Unspoken Cosmological Assumptions

On Enchantment, the Double Fall, and Theodicy

When we reflect upon the problem of evil, the problem of pain and suffering in the world, there is a metaphysical disjoint between us and our forebears.

A lot of people I've talked with about the problem of evil have expressed to me how they don't have too much of a problem with what is called "moral evil," the suffering in the world caused by human agents. That is to say, they don't blame God for something like the Holocaust or slavery. Humans are responsible for those evils. To be sure, not everyone feels that way, but some people let God off the hook, at least a little bit, for the evil things we humans do.

But things are different when it comes to "natural evil," the sufferings associated with death, disease, accident, and natural catastrophes. These traumas are more directly related to "how the world works" and cannot be blamed on humans. So, blame is directed at God the Creator.

For much of church history, both natural and moral evil was explained by an appeal to a "double fall," the fall of the angels and the fall of humanity in the Garden of Eden. Natural evil, in this view, is attributable to a rebellion among the angelic "rulers" of the cosmos. Moral evil is also linked to this angelic rebellion, given traditional readings of Genesis 3 where the serpent is identified with Satan. You also see the moral evils of oppression and injustice associated with the misrule of the angelic "sons of God" in Psalm 82. In the New Testament, Satan is described as the "god of this world" and we wrestle against the rebellious angelic "principalities and powers" in the heavenly realm.

In short, for most of church history, the angelic rebellion did a lot of the heavy lifting in theodicy. But not so much today. Today, when we debate the problem of evil, you rarely hear anyone point a finger at Satan or rebellious cosmic archons. We'd find such an appeal to the double fall very implausible. 

This change is due, I believe, to a loss of enchantment and the rise of a more deistic vision of the cosmos. For us, the cosmos isn't stuffed with spiritual agents. Rather, the cosmos is a machine. Thus, we don't experience the cosmos as in a state of "rebellion," for that would imply agency. Rather, the machine is "broken." And we trace that brokenness back to some "design flaw." Basically, our imagination of the cosmos has shifted from agency (human and angelic) toward mindless, mechanistic causality. Mind, human and angelic, is no longer a part of our conversations about theodicy. We only see dumb chains of causes and effects, the "laws of physics." And so, we blame the designer of those laws.

To be clear, I'm merely being descriptive with all this. I'm not suggesting we have to convince ourselves of the angelic rebellion as the first in a double fall. I think the modern Christian imagination has become too disenchanted for that to be a live and widespread possibility. My point in all this is simply to draw attention to how largely unspoken and implicit cosmological assumptions impact our conversations about theodicy. As I pointed out, most of us approach theodicy with a deistic imagination, tacitly assuming that the world is a machine, a clockwork operating deterministically. And that working assumption pinches and constricts conversations about pain and suffering. Frankly, I think the implicit deism operating behind most conversations about theodicy is the main reason we find theodicy so unsatisfactory. Certain predictable frustrations are baked in right at the start. 

But again, my point here isn't to convert you to the cosmology of the first centuries of the church. Though that wouldn't be a horrible thing. My goal in pointing out that lost and ancient cosmology is to simply draw attention to your own cosmological assumptions, how you imagine the world when you enter a debate about theodicy. My guess is that what you find helpful or frustrating, satisfying or unsatisfying, about those conversations has little to do with the arguments themselves. Rather, the entire conversation is being carried by your unspoken cosmological assumptions, assumptions that rarely, if ever, come under scrutiny and reflection.