David Silberstein wrote: > > On Sun, 1 Dec 2002, Mia McDavid wrote: > > >Irritatingly, it can. That is, if I believe that God is the source > >of all that is good, and that he/she loves us, then I believe that > >nothing that is hateful or evil originates with God, but with the > >sinful desires of people. > > > Everything that is good, comes from God. Everything that is evil, > >comes from our wills opposing God. > > Mm. Problem-of-evil time in your model: How do explain natural > disasters that kill and maim thousands? How do you explain disease > (that doesn't just kill, but kills as slow torture)? How about > genetic disease (that doesn't just kill slowly, but kills an innocent > child slowly)? > The normal response is to talk about the effects of living in a fallen world, and about free will as opposed to other values. Theodicy is too long a topic to get into here, within these constraints; and many answers can sound either flip or hard-hearted. The simplest way to talk about it is to say that we live in a world which God has allowed, by and large, to run by its own laws; he intervenes directly only very rarely and very economically and unobviously, precisely to leave us free will. We also have the capacities that the rule of nature has granted us -- no magical foresight, and no perfect judgement. In a world into which no (moral) evil had ever entered, things might be different; but as it stands, there are lots of processes which will flatten you if you get in their way (like earthquakes) which aren't bad in themselves, and lots of things which don't run perfectly all the time, like cell replication controls that can go off the rails and cause cancer. So God provides us, principally, with subtler assistance: "God will send no trial which he will not also send the strength to meet" -- assuming that we ourselves are willing to try rather than simply being carried. And in the long run, given the doctrines of the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come, he provides a context which can counterbalance the problems _in hac lacrimarum valle_. > Or did you say that the natural world isn't subject to the will of > God, and therefore God can't be blamed? Oddly enough, that's the way > Bujold's Chalion seems to work. Interesting theology. It's what a mediaeval would have said, almost: after the fall, God handed over the world to the governance of Nature/Fortuna (seen as a tutelary spirit like the planetary rulers) instead of ruling directly, and thus the world's events are governed, below the orbit of the moon, differently than above it. -- James Burbidge jamesandmary.burbidge at sympatico.ca