A Theology of Everything

Part 4, The Ontological Drop

In the last two posts I've worked through some thoughts regarding a theology of creation. I'm doing that, as you might have picked up on the last post, to create some connections between theodicy and soteriology, how the "problem of evil" (theodicy) might be implicated in our theologies of salvation (soteriology).

In my thinking, the doctrine of creation I'm working through helps to connect a moral conception of the fall ("sin") with what I described in the last post as "the ontological drop," the drift of being into non-being. In many Protestant spaces these twinned aspects of the fall--sin and death--tend to become separated. Generally speaking, only sin is the focus of salvation and the ontological consequences of the fall are left uncommented upon. This impoverishes our visions of salvation and shifts questions away from soteriology toward theodicy. That is to say, when you lose a rich ontological description of the fall questions that should have been handled by your theology of salvation get left unanswered and are, therefore, dumped into the theodicy bucket. Theodicy becomes the leftovers of an undercooked soteriology.

Again, the "ontological drop" happens when Adam severs his dependence upon God. The contingent nature of creation starts being shadowed by non-being. Separated from God, creation slides toward non-existence. 

When did this "ontological drop" happen?

In another speculative move, perhaps the most speculative of the series, I want to borrow the contention from Maximus the Confessor that creation dropped "immediately." At the very moment of creation it fell away. This is, you know, not the normal idea. Generally, we think of Adam and Eve's sojourn in Paradise as lasting for a season. But on three different occasions in his writings, Maximus describes how humanity fell the "instant" we were created. For example:

"...our nature unnaturally fell at the instant it was created, thus depleting its whole potential." (Ambiguum, 42)

"But at the instant he was created, the first man, by use of his senses, squandered this spiritual capacity--the natural desire of the mind for God--on sensible things." (Ad Thalassim, 61)

Humanity was created whole and perfect, but the moment we stepped into contingent existence our passions pulled us away from God. Two things happen in this first instant. First, there is a moral separation from God. Sin is introduced. This creates a hamartiological rupture focused upon human volition. ("Hamartiology" is our doctrine of sin.) Following Maximus, at the instant of creation humanity falls and become morally separated from God. 

The second thing that happens is that, due to sin, created existence "drops" into its contingency and becomes shadowed by non-being. Separated from God's vivifying power, creation begins drifting away from life. Death, disease, decay, and damage begin to eat away at being.

One of the things I'm trying to do here is tightly link what is often described as "moral evil" and "natural evil." Moral evil is human sinfulness, and we can point to the harms caused by human beings. Natural evil, from cancer to earthquakes, causes suffering of a different kind, and can't be directly blamed on human choice. The theology of creation I'm sharing here is connecting the two. At the instant of creation sin ontologically drops us into contingency. At the instant of creation the potential shadow of non-being becomes actual. 

Because creation is ex Deo, when humanity fell away from God, both hamartiologically and ontologically, "evil" is movement toward non-being, nothingness. When humanity rejects God, the only positive existent good, we can only be choosing nothingness. This where creation ex nihilo is the flipside of creation ex Deo. If you turn away from God you are turning toward nothingness. Sin is choosing non-being, non-existence, and death. When you walk away from God you walk into the void. This is the hamartiological aspect of the fall.

The ontological aspect of the fall is what I've already described in great detail, the slide of being into non-being. Consequently, natural evil, like moral evil, is movement into nothingness. If you want a scientific frame for this, for creatures our drift into non-being appears as the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the drift of order into disorder. Life toward death. This is the ontological aspect of the fall.

Summarizing, "evil" is the word creatures use to name non-being. Non-being might look like sin or it might look like entropy, but these are two sides of the same coin. One side is hamartiological and the other side is ontological. Since creation is both ex nihilo and ex Deo movement away from God is movement into nothingness. We move either toward God or away from God, toward either Being or non-being. Goodness names one direction, evil names the other.

Now, I do want to be clear in all this that if you're looking for a "solution" or "answer" to the problem of evil in this post, it's not being offered. Again, what I'm floating here, which isn't novel but really a summary of a great deal of patristic thought, is a twinning of soteriology and theodicy, linking sin and death, into a whole gestalt. As a reminder, the point of this series is some systematization, to pull a lot of theological threads together into a comprehensive, coherent whole. 

The "win" here, in linking hamartiology and ontology, is that when we turn to soteriology and eschatology in the posts to come we have before us a single problem, creation's movement toward non-being.