But there are (at least) two ways that the question gets asked. The first is to ask about some-thing, some incident, some phenomenon of which we have direct and personal experience - including of the actual degree and nature of personal suffering entailed.
The second, and most usual, form of the question is to ask about some-thing of which we have only indirect and essentially hearsay knowledge, usually from the mass media or educational institutions. This version of Why does God allow X refers to something somewhere place, involving strangers, often remote in history - something such as the Spanish Inquisition, or the Holocaust, or the victims of some "natural disaster or catastrophe (the Lisbon Earthquake was a popular example in the 18th century - see the novel Rasselas by Samuel Johnson).
The second form of the question cannot be answered satisfactorily, because it is an ill-formed question which contains assumptions that make it intrinsically unanswerable. It assumes the validity of our secondhand, remote knowledge, the competence and honesty of those who generated and transmitted this information, and many links of inference involved in constructing it.
And it assumes that we know what was the nature and degree of suffering of (often) large numbers of individual persons - and indeed it assumes we know what these people's attitude was, to whatever they experienced.
None of this is solidly knowable, so we are debating insecure inferences - and such debates never go anywhere useful or valid.
Indeed, I would regard such discussions of big, remote abstractions concerning phenpomena of unknowable validity as fundamentally unserious: merely idle curiosity, the dishonest seeking of excuses, or moral grandstanding ("virtue-signalling").
But even when we stick to valid questions concerning that suffering of which we have direct and personal knowledge, so that we feel absolutely confident of what we are talking about; such that we would literally stake our lives on its truth...
Even then, if a Christian answer is desired, then a Christian context must be assumed: and here must means must.
If the questioner asking "why does a Good God allow..." demands a this-worldly answer, an answer in terms of providing a reason for suffering that is justifiable purely in terms of some kind of measure of mortal-life gratification, an explanation within bounds of time only between conception and death - then he has already assumed that Christianity is untrue.
Because a Christian answer will ultimately strive to explain things, including all instances of suffering, in a large context of time - indeed an everlasting context that includes resurrected eternal Heavenly life.
If we have a valid question about the origin of suffering in this divine creation of a Good God, and with eternal life beyond salvation, then this question is what absolutely needs a satisfactory answer.
That is, an answer which is sufficiently clear and concise to be comprehensible, and whose assumptions are endorsed by that person's intuitive understanding. And an answer that really answers the source of suffering in the divine creation of a Good God - and which does not merely kick the can a but further away from the initial question.
To say "the devil did it" is just a can kick; if we assume that God made the devil - entirely, and from-nothing; and made the devil with his demonic nature.
And any explanation in terms of randomness is likewise an evasion; if God is asserted to have made everything as it actually is.
Also, it is not Good enough for Christians to say that such questions can't be answered because God the creator is too different from us - too Great, too inscrutable, or that His ways are not Our ways...
Christians can't coherently plead divine incomprehensibility because Jesus was a Man.
All Christians ought to have such answers thought-through and ready for deployment when required - because the question is vitally important, and not one that is going-away.
16 comments:
"Christians can't coherently plead divine incomprehensibility because Jesus was a Man."
Furthermore, a being too alien from us can not have a mutual loving relation with us. When its love is perceived as malevolent torment, it's not going to happen.
Either their father is understandable on some level (even a baby has some understanding of its mother), or the loving relation that they claim is the highest objective in life is not possible
@Hagel - Yes indeed. And I find it odd that this needs to be argued with a Christian.
I mostly agree, but I think historical disasters and atrocities deserve a less dismissive treatment. Desire the unknowability of the details, it’s indisputable that earthquakes and mass murders and such do occur, and they need to be explainable in principle.
The importance of mass-casualty events is that they are inherently harder to justify. A personal tragedy may be explained in terms of that individual’s unique situation and needs, but it’s obviously less plausible to propose that the Lisbon earthquake was, for reasons unique to each of them, the best outcome for each of its many and diverse victims. Yes, we don’t know anything about those individual victims, but we still need a broad-brush concept of how such an event *could* be consistent with a loving God.
“Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem?” The question’s rhetorical force comes from the fact that 18 were killed. Are you really willing to claim, Jesus asks, that 18 people who each for his own unique reasons needed to die that day just happened to be the ones killed by that tower?
@Wm - I am not dismissive at all; nor do I think that there is individual justification for the timing and nature of each death - that would only be the case for an omnipotent God in a monistic reality.
What I would say is that there is no possibility of answering the question *as you frame it* - and that is the important thing to realize... We must not proceed on the basis of those assumptions. One of which is that such disasters are unmotivated.
Instead, I think we need to assume that natural disasters are not "random", nor mechanically-caused, but purposive actions on the part of living entities (beings) that initiate such things. Eg. The Earth "herself", but also there are beings associated with what we regard as the forms of the earth, combinations of particular places, components, "elements" etc - maybe a mountain, river, or the airs are distinct beings - each with a distinct nature and motivation.
These nature-entities may be aggressive against humans; or may be simply indifferent - as humans are indifferent to microbes, and ignore the fate of grass and short lived/ small animals.
And such entities - being conscious - are mortal, and mixed in nature as we are; and must choose whether to strive to live in harmony and love with God and creation - or against God and creation. And ultimately choose to accept or reject salvation.
Then there is the fact that entropy/ death is universal and unavoidable in this world. Every being dies later if nor sooner, because all beings are continually dissolving back towards chaos. This applies at all levels, including the largest entities. When a Man degenerates, ages (which happens all the time) and dies, so do the cells of his body. When the Earth is degenerating and ageing (i.e. all the time) and dies; the beings that inhabit earth will also die.
In other words, the animistic hunter gatherers were pretty much right about such matters (And we probably felt the same way as young children) - but Christians have the added understanding of salvation. With the possibility of that escape from entropy and evil by transformation which is Heaven - where "natural disasters" are absent (because all resurrected entities live by love).
The Good creator God is always forming, and repairing, and making the best of this mortal world - but the prime creator cannot "win" because of the nature of this world, where entropy is unavoidable and evil is innate to beings. The only victory is resurrection.
Making one's Self the subject of the question is a useful orientation: Why does God allow me to hurt Others?
Your assumption against luck (randomness, chance) speaks against the freedom of the many. If every deed of every being amongst countless deeds and countless beings is purposive, it will not follow that everything that happens is purposive as such. On the contrary, we would expect many a happening to happen without purposive direction towards whatever it happens to be. An illustration: unbeknownst to one another, and by their own free initiative, Being A (which might be a fundamental particle or a particular fundamentalist) and Being B (likewise or otherwise) move to point x at time t, and thus they meet (or clash). Hence good (or ill) luck. Now consider this in the light of how many beings there are. The world abounds with luck, which is not a force in itself, but the outcome of the freedom of the many. Not to take the abundance of luck (good or ill) seriously is not to take the freedom of the many seriously.
I think this question is manyfold.
-There is the "go away" question: this person doesn't care about the answer because he ithinks that Christianity is hogwash. He's just trying to get rid of you. You have little chance of giving him an answer he will take seriously.
-There is the literal answer: God gave us the Earth to run; "...and let him have dominion over etc." (Genesis 1)
(The heaven, even the heavens, are the LORD'S: but the earth hath he given to the children of men Ps 115:16).
Our ancestor chose to disobey God & this mess followed.
This is literally correct but is unsatisfactory, because it ignores the implicit questions, such as, "But why did God do it this way?"
That's the hard part.
@D - I think I take your point, in terms of what any one person can know about a vastly complex situation; but a world full of purposes and meanings is surely the opposite of a random world without meaning and ruled by luck.
@Phil - I'm assuming here that the questioner is serious; although he may also be too impatient to get a meaningful answer.
"Our ancestor chose to disobey God & this mess followed" - I have always found this a silly, if not itself evil, explanation for current human suffering. If you word search original sin on this blog, you could find what I've written on the theme. But at the very least it is a can-kicker of an explanation, and no more.
‘but a world full of purposes and meanings is surely the opposite of a random world without meaning and ruled by luck.’
It is a world full of purposes, meanings, reasons, freedom, necessity, luck, and many other things besides. (Nothing in the world is in any way mechanical, except by our contrivances.) The world is not random, let alone ‘ruled by luck’, but random chance (luck) happens all the time. The point is that the world as a whole is not ruled at all, but there is order nonetheless. The world is a multiplicity of free beings (or, more clearly stated: agent-subjects, aka souls) and aggregations thereof (wherein, with averaging-out, the predictability of ‘matter’ arises, and thereupon the mechanical conception), and each soul creates the world to some degree or other. Every soul is thereby subject also to luck and need. The duty of everyone is to try and see things in their fullness and richness rather than to view them through a narrowing shard taken from an image shattered by our unreasonable desires or preoccupations or indeed our linguistic structures. To wit., we should not rule out everything but necessity, or everything but freedom, or everything but purpose, or everything but God, or everything but this or that. You are in a war against abstractionism? Well, here is the front! The shattered image stands opposed.
@Deogolwulf
your two comments present my understanding of this subjecy in a very precise and complete way, which i was never able to do properly (i know that now from reading your comments). thank you!
@D "but random chance (luck) happens all the time. The point is that the world as a whole is not ruled at all, but there is order nonetheless. "
On the contrary, I would say that there is no chance At All - although we very seldom understand the purposes of things.
"The world as a whole" Is indeed ruled: ruled by God, the creator, who is always and everywhere creating - and That is the order. Divine creation is why all beings and forms and meanings do not rapidly collapse into chaos.
Without God there would be nothing but chaos in the first place; and without continual creation, entropy would have things its own unopposed way, and chaos would soon supervene.
Laeth,
I'm glad my muddle-head is of service!
'I would say that there is no chance At All'
Then there would be no multiplicity of free beings. (Each would have to be unwittingly coordinated, or manipulated, or forced into not meeting or clashing with one another by chance.) Not everything is chosen, decided. You've put yourself back into determinism, albeit non-mechanistic.
'Without God there would be nothing but chaos in the first place'
Does that sit well with the view that all beings are uncreated, existing from the beginning?
'and without continual creation, entropy would have things its own unopposed way, and chaos would soon supervene.'
I am of the same view.
What does 'always and everywhere creating' mean in a universe composed of primarily beings? If forces and so on should be seen as extensions or aspects of other beings, what is God doing to create and keep order? Are there certain things which He alone would have power over?
@D - All your questions have been answered (to the best of my ability) in many blog posts over the past several years. That stuff is exactly what I've been writing for the past decade.
@Lucas - What I said to Deogolwulf - The answers can't be done in a comment, but are the subject of very large numbers of blog posts about metaphysics over the past decade.
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