life in the world, which is nothing less than the life of Christian pacifism. As I see it, the problem with this account is not so. much that pacifism will be vindicated but how. For precisely pacifism is the agency of God who is bringing about the vindication of the agency of pacifism. In this light, it seems that Yoder's eschatology can proceed in one of three possible directions: (1) God's pacifism is significantly different than that currently lived out in the church in so far as the former is capable of bringing about a resolution in a way that the latter is not. (2) The pacifist agency of both God and the people of God is essentially similar, hence as we are not capable of insuring that people will respond to our nonviolent witness so also God must accept the possibility that some of his creatures will refuse His love, eternally. (3) In fact the pacifism of the church and of God - which are essentially similar - are effective, even if this is not at all times entirely clear. The difference between this present age and the next is not so much that pacifism is ineffective currently, later to become effective, but that later we will see its effectiveness plainly.

Of these three, I have pinned the second on Yoder. I do not think there is room for the first given Yoder's strong understanding of the transparency and unity of God's revelation of Himself in Jesus and the church. There is room, I believe, for the third position, particularly when Yoder speaks as he does in the quotation on page 202 of this essay of the real success of such pacifists as Gandhi and King. Were Yoder to embrace this wholeheartedly, he could speak from it to some of the other objections I have raised. Specifically, were the effectiveness of the pacifist witness affirmed, the possibility of some sort of chasened universalism would emerge, although one might expect a bit more to be said about how the ultimate effectiveness of the nonviolent witness does not violate the freedom of those upon whom it is ultimately effective. (Yoder entertains universalism as mentioned in note 28 below.) I do not find, however, that he is entirely ready to do this for he continues to resist the claim that nonresistance works: "Nonresistance is right, in the deepest sense, not because it works, but because it anticipates the triumph of the Lamb that was slain." (The Original Revolution, p . 61.) Rightly Yoder objects to the facile equivalence of the gospel with "what works," but it does not seem incompatible with his position to claim that, in an ultimate sense, pacifism does work. (Yoder may imply agreement with this in the following passage from Christian Attitudes to War, Peace and Revolution: A Companion to Bainton ([Goshen Biblical Seminary, 1983] p . 436-437) where he is critical of the typical distinction between effectiveness and principle. "The longer I look at the question of effectiveness, the less I trust that way to put the issue to be of any help. . . . The person who says, 'You must give up some of your scruples in order to be effective' is still saying that because the

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goal for the sake of which to be effective is in principle a good goal. So the argument which takes the clothing of 'principle versus effectiveness' really means this principle versus that principle. . . . Likewise, the people who say 'You must simply be true to God' . . . and 'let the heavens fall' . . . really say that because of a conviction about Providence, trusting that if the heavens fall God has another better set of heavens ready, which is part of the process, so even this is not thumbing your nose at the results. It's trusting God who gave us the rules to know more about the results than we know. So I am increasingly convinced that the debate between the effectiveness ethic and the principle ethic is a false debate.")

28 Yoder has responded to this point about hell's eternality in personal correspondence that he "is not so sure that hell needs to be eternal for the things that [he] has drawn from the biblical witness to be meaningful " This may be so. But I regard this as a new development in his thinking that is not found in the published articles and unpublished papers to which I have heretofore had access. (Seethe quotations on pages 199 and 204.) These point, I think, in the direction of hell's eternality. Yoder needs to show us either how and why his thinking has changed on this and that the change is not inconsistent with his theology otherwise or that in fact the implication of the passages I have quoted is not rightly understood to be an eternal hell. I welcome his attempts to do either of these.

29 He Came Preaching Peace, p . 34.

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