Open Theism Discussion Board

I'm sorry to hear about this family's loss, Sojourner. I'd have to agree with Corey, though. God's being all-powerful doesn't mean we don't have "any" power to exercise. In other words, "X is all-powerful" doesn't have to mean either "Only X exercises power" or "Only X decides how all the power being exercised (by non-X entities) gets exercised." "X is all-powerful" can (and I think does) include "X has the power to share power." God does "allow" evil in the sense that he creates a world for purposes that entail his relating to the world under rules that permit the emergence of pain, suffering, and moral evil. Does God want a world of "lovers"? I say yes. Do we have to "become" lovers through choice? I say yes. Does creating us to free choose to become this or that sort of being (i.e., loving or not) entail an appropriately free context? I think so, yes. If yes to these, then God has released some 'power' into us, shared some "say-so" with us. But that in turn means God is no longer the only one deciding how things turn out. No blueprints. No scripts. We now co-author history with God.

I'm wondering whether God's allowing a father to give his life for his son ought to be spoken of as God's allowing some "evil" to occur. Isn't there something wrong with calling an act of love evil? But might the son's falling into water to drown be spoken of as an "evil"? Some (Greg) would say yes, a sort of "natural" evil. But I'm no longer sure. There's nothing necessarily "evil" about a person that can't swim falling into a river. So could it be that SOME pain and suffering are the necessary but morally neutral context in which our growing and learning have to take place? Could we freely choose and grow into love and maturity without ANY pain or suffering? If not, does that entail moral evil? I think not. It just requires suffering and pain, and I'm not sure that suffering and pain are always "evil." In other words, might it be that such things (those we call natural evils--storms, earthquakes, accidents [slipping and falling into a river], etc.) would be happening had there never been a Satan, a Fall, or moral evil introduced into the story? I tend to think so. God allows them, without individually scripting them. It's enough to place us on a living, moving, somewhat free planet.

ASIDE: I thank God that there are fathers like this one who gave his life for his son. Why is the greatest example of LOVE, the purest expression of a person's valuing another person (viz., that a person give his life for another) held up as a challenge either to God's existence, love, or power? It's sacrifices like this father's that make denying all concepts of the divine nearly impossible. If tremendous evil is a problem for theism, tremendous good (which has to be admited "as a good" with respect to the evil thought to challenge belief in God) has to be a problem for atheism. Instead of conceding this event to the atheist as constituting a challenge to faith, perhaps we out to argue that it is a challenge to atheism. But that's a different issue. Sorry!