Daily Archives: March 11, 2010

Call for Papers: Religion and Modernity in a Secular City

Posted by on March 11, 2010 1 comment

Call for Papers: The Religion and Modernity in a Secular City postgraduate conference will take place this coming 16-18 September at the Katholische Akademie in Berlin. The conference is being organized by the K. Akademie in conjunction with the Centre for Religion and Political Culture at the University of Manchester, and the Program on Religion, Politics and Economics at Humboldt University. Further details can be found by clicking here. The following is an abstract from the conference website:

Writing from Vichy, France in early 1940, Walter Benjamin articulated what many theologians secretly feared in his Über den Begriff der Geschichte by portraying theology as the hunchback that must keep out of sight. However, Slavoj Žižek has recently suggested that it is time to reverse Benjamin’s first thesis on the philosophy of history: “The puppet called ‘theology’ is to win all the time.” This startling reversal reveals that the extent to which Enlightenment secularization imagined it could map the rational world onto a manipulable grid, manifested in the global spread of political, economic and social structures that have attempted to inscribe the sacred within a strictly private sphere, is increasingly being called into question by the continuing public presence of political theologies. However, the question of what this new visibility of religion might mean in the context of the supposedly secular city remains less than clear. We invite proposals for papers, to be delivered in no more than 30 minutes, that address this broad theme from theology, philosophy, political theory, economics, sociology, as well as cultural and biblical studies. The keynote speaker will be Professor Graham Ward.

The language of the conference will be English. Abstracts of no more than 300 words, together with a CV, should be sent simultaneously to both the conference organizers via email no later than 30 April 2010. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by 14 May 2010. The conference will take place in the centre of Berlin at the Katholische Akademie. Generous grants are available for presenters to cover the costs of registration, accommodation and meals.

For further information please contact the conference organizers at the following addresses:

Is evil privation?

Posted by on March 11, 2010 75 comments

It has become an almost undisputed datum in contemporary theology that evil is to be understood in the Augustinian manner as a privation of goodness. Evil has no reality or being as such. Rather it is simply a lack, a minus within the plenitude of goodness (See for example Confessions VII 13[19]).

This sounds absolutely lovely and certainly gives theologians a great way to posses answers.

However lately I’ve been thinking through some problems with Augustine’s account. Three things:

  1. Its unclear why a lack of goodness necessarily makes something evil. My biceps are probably not as strong as the could be. They lack strength, which is good for biceps to have. Doesn’t seem evil. Or to use a specifically moral example, it would be good if I gave $100 to every needy beggar I ever came across. But instead I’m more likely to give a couple bucks if I have it on me. Is there any evil going on here? I doubt it. At the very least there is no necessary evil going on here, but there is a certainly “lack” of goodness.
  2. There’s absolutely nothing in the Bible I can find that remotely describes evil this way. If it is in there, show it to me. I can’t find anything that gives even a hint that we should understand evil as a lack of goodness in Scripture.
  3. Not only does the Bible not describe evil in this way, it actually describes it in ways that seem to outrightly contradict it. All throughout the NT Paul and the other apostolic authors speak of evil as involving cosmic forces, powers, demonic agents, Satan, etc. Evil is not talked about as a lack of goodness, but an utterly real group of forces of darkness. Obviously we need to work hard at interpreting this language, but I don’t see a way to make it square up with the Augustinian notion without very intentionally bringing a pre-determined axe to bear on the Bible.

Now, of course this will bring about the oft-thrown down gauntlet that “you’re ontologizing evil!” (here’s looking at you, Horstkoetter). In response to that I find myself inclined to say “So?” Saying that evil exists or has some sort of being is not, prima facie problematic as far as I can see. Now, to be sure it would be problematic to claim that evil and God are both equally ontologically ultimate; that would be to end up Manichean. But that is decidedly something different than recognizing that evil has (contingent) being in some sense. Obviously that one needs to be unpacked more, but at the very least I’m hoping to forestall the facile accusations of Manicheanism that are so readily made these days.

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