ABSTRACT
Marilyn McCord Adams has long been preoccupied with soul-destroying horrors and suffering. God seems absent when we are so afflicted, and we are angry that God has abandoned us. God infiltrates societies and institutions, working with us to co-opt and uproot systemic evil, bringing us closer to utopia. She insists that the proper attributes of God are wisdom and knowledge. She is certain that God is “with us,” always trying to meet us where we are, sharing wisdom with us and drawing us into harmony with God’s self. Often, we are not aware of God’s attempts to communicate because revelatory messages can’t be received by us and remain pure. We humans are, by nature, partial. Our motivations are distorted by Darwinian impulses. God is also “with us” in our institutions but is co-opted by them, and thus we associate God with their systematic evils. Even in the Bible, God experiences communication difficulties because scriptural teachings arose out of particular social contexts with moral insights and failings. God, according to Adams, can most clearly and accurately be perceived as “with us” in the “good” and in the “subversive” – for example, in the work of civil rights and AIDS activists. The real God “aims at societies” in which the common good is achieved for all.
