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| Simon Vouet, Father Time Overcome by Love, Hope and Beauty (1627) |
A lot has been said about the “problem of pain.” Why, if God is both loving and all-powerful, is there still suffering in the world? The question is a challenge for Catholics, as for all theists. As believers, we have some sense of why a loving God would permit suffering. It’s easy enough to see that love is a good (the highest good, even), and that love requires free will. And it’s just a small step from there to see how that free will could be used in some dastardly ways. Likewise, it’s clear enough that a loving God might permit His creatures to suffer, in certain cases, for their (our) own good.
This answer to the problem of pain is sensible, but not satisfying. There’s no shaking that there’s still something out of whack, something not quite right about this world. Christianity hasn’t been shy about this point the whole story of the Fall is that things aren’t how they ought to be, how they aren’t how they were intended to be, and how we’re the ones who screwed them up. You can read that story in Genesis, or watch it on the nightly news.
And there’s no shaking the sense that we don’t have a full explanation. But again, Christianity acknowledges this from the outset: when Job complains about his problem to God, he’s not given an answer; rather, he’s basically told that there are things going on that he can’t begin to comprehend. In the Cross, we get a fuller picture: God doesn’t just acknowledge suffering, He takes it on, and we’re given a tiny glimpse into the mysterious relationship between love, vulnerability, and pain. But there’s still so much that we don’t understand. And the Christian answer seems to be: that’s the way it’s going to be, this side of Glory. The answer is unsatisfying, but it seems to me that it’s meant to be.
This ground is well-tread, and others have addressed the problem of pain much more eloquently and exhaustively. I want to look at another problem (or “problem”) that doesn’t get much attention: the “problem of beauty.” It’s a problem, not for believers, but for nonbelievers: if there isn’t a God, how can we account for all of the joy and beauty in the world? More specifically, how can we account for all the joy and beauty that doesn’t have any evolutionary benefit? I really like the description of the problem given by Joanna Newsom, in a discussion about an album that she wrote shortly after the death of her best friend:
“The thing that I was experiencing and dwelling on the entire time is that there are so many things that are not OK and that will never be OK again,” says Newsom. “But there’s also so many things that are OK and good that sometimes it makes you crumple over with being alive. We are allowed such an insane depth of beauty and enjoyment in this lifetime. It’s what my dad talks about sometimes. He says the only way that he knows there’s a God is that there’s so much gratuitous joy in this life. And that’s his only proof. There’s so many joys that do not assist in the propagation of the race or self-preservation. There’s no point whatsoever. They are so excessively, mind-bogglingly joy-producing that they distract from the very functions that are supposed to promote human life. They can leave you stupefied, monastic, not productive in any way, shape or form. And those joys are there and they are unflagging and they are ever-growing. And still there are these things that you will never be able to feel OK about–unbearably awful, sad, ugly, unfair things.”
This captures the problem so well, because it anticipates the easy answer: that joy and our love of beauty is some sort of evolutionary benefit bequeathed to us by natural selection.
One of the clearest ways that we explore this is to understand why intentional evils are done. Invariably – as in, without a single exception – evil acts are done in the pursuit of some real or perceived good. We’re always chasing after the good: after pleasure, after honor, after love, etc. (That doesn’t excuse evil actions, obviously: you can’t justify torturing the cat for pleasure simply because you did it for pleasure.) This shows that every evil act pays homage, no matter how unwittingly, to good. That’s why you can’t understand evil without understanding good. But none of this is true in reverse. We don’t do good things because we’re seeking evil, and we don’t need a concept of evil to understand why something is good.
Third, there’s a difference in explanatory power. Here, I want to conclude by refocusing on the two specific problems, the problem of pain and the problem of beauty, because it’s here that we see the final inequality. The Christian explanation for pain leaves us unsatisfied, and I think that’s an appropriate response. For starters, it’s not a thorough explanation, nor a specific one: it doesn’t explain why this evil thing happened to that person. But despite this, it offers a colorable explanation of the problem. It’s clear that there’s no logical incompatibility between permitting evil and being good, and this corresponds to our experience of life: we live in societies built on the idea of freedom-expansion, even if that entails the annoyance of people misusing that freedom for stupid or evil ends.
The atheist explanation of the problem of beauty is similarly unsatisfying. But here’s the rub: unlike the Christian account of pain, the atheist account of beauty doesn’t even advance any colorable explanation. The generally proffered solution, natural selection, just doesn’t work here. Nor does it correspond with our experience of life: we don’t see a clear correlation (at least, not a positive one) between “I cry at museums” and “I am adept at surviving and mating.”
At the end of a court case, even a well-argued one, there are often questions left lingering: if X is at fault, how do we explain this or that piece of evidence? On the other hand, if X isn’t at fault, what about all of these other pieces of evidence? And if God is in the dock, so to speak, these are some of the critical arguments we should expect to see brought up – both in regards to His existence, and His goodness. That’s why I think it’s important to hold the problem of beauty up, side-by-side, with the problem of pain, weighing them, as if in a balance.
I don’t think you got the cold thing right.
I get that light is not an absence of darkness, while darkness is an absence of light. Therefore, light is not conditioned upon the existence of darkness. It is absolute. Light is not a reference to darkness.
But you said:
The same holds true for heat and cold. Heat actually exists: it’s molecular energy. Cold is just the relative or absolute absence of heat. It’s why we can talk about absolute zero: it’s an absolute absence of heat. But there’s not some maximum temperature where all of the cold particles are wiped out
That would be the opposite of what you just said about light. If there is an absolute absence of heat, then at that point, cold is not a reference to heat. Cold is simply cold.
And if there is no temperature where all the cold particles are wiped out, then heat is always a reference to cold.
Lets do a little swap.
You said:
In a world without darkness, we could still analyze light and its wavelike and particle-like properties. In a world without light, the very term darkness would be meaningless.
Is this true as well:
In a world without heat (absolute zero), we could still analyze cold. There is no world without cold (i.e. you said, But there’s not some maximum temperature where all of the cold particles are wiped out).
I think, though, they are both besides the point.
Ask yourself. Does a tree falling in the mountains make a sound if there is no one there to hear it?
Obviously, sound waves will reverberate in the area. But, if no one hears it, there will be no sound.
Now, the same is true of light and heat. If we had no eyes to see the light and no feelings to feel the heat, it is irrelevant. So, you’re really talking about what we perceive. Not about the absolute reality of the thing.
It is God who made the eye, God who made the ear and God who made the body to feel. It is God who is the light and God who is the consuming fire, therefore God who made the created light and the created heat for us to see and feel in order to show forth an image of Himself to us.
My point being that there is a point where there is no darkness and a point where there is no cold. And that point is in God’s Being. But there is no point where there is no light and no point where there is no heat. God is absolute and eternal.
There is just a point at which we can’t perceive these things, light and heat, with our senses.
Anyway, that’s the way I see it.
De Maria,
Darkness doesn’t have being: it’s just the absence of light. Cold doesn’t have being: it’s just the absence of heat. Evil doesn’t have being: it’s just the absence (or perversion) of good.
In response to this, you said that, since there’s no maximum temperature, there’s no “world without cold.” But that’s giving too much being to cold. A universe that was a million degrees wouldn’t be “cold,” but it could still be hotter. The fact that it could still be hotter doesn’t point to the presence of “cold” particles or anything. There’s only heat; cold is just a privation.
I.X.,
Joe
De Maria,
Darkness doesn’t have being: it’s just the absence of light. Cold doesn’t have being: it’s just the absence of heat. Evil doesn’t have being: it’s just the absence (or perversion) of good.
Agreed.
In response to this, you said that, since there’s no maximum temperature, there’s no “world without cold.”
But, you said.
But there’s not some maximum temperature where all of the cold particles are wiped out
What did you mean?
But that’s giving too much being to cold.
Agreed.
A universe that was a million degrees wouldn’t be “cold,” but it could still be hotter.
Agreed.
The fact that it could still be hotter doesn’t point to the presence of “cold” particles or anything. There’s only heat; cold is just a privation.
Is that what you meant? Because that isn’t what I understood.
Yes. The reason there’s no temperature at which you can wipe out all the “cold particles” is that there’s no such thing. The confusion seems to be that I didn’t signal this by using scare quotes or anything. I’ll update that.
You said:This shows that every evil act pays homage, no matter how unwittingly, to good.
Agreed.
That’s why you can’t understand evil without understanding good.
That was the dilemma in which Adam and Eve found themselves. They understood the Good. They were born and raised in His Light.
And He told them what was evil. Whether they understood or not, is the question. If they understood, then it is understandable that their Original Sin would be a mortal sin because they blatantly disobeyed.
But none of this is true in reverse. We don’t do good things because we’re seeking evil,
On the contrary, how many times does a man feed a woman and her children in order to take advantage of them.
Feeding them is good.
Taking advantage of them is evil.
Those men do good because they are seeking to do evil.
and we don’t need a concept of evil to understand why something is good.
True.
But again, how are we defining good?
Is something good simply because it benefits us, personally? Is it still good if it benefits us but destroys our neighbor?
And how are we defining evil? Is it simply evil because it hurts us? Is it still evil if it hurts us but benefits our neighbor?
So, we wind up defining good and evil by how we feel about it.
This is why God gave us the Ten Commandments:
Romans 3:20
…. for by the law is the knowledge of sin.
Romans 7:
7 What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.
In order that we might know, that goodness is not bound to our feelings. Adulterers frequently say, “if this is wrong, I don’t want to be right”.
So, what is my point? My point is that, without God’s revelation, without the Church, we can’t truly understand pure goodness. We can only know that it exists and begin to seek it.
But evil is only a reference to good. It is either the absence or the perversion of good. I don’t see the two as mutually exclusive. In any case, without good, evil would not exist. But without evil, good would still exist. And that goodness is in the only One who is Good. God.
Right: a person can seek something evil as a good. That is, you can do something nice for a woman and her child because you want to take advantage of them, but that’s only because you can convince yourself that taking advantage of them is a good of some sort (i.e., it produces pleasure or whatnot).
“But evil is only a reference to good. It is either the absence or the perversion of good. I don’t see the two as mutually exclusive. In any case, without good, evil would not exist. But without evil, good would still exist. And that goodness is in the only One who is Good. God.“
Right: that’s my point. Although I would add that we can know that God is infinite Good without revelation. The Greeks got pretty close on this one.
Close is only good in horseshoes. 😉
The problem of beauty is brought up in the Gospels a few times. It’s relation to ‘Father Time’ also.
One of these is when the disciples prodded Jesus to give an opinion regarding the physical beauty of Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem, one of the most magnificent architectural structures in the world at that time:
“And his disciples came to shew him the buildings of the temple. [2] And he answering, said to them: Do you see all these things? Amen I say to you there shall not be left here a stone upon a stone that shall not be destroyed.” (Matt. 24:1)
Note that Jesus doesn’t give Herod’s great accomplishment, humanly impressive as it was, even a single word of admiration, but only refers to its destruction in due time. What the apostles see as a noteworthy human achievement, Jesus refers only to as “these things”, not giving any indication that He was at all impressed.
And this account can be compared to another that also has a ‘Father Time’ element attached to it. It is the account of the beauty of the ‘lilies of the field, that are ‘here today and gone tomorrow’ :
“And which of you by taking thought, can add to his stature by one cubit? [28] And for raiment why are you solicitous? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they labour not, neither do they spin. [29] But I say to you, that not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed as one of these. [30] And if the grass of the field, which is today, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, God doth so clothe: how much more you, O ye of little faith?” (Matt.6:27)
In these two passages we see that indeed “Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder”, but more so, that Jesus is trying to get the disciples, and us, to realize that human designed and ‘worked for’ beauty, great as it is, can never be be compared to the infinitely beautiful creation of God. That is, in comparison to God’s creation, even the magnificent temple built by Herod was not worth even a word of admiration, but on the contrary, of the wild “lilies of the field”, clothed by God, “not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed as one of these.” Moreover, this beauty created by the wisdom of God was so great, that the duration of that beauty didn’t even matter (i.e.. triumph over Father Time), as Jesus says: “… if the grass of the field, which is today, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, God doth so clothe: how much more you, O ye of little faith?”
So, these teachings of Christ confirm that the beauty inherent in God’s creation does indeed triumph over time, artistically illustrated in the Simon Vouet painting above, and moreover, that human achievement, work and creation, can be only viewed, and appraised, in a relative way to that of the eternal works of beauty that are created by God.