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Mephi2K
Registered Member

Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 713

Posted 1/30/2002 6:38 AM (GMT -6)

I figured I'd do something new today. I'm not going to argue anything per se. I'm just going to open up my cranium and show you my thoughts. First I want talk about the different options or views of God that I see on the board and give, from my perspective, the salient qualities of each. Second, I want to talk about the issues that I have with them, either individually or collectively.

The options as I see them

Icon and Semeia

I can say that God is all-loving, but we, as human beings, have a screwed up view of "good" and "evil". Our entire enterprise of ethics is screwed up. Therefore, we often view evil as good and good as evil. Because of this tendency, we may indeed see some things that God does as "evil" The problem lies in our incessant "judging" However, when we understand that God always acts in complete love and is completely "for us", this colors the discussion differently. We can understand that EVERYTHING that God does is out of love. God cannot be unloving. This idea can work out in a couple of ways with respect to what we consider "evil" acts, even by God:

--it can be the case that the combined impact of the complexity of creation and God's self-limitation is such that God could do no more than what was allowed.

--God's actions and deeds are MISINTERPRETED by us as "evil" when they are in fact "loving" Though we cannot see HOW they are loving, it doesn't change the fact that somehow, in some mysterious way, they are.

In this view, God is QUITE free. The decision to be all-loving and/or IS a choice. And it is a choice that he sticks by.

Bottom line: I have confidence that everything God does is, ultimately, for a LOVING reason.

------------------------

Doc

I can say that God is all-good and all-loving because of his NATURE as a necessary being who IS love. Because God is this by nature, it must be the case that any and all "evils" must be seen as an aspect of CREATION, not God's willing. God always does the MOST that he can do, with respect to promoting life-affirming paradigms and so forth. This is virually synonymous with saying that God always does the most loving thing. This idea works out in the following way. For any instance of evil...

--there was a "greater good" involved

--it can be the case that the combined impact of the complexity of creation and God's self-limitation is such that God could do no more than what was allowed.

It could never be the case that God was arbitrary or anything of that nature. However, UNLIKE process theology, it can be the case that God can do certain things coercively...even up to combatibilistic freedom. The chief understanding is that, when things like this take place, it is WITHIN the rubric of being the most loving/highest good action. God still has the power to ultimately bring his chief willing of a Bride at the end to pass. Our eschatological fate is in good hands.

Bottom line: The mystery of evil is a problem of CREATION, not God. God is actively doing all that he can.

-----------------------

Miss E

I can say God is all-loving and, via certain arguments, come to the conclusion of universalism. God's "Hound of Heaven" mentality will not give up the fight for his beloved creations. Though it may take some doing, even FAR past the moment of death, all things will be reconciled to God. No one can hold out from God's utterly persuasive love forever. Moreover, God being loving, he would never do anything arbitrary, just because he could.

Bottom line: Evil, as it exists, in our world right now is a mystery. But the end is NOT, for we trust in God to reconcile all things unto Himself.

----------------------------

Process Idea

I can say that God is all-loving and affirm the tenets of process theology. This would go back to the "Omnibenevolence" thread where I talked about the description using Divine Creativity, Divine Creative Love, and Divine Responsive Love. God always seeks to bring Creation to its highest levels of aesthetic value. God always seeks to maximize Creation into more love, more creativity, etc. God does NOT have coercive power because of the existence of free willed beings. God can ONLY persuade. Moreover, there is no eschatological certainty. Some branches of process hold to life after death while some don't. Of those who hold to life after death, one may assert universalism (using Miss E's "persistent God" idea) or assert that beings can resist God of their own accord after death (like Doc's idea)

If you feel that I've misunderstood any of your positions, I apologize for that. But this is indeed how I've perceived them. So I guess that's the best place to start from.

________________________________________

My Issues

Here's the primary thing that I think separates me from all of the above views:

I genuinely believe that God can choose to do LESS than the most loving/most optimal/most aesthetically maximizing thing based simply on His willing.

In other words, I believe that God can actually see a BETTER WAY of doing things that would truly be more beneficial, more aestethically maximizing, for individuals and reality as a whole...and choose to so something else simply because he wants to. This could apply to deliverances from "evils", clarity of self-revelation, etc. Notice this is NOT saying that God doesn't love or that God isn't good. What this is to say is God can place HIS WISHES AND DESIRES above the overall good (and particular goods) of His creation.

The following are JUST meant to be hypothethical examples of my thinking. They are NOT meant to try to presume to know the mind of God. What they are are attempts to show possible potential WAYS OF THINKING that I believe that God can exhibit.

This is a hypothetical situation with the Ezekiel's wife thing.
---------------------------------------
"Ok. There are a number of ways open to me to accomplish what I want accomplished...which is to get an important message to my people. Some of those ways would be more effective than others. Hmmm. ONE of those ways is to use Ezekiel's wife as kind of an illustrated analogy. Yes. I could take her life prematurely and then tell Ezekiel not to mourn. People will wonder about what going on and ask "Won't you tell us what these things have to do with us?" (Eze 24:19) Then Ezekiel will tell them a message from me.

With my infinite intelligence and insurpassable power, I can see that there are OTHER ways that probably would be MORE EFFECTIVE in really getting my point across to the people. But I'm going to choose this way because I want to see how THIS WAY works out.
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This is a hypothetical situation with the 42 mauled boys. (I will take Doc's "delagated authority" argument into consideration here)

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"Ok. Some youths have just insulted Elijah. Hmmm...now he's calling down a curse on them IN MY NAME. Ok. Now what can I ALLOW my angels to do? Lightning smiting one of them, scaring the rest? Possibly? Opening the earth to swallow 10 or them. Possibly? Wait. An angel's on the scene. WHOA. The angels is making those bear completely SHRED those kids! Wow. I have time to stop this angel JUST LIKE I DID THAT TIME WITH DAVID (God thinks back...)

2 Samuel 24:16-17
So the LORD sent a plague on Israel from that morning until the end of the time designated, and seventy thousand of the people from Dan to Beersheba died. When the angel stretched out his hand to destroy Jerusalem, the LORD was grieved because of the calamity and said to the angel who was afflicting the people, "Enough! Withdraw your hand." The angel of the LORD was then at the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.

I suppose I could tell the angel to stop the madness...right now. So far only about 15 kids have been killed by the she-bears. I could tell the angel to retract what it has done and spare more of those kids. BUT I DON'T THINK I'LL DO THAT. I'm going to just let this play out,just to see what happens.
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From what I'm understanding of all 4 of the positions above, only one of them could allow or these possibilities...Semeia's. With a particular interpretation of Semeia's view, I can just say that the acts above were "loving" BECAUSE God (who is all-loving) did them. They may SEEM "evil" or "unloving" to us, but they are loving because God did them. And it would seem to me that this would be very close to the general nominalistic take...where we say that God's acts are good by definition of being God's acts. And at that point, Doc would (as he has before) say that if this is the case, then "loving" and "unloving" as we understand the terms become meaningless.

The other 3 positions would HAVE to postulate some state of affairs where any moral, rational human being who had ALL THE FACTORS could say "Ok, God. I can see why this was the the most loving/highest good decision that you could make at the time. The constraints (self-chosen and otherwise) are CLEAR. You indeed did the MOST that you could do in both the situations."

Frankly,

I'm NOT buying it!

To posit that things like the killing of Ezekiel's wife or the allowing of the 42 youths being mauled by bears was TRULY the most loving actions possible or the most aesthetically maximizing action possible in BOTH of those situations...is straight up stupid to me. Just being honest. Ludicrous. Crazy. Asinine. Whatever. Given the way that "love" and "goodness" have been described to me ad nauseum on this board, it doesn't make sense to me. To posit that a truly all-loving God (as you describe it) can GENUINELY choose to create a FULLY CONTINGENT Creation all the while having the full knowledge that AT LEAST ONE PERSON would inevitably fall into eternal suffering away from God...is lunacy. Vexen and Miss E give testimony to this idea.

Now, don't get me wrong. I understand that what is being said is DIRECTLY in line with the chief presuppositions of each position. That's not my problem. My problem is the overall PLAUSIBILITY of such a claim. It's looks completely contrived. Like a big rationalization. And what's worse, this type of explanation MUST be given for EVERY INSTANCE OF "evil" that we see! It gets utterly ridiculous.

This is why I said that if I were to DISBELIEVE in the veracity of the Biblical narrative, I could EASILY become a universalist process theist! Basically, process theology posits a practically FINITE God in the true sense...where he CANNOT intervene like the Bible has God doing. The ONLY PROVIDENTIAL ACTION that God could do is to PERSUADE and PARTIALLY EMPOWER others to act on his behalf. And because of the notion of free will in process, it could be the case that the people could completely mess up what God wants to do. See, with process, we could say that God really wanted to help Genie but COULDN'T do so before over a decade because the people God was trying to influence just didn't follow through. With process, we could say that the reason that some people get healed while others don't lies primarily as a function of the PERSONS INVOLVED not God. With process, we can really say that God is COMPLETELY empathetic, loving, and responsive while COHERENTLY dealing with the problem of evil. My buddy Doc wants to have some of the explanatory power of process WHILE keeping God's ability to coercively do certain things. I firmly agree with David Ray Griffin and John Cobb that this produces way too many problems. While I respect the attempt of open view theists to stay true to Scripture and the veracity therein, doing so creates BIG problems...especially when you like at episodes like the one that I've brought up in this post.

Here's my dilemma. I believe the way out stories in the Bible. I'm silly enough to BELIEVE that an Exodus complete with miraculous plagues took place. I'm silly enough to BELIEVE the story about the floating axhead. I'm silly enough to BELIEVE the story about God trying to kill Moses because he didn't circumcise his son. I'm silly enough to believe that the Holy Spirit killed Anania and Saphira for LYING. I believe this stuff. And it's very hard for me to reconcile much of the biblical narrative and how God acts in there...with the PRESUPPOSITIONS about God held in the 4 views articulated here. It just seems to problematic. I just say that the events in the Bible happened NOT because God was following some principle of omnibenevolence or being "all-loving" They happened primarily because God WANTED them to happen for whatever reason. The actions may seem unloving or evil to some...but that's too damn bad. If we are going to believe that God did these things, then we have to make some conclusions.

I'm writing this as a SINCERE plea for understanding and aid. I've really tried to understand and apply some of the worldviews that have come on this board. Sometimes, when I have time, I'll just try to put myself in the worldview and examine the world around me. Kinda like putting on some glasses. And the funny thing is that they ALL work, to some degree...when I'm not trying to believe some of the accounts of the Bible. Once I start doing that, things go to hell.

So, Doc, if you REALLY want me to believe in this omnibenevolence idea, help me deal with the above. Or wish me well on being a process theist!

Love God. Love People. Love Truth. Dedicate your all to that which you love.

Edited by - mephi2K on 01/30/2002 11:40:53 AM

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