Open Theism Discussion Board

Open Theism Discussion Board > Public Forums > Let’s solve the problem of evil > An Omnipotent God Who Couldn't Stop Evil?

Forum Quick Jump

[ << Previous Thread | Next Thread >> | Show Newest Post First ]

edcaina
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2002
Total Posts : 12

Posted 4/26/2002 2:00 AM (GMT -6)

Hi, everyone,

I just would like to gain some thoughts on this problem of evil that bugs my mind: If God is so powerful enough why doesn't He prevent all the evils happening around us; if He is loving enough why does He let good people suffer so terribly. Doesn't it justifiable for others to say that God is not that omnipotent and loving as we Christians believe Him to be since what we see in our world is not a reflection of a powerful and loving creator?

My cousin and her Christian family migrated to Canada last September 2001. Just a month ago her husband (the only bread winner in the family) met an accident. While waiting for a bus on a bus stop on his way to work a huge truck moving so fast lost its front wheel and this huge wheel hit my cousin's husband who's now in the hospital and suffering memory lost. They are without any relatives there. It's already a month now that his family is in deep misery. I mentioned that to say this: last Sunday, I was told that their 9 year old son couldn't bear their misery no longer, shouted at the top of his voice, "where is God who promised protection to daddy? Why did He let the wheel hit daddy, I thought He's powerful? Why did He not stopped the rolling wheel while it was on its way to daddy's place?"

That's a 9-year old boy's desperate question, and as a Filipino boy I'm sure he had never yet read about Bertrand Russel.

Is it right to say that God let this world run it's course without His hands directly on to it?

Grace and peace,
EdCaina

Semeia
Registered Member

Date Joined Aug 2001
Total Posts : 522

Posted 4/26/2002 7:06 AM (GMT -6)

Ed,

I am so sorry to hear about your cousin's husband. What a horrible accident. It reminds me of the little girl who was recently killed watching a hockey game when a puck ricocheted up into the stands. It is this kind of accident that fills us with particular horror. We ask, "Why couldn't God have made it take a slightly different bounce, to save this precious life?"

The best answer I have ever read to this question and others like it is to be found in Greg Boyd’s book, Satan and the Problem of Evil: Constructing a Trinitarian Warfare Theodicy. In this book, Greg presents his six theses of the Trinitarian Warfare Theodicy in answer to the question, “Why cannot God, the omnipotent Creator, do whatever he wants, wherever he wants, however he wants?”

TWT1 - Love involves freedom.
TWT2 - Freedom involves genuinely open alternatives and thus genuine risks.
TWT3 - Risk involves other agents, which makes us morally and socially responsible for one another.
TWT4 - The power to use this responsibility for evil must be proportionate with an agent’s potential to use it for good.
TWT5 - This power must be, within limits, irrevocable.
TWT6 - This capacity to freely choose love is finite, not endless.

From page 213:

“In every situation, then, God must contend with the quality of irrevocable freedom he has given to each agent, together with all the contingent variables that condition each agent’s quality of freedom.

In my view, therefore, God genuinely faces in every particular situation a reality distinct from himself that has some say-so over and against himself. By giving every free agent an irrevocable domain of genuine say-so in the flow of history, God has to that extent limited his own unilateral say-so in the flow of history. God is everywhere and at all times present in his creation maximizing good and minimizing evil. But to the extent that he has given creatures say-so, God has restricted the exercise of his own omnipotence.”

The above was to give you an idea of the approach of the book, but it is just a glimpse, and not meant to be a summary, which in any case I could not do justice to.

Although I hesitate to recommend a book when you have experienced a deeply personal tragedy, it is the best answer I have to the question you have posed here. I will pray for your cousin’s family. If there is any kind of a fund set up for them through a bank could you please post it here?

I really recommend Greg’s book because I think it is the only explanation that can view such capricious tragedies while holding to a view of an all-loving God. And I think it might provide an answer to your cousin’s son.

I also believe that God’s answer to us concerning such questions of “Why?” is the death of his only begotten son on the cross. I hear in that act God’s grief over our suffering. He cannot explain to us the enormous complexity behind our suffering in this world, but he can come down and take the form of man and suffer alongside of us, as an expression of deepest love. When I am most wracked with pain over some incomprehensible grief or another, I picture Jesus’ death on the cross, and feel God’s presence with and in me, even when I cannot understand.

My heart goes out to you and your family.

Thanks,
Semeia

"The opposite of sin is not virtue, but faith."--Soren Kierkegaard

Edited by - Semeia on 04/26/2002 12:10:40 PM

PotOnWheel
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890

Posted 4/26/2002 10:05 AM (GMT -6)

I was reading Pavel Florevsky's Iconostasis last night. The first part pertains to dreams. As he puts it TIME moves BOTH forwards AND backwards. Interesting. In waking life time moves forwards. (Kant gets mentioned.) But in dreams it has a backwards dimension. On the boundary between the physical and the nonphysical dreams are a combination of two things: all the aspects that swirl and swell in that thin zone--due to life and its living and the nature of life (I'm making that part up, as I can't remember his words.)-- and the event from outside the dream that causes the dream to happen, such as a door slamming can cause the vastness of unformed elements to take the shape of a dream who's ending is also a loud noise...waking the dreamer. Both the unformed and the trigger are necessarily parts of the dream. But it is the END that causes the beginning, and not the beginning causing the end. I think you get it. So, dreams are dreamt in a sort of time that moves backwards.

Florevsky points out that to those who are in Christ this aspect of the end giving shape to the beginning and middle is also true. Modes will think here of Pannenberg, particularly. Somewhere I heard an Orthodox speak of life as being "front-loaded" like an old musket, where what goes in last gives all the rest its meaning.

My point is that we do, so habitually, and with such pressure to follow along, almost traditionally think ONLY in the forward-moving mode of time. But the MOST REAL even in Time, while it "has already happened" in the Resurrection of Christ, FOR US is YET to happen. But THAT future event works backwards to give our now and out past their MEANING.

Edited by - PotOnWheel on 04/26/2002 10:10:37 PM

edcaina
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2002
Total Posts : 12

Posted 4/28/2002 2:58 AM (GMT -6)

Hi! Semeia,

Thanks for your kind words. Thanks for the willingness to support financially (?), your kindness is superb. But for now, we just ask for your prayer support, especiallly as their family go through all the legal proceedings in Canada.

I wish I could have a copy of Greg Boyd's book "Satan and the Problem of Evil" and read it for myself and eventuallly have it explained to my nephew. I just couldn't understand why we don't have in our bookstores here in Manila any of Greg's book until now. If not for the kindness of Greg himself (through Tyler DeArmond) I would not have had a copy of "God of the Possible."

Again, thanks a lot for your kindness,

Blessings,
EdCaina

Forum Information

Currently it is Monday, November 09, 2026 6:50 PM (GMT -6)
There are a total of 97,718 posts in 6,040 threads.
In the last 3 days there were 0 new threads and 0 reply posts. View Active Threads

Need Support? | Forum Help Manual