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GregBoyd
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 1818
| Posted 1/20/2002 12:32 PM (GMT -6) |   |
Empiress, I appreciate your insights and comments on the Open View and the Problem of Evil on Vexon’s masterful website (http://www.vexen.co.uk). I would like to interact a bit with your resistance to the free will defense, however. In refutation of the free will defense, you say:
[size-2]But why do we need the depth of evil and pain? Why couldn’t humanity have been created with a greater propensity towards good? Shouldn’t our free will be, as least, limited in its potential harm? Why give wicked parents the ability to torture and murder their children? And, couldn’t free will exist but God intervene to prevent major atrocities?[/size=2]
Can you have a potential "depth" of love of a certain magnitude without having a corresponding potential "depth" of anti-love (evil) of that same magnitude? We can always ask "why no more good" and "why not less evil," but it seems to me that the testimonies of great love and great evil throughout history exemplify the inherent proportionality of our potentiality for both good and evil. And logic, it seems to me, testifies that this is a metaphysically necessary truth. The potential for one MUST be balanced by a potential for the other.
Why doesn’t God intervene to stop the more atrocious evil acts? I’d argue it is because he can’t revoke our potential for one degree of "depth" without rendering disingenous our corresponding potential for that same degree of "depth" in the other direction. It God genuinely gives the choice – hence the potential – to accomplish X amount of Love and therefore to accomplish X amount of Evil, he CAN’T revoke our potential when we choose X amount of evil. If he did, he obviously DIDN’T give us "the potential to accomplish X amount of Love OR X amount of Evil."
What do you think?
Blessings
Doc
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PotOnWheel
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Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 1/20/2002 5:43 PM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Doc: Can you have a potential "depth" of love of a certain magnitude without having a corresponding potential "depth" of anti-love (evil) of that same magnitude? We can always ask "why no more good" and "why not less evil," but it seems to me that the testimonies of great love and great evil throughout history exemplify the inherent proportionality of our potentiality for both good and evil. And logic, it seems to me, testifies that this is a metaphysically necessary truth. The potential for one MUST be balanced by a potential for the other.
If I didn't see you name on it I would have thought it a good example to use in art history of Zoroastrian philosophy and world view.
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PotOnWheel
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| Posted 1/20/2002 6:26 PM (GMT -6) | | Doc, that really sounded like you were taking the situation now, after the fall, and deducing from there what "natural" is. This now is anything but natural.
(The same thing gave the world the concept of inherited guilt, and divine justice in punishing mankind.)
It appeared that you made evil into a necessity. The RCC tradition has the concept of "contraposto." You pretty much repeated it. Maybe you believe that.
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Empiress
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Date Joined Jan 2002
Total Posts : 363
| Posted 1/21/2002 12:49 AM (GMT -6) | | Doc said:
quote:
We can always ask "why no more good" and "why not less evil," but it seems to me that the testimonies of great love and great evil throughout history exemplify the inherent proportionality of our potentiality for both good and evil. And logic, it seems to me, testifies that this is a metaphysically necessary truth. The potential for one MUST be balanced by a potential for the other.
This reminds me of C.S. Lewis' view. I think it comes down to how one views the nature of good and evil. Augustine viewed them as linked, with evil merely being the absence of good. At any rate, most people see the two as inextricably linked and your premise seems to indicate this. However, I'm not so sure. It seems rather, good and evil are separate forces, independent entities altogether. Evil has it's own independent substance, form, and origin. The number of apples does not have to equate to the number of oranges. In that case, proportionality does not hold.
But even if evil and good are linked and the concept of proportionality holds, I still argue that there could/should be limits imposed on to how much suffering can be caused by evil, ie the depth of the effects of evil seem unecessary. I imagine a world in which sin affects the perpetrator and not innocents, or where sin does not have the power to murder or permanently damage a child's psyche, etc. The devastating effects of sin...that's something I can't account for.
An example would be fencing and sword fighting. It seems we're in a universe where there's no fencing, no "training"...we're all sword fighters and our first mistake could get us or someone else killed. In fencing, one has the full range of free choices, but the effects of one's mistakes are not fatal or permanent. They know when they've made wrong or good moves and they're gaining learning skills that they can later take into sword fighting (if necessary). Fencing allows people to LEARN more readily from mistakes; this learning is something that is short circuited in our current world where we're ONLY given real swords to begin with.
Thanks for the dialogue,
Empiress
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GregBoyd
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| Posted 1/21/2002 6:23 AM (GMT -6) | | POW: If I didn't see you name on it I would have thought it a good example to use in art history of Zoroastrian philosophy and world view… It appeared that you made evil into a necessity.
Doc: Zoroastrianism (at least as traditionally conceived) and all forms of dualism hold that good and evil are two co-eternally equally powerful realities. I hold to nothing of the sort. Note the crucial word POTENTIAL in my comment: "Can you have a potential "depth" of love of a certain magnitude without having a corresponding potential "depth" of anti-love (evil) of that same magnitude?" If creatures are going to have to potential to choose good, they must have the potential to choose evil – in roughly the same proportion. That is all.
Empiress: "most people see [good and evil] as inextricably linked and your premise seems to indicate this. However, I'm not so sure. It seems rather, good and evil are separate forces, independent entities altogether. Evil has it's own independent substance, form, and origin…In that case, proportionality does not hold. "
Doc: What is "evil" if not "what should be otherwise?" And how should it be otherwise? It should be BETTER. In short, evil is something falling short of a potential goodness it OUGHT to have had. In that sense I think the Platonic (hence Augustinian) definition of evil as "the absence of good" has something to it.
Having said that, I completely agree with you Empiress that in its actualized form, "good and evil are separate forces." The abstract definition of evil does not capture the radical nature of evil in its actuality. Evil in actuality occurs when agents choose it. We incarnate a potential we should have avoided. It now takes on all the force of the free will of the agent who chooses it.
If this understanding is correct, then proportionality applies. An agent who choose evil and bring about harm had – or may yet have – the power to choose good and bring about a proportionate amount of good.
Empiress: But even if evil and good are linked and the concept of proportionality holds, I still argue that there could/should be limits imposed on to how much suffering can be caused by evil, ie the depth of the effects of evil seem unecessary. I imagine a world in which sin affects the perpetrator and not innocents, or where sin does not have the power to murder or permanently damage a child's psyche, etc. The devastating effects of sin...that's something I can't account for.
Doc: Empiress, I’d really like to encourage you to give Satan and the Problem of Evil a read. I love your theological instincts. You ask all the right questions!
I address this very question at length in this work. I can get to the gist of my answer by asking you, What is the potential to love if not to benefit another? And thus, what is the potential for evil if not to harm another? IN other words, love is inherently relational, hence so is evil. This is what makes us morally responsible for one another.
In this sense humanity – and indeed the whole created society, including spirits – is a solidarity. We are woven together by the implications our decisions have on one another, hence by the responsibility to love that weaves us together. This is the "wholeness" dimension of reality that modern western individualism misses.
What do you think?
Doc
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PotOnWheel
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 1/21/2002 6:51 AM (GMT -6) | | Sorry to bud in, Doc. I was just surprised by what I thought I was reading. And I wanted your response. The Zor. was an easy answer--of course you are not. But a comparision/contrast between your own view and contra-posto would be really interesting. 
Nice posts, Empiress.
I'll get out of the way...because Doc set this up to dialog with you.
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Magneton
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Date Joined Aug 2001
Total Posts : 132
| Posted 1/21/2002 7:35 AM (GMT -6) | | Pow, concerning whether evil is necessary, Keith Ward's thoughts on suffering in God, Chance, and Necessity are useful.
Ward sees death, change, and decay to be necessary elements in the cosmos. The decay of nuclear particles result in atomic structure. The carbon required for life was formed by the explosion of stars. Humans can't be removed from this context of interaction, conflict, decay, and renewal that occurs from the nuclear level to that of animal relationships, and which makes life possible.
Ward goes on to say that God isn't free to change the initial necessary conditions that made the cosmos possible. Among these conditions is the possibility of much suffering; not all suffering is necessary, but the POSSIBILITY of it may be.
Ward also says that many (not all) forms of suffering are necessary corollaries of the most complex and intense forms of happiness. For example, the suffering of an innocent child results from the corruption of the goods of freedom, desire, and community. (p.197)
This is parallel to the "proportionality" Doc is talking about. Evil is not necessary, but the possibility of evil is necessary in our world.
Empiress, your idea of a world more like fencing, with risks limited, is very interesting. Ward talks about this also. Risk-taking and competition are part of what people use as they seek value (e.g. skydivers and rock climbers). If the risks are removed, so is much of the positive value of the experience. In a "fencing" world we could learn from our mistakes, but the "sword fighting" world gives us a lot more motivation to learn.  Hope I'm not taking the analogy too far - it's a good one.
Magneton
The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us. Paul Valery, 1895
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Vexen
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Date Joined Jan 2002
Total Posts : 55
| Posted 1/21/2002 8:08 AM (GMT -6) | | I would also like to see a comparison between Zorostainism's strict dualism and the things you said.
Doc: "In that sense I think the Platonic (hence Augustinian) definition of evil as "the absence of good" has something to it."
Although I can see absence of good as being seperation from God, I do not see that this automatically implies evil. Is there room to do good, and still be seperated from God?
Empiress: "But even if evil and good are linked and the concept of proportionality holds, I still argue that there could/should be limits imposed on to how much suffering can be caused by evil, ie the depth of the effects of evil seem unecessary. I imagine a world in which sin affects the perpetrator and not innocents, or where sin does not have the power to murder or permanently damage a child's psyche, etc. The devastating effects of sin...that's something I can't account for."
Doc: "IN other words, love is inherently relational, hence so is evil. This is what makes us morally responsible for one another."
Excellent answer, first time I've heard that! I would expand this to say it can be self-relationship, perhaps bending the terminology a bit, but saying you also have a relationship with yourself. It seems you can be self-evil, without directly affecting others.
I would like to throw another element into this discussion.
Natural Evil
Natural evil (volcanoes, earthquakes, etc) definately cause evil, suffering, and sometimes on quite a large scale and over quite a long period of time.
Do you believe that non-Human agents, spirits, jinn, demons, are responsible for these?
I think Empiress' question applies to both moral evil (as you have discussed so far) and natural evil. Why do the effects of this Evil have to be so great and rippling, continuing out and beyond the scope and responsibility of the free agent's initial ill choice?
--
Vexen
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PotOnWheel
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| Posted 1/21/2002 8:36 AM (GMT -6) | | Magneton:
Pow, concerning whether evil is necessary, Keith Ward's thoughts on suffering in God, Chance, and Necessity are useful.
Magneton: Ward sees death, change, and decay to be necessary elements in the cosmos. The decay of nuclear particles result in atomic structure. The carbon required for life was formed by the explosion of stars. Humans can't be removed from this context of interaction, conflict, decay, and renewal that occurs from the nuclear level to that of animal relationships, and which makes life possible.
PoW: In the eschaton, there will be no more death. Originally there was not death. I'm pretty quick to ask, then whether Keith ward is setting up the fallen world as "normal"; and it is far from normal. The 'word" of all things, by which the divine logos created and sustains things has not changed. But obviously things are different than they were. As testimony to the difference between the set of the norm of creation and the now of this world of slavery to sin and death, and the far ranging effective curse is huge.
Magneton: Ward goes on to say that God isn't free to change the initial necessary conditions that made the cosmos possible. Among these conditions is the possibility of much suffering; not all suffering is necessary, but the POSSIBILITY of it may be.
PoW: Interesting to look again at: "the initial necessary conditions that made the cosmos possible".
PoW: Can we say that god wasn't free to change....but we were? Apparently that is the case. We humans did change it, at least in bringing death into the creation. We corrupted our role as mediator and microcosm of eucharistically offering creation back to god in worship, and in so doing, by making ourselves into autonomous gods, we brought corruption into the creation. Maranatha!
Magneton: Ward also says that many (not all) forms of suffering are necessary corollaries of the most complex and intense forms of happiness. For example, the suffering of an innocent child results from the corruption of the goods of freedom, desire, and community. (p.197)
PoW: Happiness and suffering…. Hmm….. That sounds a little like the Patristic discoursed on "passions." (Which are not dualistic in treatment.) Not all "passions" are bad. (Chance was correct about that, in word; (though I didn't trust/understand the inner perspective from which he was saying it.) There is a godly hate of evil. There is a Godly lust after righteousness. But "passions" can distort our rational thinking. Passions can be the cause of a disconnect between the heart and mind. Passions can lead the intellect to take over everything and be the cause of inner darkness.
Magneton: This is parallel to the "proportionality" Doc is talking about. Evil is not necessary, but the possibility of evil is necessary in our world.
PoW: This part I want to take my time with: "the possibility of evil is necessary". Maybe so with respect to the single thing of freedom being necessary for humanity to be personal. But I'm not ready to agree that this has *any* form of "proportionality." Nu-uh.
PoW: I'd be more comfortable saying that possibilities are necessary for personal existence. And then saying along side that, that in history evil was brought about by personal acts. But I'm not going to say that GOD created "the possibility of evil". I'm not going to say that. No.
Thanks.
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P.S. No "cut-and-pastes" were injured in the making of this post.
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P.P.S. I have always appreciated Doc's remarks and word-pictures about the relationsl (can I say...) structure of creaturly reality. (That should be stretched to include all the natural, non-intellegent creation too.)
PoW
Edited by - potonwheel on 01/21/2002 1:38:17 PM | | Back to Top | | |
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Semeia
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Date Joined Aug 2001
Total Posts : 522
| Posted 1/21/2002 9:32 AM (GMT -6) | | PoW said: It appeared that you made evil into a necessity.
Empiress said: At any rate, most people see the two as inextricably linked and your premise seems to indicate this. However, I'm not so sure. It seems rather, good and evil are separate forces, independent entities altogether. Evil has it's own independent substance, form, and origin. The number of apples does not have to equate to the number of oranges. In that case, proportionality does not hold.
Semeia: For human beings to have free will, evil is a necessary possibility. But Doc is NOT saying that every time someone does something really loving that somewhere in the world someone HAS TO BE doing something equally evil--as if good and evil are some sort of teeter-totter that one has to go down if the other one goes up. If that were true, the quickest way to minimize evil would be to kill all the Mother Theresas of the world in order to prevent the Hitlers and Stalins from existing. But of course no one would ever suggest that because it's obvious that that's not the way it works.
As I understand him Doc is talking about the fact that for one to have the CAPACITY for great love this necessarily entails (by the nature of freedom) that one has the same CAPACITY for great evil. The proportionality is all about possibility. But it is up to each individual what we choose.
Empiress said: But even if evil and good are linked and the concept of proportionality holds, I still argue that there could/should be limits imposed on to how much suffering can be caused by evil, ie the depth of the effects of evil seem unecessary. I imagine a world in which sin affects the perpetrator and not innocents, or where sin does not have the power to murder or permanently damage a child's psyche, etc. The devastating effects of sin...that's something I can't account for.
An example would be fencing and sword fighting. It seems we're in a universe where there's no fencing, no "training"...we're all sword fighters and our first mistake could get us or someone else killed. In fencing, one has the full range of free choices, but the effects of one's mistakes are not fatal or permanent. They know when they've made wrong or good moves and they're gaining learning skills that they can later take into sword fighting (if necessary). Fencing allows people to LEARN more readily from mistakes; this learning is something that is short circuited in our current world where we're ONLY given real swords to begin with.
Semeia: Parenthood quickly teaches that the nature of freedom prevents this sort of protection. We want our children to grow up and have great fulfilling lives. But we cannot ensure that they will do so by locking them in a room where they will never come near a car or a pedophile or a gun or a drug or a fire or any other bad thing you can think of. If they are going to run and play in the leaves there is also going to be a street somewhere nearby. If they are going to go to school and be out among other human beings there is always the risk that someone will find an opportunity to hurt them. As parents, we can do our job to the best of our ability to try to protect them, but at a certain point the protections start to diminish life, rather than enhance it. If as a family if we go out boating on a lake, I make sure that the children are all wearing life-jackets. But the truth is that while we're out boating another boat could slam into ours (which happens here every once in a while) and we could still be killed. To prevent this possibility I could control my children's world to the extent that they never went out on a boat, but then we would lose the experience of finding that secluded outcropping of rock, where we pile out with our fishing poles and boxes of crackers, to picnic and explore the little wild place, to follow the stream that suddenly curves into a turbulent surprising rapids hidden down a secret path in the woods, as a deer freezes and startles in front of us.
As a child my most vivid memories are of sneaking away to a forbidden place. We lived overlooking Valentine Lake (where Bethel college is located). We were forbidden to play down at the lake for these reasons:
1) We could drown.
2) We could break our necks jumping off the rope swing someone threw over a tree branch that overhung the lake.
3) We could be kidnapped. (My mother was certain of this one.)
4) We could be killed crossing the busy street (old Snelling) that separated our neighborhood from the lake.
5) We could be molested or raped by the "characters" who hung out down by the lake. (Characters was the word my mother used for all bad suspicious people, which represented for her a large portion of humanity.) Of particular concern was the tunnel (a four or five foot tall drainage pipe) that ran under the highway, littered with liquor bottles and beer cans, giving an indication of the activity that took place there.
6) We could get leeches and "cooties" from swimming in the swampy water. (It was pretty gross that way; the bottom of the lake was silty and muddy and tangled with underwater plants that would wrap around your leg and make you think someone was trying to pull you under, and there WERE leeches, a lot of them.)
Because the lake was forbidden I made it my life's mission to spend as much time there as I could, and since I was the sixth out of seven kids and my mother slept a lot from exhaustion and depression, I succeeded to an amazing degree. Everything about it that was dangerous was also what made it alive. The homes on the other side of the street were up on a wooded hill, so even though the lake was right next to the road it was very secluded, and it was easy to hide along both the swampy and wooded edges of it. There were frogs and minnows and bullheads and redwing blackbirds and mallards and wood ducks and even the occasional heron that would flap up suddenly with their funny long awkward legs. When you were down next to the lake the sound of the frogs and the crickets would drown out the hum of traffic from the freeway on the far side. (That was over thirty years ago--now the traffic gives off an incessant high-pitched squeal all day long.) The smell of the reeds and the mud under the hot sun, or the spring thaw (the most dangerous and also most exhilarating time to be at the lake) as rivulets of melting snow started to run, revealing rancid patches of last year's dead leaves as the ice at the edges began to give way to persistent life.
What was most dangerous about the lake was its seclusion, but that also happened to be what was most precious about it. If I fell in (I played at its edges long before I knew how to swim) no one would have been there to pull me out. But the freedom and mystery and solitude that I experienced in the hours spent exploring there also in a very real way kept me alive, in giving me respite from the chaos of my unhappy, crazed, desperately surviving family. Is it possible to have life without the danger that freedom entails? I don't see how. You would have to put a fence up around the lake to keep children from drowning. You would have to have guards stationed around, to keep the "characters" away from the isolated spots. You would have to regulate everything. You would have to lock people up at the slightest sign that something was wrong. Part of what is precious about life on this planet is that it is not eternal, in the sense of preserving what is experienced. What I mean is that every moment is letting go of the previous moment, and any attempt we make to preserve life really only preserves death, like the glass-eyed animals in a taxidermy shop. I incessantly take pictures of my three children, because I so badly want to preserve this moment of incandescent beauty and life, but in the act of taking the photo I actually rob from the present in order to bring the past into the future. It is a deal I make with the devil in a fallen world, because I don’t trust God so completely that I am able to give up storing treasures on earth, the treasure of my child standing in the sunlight at the edge of a lake with her hair golden as light glitters in a dance across the deep dark of the water that she studies, looking for something I can’t fathom even though I looked for the same thing, the same deep desire that stirs in the wild places, that is satisfied only with the dissatisfaction of not being able to contain what it seeks, because what it seeks is alive and separate and changing and delightful in its surprise. And yet being human at that moment my daughter might as well be across an ocean from me so impenetrable is the distance between us, and so I settle for a photo, an emulsion on a flat piece of lifeless paper, because it feels like death to forget this moment, to let it elapse and disappear into the trillion moments that my terrible memory cannot hold, and so I do this false thing to it, hoping to remember, even though what the image lacks is life, no matter how insightful the camera angle, no matter how I study it and think about it and try to remember it.
We used to pitch a tent on the front lawn of the neighbor’s house, one of my sisters, my best friend and her sister, and another girl, when I was nine or ten or eleven. When all the lights in the neighborhood would go out, one by one, and we were sure all the parents were asleep, we would leave. We would walk sometimes for miles in the dark, sometimes around the lake, sometimes toward the little town of New Brighton. If a car would come we would dive into the weeds next to the road. We were terrified and exhilarated in the moonlight, barefoot and bug-bitten and out of our minds. My friend’s parents would have been drinking late, and we were confident they wouldn’t stir from their stupor to check on us. Our legs would bleed from racing through swamp or woods in the dark, scratched by branches and reeds, and our hair wild and trying to muffle our screams and laughter so no one would wake up and call the police. We would do round-off back handsprings on the bumpy front lawn, which isn’t that wise in the daylight, and positively stupid at midnight, but somehow we managed not to break our necks. Oh thank God for drunk and exhausted parents, that we could sometimes live life in the moonlight, and hear the owl and something rustling nearby and dare each other to do some new act of stupidity, and frighten each other out of our wits with utter joy in the moonlight.
It seems to me that what God does above all else is let life happen.
There is a wildness in love and beauty that emerges in proportion to the risk taken, that in fact cannot exist without risk. I do not believe in utopia, on earth or in heaven, because I’m not willing to trade the unpredictable surprise for perfection. That is why I believe God learns: because I believe he is alive. I believe he is alive and he sometimes laughs in surprise at some unexpected silliness, just as he grieves at the unbearable suffering and loss.
Christians tend to focus on the “will” part of free will, but to me all of life arises out of the “free”.
Just now as I was finishing this my ten-year-old daughter was heading out with my husband to go skiing at Afton. I was giving all my “mom” precautions: “Don’t forget your gloves and hat and be careful on the ski lift and are you sure your coat is going to be enough, maybe you should grab a sweater…” And at a certain point my daughter stood at the top of the stairs and said, “Mom, stop it. Leave me alone. I’m fine.” And I said, “Yes, but you’re my darling daughter and I love you.” To which she replied, “Too MUCH!” and flashed me a huge smile which accepted my love while demanding from me the courage to let her go to live her own life racing on skis down a dangerous hill when I know full well that people break their legs and their necks and even sometimes lose their life doing the same thing.
Semeia
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Semeia
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Total Posts : 522
| Posted 1/21/2002 9:38 AM (GMT -6) | | Ok, I see that there are a bunch of new posts since I started writing my response, so I'll go back and read everything and hope what I have said is not completely irrelevant!
Semeia
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Magneton
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Date Joined Aug 2001
Total Posts : 132
| Posted 1/21/2002 10:11 AM (GMT -6) | | Vexen and PoW,
I'd recommend looking at the Doc and Natural Evil thread, which looked at the issues you've raised here. I quote from a posting I made in that thread:quote:
I agree with Semeia that we can't identify the brutal aspects of nature with evil. As she so eloquently states we call it evil because of "preconceptions of what things ought to be." I also agree with her that the fossil record argues against the view that violence and physical death originated with the Fall.
The universe is contingent and certainly COULD have been another way. But this is due not only to willful acts of free-will agents, but also to truly random features in nature about which moral judgements are irrelevant, rendering judgements about what "SHOULD have been" meaningless. Thus "natural evil" is an oxymoron: that which is evil is not natural, and that which is natural is not evil. This reminds me of the quote by Samuel Johnson: "Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good."
Just as God granted SPIRITUAL freedom to allow the development of beings who could become meaningfully related to him, he granted PHYSICAL freedom to the universe to allow it to develop in a valuable state. Rather than a "blueprint" universe in which each particle is predetermined, God included random/chaotic features which allowed the universe to undergo a process of self-adaptation in which each component can adapt to its environment. The universe is more interesting and valuable by virtue of this "freedom."
Just as granting free will to spirit beings entailed risk of evil, so granting this freedom to the creation entailed risk of violence and destructive events, and the attendant suffering. In both cases this was a necessary risk in order to achieve the desired outcome. (The evil and suffering are not necessary, but the risk or possibility of them occurring is.) Keith Ward has written along these lines in God, Chance, and Necessity.
I will grant that the Fall of angelic beings provided them with motives to use their influence in the cosmos destructively. The Fall of humans provided similar motives for humankind to harm the environment, as well as openings for these demons to exercise their destructive influence on it. However, I would think that the majority of what we "think should be some other way" in nature is a consequence of a universe created with the freedom to develop into a valuable state. With Don, I wonder how extensive and effective is demonic influence in nature.
What would our interaction with nature look like had the Fall not occurred? Obviously this is something we can never know, but I offer some speculation to flesh out this view. I think the biggest difference would be in US as humans rather than in NATURE.
Firstly, our PRIORITIES would be very different. The potential dangers of nature would still be there, but in a truly global community of love, all people would have access to protection. Our technology would be more focused on the priorities of anticipating and protecting people from earthquakes, tornadoes, and the like. In our earthquake-proof, tornado-proof homes and public places we would be free to celebrate these displays of nature's power with awe and admiration rather than fear. Or maybe better priorities in commerce and community would lead us not to inhabit dangerous regions.
This unfallen world would not eliminate all risk for us. Just as God took risks in creating the universe and spiritual beings, we who are made in God's image would take risks in our activities to achieve valuable states. Things like rock-climbing and skydiving would still entail risk, although more of our resources would have been directed toward personal safety in equipment and procedures. Newton's laws of motion would still apply for skydivers: pain and physical death would still be a reality. As "Skydiver Doc" would testify, just as God's risks resulted in a better creation than would otherwise have resulted, there are risks that we take which result in a better experience. So a second major difference would be in our PERCEPTIONS. All of humankind would recognize the real role of our life on this earth as a development process for eternal life with God. Physical death would be viewed in truth the way we today can only bravely try to describe it - as a homegoing and entry point to an eternal life that transcends our physical limitations.
A third difference would be in our PRACTICE. Our ability to cope with the uncertainties that life on this planet brings us would be far better. For example, in the face of death, our support system would meet the needs of orphans and widows.
Implicit in this view is the idea that planet earth was NEVER intended to be our eternal home (which is a good thing, because it's not going to last forever).
PoW, perhaps this helps you see my view, that the Fall introduced SPIRITUAL death rather than PHYSICAL death.
Magneton
Mathematics gets its semblance of reality by never saying what it is talking about. Bertrand Russell
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Semeia
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Date Joined Aug 2001
Total Posts : 522
| Posted 1/21/2002 10:17 AM (GMT -6) | | Hey Magneton, Thanks! I was just looking all over for that thread to post it here for Vexen. You beat me to it!
Semeia
"The opposite of sin is not virtue, but faith."--Soren Kierkegaard | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
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Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 1/21/2002 10:24 AM (GMT -6) | | Semeia, you REALLY make me miss the old neighborhood.
I used to miss the bus on purpose so that I could ski across the hills and across the swamps to MV.
(appologies to the rest of you that didnt' grow up on the edge of Eden.) | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
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Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 1/21/2002 10:29 AM (GMT -6) | | Semeia: For human beings to have free will, evil is a necessary possibility.
PoW: I think that that is just of't-repeated jargon.
I'd say that For human beings to have free will, "possibilities are a necessary possibility." And I'd put on a rider that evil can be one of those possibilities. But it is the very nature of personal action that gives that separation. Sin was OURS, and egged on by a the person of the Devil. This all was not in the logoi of creation!!!!!!!!!
To say that would be to say that sin is "natural" -- and its not!
I think its just of't-repeated jargon.
PoW
Edited by - potonwheel on 01/21/2002 3:32:48 PM | | Back to Top | | |
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Semeia
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Date Joined Aug 2001
Total Posts : 522
| Posted 1/21/2002 10:29 AM (GMT -6) | | PoW, all they have is this , but I'm smiling very wistfully, too.
(This was for the previous post about the neighborhood...)
Thanks,
Semeia
"The opposite of sin is not virtue, but faith."--Soren Kierkegaard
Edited by - Semeia on 01/21/2002 3:38:58 PM | | Back to Top | | |
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Mephi2K
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Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 713
| Posted 1/21/2002 10:30 AM (GMT -6) | |
processtheologyfreedomlovintreehugginutopiaville.
Riiiight.  | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
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Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 1/21/2002 10:31 AM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 1/21/2002 10:36 AM (GMT -6) | | Semeia: For human beings to have free will, evil is a necessary possibility.
PoW: I think that that is just of't-repeated jargon.
I'd say that For human beings to have free will, "possibilities are a necessary possibility." And I'd put on a rider that evil can be one of those possibilities. BUT it is the very nature of personal action that gives that separation. Sin was OURS, and egged on by a the person of the Devil. This all was not in the logoi of creation!!!!!!!!!
To say that would be to say that sin is "natural" -- and its not!
I think its just of't-repeated jargon.
PoW
Edited by - potonwheel on 01/21/2002 3:47:31 PM | | Back to Top | | |
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Semeia
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Date Joined Aug 2001
Total Posts : 522
| Posted 1/21/2002 10:37 AM (GMT -6) | | PoW said: Semeia: For human beings to have free will, evil is a necessary possibility.
PoW: I think that that is just of't-repeated jargon.
I'd say that For human beings to have free will, possibilities are a necessary possibility." And I'd put on a rider that evil can be one of those possibilities. But it is the very nature of personal action that gives that separation. Sin was OURS, and egged on by a the person of the Devil. This all was not in the logoi of creation!!!!!!!!!
To say that would be to say that sin is "natural" -- and its not!
I think its just of't-repeated jargon.
Semeia: But PoW, evil IS a possibility with free will, by definition. It is in the set of possibilities. And the fall happened about five minutes after creation, if you believe Genesis. Is God so lacking in intelligence that this completely caught him by surprise? Is God such a bad creator, that he just couldn't get it right with life? Or are sin and evil (which are not at all the same things) something that arise from life and consciousness, and you can't risk one (life) without the other (sin or evil)?
Semeia
"The opposite of sin is not virtue, but faith."--Soren Kierkegaard | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 1/21/2002 10:44 AM (GMT -6) | | Semeia, perhaps you missed this part:
And I'd put on a rider that evil can be one of those possibilities. BUT it is the very nature of personal action that gives that separation. Sin was OURS, and egged on by a the person of the Devil. This all was not in the logoi of creation!!!!!!!!!
I think that the distinction is big. And that the significant is immense!
I think that they system that you posted above is a closed (process) system. I don't think that it takes the full picture into consideration -- Genesis AND Revelation.
PoW
Edited by - potonwheel on 01/21/2002 3:48:30 PM | | Back to Top | | |
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Semeia
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Date Joined Aug 2001
Total Posts : 522
| Posted 1/21/2002 10:47 AM (GMT -6) | | Mephi said: processtheologyfreedomlovintreehugginutopiaville
Semeia: If that was for me you MUST take out that UTOPIA word! Ixnay on the Nutopianay!!! And "tree huggin" also misrepresents... but I'd go for "tree climbin" for sure...
Talk to me!
Semeia
"The opposite of sin is not virtue, but faith."--Soren Kierkegaard | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
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Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 1/21/2002 10:49 AM (GMT -6) | | You're on, Meph.
I gotta go.
(See you later, Semeia.) | | Back to Top | | |
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Semeia
Registered Member
Date Joined Aug 2001
Total Posts : 522
| Posted 1/21/2002 10:51 AM (GMT -6) | | I don't know what you mean, PoW. Are you saying that God could have created creatures with free will without risking evil?
I don't get it.
Semeia
"The opposite of sin is not virtue, but faith."--Soren Kierkegaard | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 1/21/2002 11:00 AM (GMT -6) | | Possibilities are necessary.
Evil is a choice.
They are different categories. | | Back to Top | | |
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