"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
then whence cometh evil.
Is he neither able nor willing?
then why call him God?"
-Epicurus
This, to me, succinctly summarizes one of the most critical logical questions that Christianity must face. As Primo Levi once said, "Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are...the functionaries ready to believe and act without asking questions." So with this in mind, will we retain our image of God as a God of love, over our need for the comfort of a being that controls and keeps all things in his hands? I have many many thoughts on this and have read the work of several Theologians who deal with this, but I would rather spend most of my time hearing what you all have to say and I will intersperse my own thoughts within your comments as we discuss, but if you are curious about my position on this, I have come to the conclusion that if God is able to intervene in situations regardless of people's actions, I cannot believe that God is good. There is no way I can find a reason for a good God to let a rape happen, or the holocaust, or natural disasters, or mental illness, or hell (which I don't really believe in, but that's another post). I must sacrifice the omnipotent for the loving. That is my conclusion so far. What is yours?
I'm not actually sure that "good" and "love" mean the same thing Biblically/theologically as they do for us... God's "plans" are pretty horrifying. Apart from the traumatizing Old Testament, and the sort of gruesome "sacrificing your Son on a cross thing," you've got Lazarus, who still had to die. He and his family suffered and Jesus could have prevented it--see the healing of whoever it was from afar--but didn't because it was an opportunity to "show God's glory"... which makes me intensely uncomfortable. I don't like it, it troubles me and makes me a little angry, but the implications of ability-but-still-inaction are there. Thoughts?
ReplyDeletehmm, that is quite interesting and very true. Good thoughts. I haven't thought about it that way before. I would say that personally that it is easier for me to believe that A. The Israelites wrote God (or the gods) into their genocidal history as a means of revisionist history (which I'm pretty sure was the way to go about history back then), and B. that God didn't "send down his son for slaughter" (which is pretty awful if you think about it) but that the cross was more a manifestation of God-abandonment and pain that one can find God in in the same way that Wiesel found God "hanging here from his gallows," if that makes sense as a more post-war understanding of the cross. But yes, there are definite implications of the Biblical God being a little more machiavellian and omnipotent in the completion of his/her work than I am comfortable with (the flood? wtf, God.) Definitely agree with you there. That's pretty brutal, sociopathic stuff. The passages about Christ going to the cross "for the glory of his father" ring like a follower of a cult who is convinced that his death will mean something because he was told to do it, which is probably pretty heretical to say, but it's kind of true. ;) To me, these things that Christ proclaimed about his father seem to culminate in his abandonment at Calvary by that same divine, machiavellian force that he proscribed greatness to, which leads me to believe that Scripture is saying that "God is dead" in the same way that Nietzsche was, and that our understanding of the divine needs to become much more horizontal and dependent on the actions of people than it is. These are not simply my own thoughts, but come mostly out of Process Thought; people like John Cobb, Whitehead, and arguably Moltmann. What do you think? Is the Bible to be scrapped then in view of its horrific take on divine omnipotence (if taken literally)? or do we scrap our literal reading of it and simply understand it as an expression of a certain people in their exploration of the divine experience in their own lives?
ReplyDeleteWow. Good thoughts. You are much more widely read than i (and, sometime when we see each other, I'd love reading recommendations/discussion of Process Thought, which is new to me)... But as for what I think- if the literal, infallible (i.e., not culturally mediated/revisionist history take) were true, I'd have no choice but to position myself against such a horrifying figure of the divine. As for what I think... I think for me personally to be able to continue to engage with the complicated tangle of "Christianity," I have to cultivate negative capability, the capacity to live in uncertainty, to constantly struggle with doubt, outrage, and conflicting discourses. I also think that we should never "scrap" the Bible (or any other challenging text) but always confront it, love it if you want but never settle with it, and never put a reading of the Biblical text above compassion, grace--and basically human beings. Gah, so many thoughts! Thanks for sharing!
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