Alright, I realized my last paper, though of course erudite and fascinating, was just plain long to post. For those of you desperately curious to find out how it all ends, let me know. Actually, it's in need of some revision at this point, since there were some issues that came up at a healing conference we went to at the Scottsdale Vineyard that I wanted to address. I am done with classes for a little while - 2 whole months with no classes. Followed by 4 years straight of classes with no breaks, most likely! So I'm going to enjoy my free time while it lasts. I recently finished up an apologetics class, and had to interact with issues like the existence of evil, the nature of God's sovereignty, and it ended up leading into some really interesting discussions of the implications of limited atonement. I'm still trying to get my understanding of all this stuff, so hopefully as I process through some of this it will all get clearer. As part of that process I wanted to post some excerpts from a paper I wrote recently and get some other perspectives on it. Here's the stage 1 of 4 stages to my argument, basically interacting with aspects of the Problem of Evil and specifically the statement "If God created everything then He must have created evil also."
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I grant that this statement is accurate. If, as Paul writes in Colossians 1:15-16, all things were created through, for, and by Jesus, then the conclusion seems inescapable that He is the one responsible for everything, good or bad, and that He is responsible regardless of whether He created it directly or merely created its potentiality. Moreover, He is the one by whose word of power all things are sustained (Hebrews 1:3), so presumably He is able to cause things which are evil to cease existing by simply ceasing His sustaining power for the evil in question. One could argue that evil is merely an illusion and doesn't really exist, but this hardly seems worth considering, for if evil is only an illusion, then the problem of evil disappears altogether. Alternatively, one might argue that evil is simply a privation of good, an 'ontological parasite.' While I think that is closer to the truth, we would have only to rephrase the question to ask why God made a creation where these privations, these parasites, could exist and thrive and we would find ourselves back at the beginning and facing the same difficult questions. Nor will I offer the patronizing answer that this particular world is the best world that God could possibly have created; we all know it could be better. And, while I am grateful for whatever measure of freedom God has given us to make choices in our lives, I don't value my freedom so much that I think it justifies the freedom of the murder or rapist or madman.
[end of part 1/4]
2 comments:
When you say you don't think this is the best possible world, what do you mean? It's not the least evil possible? It's not the most glorifying to God?
Hurry up and post the rest so I can see your position as a whole.
It will get a little clearer with the next couple sections, but in a nutshell: the argument is often made that the world that exists is the best possible world that God could have logically created, in that it has the least evil with the greatest good possible with creatures who are free moral agents. You're already anticipating my argument that it is the best possible world for the glory of God, but not best in the sense that is ususally used in apologetics engagements to defend God against the charge of being responsible for evil.
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