Every time you turn on the news you see the same thing. Horrible disasters occur, genocides, and terrible murders. These events are so pervasive in our society that we have become numb to them. Desensitized by thing after thing, by the time I reached college, I no longer felt any pain or real sadness from the things I saw around me. Our world no longer seems to care. Genocides occur in
Eighteenth Century Philosopher David Hume asked of Christians: “Is [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?” Hume’s problem led him to three possible conclusions:
- If God is gracious and loving and still allows evil, it is because He is unable to prevent it.
- If God is able to prevent suffereing, but doesn’t, it is because He is evil.
If you refuse to accept either of these alternatives, Hume leads his reader to believe:
- There is no God, since evil runs rampant in this world.
Modern Christian theologians respond to Hume by saying that he uses parts of Christianity in order to indict Christianity. In other words, without a Christian framework, there is no such thing as absolute moral law, so how can anything actually be evil?
Others advocate the position that God wants to interfere in the events of the world, but cannot. They say that either God is inherently limited or has limited himself by either natural law or an inability to interfere with human freedom.
Here are some questions for our discussion:
1. Why do you believe suffering exists in the world?
2. What are some reasons that God would restrict himself from interfering?
3. Who do you think is ultimately responsible for human suffering?
5 comments:
Why would a loving, all-powerful God leave his creations in pain? C.S. Lewis said, "The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves, is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word 'love', and look on things as if man were the center of them. Man is not the center. God does not exist for the sake of man. Man does not exist for his own sake. 'Thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created'[Revelation 4:11]” (The Problem of Pain).
In other words, mankind suffers because suffering is part of God’s plan. One major theme in the Bible is that all things happen to further the glory of God. If suffering brings about God’s glory, then we end up suffering. This does sound very unloving, however, not if the suffering brings about something better. When people suffer, they change. They come out of the other side stronger and often more compassionate. In a sense, God is a loving teacher who needs to teach His student a lesson that can only be learned by experience.
The idea of an impotent God is one that obviously doesn't go with Christianity or with many of the other mainstream religions. However, an unloving God doesn't really mesh with Christianity either.
People seem to get this idea that a loving God cannot be just. A lot of the pain in this world is a direct or indirect result of people doing wrong. In a world where, according to the Bible, all have sinned, suffering is the natural result.
Did God create Man or Mankind?
This question is ostensibly trite but, as we will soon see, can account for the difference between Protestantism and Catholicism, and consequently the difference between Grant’s and everyone else’s opinion on the cause of suffering in the world (sorry Grant, but I am convinced that you are a closet-Catholic—welcome to the dark side!).
By God creating man I mean that God created every individual separately, i.e. God personally created Grant, Alan, Chris, Sereena, Alexis, etc., and by creating mankind I mean that God created the animal, Homo sapien, and that Grant, Alan, etc., are creations of a subclass of creation. In other words, God did not directly create Trip, but Trip is the indirect Creation via the direct creation of mankind.
There is Biblical support for both. I assume most of you are more familiar with evidence for the former view, i.e. God creating man, and thus will only address the latter here:
“Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind” (Gen. 1:24).
It can thus be inferred that God did not create Fido, Spot, and Spunky, but rather that God created the species dog. Furthermore, when considering this it makes more sense scientifically. Why is it that all these created animals, plants, etc. can so easily be divided into groups? And why is it that when a donkey and a horse mate, they create a mule or hinny which is incapable of reproduction? Why are there easily deduced rules as to why these classes of creation all act similarly rather than every individual creation acting distinctly? If one believes that all beings are created directly, why the need to subordinate them in arbitrary classes (human, dog, fish, plant, etc.)?
Why is this important? If God created each of us independently, then it is much more difficult to reconcile why we do evil. He made me different from you, and one reason that I am different is because I rape infants while you punch old ladies. How could put these differences (horrible, horrible differences) within us?
On the other hand, if God only created mankind, then this problem is much more easily reconciled. My sinning is not the result of my substantial human characteristic, but rather a particular deviation from it. Human is thus an ideal, and a human, as free, is capable of acting against God within his own particularity.
Both interpretations have setbacks. For the first (God created man), the biggest setback has already been presented, that evil cannot be reconciled. For the second, which I have not yet shown, God is seemingly limited, for obvious reasons. But this is not the case. An unlimited God would have the choice whether or not to create something out of His control, so to say that an unlimited God must be able to control every aspect of our lives would fundamentally limit Him as well.
Clearly, I agree with Grant’s (i.e. the Catholic) interpretation of Creation. Hopefully this will spark some discussion and will at least provide a little structural basis for the differing interpretations that we will necessarily encounter…
Also, please read St. Anselm's "De Casu Diaboli" to see his answer to the problem of pain, if you like.
I think the fact that we have free will is another dimension to this discussion. Sure, God could step in and stop everything bad from ever happening, but then we would all be some sort of robots who can't make our own decisions. God wants us to CHOOSE to do good, to CHOOSE to love, not be forced to do it. It's like when parents force their children to apologize for something they don't feel bad about. Everyone knows the apology doesn't really mean anything.
Post a Comment