EVIL AND THE JUSTICE OF GOD

N. T. WRIGHT

Bishop of Durham

First published in Great Britain in 2006

Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge

36 Causton Street

London SW1P 4ST

Copyright © Nicholas Thomas Wright 2006

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Scripture quotations from the New Testament are the author’s own translation. Unless otherwise indicated, biblical extracts from the Old Testament are taken from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN-13: 978-0-281-05788-7

ISBN-10: 0-281-05788-5

In memory of those who died in New York and Washington on September 11th 2001, around the Indian Ocean in December 2004, in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in August 2005 and in Pakistan and Kashmir in October 2005

Contents

Preface

1 Evil is still a four-letter word: The new problem of evil

Introduction

(A) The new problem of evil

(B) The new nihilism: postmodernity

(C) Towards a nuanced view of evil

Conclusion

2 What can God do about evil? Unjust world, just God?

Introduction

(A) To renew the blessing

(B) People of the solution, people of the problem

(C) My servant Israel, my servant Job

Conclusion

3 Evil and the crucified God

Introduction

(A) Rereading the gospels

(B) Jesus dealing with evil

(C) Early Christian view of evil’s defeat

Results: atonement and the problem of evil

4 Imagine there’s no evil: God’s promise of a world set free

Introduction

(A) Interlude: naming the powers

(B) World without evil

(C) The intermediate tasks

(D) Educating the imagination

Conclusion

5 Deliver us from evil: Forgiving myself, forgiving others

Introduction

(A) God’s final victory over evil

(B) Forgiveness in the present

(C) Conclusion

Subject index

Biblical books discussed

Preface

After working for some years on a major book on the resurrection, I resolved at the start of 2003 that I would turn my attention to the meaning of Jesus’ crucifixion. But as soon as I began to think how I might approach the subject, I realized that there was something else I had to do first. When Christians talk about what Jesus accomplished in his death, they usually say something about his cross as the answer to, or the result of, evil. But what is evil?

The same question presented itself to me for a quite different reason. Between September 11th 2001, when terrorists flew aeroplanes into the Twin Towers in New York and into the Pentagon in Washington, and my reflecting on the cross and the problem ...