Eastern Orthodox Christian Theology - Theodicy

Theodicy

The Eastern Orthodox church rejects the Western European philosophical problems that derive from Western Christianity's theological teachings about the Judeo-Christian Trinity.

The Eastern Orthodox theologian Olivier Clement, wrote:

There is no need for Christians to create a special theory for justifying God (theodicy). To all the questions regarding the allowance of evil by God (the problem of evil) there is one answer - Christ; the Crucified Christ, Who burns up in Himself all the world's sufferings for ever; Christ, Who regenerates our nature and has opened the entry to the Kingdom of everlasting and full life to each one who desires it. The Orthodox Church teaches that from the time of Christ's coming into the world, the fullness of Divinity Love is revealed to those who believe in Him, the veil is fallen, and the Lord's sacrifice has demonstrated His Divine in His Resurrection. It only remains for the faithful to partake of this Love: "O taste and see that the Lord is good," exclaims David the Psalmist.

These concepts theodicy and the problem of evil from an Eastern Orthodox perspective stems from misconception about the anthropology of man (i.e. free will, divine omnipotence). In the earliest years of the Christian community a group of syncretic sectarians (whom sought to reconcile the gnosis of their religo-philosophical metaphysical systems of the ancient Mystery Religions with Judeo-Christian belief) labeled gnostics (by Church Fathers such as St Irenaeus) attacked the Jewish God and the story of cosmic creation contained in the Torah. Much of these gnostics sects attacked the Jewish creator Yahweh as inferior due to the Judeo-Christian God allowing his creation to be imperfect or allowing the occurrence of negative events. The clearest example of this "flawed" or imperfect God is in modern terms expressed in the philosophical concept termed "the problem of evil." Western Roman Catholic philosophers (such as Augustine, Anselm of Canterbury, Thomas Aquinas following Augustinian theodicy) have attempted to make apologies for the Judeo-Christian God due to this characteristic of the material world, under the term theodicy.

The early church fathers addressed this form of fatalism (a more modern secular term for these teachings would be either necessitarianism or determinism) as it taught that mankind had no free will, Judeo-Christianity taught mankind has free will (a philosophical position called libertarianism). Judeo-Christianity taught (against the gnostics) that the cosmos is fallen but not due to God creating it that way (1st creation) but rather because mankind misused his free will to choose to be separate from God i.e. to be like God, is to be self-sufficient (with no need for God). When mankind made this choice it is taught in Eastern Patristics that reality or mankind's environment was corrupted (fallen).

Causing randomness (a necessary thing for there to be free will in an existence separated from God) to be infused into mankind's existence. In order for the randomness to be real, good and bad befall all people rather they be good or bad of character. The first condition of this change was the Eastern understanding of creation which greatly parted from the fatalist approach to sin as taught by the gnostic sectarians. In that God created sarx as a means to give men a way to remedy their fallen state by using their time on earth to seek God and reconciliation with God even while being separated from God by their flesh or sarx.

The notion that the Eastern Orthodox see theodicy as an exclusively Western preoccupation is belied by writings such as Pavel Florensky's The Pillar and Ground of the Truth: An Essay in Orthodox Theodicy in Twelve Letters; Archbishop Stylianos's Theodicy and Eschatology: A Fundamental Orthodox Viewpoint in Theodicy and Eschatology (Australian Theological Forum Press 2005 ISBN 1-920691-48-0); Tsunami and Theodicy by David B. Hart, an Eastern Orthodox theologian and author of The Beauty of the Infinite; "The Lady and the Wench": A Practical Theodicy in Russian Literature by Paul Valliere; and with regard to one of the Fathers of the Church Irenaeus' Theodicy.