Wonders for Oyarsa recommended to me David Bentley Hart’s wonderful little book The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami. Hart is an Eastern Orthodoxy tehologian with a Radical Orthodoxy sensibility. Unlike much turgid theological prose, his writing is lucid and gracious, sprinkled with just-right literary references. The terrible Indonesian tsunamis of 2004 prompted Hart’s reflection on theodicy. Much of his reflection in The Doors of the Sea plays off of Dostoyevksy’s The Brothers Karamazov, particularly The Grand Inquisitor’s devastating speech.
I loved this book, because it reminded me that things really are “not right” in this world. Having been immersed in the study of how Christian faith relates to the natural sciences, it’s easy to forget that the creation is “fallen.” There is no trace of a “fall” in the record of natural history. We can’t attribute the behavior of carnivorous animals, or the geological processes that inevitable give rise to earthquakes and tsunamis, to Adam’s sin — these things existed on earth for billions of years before man appeared.
Yet, we intuitively know that the apparently meaningless deaths of hundreds of thousands of people when the giant waves hit Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand is not “natural” or “right.” And, we know from scripture that “death” is an “enemy.” Developing a theology that accounts for God’s goodness, human sin, the long, deep record of natural history, and the “enemy” of death, is one of the great challenges every thinking Christian has to face.
Hart insists that Christian theology not fall into the trap of thinking that nature is all there is — that death must inevitably be part of human history. But he also insists that we must not give in to a literalistic fundamentalism that ignores or distorts billions of years of natural history. How does he pull this together? In typical Eastern fashion, he really doesn’t. He allows this paradox and mystery to simmer a bit, and invites us to contemplate a God who is not bound by the ontology of the present creation. An ontological “is” is not an ontological “must” for God.
I appreciated this approach. God knows, literally, that recovering fundamentalists like myself need to learn how to rejoice in mystery. But I confess that, categorizer that I am, I wasn’t fully satisfied. So I asked Prof. Hart how he draws these things together, and he referred me to the Patristic Father Origen.
Well, now I need to read more Origen than I have. Here’s what I understand of Origen’s conception of the fall, however: for Origen, the fall happened in the wills of pre-existing souls, outside of “natural” time. Embodied in “natural” time, these souls recapitulate their original fall. This underlying theology is why, in the book, Hart makes some effort to distance himself from gnosticism. The Greek and gnostic themes seem evident in this notion of a pristine disembodiment that goes bad and becomes embodied, with the hope of redemption from embodiment in the eschaton.
I’m pretty sure I don’t know enough about Eastern Orthodox thought or about Origen to be getting this exactly right. I’d love to hear from any readers about nuances I’m missing. At the end of the day, this seems like far too elaborate and speculative an ontology for me. But, I think there’s something very true about the fall as in some respect an event “outside” of normal time — like, in a way, the incarnation.
3 replies on “The Doors of the Sea — Eastern Orthodox Theodicy”
So glad you liked it! I can’t really say enough good things about this little book, as you well know.
I’m sure that Hart and any serious Christian theologian these days is aware of the dangers of gnosticism – that embodiment is a glorious thing, and that our ultimate hope lies not in the immortality of the soul but the resurrection of the body. Hart certainly doesn’t believe the creation to be evil all through.
I think I found it most profound to see how the elder Zosima really is an answer to Ivan. We can’t see, looking into natural past with scientific instruments, any time where the world was any less bound to death and decay. And yet the saints seem to live in paradise even now. It is that witness that says to the powers and principalities of the world that the kingdom of God has broken in.
Perhaps my palette for mystery has been more finely tuned of late. For, I must say, that despite some of the ontological gaps in Hart’s approach (why does the freedom of man produce evil when the freedom of God does not?), the thing has the ring of deep truth to it. Not a shallow intellectual truth that ties everything up in logical bows, but a qualitative truth you can sink your teeth into and live out in daily life.
The tsunami in 2004, the cyclone in Myanmar, the earthquake in China and the recent devastation in my home state of Iowa have sent me reeling in search of a place to reconcile the value of human life with the realities of creation.
Too many thoughts to post in a comment, but here are a couple: I agree with Wonders. Gnostism is not an option.
And I agree our only hope for immortality is resurrection. But the bottom line is, If there will be resurrection, eternal life and new creation, the physical laws of the cosmos will have to change.
Our soulness is based on biological processes. And the created order in its current state REQUIRES the cycle of life and death to keep from stagnating. Think of it–even eating plants requires the death of something to sustain life in something else. And death and birth recombine genetic material, and new people and new ideas and new ways to glorify the Creator are the result. Sometimes I think it’s arrogant for me to hope the entity that is me should “enjoy” eternal conscious existence at the expense of a new person’s life. At what point does God say we have enough human souls, so let’s stop making more and get on with eternity? Maybe eternal life is a metaphor for living this one according to God’s call (placing our faith in Jesus and dealing with sin) and going to our deaths “commending our souls to God” to make room for the new people he’s’ calling into existence.
With current events, I find myself more willing to be humble and say to God, I trust you, I place my trust in Jesus, and I entrust my soulness to you for eternity without demanding to know what that means. I’m willing to dwell in that mystery.
Nice thoughts Kathy — and a lovely site you have!