ILLNESS THEODICIES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
by Robert M. Price
The
problem of theodicy is
surely one of the most vexing questions with which Christian faith, or
any
religious faith, has to deal. Most of us, however, are usually quite
willing to
leave it to the theologians. Perhaps one day they will come up with a
solution,
we say to ourselves, relegating the problem to the same limbo as safe
nuclear
energy and a cure for cancer. But theodicy quickly intrudes itself upon
the
agenda of even the simplest believer as soon as serious misfortune
strikes. The
technical jargon of theology may remain in the ivory tower, but the
stricken
believer must ask, "How can God have let this happen to me
? " Theodicy, both as an intellectual stumper and as a cry of the
heart, is as old as theology and religion, and we find many answers
offered. We
find many proposed or at least mentioned in the Bible itself. Here we
wish to
restrict our attention to the New Testament, inquiring after the range
of theodicies occurring there, whether advocated or opposed.
Most of the examples chosen will concern illness and its explanation.
This is
often the form in which the question of theodicy arises in the text
anyway, and
it will facilitate comparison if all cases are drawn from the same
category.
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First, we find especially though
not exclusively in the gospels the assumption that illness represents
victimization by demonic or Satanic powers. This belief is shared by most
preliterate cultures and by pentecostal/charismatic segments
of contemporary Christianity. One particularly striking reference to this
belief occurs in Luke 13:10-17.
In verse 11 we read that an unfortunate woman has been "crippled by a
spirit" for eighteen long years. The words of Jesus in verse 16 are even
stronger; she has been "bound by Satan" himself (presumably through
the agency of a subordinate spirit) all this time. The same verse also contains
the principal clue as to why everyone assumed her illness was demonic in origin
(instead of one of the other available alternatives - see below). The
woman is called by Jesus a "daughter of Abraham, " a term which seems
to imply her known piety, as in Luke 19:9, where upon his repentance Zacchaeus is eulogized as "a son of Abraham" (cf.
especially the New American Bible rendering, "for this is what it means to
be a son of Abraham"). In other words, the woman is known to be pious and
so her affliction cannot have been sent as divine chastisement. We find a
similar case (perhaps two of them combined) in Mark 9:14 29. There a boy has been plagued intermittently
("often" v. 22) by a demon, as we
might call it, of epilepsy. This account seems to have been conflated somewhere
along the line with another in which a boy was possessed by a "deaf and
dumb spirit. " In either case, however, the
illness is the result of the wanton terrorism of demonic spirits.
We should not
ignore the theological assumption implicit in this belief of popular religion.
The presupposition would seem to be one of Manichaean like dualism. There is
no hint in these cases that God is using devilish harassment as a secondary
instrument to chastise or test faith as is the case, for instance, in
the Book of Job or possibly with Paul's "thorn in the flesh, a messenger
of Satan" (II Corinthians 12:7). Rather, the idea is that the sufferers
are merely victims of infernal terrorism in a divine demonic contest in
which now one side gains ground, now the other. Of course Jesus is under stood
as God's champion, sent (finally) by God to release Satan's prisoners of war.
We have a similar notion in Paul's comment that Satan hindered his travel plans
to Thessalonika (I Thessalonians 2:18). Paul expects that one day soon God will put a stop
to all such pesky interference, but notice that for the present he ascribes, as
do the gospel writers, real power to Satan. There is no thought to
explain, as modern theologians might, how God can allow Satan to contravene the
divine purposes, or even what sense such a seemingly contradictory claim would
make. It is deemed sufficient that soon it will all cease. This is a resolution
of the problem but not a solution to it.
The theoretical implications of this
type of theodicy are usually considered as incompatible with Western monotheism.
Zoroastrianism has said the most that can be said for this theodicy
theologically: God is not omnipotent at present but one day will
be, when the evil power is finally neutralized. As theoretically unsatisfying
as this schema is in a Christian context, it loses even its apparent practical
value for an obvious reason. The impending victory of God, on which hopes for a
theodicy depend, is pushed off indefinitely into the future. 1
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The second approach to theodicy
we meet in the New Testament is the notion that God has inflicted the illness
to punish or chastise. Though this idea is very distasteful to many modern
religious believers, this predisposition should not be allowed to obscure the
meaning of various texts. For instance, the story of the invalid at the healing
shrine of Bethesda (John 5:1 15) concludes with Jesus' warning to the man
who has disobeyed him and spread the news of the miracle, causing trouble for
Jesus. "See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen
to you, " Jesus warns with visible irritation.
Clearly this is a warning, if not an actual threat, to the effect that sin
brings divine reprisal in the form of illness. We are probably dealing with the
same belief in Mark 2:1 12, where Jesus absolves the sins of the paralytic
lowered to him through a hole in the thatched roof. Modern readers are
surprised to read the words, "Son, your sins are forgiven" (v. 5),
since surely this was not the paralytic's request. But the ensuing developments
imply that the forgiveness is a necessary step preliminary to the healing. It
seems to be taken for granted that the man had been stricken with paralysis for
some sin(s), which Jesus now forgives. The punishment is then naturally lifted,
just as surely as a paroled criminal is shortly released from jail. Jesus'
subsequent healing of the man is then no arbitrary wonder intended to silence
his critics by "bowling them over" (in that case he might as well
have pulled a rabbit from a hat! ). Rather, his
healing miracle serves to settle the question of his authority to forgive sins
because of the organic link between sin and illness, and thus between
forgiveness and healing. Some readers may be tempted to dispute this exegesis
by pointing to two favorite texts elsewhere in the New Testament: John 9:3,
where Jesus denies that a case of blindness is due to sin, and Luke
13:1 5, when Jesus rejects the notion that certain political and disaster
victims' fates resulted from their wickedness. It hardly need be said that the
teaching of Lucan and Johannine
texts cannot control our reading of Mark. But these texts are of interest to
our discussion in their own right. In the case of John 9:3 we need only note
that only a particular case of blindness is at issue. No statement at all is
made about blindness or illness in general. And recall John 5:14, where illness
is clearly ascribed to sin. (We will return to this story below. ) As for Luke 13:1 5, we suggest that the assumptions
of the story may be very different than usually supposed. True, Jesus' words
must mean that the famous Galileans and Jerusalemites were not greater sinners
than most simply because their deaths were more spectacular. But is to say this
to reject the whole idea of divine visitation in wrath? Luke would not have
thought so; cf. Acts 5:1 11, where Ananias and Sapphira are dramatically stricken dead for their
hypocrisy! And the immediate context makes it obvious that Jesus' whole point
is to warn his hearers that their fate will be as bad as that of the Galileans
and Jerusalemites since their wickedness is just as great: "Unless you
repent, you too will all perish" (vv. 3 and 5). We are to understand not
that those already dead were not more guilty, but
rather that Jesus' hearers were not more innocent! The parable which immediately
follows makes Jesus' (or Luke's) intention clear; it is a warning of the coming
judgment on Israel.
And it is no accident that the two particular examples of verses 1 and 4 have
been chosen. Death at the hands of the Romans and under
collapsing buildings are both in the offing for unrepentant Jerusalem
(Luke 21:6, 20, 24). Far from militating against our second New Testament
theodicy, this passage may better be seen as another instance of it.
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Third among illness theodicies in the pages of the New Testament is the idea that one's illness may have come one's way via someone else's sins, specifically a parent's. This idea is mentioned in John 9:3, in the story of the man blind from birth. Again, all we know from the text is that this particular blind man was not so afflicted because of his parents. Jesus' words "Neither this man nor his parents sinned" simply do not address the question of whether parents may sometimes be punished by their children's misfortunes. Certainly the disciples' question implies that such a situation was thought to be a real possibility. As much as it may outrage our own sense of justice, it is undeniable that a biblical precedent, even a biblical warrant for this belief existed. For did not Exodus 20:5 warn that wickedness might take its toll even unto the fourth generation? Other biblical writers rejected the belief (Deuteronomy 24:16; Ezekiel 18:2), but this did not make Exodus 20:5 any less canonical scripture. Before we leave this answer to the question of theodicy, surely a case where the cure is almost worse than the illness, it is worth noting that something like the belief mentioned in John 9:3 occurs also in Matthew 27:25, though illness is not specifically the misfortune in view. Matthew depicts the crowd of Jews as hungry for the death of Jesus and more than willing to take the responsibility for it that the squeamish Pilate shuns: "Let his blood be on us and on our children! " It is difficult to deny that Matthew means the reader to see this suicidal curse as effective, in a fashion parallel to the unwitting prophecy of Caiaphas (John 11:49 52). (It almost goes without saying that the whole structure of Pauline soteriology presupposes such a schema, though in broader, corporate terms: "The many died by the trespass of one man" [Romans 5:15]. ) We may even be able to detect a positive converse of this inheritance of guilt, in individual cases, here and there in the New Testament. It has often been noted that in Mark 2:1 12 it is the faith of the paralytic's friends, not his own, that avails for his healing. Similarly, though religious salvation and not physical healing is in question, I Corinthians 7:14 and Acts 16:31 may be interpreted as promising salvation to the families of individuals who believe, but admittedly the point of these texts is not clear.
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Fourth in the New Testament's
catalogue of theodicies is yet another option
mentioned in John 9:3, a text which seems to promise much but deliver
disappointingly little in terms of our concern since it does not develop the
alternative theodicies it so tantalizingly alludes
to. The fourth of our options is that implied in the disciples' question,
"Who sinned? This man . . ., that he was born
blind? " Now what did the disciples have in mind?
Did they suppose that in his omniscience, God foresaw the man's sin before his
birth and so gave him blindness at birth? This would certainly be a perverse
state of affairs. Indeed, blindness might well prevent his committing a number
of sins. One might in fact imagine a theodicy that postulated God's depriving
someone of sight at birth in order to prevent his or her committing some
damning sin of the "lust of the eyes" later in life. In this case we
would have thinking similar to that in Mark 9:47: "If your eye causes you
to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom
of God with one eye than to have two
eyes and be thrown into hell. " (cf. also I
Corinthians 5:5. ) But it would strain things considerably if we were to try to
read all this into our passage. Occultists and Western proponents of Eastern
religions have always pointed to John 9:3 as biblical evidence for the doctrine
of karma and reincarnation. Is it possible they are right? We might feel a
little more confident in allowing even a qualified affirmative answer if there
were any other evidence that anyone in Jesus' milieu believed in reincarnation.
Such evidence, albeit scanty, may be found in Josephus' The Jewish War,
where he writes of the Pharisees that they believe "Every soul is
incorruptible, but only the souls of good men pass into other bodies, the souls
of bad men being subjected to eternal punishment" (II, 8, 14). 2
Now
admittedly this might be a reference to the doctrine of the
resurrection of the just. The "other bodies" might
simply be the superhuman bodies of the resurrection. Paul speaks of the
resurrection body in terms similarly suggestive of discontinuity. In II
Corinthians 5:1 4 he contrasts the "earthly tent" with the
future "heavenly dwelling" now reserved in the heavens, as if they
were two different bodies. Besides, this is the only version of a belief
in an
afterlife that Josephus ascribes to the Pharisees, and if he were going
to
choose only one variety of Pharasaic belief for his
summary, reincarnationism even if present would not
be the most representative. Still, the reference might be to the
doctrine of
reincarnation. Many have pointed out that Josephus would have depicted
Judaism
in the terms most palatable to his readers, and that means Hellenistic
terms.
So, the suggestion runs, he may have ascribed Hellenistic beliefs (such
as
reincarnation) to Jewish sects. Yet this apologetical
motive need not have forced Josephus to attribute to the Pharisees
beliefs that
none of them held. If belief in reincarnation were
present among some Pharisaic circles, as it certainly was in later
Jewish
heterodoxy, he might merely have chosen to mention this doctrine instead
of its
(to Gentile ears) more alien sounding rival, the doctrine of
resurrection.
So perhaps Josephus may be summoned as background evidence for Jewish
reincarnationism in Jesus' era. Even so, his description of
it would not fully coincide with the assumptions of the disciples in
John 9:3
if they had reincarnation in mind. For according to Josephus' account,
sin
would be punished not by affliction in one's next life on earth, but by
disembodied torment in Hades. By contrast, what occultists see in John
9:3 is
the doctrine of karma, i. e., that all individuals
are reincarnated, their moral record determining what happens to them
for good
or ill in each subsequent life. And, it is hard to
deny, this reading of the text would seem to make better sense of it
than any
other known to us.3 Even if there is no other evidence for contemporary Jewish
belief in karma and reincarnation, that does not mean that John 9:3 may not
itself count as evidence. Yet, be it noted, that is all we can say of it; the
passage neither advocates nor rejects such a belief per se. If we are right it
merely mentions it. Again, all we are told is that this man's blindness
is not the payment of a karmic debt. If the occultists were right in their
contention that in John 9:3 the New Testament teaches reincarnationism, we
would have much more to say about its 1 0 utility as a theodicy here, e. g.,
how every base is covered with no sin going unpunished, no misfortune being
undeserved. But at most the doctrine is only mentioned and this very
possibility we have thought worth exploring.
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We
call on our
much exercised text John 9 one last time, in our discussion of the fifth
type of theodicy in the New Testament. "This happened so that the work
of
God might be displayed in his life" (v. 3). And precisely how is it
displayed? We know from the rest of the story that the divine glory is
displayed in the blind man's healing, but as we shall see below, this is
not
the only way the story might have ended to achieve the same result. In
every Johannine miracle story a symbolic significance is never
far to seek. After all, they are "signs" of spiritual truths. It is
clear by the end of the chapter that the story is symbolic of spiritual
blindness and its cure by faith. When unlike the spiritually blind
Pharisees
the former blind man worships Jesus, we are to see in his faith a
reflection of
the miracle in Cana in chapter
2. There, too, Jesus "revealed his glory, and his disciples put their
faith in him" (2:11). But the
story is told on a literal level as well, and John does want us to
understand
that the man was born with physical blindness, so the question of
theodicy is
raised. John thought it not untoward for God to have sent the poor man
through
years and years of life as a blind beggar so that one day he might, so
to
speak, serve as an object lesson. No sooner does one marvel at God's
mercy at
healing him than the troublesome question obtrudes itself, "Why inflict
him with years of blindness in the first place?" It is as if we were to
push
a man into a raging torrent to demonstrate our courage as
we jump in to rescue him! This is not mere carping; remember,
the question is precisely that of God's fairness. The disciples wanted
to know,
and we wish to know, where is the justice in a man's being
born blind if God is able to prevent it? If one wishes to object that we
are
caricaturing God by holding him responsible to human standards, then let
us
admit that the whole question of theodicy is wrong headed, and that God
is, after all, beyond good and evil. And this would place us outside our
chosen
field of inquiry, since we are seeking to catalogue the ways in which
the New
Testament tries to grapple with the question of theodicy. Another
difficulty
with the illness theodicy offered in our passage is its very limited
applicability. Obviously most sufferers are unable to seize upon John
9:4 to
rationalize their illness for the simple fact that no miraculous healing
is
forthcoming. But of course we have been maintaining that John 9 is not
intended
to cover all illnesses, only the one in the story (and presumably others
issuing
in miraculous recoveries). What of those who remain afflicted,
yet seem guilty of no sin to which they might trace their malady?
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Besides
demonic victimization
(our first New Testament option), one possibility remains. The sick
person may
follow Paul in believing that sicknesses may be allowed or even sent "so
that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body" (II Corinthians
4:10). In his opposition to the triumphalist "super apostles" who
opposed him in
Corinth, Paul claims his scars of suffering as the true "signs
following" those who are Christ's: "We have this treasure in jars of
clay to show that this all surpassing power is from God and not from us.
We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed but not in
despair" (II Corinthians 4:7 8). The idea is exactly parallel to that
in I Corinthians 2:4: "My message and my preaching were not with wise
and
persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so
that your
faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power.
" Paul wants it to remain absolutely clear just whence the power in
his ministry comes. His speech is unimpressive? All the better no one
can attribute the compelling quality of
his message to his personal eloquence or cleverness. His life is full of
weakness and calamity (cf. II Corinthians 11:23 33)?
So be it no one will make the mistake of
thinking that mere human resources keep him going. "That is why, for
Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in
persecutions,
in difficulties" (II Corinthians 12:10). But what about sickness? If
Paul's "thorn in the
flesh" (II Corinthians 12:7) was some type of physical affliction, as
most
(though not all) exegetes hold, then the applicability of his thinking
about
"hardships" is assumed, since on his own account it was the
experience of the "thorn" that taught him the lesson in the first
place. "Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But
he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made
perfect in
weakness"' (II Corinthians 12:9a). If John saw God's glory made manifest
in the healing of affliction, we may say that Paul sees it displayed
first and
foremost in the bearing of affliction with an unflinching endurance
which can
only come from Christ. Seen this way sickness does us the favor of
loosening
the hold over us of the illusion of security and self reliance. It helps
us "fix our eyes not on what is seen but on what is unseen. For what is
seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal" (II Corinthians 4:18).
This need not imply that the sufferer
is to seek out suffering in a masochistic fashion. The point of a
theodicy is
not to make suffering a desirable thing, but rather simply to make it
understandable and meaningful, and Paul seems to have recognized this
line and
avoided overstepping it. Flagellants and medieval penitants
may have sought out suffering, but Paul did not. After all, he knew not
only
how to "be abased, " but "to
abound" as well (Philippians 4:12).
----------------
Of
all the theodicies
mentioned in the New Testament, the sixth is probably the most
attractive and serviceable theologically. A11 the others are beset with
either serious difficulties or severe limitations. They require us to
accept
the reality of demons or (possibly) reincarnation; they ask us to
believe that
God visits sickness upon us for our sins or, if we can think of none for
which
we are guilty, our ancestors' sins; or they work only if we are sure we
will be
miraculously healed. The sixth asks us simply to follow the way of
Christ in
our suffering, recognizing the affliction itself as an opportunity to
draw on
Christ's power. Yet this very observation points up the
utility of there being so wide a range of theodicy models in the New
Testament,
since different readers will approach the text with different beliefs,
and each
may find appropriate guidance in dealing with his or her illness or
misfortune.
FOOTNOTE REFERENCES
1See Peter L.
Berger's highly interesting remarks on this kind of theodicy in The Sacred
Canopy (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1969), pp.
68 71.
2Flavius Josephus, The Jewish War, trans. G. A. Williamson
(Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1978), pp. 129 130.
3. Compare our story with the
experience of Paul Deussen:
In
Jaipur I met in December 1892
an old Pandit almost naked, who approached me groping his way. They
told me
that he was completely blind. Not knowing that he had been blind from
birth, I sympathised with him, and asked by what unfortunate accident
the loss of sight had come upon him. Immediately and without showing any
sign
whatever of bitterness, the answer was ready to his lips: kenac'id
aparahena purvasmin janmani kritena, "by some crime committed in a
former birth. " (The Philosophy of the
Upanishads, New York: Dover, 1966, p. 313. )
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