Abstract
This paper explores the relationship between the problem of evil and a kenotic view of the Atonement evidenced not just by feminist theologians, but by analytic philosophers of religion. (“Kenosis”, from the Greek κένωσις, “emptiness,” generally refers to the emptying of the self, and more specifically refers to the passion of Christ, during which Christ suffered on behalf of humanity.) I will argue that, although kenosis provides an interesting story about the ability of Christ to partake in human suffering, it faces debilitating problems for understanding divine concurrence with evil in the world. Most significantly, I will argue that the potential tensions between divine justice (in holding wrongdoers responsible) and divine love (for those who suffer) can be loosened by looking at ‘redemptive accounts’ of theodicy in the scholarship of women writing in the early modern period in philosophy, particularly Mary Hays (1759–1843), and Catharine Macaulay (1731–1791). Their work collectively confirms the problem of concrete evil (that is, not just that evil must be logically possible in order for God to create the best possible world, but that atrocious harms are pernicious to a perfectly existing necessary being) and yet offers a unique theodicy grounded in the saving power of the Atonement and restorative power of Christian service. Their arguments are all the more compelling for having been written in response to egregious civil rights abuses and rampant domestic violence of their day. If the Atonement is the divinely-ordained method for gaining insight into the redemptive power of divine grace, then rather than speculating about the metaphysical nature of the divine, this paper will question how we can understand divine perfection in light of evil in the world, especially if the Atonement of Christ involves kenosis.
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Notes
F.F. Bruce (Philippians, (Ada, MI: Baker Books), 1989, section 9) writes that part of the difficulty in Philippians 2:5 is that there is a missing verb, “The interpretative problem in this verse lies partly in the supplying of a verb for the adjective clause ho kai en Christō Iēsou and partly in the understanding of the phrase 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…we supply prepei (“is fitting”), then en Christōlēsou will mean “in your common life in Christ Jesus.”
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.
Philip McCosker wryly points out that “kenosis” is a “weasel word” whose “popularity is inversely proportional 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 the human situation by emptying himself through the atoning act, rather than an absolute kenosis in which Christ abandoned his divine nature (see Marilyn McCord Adams, Christ and Horrors, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006, 88–90).
This presents many other rich issues, especially for the feminist. If Christ’s suffering was merely an instance of another human suffering, then Christ identification with humanity comes qua a man, not as God, and so his death would allow Christ (as a good man) to identify with men who suffer, but not (in a prima facie manner) with women.
See, for example, Balthasar, Theo-drama IV 1994, 336.
Mercedes (2011), 62, is especially helpful here.
The work of Macaulay and Hays, like most female scholarship in the early modern period, is just now gaining popularity qua philosophy rather than merely as literature, political science, or history.
A fact that has led many to reject kenosis, just (as it was earlier observed, see note 3) as abuses within the Church 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 male thought. 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.
Eschatological justice connotes an all-things-considered, at the end of life justice, in which believers can be comforted about the ills of human existence, by promises of final vindication and reward—results in an even better good into eternity. (See David Aune 2010, 573).
This point is made by Walker 1988, 183.
Robert Adams (1998), in section 1.3 of Leibniz: Determinist, Theist, Idealist, explicates the nuances of hypothetical necessity for Leibniz—certainly an idea that evolved over Leibniz’s life. Adams provides Leibniz’s own clarification of truths that come from what is necessary: “In this place we call necessary only that 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 the supposition of this series of things—that is, from the harmony of things—or from the Existence of God, are contingent through themselves and only hypothetically necessary. (A Vi, iii, 128), 17.
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 are reasonably foreseeable intolerable harms produced (maintained, supported, tolerated, and so on) by culpable wrongdoing. So understood, evils have two irreducibly distinct components: a harm component and an agency component”.
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press (2008), 18 and 84. It is important to note that Antognazza argues that 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).
Ruether (1998), 234ff is also helpful here.
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 by sufferings; and those from whom the dross is separated in this first stage of existence, are assuredly nearer to that state of pure and perfect enjoyment, where our faculties will no longer be enigmatical, and where these glorious faculties, here too frequently only inlets to pain, will find their proper gratification? Whether we reason from experience, observation, or analogy, every conclusion goes to prove, that this world is a state of discipline and progression and can never be, ‘The final issue of the works of God, forever rising with the rising mind’”.
An excellent synopsis of these views can be found in Janet M. Soskice, The Kindness of God, (Oxford, OUP), 2008.
Notice that none of the theodical arguments presented here are best of all possible worlds arguments.
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Acknowledgments
Research support for this paper was provided by a generous National Endowment for the Humanities Faculty Award. This paper benefitted tremendously from input received by participants in the University of Notre Dame’s 2014 Logos Workshop. Special thanks to William J. Abraham, Joy Ann McDougall, Samuel Newlands, Michael Rea, Marilyn McCord Adams, Amy Peeler, Andrea White, Lacy Hudspeth, and Kevin Diller.
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Hernandez, J.G. Acquainted with Grief: the Atonement and Early Feminist Conceptions of Theodicy. Philosophia 43, 97–111 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-014-9568-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-014-9568-0