Jiří set his fork down next to his knife on the plate, wiped his mouth with a napkin, and slid his plate to the edge of the table. Along the way it bumped into the pepper shaker, but he caught it before it could tip over. He picked the plate back up with both hands and slowly set it down at the edge of the table. For a while, neither of them said anything.
“Want some coffee?” Antonín said finally, breaking the silence.
“If I drank alcohol, I’d have a shot, but I guess coffee will have to do.”
“You don’t drink at all?” Antonín said.
“Oh, normally I do, but not today.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a fast day today.”
“That didn’t even occur to me, you know? Everyone thinks that God wears their colors. I’m a Sparta supporter, and I couldn’t stand the thought that God might root for, say, Slavia. When I still believed, I just assumed God was Catholic. It didn’t seem strange to me. But once I found out what I just told you, I stopped believing. It put a crack in my faith.”
“The devil’s main job, after all, is to break our faith,” Jiří said.
“Oh, of course, but from what I’ve read of Ignatius of Loyola, I thought the devil disguised himself as things that were seductive and inviting. Things and situations where it wouldn’t even cross our minds to think about God. And I’m telling you straight out, don’t try to pull the Book of Job on me.”
“So why do you think it happened?”
“I couldn’t come up with a reason, that’s the problem. Not a one. God let it happen and just left them there. I thought about it a lot, but couldn’t come up with an answer. My God had ceased to be benevolent, even slightly, and instead was infinitely merciless.”
“Sometimes we don’t understand the ways of God’s providence.”
“Wrong! We nearly never understand! Trying to reconcile Tertullian of Carthage with Origen the eunuch is a hell of a job, my friend.”
“Credo quia absurdum, ‘I believe because it is meaningless,’ that was Tertullian,” Jiří replied. “Credo ut intelligam, ‘I believe so that I may understand,’ was Saint Anselm of Canterbury, not Origen.”
“Really? I can’t keep track anymore,” Antonín said. “Is that right?” he asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. “‘And the son of God died; it is believable because it is foolish. And buried, he rose from the dead; it is certain because it is impossible’?”
“Yes: Credo quia absurdum.”
“But literally what it means is, ‘I believe because it is absurd.’ That’s what I’m saying. I was stripped of faith by my God. Absurdly stripped of my absurd belief.”
“Maybe the way you’ve been thinking about it is wrong.”
“What else can it be except wrong … and imperfect? Given that we’re only human.”
“Well, of course, but …”
“In the end, after her life went on, I had to admit your uncle was right.”
“Who?”
“Josef.”
“What has he got to do with religion?”
“Not very much, but he did give me some advice back then.”
“The last time I talked to him he was old, incoherent, and didn’t look well.”
“Back then we were young. Josef was a different man. He had charm and sparkle, up until he went to prison, and then … then things changed him.”
“What advice did he give you?”
“Apart from his own work, he was also interested in logic in those days.”
“And?”
“And the combinations that he used to beat me at chess. He was a master of rook endings, but I suppose you know nothing about that?”
“No,” Jiří said, laughing. “I really don’t.”
“There was a beauty to his rook endings, a beauty with steel-blue logic. They were memorable defeats. My most beautiful.” Antonín paused. The conversations at the surrounding tables had died down, and outside, in the street, another downpour had begun.
“So what did he have to do with logic?”
“It was a hobby of his … and back then he gave me some advice, and he was right. He told me not to look at the problem from a personal perspective but from the standpoint of infinitary logic. Which even God trembles before, as he used to say.”
“So what was his advice?”
“He advised me to break the problem down into simple, logical steps. Like moves on a chessboard.”
“You can’t play chess with God. That’s true blasphemy.”
“I thought I would offend you sooner or later.”
“Explain!”
“One of God’s qualities is His infinite kindness, correct?”
“Of course, that goes without saying.”
“What Josef explained to me back then was that, theological loopholes and silly equivocations about the incomprehensible ways of God’s providence aside, there are only a certain number of possible alternatives.”
“And what alternatives are those?”
“Josef sketched it out for me something like this. The most important characteristics of God are: one, omnipotence; two, omniscience; three, omnipresence; and four, infinite kindness and love. I’m leaving out the less important ones, which even you Christians can’t agree on among yourselves. The question is, If infinite kindness is one of God’s attributes, how do you explain all the crap and misery in this world? Josef counted them all off on his fingers for me. One, the first alternative is your benevolent Catholic God doesn’t see, which is why He does nothing about it, but this contradicts your good Catholic belief in his omnipresence. Two, He isn’t capable of distinguishing good from bad, in which case maybe he should have stayed in paradise along with the bedbugs, the brontosaurs, and that snake, poor thing. This second alternative is ruled out, since your good Catholic God, in all his greatness, is omnipresent, and as we already noted, point four also applies, that is, infinite kindness and love. That means there’s nothing we can do about it, since as you pointed out to me, God is also all-powerful. The third alternative is that there is a God: He exists, sees everything, is omnipotent, and likes what He sees. In which case this omnipotent, omnipresent being can’t also be infinitely good. Otherwise it would do something about all the crap and such that goes on in the world. If anything does exist that is omnipotent and omnipresent, it can’t be God if it leaves everything the way it is. In which case that being, from a strictly logical point of view, has to be — the devil. The next-to-last alternative implies that this at least more or less possible, hypothetical Catholic God sees everything and doesn’t like it, but can’t do anything about it. Which would mean he’s in the same situation as both of us. The bottom line being, there’s a fifth alternative.”
“Which is?”
“He doesn’t exist.”
“Doesn’t exist?”
“That’s right.”
“But, but … that’s a cheap argument.”