All Christians believe that God is Good and loves us.
But what does this actually mean?
What does it mean to be Good?
In particular; is Good a matter of preference merely, as modern materialistic ideology would have it. Are Good and evil "relative" and interchangeable?
What this "relativism" of values seems to mean in current Western/ Globalist culture, in an underlying and implicit way, is that what matters are peoples' feelings (or more exactly, some peoples' feelings) - especially their "hedonic status", i.e. whether they are happy or suffering.
What counts as Good is what is believed to lead to happiness, while evil is whatever causes suffering (or is asserted to cause suffering) - and Good and evil can therefore change places according to the cause of gratification/misery in the current situation.
It should be noted that this modern Western hedonic morality as the basis of values, is rooted in the assumption that we can objectively know, and indeed measure, the hedonic outcome of choices...
The assumptions that we know and can quantify other-people's state of happiness; and that we understand the relationship between present action and future emotions - including in large numbers of people; and that that we can predict the major psychological consequences of material actions.
These assumptions seem to me nothing but wishful-thinking at best; and most often sheerly-obvious nonsense...
Nonetheless; these are among the assumptions upon-which modern mainstream morality and values are based.
Or is there instead some objective basis to Good and evil? By "objective" I mean here to ask: is there something about the nature of reality that distinguishes Good from evil? And if there is something objective about Good - what is it?
Traditional orthodox mainstream Christian theology has it that God is Good because God created everything from nothing, because God is "omni" in nature.
This is the argument of monotheism, something that this type of Christian shares with Jews and Moslems, and which is rooted in an assertion that God is Good because there is nothing else.
In other words, by this argument, God is Good because God is everything, so that it is irrational, meaningless, to believe otherwise. Because there is nothing else but God - to be evil is meaningless, futile, insane... evil (by this account) has nowhere to go, and nothing to believe-in.
The obvious objection to the monotheistic omni-God argument; is that if God made everything, is everything, controls and knows everything - then this abolishes the difference between Good and evil.
The trad-orthodox definition of evil is more a matter of "Good is God" than "God is Good"; because (by this account) there is ultimately nothing except God and that which is wholly made by God - and God has been defined as Good.
Apparent differences between Good and evil can therefore only be illusory, or temporary... But, even then, it is unclear why God should make or allow such illusions.
(Indeed, it is unclear why the omni-God should do anything at all - since everything that has happened, is happening, or could happen - is all God Himself and his own 100% God-made creation. Creation seems to change nothing essential, to have no purpose or direction; because everything always was/is/shall-be.)
Therefore, if we regard Good as relativistic, we just get a kind of this-worldly hedonic therapy, in which anything and everything is "justified" by assertions that it will make "people" happier, or less miserable.
Or else, by trying to make Goodness identical with an omni-God, by asserting that all-is-God and God-is-Good; we end up actually abolishing the distinction between Good and evil.
Anyone evil is then insane by his opposition to the only actual reality... Yet even this statement does not stand, because God must have made that person the way he is - i.e. insane.
The omni-mono-God philosophy explains nothing because it explains everything!
And such a conception of God seems especially antagonistic to Christianity; which must surely have an essential place for the divine Man Jesus Christ, and his doings at some point in history; and for the necessity of (in some meaning) "following" Jesus.
For a Christian; Jesus must make a difference, and that difference must be deep, cosmic, temporally-located, crucial.
My own views on this subject have been expounded scores of times on this blog; but I will focus on the major objection to it.
My understanding of Good: If God is a Being (or indeed two Beings - Loving Heavenly Parents) who found-themselves among a multitude of other Beings; and if this God began creating at some point in time; and if this creation is founded upon Love...
So that creation is something like "the purposive and mutually loving relationships between Beings that were previously and otherwise mutually unloving, lacking in shared-purpose"...
Reality is therefore a growing creation in an environment of chaos...
By this "model", Good is defined as God's project of creation; and evil is some kind of opposition to this project (anything other than joining with the project of creation - is may be any kind of opposition, from trying to exploit creation for selfish reasons, or trying to destroy creation).
In theory, there is also the alternative of opting-out from creation.
By my understanding of Good; Beings such as ourselves find-ourselves in an ongoing divine creation; and we need to decide whether we are on the side of creation or not.
Good is the decision to join with God's creation.
Opting-out is the decision Not to join with creation.
Evil is the decision to oppose creation.
Main objections to my understanding: Some things that some people find wrong with this scheme, are that I regard God as "just" a Being (actually two Beings) among a multitude of other Beings; that God's creation had a beginning and has therefore not been eternal; that God is finite in knowledge and power...
And that Good is only one among other rational possibilities.
By my understanding; to be evil is to oppose the project of divine creation; but that opposition need not be irrational. Evil may be short-termist, evil will be un-loving, and may be manipulative, sadistic, spiteful...
But evil need not be irrational (evil is only irrational when it denies the reality of divine creation).
By my understanding: There really is no compulsion to be Good, because Good is one side in the spiritual war arranged around the actually-existing reality of divine creation.
There is indeed One God, in the sense that there happens-to-be one divine creation, and this was an is the creation of God.
There is one creation which is that we know, and which includes all other Beings that we can know. One creation within-which we and other Beings find-themselves when they become self-aware, when we/they become "conscious" of reality and their places in it among other Beings, and having relationships with these other Beings.
Such matters could have been otherwise, but were not otherwise: this is reality - this is the situation within-which we exist.
To loop back to the original incoherent ideas that Good is relativist because choice is rational and real; or else that Good is objective and necessary because there is mono-omni-God creating everything; I would say instead that Good is objective because God is The Creator; but the choice of Good versus evil is also real, has consequences that may be permanent, and it is a coherent choice to choose evil - even when the reality of one divine creation is acknowledged.
By my understanding: To choose Good is to choose to affiliate with God's objectively real project of creation, and this project is built from love, because creation is the product of love.
Any Being capable of love is capable for choosing to affiliate with creation.
But evil may be a coherent choice, because creation takes place amidst continuing chaos - and continuing chaos is termed "death" (by the Fourth Gospel" and is spiritually-analogous to the scientific-material concept of "entropy".
Evil is not entropy, but coherent evil entails an ultimate commitment to entropy and chaos in preference to divine creation, because entropy/ chaos is all that would remain when evil has done its work...
After evil has worked through to its conclusion; there would be a world without creation, which is a world without love; and that would be the return to a pre-creation world of mutually un-conscious and unloving Beings; i.e. the end state of evil would be Beings uncomprehendingly existing in a situation that has no coherence and no direction.
Thus evil is a possible and coherent thing to desire.
In other words, by my understanding, divine creation is incomplete and (in principle) vulnerable to evil, and to entropy; or, this would be the case without the Second Creation of Jesus Christ.
Primary creation of God is of-itself therefore incomplete and contingent; and Jesus Christ is therefore essential to the triumph of Good.
But the triumph of Good is not the imposition of Good across all that exists - it is a Second Creation that consists of Beings that are only and wholly Good. That situation called "Heaven".
This is why Christianity is the only coherent religion; and why Jesus Christ is and was essential. Jesus was Not essential to the primary divine creation; but Jesus is essential to the indomitable and eternal triumph of creation - in Heaven.
Note added: What makes Good good is loving-creation - but only if you agree that love is, indeed good. Otherwise not. That which is good is therefore objectively real; but what makes the real objective, is personal.
12 comments:
you may or may not know that the root of the word 'Good' means 'join'. it fits quite perfectly with the idea of free, loving relationship between beings.
Vital points.
"The omni-mono-God philosophy explains nothing because it explains everything!"
Or vice versa, explains everything while explaining nothing.
A good example is the privation theory of evil (absence of good). Since God created being, being itself cannot be evil. Hence, evil is *actually* non-being! It's nothing! What we regard as evil is really just non-existence.
Don't ask me how any mere creature can introduce non-existence into God's obviously existing Creation, but they must be able to do it, because it's there...er...I mean not there. Maybe it's like reverse creatio ex nihilo or something?
Oh yeah, I just remembered. Evil is introduced through freedom because if creatures couldn't choose between good and evil, they wouldn't really be free, and omni-God wants us to be free even though, in the end, it is only omni God who makes everything happen or permits things to happen.
Anyway, concerning non-existence/evil, omni-God certainly wouldn't permit it to happen unless serves some grand mysterious Providential purpose we can't even begin to fathom because we are just creatures, albeit free because we have the ability to choose evil over good -- that is, non-existence over existence. Anyway, it doesn't really matter because omni-God knows everything we will do and how these actions affect everything else. Your job is to be good or burn. Or something like that. The main thing you have to remember is that omni-God is ultimate.
There. That explains everything.
@Frank - Indeed. The Omni-God concept just kicks the can one step down the road, but leaves all the real problems untouched - except that (like other abstract absolutes) the mind is stunned into passive acquiescence.
In reality, omni-god merely illustrates the capture of Jesus Christ's work and message by prior philosophical assumptions.
Why omni-god is clung-to so tenaciously is a matter of psychology, not rationality.
As I understand it, privation is thought to be something like that hole in a doughnut. It does not exist apart from there being a doughnut in the first place. In a sense, it is part of the doughnut and exists but in another sense it is not. It's called a "per se affection"
@bm - However privation is envisaged; when God is understood as omni and as having created everything from nothing; then ultimately God made whatever led to the privation of Good - so the concept doesn't explain anything.
The thought occurred to me the other day: God is not Good because He can be no otherwise. "Our" (meaning those who take the Classical understanding of God, which included myself until quite recently) explanation of the Problem of Evil necessarily makes God Himself Not Good.
Regardless whatever other points of Classical Theology one may or may not stand on, one essential thing Must be understood:
God is a Free Agent. He can, at any time, authentically Choose what He will do. And yet, throughout all of Eternity Past, every single moment right up to this present time, He has chosen Good. That is WHY He is trustworthy.
I don't know. I don't believe a baker is generating actual holes, only doughnuts.
Take blindness for instance. People should be able to see but if they are blind they can't see. Although we call blindness a thing it's really a lack of something. I don't think this is too far from your thoughts about good and evil. Good is love. Evil is "not love" or a disordered love. It seems to me that privation is just another way to talk about good and evil that you could accept.
I think talking about how you conceive the "Omni-God" would take to long for this space.
bmiller https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/search?q=omni-god
@MC - I was trying to explore what "good" actually means, in a way that is non-circular.
BC,
God the creator is indeed wholly Good, however God creates using already-existing Beings - such as Men. It is these already-existing Beings that are the source of evil.
If the argument against an "Omni-God" creator is that a wholly good God would not allow evil into His creation, then it seems to me that non-"Omni-God" creator is in the same boat. Unless I'm missing something non-"Omni-God" is responsible for using these evil "already-existing Beings" to create and so brings evil into creation. Why would one consider non-"Omni-God" wholly good while "Omni-God" could not be considered wholly good since both allow evil in creation?
@bm - Yes, you Are "missing something". But comments are not the place to explain the whole subject matter of this blog. If you Really want to Know, you need to stop asking questions, and start trying to understand.
BC,
OK. Good advice.
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