THOUGHTS ON ISAIAH 45:9-12 AND A REVIEW BY HAROLD BLOOM: The collapse of the attempt to pit ethics against God the Creator:

1) The world is malformed. It is not Fallen–it was not created good–its deformation, its wreckage, is the fault of its Maker. It is His fault.

2) In order to say that, I must know right from wrong, beauty from ugliness, acceptable from unacceptable. But I do know–you can’t deny me that!–and what God has done is unacceptable. This work gets an F.

3) Where did this knowledge of what constitutes good and evil come from? Where did I get this rock within myself on which I can stand to condemn God?

4) All that I have–including my knowledge of the good and of its wreckage, including my conscience–is a part of Creation. All that I love–including those on whose behalf I bring charges against God–is a part of Creation. In condemning Creation and its Author, am I sawing off the branch on which my conscience and my condemnation sit? (This question is why Milton’s Satan has to pretend that he is self-begotten.)

5) At this point, the paths open to the atheist (as opposed to the anti-theist) are closed to me. I can’t assert the worth of myself against God, because the wrecker God created me. I can’t follow my culture or my beloved for the same reason. I don’t think the Gnostic option–the spark within, the divinity accessible to the elite sect of knowers–can cut this knot. (Nor do I think epistemological elitism is a particularly appealing ethical stance on its face.)

Eve in her own voice now: I don’t see a way out of this. Either there is some other explanation for the existence of both good and evil, the obvious wreckage of the world; or my perception of “good and evil” is just a trick of the light, a psychological problem brought on by the demands of evolution perhaps, and not to be taken too seriously.

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I have made, and I will bear;

I will carry and will save.

–Isa. 46:4