Theologically, Ivan is sermonizing for suffering, expressing
in concrete, experiential and emotive terms, the horrors of the world. ANY
theology that denies this cry is doing humanity and God, a disservice.
Philosophically, Ivan is making a persuasive point, but not one that seems one
can easily defend or deny argumentatively. This is the crux of Ivan’s argument:
all of existence is not worth the suffering of a single child. It’s a powerful
POSITION and indeed can act as a powerful philosophical PRESUPPOSITION, but I
don’t know how one sets up any arguments for it either way without begging all
kinds of questions. It has powerful rhetorical force but I’m not sure how
logically coercive it is. I, for one, think that being itself is an inherent
good: I feel like humans naturally will, and properly so, being and
consciousness. I don’t know how I go about proving that is the way things
really ought to be, but it strikes me as a most basic of intuitions.
The problem comes because we can imagine other options that
are available to God to give to us, and we judge the attainment of value in
this world by that ideal, and it does indeed seem that God has some moral duty
to actualize the highest value possible for the world. A child’s suffering
seems SENSELESS and it doesn’t seem like Heaven, for instance, can pay back
even one moment of pain for the child, and any progress gained also seems a
weak return on such a terrible loss.
In other words, when it comes to the substance of his
argument, Ivan is being disingenuous. It is indeed God that Ivan rejects, and
the giving back of his ticket is a judgment on God’s handiwork. Let me say that
I agree with Ivan in many, many ways. If God is this far off old man in the
clouds who sets up the universe to be such a costly place and just says “it’ll
all be alright in the long run” then I would also give up my ticket. And indeed
if God is a Being who so little cares for the weight of sin that He forgives
willy-nilly without concern for the costs incurred by the sufferer, I’d rather spend
an eternity in darkness than worship THAT. But where does the argument falter,
what is the only response Alyosha gives to his brother that seems (in the
context of the conversation itself) to give Ivan any real trouble (though he
does have a kind of response)? It is Jesus. Ivan responds to the mention of
“The Man-God” with the story of the GRAND INQUISITOR. God’s self-emptying is,
by Ivan’s light, a way to give freedom to people, to creation, and evil is the
result of a refusal by God to impose Himself upon mankind. Ivan’s argument as I
understand it is that this is not fair, because MAN DIDN’T ASK FOR THIS
FREEDOM, AND REALLY DOESN’T WANT IT. We are no heroes if we didn’t volunteer,
if we didn’t choose to have this ‘gift’ and if we have no say in its terrible
consequences.
Still I’d say Alyosha (and the other heroes of the story
Father Zossima and Zossima’s brother) turn the question around. Instead of
asking why we suffer, they ask if we are going to continue to let GOD suffer.
God is not ‘out there’ ‘somewhere’ but enfleshed within creation and within
each suffering individual. It is the suffering of God in the world that is
Alyosha’s concentration. If God shares in the suffering of the afflicted, His
forgiveness is not dispassionate, and without concern for the evils done, He
understands, and through that understanding retains the moral right to forgive.
The wholeness He gives is acceptable. The child doesn’t suffer alone, and so
his suffering has meaning and can even lead to a deepening of God’s presence in
the world.
But what of Ivan’s claim that we didn’t ask for this? One
could go any go a number of routes: one could claim that Ivan is being a bit
childish. I remember Good Will Hunting, the main character claims he didn’t ask
for his amazing genius, to which the therapist says “no, you were born with it,
so don’t try to cop out of your responsibilities by saying ‘I didn’t ask for
this’”. But it seems to me that a stronger objection is just so ask why we
can’t have the freedom without the cost. It seems perfectly reasonable and
logical to believe that free will without it is possible. My own route is to
say Alyosha and Father Zossima don’t go far enough. Zossima touches on the idea
that we are all part of one big whole (see his conversation with the boy at the
lake) and Alyosha recognizes Christ as the essential answer to the problem of
evil. But what if Christ just IS what God IS. What if being at all, means
living ‘in risk’ and opening oneself up to suffering? What if creation is only
possible THROUGH suffering and struggle and adventure, and that all our
struggles are part of the struggles of God Himself? Indeed that’s what I think.
Being is something that is coming to be, creation is a work in progress and its
one that comes at a cost, and nothing can be cheap to us that is costly to God.
Freedom without cost may be metaphysically possible, but I don’t think God can
just do whatever is metaphysically possible. This freedom may be the only one
God can really bring about, His freedom too. Love may just mean being
vulnerable, and that’s the best we get: our sufferings contribute to the
manifestation of God’s love in the universe. That brings us back, however to
his original point about whether being and creation are worth the cost at all.
That, I think, remains unanswerable. Is it better to be with suffering and
struggle and cost, than not to be at all? My gut tells me yes. But sometimes my
guts have crap for brains.
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