I recently read Evil and the Justice of God (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2006) by N.T. Wright. In the adult Sunday School class I help teach we're discussing the book and watching the companion film that Bishop Wright did for Channel 4 in the UK. Both the book and video are powerful. Wright leans heavily on earlier work, especially his massive Jesus and the Victory of God. In fact this book makes for an accessible entry point into the strengths, and some would say weaknesses, of his thought. Wright's purpose here is to demonstrate how the scriptures of the Old and New Testament provide a more effective and compelling response to evil than either the myth of automatic progress growing out of the Enlightenment, or postmodern-style cynicism and nihilism. By response Wright doesn't mean that the Bible answers every question we may have about the "problem" of evil, rather it tells us "the story of what God has done, is doing and will do about evil." (p. 45) The hinge of this story is the promise God made to Abraham in Genesis 12, and the main character of the story is the nation of Israel, culminating in the prophetic and kingly work of Israel's Messiah.
One of the emphases in this book that I loved is Wright's refutation of two kinds of false dualism that often spring from efforts to deal with the problem of evil. The first is an "us and them" dualism that sees the line between good and evil running between the good guys (me and those like me) and the bad guys (them). A recent example of this, according to Wright, is the post-9/11 rhetoric from Western leaders about ridding the world of evil and defeating an "axis of evil." Wright reminds us of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's hard-won insight that the line between good and evil runs through every human heart, and every human society. The second is an "ontological dualism" that sees the physical world of matter, space and time as essentially evil and the spiritual world as essentially good. This often leads to a belief that salvation consists of the obliteration of the physical, and the liberation of the soul from the body. Thus we've grown up with images of heaven as a place where disembodied spirits sit on clouds and play (invisible?) harps for all eternity. These pictures of salvation and the afterlife have more in common with gnosticism than the Bible, and it's amazing how far they've crept into contemporary evangelicalism. Been to a "Christian" funeral lately?
Toward the end of the book Wright gives this summary.
We are not told—or not in any way that satisfies our puzzled questioning—how and why there is radical evil within God's wonderful, beautiful and essentially good creation. One day I think we shall find out, but I believe we are incapable of understanding it at the moment, in the same way that a baby in the womb would lack the categories to think about the outside world. What we are promised, however, is that God will make a world in which all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well, a world in which forgiveness is one of the foundation stones and reconciliation is the cement which holds everything together. And we are given this promise not as a matter of whistling in the dark, not as something to believe even though there is no evidence, but in and through Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection, and in and through the Spirit through whom the achievement of Jesus becomes a reality in our world and in our lives. When we understand forgiveness, flowing from the work of Jesus and the Spirit, as the strange, powerful thing it really is, we begin to realize that God's forgiveness of us, and our forgiveness of others, is the knife that cuts the rope by which sin, anger, fear, recrimination and death are still attached to us. Evil will have nothing to say at the last, because the victory of the cross will be fully implemented. (pp. 164-5)
It's become almost a cliche to say that Wright's a big-picture thinker, and that this strength of his becomes a weakness at times. D.A. Carson has said that Wright's exegesis tends to foreground what's in the background and background what's in the foreground. I think that's a danger for any theologian. We all have our favored emphases that can distort our interpretative lenses if we're not careful. Nevertheless, one need not agree with everything Wright has written on justification (and I don't) to benefit from this book. I told my class that any serious seeker of God must sooner or later grapple with the question of evil. This book is a worthy attempt at doing just that. It's one I wouldn't hesitate to recommend to non-Christian friends who want to know why I believe that in Jesus Christ all things are being made new. One day there will be no more sea. (Rev. 21:1)
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