Three Religions: Same Contradictory God?
Christian, Jewish and Muslim theologians wrestle with the apparent contradiction of God's love and judgment.
February 2, 2011 at 08:00 PMRoone Arledge Auditorium
| Presenters: | Miroslav Volf, Director, Yale Center for Faith and Culture; Henry B. Wright Professor of Systematic Theology, Yale Divinity School Shakiel Humayun, Muslim President of the Foundation of Knowledge and Development Leonard Levin, Assistant Professor of Jewish Philosophy, Jewish Theological Seminary. |
My presentation commented on a series of Biblical and rabbinic quotes that were highlighted on the screen. Here are the quotes and my comments on them:
Quote 1:
The LORD passed by before [Moses], and proclaimed:
a. 'The LORD, LORD, God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth; keeping mercy unto the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin;
b. But that will by no means clear the guilty; accounting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and unto the fourth generation.' (Exodus 34:5-6)
In August, 2009 I received a letter from Helga Schneider of the German Office of Reparation in Saarburg, saying that after the death of my mother-in-law Regina Freeman in March of that year, Regina’s heirs were still entitled to a final payment of 455 Euros in token of the pain and suffering that my mother-in-law had suffered in the years 1940–45 at the hands of Nazi Germany. I must say that I was moved by this letter. It is a safe guess that Helga Schneider is of the third generation from those who perpetrated the crimes against humanity in the middle of the 20th century. She and others like her have taken responsibility for the sins of their ancestors and undertaken a broad spectrum of constructive actions — including massive re-education, dedicating memorials and museums, restoring defaced cemeteries, and engaging in ongoing dialogue with the descendants of survivors of the catastrophe — in order to make reparation for evils of the past to the extent that this is humanly possible. If they did not undertake this reparative action, I believe with full certainty that the costs for the sins of the past would be exacted in other ways — by the perpetuation of past evil among the later generations of the original perpetrators. History teaches us that those who do not correct for the sins of the past are doomed to repeat them.
Quote 2:
"God considered at first whether to create the world on the basis of justice alone, but decided that the world could not survive on that basis. God therefore reconsidered and decided to create the world on the twin pillars of justice and mercy." (Midrash Genesis Rabbah 12:15)
As I am a teacher, I like to imagine God as a teacher. God knows, as I know, that all students start out from a position near zero, and that mistakes are part of the way toward learning — and mistakes can be more or less costly, depending what skills are being taught. I am glad I am not teaching automobile driving or piloting small planes. The teacher must adopt a policy of combining justice and mercy in order to encourage the student to make progress along the necessary path. Justice is enforcing the consequences for mistakes. If there are no consequences, the student will go on making the same mistakes and not make progress. But if every mistake is reprimanded with maximum harshness, the student will become totally discouraged and give up.
The rabbis said that God considered at first whether to create the world on the basis of justice alone, but decided that the world could not survive on that basis. God therefore reconsidered and decided to create the world on the twin pillars of justice and mercy.
Quote 3:
Abraham appealed to God: “Will You sweep away the innocent together with the guilty? Far be it from You to do such a thing! Shall not the judge of all the earth do justice?” (Genesis 18:24–25) But the LORD rained brimstone and fire and annihilated these cities of the plain and all their inhabitants. (Genesis 19:24–25)
We also know that the world, as presently constituted, is based on physical law, which does not recognize moral boundaries. Earthquakes and tsunamis kill innocent and guilty people alike, without discrimination. It seems likely to me that contemplation of this fact led the authors of the Bible to a train of moral reflection in response to the geological catastrophe that buried the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, next to the Dead Sea, at the bottom of the Jordan Rift Valley, around 4000 years ago. Monotheism, in its infancy, had to face a dilemma: Is God responsible for this kind of evil, or not? If you say not, then God is not fully God — then there are powerful forces in the world that God cannot control. If you say yes, then God’s goodness is placed in jeopardy — how could God allow such a catastrophe to happen? The Biblical authors tried to finesse this question by saying that the inhabitants of those towns must have been very wicked indeed, to the point that they deserved this horrible fate. Sodomites have had a bad reputation ever since. But a fateful dissent was recorded on the same page of the narrative, and put in the mouth of Abraham, patriarch of the Jewish people: “Will You sweep away the innocent together with the guilty? Far be it from You to do such a thing! Shall not the judge of all the earth do justice?”
Quote 4:
“It is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is dispossessing them before you.” (Deuteronomy 9:5)
God said to Jonah: “Shall I not have mercy on that great city Nineveh, on which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and many cattle?” (Jonah 4:11)
This dialectic of justification and questioning runs like a rift throughout the ages of Jewish thought. The author of the book of Joshua, like the theorists of American manifest destiny, thought God was on the side of his nation in every war, and that the conquered nations of Canaan must therefore have deserved their fate. But the author of the book of Jonah burst the bubble of this chauvinistic self-congratulation with a broader, more universalistic perspective. Jonah is made to acknowledge at the end that the Ninevites — arch-enemies of Israel — are also worthy of the message of forgiveness. “Shall I not have mercy on a city of 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and many cattle?”
Quote 5:
Moses asked God: “Why do the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper?”
a. View #1: The righteous who suffers is the righteous child of a wicked parent; the wicked who prospers is the wicked child of a righteous parent.
b. View #2: God had no answer for Moses. “We have no explanation for the tranquility of the wicked or the suffering of the righteous.” (Talmud Berakhot 7a; Mishnah Avot 4:19)
In later times, when historical suffering was the lot of the Jewish people for centuries, the major tendency in Jewish thought was to acknowledge this suffering as a just punishment. “Because of our sins, we were exiled from our land.” But every now and then (as in the book of Job), the justice of this apparently divine verdict is questioned. The rabbis of the Talmud projected this perplexity onto Moses. They imagined Moses arguing with God and demanding an explanation for the mystery: “Why do the righteous suffer, and the wicked prosper?” In one view, God answered: “The righteous who suffers is expiating the sins of his wicked parents, even to the third and fourth generations. The wicked who prospers is graced by the merits of his righteous ancestors.” But according to another view, God had no explanation for Moses. “I will be gracious to whom I choose to be gracious, and merciful to whom I choose to be merciful.” In the words of Rabbi Yannai: “We have no explanation for the tranquility of the wicked or the suffering of the righteous.”
Conclusion:
The rabbis never accuse God of malice or of having an “anger problem.” (Well, hardly ever.) At worst, God may be too hung up on justice and needs to be swayed to be more merciful. Or maybe the problems of this humungous universe are too much even for God to square physical necessity with moral equity. Bottom line — we don’t know.
The questions are perennial and everlasting. The debate is ongoing. We are always open to new answers.
