The Problem of Evil (part 3)

Well, so far its been really interesting. I appreciate anyone who's still reading along at this point. High five.

So far I've laid out some basic ideas surrounding the idea that evil exists because God can't do anything about it because humans have free will/free choice and God doesn't know exactly what decisions we're going to make because God doesn't necessarily have foreknowledge. That's the summation of the past two posts, more or less.

I signed up a little while back on HomebrewedChristianity.com to be part of a blogger's book review of sorts. Basically, they send me books, I read them, then I blog about them. I have really procrastinated in writing about them, but have really enjoyed reading them. I got four books, all from Process and Faith--a group that centers their writings around process theology. Up until reading the receiving them, I was fairly ignorant as to the specifics of process theology. The first book ("Why Whitehead?" by John B Cobb, Jr.) is the script from a lecture given by Cobb about the importance of Alfred North Whitehead--a mathematician and philosopher who greatly influenced the genesis process theology. The next book, "Evolution Without Tears: A 3rd Way beyond Neo-Darwinism and Intelligent Design" by David Ray Griffin, was concise but informative. He basically lays out the 13 most important aspects of Neo-Darwinism, the critical aspects of intelligent design, and then the 13 most important parts of Whiteheadian Evolution (which seeks to reconcile the two). The third book, "What is Process Thought?" by Jay McDaniel, was particularly interesting. It lays out the history of process thought, its key ideas, what fallacies it tries to avoid, and the branches within it. The most helpful part was an appendix where he addresses the issues and controversies of process theology.

The final book, "How Are God and Evil Related?" by David Ray Griffin, was far and away the most interesting to me. Since I was already studying the concept, the book was a great read. Griffin sets up the problem of evil, historical approaches to addressing the problem (and what those views' conclusions really are), and how process theology seeks to reconcile the view of a loving God and a world with ever-present evil, suffering and pain. A major part of this book is discussing the act of Creation.

Regardless of your view on HOW Creation happened (whether by God literally creating or by God jump-starting the evolutionary process), all Creation discussion must start with a look at the opening of the book of Genesis which says (in most English translations): "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty..." Which is interesting. See, when I took Hebrew 1, this was one of the first things we translated. I remember talking with Dr Veenker about the words used here, and the class agreed a better translation (though not as literal, but more appropriate to our vernacular) was probably: "When God began creating the heaven and earth, the earth was without form and empty..."

Back to the book-- Griffin echoes this point: that creation was out of chaos rather than out of nothing. It WAS a widely held view that God created/shaped/designed the universe out of pre-existing chaotic matter. (Most Jewish translations of Genesis still translate it "When God began creating..." When Genesis still existed only in Hebrew, the idea was fairly universal from what I've found.) Long story short, along comes this dude named Marcion, espousing the idea that evil exists because the things causing it (human or otherwise) were made from evil matter. In reaction to that, guys like Tertullian and Irenaeus supported a new idea of creation "ex nihilo," meaning creation "out of nothing." (Its easy to deny the world being made from evil matter if it was made from nothing.) But Hermogenes and others warned that this "ex nihilo" would leave Christians (as Griffin says) with a big hole in the argument: with this view, there is no explanation for evil. You see, if we were made from chaos, then there is still chaos in all of us. God did not put it there, it was simply already there. Since God gave humans free will, and they already had chaos within them, then they had the power to digress to that chaos at times. But if the universe and all that is in it was created out of nothing, then God is responsible for all matter. Good matter or bad matter, its all God's doing. Needless to say, Tertullian's views became the prevalent perspective and Hermogenes was labeled a heretic by his peers who stood in opposition to his views. (Funny how that happens.)

But what if we returned to the Genesis idea of "creation out of chaos?" What implications follow along with that viewpoint?

Griffin says there are four variables now: 1, the capacity to enjoy positive value; 2, the capacity to suffer evil; 3, the power of self-determination or freedom; 4, the power to influence others (for good or bad). Basically he says that there is a necessary positive correlation between the points--meaning that if one of the variables goes up, so do the others. Follow me here: compare a cat and a human using this chart. Think about the cat. It can enjoy positive value (good things) in life. It can suffer evil. It has freedom to make some of its own choices. It has the power to influence others. Now compare the cat to the human. The human can do all of these things as well, but to a MUCH greater level than the cat. While we (humans) have the capacity for far greater good than the cat, we also have the capacity to create far greater amounts of evil. Process theology holds this to be very important because it answers a critical question: "Why didn't God create a world with all the good but without the bad?" A process theologian's response would be: because he couldn't. In a world where there was a capacity for humans to experience great joy, love and happiness, there would also be the opportunity for hate, loss, and pain. For God to create beings with the freedom to choose good but no freedom to choose bad means there is no real freedom. The beings in that situation would have no choice--they would be robots who do good all the time. This is probably the biggest pro and con for the free will argument.

What does all this mean?

While God is still responsible for everything, she is not blameworthy. If God has created humans with the capacity for the best "good" experiences, then humans also have the capacity for the worst "bad" experiences. If humans have the freedom of choice and God has no foreknowledge of what those choices are (good or evil), then God cannot stop them. Therefore, God is not responsible for the pain, suffering, and evil that is ever-present on the Earth.

All of this is dependent upon the rejection of the idea of creation "ex nihilo." I don't have the time or energy to write a defense of this, so feel free to spend time researching, reading and investigating the idea for yourself. I just don't find it to be a clear idea Biblically. So when you throw the assumption of creation "out of nothing" out the window, it raises lots of other questions. That's how I ended up here. That's how I can sleep at night. God is love. God didn't create evil. God didn't predestine evil. God created order out of chaos. We all have some of this chaos in us. We also have the freedom of self-determinism. In this freedom is the ability to choose really good and really bad things. While God knows about every choice we could make, he doesn't know what choice we will actually make. Therefore, if we choose really bad things, we are responsible for the outcome of those choices and not God.

Wow. That was a lot of writing. I hope this made some sense (as far as my perspective and argument goes). Up next is "The Problem of Evil (part 4)." In it, I wanna talk about God's nature and how it would be different if he has no foreknowledge.