Presented by Kang Hoon Lee
a) What understanding of the concept of divine providence is to be found in Farley's work?
How can we understand the divine providence? The answer, for Farley, seems to be closely related to the adequate understanding of the problem of evil. How can we understand the reality of evil? Traditional answers may be three: that evil is given as the divine punishment for sin; that evil is an element constitutive of the cosmic harmony; and that evil is the pedagogical test of God to purify or correct the Christian souls.1) Farley thinks these answers to be inadequate because they deteriorates into the justification of evil, the impassibility or indifference to the innocent sufferer, and the incapability to resist against evil. Then, what can be the central point in discussion of evil? Farley's answer is that it is suffering.
Why should we pay attention to the issue of suffering in discussion of evil? It is because some2) sufferings, i.e., what Farley calls 'radical suffering,' illuminates why evil cannot be justifiable, how desperately the helpless sufferers need immediate help and care, and why evil should be resisted. For the reason Farley wants to move the focal point of evil from punitive, aesthetic, and pedagogical perspectives to suffering and begins with suffering in her theodicy.
Then, what is the source of suffering and evil? Farley answers that it is not the divine sovereignty to determine every details of whatever happens, nor the divine powerlessness, but the tragic structures of the created world that open the possibility of evil by leaving creatures to be free and the future to be indeterminate.3) In this respect evil is inevitable but should not be attributed to God. Nevertheless, Farley seems to insinuate that God is not totally exempted from the moral responsibility for evil in that he made room in creation for the possibility and actuality of evil.
Here it can be raised a question: Why did God create the world to be so vulnerable? The answer to this question is central to Farley's understanding of the divine power and goodness. According to her, God has a desire for creativity (=eros), the desire created creatures to be self-caused, and therefore they can be and are inflicted by suffering and evil; however, God acknowledges creatures' own values, his love is foolish enough to endure real risks instead of resorting to supernatural or transhistorical interventions, and therefore his power is persuasive rather than dominating or coercive. In this respect God is described as all-good or all-loving but not as all-powerful and symbolically defined as compassion.
Then, what is compassion? Compassion is interactive because of its relational character: interaction begins with the compassionate knowledge to participate in the others' suffering; this knowledge produces concrete actions for the suffering people; these action are self-enjoyment rather than unpleasant self-sacrifice; self-enjoyment discloses that one's happiness is dependent upon and constituted by others' happiness; and therefore compassion empowers people to resist against suffering and evil.4) In this respect the role of God as compassionate power in the presence of suffering and evil is understood two: first, caring for sufferers; second, empowering people to resist suffering and evil. Both of them are what is called 'redemption' and Farley's doctrine of redemption is concentrated on the second role.
Here it can be first asked, Is the empowering power of compassion resistable? Farley' answer is 'yes' because she believes that the divine mercy cannot force human beings to accept the empowering power of compassion. Secondly, Is the empowering power the divine mercy or punishment? It is not the punishment but the mercy of God because, while condemning radical suffering and evil, it redeems evildoers as well as the suffering cause by the condemnation.5)
Then, what are the vehicles of the divine redemption? Farley answers that they are both religious--the Scripture and the Church-- and secular--nature and history. According to her, the Scripture presents us the vision of resistance against suffering and evil through the dangerous memories, and the Church preserves this vision and enacts resistance against suffering and evil.6) However, Farley describes the Scripture and the Church as ambiguous because they are not free from ideological corruptions such as racism, sexism, and have often justified them and therefore because they are partially effective and partially corrupted.
She provides no explanation for nature as a secular means of the divine redemption. And Farley qualifies the redemptive fulfillment within history instead of beyond history.7) Of course, she acknowledges that the recalcitrance of sin and evil can be illuminated by such visions as the utopian perfection of the past and the eschatological consummation of the future.8) However, she asserts these visions--especially the futuristic vision that in the Final day there will be the posthumous recompensation for the present suffering and evil-- to be ineffective because she believes that resistance within history alone proves God to be present and to work in the suffering and evil of history and that human resistance against suffering and evil is to participate in the divine life and to be morally responsible for suffering neighbors.9)
In this respect Farley boldly acknowledges that there is no certainty for the complete ending of suffering and evil within history. However, she refuses to remain in cynicism or skepticism. Rather she seems to maintain that in the midst of radical suffering and evil we should stand upon the Christian faith in the Cross as "the ultimate revelation and enactment of God's power to redeem human beings"10) and the Resurrection as the hint on the non-finality of evil.11)
b) To what extent do you find this concept a promising one for a constructive contemporary statement of the Christian doctrine of providence?
First of all, her explanation for the source of evil is quite applaudable in that evil is not attributed to God and that human beings may have positive responsibility for resisting against evil.
Second, Farley tries to assist the divine power and goodness without losing any meaning of them in that she rejects a description of God as all-powerful who determines whatever happens or as the Cosmic Tyrant who mercilessly exercises his controlling and irresponsible power upon creatures. I agree with her opinion that the divine power as omnipotence is wrong because God is "creative of and" partly "controls individuals with some decision-making power of their own, some ability to settle details left undetermined by the highest power instead of "monopolizing decision-making."12)
Third, she seems to repudiate the divine omniscience when she says that the future is undetermined. This repudiation is adequate because "God does not already or eternally know what we do tomorrow, for, until we decide, there are no such entities as our tomorrow's decisions."13)
Fourth, her understanding of human nature and history is insightful in that, as far as she/he is human, a human being will still remain sinful and the historical achievement of justice will be no more than fragmentary.
Fifth, Farley tends to see reality as such in the context of the too narrow vision. For example, when she envisages the structure of the created world mainly in terms of the tragic vision, she is blind of such an important element as creativity, divine or human. For this reason she seems to insinuate that God is partially responsible for evil by remarking the tragic structure of the creation. If the universe is structured to be free and the future is open to creatures, evil is, however, entirely attributed to creatures, human or non-human. In this respect her book seems to give readers the bad impression that she is too narrowly attached to the tragic vision.
Sixth, she is not clear about how we can experience the empowering power to resist against suffering and evil in the actual world and what the power transforms in human beings.
Seventh, it is ambiguous for her to argue in discussion of the divine ungroundedness that the divine compassion is rooted in the total otherness of God rather than in the divine attributes. By this argument Farley seems to try to secure the divine compassion from the ideological taints, based upon the tradition of the theology of negation. However, the total alterity of God implies the absoluteness of God which is purely abstract, will any desire or thing to happen, and therefore cannot make any increase or realization of value in the divine life. This means that the total otherness or the absoluteness of God cannot have love because compassion has a relational character and therefore can be done only in respect of the relativity of God which is concrete, wills and does in history, and therefore makes increases or actualizations of value in the divine life. In this respect, Farley seems to commit "the fallacy of misplaced concreteness"14) by presupposing the enduring entity of God as the concrete reality.
Eighth, Farley seems to be ignorant of how evildoers can be redeemed, while she says caring for sufferers and resistance for both sufferers and their neighbors. For this reason she is required to say repentance-forgiveness for evildoers. However, she rejects this conception in her discussion of the doctrine of mercy. The rejection seems to imply that premature proclamation of forgiveness may weaken the capability to resist against suffering and evil. But this leads her to be blind to how evildoers can be redeemed from their sins and evils.
On the basis of these analyses, Farley's conception of the divine providence looks to be somewhat promising but includes some unclarities and logical inconsistecies.
1) Farley mentions four types of traditional theodicies, but in my view pedagogical type and eschatological type can be combined into one. See: Tragic Vision and Divine Compassion: A Contemporary Theodicy (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990) p. 22
2) It is not that all sufferings are evil because some may be deserved and just.
3) p.98.
4) Ibid., pp. 116-119.
5) Ibid., pp. 121-122.
6) Ibid., pp. 129-130.
7) Ibid., p. 131.
8) Ibid., p. 130.
9) In her article, "Resistance as a Theological Category: The Cunning of History Revisited" (Bridges vol. 3: Spr-Sum, 1991), Farley boldly asserts the futuristic vision to be illusionary: "It is an illusion of th logic of sovereignty that history will in some unambiguous way overcome the devastation of war, injustice, and radical evil" (p. 124).
10) Wendy Farley, Tragic Vision and the Divine Compassion, p. 112.
11) Ibid., p. 132
12) Charles Hartshorne, Omnipotence & Other Theological Mistakes (Albany: Suny, 1984) p. 38.
13) Ibid., p. 39.
14) Alfred N. Whitehead, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology INY: The Free Press, 1978) p. 7.