Facing evil: Evil's many faces: Five paradigms for understanding evil

Interpretation- Journal of Bible and Theology

Volumn 57, Issue 4, 2003, Pages 398-413

  Nelson, Susan L ^a  

^a Pittsburgh Theological Seminary ^*

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33645528518     PISSN: 00209643     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/002096430005700405     Document Type: Article

References (46)

1. See D. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991) 80-98, for a discussion of what it means to speak of creation
2. The term "radical suffering" is borrowed from Wendy Farley, Tragic Vision and Divine Compassion (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1990). Farley defines radical suffering as suffering that destroys the human spirit and cannot be justified. Radical suffering cries out not for theodicy but for vindication
3. See Peter Berger's argument that the primary task of religion is to recast the experience of evil that threatens any meaning into a mere anomaly - an exception that as such does not undermine the overall meaning (The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion [Garden City: Anchor, 1969])
4. See Z. Braiterman (God) After Auschwitz: Tradition and Change in Post-Holocaust Jewish Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), who develops the category of anthropodicy and insists that theodicy cannot be addressed at the expense of human sufferers
5. See Sister Helen Prejean, Dead Man Walking (New York: Vintage, 1994)
6. See J. Harr, A Civil Action (New York: Vintage, 1995)
7. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, tr. F. L. Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960) III.ix.1
8. See C. Plantinga, Not the Way It's Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995) for a fuller development of this view of sin and suffering
9. This distinction is borrowed from Anna Case-Winters, God's Power: Traditional Understandings and Contemporary Challenges (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1990)
10. See R. Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, vol. 1 Human Nature (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1964) for a fuller development of this argument
11. See Case-Winter's argument in (God's Power, 39-93) that Calvin's model of power as domination and control erodes his insight that God exercised providential care for creation. She argues that a different model of power (i.e., the power to influence and to be influenced) would better honor this insight (201-32)
12. See M. L. Bringle, Despair: Sickness or Sin? (Nashville: Abindgon, 1990) for an argument that despair is both sickness and sin
13. See R. N. Brock, Journeys by Heart (New York: Crossroads, 1988) for a discussion of sin as a symptom of human brokenheartedness
14. and S. Nelson, Healing the Broken Heart: Sin, Alienation, and the Gift of Grace (St. Louise: Chalice, 1997) for a fuller discussion of the interweaving of sin and brokenheartedness
15. For further discussion of this point, see E. Pagels, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (New York: Random House, 1988)
16. For an argument that in the shadow of the holocaust one must stand in such a place, refusing to justify its horror, see L. Langer, Versions of Survival: The Holocaust and the Human Spirit (Albany: SUNY, 1982)
17. The voice, of course, is Job's. See S. Balentine's article, "For No Reason," in this journal issue (pp. 349-69)
18. See F. Lindstrom, Suffering and Sin: Interpretations of Illness in the Individual Complaint Psalms (Stockholm: Almquist and Wiksell International, 1944)
19. See also J. D. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988)
20. See Walter Brueggemann, "The Shrill Voice of the Wounded Party," in The Other Side of Sin: Woundedness from the Perspective of the Sinned-Against, ed. A. S. Park and S. L. Nelson (Albany: SUNY, 2001) 29
21. See Farley, Tragic Vision
22. and M. P. Engel, "Evil, Sin, and Violation of the Vulnerable," in Lift Every Voice: Constructing Christian Theologies from the Underside, ed. S. B. Thistlethwaite and M. P. Engel (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1990) 152-64
23. J. Cone, God of the Oppressed (Minneapolis: Seabury, 1975)
24. A. S. Park, "The Bible and Han," in The Other Side of Sin: Woundedness from the Perspective of the Sinned-Against, eds., A. S. Park and S. L. Nelson (Albany: SUNY, 2001) 47-48
25. For an elegant analysis of the human condition as described here, see E. Farley, Good and Evil: Interpreting a Human Condition (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990)
26. See Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man
27. and Farley, Good and Evil, for arguments that this ambiguous character of creation and the anxiety and vulnerabily it entails are a precondition for sin - the crucible in which sin and evil are formed
28. D. Gowan, From Eden to Babel: A Commentary on the Book of Genesis 1-11 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988) 21
29. Quoted from J. Hick, Evil and the God of Love (New York Harper & Row, 1966) 135
30. See K. Sands, Escape from Paradise: Evil and Tragedy in Feminist Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994). According to Sands, the realization that we cannot, by nature of our existence, be innocent frees the world from the damage we do in our attempt to appear innocent
31. Marian Kolodziej, as quoted in the brochure describing his exhibition of Auschwitz, "Plates of Memory." The website of The Father Kolbe Center in Harmeze, Poland, where Mr. Kolodziej's work is on exhibit is http://franciszkanie.pl/harmeze
32. Details from the life of Maximillian Kolbe can be found in A Man for Others written by Patricia Treece (San Francisco: Harbor & Row Publishers, 1982). A fictional account of Kolbe's story can be found in Orbit of Darkness (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1991) which tells the Kolbe story as it might possibly have impacted both the prisoners and the guards
33. See D. Toole, Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo: Theological Reflections on Nihilism, Tragedy, and Apocalypse (Boulder: Westview, 1998) 210
34. J. H. Yoder, "Armaments and Eschatology," in Studies in Christian Ethics I/1 (Edinburgh: T and T Clark, 1988) 58
35. quoted in Toole, Waiting for Godot, 216
36. For a narration of one such incident of nonviolent resistance, see Martin Luther King, Jr., Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story (New York: Harper & Row, 1958)
37. William Shakespeare, "Romeo And Juliet."
38. C. S. W. Crysdale, Embracing Travail: Retrieving the Cross Today (New York: Continuum, 1999)
39. For further discussion of Isaiah 53
40. see P. S. Fiddes, Past Event and Present Salvation: The Christian Idea of Atonement (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1989) 79-81
41. See W. Farley, Tragic Vision, 44-47, for a longer discussion of the structure of deception and callousness
42. See E. Farley, Good and Evil, chapter one, for a discussion of Emanual Levinas's description of "the face" and the obligation one has in seeing the face of another to respond
43. Park, "The Bible and Han," 47-48
44. See S. M. Heim, "Visible Victim: Christ's Death to End Sacrifice," ChrCen (March 14, 2001) 19-23 for a discussion of how Christ's death put an end to cycles of violence
45. D. Ottati, Jesus Christ and Christian Vision (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996) 88
46. P. Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda (New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1998) 353