Problem of Evil

[Guest JeffCR07]

I will take you point by point:

[QUOTE]I don't see how man has a right to question God[/QUOTE]

To question is to seek an answer, and God is the True Answer that we need. Thus, not only [i]can[/i] we question, but we [i]must[/i]. Unless you would decry the Psalmist who says "I seek your countenance, O Lord, your countenance I seek" or Our Lord who says "Ask, and it shall be given you: seek, and you shall find : knock, and it shall be opened to you."

We ought to do as Christ says, and so honored we seek, humbly we ask, and hopeful we knock.

[QUOTE]God is so far above man, that his intellect is simply unable to comprehend Him or His designs[/QUOTE]

And yet it is said by the Evangelist "We shall see Him as He is" and "This is eternal life, that they may know Thee the only true God. Moreover, it is also said by the Psalmist "In Thy light we shall see light"

Now it is true that the intellect is incapable of grasping the totality of God, but we can know Him in part, and truly. Just because we cannot [i]fully[/i] comprehend the infinite majesty of God's Nature does not mean that we should not try to know what is within our power to know. Rather, we should say along with St. Anselm:

"I do not try, Lord, to attain Your lofty heights, because my intellect is in no way equal to it. But I do desire to understand Your truth a little, that truth that my heart believes and loves."

[QUOTE]I don't see how the free will defense does justice to God's sovereignty at all; while it does remove the onus of evil from God, it does not speak of God's sovereignty or His will. It only speaks of man and his supposed freedom to do evil or refrain from it at his liberty. It makes God a passive spectator of the world scene rather than actively moving everything to its foreordained purpose.[/QUOTE]

The only reason you say this is because you are focusing on the free will defense itself and not looking at all at its implications. If you looked at the implications of the free will defense, you would see, like St. Anselm, that it leads us logically to the Atonement of Christ through the Incarnation of the Word of God and his subsequent life, passion, death, resurrection, and ascension. Indeed, the Free Will Defense [i]highlights[/i] God's plan. For we see that in making us free, He desired for us to be "co-workers" with Him and even, as the catechism says, "co-creators." Because of that freedom, the Fall occurred and that is why God became man, restoring us to our original dignity. Thus, the Church does the work of God in the world today and truly does bring us closer to the appointed time of Christ's Second Coming.

To say that God is a "passive spectator" is to turn a blind eye to the fact that the free will defense makes sense of Creation and Redemption.

[QUOTE]Natural evils seem to be an aspect of God's creation, rather than a result of human choices. Yet even moral evils often have a victim, who may suffer intensely through no fault of his own, due to the choices of another. Consider the Holocaust[/QUOTE]

Here you display a faulty understanding of what happened at the Fall. It was not simply [i]man[/i] that "fell" with original sin, but rather, the whole [i]world[/i] fell. Death is the result of sin, as Paul tells us. Natural evil did not exist prior to the Fall, but rather, both Natural [i]and[/i] Moral evil follow from the Fall.

[QUOTE]Now, St. Augustine tells us that God only allows evil for the sake of a greater good, and likewise he says of Adam's sin, "O happy fault that gained for us so great a redeemer." The redemption we have from Jesus Christ is greater than all the sins of the world. Furthermore, St. Paul says, "The sufferings of the present age are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed."[/QUOTE]

None of these points lead us to the conclusion that God is the author of Natural Evil. Of course the merit of Christ outweighs sin. That doesn't mean that sin had to happen.

[QUOTE]Yet, it's questionable why God should have done things the way He did, allowing so much sin and degradation, so much horror, so much evil, to achieve His purposes. And I don't think free will is necessarily the best, or most complete, answer. It's conceivable that God could have made the whole procedure much less painful.[/QUOTE]

Now you have contradicted yourself. Before you wanted to have nothing to do with questioning God, but here you find it unavoidable. I agree, we [i]should[/i] ask these question like "why is there evil." The Free Will Defense answers all of those questions, but you seem to think there is a better explanation - I invite you to elaborate on what that might be.

[QUOTE]It's questionable to say that God allows all this simply to obtain man's love and obedience freely, without compulsion, considering how many people have lost faith, and given themselves over to despair, on account of what they've suffered and what they've been through. Perhaps many have kept faith heroically and never wavered in the love of God; others have not.[/QUOTE]

I don't think that is all that questionable. If the world was created as a communication and outpouring of God's Love, that love (which is freely given) is more perfectly shown through creatures with free will. You have quite a case to make if you want to say that a world without free creatures would be just as good at mirroring the Trinitarian Love.

[QUOTE]It seems to me that ultimately we must simply accept that God "dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has ever seen or can see." (1 Timothy 6:16) He is "hidden in a cloud of ineffable light," as I believe another version puts it. It's necessary to keep faith with God, but, like Job, I think we'll have to forgo easy answers and wrestle with inscrutable mysteries.[/QUOTE]

And yet wrestling with the mysteries of God is exactly what you refuse to do. Throwing one's hands up in the air and refusing to discuss when there is a viable possibility - like the Free Will Defense - is not the answer, and neither is it what God intended when bestowing upon us the gift of our intellects.

The same God who "dwells in unapproachable light" does indeed make himself approachable to us in the incarnation and the illumination of our thoughts, unless you think we speak in vain when we say "I seek Your countenance, O Lord"

[QUOTE]I'd have to say, Spinoza may have been partly right. Sin and evil must have a place in the bigger picture, to wit, God's picture[/QUOTE]

Have you even read Spinoza? He doesn't say that sin and evil have a place in the bigger picture, he says that sin and evil [i]don't actually exist[/i], but rather, that sin and evil are the products of finite minds trying to reach beyond themselves.

If you want to go with Spinoza, that is fine, but you must understand that to do so you must deny the reality of Original Sin, the Fall, temptation, and evil. I, for one, will fight you tooth and nail, along with every other orthodox christian.

[QUOTE]I certainly don't agree with Leibniz, that God could only have created the world a certain way, namely, the best way[/QUOTE]

And so the Lord could have made a world (and so a choice) that was not fitting?

[QUOTE]Besides it's by no means clear that there is only one best way to create the world[/QUOTE]

Then lets talk about that, but to do so you need to come out of hiding from theological discourse. Rather than hide behind "its a mystery" you should take heart, seek, ask, and knock.

Your Brother In Christ,

Jeff

[Guest JeffCR07]

For some reason I don't have the option to edit that post in order to fix the problem with the quotes

[kdewolf2]

I don't have much time. I'd like to thank you, Jeff, for your answers. I don't have much else to say, other than reiterate what I already said. It wasn't my intent to say that since these things are inscrutable, therefore nothing can be said about them, or nothing sought. I believe very much in questioning and searching, even without the consolation of finding answers. It just seems to me that the rationales given are not only human answers made on God's behalf, the finite attempting to capitulate the infinite within its own terms, (notwithstanding the gift of the "intellect"); scripture abounds in declarations of God's inscrutability; however they're (the rationales) immensely unsatisfying existentially. This talk of love, freedom, and redemption is all very well; but, I'm always confounded by the actuality of hatred, enmity, strife, great pain and suffering, death, wholesale destruction, and ultimately, widespread despair. Is there a lack of proportion here? I would hope not; but the world is too often a living hell, and there's too much despair. The Creator cannot easily be absolved, considering nothing ever happens which He does not either will or at least permit. So, I take refuge in the ineffable cloud. But my posture is just as easily stricken by the declaration, "Let God be true, and every man a liar."