When Leibniz coined the phrase “theodicy” for the title of his landmark 1710 work, Essais de Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l’homme et l’origine du mal (Essays on Theodicy, Concerning the Goodness of God, The Freedom of Man, and the Origin of Evil), the meaning of the term seemed pretty much nailed down. “Theodicy”, in its classic, technical sense is fairly straightforward: the philosophical attempt to demonstrate that God is both just and good, despite the simultaneous existence of evils. A theological variation of the problem of evil, Leibniz’s argument gave technical heft to a discourse already well travelled across the continent; almost a half-century earlier, the bard in Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667) had famously invoked the muse:
What in me is dark
Illumin, what is low raise and support;
That to the highth of this great Argument
I may assert Eternal Providence,
And justifie the wayes of God to men. (1.22-26)
Although fundamentally different in their sensibilities, not to mention their modes of employ, both texts offer paradigmatic examples of our technical version of the term, thinking through the co-existence of God and evil, providence and suffering.
But in the process of one of the more mundane tasks of this summer’s research, I have been revisiting the question of terminology. As I catalogue the notable and forgettable attempts at theological meditation on the problem of evil during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, I’ve been struck by the descriptive plasticity of the category, causing me to reconsider the scope of my project and, in fact, my usage of this key term.
In other words, while theodicy often self-consciously takes the form of the meditative treatise in which God is figuratively put to trial (i.e. the treatise on divine attributes and their relation to metaphysical evil), it also appears in decidedly more abstracted manifestations. This first “official” version we might call the “hard” or even “theistic” version of theodicy, since it takes as its starting point a fairly coherent sense of who exactly is in need of justification (i.e., the Christian God). The problem of evil is thus equally wrapped up in imagining divine attributes like omnipotence and omnibenevolence.
But a softer or “deistic” tradition, it seems, fairly quickly rivals these, preferring to speak in a much more attenuated religious idiom about Providence and Fate. How could Providence, Voltaire asks, allow the Lisbon earthquake? This is a Newtonian version of the order of things, not often anti-Christian, but nevertheless more concerned with the mechanisms of the watch, rather than the watchmaker who set it in motion. What is interesting here is that the concern shifts to conceptualizing design, and the theodicies of this sort (if we may still call it that) attempt not precisely a justification of God, but rather a penetration into the mysterious laws of the natural world (here theologized). Evil is thus quite often conceived in terms of inefficient design, and hence crucially, both conceivable and perhaps, manipulable. Most importantly though, theodicy has definitive answers at hand; “why?” has been transmuted into “how?” But ought we to consider any treatise that treats evil in light of providentialism a theodicy? It is not at all clear to me that we should, even though they are not easily discursively separable.
And in fact, this only scratches the terminological surface. Softer versions spin off from this (theodicy as progressive history, theodicy as economics), but that will have to wait. We might only note, however, that it is a small leap from the soft account to a theodicy imagined expansively, as any discourse in which evils are balanced precariously against abstract, unseen goods. But if that is indeed the case, is theodicy still a useful category?
Alex, thank you for pointing out what I hadn’t noticed—the interesting shift or re-shuffle of the issue of theodicy implied in the form of Voltaire’s question about “providence” and the Lisbon quake.
I agree that the problem is more meaningful if we see it as something other than primarily a question of justifying divine attributes such as omnipotence and omnibenevolence. And I think Voltaire’s question (and yours) makes an advance on the problem while shifting the attribute of omniscience to the top of the deck, in the issue of the mysterious consequences of design or law.
If the geological realities of unstable planetary techtonics (Voltaire’s issue) cannot be changed, would it have been a “better world” if life had not evolved until the ages in which the threat of earthquake was nil? Or do we find that such a late and settled physical age on Earth does not arrive until the sun itself is beginning to show signs of cosmic weakness? I know you probably have bigger fish to fry, but I personally like the way the shift you are talking about allows for continued discussion of the need for divine wisdom in the realization of the best of possible worlds.
Alex, you raise a number of very interesting distinctions—and since we’re on the subject of Voltaire, I feel perversely compelled to bring up the case of Joseph de Maistre. I’ve long been fascinated by his providential justification for the “satanic” French Revolution as a purifying punishment that was actually paradoxically necessary in order to prepare the way for the glorious Restoration. In other words, the counter-revolution doesn’t seek to reverse the Revolution, but paradoxically depends upon and transfigures it. Beyond the very obvious ideological differences between Voltaire and de Maistre, it seems important to note that Voltaire is concerned with a natural disaster, while de Maistre is responding to a man-made event. What role do you think human agency plays in the various approaches to theodicy you are examining?
Also, if there is a shift from a concern with the “why?” to the “how?” of theodicy—from justifying to understanding the operations of providence—does this desire to understand rest upon an implicit attempt to justify, or does it signal an increasing desire and belief in the possibility of human mastery over the laws of the universe?
Thank you both for your insightful comments and many apologies on my belated response—I just got back from London and I’m settling accounts. You raise (and at many points, echo) many of the thoughts I’ve been mulling over this summer.
John: I think you put your finger on a central feature of the thinking on theodicy, i.e., the rise of counterfactual argumentation. “Would it—could it—have been better otherwise?” That’s the question here, stated and restated countless times in the literature considering providence. This is, it strikes me, a singular contribution of theodicy and you’re right to point out the way—once one begins to go down this road—the questions multiply and sustain a continued discussion as the hard sciences open up new models for understanding physical mechanisms. Indeed, we might make a slightly more ambitious argument about theodicy’s connection with the theoretical practices of history on this score; once one begins thinking counterfactual, that is, don’t we open the types of questions about contingency and necessity that form the disciplinary stock-in-trade of the properly historical? Either way, we can thank, I think, Leibniz for this, although it was around in similar forms since at least Luis de Molina argued for God’s counterfactual knowledge at the creation against the Dominicans. The difference is that we now get in on the game, imagining alternative worlds and holding the deity accountable.
Sarah: I much enjoyed your comment here and in your recent blog post. I’ll have to incorporate some reading on Maistre (with whom I am only vaguely familiar). The corollary distinction you draw, between moral and natural evil, is also astute and particularly apt here. In fact, I’ve been struck with how many of the theodicies I read while working at the British Library tended to deal strictly with the moral side of the issue; quite often, the concern is with why the wicked seem to prosper. On this score, Voltaire is quite original it seems, but nevertheless in a rough continuity with those concerned with fashioning a theodicy of design. Newton himself worried about this with respect to the Great Comet of 1680, and what it might mean to providence had it slammed into the sun. Perhaps the take away is that for a constituent of what we might call “orthodox” thinkers, the problem of natural evil really wasn’t very problematic until Lisbon, at which point Voltaire stirs up the hornet’s nest.
I won’t go into your last point, which is too suggestive to do justice to here. I will only say that I am tracking with you here, and that this question is what originally starting me thinking about the subject. Needless to say, I’m still reluctant to declare allegiances…