Habakkuk and the Problem of Evil
Summer Sermon Series: Habakkuk and the Problem of Evil
25th August 2024
A sermon by Kenneth Padley
Reading: Habakkuk 1.1-4
This year’s summer sermon series, Old Testament Shorts, is taking us into the less-frequented recesses of the Hebrew Bible. Today we come to the obscure prophet, Habakkuk. All that we know for certain about Habakkuk from the three short chapters of his book is his name and that he is a prophet. In addition, we might reasonably deduce from his prophecy that he lives in Jerusalem and perhaps that he is a Temple musician, because his third chapter reads like one of the Psalms.
Despite our ignorance about Habakkuk, the date of his prophecy can be pinpointed to 612BC. This is because of his reference to the fall of the Assyrian Empire, the same event which inspired the prophet Nahum, about whom we heard a few weeks ago. Nahum and Habakkuk make for interesting comparison. For Nahum, the fall of Assyria was an occasion for gloating. This was because the tiny Kingdom of Judah had been freed from vassalage. Habakkuk, however, saw a shadow side to the liberation: Assyria had been defeated by an even more powerful regime, Babylon.
Driven by scepticism and fear, Habakkuk begins his prophecy with words that are unique among the Hebrew prophets. Rather than railing against the people for their sinfulness, Habakkuk takes up the cudgel against God himself. As we heard, chapter 1 verse 2:
O Lord, how long shall I cry for help,
and you will not listen?
Or cry to you ‘Violence!’
and you will not save?
Here is Habakkuk’s articulation of the timeless problem of evil, theodicy, the question of why God permits bad stuff to happen. On the one hand, if God is all powerful, does he lack the love to intervene when tragedy occurs? Conversely, if God is all loving, does he lack the power to make a difference?
It is important for Christians reflect on this dilemma. I say this for two reasons. The first is pastoral. Given that so much rubbish happens in the world, am I convinced in myself that God is both true and truly loving? The second reason flows from the first and is a matter of apologetics. If I am convinced that God is both true and truly loving, what words of comfort or justification might I offer when someone else rails against God because of the sadnesses that they experience or hear?
Let us start our response by making a traditional division between what theologians call moral evil and natural evil. Moral evil is wickedness inflicted by human beings. People are bad and so have bad intentions and do bad things. With sufficient human liberty in our theological system to lay moral responsibility at the door of humans, God’s integrity is protected through a Free Will Defence.
Natural evils are rather trickier to explain. This is because they cannot be blamed on people. I’m talking here about large scale disasters such as tsunamis and infinitesimally small diseases like viruses. Humans increasing understand the science of these issues, but we cannot always stop them and we cannot be blamed for their origination. Why might God allow such awful things? And why does he not intervene to eradicate them?
O Lord, how long shall I cry for help,
and you will not listen?
There are no easy answers. We should not delude ourselves – nor patronise others.
If I were to attempt a tentative reply I would begin by saying that – often – we know the ‘what’ but not the ‘why’. There are robust arguments for the existence of God. And these standalone from the problem of evil. But there are many things in the world which God does not explain. Given this, I find myself asking not whether God exists but why he might tolerate the existence of evils, even temporarily?
I am not too keen on justifications which say that ours is the best of all possible worlds, for example that we need plate tectonics – including its earthquakes and volcanoes – so as to create cultivatable land. If God is perfect then surely the world could, in theory, be perfect – or at least just a little bit better. Instead, I prefer arguments which says that adversity is the seedbed of holiness. When we see our fellow humans in pain we may be able to help, practically or prayerfully. St Irenaeus said that the world is a ‘vale of soul making’. By this he meant that we are shaped for the better because of the opportunities which God lays before us for acts of loving service.
Two other thoughts. Firstly, we should assert that, despite its many problems, the world is, on balance, good. If this were not the case, the world would cease to exist. In a related vein, I also find helpful the view of St Augustine that evil is a privation, an absence of good. Evil is not a force actively opposed to God, but merely an absence of the goodness which we find in God. We should not set good and evil on an equal footing.
I am sure that you have thoughts and questions about this important topic so would you like to join me in a reflection group on Zoom tomorrow, Monday 26th, between 7 and 8pm? If you have yet to sign up for the zooms which are accompanying each of our summer sermons, please follow the weblink on the notice sheet that you were given when you came into church today. If you are worshipping with us online or have issues with today’s font size, you can access this document and its weblink by googling ‘Salisbury Cathedral Sunday notices’.
Habakkuk is sadly unable to join us on the Zoom tomorrow, so let me briefly outline his three reflections on this, his specialist topic.
Firstly, Habakkuk knew that violence begets violence. From this, he inferred that the sinful will receive their just desserts. He slated the new Babylonian empire saying that ‘Because you have plundered many nations, all that survive of the peoples shall plunder you.’ (2.8)
Habakkuk accepted that this is hardly fair on those who suffer in the interim. And so his second mitigation is to say that God’s timing is not the same as ours. Chapter 2 verse 3 maintains that
there is still a vision for the appointed time;
If it seems to tarry, wait for it;
it will surely come, it will not delay.
Thirdly, in a combination of his first two arguments, Habakkuk insisted that God’s glory is different from earthly glory. He says of Babylon in 2.16, ‘shame will come upon your glory’. This contrasts his assertion two verses earlier that
the earth will be filled
with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord,
as the waters cover the sea.
Here Habakkuk is modifying words from the earlier prophet Isaiah. Whereas Isaiah 11.9 says that ‘the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord’, Habakkuk says that the earth will be filled with ‘the knowledge of the glory of the Lord.’ He makes this modification to serve his argument about evil, emphasising that God’s glory shines in ways which transcend its feeble earthly equivalent.
Caught in the realpolitik of 612BC Habakkuk knew the what but not the why. And he, like us, knew for good reasons that God exists, even if God’s glory and timing are so very different from our own. As William Cowper concluded when he wrote ‘God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform’:
Blind unbelief is sure to err,
And scan God’s work in vain;
God is His own Interpreter,
And He will make it plain.