TSUNAMIS, THEODICY, TERRORISTS AND THURSDAY (The Man Who Was ...) . The Corner on National Review Online.
A recent thread on The Corner on National Review Online about the human carnage brought to us by the tsunami in south Asia, in what is sometimes called "an act of God", raised the sticky theological question of theodicy. Theodicy is the question of God's goodness - indeed his very existence - in light of the existence of evil, particularly natural evil, which unlike human evil is not as easily laid at the foot of man's free will. It raised for me, what the question of theodicy will forever raise with me since reading the novel, thoughts of - along with the Book of Job - G. K. Chesterton's "The Man Who Was Thursday".
Thursday's plot concerns the members of the Central Anarchist Council, each of whom for reasons of secrecy is named after a day of the week, and most of all Sunday the immense and threatening leader of the Council. (For those who have not read the book and would like to do so with out any foreknowledge, a bit of a spoiler follows).
As the story becomes progressively more surreal, each of the six lesser plotters discovers that each other is not in fact a terrorist but an undercover agent. They proceed to hunt down the horrible and menacing Sunday. When one of his pursuers questions him about his identity, who and what he is, Sunday answers, "I am the Sabbath. I am the peace of God." Chesterton tells us that Sunday can be taken to "stand for nature as distinguished from God." But also that when "you tear off the mask of Nature ... you find God". So this recent tsunami emanating from the sea near Sri Lanka, Leviathan from the sea, slaughtering more than 100,000 people, is the wet finger of God? I've read in one news piece that a tsunami warning system could cost as little as $2,000,000. So we would place a hook in the mouth of this Leviathan? I'm not saying we should not protect ourselves from the ravages of Nature, only that we should not delude ourselves by the purely materialist viewpoint that we will ever make a pet of it. There is no compromise with this mystery and only one resolution.
It is theodicy, the question of evil, which, it is said, has driven many people to atheism. And which is probably its only seemingly good argument. The problem is, ultimately, it is a flawed argument.
I have read that Chesterton's Sunday is the "backside of God" (I don't recall if it was Chesterton himself who said this). The subtitle of the novel is "A Nightmare". I guess the nightmare is that God is the author of all the carnage, or that this very proposition means he could not exist. Yet Nature as the backside of God, glimpsed only briefly through the corner of the eye, makes sense in only one framework. In the cup partaken of on that Thursday long ago and its physical manifestation on the following day.
Still, the grasping of this completeness is not accomplished with reason. It lies in a mystical paradox, the glimpsing of the backside of things, where the angst of human existence is in fact joy.
An excellent treatment of this subject can be found at THE TUMBLER OF GOD: Chesterton As Mystic, By Robert Wild, Chapter 12
Thursday's plot concerns the members of the Central Anarchist Council, each of whom for reasons of secrecy is named after a day of the week, and most of all Sunday the immense and threatening leader of the Council. (For those who have not read the book and would like to do so with out any foreknowledge, a bit of a spoiler follows).
As the story becomes progressively more surreal, each of the six lesser plotters discovers that each other is not in fact a terrorist but an undercover agent. They proceed to hunt down the horrible and menacing Sunday. When one of his pursuers questions him about his identity, who and what he is, Sunday answers, "I am the Sabbath. I am the peace of God." Chesterton tells us that Sunday can be taken to "stand for nature as distinguished from God." But also that when "you tear off the mask of Nature ... you find God". So this recent tsunami emanating from the sea near Sri Lanka, Leviathan from the sea, slaughtering more than 100,000 people, is the wet finger of God? I've read in one news piece that a tsunami warning system could cost as little as $2,000,000. So we would place a hook in the mouth of this Leviathan? I'm not saying we should not protect ourselves from the ravages of Nature, only that we should not delude ourselves by the purely materialist viewpoint that we will ever make a pet of it. There is no compromise with this mystery and only one resolution.
It is theodicy, the question of evil, which, it is said, has driven many people to atheism. And which is probably its only seemingly good argument. The problem is, ultimately, it is a flawed argument.
I have read that Chesterton's Sunday is the "backside of God" (I don't recall if it was Chesterton himself who said this). The subtitle of the novel is "A Nightmare". I guess the nightmare is that God is the author of all the carnage, or that this very proposition means he could not exist. Yet Nature as the backside of God, glimpsed only briefly through the corner of the eye, makes sense in only one framework. In the cup partaken of on that Thursday long ago and its physical manifestation on the following day.
Still, the grasping of this completeness is not accomplished with reason. It lies in a mystical paradox, the glimpsing of the backside of things, where the angst of human existence is in fact joy.
An excellent treatment of this subject can be found at THE TUMBLER OF GOD: Chesterton As Mystic, By Robert Wild, Chapter 12
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