Fiction & Theodicies

[MikeWC]

Up front, this thread is only partially serious. I think there's a kernel of an interesting idea here. I think I can show a fundamental problem with every last theodicy, even with the very idea of theodicy itself. And explain why most religious fiction stinks, to boot.

Basically, attempts to reconcile a good God with suffering are analogous to attempts to explain why characters in fiction featuring an overwhelmingly powerful character do not immediately take advantage of that character's power to solve all their problems quickly and easily.

1. Suspension of Disbelief

First watch this.

I assume most of us have at least a passing familiarity with Lord of the Rings, but maybe someone of you aren't. The characters have a ring which, in the hands of the villain, could be used to throw the entire world into a never ending dark age. The only way to end this threat once and for all is to throw the ring into the fires originally used to create the ring; alas, the volcano in question is in the heart of enemy territory.

So we get three really fantastic books about walking to that mountain.

Except in the LotR world, we know there are giant eagles that can fly people places. Hence the video.

At the end of the day, we accept the journey as necessary because without it, there would be no story. But the important point is that, in order to enjoy the LotR books, we have to ignore the fact that the characters have a very simple solution available to them.

We are willing to do this with certain stories. We ignore the plot holes because everything around the holes is so excellent; it is suspension of disbelief. Most stories need this in one way or another to function.

2. The Limits of Religious Fiction

Given how many religious people there are in the world today, and the enormous financial success of movies like The Passion of the Christ, it is interesting to note that there just isn't that much religious fiction out there. Other than the Left Behind books and their cousins, what else is there in the way of stories set in a world with obvious displays of Christian supernaturalism?

I can think of some examples: Frank Peretti (the evangelical Stephen King, required reading for anyone interested in American evangelical culture!!), CS Lewis, and the granddaddies, Paradise Lost and Inferno.

In both Peretti and Lewis, fairy tale logic is used to justify God/Aslan's general lack of action. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is a great example of this: Aslan does not take down the White Witch immediately for much the same reasons that Gandolf does not whip out his glowy magic powers in LotR more often: it would end the story within ten pages. Ostensibly, Gandolf and Aslan are limited by a higher set of laws, but the threatened shortening of the story is the real reason. We accept God/Aslan/Gandolf's lack of action in these stories because, again, the stories are pretty good. To keep things short, let's call the God/Aslan/Gandolf triad the GAG character.

Yet, in stories that cannot marshal fairy tale logic or the overwhelming good will of the reader, the GAG character is a major problem. If you've ever read the Left Behind books, you'll know at least one of the many reasons why they are so difficult to take seriously: we already know how it's going to end. Every last element of the plot is nothing other than clocking time. There is no possible way that the good guys could lose; even their momentary sacrifices will be swallowed up in eternal bliss.

You can provide a dozen theological reasons why knowing how the story ends does not ruin life here on Earth; that does not change the fact that when we imagine a fictional world in which that knowledge is certain, the story is boring and stupid.

Paradise Lost is a story that faces the GAG problem head on: Lucifer knows he's going to lose, but finds a certain heroism in pointless rebellion. Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.

This is the situation non-allegorical (i.e., not Pilgrim's Progress) Christian fiction finds itself in: God is the ultimate GAG character, so its only two options are to draw out the fates of its characters a la Left Behind or to find an ugly heroism in rebellion, a la Paradise Lost,or to appeal to fairy tale logic a la Narnia. The first option is stupid, the second two are enormously difficult to make convincing: I think this is why Christians do not write much fiction in which God plays a visible role.

3. Fiction & Theodicies

We find ourselves in a world in which there is apparently a real, true GAG character. The omnipotent, perfectly just and holy creator of the universe. Yet this GAG character does very little, at least in proportion to the amount of misery and suffering in the world. Child soldiers, sexual slavery, diamond wars fought with machetes, drunken fathers creeping down the hall at night.

So why doesn't this GAG character do anything, or at least more? This is where the theodicy comes in: the attempt to reconcile a good God with suffering.

Here is my contention about theodicies: they are all attempts to justify God, our real world GAG character, not doing anything. And they all revolve around the same logic used to explain why Frodo didn't just ride an eagle to Mordor. It boils down to saying that there is a good reason for all of this, we just don't know what it is.

We can accept that answer in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, because the story has the feel of a child's tale about it, and so has leeway to function under a different logic. We can accept it from The Lord of the Rings because "the journey is the point," I guess.

But can we really accept it in real life? Essentially, we're being asked to believe that there are good reasons why the giant eagles won't just fly us to Mt. Mordor like in the linked video above.

Why not just ditch the whole idea of the GAG character? Relegate it to fiction where it belongs.

[shunyadragon]

I will be back!!

[Whag]

Up front, this thread is only partially serious. I think there's a kernel of an interesting idea here. I think I can show a fundamental problem with every last theodicy, even with the very idea of theodicy itself. And explain why most religious fiction stinks, to boot.

Basically, attempts to reconcile a good God with suffering are analogous to attempts to explain why characters in fiction featuring an overwhelmingly powerful character do not immediately take advantage of that character's power to solve all their problems quickly and easily.

1. Suspension of Disbelief

First watch this.

I assume most of us have at least a passing familiarity with Lord of the Rings, but maybe someone of you aren't. The characters have a ring which, in the hands of the villain, could be used to throw the entire world into a never ending dark age. The only way to end this threat once and for all is to throw the ring into the fires originally used to create the ring; alas, the volcano in question is in the heart of enemy territory.

So we get three really fantastic books about walking to that mountain.

Except in the LotR world, we know there are giant eagles that can fly people places. Hence the video.

At the end of the day, we accept the journey as necessary because without it, there would be no story. But the important point is that, in order to enjoy the LotR books, we have to ignore the fact that the characters have a very simple solution available to them.

We are willing to do this with certain stories. We ignore the plot holes because everything around the holes is so excellent; it is suspension of disbelief. Most stories need this in one way or another to function.

2. The Limits of Religious Fiction

Given how many religious people there are in the world today, and the enormous financial success of movies like The Passion of the Christ, it is interesting to note that there just isn't that much religious fiction out there. Other than the Left Behind books and their cousins, what else is there in the way of stories set in a world with obvious displays of Christian supernaturalism?

I can think of some examples: Frank Peretti (the evangelical Stephen King, required reading for anyone interested in American evangelical culture!!), CS Lewis, and the granddaddies, Paradise Lost and Inferno.

In both Peretti and Lewis, fairy tale logic is used to justify God/Aslan's general lack of action. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is a great example of this: Aslan does not take down the White Witch immediately for much the same reasons that Gandolf does not whip out his glowy magic powers in LotR more often: it would end the story within ten pages. Ostensibly, Gandolf and Aslan are limited by a higher set of laws, but the threatened shortening of the story is the real reason. We accept God/Aslan/Gandolf's lack of action in these stories because, again, the stories are pretty good. To keep things short, let's call the God/Aslan/Gandolf triad the GAG character.

Yet, in stories that cannot marshal fairy tale logic or the overwhelming good will of the reader, the GAG character is a major problem. If you've ever read the Left Behind books, you'll know at least one of the many reasons why they are so difficult to take seriously: we already know how it's going to end. Every last element of the plot is nothing other than clocking time. There is no possible way that the good guys could lose; even their momentary sacrifices will be swallowed up in eternal bliss.

You can provide a dozen theological reasons why knowing how the story ends does not ruin life here on Earth; that does not change the fact that when we imagine a fictional world in which that knowledge is certain, the story is boring and stupid.

Paradise Lost is a story that faces the GAG problem head on: Lucifer knows he's going to lose, but finds a certain heroism in pointless rebellion. Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.

This is the situation non-allegorical (i.e., not Pilgrim's Progress) Christian fiction finds itself in: God is the ultimate GAG character, so its only two options are to draw out the fates of its characters a la Left Behind or to find an ugly heroism in rebellion, a la Paradise Lost,or to appeal to fairy tale logic a la Narnia. The first option is stupid, the second two are enormously difficult to make convincing: I think this is why Christians do not write much fiction in which God plays a visible role.

3. Fiction & Theodicies

We find ourselves in a world in which there is apparently a real, true GAG character. The omnipotent, perfectly just and holy creator of the universe. Yet this GAG character does very little, at least in proportion to the amount of misery and suffering in the world. Child soldiers, sexual slavery, diamond wars fought with machetes, drunken fathers creeping down the hall at night.

So why doesn't this GAG character do anything, or at least more? This is where the theodicy comes in: the attempt to reconcile a good God with suffering.

Here is my contention about theodicies: they are all attempts to justify God, our real world GAG character, not doing anything. And they all revolve around the same logic used to explain why Frodo didn't just ride an eagle to Mordor. It boils down to saying that there is a good reason for all of this, we just don't know what it is.

We can accept that answer in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, because the story has the feel of a child's tale about it, and so has leeway to function under a different logic. We can accept it from The Lord of the Rings because "the journey is the point," I guess.

But can we really accept it in real life? Essentially, we're being asked to believe that there are good reasons why the giant eagles won't just fly us to Mt. Mordor like in the linked video above.

Why not just ditch the whole idea of the GAG character? Relegate it to fiction where it belongs.

It's a slow and gradual abandonment. It's happening right now with the number of those declaring themselves non religious, and believers adopting more watered down versions of Christianity. It's a long protracted decision, but essentially the same thing is happening that you propose: relegating god to fiction is the same thing as theology being less important that it ever was. It won't likely gain a resurgence, especially when you look at the quality of today's evangelical approaches.

With advances in knowledge, the problem of theodicy gets bigger. As we learn more about grief in animals, it's not so easy to dismiss them as dumb beasts. As we learn more about what primitive humans contended with, it's not so easy to judge them for trying to gain a sense of control over their environment by worshipping celestial objects and animal deities.

[seanD]

You're assuming Christians don't have an explanation for PoE?

[Soyeong]

I think when looking at a GAG character, you need to look at their motivations and see if there are reasons why they choose not to use their powers to skip to the end. For instance, the end goal of a teacher assigning a bunch of essays is not to have them, but to have their students go through the process of learning how to organize their thoughts and express them clearly and coherently. In other words, are there important things that the characters in LotR experienced because they walked that they wouldn't have experienced if they had flown?

We find ourselves in a world in which there is apparently a real, true GAG character. The omnipotent, perfectly just and holy creator of the universe. Yet this GAG character does very little, at least in proportion to the amount of misery and suffering in the world. Child soldiers, sexual slavery, diamond wars fought with machetes, drunken fathers creeping down the hall at night

Arguments that complain about the amount of suffering fail because there is no amount of suffering that is acceptable to them. If you lined up every type of suffering from the least to the greatest, and created a world that didn't have the very greatest type of suffering, then people would still complain that there was a gratuitous amount of suffering. You could continue to remove types of suffering from the list and people would continue to complain until there is nothing left on the list. What you are arguing for is a very different world where suffering doesn't exist, where in fact no variation in experiences exists, because people would complain about experiencing something that was only slightly good when God has the power for us to always experience the greatest good.

We can accept that answer in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, because the story has the feel of a child's tale about it, and so has leeway to function under a different logic. We can accept it from The Lord of the Rings because "the journey is the point," I guess.

So why can't we accept that God has us go through a life that includes suffering because He has a story to tell and He thinks we will benefit from going through the journey?

[Whag]

You're assuming Christians don't have an explanation for PoE?

Most religions have an answer for PoE. As the problem expands, religions have to build on previous answers in an obvious game of catch up. There was a time when evolution was anathema, but now it's become a teleogical apologetic. I think this is smart for the survivability of Christianity but not altogether convincing.

[Soyeong]

Most religions have an answer for PoE. As the problem expands, religions have to build on previous answers in an obvious game of catch up. There was a time when evolution was anathema, but now it's become a teleogical apologetic. I think this is smart for the survivability of Christianity but not altogether convincing.

Does this mean we should start doubting science because our understanding of it has been forced to change and adapt in light of new information?

[MikeWC]

You're assuming Christians don't have an explanation for PoE?

It's probably worth assuming that anyone who cares about apologetics is already aware of most theodicies. It's not like they are rare on the internet.

[seanD]

It's probably worth assuming that anyone who cares about apologetics is already aware of most theodicies. It's not like they are rare on the internet.

Okay. I thought you were assuming there was no answer.

[shunyadragon]

You're assuming Christians don't have an explanation for PoE?

Not an adequate response.

[Kane]

You're assuming Christians don't have an explanation for PoE?

Oh, they have many. They're simply inadequate.

[Whag]

Does this mean we should start doubting science because our understanding of it has been forced to change and adapt in light of new information?

No, doubting science never works out particularly well for religious leadership and the laity. It's best to refine one's worldview by doubting parts of the religion itself first. After all, doubt is a form of thinking. In science, doubt is encouraged when it's backed by action (i.e., "I doubt your hypothesis such and such, and will endeavor to disprove it by conducting new research.").

[Soyeong]

No, doubting science never works out particularly well for religious leadership and the laity. It's best to refine one's worldview by doubting parts of the religion itself first. After all, doubt is a form of thinking. In science, doubt is encouraged when it's backed by action (i.e., "I doubt your hypothesis such and such, and will endeavor to disprove it by conducting new research.").

My intention was not to suggest that we doubt science, but to show the absurdity of your statement in parallel. Doubt plays a similar role in Christianity as far as doubting someone's interpretation and endeavoring to show that it is wrong by doing research.

[Whag]

My intention was not to suggest that we doubt science, but to show the absurdity of your statement in parallel. Doubt plays a similar role in Christianity as far as doubting someone's interpretation and endeavoring to show that it is wrong by doing research.

I understood your point. My point is that one can doubt an aspect of his religion before science comes along and disconfirms it. The first philosophers questioned the supernatural causes of scary events like earthquakes before they had any hard data that the events were natural. Maybe it's best to suspend faith in certain things when doubts nag rather than holding on too tight and having to play catch up later, as happened with cosmology and biology. Even Christian philosophers like Plantinga and Craig are still digging those trenches, probably because doubt is painted in a negative light in religion. I'm only guessing, but that seems the most plausible explanation.

The difference between doubt in religion and doubt in science is vast. Scriptural tennis isn't the same as hard-nosed research that often results in incontrovertable findings. Christian research about the extent of Mary's role in intercession and redemption, or the exact proportion of works and faith will always be debated with no end in sight.

[Soyeong]

Our faith is not in an interpretation of God's Word, but in God, so there is no particular reason why we should doubt God's trustworthiness when it is a matter if doubting an interpretation. Christians shouldn't doubt God's trustworthiness in a similar way that you shouldn't doubt gravity (in other words, trusting God at His word is similarly as sure as gravity pulls objects to the ground), but other than that, how we treat doubt is the same.

The research I was referring to was understanding the culture and language.