Atheism and Theism 143to moral self-realization and that God himself entered into the valley of
death. What is to be made of these claims?
It is a fact of human experience that suffering has immense potential for
growth. Anyone who has lived through painful illness, emotional distress,
anxiety and depression, and other familiar terrors and woes, knows that these
give rise to ‘spiritual’ challenges which, if met, leave one a stronger and wiser
person. To put it paradoxically, people are often grateful to have suffered
harms. This is not perverse and nor does it imply that the experiences were
not really harmful. What it suggests is that it is possible to fashion something
good out of evil by accepting it for what it is and by making oneself stronger
so as to be able to absorb it, and in the process reorder one’s priorities in
better accord with the hierarchy of objective values. These are commonplaces
of mature human reflection. What Christian theism adds is an account of
how heroic victory over evil is possible. How can someone be so gracious in
the face of evil as to forgive the murderer of their only child? ‘By God’s Grace
alone is it made possible’ – is the Christian answer. An atheist may speak
in psychological or evolutionary terms of ‘self-preservation’ and of ‘adaptive
utility’, but it is difficult to see how he can construct out of these any ade-
quate account of what so forcibly presents itself as a moral or spiritual victory.
To suffer evil, and to a lesser extent to contemplate such suffering, is to be
faced with an occasion for moral growth. It is obvious, however, that not all
harm elicits gracious and heroic virtue. Where the victim is a rational agent
the failure to respond morally may be culpable and not a ground for com-
plaint against God. Yet there is much suffering involving natural and moral
evils that cannot be an occasion for growth on the part of the victim because
he or she is a non-human animal or a sub-rational human. May we not call
out to heaven in protest against this? It might be reasonable for a heathen to
do so, but the doctrine of the incarnation and crucifixion of Jesus Christ
should give the Christian cause for hesitation.^24 This is the most profound
religious idea ever entertained by the human mind: that God, the uncondi-
tioned cause of being, entered into the precarious condition of his creation.
From St Paul to the present day, libraries have been written on this theme.
I must rest content with five sentences. (1) Whatever else is to be said about
the incarnation of God in Christ this much is true: that by becoming a
human animal God rendered himself vulnerable to the harms arising from
the divinely ordained activity of bacteria, the uncertainties of being born of
a poor young woman in first century Palestine, and the self-interested actions
of imperial governors and religious leaders. (2) Sacred history teaches that
this was for the sake of re-establishing (for ever) the original covenant between
man and God; but it also meant that God moved among the dark shadows of
his creation. (3) Justice did not require this of him, since the shadows are
a consequence of the light, and hence not something that might have been