Theodicy pt 1

Dale Hathaway

Week of March 23, 2020

Created: 2020-03-18 Wed 11:08

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The Problem of Evil

  • The word theodicy derives from the Greek words
Θεός Τheos "God"
δίκη dikē "Justice"

Humanity seems to never learn

elie_wiesel_1.jpg Youtube Elie Wiesel asks, "What are we doing?"

We must remember

What is the Problem of Evil?*

  • actually a cluster of "problems" related to understanding Sacred reality
  • Why does good fortune turn to bad? (Psalms)
  • Why do the righteous suffer and the wicked flourish? (Hindu)

Problem of Evil (Christianity)

1-2a We’ve been hearing about this, God, all our lives. Our fathers told us the stories their fathers told them, … 9-12 But now you’ve walked off and left us, you’ve disgraced us and won’t fight for us. You made us turn tail and run; those who hate us have cleaned us out. You delivered us as sheep to the butcher, you scattered us to the four winds. You sold your people at a discount— you made nothing on the sale.

(Psalm 44)

Problem of Evil Hinduism

The world is so confused and out of joint, why does Brahma not set it straight? If he is master of the whole world, Brahma, lord of the many beings born, why in the whole world did he ordain misfortune? Why did he not make the whole world happy? . . .Why did he make the world with deception, lies, and excess, with injustice?

(A very early example of an explicit statement of the problem of evil – the justice of God – occurs in a BUddhist text that satirizes the Hindu's failure to come to terms with the problem.)

Logical dilemma

  • God's omnipotence (power), God's benevolence (goodness), and God's justice together seem incompatible with the presence of evil in the world
    • If God can change the world, and God is good, how can there be evil?
    • If God allows evil can God be said to be "good"?
    • If God is good but cannot prevent evil – can it be said that God is powerful?

Theodicy

It is argued that if God is all-merciful, all-powerful, perfect-justice

and there is evil:

only 2 of those can be true

God is merciful and powerful but not just
God is merciful and just but not powerful
God is powerful and just but not merciful

It is a dilemma, even for non-religious

The psychologist M. Scott Peck wrote a book in the 1980's titled The People of the Lie. In it he argued that people engaged in evil acts are at the deepest level lying, betraying the truth. cf. the web site: Scott Peck

The Holocaust (Shoah)

  • the 20th c. gave us the example of Hitler's Final Solution – the attempt to exterminate the world's population of Jews.
  • It has been called holocaust which in the Bible means an offering to God
  • Some propose today that it be called shoah which means catastrophe
  • Note the difference the two words imply

Slavery

  • For our country the effects of slavery are still affected by racism
  • In the American context there is perhaps no better example of evil than the presence and justification for slavery – from the earliest years of the Republic
  • the Bible and Christianity were used to justify slavery and are still used to justify racism

Genocide e.g. Native American

  • From an even earlier period in the Caucasian invasion of North America is the genocide perpetrated on Native Americans by Europeans colonizing North America
  • there are models in the Bible that illustrate total annihilation

“blot out their names from under heaven” (Deut. 29:20). Indeed, he vowed to destroy them and the land “like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah…which the Lord destroyed in his fierce anger…’” (Deut. 29:23)

cherem or "ban" refers to the total destruction of an enemy (of Israel) but ultimately came to refer to an offering to God

Extinction Environmental Catastrophe

  • many would argue that the mounting catastrophe of the abuse of the environment and the possibility of the extinction of life as we know it may be the largest example of all
  • Is it a matter of utter self-concern, a disregard for those who come after, a willful deceit?

Some bibliographical links

Justifications for slavery

Justifications for genocide

Other links

Created by Dale Hathaway.