August 26, 2024

Re: World-Historical Events, Theodicy, and the Divine Will; or, Did God “Save” Donald Trump?

My Mom, who would have turned 79 years old on July 18, was deeply interested in American politics. Like many of her generation, my Mom’s appetite for political debate was nourished during the 1960s—a period of immense societal change and conflict. “Christopher,” she used to tell me, in her exaggerated Southern drawl, “I remember exactly where I was when Kennedy was shot.” This is, I know, a veritable trope among Baby Boomers, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Only a handful of events during one’s life are capable of bearing world-historical importance, and they have a way of stopping time, like a freeze-frame shot in a movie.

In my own lifetime, I can clearly remember two such moments:

• The September 11 attacks in 2001: I found out on a bus ride in County Galway, Ireland.

• The rollout of COVID-19 shutdowns in March 2020: I distinctly remember sitting in a parking lot in Mt. Laurel Township, New Jersey, waiting for my kids to wrap up a baseball practice. Twitter was flooded with news and rumors, and then came the shocking headline: “NCAA tournaments canceled over coronavirus.”

Several weeks ago, on July 13, 2024, another significant historical event took place: former United States president, and current Republican nominee for the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Donald J. Trump was shot at an open-air campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The political implications of this assassination attempt remain hotly debated. At first, Trump seemed to emerge from the shooting as a stronger, more sympathetic candidate, but changes to the Democratic ticket, especially the sudden elevation of current Vice President Kamala Harris as the party’s 2024 nominee, have reshaped the campaign yet again. Still, the attempted assassination of Trump was a stunning development. Prior to Trump, only three presidential nominees have been shot on the campaign trail: Teddy Roosevelt (1912), George Wallace (1972), and Gerald Ford (twice in 1975). None of them would go on to win the elections in question.

In any case, world-historical moments are characteristically unexpected, if not entirely unpredictable. We all know that terrorist attacks happen; we all know that presidential election years are often chaotic and violent. Still, no one could have prepared for the shock of seeing planes fly into skyscrapers or AR-15 bullets spraying a campaign rally.

Amid such tragedies, there is always an abundance of analysis, debate, and speculation—indeed, even in the years before the Internet! To return to another memory from 9/11: upon disembarking in Galway city, my wife and I ducked into a local pub to have a drink and to catch up on the news. While clips of the disintegrating World Trade Center complex repeatedly played on the large TV above the bar, I listened to a table of Irish “lads” debate how the United States would respond. “Bush will nuke ‘em,” one guy predicted, “he’s from Texas!” Of course, over two decades later, such comments are not confined to corner booths in Irish pubs but are circulated ad infinitum on Facebook, Twitter/X, and so on. The proliferation of social media does not provide clarity; it just raises more questions.

This post will address one such debate that emerged in the wake of the Trump shooting. In particular, I want to ponder the theological claim that God saved Trump from being killed on that fateful afternoon. Comments both for and against this assertion circulated in the hours and days following Trump’s brush with death. On July 15, at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, the former president’s son Donald Trump, Jr. said that his father was alive solely due to “divine intervention”:

Meanwhile, on the other side, the “progressive social democrat” and talk-radio host David Pakman joined a chorus of people who took exception to this assertion. What needles Pakman—fairly, it seems to me—is that those who invoke God’s protection of Trump often elide the fact that others did not escape the gunfire that shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks rained down on the rally in Butler, PA. Indeed, when all was said and done, Crooks managed to shoot a number of people before he himself was cut down by an anti-sniper team. Two people were critically injured and one man was horrifically killed—a 50-year-old engineer and volunteer firefighter named Corey Comperatore, who died shielding his wife and daughter from Crooks’ bullets. Why did God save Trump, Pakman asks, and not Comperatore? Besides, wouldn’t it have been better if God would have stopped the shooting altogether? How “good” can God be if he saves one but allows another to perish in cold blood?

Needless to say, these divergent theological interpretations spilled over onto Facebook and Twitter—yet another example of how denizens of the West continue to engage theology, however inchoately, even if they are increasingly unlikely to attend church. Still, the question lingers: which perspective is right?

I’m going to proffer an answer below. First, however, I think it should be noted that these debates, particularly as they unfold on social media, are not really meant to provide a meaningful answer. This is because social media thrives on the controversy itself, which drives up user participation and generates advertising dollars. As I’ve written about before, this aspect of digital culture was foreseen by Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard (1813-55), who, in works such as A Literary Review (En literair Anmeldelse), argued that the then emerging print media would facilitate and strengthen a preoccupation with “reflection” (Reflexion). Rather than relate to existential issues with individual immediacy and passion (“What does this mean for me and for the way I conduct my life?”), human beings would increasingly treat such issues as abstract concerns that represent public positions and collective roles (“How do different groups answer this, and who has more evidence on their side?”). According to Kierkegaard, this sort of Reflexion is an epistemic trap, which is bound to treat the truth as a utilitarian matter and, in the process, drain individual existence of inner vitality and transcendent meaning.

The online debate, then, is just chatter (Snak): it is, in and of itself, a diversion from the responsibility that one has for one’s own life, which is irreducible and unrepeatable. Consequently, any attempt to “solve” the debate once and for all is not advantageous, much less possible. The best one can do is find hope and motivation in a tradition that clearly, earnestly, and reasonably articulates its standpoint. A few do; many do not. To be sure, a transformative response cannot be achieved via social media, which does not provide enough space or time to internalize a “thick” tradition. Indeed, if one is being honest, even an essay (such as this one) or a short book is inadequate. Only a lifetime of practice will suffice.

Okay, with these prolegomena out of the way, it’s time to address the question at hand: did God save Donald J. Trump from assassination, and, if so, why did God not save everyone on the grounds of the Butler Farm Show? In order to tackle this problem, I will lean on Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma (Grundriß der Katholischen Dogmatik), published by the German medievalist and priest Ludwig Ott (1906-85) in 1952. Ott’s text is useful for two reasons: (i) it’s a laconic and, in a sense, humdrum pre-Vatican II primer on what Ott calls “the essentials of Church teaching and the foundation of such teaching.” Thus it predates many of the hot-button ecclesial-political debates of our present era; and (ii) it is still considered a “classic” among doctrinal textbooks and was, in fact, specifically recommended to me during my doctoral studies at Oxford as an indispensable theological resource. To this day I keep a volume of Ott’s Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma near my desk, alongside a handful of other reference books (dictionaries, concordances, etc.).

To begin, then, it must be the case that God willed the existence of the various actors involved (one way or another) in the 7/13 shooting, whether it’s Trump, Crooks, Comperatore, or then director of the United States Secret Service Kimberly Cheatle, not to mention countless others. We can say this because if God were forced to create this world, including the agents therein, then God would lack omnipotence—and wouldn’t be God at all. With this in mind, Ott cites the Book of Revelation: “For thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created” (4:11). Indeed, in contrast to the deus otiosus of Deism, Catholicism insists that God “continuously preserves in existence created things,” lest they relapse into nothingness. Hence, if you are here, reading this essay or looking out the window or getting ready for work, then it is by the will of God, who has chosen not “to annihilate [creation] through the withdrawing of His conserving influence.”

And yet, even if this is true, one might still wonder if God were truly present at the 7/13 shooting: “Sure, God is the Creator, but that does not mean that he is active and present in everything we do, much less in political assassinations.” According to Ott, however, the logical conclusion of God’s creative power is that created beings are wholly dependent on God, even when they sin. This is not because God causes sin per se; it is because God grounds and actuates all of the physical and spiritual powers of creatures—an activity that theologians call the Concursus Divinus (“divine concurrence”). As it is written in the Book of Acts, “[God is] not far from every one of us: for in him we live, and move, and have our being” (17:27-28). Hence, as the originating source of being, God was immediately cooperative in the events of 7/13. He did not effectuate Crooks’ decision to fire upon Trump, but the shooter could not have made such a decision without God’s prior creative act.

So, God was there—yes, with Trump, but also with Comperatore and even with Crooks. In and of itself, however, this metaphysical reality is unlikely to satisfy those who either believe that God miraculously drew Trump’s head away from the incoming bullets (incidentally, Trump has also given credit to a chart on immigration, which he turned to read just as Crooks fired) or those who insist that God’s goodness is annulled if God chose to intervene on behalf of the (highly controversial) former president but not on behalf of innocent bystanders such as Comperatore. What people really want, then, is an answer to this question: to what extent is God’s will manifest in seemingly haphazard human affairs?

According to Ott, Catholics are obliged to believe that God “protects and guides all that He has created.” At the same time, however, God’s management of earthly life is not akin to that of a puppeteer. Even though there is a “Divine world-plan” (providentia), the execution of that plan (gubernatio) happens in and through the realm of time. Since all things have been created by God and are sustained by God, they are all ordered to an ultimate purpose or, in good Thomistic language, a ratio ordinis rerum in finem. Ott points out that this notion is supported throughout the Bible, whether in the stories of God’s care for the people of Israel, in the teaching of Jesus Christ, or in subsequent apostolic exhortations against pagan fatalism or nihilistic materialism. As it is written in First Epistle of Peter: “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time: casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you” (5:7).

Precisely because God’s governance ordinarily works through finite and temporal causes—what Ott terms Providentia Mediata—it is a complex, even mysterious process. Sometimes earthly outcomes are desired; at other times they are merely permitted. And yet, lest “fate” or “luck” be elevated to divine status, Ott insists that “all world events are necessarily and inevitably subject” to the will of God. This is an essential corollary of God’s eternal and immutable nature; however, it does not render human activity or prayer unimportant. Indeed, according to Ott, the one who prays to God for this or that good has already been foreseen by the Almighty and thus included in God’s providentia. This point reinforces Ott’s final conclusion: “Nothing happens without Providence or independent of it.”

This bold assertion raises the possibility of a twofold offense. On the one hand, the doctrine of Divine Providence may offend by seeming to diminish human accomplishment. On this reading, whatever success that human beings enjoy is finally dependent on God—a claim that runs counter to the so-called “American Dream” and other ethea that celebrate rugged individualism and/or socio-political power. On the other hand, and far more vexingly, this teaching may also offend by suggesting that God is equally responsible for good and for evil, for sparing the life of a Trump and for causing the death of a Comperatore. Yet, if such a conclusion were true, then how could Christians rightly say that God is good? This question, in fact, lies at the core of the philosophical discourse known as “theodicy,” which seeks to reason through the conundrum classically formulated by Scottish thinker David Hume (1711-76): “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?"

Ott addresses this concern in a section on God’s will entitled “The Object of the Divine Volition” (Der Gegenstand des göttlichen Wollens). What God wants for all creatures is love, because God himself is love (1 John 4:8). Thus God is ever working to draw creation into his own life. As it is said in the Book of Proverbs, “The Lord hath made all things for himself” (Proverbs 16:4). This statement may sound pompous to contemporary ears, but, as Ott underlines, it is just the opposite—the fact that God’s love is not motivated by creaturely goodness means that it is a perfectly benevolent love (amor benevolentiæ), receiving nothing from others and giving unsparingly to all, irrespective of how they are valued by human logic. Indeed, since God’s love proceeds from the same “inner-Divine act,” it does not rise and fall in relation to the recipient. A Trump, a Comperatore, a Crooks: each is loved by God to the same degree. However, not all will respond with equal “amiability” (Liebenswürdigkeit) to the divine gift.

This tension between God’s unchanging love and the changing fortunes of a finite and often broken world—a tension that Indiana singer-songwriter Stephen Wilson, Jr. has pithily summarized in the 2023 song “twisted”: “God is good / Life is twisted”—brings Ott to a discussion God’s relationship to earthly evil. That life is replete with “physical evil” (das physische Übel) goes without saying. A deadly tornado rips through a small town, killing hundreds; a woman dies after her car is stranded in a snowstorm; a teenager is viciously attacked by a bull shark while swimming in the Gulf of Mexico; a husband and father of two young children dies of cancer. Are such occurrences nothing more than “shit luck”? Or can they be rightly ascribed to God’s providentia? Ott notes that a pair of biblical pericopes have to be taken into account:

• “God did not make death, and he does not delight in the death of the living. For he created all things that they might exist” (Wisdom 1:13-14).

• “Good things and bad, life and death, poverty and wealth, come from the Lord” (Sirach 11:14)

These passages, according to Ott, describe different orders of God’s will. Physical evil is never desired by God for its own sake or as an end in itself. However, insofar as physical evil occurs by extraneous circumstances (i.e., forces of nature), God wills it “as a means to a higher end of the physical order…or of the moral order.” Perhaps a sports analogy can be usefully applied here: an athlete always competes with the intention of winning, but, if she should lose, she will use her disappointment as a spur to greater achievement, whether by finding new training methods or by giving up deleterious personal habits. Indeed, this sort of scenario is presupposed by serious athletes. A true competitor plays the game even though she knows she will lose at times; the alternative, however, is not to forego competition altogether but to grow from one’s struggles. In a comparable way, if God were to will the elimination of physical evil in toto, the world itself would have to be annulled, since change and limitation are ineluctable parts of earthly existence. God has determined, then, that it is better to bring good from the world’s flaws than to eradicate the world itself.

God’s relationship to what Ott calls “moral evil” (das moralische Übel) is different. As Ott puts it, “Moral evil, that is, sin, which according to its nature is a revolt against God, is willed by God neither per se nor per accidens, that is, neither as an end nor as a means to an end.” Here a connection to the 7/13 shooting is most apparent. The attempted murder of a public figure, plus the death and injury resulting therefrom, is in no way part of God’s government of or plan for the world. “For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness: neither shall evil dwell with thee” (Psalm 5:4). Crooks’ decision to fire on Trump, however it was conceived, manifests a complete break from the divine life. To return to the sports analogy: whereas physical evil is akin to losing an athletic competition—an accidental outcome of being willing to engage in competition in the first place—sin resembles an athlete’s decision to tear up the rules of the game and to act according to one’s own wishes. Just as Roger Goodell would never approve of a football coach directing his players to purposely injure their opponents, so does God stand entirely outside of the creature’s decision to commit moral evil. Ott again appeals to the Book of Sirach (15:11-20):

Do not say, “Because of the Lord I left the right way”;
   for he will not do what he hates.
Do not say, “It was he who led me astray”;
   for he had no need of a sinful man.
The Lord hates all abominations,
   and they are not loved by those who fear him.
It was he who created man in the beginning,
   and he left him in the power of his own inclination.
If you will, you can keep the commandments,
   and to act faithfully is a matter of your own choice.
He has placed before you fire and water:
   stretch out your hand for whichever you wish.
Before a man are life and death,
   and whichever he chooses will be given to him.
For great is the wisdom of the Lord;
   he is mighty in power and sees everything;
his eyes are on those who fear him,
   and he knows every deed of man.
He has not commanded any one to be ungodly,
   and he has not given any one permission to sin.

In this passage, the Jewish sage Ben Sira makes two crucial points: (i) human sin, in any number of forms, results from the abuse of human freedom, and (ii) God nevertheless wills human freedom as a greater good and, “mighty in power,” is capable of turning even moral evil into good. This resolution on God’s part is highlighted throughout the Hebrew Bible, as in the story of the patriarch Joseph, who was sold into slavery by his own brothers, only to later save his family from a famine: “Ye thought evil against me,” Joseph says, “but God meant it unto good” (Genesis 50:20). Moreover, from a Christian standpoint, this principle finds its highest expression in the life, ministry, suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Indeed, Jesus is the very incarnation of God’s providential relationship to the world.

Of course, just how good is wrought from evil is often hard to see, and, like an Ivan Karamazov, one may despair of ever finding an adequate demonstration. I have often told my undergraduate students that the decline of religion in the West is largely owing to Christianity’s unabashed optimism, which can seem all too precious in the face of cosmic vastness and earthly misery. To be sure, and going back once more to the attempted assassination of Trump, this is why there was more than a little eye-rolling at the claim that God saved the former president from his would-be assassin. And yet, following Ott, it should be clear that there is truth in this assertion—that, for reasons that cannot be fully comprehended by the human mind, God wanted Trump to survive the events of 7/13. So it is, after all, with every creature who has been preserved in existence by the divine will. This is not “bad theology,” as many critics lamented on Twitter/X, but the logical application of traditional Christian doctrine.

And yet, that there were victims of the 7/13 shooting should not be ignored either. The deaths of Comperatore and Crooks were not willed by God; they were the tragic outcomes of the laws of physics and of the corruption of human freedom. So it is with all evil, whether physical or moral. Thus an appropriate response to the attempted assassination at the Butler Farm Show would exclude political chest-thumping and cultural warring. For whatever good emerges from those events is not in service to human self-aggrandizement but, in Ott’s words, to “the supreme aim of the world” (dem höchsten Weltzweck), which is nothing other than the ultimate fulfillment of God’s love for all creatures.