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The Transforming God: An Interpretation of Suffering and Evil
Theologian Tyron Inbody suggests a new understanding of God in this highly accessible introduction to Christian perspectives of suffering and evil. Interpreting suffering and evil as religious problems, Inbody analyzes and assesses the notion of an all-loving and omnipotent Deity found in classical theism. He concludes with a radical reinterpretation of the Christian Deity as a vulnerable, transforming God, one recognized by both process and Trinitarian theology.
- GenresTheology
244 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1997
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July 7, 2014
Some people are anti-theist because of their assumption that an omnipotent or, perhaps worse, omnibenevolent God who allows tragedy, suffering, death, and loss is illogical and incomprehensible. In The Transforming God: An Interpretation of Suffering and Evil, Tyron L. Inbody explains that this is a post-Enlightenment problem and has tremendous bearing on whether on believes in or, or even more importantly, finds God to be worthy of worship in the biblical and traditional Christian tradition.
Theodicy, the problem of evil, is a tricky problem. It has the provenance problem of trying God in a mundane court of limited dimensionality when the issue is multi-dimensional, even eternal. Humans seem overly audacious to “judge” God based on their own evidence, yet, if we don’t try to make sense of the relationship between God and the world, what difference does God really make in an individual’s or a culture’s life and why do we even have religion as an institution and faith as an expression of trust?
Inbody states, early on in the volume, that “One of the major functions of religion has been to offer meaning to our experiences of disruption, pain, and suffering.” (p. 16) He contends that it is “meaningless suffering” that frustrates humanity the most and asserts that if religion is concerned at all about meaning and understanding within human life, it must add a consideration of theodicy to its broader scope (p. 33), but by the end of the volume, he establishes that it is vital to ground our understanding of God’s being in God’s participation in suffering: “The crucial point is that a Trinitarian understanding of divine providence and the reality of evil is marked not by a pagan notion of God as sheer almightiness but by the power of love at work in the ministry, cross, and resurrection of Jesus.” (quoting Daniel Migliori, Faith Seeking Understanding, on p. 168)
For readers who haven’t dealt with the issue, Inbody does an introductory course’s worth of summarizing issues and advocates of various positions, and he does it in less pages than I, personally, would have anticipated. Theodicy, for those who don’t remember, was the grand struggle of the 17th century philosopher, G. W. Leibnitz. His position was (to greatly oversimplify) that God who knew everything and could do everything had decided that the world as it is must be the best possible way it could be in order to accomplish God’s purpose. This, of course, led to Voltaire’s parody in Candide with regard to the “best of all possible worlds.”
Inbody summarizes Augustine’s approach as: 1) evil is the privation of the good (p. 40), 2) evil is necessary for “free will” (p. 40), 3) the “principle of plenitude” (essentially, the “diversity” argument (p. 41), and 4) the aesthetic view (if we could only see from the “divine perspective”—p. 42). Obviously, this approach emphasizes “potentiality” to the detriment of “reality.” “Although God could use all power, God instead chooses to delegate power to a self-regulating nature and self-determining moral agents.” (p. 44) Critics contend that there is no difference between God’s will and God’s permission (p. 45) such that the real crisis with this theodicy is that God is (from many perspectives) a bad economist (too much waste and inefficiency—p. 107).
Many theists prefer the pedagogical (or teleological) argument that suffering occurs to guide, sculpt, and educate humans in order to help them live to their full potential (pp. 61-62). This has some biblical resonance, but is also subject to the “economics” argument. There is something appealing about the idea that “The sufferer will be moved in the suffering through the work of God the Spirit into closer relationship with God and therefore toward the ultimate fulfillment God intended for the creature.” (p. 63)
The problem, as Inbody clearly demonstrates, is that any of these traditional theodicies has a problem because they: 1) can be perceived as justifying a divine abuse of power, 2) deny the reality of evil, 3) ignore the problem of proportionality (ie. “cost effectiveness”), and 4) seem implausible (although technically possible) (p. 70). Eventually, however, Inbody turns the tables on those who undermine traditional theodicies by asking two excellent questions: 1) How can we understand God’s goodness when we don’t understand the fullness of God and 2) How can we understand God’s goodness when we don’t have a common human idea of goodness (p. 108).
I really believe the key thought is found when Inbody suggests that God’s goodness is not justice, but sheer gratuity—with implications (p. 109). That seems to be the hinge point in the volume from whence he builds a foundation for God who suffers and feels (p. 146). In dealing with God’s participation in God’s creation, Inbody notes that “process theology” (where God is so much a part of creation that God is “defined” by the process) has two advantages: 1) God is seen as both creating and redeeming the world in every moment; and 2) while “process” suggests that God doesn’t “will” everything that happens, it is aware that God has a “will” in everything that happens (pp. 151-2). In short, God has skin in the game. But the biggest problem with “process theology” in its purest form is that a “process” cannot be worshipped nor instill a “relationship.” (pp. 158-9)
However, as Jurgen Moltman makes so clear, the death of Jesus tells us considerable about the being of God (p. 171). Following the lead of Moltmann and theologians like him, Inbody reaches what I believe is his most important conclusion: “God is not the Father who is usually conceived in classical theistic categories, but God is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. The groaning and travail of the Holy Spirit and the agonizing and endurance of the Son are as essential to what Christians mean by God as is the transcendence and reliability of the Father.” (p. 176) In short, one cannot understand suffering without realizing that God suffers enough to enable “relationship” and merely understanding God as power is useless.
Having never heard of The Transforming God: An Interpretation of Suffering and Evil before I encountered it in a used bookstore, I sense that this book is quite underrated. I find his approach significantly more valuable than the three “go-to” theological works currently in my library (all cited in Inbody’s work): Fretheim’s The Suffering of God, Griffin’s God, Power, and Evil, and Hick’s Evil and the God of Love. All four are valuable, but Inbody’s approach seems to be the most inclusive and versatile.
Theodicy, the problem of evil, is a tricky problem. It has the provenance problem of trying God in a mundane court of limited dimensionality when the issue is multi-dimensional, even eternal. Humans seem overly audacious to “judge” God based on their own evidence, yet, if we don’t try to make sense of the relationship between God and the world, what difference does God really make in an individual’s or a culture’s life and why do we even have religion as an institution and faith as an expression of trust?
Inbody states, early on in the volume, that “One of the major functions of religion has been to offer meaning to our experiences of disruption, pain, and suffering.” (p. 16) He contends that it is “meaningless suffering” that frustrates humanity the most and asserts that if religion is concerned at all about meaning and understanding within human life, it must add a consideration of theodicy to its broader scope (p. 33), but by the end of the volume, he establishes that it is vital to ground our understanding of God’s being in God’s participation in suffering: “The crucial point is that a Trinitarian understanding of divine providence and the reality of evil is marked not by a pagan notion of God as sheer almightiness but by the power of love at work in the ministry, cross, and resurrection of Jesus.” (quoting Daniel Migliori, Faith Seeking Understanding, on p. 168)
For readers who haven’t dealt with the issue, Inbody does an introductory course’s worth of summarizing issues and advocates of various positions, and he does it in less pages than I, personally, would have anticipated. Theodicy, for those who don’t remember, was the grand struggle of the 17th century philosopher, G. W. Leibnitz. His position was (to greatly oversimplify) that God who knew everything and could do everything had decided that the world as it is must be the best possible way it could be in order to accomplish God’s purpose. This, of course, led to Voltaire’s parody in Candide with regard to the “best of all possible worlds.”
Inbody summarizes Augustine’s approach as: 1) evil is the privation of the good (p. 40), 2) evil is necessary for “free will” (p. 40), 3) the “principle of plenitude” (essentially, the “diversity” argument (p. 41), and 4) the aesthetic view (if we could only see from the “divine perspective”—p. 42). Obviously, this approach emphasizes “potentiality” to the detriment of “reality.” “Although God could use all power, God instead chooses to delegate power to a self-regulating nature and self-determining moral agents.” (p. 44) Critics contend that there is no difference between God’s will and God’s permission (p. 45) such that the real crisis with this theodicy is that God is (from many perspectives) a bad economist (too much waste and inefficiency—p. 107).
Many theists prefer the pedagogical (or teleological) argument that suffering occurs to guide, sculpt, and educate humans in order to help them live to their full potential (pp. 61-62). This has some biblical resonance, but is also subject to the “economics” argument. There is something appealing about the idea that “The sufferer will be moved in the suffering through the work of God the Spirit into closer relationship with God and therefore toward the ultimate fulfillment God intended for the creature.” (p. 63)
The problem, as Inbody clearly demonstrates, is that any of these traditional theodicies has a problem because they: 1) can be perceived as justifying a divine abuse of power, 2) deny the reality of evil, 3) ignore the problem of proportionality (ie. “cost effectiveness”), and 4) seem implausible (although technically possible) (p. 70). Eventually, however, Inbody turns the tables on those who undermine traditional theodicies by asking two excellent questions: 1) How can we understand God’s goodness when we don’t understand the fullness of God and 2) How can we understand God’s goodness when we don’t have a common human idea of goodness (p. 108).
I really believe the key thought is found when Inbody suggests that God’s goodness is not justice, but sheer gratuity—with implications (p. 109). That seems to be the hinge point in the volume from whence he builds a foundation for God who suffers and feels (p. 146). In dealing with God’s participation in God’s creation, Inbody notes that “process theology” (where God is so much a part of creation that God is “defined” by the process) has two advantages: 1) God is seen as both creating and redeeming the world in every moment; and 2) while “process” suggests that God doesn’t “will” everything that happens, it is aware that God has a “will” in everything that happens (pp. 151-2). In short, God has skin in the game. But the biggest problem with “process theology” in its purest form is that a “process” cannot be worshipped nor instill a “relationship.” (pp. 158-9)
However, as Jurgen Moltman makes so clear, the death of Jesus tells us considerable about the being of God (p. 171). Following the lead of Moltmann and theologians like him, Inbody reaches what I believe is his most important conclusion: “God is not the Father who is usually conceived in classical theistic categories, but God is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. The groaning and travail of the Holy Spirit and the agonizing and endurance of the Son are as essential to what Christians mean by God as is the transcendence and reliability of the Father.” (p. 176) In short, one cannot understand suffering without realizing that God suffers enough to enable “relationship” and merely understanding God as power is useless.
Having never heard of The Transforming God: An Interpretation of Suffering and Evil before I encountered it in a used bookstore, I sense that this book is quite underrated. I find his approach significantly more valuable than the three “go-to” theological works currently in my library (all cited in Inbody’s work): Fretheim’s The Suffering of God, Griffin’s God, Power, and Evil, and Hick’s Evil and the God of Love. All four are valuable, but Inbody’s approach seems to be the most inclusive and versatile.
April 4, 2013
This is a clear statement of, and attempted response to, the "problem of evil" using process and neo-trinitarian theology. Inbody argues that "classical theism" doesn't have the resources to adequately reply to the problem, but that these other versions of theism do--and are truer to the heart of Christian faith. I wasn't fully persuaded, but Inbody homes in on the key point of contention, namely, how we should understand God's power and presence to and in the world.
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