The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami?

by David Bentley Hart

That there is a transcendent providence that will bring God’s good ends out of the darkness of history — in spite of every evil — no Christian can fail to affirm. But providence (as even Voltaire seems to have understood) is not simply a “total sum” or “infinite equation” that leaves nothing behind.

Even if the purpose of such a world is to prepare creatures to know the majesty and justice of its God, that majesty and justice are, in a very real sense, fictions of his will, impressed upon creatures by means both good and evil, merciful and cruel, radiant and monstrous — some are created for eternal bliss and others for eternal torment, and all for the sake of the divine drama of perfect and irresistible might. Such a God, at the end of the day, is nothing but will, and so nothing but an infinite brute event; and the only adoration that such a God can evoke is an almost perfect coincidence of faith and nihilism.

Rather, Ivan rejects salvation itself, insofar as he understands it, and on moral grounds. He rejects anything that would involve such a rescue — anything that would make the suffering of children meaningful or necessary. He grants that one day that eternal harmony will be established, and we will discover how it necessitated the torments endured by children. Perhaps mothers will forgive the murderers of their children, and the serf child, his mother, and their master will be reconciled, and all will praise God’s justice, and all evils will be accounted for. Or perhaps the damnation of the wicked will somehow balance the score (though how then there can be that final harmony, when the suffering of the victims has already happened and the suffering of their persecutors will persist eternally, Ivan cannot guess). But still, Ivan wants neither harmony nor the knowledge of ultimate truth at such a cost: “for love of man I reject it”; even ultimate truth “is not worth the tears of that one tortured child.”