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The Problem and Mystery of Evil in Theology,

Philosophy and Literature: Plenty of Questions, No

Easy Answers

1. Existential Prologue

Human beings are meaning-making creatures. Since the dawn of

consciousness we have been seeking to make some little sense of the life that

has been thrust unasked upon us. One of the central issues in that search

for meaning is surely the existence of evil in the world as we encounter it.

Indeed, its existence more often than not tends to raise thorny and

contentious questions that undermine even the more erudite and wise

explanations humankind has advanced for its own existence and

significance over the course of its history.

However, it is evil’s encroachment into our own personal existential

space that causes us what can only be described as anguish1 at the fragility

and temporality of our little lives in an apparently indifferent universe. Evil’s

intrusion into our lives is also, of course, called simply “suffering.” On one

level then, that is, on a more superficial intellectual level, evil in the world

and in our lives may present itself as a cerebral problem requiring some

mental gymnastics to square it with various erudite religious accounts of the

goodness of a supposedly benevolent God. On another but deeper level, that

is, on a more personal existential level, evil in the world and in our lives may

present itself in the real and actual pain of physical and mental suffering

and loss in our own lives and in those of our dear family and friends. And

what human being has never suffered pain or loss in any of their many

incarnations? A Swedish study of existential pain (2004) reported the

following findings:

1 Anguish, with its Dutch and German equivalent “angst,” connotes a deep inner torment and turmoil associated primarily with the writings of Søren Kierkegaard and with the

writings of the existentialist philosophers who followed in his footsteps. If one were to look for a pictorial equivalent one could do worse than instance the famous painting The Scream

(1893) by the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch.

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In many cases, existential pain was described as suffering with no clear connection to physical pain.

Chaplains stressed significantly more often the guilt issues, as well as various religious questions... Palliative

physicians (actually seeing dying persons) stressed more often existential pain as being related to annihilation and impending separation..., while pain specialists (seeing

chronic patients) more often emphasized that “living is painful”.... Thirty-two percent (32%) of the physicians

stated that existential suffering can be expressed as physical pain and provided many case histories. Thus, “existential pain” is mostly used as a metaphor for

suffering, but also is seen as a clinically important factor that may reinforce existing physical pain or even be the primary cause of pain, in good agreement with the

current definition of pain disorder or somatization disorder. 2

In like manner, this present author is writing in the context of certain

mental suffering and pain endured over the years, the actual details of which

need not detain us here as they are not in themselves relevant to the readers’

understanding of the subject. However, what is significant is that suffering

and pain need to be dealt with, accepted and somehow made personally

meaningful in all our lives if we are not to totally despair of the enterprise of

living.

In all of the above we can clearly hear the undertones of the message

enunciated by and the themes adumbrated by the father of existentialism

Søren Kiekegaard in whose writings we read similar sentiments:

I stick my finger into existence – it smells of nothing. Where am I? What is this thing called the world? Who is it that has lured me into the thing, and now leaves me

here? Who am I? How did I come into the world? Why was I not consulted? 3

2 Strang, Strang, Hultborn & Arnér (2004), “Existential Pain—An Entity, a Provocation, or a Challenge?”in Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, Vol. 27 No. 3 March 2004, p.

241. 3 Quoted Lavine (1984, p. 322)

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2. A Brief History of attempting to Grasp the Problem of Evil

2.1 Ancient Torments: Existentialism Prefigured

Humankind, as well as being the creator of much wonderful artefacts,

sciences and technologies, has been at the same time the sufferer of much

torment in seeking to understand his place in this oftentimes hostile world.

By torment, I mean the proclivity within a certain number of us to mentally

torture ourselves. The history of self-inflicted torment is as old as humanity

itself. Take, for example, the ancient Egyptian poem known in English

as The Man Who Was Tired of Life or The Dialogue of a Man and His

Ba (or Soul). This composition is universally regarded as one of the

masterpieces of ancient Egyptian literature. It is also one of the most difficult

and continually debated, as well as being the subject of more than one

hundred books and articles. It is the author's mental anguish or torment

that intrigues this writer here - one could say, to use a definite anachronism,

that this early poem is pure existentialism. This poem dates back to the

Twelfth Dynasty of Ancient Egypt, a period that spanned from 1991-1803

BCE. In the text the man accuses his soul of wanting to desert him, of

dragging him towards death before his time. He says that life is too heavy for

him to bear, that his heart would come to rest in the West (i.e. the afterlife),

that his name would survive and his body would be protected. He urges

his soul to be patient and wait for a son to be born to make the offerings the

deceased needed in the afterlife. His ba describes the sadness death brings

and retorts to the man's complaints about his lack of worth, his being cut off

from humanity and the attractiveness of death by exhorting him to embrace

life and promises to stay with him. Scholars have disputed as to whether the

author is intending to take his own life or not. One way or another the

author of the piece is a highly tormented being and one full of angst to use

yet another anachronistic term associated with existentialism. Here is a brief

snatch from this rather pessimistic and angst-ridden poem:

And the violent man has come down on everyone.

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To whom can I speak today?

Men are contented with evil

And goodness is neglected everywhere.

To whom can I speak today? 4

There are other ancient documents, too. For example, the earliest is

the Sumerian text A Man and His God, dating from 2000 - 1700 BCE

describes the unjust and innocent sufferings of a righteous man. An

Akkadian text called Ludlul Bel Nemeqi (I will praise the Lord of Wisdom),

dating from 1000 BC, describes a nobleman praising the Babylonian god

Marduk. This god had healed the stricken nobleman on account of his

religious and cultic piety. Yet another ancient text is the Babylonian

Theodicy which was composed between 1400 and 800 BCE. It consists of a

dialogue between a sufferer and a comforter that seeks to explain why an

innocent and good-living man should suffer. All these ancient compositions

thematically resonate with the book of Job from the Old Testament and

demonstrate that the themes of theodicy were important pieces of the

theological discourse in the ancient Near East.

The ancient Israelites addressed the theme of innocent suffering in the

Book of Job (most probably written in the sixth century B.C.) that is now the

first poetical book in the Christian Old Testament. The theme is universal

and trans-temporal, that is, of God's justice in the face of human suffering -

or to put it more simply, "Why do the righteous and innocent suffer?" It is

written in the form of a poem with a prose introduction and conclusion.

Being written in such a form adds to its richness and depth. Consequently,

it is an equally rich theological work that sets out a variety of perspectives.

Job simply cannot understand why he is seemingly being punished by

God as quite obviously he has been a righteous and good-living man all his

life. The ancient theology is quite rightly debunked by Job, that is, the

traditional theology that argued that retribution always followed an evil

man's deeds and that the good and righteous always prospered. That's why

he gets so upset with his so-called comforters who argue that he must have

4 See http://www.maat.sofiatopia.org/ba.htm accessed 07/02/2015

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done something wrong to merit God's retribution. However, Job will have

none of their arguments. For him, the questions of God's justice and of

human suffering are far more complex than traditional theological thought

was able to comprehend. I shan't rehearse any of Job's arguments and

protestations here save to illustrate how tormented a soul Job was. Very

early in Chapter 3 he laments the fact that he was even born at all: “Why is

light given to him who is in misery//and life to the bitter in soul, //who long

for death, but it comes not, // and dig for it more than for hidden treasures,

// who rejoice exceedingly, and are glad when they find the grave.” (Job 3:

20-21 ESV

2.2 The Classical Philosophical Statement of the Problem

The Greek philosopher Epicurus (341–270 BC) is generally credited with

first expounding the problem of evil, and it is sometimes called "the

Epicurean paradox" or "the riddle of Epicurus." However, the Scottish

philosopher David Hume is well noted for his re-statement of the Epicurean

paradox thus: "Is he [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then is he

impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then is he malevolent. Is he both able

and willing? Whence then is evil?" 5 I will outline below what I believe are the

narrow parameters of this statement of the problem in greater detail.6

2.3 Traditional Attempts to Explain the Problem of Evil

Attempts that were made to explain evil in the context of the existence

of a benevolent and omnipotent deity are called theodicies in philosophical

and theological circles. Briefly, then, a theodicy means an explanation as to

why God would allow there to be evil and suffering in the world. There were

two main ones 7 proposed in early medieval times by Christian thinkers. I

5 David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, The Gutenberg Project:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4583/4583-h/4583-h.htm, accessed 5/2/2015 6 See Section 6 of this paper. 7 Theologian Mark Scott has argued that Origen, rather than Irenaeus, ought to be

considered the father of the approach suggested by Irenaeus. Therefore, there are two not three theodicies. I treat of Origen’s approach as separate in this essay as I quite like the

metaphors he advances as a help to understanding the problem of evil, while admitting that

it adds nothing of substance to one I have termed Irenaean in this essay.

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will begin with the slightly later one as it gained the pride of place in the

Christian tradition while the other was almost wholly forgotten.

2.3.1 The Augustinian Theodicy :

A major Christian thinker to write on the problem of evil was the

redoubtable St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD) who may be said to have

left his prints all over contemporary and subsequent Christian thought.

However, what is undeniable is that this great saint and scholar was a

brilliant intellectual and spiritual genius. The intellectual problem that then

faced Augustine was the perennial unavoidable contradiction between the

notion of God as omnipotent (all powerful) and omni-benevolent (all good), on

the one hand, and the existence of evil (natural and moral), on the other.

Given that God is all powerful in the first place, why then does He not act to

eliminate evil? He obviously is not as benevolent as we are led to believe. In

the second place, if we grant God’s total benevolence or goodness, then in

this conception of things, he is consequently not all powerful. So we have a

glaring contradiction in terms. Christian "orthodoxy" still remains unwilling

to modify its conception of God's goodness or his power and hence we have

the persistence of this fundamental contradiction down through the

centuries.

St. Augustine was fully aware of this problem and spent much -

perhaps most - of his philosophical energy attempting to come to terms with

it. In putting forward a solution, he showed great insight and creativity. He

emphasised three main points: (1) Evil in itself could not properly be said to

exist at all. A rather novel, almost stupid position insofar as it seems to deny

our experience in the world. However, what Augustine was getting at was his

contention that evil while it did not exist in itself, existed as a privation of

the good, that is, a privation or lack of a good that should be there in the

first place. Augustine’s Latin for this unusual notion is beautiful – “privatio

boni malum est” - “evil is the privation of the good.” For example, ignorance

is an evil, but is merely the absence of knowledge, which is good; disease is

the absence of health; rudeness and hatred are an absence of compassion

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and love. Since evil has no positive reality of its own, it cannot, therefore, be

caused to exist, and so God cannot be held responsible for causing it to so

exist. In its strongest form, this view may identify evil as an absence of God,

who is the sole source of that which is good.8 (2) The apparent imperfection

of any part of creation disappears in light of the perfection of the whole. This

is allied with what may be called the Principle of Plenitude which states that

if the world is to be as perfect as possible it must contain as much as

possible. (3) Finally the origin of moral evil, together with that suffering

which is construed as punishment for sin, is to be found in the free choice of

the will of all rational creatures. This final point is well known and is

commonly called the Argument from Free Will and it was to remain one of the

mainstays of Catholic and Protestant theology down through the centuries.

St. Augustine believed that God made a perfect world, but that God's

creatures had turned away from God of their own free will, through different

types of falls (the main fall being that of Adam and Eve which he would have

accepted as being literally rather than metaphorically true) and that is how

evil originated in the world. It shows, he believed, how God has allowed evil

to exist in the world because it does not conflict with His goodness. God did

not create evil but is also not a victim of it. He simply allows it to exist.

Indeed, Augustine argues God does not want evil to exist, but rather He

allows it because He cherishes man’s freedom and because He does not wish

to force man to love Him as love in itself can only be freely given.

Another point that remains with me from all those years ago is the

phrase “logically prior.” In the thought of Augustine the good is always

logically prior to evil. In other words there has to be some good there first to

be corrupted. For example, you break your leg. The evil is the break or

8 A related view, which draws on the Taoist concept of yin-yang, allows that both evil and

good have positive reality, but maintains that they are complementary opposites, where the

existence of each is dependent on the existence of the other. Compassion, a valuable virtue,

can only exist if there is suffering; bravery only exists if we sometimes face danger; self-sacrifice is called for only where others are in need. This is sometimes called the "contrast"

argument. If there were no suffering there would no need for doctors, or nurses and no need

at all for compassion and for the development of medical knowledge and skills.

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fracture and the consequent pain which can only exist if the leg (good and

whole) is there in the first place to be broken. The same can be said of say an

apple which rots, the rottenness can only inhere in the goodness of the apple

which is there in the first place well before any decomposition set in.

All of the above is classical medieval thinking and I grant that it does

seem more than a little irrelevant to lived reality and to everyday experiences

of the twenty first century. I concede all of this, but classical thinking in

itself is beautiful and self-contained, and its categories did form the

foundation stones for modern thought which we may feel deals more

concretely and more relevantly with day-to-day living today. However, the

Augustinian theodicy can only satisfy a believer on a narrow intellectual level

that makes sense solely within the constraints of Christianity. Thankfully,

there is also at least one other more humane and strikingly holistic

theodicies that also emerged from the medieval world.

2.3.2 The Irenaean Approach to the problem of Evil/Suffering

The Anglican philosopher and theologian John Hick,9 in a book called

Evil and the God of Love (first published 1966 and revised in the middle of

the 70s), gives a very clear account of this theodicy. This book re-established

and made popular the long-forgotten Irenaean philosophy as a response to

the mystery of evil. St Augustine, as we have seen assigns the blame for evil

in the world totally to mankind’s sinning – this is illustrated essentially for

traditional Christians in the story of the Fall in the Book of Genesis. Sin

entered the world through Adam’s sin and continues in the sinning of all his

descendants. Add to this, then, the later development of the doctrine of

Original Sin and the story gets more complicated. St Augustine’s thinking is

very dark and negative as regards the essential nature of the human person.

His words are far too dark for our modern tastes: he believed that human

beings made up a “massa damnata” – “a damned mass” who needed the

9 Hick is a marvellously clear and lucid writer and any of his books that I read subsequently always held my interest as did any of his broadcasts as he made many TV programmes and

documentaries.

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liberation of the Christ. These dark and dismal words, however, do help to

offset what is the wonderfully positive thinking of St Irenaeus of Lyons (born

in the early second century around 130 A.D. and died around 202 A.D.) His

thought is wonderfully refreshing, given the predilection for darkness and

damnation in traditional Catholic and Protestant theologies.

For St Irenaeus, God created the world and has been overseeing it ever

since. Absolutely everything that has happened since creation is part of his

plan for humanity. This loving Creator created a world or universe which

would grow and mature, rather than one which was fully perfect from the

outset. Hence, the essence of the Irenaean theodicy is the process of

maturation or the idea of on-going perfectibility. In Irenaeus’s mind,

humankind was created immature, and God intended his creatures to take a

fairly long time to grow eventually into the divine likeness. In this scenario

the Fall does not take on the ultimate calamitous nature that Augustine

would have us believe. Rather than a full-blown rebellion what we have here

is a rather adolescent rebellion, as it were, against parental control.

Everything that has happened since has, therefore, been planned by God to

help humanity overcome this initial mishap and achieve spiritual maturity.

In other words, the world has been intentionally designed by God as a

difficult place, where human beings are forced to make moral decisions, as

only in this way can they mature as moral agents. Hence, the high point of

salvation history, or on-going creation if you will, would be the advent of the

Saviour, Jesus Christ who would represent the ultimate maturation and

salvation of humankind in his very person.

The result of the Irenaean theodicy is that God is certainly not "off the

hook" as it were for human evil, but must find a way to use it as an

instrument for good, within a process that ultimately will redeem all

humanity. Thus, in drawing out the ramifications of the Irenaean theodicy,

Hick is led to a form of universalism - holding that in Christian faith and

hope all humanity will ultimately be saved (1978, p. 345). In other words,

moral evil, then, is somewhat akin to growing pains along the way to

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maturation. The evil deeds which humankind perpetrates lead to greater

maturation, if not on a personal level, then, certainly on a communal or

societal level.

I have long believed in the fact that our understanding of different

truths develops as humankind comes of age, e.g., after centuries of the vilest

ill-treatment of slaves we grew eventually to believe that keeping other

human beings as slaves to be really, truly and essentially wrong. Likewise we

would not have had the International Declaration of Human Rights (1948)

were it not for the occurrence and just punishment of the horrific crimes of

the Nazis. Nor would we have had the present declaration of the Rights of

Children had not the heinous nature of child abuse in all its forms been

uncovered by whistle-blowers, journalists and various investigators. Indeed,

what I am arguing for here is the evolution and gradual development of

ethics and morality.10 All of such growth in our understanding of evil would

have a good basis in an understanding of the Irenaean theodicy. If we follow

the arguments of Hick and Irenaeus to their logical conclusion, the ultimate

perfectibility or ultimate maturation of humankind can only be in a Heaven

or in a Paradise beyond this world. And so we get the traditional Christian

notion of Heaven as a reward for good deeds and Hell as punishment for evil

deeds. Hence, Hick has a motto that runs "no theodicy without eschatology."

In other words, a theology of the final things (eschatology) must supplement

and fill out any possible theodicy (theory of the justification of evil).

2.3.3 The Approach of St Origen of Alexandria (184/5 – 253/4 A.D.) 11

St Origen was a scholar and early Christian theologian who was born

and spent the first half of his career in Alexandria. He was a prolific writer in

multiple branches of theology, including textual criticism, biblical

exegesis and philosophical theology, spirituality and preaching. He was also

10 That the moral or ethical principles of today can or could ever be applied to actions or

crimes committed centuries ago is somewhat ridiculous as the then historical cultural

understanding has to be taken into account. I should imagine that murder, never mind all other lesser crimes we might list, did not cause too much worry, if any, for our cave people

ancestors! 11 See footnote 7 above.

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renowned for his severe practices of asceticism. Moreover, he did offer an

interesting insight into the problem of evil. Origen presented a response to

the problem of evil which cast the world as a schoolroom or hospital for the

soul. It is interesting to note that the great Romantic poet John Keats saw

the world as the "vale of soul-making"12 and his thoughts were very much in

line with those of Origen. In other words, to be truly human is to be a carer,

a nurse, a doctor or a paramedic for each other. To be truly human we must

be soul-makers, not soul-breakers. Too much of modern life is into soul-

breaking rather than soul-making. To be a soul-maker is to be a

compassionate healer. The answer is seen in all the ways we can become

caring communities rather than anonymous urban sprawls that dislocate

and break souls down. Indeed, pulling the parts together is no easy task. We

live in a world that almost prefers disintegration to integration. We care little

about others, especially strangers.

3. Lessons from Cinema and Literature

To my mind, Shakespeare especially, and even every middling to good

dramatist worth his or her salt before and after him, paints characters that

are whole or holistic or more three-dimensional. Shakespearean heroes all

have their fatal flaws which lead to their downfall. Likewise, great novels and

films have less extreme cardboard or two-dimensional characters. The great

and powerful television series The Sopranos comes to mind here. Tony

Soprano is a very believable and scary character. Why? He is capable of

being a loving husband and father. At the same time he is capable of

cheating on his wife and murdering both former friends and foes alike. He is

also capable of doing work on his own feelings by attending a therapist. In

short, despite ourselves, we begin to like Tony Soprano. This in itself leaves

us very uncomfortable indeed. This mafia boss or capo has good points and

bad points. He’s not all evil and he certainly is not all good. So Tony is not

demonized by the programme. Rather he is painted in the round – with his

12 Keats speaks of this concept in his letter to George and Georgiana Keats in a letter dated, and obviously written over an extended period, Sunday 14 Feb.-Monday 3 May 1819. This

letter may be read on-line at http://www.mrbauld.com/keatsva.html, accessed

07/02/2015

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many good points as well as his many bad ones. This, to my mind, is what

makes The Sopranos a great TV show and this is precisely what makes it so

popular. In summary, then, humankind, come of age, begins to

understand the complexities of the human psyche or the complexities of being

human or the complexities of the many moral dilemmas in which it finds

itself embroiled.

The viewing of the wonderful German film The Downfall 13produced the

same reaction in me. I began to find myself beginning to have some little

sympathy with the dreadfully flawed and evil character of Hitler. This fact

disturbed me then and continues to disturb me. This reaction to both Tony

Soprano and to the depiction of a more “human” (though not humane)

portrayal of Hitler is the result of good drama, of good ethical and moral

drama. How can I even use those words “moral” and “ethical” with respect to

both these dramas? Quite simply because good drama and good literature

and good cinema seek to present an honest account of human motivation,

an honest account of humankind in the round as it were, not just the warts

and all, but also those kindlier characteristics of so-called monsters!

When we find newspapers using headlines like, “Hitler the Monster” or

“paedophile priest” or “scum of the earth” and so on, we must begin to

question such an obviously crass use of language. What does “monster”

mean? Let the writer of the headline look up the OED or some other useful

dictionary. King Kong was a monster as was Frankenstein. Some might even

say the wonderfully fine human being John Merrick was a monster, he who

was also called by that horrible description “The Elephant Man” because of

his horrific bodily deformities. We're not all too sure of what we mean by

monster are we, short of the fact that the word gets the hair standing on

people's necks?

13 Downfall (German: Der Untergang) is a 2004 German war film, directed by Oliver

Hirschbiegel that depicts the final ten days of Adolf Hitler’s reign over Nazi Germany in

1945.

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And so we are disturbed by good drama, and why should we not be? I

remember a good priest who is a friend of mine often saying, and it is so

true, that “Jesus came to comfort the disturbed and to disturb the

comfortable.” When we are disturbed, our consciences are being awakened,

our sensitivities are being deepened, our understanding of human nature is

being brought to deeper ground and our compassion for all humankind is

being extended. It is possible to love the weak and deformed. It is possible to

love the criminal and insane – albeit with great difficulty. It is possible to love

our enemies – albeit with considerable difficulty also. It is possible to come to

terms with the more evil parts of ourselves, that is our shadow parts and by

incorporating these latter into a whole within our psyche we stop short from

projecting these weaknesses and evils onto others.14 In this way we begin to

avoid evil in the world by avoiding confrontations solely as the result of our

more adolescent and ego-ridden projections.

Evil has fascinated humankind ever since the dawn of consciousness.

It has fascinated writers of all genres – novelists, poets, essayists, historians

and journalists. Their task, through their respective media, is to grapple

imaginatively and creatively with the reality and indeed the alarming extent

of man’s inhumanity to his fellow man – in the words of the famous

American war poet, Randal Jarrell, about man’s being “a wolf to man.” Also,

the famous quotation from the wonderful German Romantic writer Heinrich

Heine comes to my mind here: In his 1821 play, Almansor, this German

writer, referring to the burning of the Muslim holy book, the Koran, during

the Spanish Inquisition — famously wrote: "Where they burn books, they will

end in burning human beings." One century later, ironically, Heine's own

books were among the thousands of volumes that were torched by the Nazis

in Berlin's Opernplatz in an outburst that did, in fact, foreshadow the

blazing ovens of the Holocaust

14 Psychological projection is a theory in psychology in which humans defend themselves

against unpleasant impulses by denying their existence in themselves, while attributing them to others. For example, a person who is rude may constantly accuse other people of

being rude. One might also remark in general that we also overcome evil by doing good, that

is, as Aristotle put it, we become good by doing good.

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3.1 Tension of Opposites

There is a specific tension of opposites that I wish to explore here is that

between innocence and experience. Indeed this tension has been, and still is

indeed, at the heart of much creative literature. The book that immediately

comes to my mind is that wonderful novel Lord of the Flies by William

Golding which was one of the novels I read for my Leaving Certificate exams

at school here in Ireland in 1976. It is a wonderfully rich story which treats

of this conflict between innocence and experience and the growth of moral

evil in our world. It does not surprise the reader that this wonderful novel

by Nobel prize-winning author William Golding was published in 1953, less

than ten years after the end of World War II which inflicted such

unprecedented suffering on humankind. At an allegorical level, one can

argue that the central theme of this novel is the conflicting impulses that

seem to be at the heart of humankind and which seek to establish a

secure civilization, that is, on the one hand, the impulse to live by rules,

peacefully and in harmony where we protect one another's back as it were,

and on the other hand, the impulse to take over and control others, in short,

the will to power.

Other themes include the tension between what one might term

"groupthink" and individuality, between rational and emotional reactions,

and between morality and immorality. How these play out, and how different

people feel the influences of these, form a major subtext of Lord of the Flies,

at least, to my mind. The Innocence versus Experience tension reigns

supreme as a holder or carrier, as it were, of all these themes. The boys

in Golding's novel were survivors of a plane crash on a remote and idyllic,

almost paradisiacal island that reminds the reader of perhaps The Garden of

Eden or at least of Robinson Crusoe's island in the Caribbean. Anyways,

this backdrop is the scene against which the struggle between good and evil,

care and indifference, love and hate, morality and immorality plays

itself out. At base, the individual, I argue, experiences this struggle as a

tension between Innocence and Experience.

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Now let us take the film Io non ho paura (I'm Not Scared) from the Italian

director Gabriele Salvatores as a further example. The theme of this

beautifully directed and splendidly shot film is once again the struggle

between the innocent world of childhood and the not-so-innocent one of

adulthood; the struggle between good and evil as it is played out in the lives

of poor boys and girls as they struggle to grow up in the Mezzogiorno area of

Italy in the late 1970s.15

For most of this film, we adults are brought lovingly and gently into the

world of our own youth, only to be disturbed by the experience of grosser

things in the apparently idyllic landscape. These grosser things in turn are

(i) the bully among the gang of friends, (ii) the spooky call of the raven and

the hidden world of the scary creepy crawlies, (iii) the discovery of the

zombie-like boy, (iv) the further discovery that daddy is not that wonderful

after all. In fact, he is actually a member of the kidnapping gang, (v) the

sharing of a room with the evil gang-leader, and finally (vi) the fact that

adults aren't really all that wonderful at all, nor is the world they inhabit.

All in all, we are reminded that growing up is a painful business, that the

world of innocence does not and cannot exist in its own purified and rarefied

state. The harsh world of experience must enter in.

That discordant world, indeed, can be coped with and even incorporated

into the innocent world if and only if we are courageous, and this film seems

to suggest that such incorporation can take place if we grow morally and

rebel against the grosser aspects of the evil in the world and in

ourselves. Michele's father does rebel against his leader by putting the love

for his own son first. Also, at the end of the film the

15

I'm Not Scared (Io non ho paura) was made in 2003 and was directed by Gabriele

Salvatores. The script was written by Francesa Marciano and Niccolo Ammaniti. Indeed, the

film is a screen version of a novel by the second of these script writers, that is Niccolò Ammaniti's successful 2001 Italian book Io non ho paura. The story is set during

Italy's anni di piombo, a time riddled with terrorism and kidnapping in the 1970s. Now

"anni di piombo" literally means "years of lead" and most likely refers to the huge amount of bullets fired during these years of conflict. In fact, there was a film of that name - Anni di Piombo made and screened in 1981.

16 | P a g e

wounded Michele reaches out his hand towards the now freed formerly

kidnapped boy, suggesting again this possible incorporation of experience

into innocence and some possible positive resolution. In other words, if we

are willing to learn from our mistakes, to change from selfishness to

selflessness in reaching out to others then possibly this world will be

redeemed.

At the end of Lord of the Flies we read the familiar and oft-quoted lines

that I have committed to memory ever since my first reading this novel in

1974/5: "Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart,

and the fall through the air of a true, wise friend called Piggy." 16

One gets the feeling, having read this wonderful book from the pen

of William Golding that evil will win out in men's hearts, but one is left with

an equally strong feeling after viewing I Am Not Afraid that innocence can

somehow incorporate the lessons of the experience of evil into the idyll of

innocence and that somehow love and care can win out in the

end. Golding, having fought in World War II in the British navy, was all too

aware of evil and one can consequently forgive him his negative take on

humanity. In like manner, one can also understand Niccolo

Ammaniti's positivity having lived "the good life" in more peaceful times.

4. Lessons from Psychology

4.1 Emotional and Unconscious Reactions

There is a word that I think sums up much of the contemporary

attitude to evil, or that at least sums up our reaction to seeing acts of evil

being committed and that word is demonization. During every war, whether

internecine or international, one side will demonize the other. For any

parties at war, the combatants on the home side are always “right” and those

on the other always “wrong.”

16 These lines from the end of Chapter 12 occur near the close of the novel, after the boys

encounter the naval officer, who appears as if out of nowhere to save them.

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Needless to say, this is a gross oversimplification of matters, but during

disputes even, never mind wars, oversimplifications are indeed rife.

Propaganda takes the place of objective news for the most part. Then there is

the further “evil” of believing our own propaganda, swallowing whole gross

exaggerations and prejudices and allowing hate for others to consume us.

Historically, for example, in Northern Ireland before the Good Friday

Agreement, those with politics of an extreme orange hue would have seen

Gerry Adams as “the devil incarnate,” while those of an extreme green hue in

politics would have seen Ian Paisley as “the hoofed one.” One can trace the

history of the deification or canonization of one’s own nation and heroes and

the demonization of the nation and heroes of the opposition/enemy even if

one only has rudimentary historical and analytical skills. Somehow or other,

the enemy is always painted in the blackest terms.

4.2 The Personal Weight of Evil: The Human Shadow and Jung’s Diagnosis

"Everyone carries a shadow," Jung wrote, "and the less it is embodied in

the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is." 17 It may be (in

part) one's link to more primitive animal instincts, which are superseded

during early childhood by the conscious mind.18 Likewise any nation has its

own collective shadow within which the nation’s fears and hatreds dwell.

Now, not everything in the shadow is evil in Jung’s psychology unlike that of

Freud where everything in the unconscious was, by definition, simply

negative. However, Jung wrote a book called The Undiscovered Self at the

height of The Cold War in 1957, barely 20 years after the bloodbath of The

Second World War when the horrors of the holocaust of innocent Jews as

well as that of many other minorities were still fresh in people’s minds. It is

hard to blame Jung for concentrating on the propensity for evil that exists in

the human heart in that book. The shadow of evil was psychically palpable

to the more sensitive members of the human race and Jung was among the

17 Jung, C.G. (1938). "Psychology and Religion." In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P.131 18 Jung, C.G. (1952). "Answer to Job." In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East.

P.12

18 | P a g e

most sensitive in this regard. The harsh reality, though, was that most

Germans, and indeed other nationalities, were in denial of their

responsibilities for any of this horrific evil. There is nothing new in this, at

all. We can but agree with our psychiatrist scholar that denial of

responsibility and a suppression of guilt is common to all humankind.

In Jungian thought, and the present writer finds it hard to deny this

stark truth, wars are most definitely the result of humanity's failure to deal

with its own shadow on an individual as well as on a collective basis. Instead

of integrating it into the psyche it seeks to externalize it in evil out there, by

demonizing others. I read the following words with a nod of deep

acceptance:

The horror which dictator states have of late brought upon mankind is nothing less than the culmination of all those atrocities of which our ancestors made themselves

guilty in the not so distant past. Quite apart from the barbarities and blood baths perpetrated by the Christian nations among themselves throughout European history,

the European has also to answer for all the crimes he has committed against dark-skinned peoples during the

process of colonization. In this respect the white man carries a very heavy burden indeed. It shows us a picture of the common human shadow that could hardly

be painted in blacker colours. The evil that comes to light in man and that undoubtedly dwells within him is

of gigantic proportions, so for the Church to talk of original sin and to trace it back to Adam's relatively innocent slip up with Eve is almost a euphemism. The

case is far graver and is grossly underestimated.19

4.3. Humankind's Ignorance and its Denial of Knowledge of Evil

What adds to the problem of evil is each individual's lack of true or real

knowledge of his/her own soul. Some of us are not aware at all of the

Shadow at work in the psyche, while others are in denial of this reality

completely. Universally almost, humankind believes that it is merely what

its consciousness knows of itself. In other words, we may say that once

again human beings are living a one-dimensional life, namely, merely a

19 C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self, p. 67

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conscious one and are forgetting about or actively denying even, that we

have an unconscious level to our psyche, too. As Jung says elsewhere in

this short wonderful classic – “we are duplex, not simplex creatures.” The

level of evil in the world all boils down to humanity's failure to take on board

this duplex nature of its psyche which is at once Conscious and

Unconscious, Rational and Irrational, Head and Heart, Thinking and Feeling,

Head and Gut - call this a principle of opposites if you wish. Real self-

knowledge means that one sets about integrating the two poles by keeping

them in a healthy tension as it were. Jung argues that humankind adds

stupidity to his iniquity when s/he regards himself/herself as harmless or

innocent. None of us is harmless or innocent. Another way of putting this

religiously if you are a believer, or at least metaphorically if you have at least

a literary turn of mind, is to say that humankind is born into a sinful world

with the stain of “original sin” on his or her soul. Interestingly, once again a

small number of modern Television Series and Films can come to our aid

with their insights into the complexity that we human beings are. I have

already referred to the HBO channel series The Sopranos above as one that

portrays fully rounded rather than cardboard characters with respect to the

complexity of humanity. The series called House also raises interesting

moral and ethical issues. Here, I am reminded that Dr. House is so right

when in one episode he opines, and we all must agree if we are not still lying

to ourselves, that quite simply, “everyone lies,” whatever their motivations

may be. 20

4.4 The Terrible Tension of Opposites 21

I have written much elsewhere about the tension of opposites - it seems

to be at the very heart of our existence. And somewhere along that

continuum between those opposite poles thrives life. The tension between

opposites may at times be experienced as terrible or terrifying, but if life is to

be embraced in its fullness, this tension has to be lived through. It is in

20House (sometimes as House, M.D.) is an American television medical drama that originally

ran on the Fox network for eight seasons, from November 16, 2004 to May 21, 2012. 21 See Section 3.1. above where I treat of the same topic with respect to cinema and

literature

20 | P a g e

grappling with this tension that we grow. When we deny this tension of

opposites, we stagnate or wither, or worse still we embrace one or other

extremist position, that is, one which denies unrealistically the other pole.

Those who do this end up sanctifying certain people, positions, thoughts and

feelings while demonising other people, positions, thoughts and feelings.

These are those people who live in a monochrome world where black is

black, white is white and where there are no shades of grey in between.

Spare us from these extremes and extremists.

5. Warning to Fundamentalists

Let me here issue a well worn, often repeated, warning to fundamentalists

of all hues: to (i) naive scientism as inherited from The Enlightenment on the

one hand and (ii) Christian or Religious fundamentalism on the other, both

of which seek to reduce the complexity of evil to simplistic dimensions.

5.1 The Naive Belief in Continual Linear Scientific Progress

There is no accounting for the evil that lies at the very heart of human

beings. We have long lost our innocence. Such optimism and innocence

died with the two great World Wars of the twentieth century. The nineteenth

century was the century of optimism and of seeming eternal progress for

human kind – a direct inheritance of the naive positivism and shallow

positivity bequeathed to us by that period known as The Enlightenment. It

seemed then that progress and improvement, brought on by the Industrial

revolution, would lead to the eventual perfection of the human project. This

myth was soon shattered. Human beings never were and never will be

perfect. At most we are a far from a perfect and complete project. We might

swallow our myths whole at the times of peace, but at the times of conflict

and war such a diet is not alone indigestible but sickens the psyche of those

left behind onto a death of spirit that mirrors psychologically the bodily

death of their men folk on the far away fields of war.

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5.2 The Naive Belief in Literalism of Scripture and Tradition

We must, when talking about suffering, guard against simplistic and trite

answers. For example, suffering is sent by a rather cruel God to test the

strength of our faith. Such answers, mostly advanced by Christians and

religionists of a fundamentalist and literalist view of the Bible or other holy

book, give people a false image of God: a rather tyrannical figure who likes to

torture his creatures. All we can do is search for insights – there are no full

and complete answers. Also a naive belief in an unscientific creationism also

advances a naive understanding of the place of evil, pain and suffering in

both human life and in that of the world in general.

6. Narrowness of the Classical Philosophical Statement of the Problem.

Let me note here that this is a statement of the problem or paradox of evil

as classically formulated and as expressed about in section 2.2. of this

paper. As such it engages the human being at the level of the intellect alone

or at the level of reasoning and rationality only. It leaves entirely out of the

question other aspects of the human person. For us moderns, with a deeper

knowledge of psychology than the ancients, with our appreciation of say the

theory of Multiple Intelligences as proposed by Howard Gardner 22 that

acknowledges more than just traditional narrow IQ, such a limited

engagement with the question of evil is somewhat unsatisfying and

superficial. It also does scant justice to the way human beings actually

make decisions with regard to their beliefs about and actions in their real

everyday lives. The thought of John Henry Newman (1801 – 1890) like that

of Pascal (1623 – 1662) before him can be said to be the outcome and

expression of great spiritual travail in struggling with life. Making big

decisions about life was not just a change of head or heart alone - it was

more : 'For myself, it was not logic then that carried me on....It is the

concrete being who reasons...the whole man moves; paper logic is but a

22 Howard Gardner (1993) Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, New York:

Basic Books

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record of it.'23 Faith or religious belief, like conversion, enlists 'the whole

man.' It is in that context that I will now proceed to make the seminal

distinction between problem and mystery.

6.1 The Distinction between Problem and Mystery

Many years ago I wrote an undergraduate thesis called The Mystery of

Evil. From early on, I grew to dislike the word “problem” with respect to the

question of evil because it had too close an association in my mind with

mathematics which I would go on to study later in my student life. I began to

prefer the word “mystery”, not in the sense of something that one should not

talk about, or be scared or shy to talk about or as an excuse to avoid difficult

answers. Mystery refers, to my mind at least, to a whole range of issues,

associations and connotations; to a whole intricate web of complexities

which confront the human being on a broad front, 24 on a very existential

level while a problem denotes something that confronts us on an intellectual

or cerebral level alone. In other words, what I am getting at here is that real

existential suffering brings us beyond superficial intellectual problems that

can or cannot be solved to a deeper level of going with or living with and in

the pain or suffering which we encounter in our lives as baffling mystery.

All our argumentations, theorizing, philosophizing, theologizing and

speculations count as nothing – they are mere chaff in the wind. It’s life in

the round, with its vicissitudes, all its ups and downs; life in its totality or

indeed life in its mystery that counts. It was at this juncture in my life that

the insights of the great Christian existentialist philosopher Gabriel Marcel

came to my aid, and I have been a fan and a follower long since. According to

Marcel, we are part of, and thus cannot be objective about, our own

existence. Existence transcends objective enquiry, and is thus a mystery.

Scientific questions may be objectively answerable, and may be considered

as problems for which there may be solutions. However, philosophic

questions may not be objectively answerable, and may involve mysteries

23 J.H. Newman, Apologia, p. 225. 24 This includes also the intellectual dimension of the person.

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which are part of our own existence. Science may be concerned with

problems which we can stand apart from and be objective about, but

philosophy may be concerned with mysteries which we cannot stand apart

from or be objective about.25

I remember finding a definition of mystery given by the early twentieth

century French theologian Eugène Joly, which supported Marcel’s

marvellous and important distinction, a definition which went something

along these lines: “A mystery is not a wall off which you bang your head.

Rather, it is an ocean into which you dive.” Hence, I began by stating in my

introduction to that undergraduate thesis that evil was not a problem to be

solved, but rather a mystery to be lived, and this important distinction has

remained firmly to the forefront of my mind ever since.

For Marcel, then, a mystery is not an 'object' of perception in my mind,

but rather it is felt as a 'presence' that is capable of being experienced and

recognized. We know instinctively when we are in the presence of mystery,

because it pulls us up and stops us in our tracks to use a cliché. It is rather

akin to Rudolf Otto’s experience of the “Divine” as “Mysterium tremendum et

fascinans.”26 Marcel’s thoughts on mystery are outlined in a book called The

Mystery of Being,27 which as many scholars have pointed out since, is more

25 See Alasdair MacIntyre, "Existentialism," in A Critical History of Western Philosophy,

edited by D.J. O'Connor (New York: The Free Press, 1964), p. 522. 26 See R. Otto (1950), The Idea of The Holy, London: Oxford Press. This is surely one of the

most successful German theological books of the twentieth century. Therein the author

defined the ‘holy’ as the ‘numinous’ and mysticism as an encounter with the

‘numinous.’ Otto left a broad influence on theology and philosophy of religion in the first

half of the 20th century. German-American theologian Paul Tillich acknowledged Otto's influence on him, as did Romanian-American philosopher Mircea Eliade. 27 G. Marcel (1950), The Mystery of Being, London: The Harvill Press Limited. The book is

essentially the text of Marcel’s Gifford Lectures given at the University of Aberdeen,

1949/50. They were translated by G.S. Fraser. The Catholic theologian, Karl Rahner also emphasised humankind’s encounter with mystery. In his monumental Foundations of Christian Faith, the title of the second chapter reads quite simply: “Man in the Presence of

Absolute Mystery.” In fact, Rahner disliked the plural of the word “mystery” when used in theology or philosophy and preferred most decidedly its singular and proposed a mystical

approach to the question of God (though significantly he avoided using the God word at all

in the title of that particular chapter preferring the term “Absolute Mystery.”) Indeed, once

he described his method in theology as a “reductio in Mysterium.” All individual mysteries

converged eventually in the one Absolute Mystery of God.

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concerned with exploring what is meant by Mystery rather than what is

indeed the nature of our “being” in this mysterious, wonderful, and at times

very painful world. My argument in this brief account of the question of evil

is that it is one mystery among many that fundamentally converges with all

the others within the larger horizon of the one mystery of life that in turn is

subsumed into the greater Absolute Mystery as Karl Rahner argues. 28

In the end, the answer, we may argue, lies firmly in an approach more

broadly aimed; one that attempts to encompass the complexity at the heart

of humankind and its search for meaning in an often seemingly indifferent

universe. Whether one accepts this or that answer is an entirely individual

matter, but to dismiss that of another without due attention to good

argument and a respect for their position and beliefs is inadmissible by any

decent standards. This author takes some solace from that oft-quoted

chestnut from the wise old Socrates: “I know that I do not know!” The

declaration of our ignorance is a great starting point in any debate, and most

definitely so with respect to the problem and mystery of evil.

28 See footnote 27 above. The second part of Chapter 2 of The Foundations of Christian Faith

discusses whether we can know God at all. It advances Rahner’s central thesis, namely, that we encounter God in a transcendental experience of God’s Holy Mystery. Whenever we

experience our limits, imagining what lies beyond them, we begin to transcend them. In

that experience, we recognize the mystery of our existence, whose origin and destiny are not

yet clear. To know that mystery, says Rahner, is to know the source of transcendence.

Indeed, it is my contention that we experience our limits when we encounter the lesser mystery of suffering that can only make sense within the greater context of an Absolute

Mystery, namely God.

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Bibliography

Howard Gardner (1993) Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, New York: Basic Books

Golding, W. (1976) The Lord of the Flies, London: Faber & Faber.

Hick, J. (1978) Evil and the God of Love, Basingstoke: Palmgrave Macmillan

Jung, C.G. (1984) Modern Man in search of a Soul. London: Ark Paperbacks Jung, C.G. (2010) The Undiscovered Self. London and New York: Routledge. Lavine, T.Z. (1984) From Socrates to Sartre: The Philosophic Quest. New

York: Bantam Books. MacIntyre, A. (1964) "Existentialism," in A Critical History of Western Philosophy, edited by D.J. O'Connor, New York: The Free Press.

Marcel, G. (1950), The Mystery of Being, London: The Harvill Press Limited.

Otto, R. (1950), The Idea of The Holy, London: Oxford Press.

Rahner, K. (1978), Foundations of Christian Faith. New York: Seabury Press Strang, Strang, Hultborn & Arnér (2004), “Existential Pain—An Entity, a

Provocation, or a Challenge?”in Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, Vol. 27 No. 3.