“Death creates an economy that makes life precious. One of the ways of naming that preciousness is friendship.”
Stanley Hauerwas

The elimination of evil
Greg Clarke

The following is an address given by Greg Clarke at 'Trubar’s Evil series', in October in Slovenia

Thank you very much for this opportunity to speak in the series celebrating the 500th anniversary of Trubar’s birth. He is not a figure well-known in Australia, but the events of the European Reformation are indeed significant for the shape of Australian culture. It was the post-Reformation Church of England that first brought Christianity to Australia, sending chaplains to teach and pastor the penal colony. We are a nation shaped by preaching to sinners—whether they be the poor souls of thieves deported from England, or the sometimes savage and self-serving colonials. Modern Australia is born out of trying to make good of a bad situation, trying to turn a prison into a paradise. Australia is a beautiful place to live, but nevertheless great corruption, selfishness, injustice and violence remain.

Which means that evil is a topic of enduring interest to us, as it is no doubt to you. Our contexts are different—Australia, a young nation; Slovenia a much older one; Australia an island continent, in some ways cut off from the wider world; Slovenia a significant part of Europe’s struggle with a violent past and violent ideologies. However, the idea that evil could be done away with, eradicated, finished and that we would never see suffering again—well, that is a most appealing hope to all nations. Surely, the elimination of evil is one of the underlying intentions of social policies in many of the world’s nations. We may not expect to see it, but we expect to pursue it as a goal.
     
 

Tonight, I wish to speak with you about the idea that evil will be eliminated. Last night, Professor Blocher spoke about the entry of evil into this created world; I wish to speak about the exit of evil—the end of evil. To do so, I wish first to outline a contemporary way of categorising evil, using the recent work of Slavoj Zizek on violence as my reference point. I then wish to explore the means by which evil will be eliminated, according to Christian teaching, that is, the judgment of God through Jesus Christ. And finally, I want to consider what a world without evil might look like, naming it with biblical language as ‘the kingdom of God’.

Categorising evil
Evil occurs in many forms, and we shouldn’t be too quick to think of evil as merely one large moral category of event or person. It is more useful to us if we explore different kinds of evil.  I shall employ, especially for the sake of local connection, the three categories for evil that Slavoj Zizek uses for violence in his recent book called Violence. These categories are: the subjective (interpersonal assault in murder, war, physical pain), the symbolic (violence in the form of language, such as hate-speech or discourses of oppression), and systemic (the violent nature of the world itself, that is, the underlying violence in all institutions and relations). I don’t intend to give a detailed critique of Zizek’s book, but these categories concerning violence helpfully frame for us an understanding of evil. Subjective evil is recognisable wrong against another person or group of thing. If not everyone recognises its wrongness at the time, at least some do and over time more are convinced. Zizek says that this is the kind of violence that most people think about; I suggest it is also the category of evil that springs to mind for most people. Evil acts. Wicked deeds. Obvious assaults on another person or group.  
  the idea that evil could be done away with ... is a most appealing hope
 

But the other two categories are very important for understanding evil, and ought not to be ignored. Symbolic evil might be summarised as ‘lying’—communication that does less than tell the truth, misusing and twisting the human capacity for language, abusing people by not being true to them. This is surely evil. Any discussion of the elimination of evil will need to deal with this symbolic evil as well as subjective evil.

And it seems to me that systemic evil is what Christians call ‘sin’, that is, a state of wrongness in the world whereby at every point something can be identified as violent, abusive, obscene or oppressive. This systemic wrongness often does a better job of explaining horrific events (for example, child sexual abuse or the Holocaust) than does any psychological, social or political theory. The evil seems very deep, very comprehensive and far-reaching, almost viral or ethereal. This condition of the world and its inhabitants is known to Christians as ‘sin’.

With our understanding of evil categorised in this way, it becomes clear that in order to deal with evil, we will need more than mere laws (which constrain behaviour). We will need more than control of the movements and freedoms of individuals or organizations. We will need more than a system of reward and/or punishment by which we can discourage subjective evil. To deal with evil, we will need to deal with the minds and the tongues of human beings (respectively, the source and the instrument of symbolic evil). To deal with evil we will need something that can address the condition of sin, in its complicated and entrenched systems, its ingrained and convoluted injustices, and its devious justifications for ongoing oppression towards others. We will need a complete—perhaps the best word for it is ‘spiritual’—solution.

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