Summaries / Resúmenes - Studia Moralia

EVIL: QUESTIONING AND CHALLENGING THEOLOGY AGAIN AND AGAIN 119ably more conditioned in a whole variety of ways than wasthought in earlier times. The decisive challenge which thenarises is to show that man is endowed with authentic freedomdespite so much conditioning and that he is capable of actualizinghis freedom. The foundation of freedom then has to beworked out as the most precious and demanding gift of God. Ifwe really are able, and called, to assume a position of freedomand responsibility in the face of evil’s temptations, then evil isfor us not a blind destiny expressed in blind mechanisms andstructures. To confront the subject of human freedom in a clearand realistic way both at the anthropological and theologicallevel prevents the banalization of evil and its dissolution intothe global. It prevents the blinking last man in the sense ofNietzsche and opens the view for the unique greatness and dignityof the human being. It acknowledges the existence ofmoral evil and also makes the human being responsible for evil,but in such a way that it also restores his freedom.The tension between moral evil on the one hand and mechanismsand structures of evil on the other requires further amore developed awareness that we can be at one and the sametime author and victim of evil. This brings new challenges withregard to the question how to determine precisely the boundarybetween moral evil and evil that goes beyond moral accountability.Theology, while insisting on the reality of moral evil, hasto make clear at the same time that the problem and the scandalof evil cannot be reduced exclusively to the dimension ofmoral evil and personal sin and that suffering cannot bereduced to punishment for sin. Theological questions aboutGod and about trusting God in the face of evil have to go farbeyond subjects like sin and punishment; they must even put inquestion the distinction between merited and unmerited suffering.55 Christ’s rejection of the causal link between personal sufferingand personal sin (John 9), His healings and His extollingof a justice that makes the first last (Mt 19:30, etc.), His deathon the cross for the whole of humanity, all show that God55See James Keenan, “The meaning of suffering?” in EdmundPellegrino and Alan Faden, eds. Jewish and Catholic Bioethics: AnEcumenical Dialogue (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press,1999), 86-87.