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Dear Visionaries:<br><br>
Manicheanism: God and Satan are two cosmic powers fighting for the
control of the world. Condemned by both Protestant and Catholic
authorities. "The Devil made me do it" simply doesn't
wash.<br><br>
Orthodox Christianity: God is sovereign over his creation and everything
happens with his permission or active participation. For example,
God permits and empowers Satan to destroy Job's family and herds. At
chap. 42: 11 God is identified as the one "who brought evil"
upon Job.<br><br>
Apparently Pat Kraut did not read my recent essay and Martin Luther's
quote: “Since God moves and does all, we must take it that he moves and
acts even in Satan and the godless; . . . evil things are done with God
himself setting them in motion.” <br><br>
In the essay I posted (appended below) I neglected to mention that if one
revises the orthodox view of divine power, one can avoid these
implications.<br><br>
By the way, Phil Nisbeth still has to point out to us where I have dumbed
down any of my published arguments.<br><br>
<b>THE GOOD LORD JUST DONE GAVE US A WHUPPIN’!<br>
KATRINA AS THE WRATH OF GOD?<br><br>
</b> Protestors
outside the national headquarters of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and
Transgendered Alliance held signs such as “Thank God for Katrina” and
“New Orleans: City of Sinners and Sodomites.”<br><br>
A Mississippian
interviewed on NPR just after Katrina hit exclaimed that “The Good Lord
just done gave us a whuppin’,” but the Governor of Texas declared that
“By the grace of God we were saved.” What, for God’s sake, is going
on here?<br><br>
Why do bad things
happen to good people? Why do the wicked get away with murder and the
innocent die in disasters such as Katrina and September 11? Following
Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, the protestors above claim to have a pat
answer: all of us are being punished for the sins of a few. Most of
us, however, are repulsed by such an outrageous and poisonous
diagnosis.<br><br>
My first
philosophy of religion textbook contained a footnote that showed a long
term study of tornado damage in the Bible Belt. Far more churches
were hit than bars and houses of prostitution. If these are “acts
of God,” what on earth is God trying to tell us?<br><br>
The problem of
evil has bedeviled philosophers and theologians for at least three
millennia. It is most cited reason by those who do not believe in
God. But even most believers are not willing to admit that God
judges us with such horrendous violence. This makes God a moral
monster. <br><br>
In Agatha
Christie’s <i>Then There Were None</i>, one of the characters opines that
those who had been murdered were “struck down of the wrath of God.”
Justice Wargrave was not convinced: “Providence leaves the work of
conviction and chastisement to us mortals.” Ironically, it was
Wargrave who planned all the murders!<br><br>
Let us see if we
can actually reconcile belief in God with the existence of unmitigated
evils. The first thing to note is that Justice Wargrave is a good
Confucian or Stoic in holding a doctrine of General Providence. In
this view God presides over a world that operates by natural laws and in
which humans govern their own affairs. Most people don’t realize
that this is the view that Darwin held in the first edition of the
<i>Origin of Species</i>.<br><br>
On the other hand,
the Abrahamic religions--Judaism, Christianity, and Islam-- believe in
Special Providence. This means that God chooses particular prophets
or saviors that embody divine authority, and then God intervenes in
history as an expression of divine will and judgment.<br><br>
Philosophers make
a distinction between moral evils and natural evils. The first is
the result of humans choosing to do good or evil. For orthodox
Christians the prototypical moral evil was Adam and Eve’s choice to
disobey God in the Garden of Eden. All the other evil in the world
started with this fatal decision.<br><br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>Natural or
physical evil is defined as that which is not the result of any human
will: disease (both physical and mental) and natural disasters. In
a theology in which God is all powerful, it can only be God who wills
these conditions and events to happen.<br><br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>Even
though some Christian legislators in Oklahoma tried to change the
language of their insurance law, calling natural disasters “acts of God”
is correct Christian theology. The Oklahoma law makers, however,
recognized the logical implication of such a view: it made God
responsible for what all of us would call evil acts.<br><br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>I suspect
that the Oklahoma legislators really wanted to say that Satan causes all
the evil in the world. But this is the heresy of Manicheanism, a
view that compromises God’s power by holding that there is another cosmic
power that is the source of evil. <br><br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>Following
the Book of Job, where it is clear that Satan operates only with the
permission and delegated power of God, Christian theologians have
consistently declared that even Satan is empowered by God. Martin Luther
expressed the point most clearly: “Since God moves and does all, we must
take it that he moves and acts even in Satan and the godless; . . . evil
things are done with God himself setting them in motion.” Following some
key Old Testament passages, Luther believed that Satan was the dark side
of God, the wrath of God.<br><br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>How do
Christian theologians justify God doing evil? Here is the
rationale: God cannot abide the moral evils committed by humans, so God
must show that justice must prevail. Causing natural disasters are
simply dramatic previews of the Last Judgment, when divine justice will
finally be done. If God is performing justice, then God is doing
good not evil. We would call a judge who let all criminals off the
hook a bad judge, wouldn’t we?<br><br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>Let’s take
a closer look at this solution to the problem of evil. There is
something important that has been forgotten. When the theologian
Augustine discussed the Fall of Adam and Eve, he made a very interesting
concession: “our first parents fell into disobedience because they were
already secretly corrupted.” Adam and Eve were already corrupted because
they had “deficient wills.” But who was responsible for their
deficient wills? They could be only if they had created
themselves. The only answer is that God created them finite,
fragile, and corruptible. <br><br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>An
engineer friend of mine was once hired by an auto insurance company to
analyze the steel in a broken drive shaft. He discovered that it
was some of the cheapest steel that Chrysler could have bought for this
crucial part of the chassis. Now it would have been absurd for
Chrysler's attorneys to state that the company was responsible for the
positive elements of the steel but not its deficiencies. <br><br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>At the
same time it would be unfair to demand that the steel manufacturer make
sure that there were no deficiencies at all. This we could demand
solely of an omnipotent Creator. As the exclusive manufacturer of
all natural things, the orthodox God is fully responsible for the
deficiencies in his products. <br><br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>I submit
that General Providence is a much more coherent view if people are going
to continue their belief in God. (Or Christians could revise the
concept of divine power as explained below.) The Confucians and Stoics
also believed that God is not a Creator. Rather, God is coeternal
with a universe that operates according to natural laws and contains
rational beings that freely choose their own destinies.<br><br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>Following
Justice Wargrave, we are solely responsible for our own “convictions and
chastisements.” Instead of blaming God, we can focus on a president who
refuses to admit to global warming, who appoints unqualified people to
important offices, and who gives tax cuts to people who don’t need
them.<br><br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>Blame must
also be laid at the feet of a Congress that has for years refused to fund
necessary infrastructure repairs and maintenance. Finally,
Louisiana and New Orleans government officials are responsible for not
being prepared for the big storm they knew was coming. And God had
nothing to do with it.<br><br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>Nick Gier
taught religion and philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31
years. For more on these issues see
<a href="http://www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/305/home.htm" eudora="autourl">www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/305/home.htm</a>.<br><br>
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<font size=2>"The god you worship is the god you
deserve."<br>
~~ Joseph Campbell<br>
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