The Son Rises on Reality

“I would catch a glimpse of the cross – and suddenly my heart would stand still. In an instinctive, intuitive way I understood that something more important, more tumultuous, more passionate, was at issue than any our good causes, however noble they might be.” – Malcolm Muggeridge, Jesus Rediscovered, as cited in Tim Keller, The Reason for God ch. 12

“Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!...For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.” – Romans 11:33, 36

“The refulgence shines upon and into the creature, and is reflected back to the luminary. The beams of glory come from God, are something to God, and are refunded back again to their original. So that the whole is of God, and in God, and to God; and he is the beginning, the middle, and the end.” – Jonathan Edwards, The End for Which God Created the World

Look at what our God has done! Come and see – how awesome are his designs! Do you see it? Do you see the grace and power of the cross and the resurrection? – that bright, piercing light that God has sent from himself so that we might know him for who he is, shining like “a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts” (2 Peter 1:19). I have done my best to communicate with words what I see in this Great Eucatastrophe, yet words are so shallow and weak when they are used in reference to such deep and weighty truths. To describe the reality itself, to convey the force with which it hits me – the brightness of the light of eucatastrophe – I can think of little more that could be said with words. I might also say this: when I look at it – the victory of God – I understand why we are here in this world and I know who I am. I see why anything at all exists. As I turn my gaze towards the Son of God as he rises from death and shines his victorious light on all reality, I think, “so that is why there is a world filled with living beings, rather than nothing at all!” When I look at the cross, I think, “so that is the firm foundation of reality and the meaning of existence.” This meaning of existence is most transparent to me – indeed I see it beyond the shadow of a doubt – when I listen to certain pieces of music,* and for you the light may shine down in some other unique beam, giving a similarly small but bright glimpse of the same beauty and power – that of the eucatastrophic victory of good over evil. It is this light, streaming forth from the Victory of God in the resurrection, that illuminates all reality, showing how all the pieces fit together in God’s Story and the dance of creation. In the words of C. S. Lewis, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” And the Son has risen. The mystery of God is being fulfilled (Revelation 10:7). The tide has turned towards redemption. This is the morning.


*I might be accused of letting my thoughts become crowded in emotions. Is not one’s clarity of rational thought dimmed and confused by an “emotional high?” This could happen, but it is by no means a necessary quality of emotion.

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The Victory of God: Summary, part 3

All this God carries through with complete sovereignty and foreknowledge – the cross was (like all sin) an evil event in itself, but it was planned from eternity for a good purpose. But all this would be impossible without a fallen world and the horrible reality of evil. Only by freely choosing against God’s will, by falling into sin and evil, and thus pain and grief, could we need redemption, and only through redemption – only by death and resurrection – could there be eucatastrophic victory over evil. The full light of God – revelation not only of his love and justice, but of all his perfections – could shine on us only if both man and God passed through sorrow and suffering. And only by seeing this light could we see God for who he is, and be filled with the joy that comes from knowing him. Evil, then, is necessary to accomplish “the end for which God created the world” – the deepest and highest joy of God’s people – joy in God that is given by God and honors and glorifies God. God is just, and he will destroy evil and sin in the end – it is a temporary and passing reality, and exists so that God may conquer. A time will come when evil is no more, and when there is no longer a “problem” to be troubled by. “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4). But without the difference it makes, God’s Story and our joy would be incomplete.

In the deeper wisdom of the cross and the power of Christ’s resurrection, then, we find an answer to both the problem of evil and the “problem of good” – our hope is confirmed and a greater redemptive purpose is seen. And in seeing how God has so beautifully and powerfully defeated evil in order to write into being the best of all possible stories, we have cause to step back in awe and wonder (which we also ought to do in response to good and evil, and indeed to reality itself). What must God be like that he has made such a creation and written such a story, for our joy* and for his glory?

*Chiefly in heaven, but also here and now to some extent – the process of being raised to new life in Christ has already begun. One might ask, “why doesn’t God complete the redemption of the world right now? If the cross was the important thing, why does suffering continue after it?” This is a valid question, and one that I will consider in future posts. There are, I think, things that are accomplished through a long and gradual history of redemption that would not have been otherwise accomplished.

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The Victory of God: Summary, part 2

What is it, though, about the cross that makes it so deep and mysterious and yet so high and majestic and glorious? It is a terrible event – we have cause to fear and tremble at the death of God. The roots of the cross go down deep, to the foundation of reality – to God himself, who fills the cross with beauty and wisdom and riches and treasures, and with the power of resurrection. At the cross God showed his love for us (Romans 5:8) and at the same time vindicated his justice and holiness. Evil, justice, forgiveness, and love come together in this mystery.

By dying on a cross God turned this fallen world’s “wisdom” on its head and revealed himself in a sharp, paradoxical contrast with human expectations of what victory would look like (1 Corinthians 1:18-2:5). Here we see most brightly the beauty of paradox that comes from God. By bearing sin, God eliminated sin and showed himself to be holy and sinless. By dying our death, he gave us his life. By being forsaken by the Father, Christ showed himself to be one with the Father in wisdom and power. By becoming weak and powerless, Christ unveiled incomparable power. By dying on a cross, he conquered death and showed himself to be the Living God. By being defeated, God is victorious. By submitting to suffering and death, God solved the problem of our sin, reconciled us to himself, turned Satan’s schemes backwards, and conquered death and evil forever. It is at the cross that the ways of God – his “treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:2-3), made known in this great revelation of his character, are shown to be deeper and stronger and more original than the ways of the Enemy.

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The Victory of God: Summary, part 1

In the cross of Jesus Christ, and in his resurrection, we find in history – in the real world – exactly the kind of event that would vindicate the undying seed of hope – hope even in a world filled with sorrow and suffering – that burns deep within us. The Christian Story in turn explains this sense of hope that is a part of human nature. Overflowing from the being of God is a creation filled with “little gods” – creatures made in his image and designed with an ability to perceive his ways. It is in the Story of the One in whose image we are made that we find the reality that is reflected in our own intuitions of hope and stories of good and evil. Alongside the seed of hope there is a longing in our hearts for great stories to be true, for beautiful worlds to be real places. And the eucatastrophic story that, if we saw it fully for what it is, we would long for it to be true more than for any other story – this Story is true, in Christ.

But we cannot arrive at the glory of the Happy Ending, Tolkien’s Eucatastrophe, without passing through the whole story, and the valley of pain and sorrow that precedes the final joy. Imagine watching the end of one of your favorite movies without watching the sad events that came before. The happy ending would lose its meaning – it needs the whole story, with all its elements, to make sense.

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Conclusion: The Best of All Possible Stories

My conclusion, then (which I also stated in “Jonathan Edwards on the Two “Wills” of God”), is that despite evil’s temporary existence, this is the best of all logically possible realities,* and the Story told by means of evil the brightest of all possible revelations of God – the best of all possible stories that God could write into existence. Indeed, with a God who is totally knowing, can do anything he wants, does all things for a purpose, and has a standard of what is good and right, we can be certain he will create the best of all possible worlds and write the Story that functions to express his character most fully, thus bringing back to him (who alone is worthy) all the glory and honor and bringing the greatest joy to creatures.

The curious thing about this best of all possible worlds, which will, in the end, shine God’s light most brightly and be marked with his ways most perfectly, is that God accomplished it by withholding his full power and light and allowing freedom for man to take a path away from him. C. S. Lewis compares the “giving” of free will to death and resurrection (“the very pattern of reality”), describing it as “a deathlike or descending movement” (Miracles, ch. 14). Paradoxically, a God who is inclined to pour his goodness and wisdom into creation (in this respect, Jonathan Edwards compares God to a fountain) did so precisely by initially holding back that divine light. Perhaps it was not only at the cross (although here supremely), but throughout the entire history of his creation, during which God gifted his creatures with freedom of choice, that God experienced a “death” of some sort – the “death” of letting all creation run its own course, a ruinous course away from him. The coming final joy and revelation of God might then be described as a resurrection of sorts on the scale of all reality. The whole world – all of reality – is raised up again to new life.


*One might object that the best of all possible worlds demands that God relinquish his power in giving free will, and that consequently the result may not be the absolute best possible. This is a fair objection, but I think we have to recognize that God, the maker of the universe, would be wise enough to find a way to integrate all free choices towards his purposes. And indeed, since he foreknew all that would happen, there is no room for any freely made creature choice to escape his purpose in perfecting reality. Free choices made by creatures cannot mar God’s Story or dim his revealed glory.

One might also object that there is no best possible reality – either there are multiple equally good possible realities, or there is, for every possible reality, a better possible reality (an infinite number of possible realities), and thus no “best” possible reality. The latter seems to conflict with God’s nature. If God is inclined towards “better” realities, it would seem to be a restriction on his creative power if no reality could be created that was not far inferior to other possible realities. Rather, one would expect the potentiality for a truly “best” world would seem to be inherent in the character of the God who prefers “better” worlds.

Perhaps it is possible that there are multiple equally good possible realities; indeed, this idea fits well with the free will of creatures discussed above. Free creature choices, not predetermined by God, would affect reality – the course of history is not fully set by God. One would expect, though, that a God of infinite power and wisdom would be able to integrate free choices into reality in order to prevent a less perfect reality. Creature choices may alter the course of events in small ways, but God, foreknowing everything, would have no difficulty planning things out so that history was completed in the same way and the same Story was told – the story of the victory of God, centered on the cross.

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The Accomplishing of God’s Purpose for Creation

Finally, in revealing himself most fully, God shines most brightly in creation and is most glorified. And in the same revelation, we see God’s love and rejoice with greater joy. The cross, then, achieves “the end for which God created the world,” which, wrote Jonathan Edwards, is both God’s glory and our joy. In John Piper’s words,

“Up until the coming of Jesus Christ, the Bible is like a piece of music whose dissonance begs for some final resolution into harmony. Redemptive history is like a symphony with two great themes: the theme of God's passion to preserve and display his glory; and the theme of God’s inscrutable love for sinners who have scorned his glory. Again and again all through the Bible these two great themes carry along the symphony of history. They interweave and interpenetrate, and we know that some awesome Composer is at work here. But for centuries we don't see the resolution. The harmony always escapes us, and we have to wait. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the resolution of the symphony of history. In the death of Jesus the two themes of God's love for his glory and his love for sinners are resolved.” – John Piper, The Pleasures of God ch. 6

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A More Glorious Reality

Not just humans, but all creatures will see and rejoice in God more fully, and reflect his goodness, because humanity fell and was redeemed. And not just creatures, but all creation will display God’s glory more brightly.

“God is not merely mending, not simply restoring a status quo. Redeemed humanity is to be something more glorious than unfallen humanity would have been, more glorious than any unfallen race now is (if at this moment the night sky conceals any such). The greater the sin, the greater the mercy: the deeper the death and the brighter the rebirth. And this super-added glory will, with true vicariousness, exalt all creatures and those who have never fallen will thus bless Adam’s fall.” – C. S. Lewis, Miracles, ch. 14

“The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” – Isaiah 11:9

God’s Story will be complete, and with the new, resurrected creation, his design for reality will be brought full circle – creation will be more filled with the things of God than it could have been any other way. The original creation was good, but there is a greater good on the other side of suffering, a more beautiful and elegant simplicity on the “the other side of complexity.” ¹ All the loose ends of the Story will be tied together, and existence itself will be more glorious. The beauty will be greater for having come out of ugliness, the victory complete for having fully faced evil, the revelation brighter because God rooted his Story more deeply in his character, and God more glorious to creation² for having shown himself supreme and victorious over evil (what he is not).

Evil events are part of a much larger reality, much more vast and glorious than any human could possibly comprehend. This is not to say that evil is a small thing. Evil is an enormous reality, more horrible than any of us have experienced. But the great magnitude of evil only testifies to the even greater glory and perfection to which evil (a fleeting reality, and virtually nothing in comparison to the fullness of reality) contributes. The full extent of creation stretches to heights and depths immeasurable, beyond the comprehension of all but God himself. All things, all reality! Pause to think how indescribably great it could be – innumerable worlds and universes and dimensions of existence beyond our knowledge. And all this – all of it – was made for God’s glory and the joy his creatures. How great then must God be!


¹ Lewis writes that evil is “the fuel or raw material for the second and more complex kind of good…In the fallen and partially redeemed universe we may distinguish (1) the simple good descending from God, (2) the simple evil produced by rebellious creatures, and (3) the exploitation of that evil by God for His redemptive purpose, which produces (4) the complex good to which accepted suffering and repented sin contribute.” – C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, chs. 6,7

² Not in himself, but as he is revealed to creation. God himself is unchanging, and creation adds nothing to his glory. In C. S. Lewis’ words, an archangel adds no more to God’s glory and perfection than a grain of dust. God is so great, that in an act of ultimate creative self-expression, his character overflows into all reality. He creates – new things that are not God flow out of his being and into existence. That God has the power to create does not suggest any deficiency in his being (that he needs creation). Rather, that God’s power is so great that he brings things into existence points all the more to his total supremacy. But that God can redeem a fallen creation, I think, reveals his power in an even greater way.

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Quotes from Tolkien, Lewis, Dostoevsky, and Jesus

“In a few moments the darkness turned into a greyness ahead, and then, almost before they dared to begin hoping, they had shot out into the sunlight and were in the warm, blue world again. And just as there are moments when simply to lie in bed and see the daylight pouring through your window and to hear the cheerful voice of an early postman or milkman down below and to realize that it was only a dream: it wasn’t real, is so heavenly that it was very nearly worth having the nightmare in order to have the joy of waking; so they all felt when they came out of the dark.” – C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

“Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy. When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world.” – John 16:20-21

“Their hearts, wounded with sweet words, overflowed, and their joy was like swords, and they passed in thought out to regions where pain and delight flow together and tears are the very wine of blessedness” – J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King ch. 4, “The Field of Cormallen,” which is my favorite chapter in the trilogy

“I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, of the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood that they’ve shed; and it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify* what has happened.” – Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
*not to render evil just in itself, but to make it worth it with respect to what its existence accomplishes

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A Higher Joy

Since God is the only fountain of joy – indeed, of all good things – only in knowing God can a creature’s joy be complete (John 15:11). We have seen that God can only be fully known by means of a broken and pain-filled world. Therefore, in yet another instance of the beauty of paradox, our joy in God can only be complete if we first lose that joy to suffering and evil. He who is last shall be first, he who would find his life must lose it, he who would be filled with the greatest joy must know the painful loss of that joy.

“…as dying, and behold, we live…as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing, as poor, yet making many rich, as having nothing, yet possessing everything.” – Paul, 1 Corinthians 6:10

“So evil is necessary, in order to the highest happiness of the creature, and the completeness of that communication of God, for which he made the world; because the creature’s happiness consists in the knowledge of God, and the sense of his love. And if the knowledge of him be imperfect, the happiness of the creature must be proportionably imperfect.” – Jonathan Edwards, “Concerning the Divine Decrees”

And not only will we be filled with a greater joy. We, as God’s image bearers, will become more fully who he intended us to be – more like God. The community of heaven will be more united, joyful, and loving – we will love others more truly and be more compassionately for having seen more of God’s love. Our relationships with others will be stronger and more filled with love because we passed through sorrow together, and our relationship with God will be deeper because we came to see him more fully. We will be stronger and deeper and truer people for having learned courage and sacrifice, known God’s power to redeem, and experienced the undying hope amidst sorrow that rests on the foundation of God’s character. We will be older for having grown through the long experience of bittersweet life in a fallen world, and we will be younger for having come to delight in and treasure more fully the simplest of God’s gifts. Having seen God’s wisdom, our wisdom as his children will be deeper, and having participated in his death and glorious new life, we too will be greater and more glorious. Indeed, having seen more fully all that God is, and having been united with God through Christ’s death and resurrection, we ourselves, his sons and daughters, will more brightly reflect his perfections. We will shine the image of God more brightly throughout creation, and back towards our Creator, for his glory and our joy.

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A Deeper Knowledge of God’s Love

And all this can be accomplished only by passing through and rising above suffering and evil. When we see God face to face in heaven, when we see the Lamb of God on his throne, reigning as King of Kings and Lord of Lords, what we see will be so much more beautiful and glorious than what we would have seen without passing through evil and suffering and without knowing God because of what he did in a broken world. In his love he gave himself to redeem it:

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A Greater Revelation of God’s Perfections

Having considered God’s sovereignty over and purposeful design of evil events, specifically the cross, despite it being an evil that resulted from the free choices of creatures (possible because God “held back” his influence), let’s take a look at what this divine design accomplishes. I wrote earlier in “The Cross as Revelation,” that God poured all that he is into his Story, centered on the cross, in such a way as to more fully “display his infinite beauty and immeasurable worth” (Spectacular Sins 34). Jonathan Edwards puts it this way:

“It is a proper and excellent thing for infinite glory to shine forth; and for the same reason, it is proper that the shining forth of God’s glory should be complete; that is, that all parts of his glory should shine forth, that every beauty should be proportionably effulgent, that the beholder may have a proper notion of God. It is not proper that one glory should be exceedingly manifested, and another not at all…It is highly proper… that the splendour should be answerable to the real and essential glory…

Thus it is necessary, that God’s awful majesty, his authority and dreadful greatness, justice, and holiness, should be manifested. But this could not be, unless sin and punishment had been decreed; so that the shining forth of God’s glory would be very imperfect, both because these parts of divine glory would not shine forth as the others do, and also the glory of his goodness, love, and holiness would be faint without them; nay, they could scarcely shine forth at all.

If it were not right that God should decree and permit and punish sin, there could be no manifestation of God’s holiness in hatred of sin, or in showing any preference, in his providence, of godliness before it. There would be no manifestation of God’s grace or true goodness, if there was no sin to be pardoned, no misery to be saved from. How much happiness soever he bestowed, his goodness would not be so much prized and admired, and the sense of it not so great…”

– Jonathan Edwards, “Concerning the Divine Decrees”

Indeed, this supreme revelation of all that God is is the purpose not only of the cross, but of all the suffering and evil in the world, and of having a broken and fallen world in the first place. It is nothing less than the purpose of all creation. Without Christ’s death and resurrection it would be impossible, and without a world filled with evil, Christ’s death would be impossible. Just as the brightness of light is revealed more fully against the background of darkness, so the fullness and perfection of God is made known more completely when viewed in light of evil, and the supremacy of God and all that he is is revealed more fully in his triumph over evil. The vast and immeasurable gulf between the good that God is and the evil that he is not is shown for what it is, and thus the superiority of God is revealed more fully.* God’s beauty, wisdom, majesty, power, God’s nature, character, qualities, attributes, the innumerable glorious facets of God, the paradoxically diverse aspects which comprise the united whole that is the Trinity, the majestically complex yet beautifully simple riches and treasures of God, the depths and heights and fullness of God! All this – that is, God himself, who cannot be described with language – will be made known to finite creature minds and will shine forth in the realm of created reality to the greatest extent possible.

“Who has done this and carried it through, calling forth the generations from the beginning? I, the Lord…so that people may see and know, may consider and understand, that the hand of the Lord has done this.” – Isaiah 41:4,20

*This is not to suggest that God’s goodness and beauty would be diminished in a world without evil. God does not change – his goodness is neither more nor less than it was before the world was made. It is the understanding of God’s character given to creatures that is, I think, increased because of redemption.

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