Review of Doors of the Sea by David Bentley Hart

 

    Since I agree with the author of Qohelet and with Aristotle that there is nothing new under the sun, I have no problem repeating the old notion that sometimes a short book can proclaim as much, if not more truth and in a more beautiful than a sizeable tome. This happens to be the case with The Doors of the Sea by my favorite philosophical theologian, David Bentley Hart. This is a short work of only a little over 100 pages divided into 2 chapters with 5 sections each. Be that as it may, this book was definitely revolutionary for me – one of those rare books that actually changes your life and worldview. The way he does this is even more astonishing – the thing I find most compelling about most of Hart’s theological writing is that he really seems to embody the Orthodox teaching of tradition – that it is living and dynamic, not a static regurgitation of what others have said. What Hart discusses here is also nothing new; he is not attempting to respond to the problem of evil with some novel innovation of his own invention. Instead he brings the leader to the light once held by the torches of the wise men of old and he does so in an intriguing way – weaving the disparate ancient views into a cohesive and beautiful tapestry that is both new and yet faithful to his forebears. Not only did this book enlighten my intellect, but it gave great comfort to my heart and surprisingly delivered me to the heights of prayer in some moments, so beautiful was the prose and even more delightful the eternal truth behind the contingent words.

            This book had its beginnings in a brief Wall Street Journal article in response to what Hart considered the many inane and confused musings of both mistaken Christians and village atheists alike. This in turn was extended into an article for the journal First Things and then he expanded even more, and this is the book here being reviewed. The title is in reference to one of the worst natural disasters in history (~250,000 dead), the Boxing Day tsunami that occurred on Boxing Day in 2004. Every time a severe catastrophe on this scale occurs there are always a variety of opinions on display and invariably most are mistaken and confused, if not downright repellant and morally horrifying. Hart gives a catalog of these and notices that in the immediate wake of tragedy the most anyone should do is to maintain silence – words have no force and can even be nigh blasphemous in the light of such monstrous evil. Comfort is more needed than explanation – but nevertheless nothing can quite comfort a rational being more than knowledge so Hart felt the need to engage the conversation and not be content with silence forever.

            In the first chapter Hart begins by defining theodicy as the attempt to reconcile the evil in the world with the all-powerful, all-loving, and all-knowing God proclaimed by Christians. He thinks not just that some particular theodicies are flawed, but that theodicy itself – the mere attempt to reconcile evil with God’s goodness is fundamentally flawed from the get-go. That’s precisely because the God professed by Christians does NOT reconcile Himself to evil—He instead subverts, overthrows, and conquers it. Theodicy inevitably leads to one of two opposite errors. The first is the reduction of God to a voluntarist monster by saying that He directly causes the evil and, in the end,, we will see why it was “meet and right” for them to occur. The second limits God’s power by stating that He sincerely does want to stop evil and never wanted it to occur, but He can’t stop it. They both share the mistaken premise that we need to deny the pointlessness of suffering, that our suffering must somehow be meaningful. To do this we must posit some mysterious divine plan that somehow makes sense in a way we can’t possibly comprehend. This lowest stage of the religious imagination views God as the divine account balancer.

 

The next rung on the latter showcases the view that correctly sees that all the horrifying and pointless evil is morally unintelligible and so shouldn’t happen. This often leads to an atheistic rebellion, which can be purifying for the soul as Dostoevsky showed clearly in The Brothers Karamazov through Ivan and that Paul Evdokimov, as a good student of Dostoevsky, demonstrated in his theological writing, such as Ages of the Spiritual Life. The reason why this can be good is that the atheists and deists who reach this point do so, most often unbeknownst to them, based on a fundamentally Christian intuition – that since God is perfectly good, all-powerful, and infinitely free to create things as he wants he must therefore not depend on evil whatsoever to accomplish his ends. God refuses to be reconciled to evil and so too does this type of atheist or deist and that is admirable in that regard and can lead to a greater faith, if the obstacle is surmounted, than that held by the heretical Christian who believes God to be a cosmic accountant. The problem lies in the fact that this sort of atheist doesn’t see that not only is this evil unintelligible, but that it would be far worse if it were—this is the highest stage in the religious imagination. This is what the NT proclaims – God utterly opposes and destroys death, suffering, and evil – he does NOT attempt to reconcile us TO IT, he came to save us FROM IT. Also, the atheist position is not a logical proof so much as a refusal of God’s salvation since it is impossible from our limited vantage point to know if it will be worth it in the end.

The second chapter begins with an extended meditation on the difference between the modern, disenchanted view of nature as mindless mechanism vs. the more ancient view of the cosmos as alive and charged with intellect – mind is at the center of all things. The reason he brings this up is because this modern view of nature has shaped theodicy. Theodicists tend to look at how nature is currently, which is an endless and pitiless cycle of random life and death and then project that back into God’s eternal counsels. Hart contends that this is nothing but a lack of imagination Sure, in the world the lion doesn’t lay down with the lamb and we may not see what purpose God would have in creating viruses or mosquitoes, but the failure to see that is both a failure of imagination as well as logic while also being against Scripture, to boot. This attempt to extend the logic of the present evil age into eternity invariably ends up proving that paradise isn’t even possible – the 2^nd law of thermodynamics becomes the god of theodicists and natural theologians rather than the God revealed in Jesus Christ.

The fundamental error shared by atheists, theodicists, deists, and natural theologians is that they see one world where they should see two. This current world is but a shadow of the real world – we are strangers and pilgrims on the earth as Hebrews 11:13 claims. Hart says that this is best modelled conceptually as two concentric circles. If we picture that in our minds we see that this shadow world is always situated in the larger, true world and this explains why this world isn’t either pure darkness nor pure light but a mixture of the two. The presence of the pure, undefiled world is always accessible to us, and at many points in time becomes shockingly clear to us. The tradition is unanimous as to how we can see the glory of the Kingdom more clearly in the here and now. As the Lord tells us in the beatitudes, and as Evagrius, St. Maximus the Confessor, and George MacDonald also confirmed the way to see God’s mysteries requires a pure heart, cleansed of all defilement by the limpid and disinfecting light of selfless love.

This two-world model may be disconcerting to some because it is a dualism and logic abhors a dualism, but we can take comfort that it is only a temporary and provisional dualism and one that does NOT extend into eternity. Many of us are so inundated in the Christian story emblazoned in the NT that we lack the ability to see its utter strangeness. Paul’s letters, the gospel of John, and the catholic epistles especially seem to envisage this age as replete with spiritual warfare between us and our hostile governors – the rebellious angels and demons who seek to destroy and pervert us. But luckily God sent His only Son to judge this evil government and its Archons as false, subjugate them beneath his feet, and will eventually be all in all.

Next, Hart relates to us the classical definition of evil as privation boni and all this entails. If evil has no substance then God can’t depend on it whatsoever The reason for this definition of evil is because if it were false, then God would be the author of both evil and good and so he would logically have to be beyond both, which is basically evil. We know, however, that it is logically impossible for God to be evil since He is the Good as such. This means that Calvin was definitely wrong when he stated that God willed the fall (Institutes III.23.8). It also means that those who think that drama of fall and redemption makes the world better than it would have been are also wrong. You don’t have to have a PhD to realize that it would be better if there were no suffering at all. This also means that those theologians who say that God can’t reveal some of his good traits unless evil things happen are also wrong. They think it is beautiful when a man courageously gives his life to save another in battle, but what they forgot that any marine or soldier can tell you is that it would be infinitely more beautiful if their friend were still alive and never had to show such courage.

This view of evil organically leads to the doctrine of divine apatheia or impassibility which entails that God doesn’t change at all, he doesn’t react to us or anything in the world and doesn’t need the world or us whatsoever. He is perfect and as such, is infinitely sufficient in Himself. Some think this is a callous and unfeeling perspective of God, but they are not thinking clearly. This doctrine is quite beautiful as well as being true since it avoids the crude anthropomorphism of viewing God as like one of us and also is the basis for God’s unchanging love for us sinners. He loves us no matter what we do – His love, due to apatheia, is utterly unconditional. He didn’t create us because of some codependent need to have people to keep him from being lonely or due to some despotic need to force other creatures to bend to his will. Our existence is an utterly free gift that he bestows in abundance.

Hart then shows the difference between providence and fate. Fate, determinism, and fatalism all suppose a universal teleology that seeks to find a 1:1 correspondence between every single action that occurs and the divine will. This collapse of the transcendence of God would entail that we are mindless robots in a pantheistic universe and so make the creation of truly free rational creations an impossible fiction. Yet this is precisely what theodicy seeks to do. What we as Christians need to do is back away from theodicy and the deterministic universe it entails and seek to take refuge in divine providence which holds that God will have his will come to pass despite the rebellion of his creatures. As such, we can let go of the frustrating and false need to imagine that every single event needs to be explained in relation to God’s will. Many things that happen are NOT his will and in fact, it is very difficult to discern what is God’s will and what isn’t. The distinction between divine will/primary causality at the transcendent level of God’s eternal counsels and the divine permission given to the derived and contingent secondary causality of his creatures must be maintained to avoid logical and moral shipwreck.

This does naturally lead to the question, so then if God is infinitely free and hates evil and is not dependent on it, then how did it get here? Well for there to be free and rational beings, this requires some amount of indeterminism at the level of secondary causality. Indeterminism introduces randomness and pointlessness into the mix. Another classical answer is that evil is born in the will and that the choice to turn towards destruction and nonbeing is what evil is. At the current moment we inhabit a hellish half-creation that is in the middle of a history that started out in absolute nothingness, is striving towards the plenitude of being in the union of the soul with God, and is in the midway point between the two. We are halfway between being and nonbeing, light and darkness, the world can’t be said to have been fully created until the end when all things are reconciled to God in the apokatastasis pan ton. In the end, God will not tell us that all this horrifying death and suffering had meaning and that our tears were necessary. The NT has always proclaimed something far more radical and wonderful – everything sad will come untrue, God will wipe every tear from every face and will tell us “Behold, I make all things new” (Rev 21:5).

I hope this essay convinces some to pick up this remarkable and short little book. It is a good way to pass the time, especially under the evil besieging the world currently in the pandemic. It may also change the way you think, the greatest feat an author can hope for. I cannot describe in words how highly I recommend this book – I would just urge the reader that they also keep a dictionary nearby.