John,

I have been interpreted as being against the idea of God minimizing evil.  But my real contention is that we don't know enough about the "factors" that would limit God's action to that effect to talk intelligently about it.  What seems MORE obvious to me is the implications it would have about the nature of the original creation - BEFORE volitional creatures introduced voluntary evil into the world.  That's why NATURAL evil is the real problem of evil to me.

But my ignorance of the factors limiting God's actions to minimize evil in the PRESENT cause me to be apprehensive about making much of it apologetically.

Jeff:  have been interpreted as being against the idea of God minimizing evil.  But my real contention is that we don't know enough about the "factors" that would limit God's action to that effect...

Tom: Just to clarify. Not sure I'm following ya. But nobody arguing that God always seeks to prevent/minimize evil argues that this is the end "effect" of God's always attempting to do so. Sometimes evil is NOT prevented. Sometimes it is NOT in fact minimized. All that's argued is that God seeks this effect. There are complexities that make it impossible for us to know what was or wasn't done in every regard to prevent or minimize some evil. But what is not complex is God's character and goodness. So where we normally assume we understand creation very well and are in the dark about God, we ought to assume far more with respect to God and admit our ignorance about the complexity of creation and palce the mystery there. That's what's at the heart of the claim that God always does what God can given all the factors and the complexities of creation [this italicized portion is often left out; it shouldn't be] to prevent evil and where evil can't be prevented, the God does what God can to minimize it. So minimizing evil in any evil event doesn't mean the end effect is the most minimal evil conceivable or logically possible. It only means the least amount of evil historically acheivable in THAT situation given the totality of creational factors at THAT point in time.

The question never arises (for me, John) that since God doesn't always get the prevention of evil he wants that he's inept at it. The ineptness doesn't apply to end results in this case since there are admittedly factors outside of God's control. The question of ineptness would apply to a God of inept character who given all the factors and the complexities of creation could do x, y, and z to prevent some evil but who simply chooses not to do so. This moves the mystery to God when it ought to reside within creation. So I simply don't know how to say the mystery is about CREATION and NOT agree that God does all God can given all the factors and the complexities of creation to prevent/minimize evil. To deny God does this is to posit a mysterious character of mysterious goodness where there doesn't seem to be anything mysterious about God character and attitude towards evil.

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 2/6/2005 2:28:33 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (sparknheart) : 2/8/2005 8:15:03 AM (GMT-6)

Hey John-

John: Okay, but in view of the astounding failure rate God has at persuading people to follow Him and live in love as they ought, and the roughly equally abysmal failure rate He has had at minimizing evil, in seems to me that saying He always does all he can to minimize evil is counterintuitive and almost ridiculous, really. (No offense intended, that's just how it seems to me).

Tom: But there’s no possible way we can judge on the basis of the amount of evil present in the world now how much evil God has successfully prevented and/or minimized. For all we know, things would be a thousand times worse than they are were it not for God's having done all he could to oppose evil. I mean, I don’t imagine the world is anywhere—anywhere—as infected and conflicted with evil as Satan would like it to be or as he has surely done all HE can to make it. So seen from that point of view, we could judge God’s prevention and minimizing of evil thus far to have been a great success.

True, lots of people have chosen against God personally and ended their time here disbelieving in God. But again, this was a possible result God was evidently willing to allow. I’d still want to argue that he’s done all within his power—given the circumstances and factors—to reach these individuals. If everybody chose against him (and that’s possible) it would still be the case that he did what he could to prevent this as opposed to sitting idly (i.e., passively) by watching.

I agree that there are holes in any theory. But how do you avoid the conclusion that, all else being equal, God was in a perfect position to prevent some evil but decided he didn’t wanna do anything, didn’t wanna get out of his chair?

John: Still chewing on this, Tom. Thanks for your input. It just seems hard for me to think of God as "victorious" (even in the eschaton) if after all His best efforts, only "few there be that find it." (the narrow pathway to life). Likewise when we try to contemplate of all the evil that has occured in this "good" world God made. It's just difficult for me to think of Him as not in some cases simply passive in view of all the evil that does happen.

Tom: I hear ya. Well, given the number of people not making it (right?), God would have to be passive in the vast majority of cases. He’d only get involved in some cases. That’s hard to swallow too.

Of course, we could just be universalists, so then God really IS victorious in the eschaton! I can’t make sense of how that works (after all that’s been said about it here).  Maybe God wins and loses. Maybe heaven is not the absolutely clean victory we imagine. Maybe the ultimate score, when all is said and done, isn’t God: Infinity. Satan: Zero. I can swallow this more easily than I can understand universalism.

Tom

-----------

PS I tried a hundred times to change the font of this post. No can do. And where do I change the font size? I don't at all see where I do that. Plus, whenever I hit the "enter" botton on my keyboard I get a double-spaced insert. No manually inserted single-spacing. Gosh.

none

none

none

none

See?

Post Edited (TGB) : 2/6/2005 2:58:59 PM (GMT-6)