Then whence cometh evil?

The Chaos: Engraving according to Ovid’s description in The Metamorphoses,

in: Michel de Marolles, Paintings of the Temple of the Muses, Paris, Antoine de Sommaville 1655

This post is the ideal continuation of my post Catastrophic Stairway to Freedom (30.01.16, originally posted April 5, 2010). In that post you will also find a hint of what I am getting at here.

Traditionally, Christians have been taught that human evil originated with the "original sin". Traditionally, especially with and after Augustine, the consequence of "original sin" has been interpreted as a true and proper corruption of human nature. While the Catholic Church has always been rather cautious with this extreme conclusion, Protestants have traditionally adopted this notion of human sin as a consequence of the corruption of human nature, in turn as a consequence of "original sin". I will confront this issue in a future post.

But what about cosmic evil (earthquakes, eruptions, floods, tsunamis, diseases, attacks by wild animals, etc.)? Surely it would be grotesque to see also cosmic evil as a consequence of "original sin". Yet there is a strong tradition in this sense, especially in Calvinism.

If anyone wants to know more, including high level literary implications, I recommend reading Calvinism and Cosmic Evil in "Moby-Dick" (T. Walter Herbert, Jr. PMLA, Vol. 84, No. 6 (Oct., 1969), pp. 1613-1619). Just a brief quotation from the paper: 

“Melville's presentation of Captain Ahab is heavily influenced by Calvin's interpretation of the Old Testament King Ahab [1 Kings 16-22]. Furthermore, Melville was familiar with a traditional form of attack on Calvinism in which Calvin was accused of having envisaged a God who is a brutal monster. While writing Moby-Dick Melville had at hand a celebrated anti-Calvinist treatise which raises this issue, John Taylor's Scripture Doctrine of Original Sin. [1740; with "A Supplement to the Scripture-doctrine of original sin", 1741]”

Unlike the prophet Jonah, also afflicted by a whale, according to God's will, “Captain Ahab, by contrast, does not dissolve in a Jonah's terror: although he interprets the whale's attack as an indication of the divine will, he takes it as a cosmic affront and determines to be revenged.” Calvin does not try to defend "God's honour", by claiming that the cosmic evil by which humans are afflicted is not willed by God. No, for Calvin cosmic evil is a perfect means by which God afflicts humans: only those who (like Jonah, like King David, like Job - the latter not immediately, but eventually) bow down to God's inscrutable will show that they are the elect. Those whom he has already predestined to be the reprobate (like King Saul, like King Ahab) vainly try to resist God's will. The more they try to act according to what they consider reason, the more they get entangled in God's punishment, wrath and condemnation. 

If there is any doubt about Calvin's position, here are the accusations against which he had to defend  himself, in his own words:

“[If God created men with the intention to damn the greater part of them, then the creation was] not an act of love, but of hatred.” (...) “No beast is so cruel (to say nothing of man) that it would desire to create its young to misery.” (Calvin's Calvinism, trans. Henry Cole (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1950), pp. 213. This volume contains Calvin's two polemical treatises, "The Eternal Predestination of God" and "The Secret Providence of God", with a series of Articles, from which the quotations are taken)

In a way, though, Calvin is logically consequent. He does not try to affirm God's goodness, so, in one fell swoop, he eliminates all problems (of which the "Canaanite genocides" are the most striking example) that have troubled so many generations of exegetes  and apologists.

Let's take stock:

• That cosmic evil is the consequence of "original sin" is embarrassingly ridiculous;
• That cosmic evil is willed by God to afflict humans makes God into a monster.

Is there another option, a way out from this conundrum?

I suggest to examine the very beginning of the Bible, the first two verses of Genesis ...

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
2 Now the earth was without shape and empty [תֹ֙הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ - transl. tohu wa bohu], and darkness was over the surface of the watery deep, but the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the water.
(Gen 1:1-2) 

... in particular verse 2, which is, usually, totally disregarded.

Notice how, unlike in Plato's myth of creations, God does not shape pre-existing matter: no, this chaotic matter ("without shape and empty") is the very first act of His creation. In many modern languages (French, German, Estonian, Hungarian), tohu wa bohu (or similar spelling) expresses "utter confusion".

So, when God, in the six days of Creation, gives shape to this primeval matter, a certain amount of chaos remains. Why would God "build on chaos"? The (tentative) answer is in my post Catastrophic Stairway to Freedom:

If Natural Catastrophes (cosmic evil) were banned, Human Freedom would be impossible.