These 2 quotes magnificently sums up James Cone’s project, no matter how inadequate of an answer it may be for some.
From Cone’s God of the Oppressed, Chapter 8, “Divine Liberation and Black Suffering,”
“Whatever else may be said about the philosophical difficulties that the problem of evil poses, whether in the traditional definition of classical philosophy or in Albert Camus’s humanism or even in the black humanism of William Jones and Anthony Pinn, faith arising out of the cross and resurrection of Jesus renders their questions (Is God evil? or Is God a white racist?) absurd from the biblical point of view. The absurdity of the question is derived from the fact that its origin ignores the very foundation of biblical faith itself, that is, God becoming the Suffering Servant in Christ in order that we might be liberated from injustice and pain.”-page 162
And continuing his case, enter Cone, once more,
“Therefore, to answer William Jones’ question, what is the decisive event of liberation? we respond: the event of Jesus Christ! He is our Alpha and Omega, the one who died on the cross and was resurrected that we might be free to to struggle for the affirmation of black [i.e., oppressed] humanity. I know that this answer will not satisfy Jones [or Pinn, for that matter] who view black humanity from another vantage point than Jesus Christ.”–page 177
While Cone’s pointing toward the faith and special revelation is consistent with his project, I believe this is where Cone’s Barthian protestant bias falls short. Having dismissed Patristic theology has a resource earlier in GOTO (and therefore probably the Catholic and Greek Orthodox traditions), Cone leaves himself vulnerable accusations of biblicism and irrationalism. Perhaps rather than approaching those of the humanist and non-theistic persuasions through the person of Christ, maybe the best way may be to have a conversation on closer to their points of view, notions of history and natural revelation. An prospective choice may be to depend on the works of Orthodox theology, like an Athanasius or Nikolai Berdyaev, who believe that evil does not comes from God, but out of the Nothingness that God worked with in the ordering of creation. This Nothingness had the freedom to obey or to rebel, and thus, evil that was foreign to YHWH at the beginning.
#justsayin
