To me, something new happened there. Many of the things that we now take to be morally appealing in Jesus were actually rather scandalous in their time. These weren’t just new principles; some of them were considered wrong. A sort of boundless degree of forgiveness was not an ideal, not even in Stoicism, not even in the prophets. Jesus also had this concern for the most abject, the most indigent people in the world. There was a category of the deserving poor in the ancient world. But the ptōchoi, the most wretched, while always the object of minimal charity, were regarded as being too debased as a rule to make it worthwhile to provide them with more than some alms. What made the ministry of Jesus so strange in late antiquity was that he made them the actual center of his concern, and even declared that the Kingdom of Heaven was theirs. So that was it. It’s the strangeness, it’s the uncanniness of this figure in his time and place first and foremost that captured my imagination and continues to do so.
Wehner: You’ve said you found Jesus to be an “infinitely compelling” figure, and that you “cannot fit him easily into the normal chronicles of human history.” You just explained why. You’ve pointed out that the issue of suffering and evil in the world isn’t an argument against God’s existence, but it does go directly to the issue of divine goodness. You’ve stated that “we exist in a world of monstrous evil and monstrous suffering. And the theist traditions tell us that behind all of this is a God of infinite justice, mercy, love and intellect.” The contrast between the suffering of children and the claim that God is all-powerful and all-good is enough to call into question the claim itself. So what’s the best way for Christians to think about theodicy, the defense of God’s goodness and omnipotence in the view of the existence of evil? Is it found in Christ’s wordless kiss to the Grand Inquisitor in “The Brothers Karamazov,” which can be understood as a moment of healing grace rather than a logical response to an argument, as an act of mercy and empathy that transcends human understanding? Or is there a better way to think about this?
Hart: There’s a partial answer in that, but it’s one that requires interpretation. Curiously enough, I’m not a great admirer of Dostoyevsky as an artist. I don’t think he was an equal of Tolstoy. But what he did have was a moral genius that could break through even his horrible prejudices, like his antisemitism. No one has ever stated more powerfully the moral case against accepting the terms of our existence as adequate to the claims of God’s goodness. By “terms of our existence,” I meant the evils Ivan makes so much of in the chapter “Rebellion,” which are principally the sufferings of children. For him, on these terms, existence in this world and even the promise of some final Kingdom in which all will be reconciled cannot be justified. And yes, I think the figure of Christ, the silent, the enigmatic figure of the Christ who reverses the kiss of Judas there and bestows a kiss of forgiveness, of reconciliation, is part of it.
But my first piece of advice on theodicy has always been to avoid theodicy, because any attempt to justify the ways of God to man in terms of why this happened already presumes a kind moral teleology to evil. Here’s what I mean by that: theodicy tries to show how evil exists as part of a great plan to achieve some greater good, which of course justifies evil. It makes it seem as if, yes, it’s sad that little girl died of cancer, but in the end it was necessary. That strikes me as obscene. Whatever one thinks of that, the New Testament never speaks in such terms. Rather, it treats evil in terms of a kind of provisional dualism. It sees evil simply as a contingent distortion and violation of creation, sustained by the arkhōn of this kosmos, against which God is at war in Christ, and which is overthrown by Christ.
The New Testament speaks of creation as something broken and distorted and destroyed by spiritual freedoms gone astray, and the whole structure of reality that we know is in some sense alien to true creation.