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Evil and the CrossUnderstand the mysteryEVIL AND THE CROSS Henri Blocher is a dauntingly well-read French evangelical theologian who can be guaranteed to tackle big issues, as Evil and the Cross (nicely translated by David Preston and first published in English in 1990) demonstrates. (Other books in English by him include Original Sin, Apollos, 1997). Since 1990, when he was professor of systematic theology at the Faculte Libre de Theologie Evangelique in Vaux-sur-Seine, France, he also has become the Gunther H. Knoedler Chair of Theology at Wheaton College, Illinois. The evil in question is not what is sometimes called natural evil, but the moral evils of the human race (and, I suppose, of the angelic realm, though angels aren't mentioned). The book is a broadly based guide to a whole range of responses to evil, pagan, secular and Christian, beginning with the pagan attitudes of optimism and pessimism, and the idea (from Manicheism, if not before) that evil is due to the eternal conflict of goodness with evil. Blocher rejects all these, but does so sympathetically and in a way that informs the reader. He then examines the idea, found in Augustine and most thoroughly worked out by Aquinas, that evil contributes to the greater good, being part of an all-inclusive order. This won't do because it fails to do justice to the divine abhorrence of evil. (Yet there surely must be something in this view, bearing in mind, for example, Romans 5.3ff. and similar passages). Appeals to human freedom, and to divine self-limitation, and to senses of freedom which limit the all-determining character of the divine decree, are similarly rejected. Blocher is dismissive of dialectical approaches to evil exemplified by the (very different) theologies of Tillich and Barth. Never glib nor trite, and seeing strengths even in some of the responses that he rejects, the author provides short, elegant pen-pictures and acute observations on a range of authors, assessing them by the testimony of Scripture. Henri Blocher's conclusion is that the answer to the question, 'Why does evil occur in a world made good by God?', is that, given the Bible's insistence on the divine sovereignty, why evil occurred in the good creation is a mystery. I believe that he is essentially correct in this claim. However, it is important to see what Blocher means (and does not mean) by that word 'mystery'. What is this mystery and why is it one? Find out by reading this excellent Christian approach to one of the deepest of all human problems. Paul Helm,
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