Some thoughts on the ordination of women (and the recurring threats to burn the house down rather than living in it)...

I think that folks ought to be very careful with regard to treating the question of women's ordination in the ACNA. There are a number of moving parts in the discussion and heated partisans on either side rarely manifest a clear view of the assumptions they are operating with. In fact, my considered base line as a priest and a theologian is that the more stridently someone advocates their particular view, the less they should be trusted as a reliable guide into the complexities of the matter. Put another way, if this is anything more than a 60%-40% call for you either way, it's a good bet that you're not considering all the evidence or weighing it properly.

First, "Bible says" arguments are almost always exercises in selection and suppression. Dropping Galatians 3:28 or 1 Cor. 14:34 simply doesn't solve the problem one way or another. People need to remember that the same Apostle wrote both texts, so the non-radical contextualization of such revolutionary passages was already at work in the application of apostolic teaching as it was being committed to writing. Similarly, partisans against women's ordination ordinarily aren't consistent in advocating absolute "silence" of women in the church (their wives and daughters wouldn't stand for it) and they rarely deal honestly with biblical instances of women bearing witness to the resurrection; with their being named "among the apostles"; or with their authoritative teaching activity--even to the point of correcting the doctrine of a figure like Apollos (Cf. Acts 18:24-26). Put more simply, and using in the words of the 1976 Pontifical Biblical Commission study on the matter, "It does not seem that the New Testament by itself alone will permit us to settle in a clear way and once and for all the problem of the possible accession of women to the presbyterate."

Second, partisans on either side of this issue tend to operate with unacknowledged and historically unwarranted presuppositions regarding the continuity of the church's theology and practice of holy orders. So, opponents of women's ordination tend to assume that  "presbuteros" and "episcopos" in the New Testament are identical to the more fully developed offices of "priest" and "bishop" at the beginning of the fourth century or by the high middle ages or in the present day. Neither do they ordinarily consider that developments in prior ages of the church's history may suggest the possibility of fuller, more inclusive developments in our own. Alternatively, advocates of women's ordination often tend toward a similar kind of argument that treats early historical precedents for women in the "priesthood" (i.e. precedents for women serving as "archisynagogos," references to "presbytera," "Episcopa Theodora," and women celebrants in "Fractio Panis" frescoes, etc.) as indicative of some a hermeneutic of rupture wherein established practices were arbitrarily suppressed in a wrongheaded accommodation of Roman patriarchal assumptions. All such arguments become historically untenable once we recognize that the offices themselves (where they were considered "offices" at all) were/are evolving and developing. Simply put, "holy orders" have experienced the same doctrinal and practical development over time that other sacraments have experienced. Because those developments have a history that is implicated in social and cultural processes, local historical "precedents" and "absences" are not enough by themselves to establish a normative practice for the present day Church.

Third, as individuals and as churches we too are socially and culturally implicated so that the ecumenical consensus against women's ordination among the Orthodox or Roman Catholics is not entitled to an automatic deference. Similarly, the broad cultural consensus in favor of women in places of secular authority in Europe and North America is not entitled to an automatic deference in favor of women being ordained to the presbyterate. One must keep in mind that both the Orthodox and Catholics also restrict the diaconate to men despite much clearer evidence in favor of women deacons in the New Testament. It may be that both are wrong in this matter (as no less an orthodox figure than Yves Congar readily admitted). On the other hand, the broad consensus around women's ordination in the two largest communions in the Church is worthy of strong consideration for the ways that our own proceeding with the ordination of women might further impede ecumenical progress. If we've learned anything from the actions of TEC and ACiC, it's that rich, fat, white people-- possessed as we are of an enormous economic and military hegemony--shouldn't be the sole determiners of a global church's faith and practice. What affects all must in some way be determined by all and the Pauline admonition that we "wait for one another" often requires that we yield to tender consciences that are unready for a particular practical or doctrinal development. Alternatively, weaker brothers and sisters are not the same thing as "professional weaker brothers and sisters" and those who would presume to imprison consciences to a self-selected "historical" or "conciliar" orthodoxy on this question should probably go read Galatians 5:13 again (and probably v. 12 as well).

Fourth, folks who automatically invoke the standard Roman Catholic "alter Christus" argument against the ordination of women (i.e. the priest functions liturgically and sacramentally as "another Christ" or as an "icon of Christ," so he must be male) rarely pause to consider the sloppy christological assumptions that are smuggled in under the cover of that argument. While the incarnation is truly a "scandalous particularity" in that the Divine Son took the flesh and blood of a Galilean Jewish peasant male, Catholics and Orthodox Christians don't usually insist on an all-Galilean, all-Jewish priesthood or an all-peasant priesthood (poverty comes with ordination, not before). They don't exclude guys with blonde hair and blue eyes from the priesthood and they are equally cool with Asians and Africans with foreskins as long as there is a penis and testicles beneath and under those foreskins. Faced with such inconsistencies, we might fare better to limit the iconographic similitude of the priest and Christ to an authentic humanity rather than drawing what increasingly appears to be arbitrary lines at sexual identity. As full human beings--or so Genesis 1 seems to indicate that they are--women are no less capable of iconically representing Christ "as the alter at the altar" than in any other ministration they provide as full members of the ecclesial body of Christ. That said, however, Orthodox theologians have also been known to argue that the priest (as representative of the bishop) functions as an icon of the Father as well as an icon of the Son. Irenaeus of Lyons and Hippolytus are important Early Christian sources in this regard, and this is a little-regarded place where really beneficial theological research can still be done. Those looking to do a PhD in Early Christianity should take note of this quick way to be practically useful to the church.

Fifth, our present experience of women in the priesthood is admittedly uneven when it comes to orthodox theology and practice. Given instances like the scandalous regime of Bishop Jefferts-Schori, many in the ACNA are even tempted to locate the historic "fall" of the ECUSA/TEC with its decision to ordain women. But this is as dishonest as arguing that gay marriage threatens to sully an otherwise pristine and undisturbed sacrament of holy matrimony. In the latter case, heterosexuals have long been at work subverting and profaning the sacrament of holy matrimony so that it's a wonder why gay and lesbian people want any part of it. In the former case, we guys have been for hundreds of years crashing our Lord's great ark into every shoal, reef, and seawall we've come across. Honest inquiry into the details of our disasters also requires admission that it's often been faithful women--religious and lay--who have repaired the damage and put us back on course. To cite one in a million such examples that come to mind, I've often wondered if the scandalous Avignon papacy might still be with us if it hadn't been for the prophetic ministrations of St. Catherine of Sienna (considered by Rome to be a "Doctor of the Church" despite the oft-cited Pauline injunction against women "teaching" or "exercising authority"). It also needs to be recognized that for well over a thousand years the priesthood has been a male institution so that women are often forced to accommodate themselves to accidental "masculine" expectations. A similar problem exists for married Anglicans who make use of Rome's Pastoral Provision to serve in ordinary diocesan settings (as opposed to the Ordinariate, which has its own problems). While these guys are considered validly ordained Roman Priests, the diocesan system is wired for an all male fraternity. Bishops and parishes have little idea of what to do with married men and no clue whatsoever when it comes to their wives and children. What looked good on paper has really been disastrous in practice because of the resulting inappropriate and impossible expectations. Similarly, when contemplating the ordination of women currently or universally in the ACNA, we shouldn't assume that a woman's exercise of the priesthood must conform to every precedent established by the exercises of men. We ought to be prepared for distinctively feminine features to appear--and it's not necessarily a sign of failure, apostasy, or divine displeasure when they do. This is to say that called people make the vocation even as the vocation makes them. If in the good providence of God the ordination of women to the priesthood is expanded in the ACNA, we should be prepared to expect that the ladies will cut their own priestly path as they have historically in monastic and religious life. And with the blessing of God, the church will adjust accordingly, just as it has in allowing the Sisters of Charity to develop a unique vocational charism that stands distinct from the that of the Jesuits.

Finally, the use of coercive tactics like the arbitrary and presumptuous refusal to consider arguments of theologians or the guidance of those in episcopal authority is not the way to exist in a Church that we believe is being guided by the Spirit into all truth. What a faithless and stiff-necked way of proceeding! The fact that this is no more than a 60/40 issue either way is a good indication that however important, this probably isn't a church-dividing issue. Also out of line is the oft-manifest willingness of proponents to cut asunder from the Body of Christ those members who are concerned that we not embrace what they presently consider a "false" development in faith and practice. Trading in insulting associations of one's opponents with those willing to ordain or recognize the ordinations of other controversial persons (homosexuals, non-episcopal orders, etc.) or with misogynists and bigots, etc. is bad faith, in horrible taste, and a failure of love before it is a failure of sound theological reasoning.

Many people in the ACNA have lived through a painful divorce in leaving TEC, but history shows that second divorces are much more easy than first divorces. This is proved out in pastoral experience and in big exemplars like the reformation and post-reformation experience of the church. So here's a modest proposal: Instead of continually threatening to burn the house down in the name of an ever-narrowing orthodoxy, perhaps we should commit to patiently living together for a while and let the Spirit of Christ reveal the unity that we possess by our common baptism.

I say that our bishops' example of being more committed to one another than to their individual dispositions on this question is a healthy example that we, their spiritual daughters and sons, might emulate.

Second Thoughts on Sola Scriptura

I sometimes wonder if "sola scriptura" is really a worthwhile category given the mass confusion over it's meaning and the variety of views that fall under its umbrella. A few things are important to clarify for Anglicans, however. 

First, the scriptures are themselves the product of a traditioning Church. For the first three centuries especially there was no "canon" to which Christians could point and a number of "dubious" texts among various Christian communities were selected and rejected as Canonical despite their use and disuse prior to the fourth century. While Protestants are quick to affirm that the Church only "recognized" the inherent, self-attesting inspiration of those texts that made the cut, it remains that this is a theological claim as opposed to an historical claim. The course of the church's "recognition" of the inspired texts is, after all, phenomenologically indistinguishable from the rational and political forces that would be operative in the church's "establishment" of a canon consistent with an existing traditionary rule of faith. So, while the oft-used distinction between the canon as "a collection of inspired books" vs. "an inspired collection of books" may be rhetorically useful for fights among Protestants and Catholics, but I'm not sure of the practical difference.

Second, this issue of practical difference is precisely what comes to the fore when adjudicating between Anglican and Puritan approaches to church practice. It seems to me that the Puritan regulative principle of worship has pride of place when it comes to a true "sola scriptura" approach to things because church & tradition are allowed no authoritative claims whatsoever. Only that which is explicitly prescribed by the scriptures or of necessary consequence immediately derived from the scriptures is permitted. Anglicans, however, have traditionally recognized the authority of the church and its traditions so that there is freedom to order our doctrine and worship by light of reason and the church's own "more than maternal" authority (Hooker). It may confidently do so as long as there is no explicit prohibition of what she chooses in the scriptures. In other words, the church can bind the conscience of Christians to affirm a belief in the Trinity and diphysitism despite both doctrines being extra-Scriptural theological developments. As Hawkins argued, both of these are in some sense provable by Scripture-informed reasoning, but the source of the doctrine itself is ecclesial--that is, it is the product of theology and not the immediate recitation of revelation. Here there is a crucial difference between Westminster's "good and necessary consequence" deductions and the Articles' "may be proved thereby" approach to reasoning from the scriptures. As Article 21 makes clear, the decrees of councils only have authority if they "may be" ("possint" in the Latin is subjunctive) shown to come from Scripture. So also Article 6, which establishes the authority of Scripture after affirming the first four ecumenical councils, declares that doctrines may be insisted upon only if “tested” or “shown as good” (deinde probari potest). In the latter, the presumption is against a theological doctrine or practice proposed by church authority. In the latter, the presumption is in favor of the church's authority as she is guided into all truth by the Spirit of God.

Third, private judgment has its limits regardless of the tradition in question, so the "5 people, 7 opinions" issue is something of a red herring. Puritans have tradition and church courts just like Anglicans and Catholics. Whether we speak of a magisterium in a formal or informal sense, such a thing is an ecclesial-hermeneutical necessity. The only difference is the level of magisterial self-awareness and the processes, ordered or chaotic, by which it operates. That being said, it is very hard to see how a "regulative principle" approach to doctrine and practice can be sustained practically. While most any evangelical or Presbyterian would readily argue that the doctrine of the Trinity is a doctrine "of good and necessary consequence" derived from the Scriptures, this is hard to defend once you take five-minute's look into church history. The best argument that Arius had was that "Trinity" and its distinction between the single "ousia" of God and three-fold "hypostases" were not prescribed by the Scriptures. For that very reason, the doctrine remained highly controversial for over a century (from the 280s and Paul of Samosata at least to the Council of Chalcedon in 381). Even then, however, the doctrine of the Trinity has continued to be challenged whenever a strident "sola scriptura" tradition has come to the fore. Michael Servetus and Fausto Sozzini exemplify this in the 16th century as do John Biddle and Henry Hedworth in the 17th, and Blanco White and Francis Newman in the 19th. The reason for this is that recourse to Trinitarian language is not the only possible or necessary doctrine that can be rationally derived from the biblical witness. One may argue that it is the "best" or "most historically durable" explanation, but then you're back on Anglican grounds. This is not the same thing as the Puritan argument that it is the only necessarily possible and consequent doctrine. 

The issue is not, finally, where we look for a court of final appeal in matters of doctrine and practice. No one thinks that a council or Pope can overturn or directly contradict scripture. This would be to set revelation and theology at odds with one another. Neither is it whether the clarity of Scripture is sufficient to lead someone to saving faith apart from the church's witness. I think that folks who seriously entertain the pragmatics of such a thing would admit this this is difficult to defend regardless of whether one is an Anglican or a Puritan. The issue, or it seems to me, is whether the Church is permitted to impose on an individual's conscience a doctrine that is not of necessary and immediate consequence ("immediate," here meaning unmediated the church) derived from Scripture. In other words, is "defensible by Scripture, but authoritatively taught by the church" enough to burden someone's conscience with a doctrine or practice? If it is, "sola scriptura" disappears in a poof of endless qualifications.

On Being Redeemed from Violence
I'm not a pacifist, but a violent man trying to follow Jesus and live into the non-violence of the Kingdom of God coming. The theory of just conflict (whether just war or the just exercise of violence at a local level) is aimed at curtailing our inexorable tendencies toward the escalation of reciprocal violence in a cursed creation. The idea is that the evils of retributory violence are sometimes made necessary by the victimization of the innocent and the incorrigibility of some victimizers. The idea is emphatically not that those necessary evils are to be celebrated as though they were a positive good. Even capital punishment may be made necessary when every alternative means of restraining evil has been exhausted, but the practice becomes evil and gravely sinful when those intermediate means are disregarded or half-heartedly attempted. While I make no assumptions about the state of George Zimmerman's soul, it seems pretty clear that "stand your ground," both as a law and as an ethos occasion and even celebrate such disregard and half-hearted effort.

The vocation of a policeman or a soldier is much like that of anyone who wields temporal power. We are especially called to pray for such persons because they bear a heavy load so that we may be free, prosperous, and alive all at the same time. As St. Augustine observed, to wield temporal power is to be unavoidably corrupted by it. Those in authority are faced with limited resources, expansive need, intransigent competing interests, and ungovernable human hearts. Choosing a positive good is the exception; seeking the lesser evil is the rule. That's the price of administrating the civitas terrena. Aspiring to such a burden or unilaterally assuming the role as an an armed individual without the warranting vocation by God and the society so governed is at least the near occasion of grave evil if not evil itself.

Many Christians of late have manifested the tendency to fantasize about unrealities that prepare us to excuse our implication in violence and death-dealingl. You likely know what I mean because you've heard the interrogations of the bloody hypothetical. "What would you do if a group of armed assailants broke into your house to kill you, your wife, and your children? The questions entice us to spend the precious moments of our short lives rehearsing for random disaster and we gradually accommode ourselves mentally, emotionally, and rhetorically to unreal violence. We forget, of course, that the sheer randomness, novelty, and overwhelming unlikelihood of such situations guarantees that they are sui generis. We have no idea of the hypothetical circumstance, the number of involved parties, the nature and disposition of your assailant(s), or our own capacities, so we lack the script to prepare for our role as the would-be, crack shot action hero that we've seen in the movies. And yet in our fantasizing about death-dealing, we've conditioned ourselves to be suspicious of the world and afraid of other people. We've already adusted ourselves to the dire burden of ending the life of a nameless "someone" and who bears the image and likeness of God. Invariably and inevitably the "someone" morphs into the hypothetical "anyone."

We might as well be prepping ourselves for the possibility of a busload of penguins crashing into our house!

All the while, this frenetic rehearsal comes at the expense of contemplating why we shouldn't go about dreaming of and practicing for death-dealing.

Wouldn't we be more obedient to Christ's calling to "take no worry for tomorrow" (Cf. Matt. 6.34) if we were to become just as studied and practiced at spiritual practices of peacemaking and restraint and the discernment of hopeful possibility? Wouldn't this habit of seeking of the Kingdom of God and his righteousness FIRST sharpen our sapiential skill to redeem the world in more high-stress situations of charged strife? Wouldn't this be a better embodiment of the cross and resurrection than rehearsing so as to become more efficient when contributing to the world's further destruction?
Imagine that Zimmerman could calm his outrage at the "assholes" that "always get away." 

Imagine that he humbled himself to obey the dispatcher urging him not to pursue Martin. 

Imagine that he had left the damn gun in the car rather than letting it stoke his bravado and escalate the confrontation. 

Imagine that he hadn't accommodated himself to the fantasy of being the heroic defender of his domain and arrogated to himself the responsibilities of a police officer.

It seems clear that the law and a violent man's fantasy conspired to bring about the death of a man who had committed no crime and who wasn't initially a threat to anyone.

I write to professing, pro-life Christians especially: From where did you learn "stand your ground," meeting fear with fear, violence with violence, or the threat of death with death-dealing? God the Father did not stand his ground. God the Father did not even withhold his only begotten Son, but gave him up for us all (Cf. Rom. 8:32). Neither did Jesus stand his ground. Though he was God of very God, he humbled himself and took the form of a servant, even to death on a cross (Cf. Phil. 2). St. Paul prefaces the latter passage with "Let this same mind be in you as was in Christ Jesus." I say "stand your ground" is heresy. I say, TO HELL with "stand your ground." That's where it came from and where it's destined to go. We believe in the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come.

The "New" Perspective (Or My Perspective, At Least) on St. Paul

[Just so no-one thinks I've completely ripped-off +Tom Wright when his most recent magnum opus arrives in a couple months.]

Wrapped up my triennial lectionary sojourn in Galatians this week. This year I've had the benefit of supplementing my work in the text with prep work for our Wednesday class in 1 Maccabees. After teaching the life and epistles of Paul to upper-level undergrads at Saint Louis University and trudging through the exegesis again this last month (with two additional commentaries on the shelf by Martinus De Boer and FB friend/colleague, ScotMcKnight), I'm more convinced than ever of the soundness the so-called “New Perspective” on Paul. Treating Paul as a polemicist against a proto-Pelagian merit theology (as though the Jews were trying to earn salvation/God's favor by “good works,” etc.) is to miss the point and the power of his gambit entirely.

My basic summary of the New Perspective would go something like this: 

The basic question is not is not "How do I get a gracious God?" or "How are my sins forgiven so that I can go to heaven?" The question for St. Paul was "How does one recognize the "people of God"? Or as he Paul himself puts it in Galatians six, “Whence do we find the 'Israel of God'?"

Beginning in Genesis with the common human ancestry in Adam and the purpose of Israel (children of Abraham) to visit all the families of the earth with his blessing, God has always been about the reconciliation of the whole human family. The purpose of Torah was to preserve Israel inviolate (uncorrupted by Gentile idolatry) until the coming of the true Son of Abraham and perfectly faithful Israelite, Jesus the Messiah.

In his death and especially in his resurrection, Torah had fulfilled its purpose (i.e. the Pauline analogy of the paidagogos, shepherding the people of God to maturity). As no less a figure than Jacob Neusner has observed, Judaism recognizes the people of God by the light of Torah at it's center. Hence, the Judaizers (Christianized Jews) were seeking to maintain the works of Torah (circumcision, Sabbath, kosher laws, etc.) as a continuing center. This is where Antiochus' attempts to forcibly alienate the Jews fro Torah and heroic Judaism's fidelity to the death is instructive. For Paul, however, this was to miss the point of the cross and resurrection entirely. 

As Jesus consistently demonstrated throughout his public ministry with stuff like his “You have heard it said, but I say...” instruction, he had come to fulfill and thus supplant Torah as the luminate center of the people of God. The glory of the resurrected Jesus was Zion restored and his outpoured Spirit was the shekinah (the glory of the divine presence) returned to a living temple (the embodied church). Thus, as Paul both taught and exemplified by his mission to the Gentiles , the time had now finally come to gather the nations and fulfill the Abrahamic promise. Christianity would not be the Maccabaeus redivivus, but something new entirely. Now the nations would be reclaimed and blessed, not simply repelled. 

Critical here, however, was that the Gentiles were to be included AS GENTILES, in all their alien integrity, rather than as bar/bat mitzvahed Jews. To require Judaizing as a basis for inclusion would have been for Paul tantamount to denying the resurrection and would represent a retreat from the in-breaking consummation of redemptive history. We recognize the people of God, therefore, not by the boundary makers prescribed by Torah, but by a living faith that embraces the lordship of Jesus (hence Paul's anti-imperial polemic: kurios iesous) and manifests the fruit of the Spirit—against which (especially when manifest among formerly pagan, idolatrous and reprobate Gentiles) no one could utter condemnation (Cf. Rom. 8.1ff.) or establish a Torah (Cf. Gal. 5.23). 

The “getting in” vs. “staying in” slogans in current use are over-simple in my opinion. I think Paul was defending over-all the notion that we recognize the people of God by their faithful embrace of the Lordship of Jesus and their manifestation of the Spirit's fruitful power. This is a matter of faithfully embracing the manifold reality of the rule of Christ NOW amid this present, contested kingdom, so we are speaking of faith immediately embodied in works of righteousness.

That's the necessary point to come to BEFORE we start thoughtfully applying things to our contemporary world, but whatever results will be a community that bears witness to the in-breaking rule and reign of Jesus. It will also be a reconciling community—reconciling people to God and to one another as the fulfillment of what Torah always pointed to as its own fulfillment. See the “summary of the law” at the beginning of the Anglican Eucharist as a basic summons for the Church to more perfectly realize what it is:

Hear what our Lord Jesus saith: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets."   Matthew 22:37-40 

Of God, Tornadoes, and Theologians

A couple Facebook friends are going back and forth over Rachel Held Evans posted rebuke of John Piper for his Tweet quoting Job 1.19 with reference to the Moore, OK tornado (following me so far?). In fairness to Piper, Rachel's retort was more a reaction to Piper's derministic modus operandi than it was to his simple Tweet likening the residents of Moore to Job, but her response certainly touched a nerve that led Calvinists and complimentarians to circle the wagons.

Doug Wilson starts in on Evans with a simple either/or:

John Piper lives in a universe where terrible things happen, but he knows that when we come to know the whole story, we will stop our mouths, and bow before a holy God in order to worship Him — and all manner of things shall be well. To acknowledge God’s sovereignty in such things does not keep our hearts from breaking in the midst of such devastation. The sovereignty of God is a hard shell case that carries and protects the tender heart. Rachel Held Evans lives in a world where innocent people just get caught in the machinery, and God is terribly sorry about it.

Wilson is typically derisive in what he writes and this post is no exception, but his snarky triumphalism barely conceals the shell game at work. Wilson thinks that Evans has dethroned God and made him into a "kosmic klutz king" who is incompetent in his handling of the world's destructive powers. That may be so, but Wilson resolves the tension the other way by making God into a cosmic Marie Antoinette, who waxes contemptuous when we rage at his suggestion that we content ourselves with the promise of cake in the sweet by-and-by.

Matt Redmond is a bid more sensible and restrained than Wilson, but he's no less willing to let his theological determinism hold sway: "Do I believe that if disaster comes to a city, God has done it? Yes. Do I believe the penalty for sin is death? Yes. Do I believe we all deserve death because of our sinful rebellion against God? Yes. But there is a mystery as to how all those things fit together."

I wonder, however, if either Wilson or Redmond haven't arbitrarily foreclosed all other options by framing the problem as they have. Both are concerned to defend a notion that all human beings deserve death and destruction and an eternal, nether-worldly water-boarding in the end. They also can't see any other way to preserve this without God as the active agent of the death and destruction and as the proprietor of the cosmic rendition site. Both have a wonderful bag of proof-texts that are alleged to justify this notion, but both run aground on the notion that the purest revelation of God is the self-donating Christ, Crucified and Resurrected. If this is true, even Redmond's restrained determinism is a bridge too far. Not every disaster-plagued city comes to it's plight because "God has done it" and saying that "the wages of sin is death" does not imply that God is the paymaster. Nor is that quote comprehended by saying, "we all deserve death."

As an alternative, why don't we lay blame where blame is due? The world's estrangement from God is consistently laid at our collective feet as humans in Holy Writ. We're the ones who have brought destruction on ourselves in our arrogant conceit that we could master the wind and waves and every other power under heaven. In the heart of each of us lives a tiny Pharaoh entertaining the conceit that we are the divine protectors of our domain. Having banished God in favor of a pantheon of competing idols, we have gone it alone to battle chaos with our own ingenuity and strength. Our pretense at fullness is really a gaping absence. As for our "rendition to perdition" and the retributive violence of God, C.S. Lewis was harmonizing with a rich choir of ancient Christian theologians when he observed that the gates are locked from the inside. The logic of damnation is that we curse the sun that gives us light and warmth and flee to an icy darkness of our own making. Even Dante knew that.

Now this doesn't ultimately solve the problem of theodicy but it places the mystery of evil on a very different temporal axis than Wilson's. For him, evil (and God's implication in evil) is ultimately justified for the goods produced in the "rich tapestry of means and ends." A clearer Augustinian view on things would recognize that both evil and evils represent a privation of divine goodness that God himself longs to fill in a resurrected heavens and earth. We contemplate evil on the redemptive-historical axis of cross and resurrection, not on the axis of means and ends. So, Evans is right to maintain, that we are not worthless, not disposable, not merely the objects of divine wrath, and not deserving of the abuses that we have visited on ourselves. Rather, the summons of grace is a plea to end our self-imposed exile and return to the waiting father who longs to receive us, not as slaves, but as honored sons and daughters.