Acquainted with Grief: the Atonement and Early Feminist Conceptions of Theodicy

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PhilosophiaPhilosophical Quarterly of Israel ISSN 0048-3893 PhilosophiaDOI 10.1007/s11406-014-9568-0

Acquainted with Grief: the Atonement andEarly Feminist Conceptions of Theodicy

Jill Graper Hernandez

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Acquainted with Grief: the Atonement and EarlyFeminist Conceptions of Theodicy

Jill Graper Hernandez

Received: 14 May 2014 /Revised: 18 September 2014 /Accepted: 13 October 2014# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Abstract This paper explores the relationship between the problem of evil and akenotic view of the Atonement evidenced not just by feminist theologians, butby analytic philosophers of religion. (“Kenosis”, from the Greek κένωσις,“emptiness,” generally refers to the emptying of the self, and more specificallyrefers to the passion of Christ, during which Christ suffered on behalf ofhumanity.) I will argue that, although kenosis provides an interesting story aboutthe ability of Christ to partake in human suffering, it faces debilitating problemsfor understanding divine concurrence with evil in the world. Most significantly, Iwill argue that the potential tensions between divine justice (in holding wrong-doers responsible) and divine love (for those who suffer) can be loosened bylooking at ‘redemptive accounts’ of theodicy in the scholarship of womenwriting in the early modern period in philosophy, particularly Mary Hays(1759–1843), and Catharine Macaulay (1731–1791).1 Their work collectivelyconfirms the problem of concrete evil (that is, not just that evil must be logicallypossible in order for God to create the best possible world, but that atrociousharms are pernicious to a perfectly existing necessary being) and yet offers aunique theodicy grounded in the saving power of the Atonement and restorativepower of Christian service. Their arguments are all the more compelling forhaving been written in response to egregious civil rights abuses and rampantdomestic violence of their day. If the Atonement is the divinely-ordained methodfor gaining insight into the redemptive power of divine grace, then rather thanspeculating about the metaphysical nature of the divine, this paper will questionhow we can understand divine perfection in light of evil in the world, especiallyif the Atonement of Christ involves kenosis.

PhilosophiaDOI 10.1007/s11406-014-9568-0

J. G. Hernandez (*)Department of Philosophy, University of Texas at San Antonio, One UTSA Circle, MH 4.05.30,San Antonio, TX 78249, USAe-mail: [email protected]

1 Both women were British essayists and political commentators. Their work is representative of the period inmany ways, but there are a number of others that have been excluded here, including Margaret Cavendish,Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Astell, Anne Conway, Lady Mary Shepherd, Damaris Masham, Charlotte TurnerSmith, Maria Edgeworth, Margaret Killam, Sarah Chevers, Lady Eleanor Davies, et al.

Author's personal copy

Keywords Problem of evil . Theodicy . Kenosis . Atrocity paradigm . Atrocious harms .

Evil . God . Atonement . Justice . Civil rights . Earlymodern philosophy. Leibniz .

CatharineMacaulay.MaryHays . Claudia Card .MarilynMcCordAdams

The Apostle Paul, in his book to the church in Philippi, describes Christ’s humility insuch a way that founds the controversy of kenosis. Kenosis is the Philippians 2:5–11picture of the Atonement in which Christ emptied himself—“made himself nothing”—either as substitution for human sins or on behalf of humans who are distanced fromGod because of their sin. Philippians 2:5 leaves hazy2 Paul’s intention to be of the samemind as Christ, who emptied himself and took on the form of a servant (verse 7). DoesPaul offer us a stern injunction or a consoling hope? Does he direct us to pursuesuffering and shame so that we can be redeemed or does he recognize that life can beendured despite suffering and shame? Bruce Fisk (2006, 63) has pointed out that acentral element in understanding kenosis is the semantic force of Christ’s initiative inhis descent, whether we take hyparchon (existing, being, 6a) concessively (“althoughexisting in the form of God”); causally (“[precisely] because he existed in the form ofGod”); or circumstantially (“who, in the circumstance of being God”), but for anyreading in which a divine Christ relates to humanity through an emptying of himself orhis nature, the result is the same: Christ suffers for us. Some contemporary feministshave been skeptical that the Atonement (that is, the reconciliation of a sinful humanityto a perfect God through the suffering of Christ) could represent a shared sufferingbetween Christ and humans who suffer, mainly because the redemptive significance ofChrist’s suffering has long been used to justify civil rights abuses against the oppressed.(This has led some to reject altogether the redemptive quality of the Atonement in favorof the redemption that came through the work of Christ during his lifetime.)3 Othershave instead argued that Christ’s suffering allows God to be present to humanity in away that would be impossible without Christ’s acquaintance with grief, with the resultthat, though suffering need not be necessary, the Atonement can create a starting pointfor the redemption of suffering that begins with Christ and is furthered by humanreparation for evil.4 Some have argued that the Atonement itself should serve as aresponse to the problem of evil: since God has emptied himself, participated insuffering as a man, and underwent the most heinous of horrors in order to redeemsin, God has both given us what we did not deserve (i.e., redemption and grace) andleveled the scales against moral evil (so, enacted justice). The interesting issue thatcomes out of the relationship between kenosis and the problem of evil is not whetherGod could limit himself, but that he has in such a way that allows for—and more,

2 F.F. Bruce (Philippians, (Ada, MI: Baker Books), 1989, section 9) writes that part of the difficulty inPhilippians 2:5 is that there is a missing verb, “The interpretative problem in this verse lies partly in thesupplying of a verb for the adjective clause ho kai en Christō Iēsou and partly in the understanding of thephrase en Christō Iēsou. These two are interrelated, for if… we supply the verb ephroneito (“was minded”),then en Christō Iēsou will most naturally mean “in the person of Christ Jesus”; if on the other hand…wesupply prepei (“is fitting”), then en Christōlēsou will mean “in your common life in Christ Jesus.”3 See, for example, J.C. Brown and Rebecca Parker, “For God So Loved the World?”, in Brown and Bohn(eds) Christianity, Patriarchy, and Abuse: A Feminist Critique, (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press), 1989, 1–30.4 See, for example, Anna Mercedes, Power For: Feminism and Christ’s Self-Giving (London: T&T Clark),2011, and A. Gudmundsdottir, Meeting God on the Cross: Christ, the Cross, and the Feminist Critique(Oxford: Oxford University Press), 2011.

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encourages the suffering of the faithful (the sins of whom his kenosis was meant toatone). But the dichotomies between our need for grace and justice create a paradox forthose who look to the Atonement to redress the problem of evil: if Christ is Judge andacts with absolute power to bring to justice, perhaps he concurs with and is responsiblefor evil in the world; and if Christ is Victim, and with ordained power stands in unisonwith humanity, he stands with those who equally are borne into sin and held account-able for it.

The potential paradox is stronger for those, like contemporary theist feminists, whobelieve that Christ as God suffered in order to participate in human suffering.Proponents of a kenotic view5 of the Atonement can disagree on the precise meaningof the “emptying” of Christ’s self, on “a sliding-scale from ‘risk’ to ‘self-limitation’ to‘sacrifice’ to ‘self-giving’ to ‘self-emptying’—and even to ‘annihilation’” (Coakley2001, 203). But, nearly all would agree that the cross allowed Christ to be “acquaintedwith grief” (Isaiah 53:3) and so relate to humanity “not just to sin, but to all suffering,all pain, all injustice, all decay and death—indeed to all that is wrong with the creation,human nature and human society as we know it” (Young 1993, 43). Kenosis takes theAtonement to be not just Christ’s substitution for us, but also as Christ taking on theultimate human pain and thereby shouldering the ultimate responsibility for the suffer-ings of those who are created. Not only did Christ suffer, but his participation insuffering provides decisive evidence of God’s love, which should satisfy the problem ofevil (Evans 2006). God could not be indifferent to the suffering in the world if hehimself is a victim of it.

The Problem of Evil and Kenotic Views of the Atonement

On first glance, any stance on the Atonement might have to provide a response to theproblem of evil, since if a divine God suffered at all as payment for sin, the result notonly is that the divine nature is capable of undergoing suffering but also that Godsuffers for evil that (on its face) seems preventable or avoidable by an omnipotent,omniscient, omnibenevolent being. There are various kenotic responses. (It should benoted that this paper will not exhaustively treat kenotic theories—that has been done6—but will integrate kenosis as an approach to the problem of evil.) One major view isthat, since the divine nature is truly impassible, Christ’s suffering required an emptyingof divine nature, so that only the human nature of Christ suffered during the passion andcrucifixion (Coakley, in Mercedes 2011, 107). The strength of this position is that itsalvages the immutability of Christ’s divinity, and aligns itself with the traditionalconception of divine nature in which “God suffers” connotes only that the humannature which Christ as Word assumed suffered (Sirvent and Holtzen 2012, 78). Walker(1988, 183) notes that the identification of the Father and the Son with a sinful

5 Philip McCosker wryly points out that “kenosis” is a “weasel word” whose “popularity is inverselyproportional to the clarity of its definition”, (“On Emptying Kenosis,” Reviews in Religion and Theology,14:3, 2007, 380). Here, I take “kenosis” to refer to the general doctrine that Christ identifies himself with thehuman situation by emptying himself through the atoning act, rather than an absolute kenosis in which Christabandoned his divine nature (see Marilyn McCord Adams, Christ and Horrors, New York: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2006, 88–90).6 Evans (2006), Crisp (2006), Polkinghorne (2001), and Adams (2006) for starters.

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humanity through the cross preserves “a lodestar which, even in earth’s darkest night,assures us that all things are founded upon a justice which will not only judge ourwickedness but also vindicate our sufferings.” A weakness of this position is that itwould mean that Christ temporarily must have set aside his divine nature to suffer anddie as human, in which case, Christ could not properly be called ‘divine’ during thePassion and crucifixion. And if the suffering, emptied Christ was only human then itcould be argued that his death might not be sufficient enough to save: since at themoment of his death he was merely human, the best that could be said is that Jesus wassimply the only good man among the three crucified that day.7 By giving Christ the roleof victim in the Atonement, we run the risk of “sacralizing the victim role in such a waythat it is presented as a sublime vocation that requires the victim to forego any claimsthat she or he has to justice” (1988, 183). Yet, a slightly different kenotic perspectivemaintains that the Messiah’s death was a complete pouring out of everything goodwithin him—and, since there was nothing in him that was not good—everything wasremoved in his emptying. Crisp (2006, 138) presents this version of kenosis as a “phasein the life of the Word” in which Christ retained essential divine properties (likeomnipotence and omniscience) prior to incarnation, but during the incarnation, had adifferent set of properties, “some of which overlap with the first set (e.g., ‘being aperson’, ‘being Christ’) but some of which do not (e.g., ‘being limited in power andknowledge’).” The Atonement represents, then, the ultimate horror, the most completeatrocity possible: the eruption of divine nature from the divine. The cross situatedChrist at the furthest possible distance from God the Father, the space necessary toaccommodate all possibilities of sin.8 A positive result from this is that Christ’s divinityis preserved, and the true evil perpetuated at the Cross is obviated.

More importantly, the emptying of Christ painted by Crisp, et al., also provides apicture of the Atonement that theistic feminists should be amenable to—his emptyingcreates a direct relationship between Christ (who was without blame, and yet suffered)and women (historically, those who have suffered disproportionately). Rather thanrepresenting Christ as King and Ultimate Conqueror, kenosis can offer Christians ahealthy distortion of power, so that through the Atonement we relate to a Divine whodoes not choose to be with us as an overbearing transcendence. Our communitiesinstead receive the caritas of God by being empowered (rather than overpowered) inmoments of everyday gritty life.9 When the oppressed, especially, ‘take on the mind ofChrist’—a Christ who can identify with their plight—they can recognize that the self isnot solipsistic in its autonomy, and the new self is defined by a capacity for conscious-ness, cognitive continuity, and self-possession (Anderson 2012, 2).

Proponents of this argument must be careful to avoid two pernicious difficul-ties: that of subordinating women and the meek by pointing to the example ofthe kenotic Christ, and the problem of the kenotic Christ’s participation in an evilthat he might have been able to prevent. The first is more easily dealt with. First,it needs to be acknowledged that the Church has, passively or actively,

7 This presents many other rich issues, especially for the feminist. If Christ’s suffering was merely an instanceof another human suffering, then Christ identification with humanity comes qua a man, not as God, and so hisdeath would allow Christ (as a good man) to identify with men who suffer, but not (in a prima facie manner)with women.8 See, for example, Balthasar, Theo-drama IV 1994, 336.9 Mercedes (2011), 62, is especially helpful here.

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perpetuated the suffering of women (and other minorities). Christianity has beena primary—in many women’s lives the primary—force in shaping the acceptanceof abuse. The central image of Christ on the cross as the savior of the worldcommunicates the message that suffering is redemptive. If the person of theincarnate God gave his life for the benefit of others, then, to be of value, womenshould likewise sacrifice themselves. Any sense that women have a right to carefor their own needs (especially when those needs compete with those of theirfamilies) is in conflict with being a faithful follower of Jesus (Browne andParker 1989, 1). Once acknowledged, we can (as expressed in contemporarykenotic theories) empower the oppressed with the relational model of kenosis, inpart by reminding believers of the purpose of kenosis. The end point of Christ’semptying (and our appropriation of the mind of Christ) is power—power oversin, temptation, loss, suffering, evil, and death—and kenosis is a model tounderstand Jesus’ power relationally. Christ stood in solidarity with sufferingpeople; he did not lord himself over them. He continues to empower through hispresence. Jesus’ efficacy in ministering to suffering people offers one illustrationof his resistance to the imperial culture in which the oppressed are immersed.The transformative power of the kenotic Christ is that Jesus lived committed tothe benefit of others, passionate for God and God’s people (think here ofBonhoeffer’s Christ as the ‘person for others’; Mercedes 2011, 8).

For theists, then, kenosis offers the advantage that the Atonement allowedChrist to serve as substitute as well as to relate-by-participation in suffering.What other evidence of God’s love for us is required but that God took part inour suffering, and in so doing, took responsibility for all suffering? Of course, itisn’t a lack of divine love that often predominately features in the atheist worryabout the problem of evil, but instead the logical consistency between Christparticipating in a suffering that he ought to have had knowledge, ability, andlove to prevent. Rosemary Ruether puts the problem this way: “yet surely evilexists, and is the central theological problem. How can it be reconciled with thisrevelation of unmixed divine goodness in which all creation participates as itstrue ‘ground of being’?” (Ruether 1998, 107). If the perfection of God resides inthe fullness of Christ, how are we to understand the ultimate paradox—therequirement of God to empty himself and surrender to what seems to be apreventable evil (the crucifixion)? Adams (2006, 274) sums up the theist re-sponse: “God sacrifices humankind by setting us up for horrors. God defeatshorrors by sacrificing God’s own self. But sacrifice requires material stuff, anddivinity is immaterial. To make this offering, God must become Incarnate, theWord (or some other Divine person) must be made flesh”. Walker (1988, 182)indicates how the suffering of an Incarnate God poses a problem specifically forkenotic views: “Kenoticism that identifies the trinitarian life of God totally withthe victim is not without its problems, however. Whilst it is preferable to thosetheories of the Atonement that portray God in his essence as the object of hisown salvific work, thus opening an intolerable contradiction within theTrinitarian life of God, it leaves humanity without a court of appeal beyondsuffering. We have an advocate, but no judge to whom his advocacy of our causemay be addressed.” So, kenotic theories should address divine justice, as well asdivine love.

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Early Modern Women, Kenosis, and Evil

Catharine Macaulay10 articulated nicely what we could see as a prediction of the Janus-headed difficulty facing kenotic perspectives of the Atonement—that they must explainnot only the curious problem of emptying and immutability but also the problem of eviland justice for God as a victim of suffering. Macaulay writes,

“How came the beneficent giver of so many rich and valuable gifts, to suffermental and bodily disease; how came he to suffer guilt, remorse, and all thenumerous train of evils which accompany sin and death? Thus to deform hisworks and to mingle themselves in such a manner with all the benefits he hasbestowed on his creatures, as to render it a doubtful question among some,whether the terrestrial globe was created with a benign intention, or whether itwas designed as a prison for the confinement and punishment of creatures, who,in a pre-existent state, have been guilty of the enormous crimes of revolt andrebellion, is a question which continually occurs, but which continually deludesthe anxious curiousity of the inquisitive enquirer.” (1783, 23)

The first problem for the theist is to provide a reason for how an omnipotent Godcould experience pain, the second is to justify the coexistence in the world of thepresence of evil and God, and the third is to justify our own complicity with evil(especially if we believe). The purpose of a kenotic Christ (as will be further shown) isto align our plight with God’s, and then to restore our physical and spiritual condition.But, these purposes are undermined when the Church perpetuates further abuses byinvoking Christ’s suffering self unjustly.11

Macaulay warns that all-things-considered accounts of evil are inconsistent with thedivine purpose of the Atonement:

“However, the teachers of Christianity [are] condemned for admitting so gross asolecism in religious sentiment, as to preach Christ crucified for the universalgood of the human race; because it is not congruous to any just idea of divineperfection, to permit the sufferings of an innocent being for the advantage oftransgressors; although according to the fundamental principle of this condemneddoctrine, the highest reward that omnipotent power can bestow is annexed to thisact of obedience and benevolence in the person of the Messiah.” (1783, 85–6)

Traditional theology’s message of eschatological justice 12—and temporary (i.e.,daily) suffering of the oppressed at the hands of those who benefit—simply cannot

10 The work of Macaulay and Hays, like most female scholarship in the early modern period, is just nowgaining popularity qua philosophy rather than merely as literature, political science, or history.11 A fact that has led many to reject kenosis, just (as it was earlier observed, see note 3) as abuses within theChurch have led some to reject the Atonement. See, for example, Daphne Hampson, “But, the theme of self-emptying and self-abnegation is far from helpful as a paradigm. Kenosis is a counter-theme within malethought. It does not build what might be said to be specifically feminist values into our understanding of God,”Theology and Feminism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 155.12 Eschatological justice connotes an all-things-considered, at the end of life justice, in which believers can becomforted about the ills of human existence, by promises of final vindication and reward—results in an evenbetter good into eternity. (See David Aune 2010, 573).

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be reconciled with the God of Christian Scripture. If God is perfect and loving, God’screated order would not mandate the suffering of the most needy and innocent. Suchgratuitous evil is inconsistent with the goodness and power of the divine. Mary Haysconcurs, “Such a system, however, we may be permitted to say, is not founded onnatural justice, and of course can never be supported by reason or by Christianity.Unstable therefore in its very nature, it is always tottering to its base and perhaps wewould not risk much by predicting its complete and final overthrow” (1798, 156). Theobstacle facing theists may not be philosophical arguments about evil and God, butrather our commitment to an idea that individuals suffer only for an omnipotent God toinstantiate an all-things-considered good.

Whereas a contemporary version of the kenotic Christ resides in the precariousposition between Victim and Redeemer over evil, the scholarship of these early modernwomen relocates the kenotic Christ between the suffering self (relationally tied to thesuffering Christ) and the advocate for human rights (who is drawn to the model ofChrist as advocate, intercessor). They encourage women to both realize and forget theirselves, to be the body of Christ (a body that is given away), and to empty their right tothe self as well as remember their own dignity. In a (related) essay on the point ofsuffering, 17th century Quakers Sarah Chevers and Katherine Evans (1662), argue thatpersonal emptying helps any person (regardless of class, social status or gender) identifywith the plight of Christ. Whether “woman, servant, or child”, the emptied self is one inwhich the soul “sinks down and rests in the eternal”, void of “all vain surface appearances”and the “divineword lays hold of the self and impels it to speak”. Emptying is thus directlytied to community and the denunciations of oppressive society—the dissolution of the selffor God’s purposes creates a power that is directed back into social relations:

“Themuchmore are we broken down into self denial, sealed down forever into thetrue poverty, and upright integrity of heart and soul, mind and conscience, whollyransomed by the living word of life, to serve the living God…we cannot hold ourpeace: the God of glory doth open our mouth and we speak to his praise, and utterhis voice and sound forth his word of life, and causeth the earth to tremble…myheart, soul and spirit that is wholly joined to the Lord, stream forth to you” (ibid).

Just as Christ emptied himself to meet our ultimate spiritual needs, our emptying canserve the purpose of meeting the needs of those who feel abandoned in their affliction.“This divine kenosis lays the foundation for our own. Our renunciation is to be a mirrorof this divine self-emptying: by remaining hungry, by looking instead of eating, wereflect back to God and to a broken humanity the infinite kenosis that God hasdisplayed for all” (Holmes and Farley 2011, 169). Such a stance directly repudiatesany contention (such as that held by Althaus-Reid 2006, 37–8), in which power is neverreally shared under kenosis. Christ did not merely play at suffering, and those who areoppressed do not merely spin hyperbolic tales of suffering. Power and strength isredeemed for the weak because of Christ’s suffering.

But, does that mean that those who suffer (especially at the hands of other people)ought to seek out a life of suffering? Doesn’t the belief that Christ redeems the grievinglives of the abused and weak actually perpetuate abuse and pain? Does the Atonementobligate those who are already subordinate to take the brunt of further evil? Further,could a perfect God require a kenotic Christ to subject the defenseless and innocent to a

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wretched daily existence with the promise of an eternal payoff? The theoreticalparadoxes here belie a pragmatic and moral point for early modern kenosis: there arelived experiences of suffering and evil that must be made consistent with a loving,relational God. It is difficult to defend the Atonement’s dual role in preserving justiceand divine love. If God is the victim, who is the perpetrator? If we share in grief, whowill be responsible for inflicting it? How can there be justice if the innocent bears thepunishment of the guilty, and how is justice administered if responsibility for divinesuffering is transferred from humankind to God?13

It seems to me that the philosophical work of Macaulay and Hays does provide oneaccounting, founded on a concept of ‘redemption’ that properly should be called ‘theod-icy’: God had to create the world as he did, and concrete moral evil is a part of the worldbut does not mitigate against divine omniscience, omnibenevolence, or omnipotence.Their redemptive theodicies are distinct from those offered by male philosophers of theperiod. Although they would not deny altogether Leibniz’s best of all possible worldsargument in Theodicy, their work indicates that traditional theodicy is insufficient for anumber of reasons. First, traditional theodicy like Leibniz’s is grounded on an abstractconception of evil in which the possibility of evil must be necessary for God to instantiatea best of all possible worlds (Leibniz writes, “[God] has permitted evil because it isinvolved in the best plan existing in the region of possibles, a plan which supreme wisdomcould not fail to choose. This notion satisfies at once the wisdom, the power and thegoodness of God, and yet leaves a way open for the entrance of evil. God gives perfectionto creatures in so far as it is possible in the universe. One gives a turn to the cylinder, butany roughness in its shape restricts the swiftness of its motion,” Theodicy III.32714). ButMacaulay, Hays, and even contemporary critics of theodicy deem this use of ‘evil’ as tooremoved from harms in the world for the task of theodicy to truly speak to the problem ofdivine concurrence of moral evil.15 Rather, ‘moral evil’ as these women thought of it wasinseparable from concrete suffering in society and in the home. The discourse on theodicyought to include a notion of evil with which those who suffer can readily identify, if thepurpose of theodicy is to salvage divine perfection (including God’s relational qualities,like omnibenevolence) in the face of evil. God’s omnibenevolence is not immediately atrisk because there must be a possibility for people to exercise their free will (say), butrather because there seem to be culpable, preventable atrocities in the world.16

13 This point is made by Walker 1988, 183.14 Robert Adams (1998), in section 1.3 of Leibniz: Determinist, Theist, Idealist, explicates the nuances ofhypothetical necessity for Leibniz—certainly an idea that evolved over Leibniz’s life. Adams providesLeibniz’s own clarification of truths that come from what is necessary: “In this place we call necessary onlythat which is necessary through itself—that is, which has the reason of its existence and truth within itself.Such are the Geometrical truths and of existing things only God. The others, which follow from thesupposition of this series of things—that is, from the harmony of things—or from the Existence of God, arecontingent through themselves and only hypothetically necessary. (AVi, iii, 128), 17.15 See, for example, Pamela Sue Anderson (editor), New Topics in Feminist Philosophy of Religion:Contestations and Transcendence Incarnate, especially Morny Joy’s (2010) “Rethinking the ‘Problem ofEvil’ with Hannah Arendt and Grace Jantzen, (Dordrecht: Springer), 2010.16 Atheist Claudia Card identifies certain evils as “atrocious harms”, a category of evils that result in culpable,preventable, and intolerable harms (2002, 9, 12-13). She explains further (2010, 5) that such, “Evils arereasonably foreseeable intolerable harms produced (maintained, supported, tolerated, and so on) by culpablewrongdoing. So understood, evils have two irreducibly distinct components: a harm component and anagency component”.

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[This isn’t to say that all theodicy is removed from the concrete. Adams (1999, 31)identifies the potential difficulty “horrendous evils” (such as rape) pose to the rational-ity of one’s belief in God. She writes, “To value the individual qua person, God wouldhave to go further to defeat any horrendous evil in which s/he participated by giving itpositive meaning through organic unity with a great enough good within the context ofhis/her life. By skirting the special problems horrendous evils pose for Divine goodnessto individual created persons, global and generic approaches win no ingenious strategicvictory. They simply fail to solve them.” But, Adams also defines horrendous evilsconcretely—tied to what makes this present life livable. The horrendous include “evilsthe participation in which (that is, the doing or suffering of which (that is, the doing orsuffering of which) constitutes prima facie reason to doubt whether the participant’s lifecould (given their inclusion in it) be a great good to him/her on the whole” 26.]

Second, not only is traditional theodicy too dependent upon an abstract conceptionof evil, so is its conception of ‘redemption’. For all-things-considered good arguments,redemption is an eschatological event—some ideal that those who suffer hope for butare told cannot be fully experienced until after death, when there will be a complete andjust reckoning of the scales. In her fine monograph, Leibniz on the Trinity andIncarnation, Maria Rosa Antognazza writes that Leibniz saw the fall of man as “afelix culpa (fortunate fault)” because it led to the Atonement, and that “the redemptionof the human race could not have taken place in a better way.”17 In fact, for Leibniz, thefulfillment of God’s work—in which humanity reaches “the greatest possible nearness”to the Creator “through an expiation of the sins of humanity, carried out in the worthiestway possible” (84)—is achieved in virtue of the fallen condition of humanity. But,‘redemption’ for scholars like Macaulay and Hays means not only spiritual restoration,but a civil one. Hays implored the “Men of Great Britain” to see, “Every impartial andcritical observer must see, that the generality of women suffer in silence and submissionto a great degree of misery, from their sensibility to a thousand mortifications to whichthey are subject through life, and from their inability to do themselves justices. Andthough men not only bind them down, but talk them down, to this state of submission,women in general feel the mortifications only, without the promised and boastedbenefits of this conduct” (1798, 143). Redemption is realized, “not primarily in anotherworldly escape from the body and the finite world, but by transforming the worldand society into personal and social relations of justice and peace between all humans.This is the true message of Christ and the gospel” (Ruether 1998, 6–7). So, redemptionis a civil as well as spiritual restoration that transforms social and legal systems thathave denied women’s rights, perpetuated slavery, and waged war (ibid, 6), and theodicythat ties divine concurrence of evil with redemption ought to rely upon a concrete senseof justice (i.e., one that is accessible through the experiences of daily life).

Differences on the connotation of ‘redemption’ between traditional theodicy and thatfound in scholarship of women in the early modern period results in part from adivergence in how the two see the Atonement. The Atonement for Macaulay, Hays,and others was not just the moment of Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection butincludes the life of Christ—a life that works to eradicate systems of domination.

17 New Haven, CT: Yale University Press (2008), 18 and 84. It is important to note that Antognazza arguesthat Leibniz takes a non-kenotic view of the Atonement, one in which Christ’s divine nature is “hidden”behind a veil of human nature in the Incarnated Christ (87).

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Christ’s life, vision, and ministry are restorative, and so the life of Christ that culminatesin his ultimate sacrifice provides a model for living redemptive lives of service. 18

Redemption is meant to supplant the egocentric vision of a life lived for the individualself—we are no longer for ourselves, but for God—and so reroots a person in the divinepower of God. The result is that a theodicy built on an eschatalogically-redemptivenotion of the Atonement misses out on the truly transformative message of livedexperiences of redemption. Macaulay (1790, 2) condemns theodicies that must relyon some good-to-come to make consistent divine perfection and evil, “These are themelancholy visions of, perhaps, the greater part of the religious world, whilst to the eyeof the modern philosopher, God is infinite only in his natural attributes; and becausethey cannot find a more satisfactory reason for the introduction of moral and naturalevil, they limit the power and the benevolence of God, to a size which exactly squareswith the objects of sense.”

So, the theodical project of Macaulay and Hays will affirm the conclusion oftraditional theodicies of the period (the existence of God and evil are not inconsistent)but differ both from their point of departure (i.e., concrete rather than abstract evil) andtheir teleological goal (i.e., redemption of lived experiences rather than a purelyeschatological redemption). Hays argued that a conception of evil that was too abstractcould never motivate the change needed to overcome suffering, and so was alsoinsufficient to defend divine perfection against proponents of the problem of evil. Todefeat this, Hays provides a resolution account in which evil suffered might completethe agent. She writes (1793, 169), “Are we then (horrible thought!) to attribute the finaldestruction of the impenitent to God? Such a final destruction is no part of my creed;from the infinite goodness of the Parent of the universe, I expect the ultimate resolutionof all his intelligent offspring, when purified and refined by sufferings.” Framed byHays, redemption of evil completes the action of creation. For Macaulay, our owncreative act has its penultimate moment in choosing to redeem suffering. “It is alsoobservable,” she notes,

“that though the voice of revelation does not condescend to enter into the nicedistinctions of metaphysical reasoning, and talks only of freedom in a popularsense, viz., the freedom of action correspondent to volition, yet it everywherepresents motives to the human mind, as the only impellers of volition and in allthe dispensations of Providence in regard to human sufferings, which we observeto take place in the human system, they are commonly attended with the salutaryeffects of reformation.”(1783, 259)

These theodical moments are distinct from an all-things-considered-good view, andnot quite Orthodox, given that both scholars subscribe to a universalist conception ofultimate redemption. The Atonement is for all people, and all people will eventuallyrespond positively to the gospel. Macaulay warns against an Atonement for the elect(1790, 2–3), “Almost every sect of Christians, to spur on the lazy virtue of theirvotaries, have represented the rigorous justice of God in a light which confines hisbenevolence to a narrow sphere of action; and whilst he is represented as devoting aneternity of torments for the far greater number of the human race, the gates of paradise

18 Ruether (1998), 234ff is also helpful here.

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are barred to all but the elect. Tremendous thought!” Those who suffer are more apt torespond quickly to the gospel message, both because they have affinity with a sufferingChrist but their suffering removes their culpability as a fire separates dross from gold.19

Rather than this redemptive process salvaging something broken, Hays thinks of it asrestoring and preserving something created good—the human spirit. “God, who seesinto futurity, regards [us] as if we were already raised from the dead and speaks of us asif we stood in the same relation to him. And surely, it is not more difficult for theSupreme Being to renovate us again, to restore to the mind its consciousness, and to thebody its form and vigor, than to preserve the spirit from becoming extinct” (1793, 160–1). God concurs with evil only because of the refining aspect of redemption, notbecause if we were to weigh all of the goods against all of the evils, good would winout, “If good would not ultimately arise from any kind or degree of evil, natural ormoral, a good Being would not permit it: and if good would necessarily arise from it, hewould be justified in appointing it, being the proper and necessary means to a valuableend” (1793, 190).

Nor are the wicked exempt, either from the impact of evil and its potential to beredeemed. “Christianity alone affords any stability to our hopes of a future resurrec-tion,” Hays writes, “we must believe (it should seem to me) in the final restitution of allthings, though for a period, both here and hereafter the wicked will suffer the conse-quences of their guilt, till refined and rectified by sufferings, they are fitted for a systemof perfect purity and order” (1793, 180). Those who use their power to exploit othersignore their responsibility to seek a virtuous life, and the scales will eventually bebalanced, at their peril. Although Hays goes so far as to warn women (specifically)against paying back evil for evil, she also recognizes (1798, 135) that women typically“acquiesce in suffering the most manifest injustice, from prudence and necessity, ratherthan from conscious inability and decided inferiority” and they should refrain fromdoing so because such activity undermines the redemptive moral work of the cross,

“I cannot however in conscience recommend to our sex, the wretched casuistry ofexcusing their own neglect of duty, from the example of others. If we are oncesincerely persuaded that the percepts of our Savior are drawn from a divinesource, and adapted to human nature, with a tender compassion for its imperfec-tions and sufferings, and that as such they are best calculated of all to producehappiness—mortal and immortal—If we are once sincerely persuaded of all this,though we see others abandon this great standard of duty, it ought not—nor itcannot indeed then—greatly affect our conduct.” (1798, 255)

On this point, a contemporary critique could be leveled at Hays and Macaulay—encouraging women to “do their duty” is a way of perpetuating abuses and so could not

19 At (1793) 211–12, Hays writes, “The gospel also teaches that ‘whom the Almighty loveth, he chasteneth’.May we not conclude from hence, that as gold is tried in the fire, so the human character is perfected bysufferings; and those from whom the dross is separated in this first stage of existence, are assuredly nearer tothat state of pure and perfect enjoyment, where our faculties will no longer be enigmatical, and where theseglorious faculties, here too frequently only inlets to pain, will find their proper gratification? Whether wereason from experience, observation, or analogy, every conclusion goes to prove, that this world is a state ofdiscipline and progression and can never be, ‘The final issue of the works of God, forever rising with the risingmind’”.

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be reflective of a loving, powerful God. This critique would have more teeth if Hays orMacaulay thought that women should just remember their place and submit as Christdid. Hays’ recommendation to women to be virtuous in the face of immorality isinstead tied to a repudiation of civil injustice, especially for the oppressed—and herbelief that justice is best met through Christianity. “In the Christian system, as deliveredby its divine founder, there is not I believe I may boldly say, a single sentence that evencan be tortured into a meaning, against the liberty, equality, or consequence of Woman;reason goes hand in hand with religion in opposing the claims of the one sex, to a rightof subjecting the other” (1798, 27). The reformative function of theodicy is strength-ened when seen in the purview of the kenotic Christ. For Hays, the emptying of Christserves as collateral for our own spirits’ completion, and so is evidence of a redemptivetheory of evil:

“The Universal Parent of mankind commissioned Jesus Christ to incite men to thepractice of virtue by the assurance of his mercy to the penitent, and of his purposeto raise to immortal life all the virtuous and the good; but to inflict an adequatepunishment on the wicked. In proof of this he wrought many miracles, and after apublic execution, rose again from the dead; as an example of the promisedresurrection. And the evidences for the truth of this religion, both external andinternal, are worthy of your most serious investigation, for though it cannot admitof a proper mathematical demonstration, it carries with it the strongest testimoniesby which an historical fact can be ascertained, and surely its doctrines are mostimportant.” (1793, 187)

Christ’s identification with those who suffer is a promise that to us that ourbrokenness will be healed, and just as Christ was restored to glory, the Atoning actremains vital in our lives. And, contrary to some theodicies of the period, ourrestoration is not something that only believers will experience (and will experienceafter death), but is happening right now to varying degrees in everyone. Those whorecognize the redemptive act of the Atonement can, in their current situations, work toeffect change in the world, and so to be a physical representation of the social changethat Christ meant for the Church to be. Those who don’t, will, at some point.

The scholarship of women like Hays and Macaulay, then, fills a gap between anabstract evil and a far-off redemption. We can (and ought) to explain evil and thedifficulty it poses to God, (if indeed evil, suffering, and a relationship with God are allobjects of lived experience). The theodicy that emerges is not just one for women, orthe oppressed, but is for everyone, so that although the call is made to consider theexperiences of suffering when building theodicy, theodical truths that emerge are notdependent upon a particular situated standpoint, although theodicy’s use of ‘evil’ reliesupon a contextualized evil. Truth is never at odds with spiritual and moral laws, so thatwhatever is true will be useful to both genders, and to people of all races. Macaulay(1790, 201–202) writes, “There can be but one rule of moral excellence for beingsmade of the same materials, organized after the same manner, and subjected to similarlaws of nature.” The location of evil in the political is socially expedient but is alsonecessary to obviate to everyone what is true. A situated sense of moral evil equalizesclaims against God for the presence of evil, for whether it is disease, or suffering ofchildren, or mental illness (or other factors that impinge on the ability to act rationally),

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or pains from physical labor, or daily circumstances that test one’s integrity, locatingevil within these injustices makes the problem of evil a question that is relevant to allpeople (not just philosophers, lords, and priests).

Justice, Evil, and More Work for the Macaulay/Hays Project

Perhaps it is a bit anachronistic to call early modern philosophical theology “kenotic”,but its emphasis on the suffering Christ who empties himself to stand in solidarity withthose who are exploited is consistent with kenotic theology, and so aligning thescholarship of early modern women who suffered exploitation and yet defended divineexistence and perfection against the problem of evil yields interesting results forcontemporary scholarship. Their kenotic-like characterization of the Atonement pro-vides a theory of how a divine Christ could partake in human suffering—he takes upsuffering sacrificially for us to relate to those who suffer most, to provide a model for usof how to redeem suffering in the world that does not require the lowliest to be madelower. On Macaulay’s and Hays’ view, divine justice is enacted because all wrongdoerspartake in redemption as a natural part of God’s creative order, whose completion is inour perfection. Their redemptive theodicy is grounded in a paradigm that mirrors thecontemporary atrocity paradigm, and yet confirms the necessity of the Atonement toaffect spiritual transformation. The result is a kenotic, divine Christ who loves us,relates to us, saves us, and secures us toward completion in God.

The project of Hays and Macaulay, to draw a line from Christ’s emptying andredemptive work to our suffering and moral obligation, resonates with some contem-porary feminist theology, which recasts divine kenosis as analogous to the life-breathing work of Christ’s Atonement. On their narrative, women and the oppressed,especially, are impacted by the communication of divine love through divine kenosis.Omnibenevolence requires that God’s love be found in the farthest places, even wheredivine love seems most absent—and it is the afflicted who reside in the furthestoutskirts, who most stand in need of that divine reach (Holmes and Farley 2011,168–9). Christ is acquainted with our suffering just to save those who suffer. Ratherthan being “caught in the bondage of the will, they come as those whose will has beendiluted in their relationships” (Jones 2000, 63). Of course, to avoid a theology of theAtonement in which men need to hear a message of self-sacrifice, but most women donot (Groenhout 2006, 295), and to instead embrace one in which all people need to‘take up their cross’ the relationship between the emptied Christ and humanity needs tobe accessible to everyone—at root, this is the message of the theodicy of Hays andMacaulay.

So, the Atonement requires that Christ himself becomes accessible especially tothose who suffer, since Christ’s suffering is the through-which God empties himselfinto the human situation, and identifies with us. Even the image of God “as Father”(something that some feminists have rejected20) is one the oppressed can relate to,particularly since both Macaulay and Hays invoke God as a Parent. The image drawsGod to us, “The uniform voice of revelation everywhere proclaims God the universal

20 An excellent synopsis of these views can be found in Janet M. Soskice, The Kindness of God, (Oxford,OUP), 2008.

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Parent of creation. By this appellation, I would describe a relation more tender thanwhat we commonly annex to our ideas of the author of nature” (Macaulay 1790, 2).The tenderness within the parent image used by Hays and Macaulay presages acontemporary kenotic view in which we remember the Trinity when responding tothe problem of evil, “The cry of dereliction continues to rise from a victim humanitywith whom the Son stands in solidarity, and is heard by the Father who does not simplygrieve for our plight but acts as guarantor for the justice of our cause” (Walker 1988,183). The immutability of God is not transgressed by the kenotic act because althoughthe Son is emptied he also remains to intercede for us, whereas the Spirit commends ustoward righteousness, and the Father hears the pleas of the Son and we as creationexperience the completion of the creative act through the Atonement.

Kenosis of the sort implicit in Macaulay and Hays is not unlike other contemporaryanalytic attempts to address the problem of evil presented by a kenotic Christ, espe-cially that from Marilyn Adams, and further research would be fruitful. If anything, acomparison might reveal remaining questions about divine justice in the presence ofkenotic and human emptying—in particular, questions of justice that come from thepossibility of God’s allowing us to suffer to yield an overall beneficial world, whichMacaulay and Hays would reject. 21 Should the Atonement prove efficacious inredeeming and transforming suffering, many believers who suffer still offer witnessthat, though they are assured of healing, they also believe God’s created order involvesjustice for evil perpetrated (so much of the Psalms is evidence of this belief). Adams’doctrine of impanation (real presence) of the emptied Christ to defeat the problem ofevil would be a place to start: “Calvary’s ironic reversal repeats itself. Biting andchomping our salvation confers immeasurable dignity, insofar as impanation turns thehostile act of eating into an act of intimacy with God” (2006, 311). The suffering of theoppressed is taken up by Christ—he ‘eats, defeats, and destroys’ our personal ruin—butis the restoration of our suffering justice enough?

What an image for theists, like Hays and Macaulay, who see the problem of concreteevil as a true difficulty for their belief in an all-knowing, all-loving, and all-powerfulGod. For them, the redemptive work of Christ requires the self-emptying of the Savior;their call to us is to continue seeking civil justice and Christ’s redemptive work byrecognizing our own need and turning to the one who—for us—acquainted himselfwith grief.

Acknowledgments Research support for this paper was provided by a generous National Endowment forthe Humanities Faculty Award. This paper benefitted tremendously from input received by participants in theUniversity of Notre Dame’s 2014 Logos Workshop. Special thanks to William J. Abraham, Joy AnnMcDougall, Samuel Newlands, Michael Rea, Marilyn McCord Adams, Amy Peeler, Andrea White, LacyHudspeth, and Kevin Diller.

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21 Notice that none of the theodical arguments presented here are best of all possible worlds arguments.

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Acquainted with Grief: the Atonement and Early Feminist Conceptions of Theodicy

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