CowPi Journal

Today is the feast day for Saint Thomas the Apostle. I chose Thomas (or maybe he chose me) for my patron saint for my baptism/confirmation a few years ago. I have an affinity for Thomas, partly because it took me nearly forty years of doubt and skepticism to finally accept the gift of faith.

Thomas, as most people know, gets a kind of bad rap for doubting. Perhaps it is warranted. Perhaps not. It is interesting to note that of the four Gospels, it is in the Book of John where Thomas is mentioned the most.

At the Last Supper, it is Thomas who asked the question leading to Jesus’ deep Christological statement:

Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?”
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.”
(John 14:5-6 RSV)

In today’s reading from John 20:24-29 NAB:

Thomas, called Didymus, one of the Twelve,
was not with them when Jesus came.
So the other disciples said to him, “We have seen the Lord.”
But Thomas said to them,
“Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands
and put my finger into the nailmarks
and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
Now a week later his disciples were again inside
and Thomas was with them.

Jesus came, although the doors were locked,
and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.”
Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands,
and bring your hand and put it into my side,
and do not be unbelieving, but believe.”
Thomas answered and said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
Jesus said to him, “Have you come to believe because you have seen me?
Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”

I suppose this is the scene that gives Thomas his nickname. But if we read just a few verses of above this in 19 & 20:

On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord.

It seems to me that Thomas was just asking for the same experience as the other Apostles. He did not want to be left out.

I wonder where Thomas was on that first evening? Why was he not with the others when Jesus first appeared?

As my spiritual director pointed out, Thomas received what he asked for but realized it was more than he needed. The text does not say that he actually touched Jesus. He knew when he saw him. And John credits Thomas with a new declaration of who Jesus was, “My Lord and my God!”

During Mass near the beginning of the Liturgy of the Eucharist when the priest first holds up the bread/Body, and then again when he first holds up the chalice of wine/Blood, there is supposed to be a long tradition (although my catechesis did not include it) of saying to ones self, “My Lord and my God.” The congregation is kneeling at this point, and although Scripture does not say it, I imagine Thomas kneeling too in front of Jesus and the others saying the same declaration of belief. Such a humble statement needs an outward sign as concrete as a physical gesture to represent the inner experience.

Thank you Thomas. Blessed are those who witnessed. Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.

See part 4 or the introduction.

An Emotional Approach

The first section of this multi-part post discusses the mystery of God and the mystery of evil from an intellectual approach, via McCabe (and St. Thomas Aquinas). The conclusion is that evil is not logically inconsistent with an omnipotent and good God.

This is not very satisfying to a certain degree on an intellectual level because it does not explain why there is evil. It is especially unsatisfactory on an emotional level. But that is the problem with any mystery. There is no ultimate solution to it. It cannot be solved or understood to the complete satisfaction of our minds and hearts. But that should not stop us from exploring mystery, dwelling in mystery.

Evil and suffering are cold, hard facts. They exist, and there is no denying them if we are to be honest with ourselves. Jesus himself, the person who Christians call the Son of God, the second person in the Trinity, who is God, did not live and die without suffering. He does not give a reason or a solution to the mystery of evil. He just suffered, and still suffers, with us.

As Thomas Keating writes in The Kingdom of God is Like…,

Jesus states clearly [in Scripture] that those who suffer…belong to the kingdom that he is introducing into the world. God has identified with us just as we are.

…If the gospel needed to be vindicated by a show of power, his trial and execution would have been the moment to provide it. The fact that nobody came to Jesus’ rescue, even though he could have called upon legions of angels to defend him, is a good indication of the nature of his kingdom. It means that the kingdom is present without our being rescued from our difficulties and the consequences of our sinfulness.

God is present in our lives and deaths just as they are.

When someone suffers, no intellectual or philosophical reasons really help. The only thing that may help is the simple act of being there with them. And that is what God did and does for us. God came in the incarnation of Jesus to show that he is with us in our suffering.

In the first chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, the angel announces to Mary that her son will be known as Emmanuel, which means “God with us.” In the last verse of Matthew, the last words of Jesus are, “And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”

See part 3 or the introduction.

Thus the defense of exhibit B is different from exhibit A.

Since there is no good at all, except incidentally, in a morally evil act, in evil done, there is nothing created there, hence an action of God. A morally evil act as such is an absence of something, a failure on my part to live as humanly, as intensely as I might have done. Evidently God does not bring about failure as such, for failure is not there, it is an absence.

When, as in the case of the lamb, the failure is brought about by the fulfillment of something else, …the fulfillment of the lion. But here there is sheer failure on my part, not brought by the fulfillment of some outside agent, but simply allowed by me. So God has no hand in it at all.

It all comes down to choice a person makes. In every choice, a person is faced with fulfilling their good, like the lion, between two desires. The defect, the evil done, the morally evil act, arises when the lesser good is chosen over the higher good. Suppose I have to choose between being just and being rich.

There is no harm in bring rich of course, unless, as it usually does, it conflicts with being just. If I then choose the riches unjustly I have failed in being human, and that is moral evil.

…My desire for riches is a positive thing, and a perfectly good positive thing, created by God—the only thing is that it is a minor thing. I should desire other things more than this. My failure to seek my true happiness and fulfillment, of course, since it is a failure, an absence, a non-being, is not created or sustained or brought about by God.

There are no such things as evil desires, there is only evil disproportion in our desires; human evil, moral evil lies in sacrificing great things for the sake of trival things, it lies in the failure to want happiness enough.

And finally,

…though it is due to God that any good and positive thing is due to me, it is not due to God that any moral failure is due to me. God does not make absences, non-beings, failures. On this count then my client is fully exonerated and his character has no visible stain on it.

Ah! Although God does not bring about failure, could he not bring about instead success? In other words, although God did not cause me to fail of choosing good, could he easily have me choose good without interfering with my freedom?

There is no question of God having to permit me to sin in order to leave me with my freedom. That kind of argument belongs to a theory that freedom makes me independent of God. In fact God could have made a world in which nobody ever sinned at all and everyone was perfectly free. In such a world, if it were material and historical, there would certainly have to be suffering as the obverse of the good of material things, but there would be no need whatever for sin. Sin has no useful function in the world except by accident.

Then is God guilty by neglect?

You can only be guilty by neglect if you have some kind of obligation to do something and you do not do it. It is the helmsman who is accused of neglect, and not the cabin-boy, because it is the helmsman’s job to steer the ship. Now by no stretch of imagination is it God’s job to prevent me from sinning. In his mercy and kindness he frequently does so, and frequently he gives me the grace to repent of the sins I have committed, but this is not his job, his métier. There can be no sense in the idea that God has any job or is under any obligation; if there were, there would be something greater than God which constrained him. God is no more under an obligation to prevent me from sinning than he was under an obligation to create the world in the first place. He cannot therefore be said to be guilty by neglect.

This, I believe, demonstrates that the mystery of evil is not logically inconsistent with an omnipotent and good God.

On the premise, which I think you will accept, that the natural material world is a good thing to have (including, as it does, ourselves), we cannot blame God for the necessary concomitant of some suffering [the lion/lamb]. I think I have also shown that although there is no such case for the natural necessity of moral evil, the most we can say is not that God causes moral evil but that he does not prevent it—that he permits it; and I think I have shown that in not preventing it, God is not failing in any duty and thus cannot be charged with neglect.

McCabe concludes,

Suffering (of the lamb) is not, of course, a perspicuous sign of God’s goodness, but the fulfillment (of the lion) which is its concomitant is a sign of God’s goodness; in sin, however, there is no manifestation of God’s goodness at all. But it is one thing to say that sin is not a manifestation of God’s goodness and quite another to say that sin is a manifestation that God is not good. We do not know why the good God has made a world which does not at all times manifest his goodness, but the notion is not contradictory.

McCabes goes on to say,

Somehow the infinite goodness of God is compatible with his allowing sin. We do not know how, but it is good to recognise this for it reminds us that we know nothing of God and his purposes except that he loves us and wishes us to share his life of love.

Continued in part 5 for an emotional approach.

See part 2 or the introduction.

Exhibit B — Evil Done

First, as stated above, evil suffered requires two things and is “concomitant of certain kinds of good”, that is, a defect in one thing arises when another thing achieves its own good. Evil done, on the other hand, involves one thing and is “not an inevitable concomitant of good in the world.”

The key to understanding what follows is what is stated above. When we call a person bad, it is because of a defect in the person, an absences of something, “he or she doesn’t measure up to what we think we can expect of human beings.” And this defect is caused by the person themselves, not by an outside agent, in the choices he or she makes. Evil done not only usually causes others to suffer, but the perpetrator suffers too in causing a defect within him or her self. Evil done is “evil to the perpetrator himself.”

In the case of the lion eating the lamb, what makes this bad for the lamb is that its lambness, so to say, is diminished. It becomes less like what we expect of a lamb; but what brings this about is the lion. But in the case, of say, Fred being unjust, what makes this bad for Fred is that his humanity is diminished, he becomes less like what we expect of a man, but what brings this about is Fred himself. In the lion/lamb encounter at least the perpetrator, the lion, is benefiting, but in Fred’s act of injustice the perpetrator, Fred, is precisely the one who suffers.

The victims of Fred’s injustice suffer, but Fred himself also suffers because he has diminished his own humanity. Fred has essentially sold part of himself for something else. Evil done has “no connection with good at, except accidentally. That is to say God may bring good even out of [Fred’s] evil acts but in themselves they have no good aspect.”

A point of clarification:

…there may well be those who think that what makes an action morally wrong is the harm it does to others, and they may be a little surprised that I say that what makes an action morally wrong is the harm it does to the perpetrator. An action may be morally wrong because it does harm to others, but what we mean by saying that it is morally wrong is that it damages the perpetrator.

An example:

I can after all do great harm to others without doing morally wrong at all. I may bring with me to a foreign country some deadly infectious disease that I don’t know about, so that after a few weeks people are dying in agony because of my arrival. If so, I have certainly harmed them by my arrival but I have not done anything morally wrong. If however I knew about it and went all the same, then you could say that I was acting unjustly, that I was behaving in an irresponsible way in which no human being should behave, that I was defective in my humanity, that I was committing a moral evil. The moral evil would consist in the injustice and the way that I diminished myself in acting like that.

When I am the cause of frightful things happening to others, the evil suffered is in them and is inflicted by me, but if in doing this I am acting unjustly (as would ordinarily be the case if I did it deliberately) the evil done is in me and consists in the diminishment of my humanity that injustice means. I do not mean by this that acting unjustly has a bad effect on me (making me a drearier person or whatever), I mean that acting unjustly is a bad effect on me, it is a diminishment of me, just as not being able to rinse the clothes is a diminishment of the washing machine. And the point is that this diminishment of me is brought about by me. …evil done is evil to the perpetrator himself. It is a dead loss with no good aspect of it.

Of course morally evil actions may have good effects, my injustice may benefit my family, my adultery may give birth to a child, but what we mean when we say they are morally bad, if we think they are bad, is the defect that they are in me.

There is no good whatsoever in evil done.

…God may bring good even out of my evil actions, and good may even be the ordinary consequence of my evil action, but that is not the point. The action itself has no good in it, and we cannot exonerate God simply on the grounds that it is for good ends that he uses evil means.

Continued in part 4 for the continuation of the discussion of exhibit B.