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JULY
11, 2005 BELIEFS Theologians have pondered the nature of evil for centuries. Now psychiatrists are ranking evil deeds according to degrees of heinousness, providing news pegs for reporters who want to explore changes in how people view brutal acts. Why do men and women commit such crimes, and how are good people transformed into perpetrators? Are they innately evil, or do they learn to be evil? Is evil the work of human beings or the work of the devil? And if there's a God, where is God in the midst of the horror? Psychiatrist Michael Stone of Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons is developing a 22-level hierarchy of evil behavior based on detailed biographies of more than 500 violent criminals. Michael Welner, a forensic psychiatrist at New York University School of Medicine, is working on a "depravity scale" to measure the heinousness of crimes - a scale he hopes will serve as a guideline for judges and juries at the sentencing phase of trial. However one measures evil, it is a topic that challenges religion scholars, theologians and ordinary people of faith. Today many ask whether God is all-powerful, given that people manage to hurt each other and commit collective atrocities on a daily basis. The shootings at Virginia Tech are only the most recent and high-profile reminder. These are not just lofty theological matters. Measuring evil has ramifications for psychological treatment; for criminal justice, including the death penalty; and for human rights policy, such as when it is imperative to intervene. Notions about evil shape sermons, Scripture study and Sunday school teaching. Why it Matters Questions for
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• Michael Stone, professor of clinical psychology at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, hopes his hierarchy of evil behavior will offer useful guidance in deciding who should be imprisoned for life. He will send interested reporters a Power Point presentation on the hierarchy. Contact 212-758-2000 (answering service), mstonemd@aol.com. • Tyron Inbody, professor of theology at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio, is the author of The Transforming God: An Interpretation of Suffering and Evil (Westminster John Knox, 1997). He says more conservative Christians are questioning whether God is fully in control in the face of evil, and some liberal Christians are open to the possibility of the demonic. Contact 937-278-5817 ext. 2111, tyinbody@united.edu. • Christine Smith, professor of preaching at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities in New Brighton, Minn., has written about sin and evil in feminist thought and about preaching as a radical response to evil. Contact 651-255-6128, csmith@unitedseminary-mn.org. • John Stackhouse, professor of theology and culture at Regent College in Vancouver, Canada, is the author of Can God Be Trusted?: Faith and the Challenge of Evil (Oxford University Press, 2000). He says scholars who once argued over whether one can uphold traditional theism in the face of any evil are talking about whether one could uphold it in the face of so much evil. Contact 604-221-3323, jgs88@shaw.ca. • Jamsheed K. Choksy, Indiana University professor of Central Eurasian studies, history and religious studies, has written about the dissemination of ideas about evil through Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, Mithraism and Islam, and the development of moral codes based on good and evil. He sees more scholarship focusing on collective responses to evil and on societal inequities, the consequences of warfare, the rise of fundamentalist groups and the threat posed by terrorists - all shaped by competing claims of good and evil. Contact 812-855-8643, jchoksy@indiana.edu. • Wendy Doniger, professor of the history of religions in the University of Chicago Divinity School, has written about the origins of evil in Hindu mythology. Contact 773-702-8239, don@midway.chicago.edu. • Elaine Pagels, Princeton University professor of religion, is the author of The Origin of Satan (Vintage, 1996). Contact by email only, epagels@princeton.edu. • Kathleen Sands, a professor of religious studies focusing on law and public policy at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, is the author of Escape from Paradise: Evil and Tragedy in Feminist Theology (Fortress Press, 1994). She says that in the 1970s, with the onset of liberation theology, religious scholars moved from thinking of evil as an absence of the good to viewing sin as forces of oppression and cruelty in the world. Sin and salvation became less individualistic and more collective, and many theologians gave up traditional theistic claims that God is all-powerful. Contact 617-287-6120, kathleen.sands@umb.edu. • Daryl Koehn, chair of business ethics at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, is the author of The Nature of Evil (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). She has found that suffering, not malicious cruelty, lies at the heart of evil. Suffering results in lashing out at other people to shore up false identities. She expects to see less scholarship on the theological question of why God allows evil to exist and more interest in the philosophical question about whether evil has a nature or essence. She believes it's dangerous to rank evil behavior. Contact 713-942-5917, koehn@stthom.edu. RELIGIONLINK OTHER
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