Review of “Exploring Mormon Thought: God’s Plan to Heal Evil”

The following is a cross-post for a review I wrote with the Association for Mormon Letters, also accessible here.

Review
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Title: Exploring Mormon Thought: God’s Plan to Heal Evil
Author: Blake T. Ostler
Publisher: Greg Kofford Books, Inc.
Genre: Religious Non-Fiction
Year Published: 2020
Number of Pages: 243
Binding: Paper; Cloth; eBook
ISBN: 978-1-58958-191-3 (hardcover); 978-1-58958-648-2 (paperback)
Price: Paper, 24.95; Cloth, 34.95; eBook, 22.95

Reviewed by Jaxon Washburn for The Association for Mormon Letters

A temptation one may face while considering the problem of evil through the lens of theology or philosophy is to divorce theory from reality in order to escape the discomfort that fundamentally stems from confronting the human experience in its full form. I made this mistake upon beginning to read Latter-day Saint philosopher Blake Ostler’s latest contribution to his Exploring Mormon Thought series. While enjoying a quiet afternoon on the day before New Year’s Eve, I actually had God’s Plan to Heal Evil sitting in my lap when I received an unexpected phone call from my father. It was such a short call that I don’t recall much of what was said, though the tone in his voice was one I had never heard before and has stayed with me since. He explained that he had just been diagnosed with leukemia and would need to stay in the hospital for an uncertain amount of time to receive immediate treatment. That was the moment in which abstract conversations about “the problem of evil” became real for me unlike never before. My reading of God’s Plan to Heal Evil was entirely impacted as a result.

I wanted to share that personal context so as to underscore the extreme importance of Ostler’s work as it pertains to the modern reader. Although rapid vaccine production and distribution is now signaling our slow but inevitable exit from the clutches of a global pandemic—the likes of which haven’t been seen in a century—with this exit comes far too many who know and have lost family, friends, or others to the tragedy of COVID-19. Losses in the United States alone have topped half a million dead. Many who have survived face ongoing health complications. Suicides, alcoholism, and mental health issues have spiked. The country was stirred to intense mourning and public pain last summer in the wake of the ongoing pandemic of systemic racism. All of these have recently attested to the reality of natural and moral evil, though none are mentioned explicitly in God’s Plan to Heal Evil due to the timing of writing and publishing. My point is that I am far from alone in having personal experiences and hardships to color my encounter with this book. Ostler puts these anxieties and pains into words which clearly capture the same question that millions have asked over the past year: Why, God?

God’s Plan to Heal Evil pulls no punches in its forthright descriptions of the manifold forms of suffering and evil which exist in this world. Likewise, in his overview of various theistic responses to the problem of evil, Ostler—at times with all the sharpness of David Bentley Hart—plainly shows why, for the greater world of traditions espousing classical theism, the problem of evil remains not just a bug, but a fatal undoing. So persuasive was his overview and critique of theological and philosophical responses to the problem of evil from the standpoint of classical theism that I am tempted to collectively label the first five chapters “Turning Theists into Atheists”. Ostler doesn’t leave the reader in a state of total deconstruction however. Like the God of Mormonism, he fashions alternative systems out of the chaotic mass of theistic history he had been left with, which is why the latter-half of the book may be labeled “And Turning Atheists Into Mormons”. Chapters 6 and 7 overview two historical theodicies that have experienced popularity within Mormon thought, though Ostler highlights where he finds them flawed and ultimately unsustainable given his own studies.

By the time Ostler reaches his own theology of suffering, evil, and God’s justice, the reader is presented with a solid third of the book, spanning chapters 8 through 11 respectively. This theodicy and greater soteriology which he terms “The Plan of Agape” proposes a new framework through which to consider the problem of evil from within Latter-day Saint belief. Though not all of the material may be unfamiliar to those who have followed Ostler’s writings over the years, their presentation in a structured, reasoned, and defensible form allows the book to stand alone as both a fatal blow and an antidote. The reader will need to exercise patience as every chapter builds the last in logical succession, raising objections in one section while responding to them in the next. This isn’t a text for one to cut their teeth on either should they be entirely new to Mormon philosophical literature. Plenty of theologians, thinkers, and philosophers both within and without the faith tradition are referenced, examined, and at times rebutted. I worry that certain readers may find this disorienting, even in light of some of Ostler’s own attempts to introduce and contextualize them.

Perhaps it was ultimately a matter of timing, but God’s Plan to Heal Evil helped to deconstruct unsustainable ideas I held about God while simultaneously providing me with new frameworks through which to retain my faith and belief in a perfectly loving, just, and merciful Deity. I imagine we could all use similar refining in light of the global circumstances of the last year. Blake Ostler demonstrates once more his theological expertise on Mormon subjects, as well as his impressive understanding of the history of thought across the religious and philosophical traditions of classical theism. To adherents of worldviews rooted in classical theism, God’s Plan to Heal Evil poses an existential challenge. To those who have struggled to believe in God in light of the problem of evil, God’s Plan to Heal Evil offers viable and compelling alternatives. And to those who, like me, found themselves asking “Why, God?” over the last year, God’s Plan to Heal Evil offers answers and hope—and for that, I am grateful.