A Theodicy of Kenosis: Eleonore Stump and the Fall of Jericho

2.2.1 Stump’s strategy against the argument from evil

Stump makes use of Franciscan knowledge to illuminates the problem of suffering in such a way that (with many qualifications) it does not arise in at least one possible world – namely, the world evoked in several extended reflections upon the biblical narratives of Job, Samson, Abraham, and Mary of Bethany.^[29]

In this possible world, Stump argues for the defensibility of Aquinas’s theodicy,^[30] and on page 415, notes a possible objection which bears upon my objection to Swinburne. The objection Stump notes^[31] is that

there is a best of all possible worlds, and a perfectly good God has an obligation to create or produce it. But [the world we live in] is arguably not the best of all possible worlds. And so […] even if Aquinas’s attempted theodicy is otherwise successful, the problem of suffering simply arises again in a different guise.

My objection to Swinburne’s argument in the preceding paragraphs has the same upshot as this argument, which is that a theistic God cannot have created the actual world. After all, if a theistic (that is, omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good) God is unlimited by our understanding of logical possibility, then They cannot be supposed to be limited in any thinkable way from creating a world in which suffering and evil do not exist. Now while my version of this objection may be more difficult to defeat than the one Stump responds to, it remains true that^[32]

the main problem with the objection […] is that it disregards the dialectic of the discussion. The proponent of the argument from evil claims that it is not possible for there to be a world that is like the actual world as regards suffering (and other related empirical facts) and that nonetheless also contains an omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good God.

That is, successful theodicy neither need defend the claim that our world is the best of all possible worlds, nor deny that a theistic God is obliged to create the best of all possible worlds. Rather “the challenge posed by the argument from evil is to show that there could be such a God in a world like ours.”^[33] This is the rationale behind Stump’s defence, and, I believe, a key contribution to the discourse on theodicy: to provide Franciscan knowledge that illuminates the problem in such a way as to reveal a possible world in which both evil and a theistic God exist.

2.2.2 The cogency of a speculatively grounded theodicy

However, Stump intentionally evokes a merely possible world by appealing to narratives where the moral of their stories are not empirically verifiable. It does not appear that an appeal to a possible world can produce a strongly compelling argument, especially to those already invested in a position like the above objection to Swinburne. Even if it is accepted (as I accept) that the objection is constructed upon speculatively grounded premises, it is rather seldom that one abandons a commitment to a possible world in favour of another possible world. After all, possible worlds are things that people entertain, a major part of which is pursuing potential ways to enrich them – which in this case involves better establishing their reality. To abandon the pursuit of a possible world which one is invested in, in favour of another merely possible world, appears unlikely. It is akin to coaxing a fan of Star Wars to instead become a fan of Star Trek on grounds of its greater scientific realism. Far from recanting their commitment, one can expect the fan to defend their investment by extolling the virtues of Star Wars. Analogously, those committed to the objection against Swinburne can be expected to reason, for example, that it commands greater allegiance, on account of its simplicity and clarity. Why would a theistic God (unlimited even by the human-relative limits of logical possibility) resort to creating a world such as the one Stump evokes, with its many vagaries, instead of effortlessly creating something undeniably free of evil or suffering?

Now it is possible that no theodicy will have a direct answer to this question. However, theodicies (such as the one in this article, and in Stump’s book) do attempt to draw the objector from their speculatively grounded position toward another position. But the cogency of the attempt will be profoundly affected by whether the alternative view offered is no less speculatively grounded than the objector’s, or is empirically verifiable.^[34] It is to the latter that I attempt to draw my readers.

Finally, in addition to the merely possible nature of the world that Stump would draw her readers to, she makes no claim for its success simpliciter, qualifying and limiting her position in many respects. In this vein, Paul Draper notes^[35] four problems with Eleonore Stump’s theodicy, namely that it is difficult to see how Stump’s argument accounts for (a) suffering which predictably diminishes the sufferer or (b) natural disasters that indiscriminately affect people, when the healing of individual psychological fragmentation is the goal of suffering on Stump’s account; (c) how trivial suffering (like scraping one’s shin) could aid sanctification; and (d) why humans and animals suffer similarly, when animals seem incapable of undergoing a process of justification and sanctification. I claim to avoid these problems arising through the generality of the approach to be taken in this article, in contrast to the strategy of appealing to specific goods that suffering may present for the sufferer (in Stump’s case, for example, healing psychological fragmentation, or aiding sanctification). A fully general account of the role of suffering and evil may avoid specious problems because genera function to allocate a place for their species. For clarity, the type of generality invoked here is not a category or a universal, but a fundamental mechanism amenable to empirical verification.

3.4.1 A limit case of relatedness: identity, or total relatedness

The distinction between identity and relatedness is defined by whether there are any respects in which things are unrelated. It is one thing to be related in some respect, it is quite another thing to be related in every respect. In the latter case, the two things would simply be one thing, because there could be nothing to individuate them from each other. As such, an object’s distinctness from another object is modelled as there being at least one respect in which they are not related (Figure 1).

Figure 1

Identicality modelled in relational terms.

Now if things are not related in every respect, then there is at least one respect in which they do not determine each other. And if they do not determine each other in a given respect, then, contrary to the common view that order equates to determinism and thereby rules out the possibility of freedom, their relations in this respect are “free” or “accidental.” This is to say that their interactions in this specific respect would be truly random.^[41]

3.4.2 Determinacy and freedom

The fact of limited determinacy between objects thus defines the nature of randomness or chaos (of either the deterministic or absolute sort). Since a universe has, as its fundamental organising principle, that things are only something if they are something to something else, then necessarily every entity in the universe must participate in this organising principle. Such a principle is the minimal order required to be (in) a universe. But this entails that universes (and all their parts) fundamentally have order. Therefore, for a universe, order is more fundamental than chaos or randomness. Chaos is, at most, no more universal than the set of respects in which bodies in a system do not determine each other.

3.4.3 Grades of indeterminacy

The possibility of indeterminacy creates considerable scope for change to occur in an ordered universe, since any respect in which an object is currently undetermined could become determined if a new relation were to arise, which would thus constitute change. In fact, the potential for change could (theoretically) be measured or mapped using “grades of indeterminacy” or freedom: the more respects in which things do not determine each other, the higher the grades of freedom they have from each other. For example, an asteroid moving in space does not determine the direction or velocity of another asteroid (excluding, for the sake of argument, their tiny gravitational attraction), which is why it is acceptable to say that they can collide by “accident;” their motions are largely determined freely of each other (until they collide, of course). Moreover, other of the asteroids’ attributes are entirely undetermined by each other’s, like, say, their colour and the type of rock they are made of. Thus, even in a fully determinate Newtonian system, bodies are not determined in every respect but have freedom from each other (Figure 2).

Figure 2

Indeterminate (free) motion in a determinate Newtonian system.

This freedom can become very great, as in the case of Brownian motion, in which no detectable pattern of behaviour obtains. The marvel of it, though, is that each moment of interaction follows deterministic principles of ballistics,^[42] yet the rich interplay between a particle and the medium it is in results in random motion. This behaviour even turns out to be easy to simulate.^[43] Thus, on empirical grounds too, determinate systems that do not determine every respect in which objects have being leave these objects partly undetermined and thus potentially able to support new relations, making “space” for change to occur – sometimes to such an extent that randomness can manifest.

3.7.1 Real relations are the principal object of scientific study

In a 1989 paper, Powell observes that, on the historical evidence, real relations of a specific sort are the principal object of scientific study. Scientific method does not reveal the intrinsic nature of things:^[55] the effects predicted by science are of the nonmaterial, purely formal, nature of a specification of form (e.g. velocity, position, etc.) in future on the basis of data of a present state; but a future state such as this “lacks an intrinsic formal cause [and.] any intrinsic nature. Hence, temporal relations have only got extrinsic formal specification.”^[56]

Powell then elaborates on how real relations exhibiting extrinsic formal specification function in the growth of scientific knowledge:^[57]

it is precisely the function of extrinsic formal causality to displace the agent and final causes by a more elementary cause. […] Thus the solar system is explained as a mechanism specified by extrinsic formal causes without needing any explanation by agent causes (let alone by final causes which have not been recognized by science since the 17th century). For, Einstein’s general relativity precisely eliminated gravitational forces [under the rationale of an agent cause] from explanation of the solar system, by substituting the curvature of space-time for gravitational forces.^[58] Now gravitational forces are agent causes, whereas the curved space-time that governs the path of the earth around the sun is an excellent example of extrinsic formal causality.

In other words, scientific investigation involves a process where the agent causality of “material” bodies in an earlier theory is surpassed by a later theory employing extrinsic formal causes, on grounds that the latter is knowable and testable, while the former constructs the same object of experience along the lines of an unknowable intrinsic nature. As such, the employment of extrinsic formal causes permits the growth of scientific knowledge.

3.7.2 Real relations are directly experienced

In terms of the subjective foundation of our ability to make scientific observations of mind-independent realities, this would not be possible unless we are physically affected by real external things, and are thus passive to them. Powell observes that to be passively affected is to be in a causal relation of agent to patient, from which it follows that we directly and immediately experience these relations.^[59]

To give an example, consider a glass of water in front of you. Pick it up, drink from it, use it. Your experience of the glass is not the immediate knowledge of things attributed to God, but rather one mediated by your senses. It is scientifically theorised that attributes of the glass – say, its reflection of light in various frequencies – serve to stimulate your visual system, the resulting electrochemical signals from which serve as grounds for you to perceive and cognitively identify the glass. That is, one is in relation to the glass. More significantly, it is the relation that you directly experience, whereas you do not directly experience the intrinsic nature of the glass itself (nor the theorised intermediate steps: the electrochemical signals and light frequencies). These can merely be inferred from what is implied by directly experienced relations. That is, experience of some relations is direct, whereas experience of the object requires the mediation of relations.

3.7.3 The function of scientific tests is to distinguish real and unreal relations

Powell then builds upon the direct experience of real relations a framework that may be exploited for the empirical verification of the nature of signs. This is a complex, book-length argument, which cannot be reproduced here, but its essence is intimately familiar to scientists: first, a hypothesis must be drawn that can in principle be falsified by observation. Second, a test must be devised that permits the confirmation or falsification of the hypothesis. Third, the test must produce a direct private experience for the experimenter, which confirms or falsifies the hypothesis. Fourth, the scientific community must be aware of the experimenter’s potential responses to this private experience; in other words, the possible responses must be known public objects, that is, objects of common experience that are either fictitious or (at least in some respect) real. Fifth, members of the public must be capable of having private experiences of the public object of the experimenter’s response, so as to be able to verify the response and thus learn what it implies.

The purpose of all of this is of course to gain knowledge, that is, not merely private (“subjective”) experience, but publicly verified realities, so as to distinguish between unreal public objects and whatever reality there may be in them, or underlying them. As mentioned, Powell holds for the reality of (at least some) relations only. Now the way that scientific experimentation results in knowledge is that this private experiencing of public objects permits the experience of a new distinction between real and unreal relations. Powell gives an example: people hold differing views about real relations in society, like those “about relations of management and labour, or rich and poor, and of the well educated and the poorly educated.”^[60] Some of the differing views Powell cites are that for one group, loyalists, “these real relations, sanctioned by our legal system, are seen as inequalities inevitably resulting from the functioning of a free society.”^[61] However, another group, deviationists, hold that

at least a good part of these relations till now sanctioned by American law and taken for granted in American life should no longer be tolerated. Real relations long identified with legal order they now declare to be devoid of true legality. [That is, the] existing system of real relations is seen [to have merely] spurious and unreal legality.^[62]

From this it can be seen that the two groups’ differing views hold for the same underlying real relations of wealth inequality, education, and so forth. But in the absence of the deviationists, it would not be possible to establish as public objects, and distinguish, the real relations from the mere views or unreal relations of the loyalists, because without contrasting views, the revealed difference between real structures and unreal views would not be experienceable.^[63] Yet in the presence of these contrasting views, each view can now be seen to be identified with the real relation, for example, to the deviationists, spurious laws maintain real structural inequalities in society. The deviationists’ activism consists precisely in differentiating real structural inequalities from unreal views codified in law. Moreover, this identification and differentiation makes it possible to experience them as distinct objects for the first time. And they are clearly public objects. Hence, what results is that we immediately experience public objects distinguished by their reality and unreality.^[64]

To establish conditions for the falsifiability, thus the scientific legitimacy, of my theory of signs, what remains is for Powell’s framework to be applied to it. This is clearly achievable for the theory summarised here, since all real relations are signs, and so each facet of this theory is falsifiable in principle by direct observation, once attention is turned to identifying circumstances which would produce a result either confirming or disconfirming this theory’s claims.^[65] Moreover, since the theory is a general theory of signs, any sign serves equally as subject of observation, permitting maximal scope for its falsification, thus giving it the potential to become an especially well-tested theory.^[66]

4.1.1 Modes: ways of being real

Concerning potential relations, “before” (logically speaking) any object is in relation to anything else, there is a pure, infinite array of potential relations that could form. “Potential” relations are not, however, mere possibilities of the imagination. I use the term “potential” to imply the same physical sense imparted by the term “potential energy.” For example, a rock perched on the crest of a hill has a measurable potential energy, which corresponds to its mass and the height of the hill; this suffices for a new attribute – the momentum it can acquire – to be realisable with a certain definite and real “potentiality” (same sense) latent in the physical system. In other words, potentialities are engendered by the intrinsic natures of the objects relating.

Next, consider relations between actual objects. These are actualised, as above, by some circumstance in the universe that satisfies the specific respect under which “determining” and “representing” obtain between terms. As such they are real relations. The sense in which potential attributes contrast with actual attributes is that the former are to be conceived in abstraction from any act in which they happen to be “picked out” in some subject, which would make them actual. In other words, attributes that do not currently sustain an actual relation to a quiddity are merely potential attributes. Nonetheless, potentialities are still “real” in the same sense in which people typically believe that there really are possibilities: they define what latent physical potential the universe has to change state.

As for virtuality, it is exceedingly common that a merely potential relation (or even an imaginary one) signifies actually. For example, if I am your brother, this is a real relation concerning our provenance. Now if I were to die, you would no longer have a brother. The real relation has fallen away, and only a mind-dependent relation to a memory and a knowledge of our common provenance remains. Yet you would continue, entirely legitimately, to refer to me as your brother, because the relation remains formally unchanged. That is, it remains founded in the same provenance, it still signifies brotherhood, and it still terminates (at least formally) at me.

In such a case, when you speak of me, your words really signify a brother to every listener, yet the terminus is now unreal, because I no longer exist. Now the definition of “virtual” is to not be some thing, yet to have the actual efficacy of that thing,^[67] and this is precisely the case here: the sign’s terminus is unreal, that is, there is no determining correlate on the side of my quiddity, and so no real relation arises; yet everyone you speak to about me actually experiences you as signifying brotherhood. Hence, a merely potential relation signifies actually.

Note, finally, that only actualities are sufficient to establish a real relation. Potentialities are merely scenarios in which a relation could arise, while virtualities are subjective to the interpretant, even though other real relations may result from them (for example, when two people converse about one’s dead brother, they really relate to one another).

4.1.2 Modal filtering

The three modes are derived directly from sign action: actual signs have a fundament, material terminus and interpretant, while potential signs have no interpretant, and virtual signs have no material terminus. Now when considered in terms of how things change, or how things come to be, it can be shown that they function as a modal filter. In the graph that follows, the modal filtering of relations is shown. The number of elements in the system begins with an infinite plenitude of merely virtual relations to any imaginary or otherwise unreal terminus. This number is then reduced to the latent physical potentialities that are unactualised but terminate at real things. Finally, they are again filtered, leaving only real relations – that is, interpreted relations to some material terminus. Being is thus filtered by acts of coming to be in relation.

Circled letters are attributes, rectangles are subjects, and arrows signify what a given interpretant takes a subject to signify. Interpretants (not shown) function to bring attributes from the blue circle into the domain circumscribed by the orange-brown circle, if not the green circle (Figure 6).

Figure 6

Modalities of relations, and their filtering effect.

4.1.3 Modal filtering and kenosis

To manifest how modal filtering is kenotic in terms of the correlated aspects of relations introduced above, namely “determining” and “representing,” I will begin by illustrating kenosis in a human and familiar setting: an act of loving. Love necessarily involves two aspects: an aspect of self-sacrifice on the part of the lover, and an aspect of hospitality or receptivity on the part of the beloved. For example, say I take time out of a busy morning to wash the dishes for my wife. The act involves a sacrifice of my time and effort, and it involves my wife’s benefitting from it. Now in order for the act to be loving, it is not only necessary for me to have done the act in love, but also for my wife to actually be loved – that is, for her good to be attained – by the act. This entails a relation characterised by determining and representing, as above: the former loves, and the latter possesses the capacity to be loved in the manner that the former loves.

It might be objected that the passive term is not necessary. For example, would it not be love even if my wife took offense, due to her feeling that I had, say, washed the dishes as if to imply that she had been neglecting them? In response I assert that my act certainly was loving, but that her good was not in fact attained, and so a real relation (that is, of the mode “actual”) of loving did not occur. In other words, a loving relation of “representing” obtained from me to her, but no attribute in her was present to determine the relation, and so it was merely virtual, not actual love.

I take it to be self-evident that my sacrifice of time for the good of my wife meets the definition of “kenotic,” but to bring out more clearly the nature of the passive role of “hospitality” as equally kenotic, consider a further example. You are drafted into the military for a war. The military thus designates you a soldier. If you were to accept the designation, you would exercise hospitality: you are welcoming a relation which strips your being of indefinitely many other potential designations (lawyer, priest, parent, etc.). The respect in which this is a stripping away of potentialities would be especially clear if you had an interest in a different potentiality – and especially if you did not believe in the war. Nonetheless, your being designated is not a “sacrifice” in the same sense as the active role is, since strictly speaking you are not actively giving up any potentialities. Rather, you are passive to the action of an external entity which designates you a soldier by virtue of attributes of your person determining it, like possessing legal status, age and citizenship. No action on your part is required to possess these attributes, and thus no action is required to be designated a soldier.

To clear up a potential source of confusion, when it comes to answering the call and taking up arms, action on your part is of course required, but this is consequent upon the designation, not part of it. This is clear from the fact that you would not be answering a call if you were not designated a soldier; but once designated, you are then free to play an active role by taking up arms or by objecting. Likewise, in situations where you voluntarily become a soldier without being conscripted, then you would be the active party, not the passive party, and your role in the relation would therefore not be one of hospitality or “determining,” but of self-sacrifice or “representing.”

As such, kenosis is present in both roles, because whether actively being self-sacrificial, or passively being hospitable, a stripping away of possible ways of being occurs. To be caught up in a relation of love – or of conscription, or indeed any relation at all – is to undergo modal filtering, that is, to exchange a rich array of possibilities for a limited, determinate actuality. This filtering I define as “kenosis” henceforth.

Now if you accept the earlier thought experiment about universes and relations, and the ontology of relations as briefly introduced above, then it would follow immediately that “self-sacrifice” and “hospitality” are anthropomorphic forms of the universe-wide roles of “representing” and “determining” in which the being of everything in the universe manifests kenosis. After all, to be conscripted is plainly to be the terminus in a relation of conscription, in which your imminent role as a soldier is signified, and so some of your attributes (e.g. suitable age, your giving consent) serve to determine the relation. Likewise, my washing the dishes founds a relation signifying love for my wife, and so the sacrificial act of washing represents the respect in which my wife is beloved.

As such, all being – and all experience – can be said to manifest kenosis, pervasively, in a manner analogous to acts of “self-sacrifice” and “hospitality,” specifically, in acts of representing and determining.

4.2.1 Not all kenosis is love

From this it does not follow that all kenosis is an act of love. After all, the preceding discussion implies that kenosis is involved in the formation of atoms, and they are not capable of love, though of course their kenosis is formally analogous to loving, and on a speculative theological approach they might be supposed to participate in the divine nature to the fullest extent their natures permit, while human beings, who are capable of love, may participate to a greater degree.

4.2.2 Reinterpreting death in the light of kenosis

Moreover, as a result of importing speculatively grounded ideas about God, kenosis casts a new light upon the various biblical and traditional ideas concerning Christ’s victory over death, for example, “death has lost its sting.”^[71] “Christ conquered death.”^[72] “Christ Jesus […] abolished death” (2 Tim 1:10). Through the lens of sign action, it is no longer necessary to understand the traditional Christian reorientation toward death in mystical or analogical ways alone, nor only as a reference to a future bodily resurrection. Understanding Jesus’s death and resurrection in terms of sign action equips Christians with a positive model of how death is conquered in the here and now, namely by it always functioning as a part of kenosis: death is always part of a “resurrection,” that is, a process of new things coming to be. Not only this, but it does so in ways that are directly experienceable ubiquitously, which is a modally superior way of knowing than beliefs held on speculative grounds. That is, kenosis can be seen to “conquer” death in actual experience, not just virtually or potentially.

4.4.1 Kenosis does not permit conceiving of suffering, evil, or death as real natures

The relational light I have shone on this problem puts in empirical form Augustine and Aquinas’s view that it would be a mistake to speak of suffering or evil as the real nature of anything. To do so would be equivalent to saying that being-to-the-left is a real property in abstraction from whatever is to its right. Rather, the kenotic process of living, dying, and living anew (to put it anthropomorphically) locates suffering or evil at “dying,” which (to put it technically) is always part of a process of becoming a correlate in a new relation. As such, it would be false that suffering or evil exists as an independent nature. Therefore, “evil” taken in isolation is unreal. It is a misperception to consider suffering, death, and evil outside of kenosis.

4.4.2 “Death” is part of loving

The observation that kenosis implies that suffering, death, and evil are an essential part of the kenotic process – and in anthropocentric contexts, part of loving – recasts the problems of evil and of suffering, and suggests a bold resolution to the principal problem faced by traditional theodicies, namely how it can be possible for a theistic God to permit both suffering (or evil) and our free will. While traditional theodicies do not satisfactorily answer why a theistic God did not simply create a universe in which this problem does not arise, a kenotic theodicy may answer that empirical experience compels us to reconstrue suffering and death as essential parts of loving, and thus that kenosis is the real nature, while death or suffering construed in isolation from kenosis are unrealities. As such, theodicy appears no longer to be a dilemma between God’s omnipotence and omnibenevolence, but rather a dilemma between our holding fast to an ideological commitment ordered to the purpose of solving a speculatively grounded problem, and our becoming open to God’s kenotic nature in us and all around us, and consequently allowing our conceptions of love and of theodicy to be moulded by God through the signification of anything in the universe. This theodicy is thus a transformation of stance from a first-personal one to a second-personal one^[73] – a transition from “knowledge-that” to Franciscan knowing.

4.6.1 Evil and suffering are real virtually

That said, when a person does evil, it is obvious that the person is part of the universe, and so the person’s act is also part of the universe, at least insofar as it has an effect, and so it does not appear prima facie unreal. It is to the modelling of this that I now turn. When a person does evil, there will be some aspect – either of that person or of the world, or of some relation between the two – that is indeterminate. That is, when acting in this way, the person may not function as an organic whole in their own right, and so there would be a respect in which a person is unreal. (An analogous situation would apply when the indeterminacy is in the world.) For example, if I were to vindictively push you down a flight of stairs, this could perhaps be because I am overcome by jealousy. You thus come to signify to me the object of my jealousy, when in your intrinsic nature you are quite distinct and, furthermore, may not personally identify with whatever it is that I perceive in you. As such, I construct a virtual sign, since there is no attribute really signified by the formal terminus of my construction. Yet, true to virtual signs, this virtuality has a real effect, namely of prompting me to violence. It is in this manner that evil and suffering can be modelled using sign action: as unrealities that are actually signified by virtual signs, so that the interpretant (my pushing you down the stairs) is informed by the virtual sign and thus – to observers and (probably) to my jealous self – is informed by the unreal nature of its terminus and in such a way appears as a positive evil in its own right.

But it is not a positive evil in its own right, it is a real act construed in terms of an unreality. Consider the scenario in terms of abstraction layers: it is again not the case that interpersonal relating can be antikenotic, because any relation that exists is kenotic. Rather, when someone does evil to another person, they establish a relation that functions kenotically, but only at a lower layer, which unmakes something kenotic at a higher layer. In terms of how the other person is treated, the evil actor’s behaviour is marked not by an antikenotic relation, but by a disturbing absence of relation at a layer where we would strongly desire a relation to obtain.

To remain consistent with how this theory handles indeterminacy, such situations are modelled to lie on the fringes of a still-forming universe, where the entities interacting do not determine each other in certain respects. Namely, simultaneously we find ourselves strongly motivated to form kenotic relations at this higher layer, but we also encounter people who are not unified in the requisite respects and either cannot perceive, or come to desire, or come to put in place, the requisite relation at the requisite layer.

4.6.2 Virtualities have actual effects

To further unpack the nature of virtual signs, note that the act of pushing is, in itself, not formally a locus of evil, but a real and kenotic act, at least at the layer at which it operates (I may, for example, play games with friends of mine in which we playfully push each other down a flight of stairs, and the act of pushing supports this higher layer equally alongside my violent act). However, what is perhaps most jarring in the act is how the virtual sign functions to twist the underlying goodness of the act’s kenotic nature (e.g. as converting potential energy to kinetic energy) to an evil end. It is to this disturbing aspect that we now turn, at which my objector may justifiably sound the alarm along the following lines: “if virtuality can essentially prey upon a kenotic universe, limiting its goodness by exploiting its indeterminacy, then God ought not create gaps in the universe’s determinacy!”

I cautiously disagree. I think that, firstly, the main force of this objection comes from a desire for the universe to manifest goodness perfectly at every layer (a desire which I share). However, it is false that a perfectly good universe must have no “gaps.” After all, as Figure 1 demonstrates, there being no “gaps” implies that there can be only one thing, removing the possibility of a universe entirely – never mind one that holographically embodies God’s kenotic nature. Moreover, the objector would be unable to claim that this brings my objection to Swinburne to bear with equal severity upon this argument, because the actual nature of the universe should inform our notion of goodness, rather than our letting idealistic predilections hold sway.

In addition to serving to ward off idealism, the observed reality of indeterminacy can play a moral or perspectival role. My objector’s alarm does not tend to be sounded only at the presence of “gaps.” Suicides, fatal acts of bravado, disasters of many kinds, and so forth draw similarly indignant responses. However, if I were foolhardy enough to jump off a building in the hope that God would make an exception to the laws of nature in order to save me, this may be a “gap” in the sense that it exhibits insufficient determinacy in respects necessary to guarantee my thriving, but it is also a case of routine continuity of the lawlike and kenotic functioning of the universe. As such, it is modelled as the same sort of direct-experiential force that I have argued compels a “Franciscan” change of stance toward theodicy: we are primarily subject to God’s universe, and would do well to be taught by it, rather than proceeding on speculative grounds impervious to reality. “Gaps” are to be known, respected, and where it is within our power, to be closed, treated with due caution, or otherwise protected against.

4.6.3 Our primary purpose

If my objector were to then remark

this is not what I mean – I do not mean total relationality, in which there can be only one thing – I just mean that there ought to be the usual sort of layered kenosis everywhere, but in a determinately perfect state, not an indeterminate state. For example, the nature of the universe ought to faithfully guide people to do good. If the universe lacks this, then it is deeply flawed in this respect at this layer.

I answer that, firstly, such “gaps” are what appear, empirically, to permit kenosis to compound holographically. They are the mark of an active, evolving kenotic expression or process, which would not be possible in a universe consisting of a changeless, static collection of properties. After all, kenosis requires a filtering from the virtual or potential to the actual: something must always lose a rich array of possibilities for the actual to emerge, or else there is no kenosis. On this ground, the desire for a fully determinate universe looks idealistic, not empirically grounded, and should be abandoned in a “Franciscan” change of stance.

That said, I cannot rule out the possibility that I have failed to imagine some equally empirically grounded model in which every layer is determinately perfect, or is maximally kenotic in another, more perfect way than the “holographic” conception employed in this article. However, on the one hand, it is not clear what could comprise a more kenotic universe, and on the other, if some promising new conception were to arrive, nothing in principle prevents this theory from being reconstrued in its light instead of in “holographic” terms.

Provisionally, then (that is, under the rubric of holographically compounding kenosis), there emerges a second moral or perspectival part of this solution to the problems of suffering and evil: cases of “gaps” are partly within our power to work to perfect, and, at a second order, are within our power to improve our power to perfect. That is, while kenosis is pervasive, at newly forming and partially indeterminate higher layers, we may want to resolve certain parts to determinacy so that a person’s actions better preserve other higher-order things in the universe (like virtuous relationships). In such a scenario, we may enjoy the inestimable privilege of being co-creators with God, where we recognise, with God, the good, and work to achieve it.^[74] In the respect that this co-creating is the universe coming to recognise its creator’s nature and wishes, it represents the very pinnacle of creation. For a kenotic God to be embodied not only in kenotic action on the part of God’s creations, but for some of them (namely human beings) to know and love God for what God is, and to kenotically work to cause new kenotic layers to arise, may be the highest perfection yet to emerge in the universe (thus far). I certainly find it difficult to imagine a richer compounding of kenosis.

4.7.1 Mind games?

A final objection: could this resort to “holographic layering” not just be a mind game? After all, there is a well-known aphorism in computer science that any problem may be solved with the use of an abstraction layer. How then might one distinguish this theory from the mistaken theory of epicycles? How are unreal mental gymnastics distinguished from the tracking of the truth?

I respond that layers – and their holographic compounding – are distinguished in the actual functioning of real things, insofar as reality is available to direct experience. Specifically, we experience real relations directly, and can converge on the functioning of real things by systematically testing theories, until a scientifically confirmed model results. My theory is falsifiable on these grounds: find a person doing evil; experimentally confirm the real relations at play; if the relations cannot be constructed in terms of sign action, then they are antikenotic and the theory is falsified.

4.7.2 Problems specific to wandering in darkness

I believe that this theory is able to provide solutions to the four problems Paul Draper notes in his review^[75] of Wandering in Darkness.^[76] Specifically, he notes that it is difficult to see how Stump’s argument accounts for (a) suffering which predictably diminishes the sufferer or (b) natural disasters that indiscriminately affect people, when the healing of individual psychological fragmentation is the goal of suffering on Stump’s account; (c) how trivial suffering (like scraping one’s shin) could aid sanctification; and (d) why humans and animals suffer similarly, when animals seem incapable of undergoing a process of justification and sanctification.

Now if we are called to be (and to grow as) co-creators with God, I believe this resolves (a), (b), (c), and (d) in one fell swoop, because, firstly, if kenosis is an embodiment of God’s nature, then our acting to prevent all of these, through compassion and through technological innovation, would be how kenosis is present in these events, and how it evolves holographically, and simultaneously how God is acting to bring about greater and greater good, in a universe that is capable of compounding kenosis indefinitely. Secondly, to bring about kenosis is to create realities on the fringes of the universe, wherever it is marked by unstably kenotic indeterminacy or unreal “gaps.” These two facets taken together mean that it is never the case that kenosis is not pervasive in the universe, and that our ability to further weave kenosis at higher layers is partially how the universe is capable of compounding kenosis indefinitely – especially in the respect that our second-personal, loving co-creation with God may embody the current pinnacle of creation.