EVIL & EVOLUTION

Chapter 9

Cosmic Suffering and the Kingdom of God

Now the earth can certainly clasp me in her giant arms. She can swell me with her life, or draw me back into her dust. She can deck herself with every charm, with every horror, with every mystery. She can intoxicate me with her perfume of tangibility and unity. She can cast me to my knees in expectation of what is maturing in her breast. But her enchantments can no longer do me harm, since she has become for me, over and above herself, the body of Him who is and of Him who is coming.
(Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu)

God's response to the problem of evil is to be found in the mystery of his own suffering in Christ. Yet this Christ, who embodied in himself "the pain of God", had to experience the seeming "godforsakenness" of the human race on the Cross. If the Christ, as God's definitive answer to the evils of this world, had to so suffer, what real hope is there for us?

What hope is there for our joys and our sorrowing, for all our human efforts to make this a better, more just, or more beautiful world? Doesn't anything really count in the end, except to have saved our "souls?"

The total Christian answer, however, has never been that. It has been a great deal more. It has been capsulized in the concept of Resurrection, and this not just of Christ, but also of the universe with and in Christ. Obviously this answer is not a simple one, for concealed within this faith can be a wide variety of attitudes. They can range from a deep pessimism regarding the future of the created world to a boundless optimism regarding its final outcome, or, again, from stoical resignation to the sufferings life entails to a dogged determination that life, even this side of eternity, can be made not just tolerable but even enjoyable. If Christianity has, in the popular estimation, persisted in seeing this life as a vale of tears, it has, at least for some others, held the promise contained in Irenaeus' vision of God's glory seen as "man, fully alive."

Who, then, is right? Has the Christian optimist any more claim to authentic hope for the future than the Christian pessimist has to his claim to being realistic about the present life, especially when both ultimately lay claim to a hope that transcends all purely earthly concern?

To formulate an answer to such a question is not easy, yet must be attempted. Our answer will to a great extent determine the mode of our presence in and towards life on this earth. More importantly, it will determine to what extent we assume responsibility for the world and the attitude we take toward the suffering that life entails. Nor will the answer always be clear; it more often may be ambiguous, demanding accommodation to suffering as well as resistance to it, acceptance as well as struggle. If this should turn out to be true, then we must know the proper time for each, neither deserting our battle stations before the ship has sunk nor claiming victory if the hulk alone remains afloat. Mere survival, either as individuals or even as a crew, is not enough. Evolution, we must hope, is more than just a "ship of fools." Certainly God expected more. May we not also?

Suffering and The Cosmic Christ

I have repeatedly alluded to the concept of a cosmic suffering, a process within which, to borrow St. Paul's words, "all creation groans and is in travail." The late monk poet, Thomas Merton, wrote of Origen, the controversial theologian of early Christianity,

Who thought he heard all beings
From stars to stones, Angels to elements, alive
Crying for the Redeemer with a live grief.

What are we to think of this ancient theme? Is it merely poetic hyperbole or is it to be taken seriously as an integral part of the Christian faith? And if so, what are its real implications for theodicy and for the problem of human suffering in particular?

Christ, it is true, did suffer in our place. He died, not only "for us and our salvation", but also in our "stead", taking upon himself the sufferings that we deserve. In this he can be said to have been the one "sacrifice" who is the cause of our redemption and our reconciliation with God. These "salvational" themes are familiar to all who have read or have been exposed to the New Testament, especially the pauline writings. But this great work of "At-one-ment" is more than a legalistic justification or even a super-imposition of God-life (grace) upon human nature. It is something more. It is rooted in the Incarnation of God in the Son who has, in the language of the early church Fathers, "become man that man might become God." No matter how often repeated, this seems too bold a statement, even taken metaphorically. Are we then to conclude that this great theme, drawn from the second-century bishop, Irenaeus (and also strongly favored by Origen a century or so later) is likewise too dangerous to be taken seriously?

If so, then we must back up a bit and take a serious look at some of the other related themes in Scripture, particularly those dealing with the sufferings of Christ. In the Epistle to the Colossians, for example, we are told that St. Paul is happy to "make up all that is lacking from the sufferings of Christ for the sake of his body, the Church." (Colossians 1:24, see footnote m in The Jerusalem Bible.) Does it not appear that it is no longer that Jesus of Nazareth who died on the Cross who suffers but that Christ who was raised and glorified by the Father who now suffers in his followers? Had not Paul (the onetime Saul) been told that it was Jesus whom he had lately persecuted when he had delivered Christians over to be flogged and expelled from the synagogues (Acts 9:4; compare with Galatians 1:13)? The identification is more than metaphorical: it is the same Jesus Christ who is now "the head of his Church; which is his body, the fullness of him who fills the whole creation" (Ephesians 1:23). Again, it is Christ as "Head" who both "holds the whole body together...the only way that it can reach its full growth in God" (Colossians 2:19) and yet does so in such a way that "the body grows until it has built itself up in love." The result of this is a growth that takes place "until we become the perfect Man, fully mature with the fullness of Christ himself" (Ephesians 4:16b and 13)

Two basic themes capture our attention in these passages. The first of these themes is the concept of Christ's Body which is primarily identified with his Church and which displays a growth which is the result of a double movement: one being the action of Christ, its head, and the other being the action of the members, "every joint adding its own strength", and "each separate part working according to its function" (Ephesians 4:16a). The building up of this Body of Christ is thus a cooperative effort which, although always dependent on the life-giving presence of Christ in his members, is nevertheless also a function of the members. Each member contributes his or her own gifts, efforts, and suffering to the great work of bringing the whole body to its maturity as the "New Man" -- the human race reconstituted in the image of Christ. It would appear that, for St. Paul, the image of Christ's Church as his Body: is no mere metaphor, for the risen Christ is truly present in his members who have sacramentally died and risen with him in Baptism and who are one body with him in the unity of the Eucharist (I Corinthians 12:13; 10:17). This is the reason Paul was told it was "Jesus", not just Christians, that he had persecuted.

The second of these major themes follows from and expands the scope of the first. This combined divine-human effort, while unfinished, both looks forward to and is even now drawn by that "fullness", that pleroma (to use the exact word here, borrowed, it would seem from stoic or even gnostic sources) which designates both the source and the ultimate end of this great process. Thus it is that the formation of the complete Body of Christ is destined to reach its fulfillment in an even more comprehensive reality -- the union of the whole universe with God. Yet a certain tension remains. If we read the texts very closely, we find that although in Christ's body "lies the fullness of divinity" (Colossians 2:9), and in his body-Church is to be found "the fullness of him who fills (pleroumenou) the whole universe" (Ephesians 1:23), there is nevertheless a certain incompleteness about all this until we "are filled with the utter fullness of God" (Ephesians 3:19), fully mature with fullness of Christ himself" (Ephesians 4:13).

It is both in the context of the repetition of this highly-charged word and the tension it displays between what is complete and what yet remains to be completed that we must turn again to the statement made in Colossians that the apostle is happy to "make up" (antanaplero -- a combination word that is unique in all the Scriptures) all that has still to be undergone by Christ for the sake of his body, the Church" (Colossians 1:24). We have to see that it is not simply a case of Christians suffering in the "imitation of" Christ or in the footsteps of Jesus (as one patterning himself after a model). It is much more than that. We are people who actually find ourselves in a relationship of intensive and intimate sharing of these same sufferings. The Christian actually "fills up" what is "still lacking" in Christ's sufferings, he or she completes that which is otherwise incomplete. No doubt, the historical Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, has suffered all he was to suffer, yet the glorified Christ, who is one with his Church-Body on earth, still suffers in that body and will continue to do so until his God's purpose has been achieved when time has "run its course to the end (literally, 'for a dispensation of time's fullness') that he would bring everything together under Christ..." (Ephesians 1:10).

Obviously this multi-faceted Pleroma of Christ, the fullness of God in him, the fullness of Christ to be accomplished in his body, the Church,, the fullness of God's plan for creation -- all this displays a variety of meaning and nuances that one word, no matter how versatile, can scarcely contain. Yet through all this , running like a golden thread through a variegated tapestry, this one word (pleroma) displays a general consistency. We are given a repeated glimpse of a wondrous reality that both exists in God and yet still seeks fulfillment in his universe, something that transcends time and yet speaks of its completion in time. It is active, in that the Pleroma is that which fills Christ and through him the Church and the universe, and yet it contains a certain "passive" quality in that the Pleroma is in some manner still to be completed not only in but also through the universe which remains unfinished. This completion, however, cannot take place without the sum of sufferings that still remain to be undergone by and in the body of Christ in his Church.

There can be no question about the fact that this great process is both initiated and completed by God. In terms of the suffering involved, there is a repeated emphasis on the element of subjection. We can see this clearly in the remarkably pleromic passage of I Corinthians 15:28 where the final victory over evil and death is foretold "when everything is subjected to him" and "then the Son himself will be subject in his turn to the One who subjected all things to him, so that God may be all in all." There can be no doubt here of the fact that this subjection must be related to and seen as a remedial countermovement to that situation in which "all creation has been made subject to futility, not for any fault on the part of creation," but having been "made so by the work of him (God) who so subjected it" (Rom. 8:20). From the pauline perspective, of course, this whole movement of "subjection" was occasioned by original sin and the divine compassion that seeks to undo its effects.

Yet, we must ask, is not this subjection simply part of an even broader movement of co-creative love and unitive fulfillment? "From the beginning till now the entire creation... has been groaning in one great act of giving birth..." Birth to what? (Romans 8:22).

Here, at the risk of complicating even further an already difficult subject, it seems necessary to call attention to the fact that the Church has never made up its mind, officially, as to just how essential the concept of Original Sin really is to our understanding of the Redemption. That it forms an essential part of the situation that needs remedy there can be no doubt. But is mankind's sinfulness the only reason God became man? The whole Irenaean approach, that the Incarnation took place "so that man might become [as] God", implies that there is a higher reason to the Incarnation than just the remedying of sin. This broader approach seems to have become more and more forgotten as the ages passed until John Duns Scotus, the great thirteenth-century theologian, revived interest in the idea that the Incarnation would have taken place even without the need to atone for mankind's sinfulness. Thomas Aquinas opposed this view, but, interestingly, he seems to have finally admitted its validity in his Compendium of Theology, written shortly before his death. In Chapter 201 Aquinas wrote that even if sin had not occurred, it would seem fitting that God would become man so as to complete the great work of his creation by a kind of "circular movement" in which the Incarnation would enable all creation to be rejoined to its Maker.

If such an opinion is entirely admissible (and certainly we could hardly ask for more traditional authorities to consider it so), then those who, like Teilhard, today insist that we expand our vision of the Incarnation and Redemption into a broader concept of "Pleromization", stand in very good company. From this broadened, more cosmic standpoint, our subjection to the law of sin is, as it were, only an unfortunate and perhaps unavoidable concomitant to this all-embracing state of subjection to the painful process involved in the growth and liberation of the universe. We suffer, not just because we deserve to, but as an essential part of our creatureliness. Our "passivity" (to take suffering in its root meaning) is also an activity in that from it is wrought the material in which the fullness of creation is incorporated (made one body with and in) the Pleroma of God.

In view of all this, however, need our outlook on suffering be so passive? Must we not also, like Teilhard, eagerly seize upon the oft-repeated words that resound through the pauline epistles? For not only do we "suffer with" and "die with" Christ, but we also "work with" and "rise with" him into the glory and freedom of "the children of God" in the "New Creation," the pleromic Kingdom of God.

Parousia and Transfiguration

From this cosmic or pleromic view of the Incarnation and Redemption, it should become clear that the experience of suffering must be lifted out of the realm of the isolated and purely subjective. A major part of the tragedy of suffering is the sense of isolation and alienation it produces, but Christians must understand that their sufferings are not undergone alone, but that "if one part (of the body) is hurt, all parts are hurt with it..."
(I Corinthians 12:26). Or if this seems too negative, then we must understand that, if through our suffering, some good results, then too we "make a unity in the work of service, building up the body of Christ" (Ephesians 4-:12). From this point of view, no one's suffering or efforts need be in vain. Even that suffering which appears to be useless is somehow caught up in the great movement in which, despite its seeming futility, all pain is transformed in the victory of Christ. No mere moral unanimity is expounded here, as excellent as such spiritual solidarity may be. We become not merely imitators of Christ in his sufferings , but participants with him in his full coming-to-be.

Any such view, particularly one of such sweeping grandeur, is liable to distortion or misinterpretation. Because of its ability to view suffering from a positive standpoint, Christianity has been often thought of as a religion of suffering, and accused of revelling in it, glorifying it, or at least excusing it. The Cross continues to scandalize many sensitive persons and to affront many who would seek an escape from the tragedies of life. Others would object that it is precisely in its acceptance of suffering, both in imitation of and in union with Christ, that Christianity has failed to do all it could to alleviate suffering when it is possible to do so.

The belief in the parousia, the Second Coming of Christ, is the theological and psychological touchstone that has, down through the ages, both determined the Christian view of the worth of this world and the struggle to live within its limitations. As strange as this assertion may seem, the evidence of history is inescapable. As long as infant Christianity clung to its expectation of an immanent, indeed almost immediate, return of the Savior, "the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power and coming on the clouds of heaven" (Matthew 26:64), the temptation was to consider this world as a passing phenomenon of little importance. Suffering remained only as a temporary prelude to a timeless eschaton or end-state of eternal glory. As time passed, however, and nothing happened, the "Kingdom of God" which the synoptic gospels constantly proclaim as being"close at hand" came to be almost entirely misunderstood, partly by a preferential misuse of the Matthean formula "Kingdom of Heaven" (used in Matthew in accordance with the Jewish preference of avoiding overuse of the divine name) and partly by an almost constant mistranslation of the "is among you" of Luke 17:21 as "within you" as found in Luke 17:21.

True, there was a gradual evolution, even within the New Testament, toward a more realized eschatology, one in which the Kingdom was seen to already exist, both in the glorified Christ and in his Church. This reversal of outlook reached a culmination first in the Constantinian Era and again in the High Middle Ages when Christianity found itself in a most-favored position as heir to the classical cultures of the past, the bed-rock of political and social stability, and the patron of all that was new in the arts and sciences.

However, when times became difficult, when the Church itself became corrupt, or when life itself became oppressive, there would be a revival either of apocalyptic imminentism with prophecies of (a soon-to-be accomplished) return of Christ or else - or even sometimes in conjunction with it - there would be a new emphasis on the essential interiority of the Kingdom within souls leading to an otherworldly fulfillment in heaven.

There can be no doubt that the tension between these two views of eschatology has been in many ways beneficial despite the conflict, even bloodshed, it has occasioned. They fueled the demands for reform and lit the fires of a fervent mysticism. Without the conflict between the "already" and the "not yet", Christianity might long ago have settled down to one of either extreme -- smug, worldly triumphalism or an unworldly disdain toward all human progress. Yet even while avoiding the more extreme positions, widely varying interpretations can be placed on the ultimate significance of our lives in this world and on the worth of creation itself.

I am reminded here of an experience that struck me most forcibly in this regard. Years ago, touring the great Cathedral of Salisbury, I moved with awed admiration among the tombs of bishops, abbots, and noble men and women of many centuries past whose serene and stylized effigies depicted them in peaceful sleep awaiting the great resurrection at the end of time, only to be brusquely jolted by the gruesome tomb lids depicting the cadaverous and decaying remains of those who were buried later during the height of the Renaissance. It was as if the plagues and other disasters of the late Middle Ages were a watershed separating the earlier period, when life, for all its violence, was inspired by a vision of a great and glorious beyond, from the more recent period, which, despite all its opulence and the revival of classical culture, had nothing to offer for the future except corruption. The joyful hope of resurrection seemed to have been dashed on the infernal brimstones of despair. Transfiguration had given way to decomposition, eternal life to eternal death.

Perhaps I have taken this experience too seriously or am guilty of a literalism that has misread the artisan's intent. All those who were buried there and those who were commissioned to adorn their tombs were, presumably, fairly orthodox Christians. Both the survivors and the deceased believed, we might suppose, in the resurrection of the dead. But how did they envision it?

Traditionally, including both eras in my illustration, "Eschatology," as it has come to be termed, has dwelt on the "Four Last Things": Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell, with purgatory and resurrection dealt with as corollaries. However, what is most significant is that almost without exception, these beliefs were visualized primarily in individualistic terms without any thought of the possible incorporation of the physical universe. Even in Dante's great trilogy, which manifests a striking awareness of the Communion of Saints, the shared glory of Paradise, the beseeching state of the souls in Purgatory, and the contrasting total alienation from all that is human and divine of those who languish in the Inferno, the vivid imagery gives little indication of any need to be taken literally. There seems to be no indication that resurrection, either for glory or punishment, was to be understood as anything actually fulfilling, much less involving, the restoration of the universe in Christ. Others may interpret this quite differently and prove me wrong, but I suspect that there has been little attempt or even motivation to do otherwise.

If so, there should not be much surprise. The doctrine of the Resurrection, not only of the dead in general, but even of Christ, has occasioned not only quite an amount of debate but even more silence through the centuries. Even in the New Testament we find some diversity if not outright difficulty in expression. The empty tomb stories seem to have been, at least at first, a separate and quite different approach as contrasted to the accounts of the mysterious post-resurrection appearances of Christ, depicted as physically present, eating and drinking with his Apostles and Disciples. Yet both approaches, particularly in the latter, with Jesus instantaneously passing from their sight, seem to hint at a kind of experience which defies description and can only resort to confused stories as a way of proclaiming that Jesus is no longer dead. Even as early as the pauline epistles, however, we find yet another approach in which the risen body of Christ seems to be identified entirely with the Eucharistic Body of Christ and his sacramental presence in the Church. "You", Paul writes the Corinthians, "together are Christ's body"(I Corinthians 12:27), or again, the Church "is his body - and we are its living parts" (Ephesians 5:30).

Yet this identification of living Christians as the living Body of Christ does not, for Paul, eliminate the need of or the promise of future resurrection for those Christians who have died. Long passages, particularly as found in I Corinthians, Chapter 15, wrestle with the problem of expressing the nature of resurrected life, and particularly the relationship of the resurrected body to the body as it once existed in this life. "Everything that is flesh is not the same [kind of] flesh:...there are heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies..." (I Corinthians 15:39, 40). "It is the same with the resurrection of the dead: the thing that is sown is perishable but what is raised is imperishable..." (I Corinthians 15:42).

The key to understanding Paul's attempt to express what seems inexpressible is to be found in verse 44 of the same chapter. "When it (the earthy body) is sown it embodies the soul, when it is raised it embodies the spirit." We must remember that, while Paul based his ideas in a Hebrew anthropology, his use of the Greek word for "soul" (psyche) has no corresponding concept in Hebrew. There is for him no natural, immortal, immaterial self which guarantees life after death. Hence it is only by virtue of the "spirit" (pneuma) given by God that life after death becomes possible. Yet it is, at the same time, a life in a body -- the only kind of life that there can be for a human creature. This is possible only because the Christian's natural life, the combination of body (soma) and soul (psyche), has been transformed by God's Holy Spirit and has, already in this life, been incorporated into the risen body of Christ. Without this action of the Spirit the natural body remains dominated by sin and is destined to the destruction awaiting all mere flesh (sarx).

These distinctions are important, for only with their help can we begin to make any sense of the seeming contradictions regarding the fate of the physical universe in terms of a wider, more universal eschaton, one which must include St. Paul's vision of "all creation" destined to share "in the freedom of the children of God" (Rom. 8:21). How otherwise can we even begin to account for the juxtaposition of such phrases as those found in II Peter 3:10-13 where we are told that "with a roar the sky will vanish, the elements will catch fire and fall apart, the earth and all it contains will be burnt up..." and yet "what we are waiting for is what he promised: the new heavens and new earth..."? Even allowing for this much later author's change of perspective and for his penchant for quoting the Old Testament prophets, how do we explain this double insistence on both the destruction and the reconstitution of the material universe? Again, even when we make allowances for the overwhelmingly apocalyptic style of The Book of Revelation, we find this same dramatic contrast between themes of total destruction and total renovation of the physical universe, including again the use of the same Isaian passage prophesying "a new heaven and a new earth" (Revelation 21:1; also Isaiah 65:17).

True, for many these themes of cosmic upheaval and recreation are to be explained "spiritually" as fantasies of apocalyptic imagery, eminently suited to a period when the traditional motifs of "classical" Old Testament prophecy had given way to the more visionary expressions of "the last days." Quite the opposite from what we might expect, when the literary style had turned so highly imaginative (who could take literally the ideas of beasts with ten horns or creatures with "eyes" all over?), literal belief in the resurrection of the body became strongest. Hence Jesus himself took a very strong stand on this issue against the skeptical Sadducees, even agreeing with the Pharisees -- something he didn't often do. Yet, at the same time, Jesus undercut the skeptics' crude arguments against resurrection (when they brought up the"case" of successive marriages - "whose wife will she be?") by roundly denouncing his critics for their crude materialism. But as for the supposed "dead", they are not dead, said Jesus, for their God "is the God of the living." (See Luke 21:27-38.)

For those who have taken the doctrine of the Resurrection seriously (which includes Jews who have taken the idea of eternal life seriously), the future life after the great Parousia at the end of all time has never been envisioned as a world of disembodied souls. Even during the periods when hopes concerning the transformation of the universe became clouded, traditional theologians such as St. Thomas Aquinas stoutly maintained that the full realization of beatific life must include that of a resurrected physical existence. One medieval pope even expressed to his dying day -- much to the alarm of his theological advisors -- his firm conviction that the souls in heaven could not be completely happy until such an event had occurred !

How can we envision such a resurrection except in terms of a relationship to and an existence within a resurrected universe? If a permanent state of disembodied existence, conceived in terms more suitable to platonic idealism than biblical realism, seems out of kilter with traditional Christian belief, can a paradise of physically resurrected human beings existing without any con- tact with a transformed universe make any more sense? If one begins by denying the latter possibility, then belief in the resurrection of the individual seems entirely pointless, and one may well end up, as have many modern Christians, denying the Resurrection of Christ, in any physical or "real" sense. St. Paul's incisive polemic against such spiritualistic interpretations proves that the tendency is hardly modern. "If there is no resurrection from the dead, Christ himself cannot have been raised ...and if Christ has not been raised, you are still in your sins. And what is more serious, all who have died in Christ have perished" (I Corinthians. 15:13,17-18).

St. Paul's argument may appear a bit strident to some, and at least curious in its reverse logic (the latter trait common to rabbinic style discourse) but it may be also very much to the point for the modern mind. In this day when Whiteheadian metaphysics or Teilhardian "hyperphysics" go a long way towards being the only plausible explanation of the facts of evolutionary process, it seems even more curious to find Christians whose major problems with basic Christian doctrines (like the Resurrection, and the Eucharist, to take two very appropriate examples in this matter) seem to arise principally from outmoded concepts of matter/spirit or body/soul dualism than any other logically traceable reason.

By this I am not trying to say that one can "prove" the Resurrection of Christ or of anyone else by means of modern metaphysics much less by the physics which they seek to explain. What I am saying is, that while the classic philosophies of ancient Greece may have given us useful conceptual tools to wrestle with the problems of faith, as often as not they again produced almost as many problems as solutions. The earthy, and very often crude, realism of the Hebrews, especially when it comes to anthropology, has turned out to be a lot closer to the facts than the rarified, but often thoroughly dualistic, thinking behind much of Greek idealism.

It may be just because the Church recognized the clash between the biblical approach to these matters and that of the Greeks, that Christians have always had the freedom to reinterpret these ideas, while preserving the essential actuality of Christ's Resurrection and a similar belief in the destiny of us all. Even St. Paul seemed ill at ease with a grosser literalism that thought of resurrection in terms of a future reconstitution of our present physical existence. There is clearly in his thought, as well as in the gospels, a distinct discontinuity between earthy pre-resurrectional and spiritual (perhaps better rendered "spiritualized") post-resurrected life. They exist on two different planes. Life after death, even in a resurrected physical existence, is not merely a prolongation of the present life. It is something else entirely. But it is still our life, that of a personality formed in the flesh and continuing to exist in relationship to that "embodiedness" which is the root of our individuality. Beyond this nothing can be said for sure.

Even this much can throw a great deal of light on the meaning of suffering, especially physical pain and death. Although ideally all suffering in the body can be seen as contributing to "the making of souls," as theologians such as John Hick would have it, nevertheless we know from sad experience that this does not always prove to be so. Some persons crumble or become entirely embittered by their sufferings. To hint that if they had been of higher moral stamina they would have benefitted rather than succumbed is a gratuitous assertion implying that we, in their place, would have proved more resolute. The plain facts are otherwise. All too often suffering is, as Hick admits, entirely "excessive" and, in effect, unredeemed. How do we explain this in a universe ordered entirely, on the physical plane, toward the production of immortal souls destined for a completely spiritual existence? As a miscalculation or even a "mean streak" in God? That would seem too much, even for someone who would modify his beliefs about the power of God, limiting it to the possession of "all the power necessary to achieve his ends" (Schilling).

On the contrary, if we assume that this creative process is an evolutionary one in which matter and spirit form a single continuum of existence, suffering, both physical and psychological (which cannot really be separated in such a world-view), is unavoidable. Rather than being ordered by God in hopes that suffering will prove beneficial (implying that God might have ordered things in some alternative manner to the same end), suffering remains the basic law of all existence that seeks greater being. This is not to say that some suffering does not appear to be altogether excessive in terms of not having been deserved by its victims, nor is it to deny that the human race itself has often been guilty of increasing the amount of suffering far beyond what was necessary. But it is also to say that, generally speaking, suffering occurs where there is growth taking place.

The implications of this, if we can admit it, are immense. If suffering, even only in the sense of physical pain, occurs in the universe, it is not just because God commands it as a trial, or even just permits it as an unavoidable by-product in the evolutionary process. It is more than these. It is the catalyst of the process itself, and this on all levels. This means that if suffering or its equivalent, whatever it may be, is part of a cosmic process. Because this activity occurs on all levels of existence, from the rending of the earth's crust and the pain of the smallest sensitive creatures, to the psychological agonies suffered by humans, it also must mean that all these levels of the universe are also in some way destined for and ordered towards a higher, transfigured, or even resurrected existence. Thus if "all creation", as St. Paul has told us, has been "groaning" and "in travail", it may not just be for the sake of the appearance of the human race or for its redemption. It has also been so that all creatures too might share in some way "the freedom of the children of God."

This is why, although we might speak of a certain recalcitrance in the structure of things that resists transformation and in so doing occasions further suffering, at the same time we might also speak of a kind of unbounded exuberance within nature. Thus nature unceasingly attempts new combinations and recombinations of existence, the whole mass of evolving energies, ranging from the most basic building blocks of material existence to the highest psychic forces, engaged in a relentless drive toward more and fuller being. It is almost as if there is an inborn "pleromic" tendency within creation itself. Although limited by the particular patterns of nature that this world has assumed out of a host of other theoretical possibilities, nature nevertheless tries every avenue of development that remains open within the limits imposed by chance, whether it turns out to be a dead end or not. Evolution will not crease, Teilhard once wrote, until "everything possible has been tried." "Boundless, abstract possibility," according to Whitehead, is part of that creativity which has its origin in God. Creativity is perhaps the key idea here when we speak of resurrection, transformation, or transfiguration. All these words, each in their own context, speak of an on-going creation, a divine-human partnership that cannot be ultimately thwarted by sin or death, even if it be the natural death of the universe. Despite the centrality of the Cross, Christians have always known their belief to be a Resurrection-Faith, an unshakable confidence in an unending future. On this transcendental dimension everything depends.

Ernst Bloch, the East German Marxist philosopher, exiled to the West because of his unorthodox stance, understood the problem thus: Communism attracted followers and held their allegiance as long as a better future was far off enough to give the illusion of a paradise ahead. Once the worker's paradise begins to materialize, it soon displays all the emptiness of any crass materialism with its wholesale betrayal of the human spirit. It is a philosophy of evolution, but of an evolutionary dead-end. Christianity will survive, long after Marxism has died, because Christianity, despite all its failings, has nevertheless kept as transcendental image before the human race. Sometimes a distorted image, or a tarnished one, but it has been this image of a future of endless possibility that has been and will continue to be its eternal strength. If Bloch's analysis was correct, then what we'd have to say is that while Communism lacked a transforming faith to see beyond the limitations of this present world, what Christianity has so often lacked is enough imagination to see what its faith would mean for this world if it were ever put fully into practice. Rather than an "opium of the people" stultifying them with promises of "pie in the sky" in the face of suffering, a fully Christian world-vision would be the great energizer mobilizing the totality of human resources in an onslaught against human misery.

Indeed, if a "liberation theology" has been viewed with some alarm by many Christians today, it is not because it shares any theoretically materialistic basis with Communism. It is rather because it refuses to go along with the practical materialism of Christians who are content with the status quo -- with the piece of pie they have already. The battle really was not between East and West, Capitalist and Communist. The battle line cuts almost evenly across all national allegiances, religious confessions, and even political ideologies. It is a battle of quality versus quantity, - over whether there is to be a better future for the human race or simply more of the same.

The Accomplishment of the Kingdom

The destiny of the universe is both in and out of our hands. In reality, three factors, the divine, the human, and, the cosmic, all have a part to play. Too often this last element is forgotten. Despite the whimsical musings of philosophers and science fiction writers, time is irreversible. The entropic consummation of energy shows little hope of abatement and while astrophysicists may speculate on the hypothetical possibilities of. a universe of "reciprocating" aeons or even a yet to be discovered "steady state", all substantiated evidence points to a single "big bang" that is slowly but inexorably leading toward a final cosmic death of all creation. Even apart from the remotely possible accident that could bring a sudden, premature end to this planet, we must face the fact that, by all accepted calculations, our own life-supporting star, the sun, is near the mid-point of its ten billion year lifespan, and for only a portion of that span is the sun capable of supporting life on earth. Barring the unlikely possibility of human colonization of another planet in another solar system, the future of the human race is already clearly limited, and schemes to extend these limits do not change the basic dilemma. Dreams of natural infinitude are dashed on the crumbling rocks of reality. The final hour for the human race might be postponed but not ultimately avoided.

Given this cosmic time-table, what other possibilities remain? Here the other two factors come most clearly into play. Apart from the cosmic limits of existence, both God and humanity may very well place further limits on the future. The human race already has reached the point where it can self-destruct bringing not only all its civilizations but even its existence to a screeching, flaming halt. Or God, with infinite wisdom or even rage, could intervene at any time. Yet all indications are that God would not do so. God's ancient pledge, given in the story of Noah, was that God would never again destroy all life. Humans may well save God the trouble; any sudden end to human history will most likely be man's doing, not God's.

Instead, what God's redeeming love seems intent on is transforming the best of the human effort into the heavenly Kingdom and transfiguring the sufferings of all creation into the substance of the "new heavens and new earth." It is God alone who will place the capstone on all history and who alone is capable of making it into the edifice of this Kingdom. Otherwise all human effort remains as surely doomed as the universe which gave it birth.

Yet, for all this, the human effort remains critical, for what can be transformed by God except that which has been "made subject" to the Father through the Son? Yet what will be made subject to the Son except that which has already been subjected by the human race for God's own purposes? This is the great pleromic "chain of being" of all things, and of all the sufferings that it took to produce them, that can be incorporated into the fullness of God's existence, "that God maybe all in all." (I Corinthians 15:28.)

The implications of this pleromic view are immense. For too long have we neatly divided the world between the secular and the sacred. For too long have the humble efforts of ordinary men and women been put down as inconsequential compared to the divine work of "saving souls." For too long have people been counselled to bear their sufferings patiently, no matter how destructive to self or society. We are surely called to suffer but this suffering must be for the sake of building up the structure of God's Kingdom and not the destruction of the human, earthly foundations on which it will stand. True, these foundations must be made on the rock of faith and not on the shifting sands of merely human hopes. But the whole structure, from bottom to top, can be achieved only in a combined effort of human work and divine grace.

Similarly, on the human level, the work of building the earth into a structure worthy of God's plans for creation must be seen as a cooperative venture involving all races, all nations, and all individuals. Every task, if it helps the total edifice to take shape, must be considered as a vital component in the overall scheme of things. Like St. Paul's description of the Body-Church of Christ, in which each member has its proper function with no one part replaceable by another, this pleromic view of the universe demands that the distinctive contribution of each individual's vocation be acknowledged precisely in terms of its complementary relationship to the whole. Rather than reducing humanity to an amorphous category of the "masses" as opposed to a fragmented collection of isolated individuals, the true Kingdom of God must be seen as personalistic in the highest sense of the word, a higher union that leads to greater differentiation. We must not obscure the paramount importance of certain callings, especially those dedicated to the greatest needs and highest aspirations of the human race. Nor should we overlook the wide variations in talents that persons can bring to this service. But, most of all, we must accord deep respect to the unique contribution that each one is capable of making if for no other reason than each person is truly unique.

As a result, the sufferings of each person must also be seen as unique but not isolated. The struggles that each one undergoes in achieving his or her destiny may be, in many ways, not unlike those of the next person, yet at the same time they are this person's unique payment of the price demanded of the whole human race in its quest for fulfillment and greater being. More importantly, we must understand that even senseless evils -- apparently useless suffering, tragic accidents, natural catastrophes, even outrageous crimes against innocents -- are in some sense redeemable if they are considered in this light. None of them cease to be tragic, particularly when they could have been avoided; nevertheless, the pains that are caused need not be entirely wasted. Even more than the seeming "dead ends" that have occurred in the course of evolution and yet paved the way for other eventualities, the apparently senseless sufferings undergone by the human race have often proven to be the springboards from which new leaps of human achievement have taken place.

This is not to say that all evil is necessarily turned into good or that every tragedy leads eventually to a happy ending. Even the optimistic message of St. Paul that "everything turns out for the good" is modified by the specification, "for those who love God", and even that is seen only as a result of God's cooperation (Romans 8:28). This seems only possible, in many cases, in terms of a future life. In terms of life in this world, God cooperates with us as our "fellow-sufferer," much as Whitehead has told us. For the Christian, especially, as God "goes on working", so does his Son (John 5:17). But just as God can be said to be our fellow-worker, so too he is in some way our fellow-gambler, "hoping against hope" and trusting that all will not have proved to have been in vain. In this sense the great Blondelian theme of the essence of being in this world as "Action" is manifested, not only as the activity of building the earth but also in the "passivity" of suffering which is transformed in the struggle of evolution.

It is here, much in terms of "le grande option" that so preoccupied Teilhard de Chardin in his waning years, that faith finds its greatest challenge. For those who, as Bertrand Russell tells us, see the universe only as an accidental collection of atoms doomed, just as accidentally, to a final dissolution, the only rational attitude is, indeed one of "unyielding despair." That the human race has become, in Julian Huxley's apt phrase, "evolution become conscious of itself" only makes matters worse, for if we are destined just as surely as the lowliest microorganism to a total extinction, then nothing, not even the greatest joys or achievements of the human race, much less the sufferings and struggles of human and brute creatures alike, amount to the slightest cause for self-congratulation or even, for that matter, a rational cause for regret. What is simply is, and what has been or will be is of no real concern nor should it be. Nihilism will have won its way and evolution, rather than being open-ended, will have proved only to have been a long passage leading to a final, irrevocably closed door.

Little wonder that our ancestors in the faith, although living in a very different age with its own world-views, nevertheless saw the future of the world and the meaning of their sufferings in terms that ultimately pointed to eternity for their justification and the grounds for any possible hope. The origin and the future of evolution remain, just as much as it was for a simple creation coming directly from the hands of God, remains a mystery encompassed by fathomless doubt. Only faith can lift the veil that enshrouds the void before time, and only a faith-founded hope can assure us that there will be any future. For Christians today God has not so much made man as "God makes man make himself." But this does not so much change the dilemma of suffering or the conditions of the human struggle as it modifies the choice of how we seek to fight. As our ancestors had realized, so we must also realize that any lasting victory can only come when, after we have done our utmost to defeat evil in all its many forms, God himself will return in the person of his Son, the "Firstborn of all creation,... the Firstborn from the dead" (Colossians 1:15, 18).

It is this expectation of the Kingdom, this longing for the Parousia, that has been the core of all hope and the touchstone of all renewed vitality in Christian life. Understood in many ways, sometimes naively, impatiently, and unrealistically, or sometimes lethargically, even cynically, the first recorded liturgical prayer of Christians beyond the one given to them by the Master himself resounds with this undying hope for the future and the faith that nothing need have been in vain. Maranatha! "Come Lord!" Only then, when he will have come, will all the problems of evil, as lived within the course of evolution, be resolved in the mystery of God.

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