<![CDATA[Systemic evil does not merely strain theodicy; it destroys the conditions under which justification is possible. This paper develops structural lateness as an analytical framework to name that destruction, distinguishing three modes through which systemic evil defeats theodicy: temporal lateness, when harm unfolds faster than moral response, as in Hiroshima’s instantaneous obliteration; epistemic lateness, when the structures of recognition are corrupted, as in Rwanda’s ideological effacement of the face; and ontological lateness, when present actions foreclose futures before those futures can assert claims, as in climate collapse. These are structural features of systemic evil; we are always already too late. Drawing on Emmanuel Levinas, the paper moves from diagnosis to constructive theology. While theodicy seeks to justify God as sovereign, Levinasian ethics discloses God as trace – the infinite ethical demand that persists precisely where justification collapses. The paper situates this argument within the anti-theodicy tradition, engaging Tilley, Pihlström, Betenson, and Poston, while identifying a dimension their accounts leave unnamed: the destruction of theodicy’s enabling conditions by the specific structure of systemic evil. What remains is negative eschatology: responsibility without resolution, hope without guarantee, fidelity grounded not in prospects of success but in refusal to abandon the Other. This framework has direct implications for post-Holocaust theology, climate ethics, and intergenerational justice – contexts where theodicy has not only failed to console but has actively normalized irreparable harm.]]>
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