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Ask the Theologian: God and the Devil

Dear Theologian,

If God is the Creator of all that is, where did the Devil come from? Was the Devil created by God? But that would make God the author of evil! Putting the question another way: Isn’t everything that is created by God “very good” (Gen 1:31)? Then where does evil come from? How is evil even possible?

~Puzzling Over Good and Evil

Dear Puzzling,

Christian tradition considers the Devil to be a “fallen Angel,” that is, a spiritual being that was created by God but refused to subject his will to God’s will. As created, the Angel was “good,” just as all things created by God are good. But this Angel used his freedom to reject God and to choose alienation and misery. He thus became “evil” himself, and a principle of evil that seeks to draw others into sin.

It’s important to note here that authentic Christian faith does not consider the Devil to be an equal of God. It’s not as if there were two equal principles—one good and one evil—endlessly battling each other. This kind of dualism is really alien to the Christian understanding that God is the Creator of all things.

But we’re still left with the puzzle that you have named. If what God creates is good, how can it “go bad?” Where does evil come from? In fact, as you put it, how is evil even possible?

Before tackling this, let’s make a distinction between “physical evil” and “moral evil.” Earthquakes, floods and diseases are examples of physical evil (for the human beings affected by them). Many thinkers have struggled to reconcile such events with the belief that God’s created world is “very good.” From our limited point of view, it often doesn’t seem that way.

I want to limit this discussion to “moral evil”—that is, the malicious choice by a free, rational creature to do what is harmful to self and others. History is replete with examples of this, both great and small. We might think spontaneously of the Nazis’ cold-blooded carrying-out of genocide against the Jews. But there are other examples from more recent years in places such as Cambodia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Rwanda. Moral evil on such a scale staggers and sickens the human heart.

There are also the smaller, less public instances of moral evil that occur constantly on all sides—causing great harm and suffering. We hear about them every day in the news media. And then there is the moral evil in ourselves that, if we are honest, we must discover and repent of.

So, although we believe in God as the totally good Creator of all that is, we have to recognize that the world God creates is actually shot through with moral evil. How can we account for this state of affairs? Why would God create a world where such things are possible?

At this point, we come up against the sheer paradox of “created freedom.” In creating, God really “lets” things exist on their own, apart from God. And some of the beings that God “lets be” have the freedom to choose either good or evil.

But why would God create a world in which some of God’s creatures can and do choose moral evil? The answer has to be sought in some understanding of why freedom is apparently so important to God. What God ultimately intends, we believe, is the free response of God’s creatures to the Love which creates and redeems them. And it is only beings who can choose either good or evil who can freely choose the good.

So, we might say that God takes a great risk in creating—the risk that the creatures will choose evil and “nothingness” rather than the fullness of being that God intends for them.

But this is not the whole story. The Love which “lets” the creatures exist as free beings, capable of choosing evil, does more than create. As Christian faith affirms, this Love also enters personally into the created order to redeem and save the creatures who would otherwise be “lost.”

In Christ’s incarnation, death and resurrection, evil is overcome by good. And those who participate now in his suffering look forward to a future in which they will participate in his glory. In the meantime, they are called to embody his saving love, which alone can counter the moral evil in the world.

To return to your original question, we might say this: God did not create “a Devil.” God created a spiritual being (an “Angel”) whose very existence sprang from the unqualified goodness of God. The Angel who chose evil became “the Devil” by his own free choice.

Following the same line of thought, God does not create “morally evil beings.” God creates beings that are fundamentally good insofar as they spring from God’s utter goodness. But the creatures endowed with freedom can and do sometimes choose moral evil. Even so, they do not become totally evil.

Furthermore, Christian faith recognizes in Christ the permanent, unswerving intention of God to forgive and reconcile all who will renounce evil and choose good once again. No one, in this view, is absolutely “lost” except by stubbornly choosing to remain in that condition. The Christian theologian Origen (third century) speculated that even the Devil would ultimately “turn back” to God and be reconciled with the Love that holds him in being.

Moral evil is an anomaly in the God-created world, to be sure. In principle, it “should not be.” But in actuality, it appears to have been part of the human scene from the very beginnings of human life. Nevertheless, the faithful and merciful Love that is at the heart of things has also been present from the beginning. That Love has become flesh in Christ, and has been victorious over sin and death.

It is for us to bear witness to Him in the way we encounter the moral evil in the world. We are to do our best to live by St. Paul’s words to the believers in Rome: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” (Rom 12:21).

Faithfully,

The Theologian

The Rev. Dr. Wayne L. Fehr wrote a column for a previous version of the diocesan newsletter called Ask a Theologian. He answered questions from ordinary Christians trying to make sense of their faith. Now he's back with a monthly column once again. You can find and purchase his book on Tracing the Contours of Faith: Christian Theology for Questioners here. 

Ask a Theologian: Revelation

Dear Theologian,

My question is about the meaning of the word “revelation.” It occurs in one of our Sunday readings: “The mystery was made known to me by revelation.... In former generations this mystery was not made known to humankind, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.” (Eph 3) Just what does the term “revelation” mean? Is it important for our life of faith?

~Not Yet Enlightened

Dear Not Yet,

The English word “revelation” translates the Greek word apokálypsis, which literally means the “uncovering” or “disclosing” (of something that had been hidden). This noun or its verb form occurs in a number of places in the New Testament. It always has to do with the disclosure or unveiling of the divine or of some aspect of the divine will. 

On the one hand, God is absolute Mystery, utterly beyond human comprehension. On the other hand, God graciously comes near to us in and through our experience of the created world. Christians as well as Jews believe that God takes the initiative in establishing a relationship with human beings. In this view, it is not really a matter of our “search” for God. Rather, in the words of the great Jewish scholar Rabbi Abraham Heschel, it is “God in search of man.”

In the revelatory experience, writes Anglican theologian John Macquarrie, “it is as if the holy ‘breaks in’ and the movement is from beyond man toward man.” [1] What one comes to know through the revelatory experience, therefore, has a gift-character. He goes on to note that almost anything in the world can be an occasion for revelation—natural phenomena, for example, or historical events and personal relationships.

But there is a paradox involved in speaking of revelation. For God, though in some sense “disclosed” through the revelation, still remains utterly “hidden” and beyond human grasp.

In the Hebrew Scriptures, it is said that no one can “see the face of God” without being destroyed (Ex 33:20). The “glory” of God rests upon some created reality, and—as it were—shines through it. (For example, “The glory of the Lord settled on Mount Sinai... like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in the sight of the people of Israel.” Ex 24:16-17) One sees the “glory,” but cannot see God directly.

Consider the story of the “transfiguration” of Jesus (Lk 9:28-36). The glory of God streams out through Jesus, changing his appearance into dazzling light. Then the cloud (symbol of God’s hiddenness) covers them, and they feel a holy fear. What the voice (of God) says to them is significant: “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.” When they look up they see “only Jesus”—that is, only the familiar, very human reality of their teacher and friend. He is the one to whom they are to pay close attention, in order to know the hidden God.

The human recipient of God’s self-disclosure receives the gift through his or her own imagination and culture. This is especially true of the one who receives what we might call an “original” or “originating” revelation (such as Moses, for example). Macquarrie uses the term “primordial revelation” for this kind of revelatory event, since it becomes foundational for all further revelatory experiences in the cultural tradition that stems from it.

The human expression of the primordial revelation, handed down through Scripture and tradition, then becomes for other human beings an occasion for their own revelatory experiences. In their own way, they “repeat” and experience afresh what was once given. This way of looking at the matter helps to understand how Scripture functions in the faith-life of present-day Christian believers.

A revelatory experience is “given” graciously by God. It is the work of the Holy Spirit interacting with human consciousness. On the other hand, the openness or receptivity of the human person is also a factor in what is experienced.

For us Christians, the greatest revelation is Christ himself. Brother and Lord, Jesus abides forever as completely human and completely divine. To recognize him as the Christ is always a revelatory experience, whenever and as often as it occurs. When the disciple Simon confessed Jesus as the Christ, Jesus replied: “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.” (Mt 16:17, emphasis added). And the apostle Paul said of his own discovery of the Lord: “I received [the gospel] through a revelation of Jesus Christ... God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me.” (Gal 1:12,15, emphasis added).

 Faithfully,

The Theologian

[1] John Macquarrie, Principles of Christian Theology, 2nd ed. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1977), p. 7.

Ask a Theologian: Who and What is God?

Dear Theologian,

 Who is God? What is God?

Seeking Wisdom

Dear Seeker,

You don’t waste words, do you? These are questions that can never be answered adequately. But it is helpful to have them posed so simply and directly—almost as a child might ask them.

When confronted so directly and inescapably, the believer might well feel at a loss to answer. How can one put into words what is infinitely greater than the human mind? But we try. Since you have asked a theologian (not a mystic or a poet), you are going to get somewhat philosophical, rational answers. But there are other ways of responding to your questions—in sacred music, inspired songs, works of art, poems, and perhaps most convincingly, in the lives of holy men and women.

All speaking about God ought to be done with great humility, modesty and reverence. But this is not always the case. We Church people use the word “God” so often and so familiarly that we are in some danger of becoming glib and superficial in our “God-talk.” We can lose the sense of awesome Mystery that must always accompany any serious speech about God.

We sense this Mystery at certain moments of heightened awareness. Peter Gomes speaks of “those close encounters of the transcendent kind that suggest relationships beyond the power of our experience to reckon, but which we know in some fundamental way to be true.” [1] Most of us have had moments like that, when we were thrilled, shocked, or awed by an experience that drew us beyond the merely rational—the splendor of a sunset, the grandeur of mountains, the birth of a child, a Beethoven symphony. The list could be prolonged.

But WHAT is God? An old axiom says, “God is always greater” (Deus semper major)—that is, greater than anything we can imagine, conceive, or express. God cannot be put into a category of things, because God is not one thing among many. God is the “ground of being” for all that is. So we are unable to answer in any satisfactory way the question, “What is God?” None of our answers to the what-question can possibly fit God.

Nevertheless, we have many “names” for God. The Bible is full of them (rock, fortress, shade from the heat, living water, blazing fire, shield, mother, father, etc.). These images function as metaphors, trying to say indirectly and poetically what cannot be said literally and directly. No one of these metaphors is adequate to the reality toward which they point. That’s why there are so many of them. They are suggestive, but cannot be taken literally, and we cannot know to what extent each of them really “fits.” It’s as if the human mind is continually groping after more ways of referring to the nameless and unspeakable Mystery that underlies and fills all things.

WHO is God? This question seems to presuppose that God is personal. “Who” is a word that directs us toward a reality that we could properly address with the word “Thou” (“You”). And Christian believers do dare to address God with this personal pronoun. In fact, they even go further, following the teaching and example of Jesus, and dare to say “Father!”

But we are not to imagine God as a limited person in the way that each human being is. This would be the same kind of mistake as taking literally one of the “names” or metaphors for God. “God is always greater.” Still and all, if one asks “Who is God?” one is looking for a reality that is at least not “sub-personal,” though it may be “trans-personal.”

The “who-ness” of God is discovered only by relating to God personally in prayer. When we try to speak to God, it feels right to say “Thou” or “You.” In the attitude of praying, we enter into a personal relationship with “someone,” not “some thing.”

On the other hand, when we try to speak about God in personal terms, we fumble and fall into paradoxical language. We are embarrassed by the need to refer to God, then, as either “Him” or “Her,” even though we don’t really think that gender is relevant in speaking about God. Our little third-person pronouns are rightly felt to be utterly inadequate when we use them to refer to the One whom we know authentically only in an “I-Thou” relationship.

Whether, then, we try to say “Who” God is or “What” God is, we are left finally in reverent silence, to feel the unutterable Mystery. This is a good and blessed point to reach. But we human beings are reluctant to stay very long in that state of unknowing and wonder.

Although I may not have answered your questions in a satisfactory way, I hope that these reflections may help you to continue to live with those questions.

Faithfully,

The Theologian

[1] Peter Gomes, The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart (New York: William Morrow & Company, 1996), p. 214.