paul@phs.UUCP (Paul C. Dolber) (09/11/85)
Some time back, I asked net.religion readers for their responses to
Kaufmann's claim (in "Faith of a Heretic") that it was impossible
for God to simultaneously be omnipotent, infinitely good, and
permit suffering. In response to a query from me, Chuck Hedrick
suggested I might be interested in "Encountering Evil: Live Options
in Theodicy," edited by Stephen T. Davis (John Knox Press, Atlanta,
1981). As I did find the book interesting, and suspect that others
would as well, I here present as brief a "book report" as I can manage.
There are 5 Protestant contributors. Each wrote up a presentation of
his theodicy; then afterwards each examined the theodicies of the
others and wrote critiques; then finally each responded to the
critiques of his theodicy. Though the contributors all seem to be
neighbors and more or less pals, they didn't pull their punches, and
the critiques and responses are fairly lively.
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1. John K. Roth: "A Theodicy of Protest" (JKR is Professor of
Philosophy at Claremont Men's College; "a liberal Protestant who
writes from an existential perspective that has been heavily
influenced by Jewish thinking.")
A difficult one to summarize; the one I'm most likely to botch. In
short, Roth asserts that God is not perfectly good, but He is
omnipotent; it is man's duty to fight evil and to protest against
evil -- to God, and for God (i.e., roughly, for God's betterment).
He simply cannot believe that this world is the best God can do, and
apparently wouldn't be much impressed with Him if this were the best
that He could do.
2. John H. Hick: "An Irenaean Theodicy" (JHH is Professor of
Philosophy of Religion at Claremont Graduate School.)
Central is a "two-stage conception of the creation of humankind, first
in the `image' and then in the `likeness' of God." The first stage was
the production of man, through evolution, as an intelligent ethical and
religious animal. "In [the] second stage, of which we are a part, the
intelligent, ethical, and religious animal is being brought through
one's own free responses into what Irenaeus called the divine
`likeness.'" Perfection lies not in the past (Adam and Eve), but in the
future. "(1) The divine intention in relation to humankind... is to
create perfect finite personal beings in filial relationship with their
Maker. (2) It is logically impossible for humans to be created already
in this perfect state... because... it involves coming freely to an
uncoerced consciousness of God... and... freely choosing the good in
preference to evil. (3) Accordingly, the human being was initially
created through the evolutionary process, as a spiritually and morally
immature creature, and as part of a world which is both religiously
ambiguous and ethically demanding. (4) Thus that one is morally
imperfect (i.e., that there is moral evil), and that the world is a
challenging and even dangerous environment (i.e., that there is natural
evil), are necessary aspects of the present stage of the process
through which God is gradually creating perfected finite persons."
Hick acknowledges that some of the evil is too awful to see how it
is/was necessary, and offers some suggestions, or hopes. Among other
things, he believes that their must be an afterlife for some forms of
suffering to be justified.
3. Stephen T. Davis: "Free Will and Evil" (STD is Associate Professor
of Philosophy and Religion at Claremont Men's College; "an analytic
philospher by training and an evangelical Christian by persuasion.")
Argues, from a logical point of view, that it is not impossible for God
to be simultaneously omnipotent, perfectly good, and permit suffering.
A proponent of a (modified?) Free Will Defense, which permits the
preceding to be consistent (not mutually exclusive) because the
following is "possibly true:" "All the evil that exists in the world
is due to the choices of free moral agents whom God created, and no
other world which God could have created would have had a better
balance of good over evil than the actual world will have." It appears
that one of those "free moral agents" is Satan, who is responsible for
natural evils (e.g., disease, earthquake, famine; as opposed to moral
evils). The critiques get pretty hot.
4. David R. Griffin: "Creation out of Chaos and the Problem of Evil"
(DRG is Professor of Philosophy and Religion at the School of
Theology at Claremont; a "Process thinker.")
My first contact with "Process theology," which I find to be very odd.
Seemingly at the center of things are the following propositions:
"(1) Those things which cannot deviate much from the divine will [his
examples: electrons, atoms, molecules, living cells] also cannot be
influenced by God very quickly. (2) Those things which can be
influenced by God quickly [e.g., humans] can deviate drastically from
the divine will. (3) Those things which can do nothing on their own
[e.g., rocks, bodies of water, speeding bullets] cannot be directly
influenced by God at all." Thus, God is a great deal less than
omnipotent in any ordinary sense of the word. While I find this
theodicy bizarre, he did make some nice responses to criticism, e.g.:
"Roth mocks my [not very omnipotent] God with the statement that `the
best that God could possibly do was to permit 10,000 Jews a day to go
up in smoke.' Roth prefers a God who had the power to prevent this
Holocaust but did not do it!"
5. Frederick Sontag: "Anthropodicy and the Return of God" (FS is
Professor of Philosophy at Pomona College; "writes from the
perspective of existential metaphysics.")
Another one that's hard to summarize. Like Roth's God, Sontag's
seems to be less than perfectly good (from our point of view). Sontag
apparently arrives at this conclusion by starting from the observation
that there is evil in the world, then asking what God must be like.
"We must be dealing with a God who takes great risks and whose mode
of control is at best quite loose. We face a God with a policy of
non-interference, one who consciously created humans with a greater
capacity for evil and destruction than any aim to enhance good can
account for. And God did this by rejecting other options open to
him, some of which are preferable from a human point of view." "God
moves neither easily nor automatically toward intervention in our
affairs... We need not decide that God is indifferent to human
tragedy, but we know that, even in the face of extreme need, he can
restrain his impulse to intervene physically." "My position certainly
does make God responsible for the devilish aspects we find in the
world, and it requires that any sense of goodness in God be compatible
with this." Sontag takes a lot of heat in the critiques for making
God less than good -- from our point of view -- and is asked how
Christians should relate to such a God. Sontag returns the heat, and
more, in his response, and closes: "[T]o make God appear too obvious,
too comfortable, too secure, flies in the face of the apostasy and
religious agony that has broken out over the last centuries." And,
as he wrote earlier, "We do not begin with God and then discover
the problem of evil. Rather, evil blocks our consideration of God
in the first place."
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Despite the considerable length of this "book report," there is an
awful lot I've left out and, no doubt, a lot that I've oversimplified
or outright misstated. Such is life. I do think that the viewpoints
of the contributors are presented at least well enough that one could
fairly accurately decide whether the book would be of interest to
him or her, which was my intent. Please do not forward questions to
me about the book; I've returned it to the Divinity School, and now
you can check it out.
One final note: None of the contributors, obviously, took the position
that some of my correspondents took: That it is not proper to ask
such questions about God, He being perfect and we as dirt beneath His
feet. Such does not apply to me (an atheist). However, I really
don't think that such applies to Christians or other theists either.
Of course, that's just what the devil's advocate *would* say.
Regards, Paul Dolber ( ...{ihnp4, decvax, mcnc} !duke!phs!paul).