Caprice: The Myth of the Fall in Anselm and Dostoevsky

Abstract

OTHING is so perplexing to man as the problem of evil. Whether he reflects on evil or simply feels its presence and effects, man, from the Stone Age to the present, has continuously exerted himself to expiate, explain, decrease, or depict the malignancy which he senses as an oppressive ingredient within himself, in society, and in the universe. Evil, in one guise or another, is a universal theme in myth, religion, literature, philosophy, and theology. It is a part of man's consciousness wherever he attains consciousness. Sooner or later it insinuates itself into every cultural symbolization. There is room for it even in modern science-if Whitehead's Process and Reality is a scientific meditation. The question how did evil originate? represents a considerable narrowing of the topic and establishes the first set of boundaries for this essay. In this form, the problem of evil is more a matter of speculation than of feeling and for the most part causes intellectual discomfort only when evil is seen as a force opposing a transcendent God who is held to be both omnipotent and good. The discomfort becomes intensified when human freedom is introduced as one of the data to be accounted for in the solution. Within Christianity, the doctrines of grace, predestination, providence, and redemption have so complicated the issue that no theological adjustment of the factors has succeeded in making an equation which is at once comprehensive and entirely rational. These Christian complexities form the framework within which I will work.