The world we live in is haunted by the only true evil, the absence of God. More tragic is the situation of the Church because of the absence of Christ. Traditionally, evil was defined as privatio boni – the privation of good. It was St Augustine’s genius that produced this definition. Evil is nothing positive, it is simply a lack. Immanuel Kant spoke of a radical evil, which perhaps is the fundamental evil that has nothing positive about it; it is the radical lack of God himself. In ‘The Symbolism of Evil’, Ricœur engages in a rigorous interpretation of the seminal myths of evil in Western culture. For him it is the myth of tragic blindness, the myth of the exiled soul. The heroes who dramatise these mythic narratives include Prometheus, Oedipus, Adam and Orpheus. In ‘Being and Nothingness’ Sartre tells us that ‘to be man means to reach toward Being God. Or if you prefer, man fundamentally is the desire to be God.’ In offering this conception of man, Sartre is in agreement with all those who posit a fundamental desire to underlie and structure all other desires – think of the concept of eros in Plato’s Symposium, Freud’s libido desire for God.

The typical theologian’s conception of the desire for God is not a desire to be God, although he is happy to talk of wanting union in this context, and we shall see from Levinas that it makes sense to say of one who gives expression to such a desire in the context of a human life that does God’s work in this context. However, it is no part of such a picture that God has been jettisoned in favour of man, although it is a common theological thought that there is a diabolical temptation in this direction.

As Heidegger put it, man ‘contends for the position in which he can be that particular being who gives the measure…for everything that is.’ God is the measure for man on earth. Sartre is an atheist, albeit one who finds God’s absence both distressing ‘along with God’s disappearance goes the possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven’, and liberating man, man is freedom. The God he rejects is defined in opposition to man, and with reference to the metaphysical framework it is his purpose to defend. Thus understood, God represents an ideal synthesis of being and consciousness – in-itself-for-itself as Sartre puts it in deference to the Hegelian language he inherits. Although the basic idea is familiar from much traditional theology, God is being in-itself by virtue of involving no lack, no longing, no imperfection.

Human reality is a lack; desire is a lack of being. It is haunted in its inmost being by the being of which it is desire. It bears witness to the existence of a lack. We are said to experience ourselves as failures in this respect. We are ‘haunted by’ and ‘thirst for’ being. We can agree that we lack the perfections of God, and it makes sense to say that we are incomplete in this respect, assuming that we are to be defined in contrast to such a being. We are lacking in this respect, but that this lack manifests itself as desire, that this desire is fundamental to our motivational make-up, and that it is a desire to be God.

Albert Camus’ ‘The Plague’ is a novel where the plague is violence and that ‘the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good.’ The solution to the plague for Camus is stated by the main character, the doctor Rieux declares ‘What interests me is living and dying for what one loves’, a difficult task now that ‘the plague had gradually killed off in all of us the faculty not of love only, but even of friendship.’ How to generate love and friendship? ‘Sainthood’ is clearly not a concept that appeals to Rieux, who nevertheless values Tarrou’s dedication. When Rieux says, ‘Heroism and sanctity don’t really appeal to me’, he is confirming that his concern is with carrying out the task of healing, not cultivating any personal heroic aura. Camus tends to regard heroism and sanctity as secondary virtues’ as confirmed by the fact that Rieux’s eyes are set primarily on the unselfish task before him. ‘Sanctity’ is a spiritual concept, which means nothing to the doctor who is intent solely on physical health. The Christians are called to recognize that the essence of the divine being is not power but compassion and love.’ To approach this, we need to digress into the reflections of some religious writers and thinkers.