University Humanities 3304:
Putting it all together.

Jewish Rabbi does for American Catholic Church.

"Does what, you jerk?"

He explains what evil is all about.
And he does it in a simple outline.

"Oh, yeah? Show me the money, home!"

Coming right up!

Source: Steinberg, Milton. Basic Judaism. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1947 .

Adapted from Pages 53-56

7. THE GREAT SHADOW

"Across the light of God evil throws a shadow.

"If He is, why is the world not better? Why is it so marred and weighted down with disorder and suffering that it seems at times not the handiwork of a God of goodness but the contrivance of a fiend?

"These terrible questions are as old in Judaism as the God-faith itself. Nor does the Tradition have a single response for them. It offers instead all the answers framed by all who ever wrestled with the problem. And since no generation and no individual has ever been spared the painful necessity of justifying God's ways, the answers are many and varied indeed.

"These are they, grouped into logical classes:

"I. There are the theories which seek to account for evil in moral terms; among them the following:

"That an evil may be he result of some prior sin of the individual on whom it is visited; that it is often punitive even where it seems not to be, since the antecedent sin may have escaped notice or may go unassociated with its consequence.

"That it may represent the expiation of the wrong-doing not of an individual but of his community; that if a man avails himself of the advantages afforded him by his society, he must be prepared to take responsibility for its iniquities.

"That it is necessary so that man may be a moral being. For how, if there were no evil, could man choose the good?

"That it must be or the good would also not exist, since, were it not for its [evil's]prodding, no one would ever bestir himself, let alone develop attachments to justice, compassion and love.

"That it supplies men with a touchstone on which they may test the stuff of which they are made, an adversary against whom to contend and so grow strong; a contest without which there could be no victory.

"II. There are the theories which seek to account for evil in metaphysical terms, among them the following:

"That evil has no reality in itself but is merely the absence of good.

"That it appears as evil because it is seen isolated or in a partial view.

"That what men call evils are only instances of the laws of life which happen to strike them adversely. If they are prepared to accept the benefits of these rules, what valid complaint have they when these same rules work to their disadvantage?

"III. There are the theories which seek to account for evil as something temporary and destined in the end to be transcended and retrieved, among them the following:

"That it will be compensated and made good in life after death, and here on earth in God's Kingdom to come.

"That it represents the survival into the human condition of other, lower stages of reality, mineral, vegetable, and animal, out of which man has emerged, or on which he stands; that the traces of these are being erased with time and the further unfolding of God's purpose until some day man will be perfectly and purely human.

"IV. There is, finally, the theory that evil is inscrutable, an enigma beyond unraveling, to which the answer, if any, is known to God alone. This is the moral of the ending of the Book of Job where Job lays his hand on his lips in contrition and confession of ignorance. This is the purpose of the rabbinic epigram: It is not in our power to explain either the tranquility of the wicked or the sufferings of the upright.

"Here, no more than listed, are some of the many suggestions advanced by Judaism on the theme of evil. Among these the individual Jew is free to make his selection, adopting the response or combination of responses which best satisfies him."