I was thinking about guiding principles, the over-arching truths. If we put the big rocks into the bucket first, we’d have more room later for smaller stuff.

Two things come to mind. One was a point Hasker has always make about methodology and expectations. He says what Christians owe others are meaningful explanations that make their faith consistent and coherent from the inside of that faith. We can’t be expected to offer atheists an explanation of suffering in the atheists terms, on his grounds, as if every Christian doctrine or belief ought to be an evangelism tool. So our theodicy might not win people who are standing on the outside of that faith, but it should be able to help honest, thoughtful seekers see that Christianity is coherent and satisfying on its own terms. That seems fair to me. I certainly don’t want to turn the whole theological enterprise into apologetics.

The second point was one Greg often makes. Traditionally people have assumed they don’t understand God very well but do understand the complexities of creation, and that led people to posit the problem or the mystery of evil in God and thus suppose a deficiency of either his character or power. Greg makes a good case for the opposite assumption. We ought to assume—again, from within the Christian revelation and the Cross of Jesus—that we understand God better than we do the complexities of creation, and so locate the problem or mystery of evil in the vast intersecting creational variables that contribute to determining outcomes in ways we can’t possibly fathom. This leads me to say something I’ve always said (and still say) re: divine benevolence and that is that God always does all God can do, given his purposes and the creational variables that constrain their fulfillment to maximize good and minimize evil in the world.

So Jeff…

What if we go with Hasker’s suggestion and free ourselves of limiting ourselves to the modernistic impulse to determine ultimate truth based on neutral human reasoning unaided by revelation—which lightens our load by asking us only to provide internal coherence to the Christian story (with blatant violation of fundamental laws of logic of course, but that’s no problem)?

AND what if we go with Greg’s suggestion that the fundamental portrait of God in Scripture (of course, aided if possible by philosophical arguments about a benevolent cause standing behind the teleology evident in the world’s design) really gives us a clearer picture of God’s loving character and competence than it does explain the complexities of creational variables (metaphysical, material, human, angelic, etc.), and so get the rule that God always does all God can do, given his purposes and the creational variables that constrain their fulfillment to maximize good and minimize evil in the world?

THEN greater clarity and coherence would come the more we clarify things outside these two assumptions. Things to be clarified are NOT benevolence and competence (those are set), but (a) just what are God’s purposes for creation? Why did he create and what do we exist for? That has to be said, because those purposes in turn tell us (b) what sort of creational variables God would have had to set in place (like metaphysical constraints, question of freedom, what kind of risks were involved, if any) to reach those goals.

So (1) we’re not out to prove anything to others necessarily. We’re just aiming for the simplest, most coherent, most satisfying (rationally, biblically, and existentially) STORY we can determine. And (2) we shall assume that God is benevolent, competent, and purposefully involved in the world and that we don’t understand creation’s complexities as much as we think we do. We trust our fundamental picture of God (not budging on that) but question our understanding of creation (we’re always prepared to adjust our understanding of the metaphysics of created ‘being’ if we’re asked to). And the key parts of the story we may already agree on: divine benevolence, purposeful creation (teleology), libertarian freedom, moral responsibility, a risky and violent cosmos, intersecting variables we can’t comprehend, incarnation as essential means to creation’s ‘telos’, and some others we can list if you want.    

What d’ya think?

Tom

I’ll stick this here instead of over on the “Alan’s a Genius” thread.

JEFF: As I said on the other thread, I, too, believe that infants and fetuses could have died pre-Fall. But those deaths would have been contingent on the misuse OF, or the failure TO use, human volition.

TOM: What about accidents? No tripping and falling off a cliff? No incompetent midwifery accidently dropping a slipper newborn on his head?

JEFF: Thus, those deaths would have been contingent on CREATURES, not the very DESIGN of the created order--the latter implies God DID it, to me.

TOM: Maybe this is where Greg has a point. Why limit what goes on in the world to human volition (and divine volition too of course)? Is it not plausible to posit angelic wills as part of the complex of creational variables that determine outcomes? I mean, they're out there and they're volitional and they have us and the created order in their sights. I don’t have all the detailed answers about what level of influence fallen angelic powers might have over the material creation, but a) supposing they do isn’t a ‘new’ idea Greg made up; it’s steeped in church history, and b) wouldn’t all we need do is posit the plausibility of it to get some explanatory value out of it?

I mean, what are the options?

(A) We can say there were no mud slides or volcanoes or earthquakes prior to the rise of human sin, or if there were they never bothered (or would bother) human populations apart from the rise of human sin. So the only way a mortal human being could have died prematurely prior to the Fall would be through some misuse or failure of volition (like they know some plant is poisonous but eat it anyway, or they know they can’t fly but try to anyhow by jumping off a cliff). However, NO accidents.

(B) We can say mud slides and volcanoes are a natural feature of the created world and that this natural evil was intended by God to provide developing human beings a measure of unpredictability and amoral suffering (suffering that doesn’t result as a consequence of sinful choice). A kind of Irenaean soul-making approach. The motivation for this would be the belief that human personal development and maturity requires contextually appropriate opportunities to learn to ‘trust’ God. Some ‘pain’ is necessary. If carefully worded (to protect MY concerns! Ha!), I could go this route. It provides for accidental deaths too. I don’t have a problem with this. The eternal state is not so utterly different that this that the perfected use of natural capacities temporarily lost wouldn’t count as fulfilling God’s purposes (for ‘eyes’, say). I don’t think we can insist that the only benevolent and competent teleology is one in which the pre-Fall world was ‘accident’ free. If that’s your intuition, then you’ll have to work within it. I understand. It’s not an intuition for me.

(C) We can take Greg’s approach and say the cosmos is a battle ground between God and fallen angelic beings who were originally entrusted with the creational project but who have rebelled and still operate with some measure of influence and that that natural evil is their doing. Hence, natural evil IS moral evil as well. There is no natural evil per se. This sounds corny, but it’s got its good points.

I can’t do (A). Either of (B) and (C) appears stronger to me than (A). And the view that human beings were contingently mortal (mortal at first but designed to become immortal through union with God) is known among the Fathers and not condemned as some sort of heresy. I favor some version of (B) because I think (C) requires us to attribute entropy to the world of demons (thought Greg’s said that’s NOT his view), and that seems very strange. Greg played the mystery card (as I remember) when I asked him about entropy and said “Well, none of us really knows how a perfect world with no death or decay but with entropy would actually look.”

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JEFF: Again, there is a reason why you say the probability of even 1 infant or fetus dying inevitably from natural evil alone is less than 1. Because you see the same issue (you "feel my pain," IOW).

TOM: I admit it’s less than 1 because I can’t manage to generate a contradiction by imagining it happening (i.e., imagining a pre-Fall world of any length of time not seeing a child slip from a tree and break his neck). But I don’t think it’s meaningfully less than one. Babies are gonna die. God knows it. It’s NOT happening doesn’t even appear on the radar of “contingencies for providence to think about.” That very nice ‘possibility’ is packed away in the last drawer of the last closet of God’s spare office.

JEFF: So, to me, theodicy is not about WHETHER God is good (that seems unavoidable, epistemologically), but HOW is He good given what seems to be instances of "vain" dyings and sufferings.

TOM: Bingo. And I appreciate that for you ‘eyes’ that never get to see in this life undermines your understanding of teleology. But that doesn’t bother me. The point is that the person sees and appreciates created beauty. It’s that END that has to be unfulfilled for us to question divine competence, not some mediate or proximate ‘means’ to that end. In other words, it doesn’t destroy the competence of God is there are some means that are intended but never get to fulfill their ends if God knows that ultimately the ends will be fulfilled. But that’s your point, God has to INTEND that eyes see. And I think he does. God doesn’t ‘want’ babies to die prematurely as if ‘that’ death provides some immediate teleological satisfaction for God. But if the ultimate ends require a context that can’t guarantee that no baby will die by accident, I don’t fault God’s intention or competence. For me, it’s very plausible to suppose that not only do sentient creatures metaphysically require freedom to determine themselves in love (you don’t buy that), but that the created material context in which those free beings develop has also to provide its own measure of risk. Maybe that’s a tint of Irenaeus hanging round my head.

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JEFF: But you still have to posit that those future eyes are somehow TELEOLOGICALLY related to that first pair that never got utilized in THIS WORLD. As long as you say that the premature destruction of even ONE pair of eyes in this world of natural evils is less than one, you're being coherent. But there's no aposteriori, empirical reasoning that will get you there. THat's just a deduction from your intuition given what you believe about earth history. All I'm saying is this: You're view will be laughed off the stage by people who don't hold our intuitions about the benevolence of God just like mine will.

TOM: So what? We’re not thinking through these issues to make sense of them to people who don’t believe God is benevolent—Bill Hasker’s point. We can only be expected to tell a consistent, coherent story. That’s it. The proof of the story is its POWER to transform the lives of those who choose to live in it. We only seek to make it as coherent and intelligible as possible because (a) it literally helps us survive when the crap hits the fan and we suffer, and (b) we know that faith isn’t created in peoples’ hearts entirely apart from cognition. Faith is linked to rationality, since only sentient beings can believe. It’s a loving thing to do to provide every reason possible for people to consider our story.

JEFF: For those who DO have our intuitions about the benevolence of God, we already know there MUST be an explanation whether we can think of a completely plausible (analogical) one or not.

TOM: I hear ya. So what are we doing here on this board? Are we just looking for apologetic tools? Who for? ‘Them’ or ‘us’? Ha! Maybe both. Look, hard-core atheists like Dawkins are what they are. I don’t think it’s the case that they don’t believe because we haven’t yet provided good reasons, or a rational story, etc. Consider Antony Flew’s conversion to Deism. Dude, he was Britain’s most famous atheist. It wasn’t anything ‘new’ that did it. Who knows? It was the same story basically, finally HE made room for it. I don’t know. But to be honest MY motivation in all this is for the hurting believers who’s faith suffers because they got a lot of bad information/theology. I think we can do something about that.

But in the end, teleology is irreducibly aesthetic (whatever else it may be), and there’s a beauty to the ‘math’ (i.e., that truth about how the story fits together), appreciating the elegance of the ‘fit’. We’re driven to understand (even if it doesn’t make a difference to atheists or our own survival) because we’re designed to seek and appreciate every possible beauty. For example, I want to understand the Trinity MORE (even though I know enough to make general sense of it for atheists and myself) because the perceived beauty deepens my worship. If we add this aesthetic component, Jeff, then we know WHY you and I are driven to keep discussing this stuff even though atheists have more than enough reason to find their way to faith and we have more than enough reason to ‘survive’. It’s because survival isn’t the point. THRIVING (intellectually and aesthetically) is the point.

Gotta run.

Post Edited (Tom) : 7/23/2009 1:36:03 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Similtude) : 7/24/2009 6:24:02 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Similtude) : 7/24/2009 9:29:13 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Similtude) : 7/25/2009 8:32:12 AM (GMT-5)