Hi Dave
Your OP has really resonated with me. Some people believe that ‘hell’ is this life and whilst I am grateful for so many things, I can also see the sense in this belief. At least, it seems like hell for many people. I’ve put a song on the “Songs of worship, adoration and experience” thread but I’m not so daft as to believe that it will help. The problem for me is, at certain times, being able to trust that the lyrics of the song are true.
God bless
John
Thanks John - I am totally pickin’ up what you are layin’ down. 
I’ve been recalling Hans Kung’s book Does God Exist?, which I’ve read a couple of times. The book is written in what I call a “V” pattern - it starts out with some high questions, and then step-by-step raises devastating arguments against God’s existence, each argument going deeper and deeper, until he hits the bottom of the “V”. Then he starts building, up the other side of the “V”, to a large affirmative conclusion.
The point I want to make is about the bottom of the “V” - where we are at the point of complete nihilism, utter meaninglessness - and the question is:: How do we get out of this?
And his answer ?- we dig deep inside, and we either say Yes or NO to existence. Do we, deep down, affirm life and creation, or do we, deep down, accept the conditions of reality as being negative, meaningless?
The first time I read the book, I was discouraged by his answer at this point. I had hoped he would unveil a secret philosophical lever by which he could move the world; a foundation of thought and belief from which he would then answer and overcome each of the negations on the downward side of the “V”. Well he does overcome them, and convincingly, but the foundation turns out to be a very human, basic attitude. Trust? Or wander in the Void somewhere? That positive, existential answer of Yes is the pivot, the lever, the foundation of the answer to despair. There is much work to do after getting to this point, but no progress at all unless that choice is made.
‘Foundationalism’ in philosophy and other disciplines is not much in favor nowadays; the question of God’s existence has come to a standoff, intellectually; the question is whether a believer is justified in her belief. I believe we are justified, and I can give many reasons for it, as can you. But the fact that this ‘I’, this blade of grass that grows one day and is gone the next, is important in all this, overwhelms me. Perhaps, if one was raised in a very positive home, where parents had actually considered deeper issues and confidently faced the world in spite of them, it would be easier. For most of us, that is not the case, and we have out work cut out for us.
For me, that’s an extremely long post. And maybe TMI? In any case it is offered with love.
Hi Dave,
I don’t have a lot new to say on the theodicy subject, but I’ve come more and more to question the ability of God to intervene in our world in the way we think he should. This is, of course, one arm of the Euthyphro dilemma— that of omnipotence. My own suspicion is that there are certain metaphysical constraints that prevent God from acting as we think he should. The idea of everything happening because that’s what God wanted to happen is difficult to accept. I think God** does do everything he is capable of to prevent evil in the universe he’s created, but despite some metaphysical limitations, is able to make it all “right” in the end. As you know, I’m a fan of MacDonald who at times seems to believe that everything **that happens is due to a divine providence, but in a letter to his father, he expressed ignorance of whether this was only true of those who had turned to God or “unbelievers” as well. He certainly expressed the idea that God was doing everything he could to make things right—and the difficulty of this.
I suppose I’m not quite ready to limit God in the way the “process theologians” do (as far as I understand them), but I think there may be some truth in their ideas (Hartshorn and Whitehead specifically). As I’ve said before, I think we need to leave the God of the “Omnis” aside and embrace the Abba that Jesus knew-- despite our imperfect understanding.
I doubt this helps much, but thought I’d post it anyway.
All the best,
Steve
“He certainly expressed the idea that God was doing everything he could to make things right—and the difficulty of this.”
Maybe GMac is right. But I would be saddened if it so; plus, it is contra-indicated by scripture and the Creeds: We believe in God the Father, Almighty…etc. It would take a large paradigm shift for me to go that far in GMac’s direction, but it may be necessary.
I try to err on the side of Sovereign Love, Wisdom, Incomprehensibility, Goodness, all of the ‘traditional’ attributes of God; or,to follow Anselm, God is that ‘than which nothing greater can be conceived’. I don’t think we are able to overestimate the attributes of God.
For moderns, the POE limits what can be thought of God - even if we admit that we cannot solve the problem, by default it colors, influences, distorts (probably) our conception of Who God is. I’d like to not think of it - but it’s like a bone in the throat, it’s always there and demands to be removed.
Well it’s getting late and the brain is tired. A good night’s sleep, some eggs and toast and good strong coffee in the morning will do me wonders.
Thanks, Steve, for the post.
I suppose it’s difficult however you approach it, Dave. It seems to come down to a question of omnipotence and omni-benevalence, and I lean towards omni-benevalence–metaphysical limitations on omnipotence seem to make a lot of sense to me.
The real difficulty is explaining apparent “miracles” (i.e. the roof funds) and the apparent inability to prevent evils such as you’ve described. (And I’m not at the point where I discount miracles). I do think the traditional philosophical portrayal of the omnipotent theistic God is off base.
Cheers Dave - I fear that if I begin Kung’s book I’ll probably give up at the bottom of the V. If I read you right, I don’t think we are far apart in how we see things. I am always inclined to intellectual tomes (still) but feel I should resist. I have reached a point where I feel the only REALLY spiritual answers I will find are experiential. Though I am disinclined to the act of surrender it requires, I should spend more time in prayerful meditation/communion in order to find those answers.
Steve - you’ve raised a very interesting point for me when you said:
That seems to be the only rational explanation for the hell on earth we see on TV (or closer to home).
In addition, I can also see that idea being a way of holding Arminian ECT as logically plausible (whether I like it or not). ie if one is an Open Theist (God cannot know the future) and we can conceive of metaphysical constraints on God beyond the eschaton, then it is perfectly reasonable to hold to the view that God loves ALL persons and does everything in His power to save ALL and yet, a number unknown to Him at the beginning of creation (possibly even the vast majority) end up in Eternal Conscious Torment.
I have known some on this forum who dismiss this possibility when I have previously raised it, but I have never seen a decent argument against it and would like, very much, to read one.
Thankfully there is enough evidence in scripture for me to hope otherwise, and I cannot see Calvinism as logically consistent, so I remain in hope.
Hi Dave,
I quote from your post where you explain how Kung ascends fromthe bottom of the V :
.the foundation turns out to be a very human, basic attitude. Trust? Or wander in the Void somewhere? That positive, existential answer of Yes is the pivot, the lever, the foundation of the answer to despair. There is much work to do after getting to this point, but no progress at all unless that choice is made…"
Try this prayer/meditation:
Dear Lord I kneel
And in silence seal
My lips and mind
Before my heart
I cross my hands
And in yours
I trust my life.
That was written at the bottom of the V some nearly sixty years ago and gradually helped an ascent upwards, and has helped many times since when human frailty leads down the slippery side of the V …!!
Blessings
Michael in Barcelona.
"em
That is a warm and encouraging meditation, thank you Michael. I think I will use it.
Blessings
Dave
On the question of omnipotence and omniscience, I suppose there are technical definitions for those words, but a lot of us probably define them in our own ways. I think that if God knows (or can know) all that can be known, then God is omniscient. Well . . . in the later case, maybe not omniscient in practice, but in ability yes. If God can do all that can be done, then He is omnipotent.
What if God, wanting to make people free to do good because it is, and freely has become their NATURE to do good, because these people have come, from long times past, present, future, to see how very, very good the good IS, and also how horrifying it is to be caught in evil, whether as a perpetrator or as a victim, or merely as a helpless onlooker. Maybe there are things God can occasionally do (miracles, semi-miracles, etc.) without upsetting this growth process of human souls. Clearly there must be, as we do see the occasional miracle. But maybe also, there are things He must not do, because it would upset the growth of this race of (one day to be) intrinsically good beings. Perhaps He is willing to let US “upset the balance” since we are inside the system and a part of the process – is in fact delighted for us to upset the balance on the side of mercy.
I think perhaps once in a while He gives a shove (the Babylonian captivity? The coming of Christ?) and other times He gives a nudge here and there, (delicately – gently – too much perhaps would do more harm than good), but that most of the time, the Spirit hovers over the waters, brooding, watching the embryonic life as it grows of its own, as it was designed to do. The desert sea (death?) doesn’t look like it could bring forth life, but He has commanded, and it is thereby enabled. The life it brings forth is violent and chaotic, but it gradually becomes organized and beautiful. Someday I think it (even the sea) will reach a state of peacefulness and love. It does seem to take such a very, very long time though.
I wonder whether He could create these many, many souls He desires (separate from Himself yet one with Him, since we will have become like Him, in that we also will be love) in any other way?
Will our “intelligent” machines ever become sentient? I don’t think so. We made them, piece by piece and in a very hands-on way, and it seems to me that they will never be more than our automatic and unthinking slaves, however much they may come to simulate life. We have made them and they are precisely what we have made them to be.
But we have grown up from the dust, largely left to ourselves until He breathed the breath of life into our souls and woke us up. At that point (and now) we had the option to CHOOSE His intervention in our lives as teacher, father, mentor, but we have always wanted to continue going it on our own. We don’t HAVE to do that. Despite the actual “garden” having been put beyond our reach, we have always had the option to follow Him. Jesus gave us the shining example and the boost to make it so much easier, and the mystical death of the race of the old Adam in Christ, to give us freedom from our sins with all that entails. But that is, I believe, a thing we must freely choose if it is not to depersonalize us.
Others – men of violence, pride, greed, etc. – do NOT choose this, and Father (to our dismay) allows these people largely to have carte blanche to do as they are able and inclined to do. We humans can intervene if we have the desire and the power and the wisdom, but usually, God will not intervene. He will bring home His beloved ones to blessed peace and relief – each and every – and He will be with us all in our sorrows, but He will not sacrifice the long-term blessedness of the (temporarily) wicked for the temporary comfort and blessedness of those either equally wicked, innocent, or in the process of becoming mature sons of God. If this or that evil man needs to wrestle with a gargantuan burden of guilt in order to turn him toward eternal good, then wrestle with it he will – maybe not in this life, but surely his sin will not take long to find him out.
The good suffer for the sake of the wicked, whether the wicked know that yet or not. One day the wicked will suffer all the sufferings they have imposed on the helpless, and that will be the best thing that could happen for them. I believe this, and I think scripture does hint at it (at least). Be sure your sin will find you out. God is not mocked, for whatever a man sews, that shall he also reap. Cast your bread upon the waters, for in due season it will return to you, multiplied (I know that’s referring to charity, but what works for the goose . . . ). Israel suffered – what was it – double? for all she inflicted on the poor and the powerless. How else could a person be healed of his wickedness? I think this has to be so. And perhaps (as I said before) the good will also see the inner workings of the souls of the wicked, and pity and love them the more for it, and learn and benefit from knowing that, too.
Ultimately I do trust God – but it can be very hard to watch the process. I think He IS all powerful, but that for the good outcome He has chosen to bring from this world, He restrains His own passions and desires to MAKE each one good so that each one may truly BECOME not only superficially good, but deeply free and also deeply and permanently and intrinsically good as only the truly free CAN be.
Thanks for that offering Cindy. I really need to think it over, to unpack what it infers.
Often, the most obvious things are the things I’ve missed. Right now I am watching 3 wars on the t.v, and the ISIS group has just kidnapped 200 religious women, after killing their husbands.
And - the obvious thing - in the back of my mind has always been - why would I think God would protect me? He does not, obviously, protect everyone. He does not. There are certainly many good things He does that we will never know of - perhaps miracles of a huge scale, but unseen. Are we on our own? Is the religious life taking place only in a ‘spiritual realm’?
I could make myself feel better right now - I could do some zen meditation, work on dropping all attachments (what you love will also make you suffer, so drop all loves), or crank up the rock and roll for a couple of hours, or read a ‘heavy’ book that demands all my attention. I could look at some porn. I could these and other things to mentally drug myself, basically. And that kind of band-aid has sustained me many times over the years.
But a bone stuck in the throat is a different sort of thing.
Having a growth spurt at 66 years of age is unusual, but I think that is what is happening here. I have mentioned Thomas Kuhn previously - his idea about scientific advances is something like this: we have a conceptual model that covers every contingency known to us. In the day in, day out, practice of normal science, anomalies will appear that are not explainable by our conceptual model. But they are anomalies. Until so many of them crop up, and the pressure to account for them grows so obvious, that a larger model, that includes the original but is bigger in scope and includes all the know anomalies, is developed.
There are enough anomalies now, in my understanding of things, that I have to create or find a different/larger/more comprehensive model. That’s what’s happening.
All of the posts in this thread have helped me.
Dave,
I don’t know that I WOULD expect God to save me from persecution. Deliver me from evil yes, but not necessarily from calamity. I think I’m okay with that – one never knows of course. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t ASK Him, as I’m asking Him for protection for those under persecution by ISIS. But no, I wouldn’t actually expect that. Hope yes; expect, no. There have been times when He’s protected me from my own stupidity (lots!), but as far as I know, no one’s ever tried to persecute me. No, looking at history and present events, I suspect that He seldom does that. Worse things can happen than death (and so very frequently they do happen), but I guess a person just has to trust Him to see you through. He gives grace to those undergoing the trial though – not necessarily to those witnessing the trial (or maybe He does and we just don’t know how to trust Him quite that much).
Love, Cindy
I constantly struggle with that. I hear people talk about God working out their situation - giving them the right house or opening up a new job at the right time etc and then I see so many people all around the world including in our own well-developed countries struggling to continue with life, be it through poverty or ill-health or depression or pain or loneliness. And it all makes me wonder how anybody can say with ease that God gave them their new car or that he helped them pass an exam or some utterly pointless thing as that when he doesn’t seem to care about others whose days are filled with complete misery.
The worst thing for me is that I do believe that God can and sometimes does intervene in those situations. I do believe he heals people because I’ve seen and heard of it happening, I do believe he might help a person gain the finance they need to go on their mission trip or whatever it is. I believe he can and does help people in these things that are or at least seem, in view of everything else in the world, utterly irrelevant. That’s the thing that really bugs me - if God completely left the physical and material world as it was, it might be easier for me to accept. But the fact that I’ve seen and heard of him impacting the physical and material world makes me struggle with the whole idea. It hurts my prayer life, it hurts my relationship with God and when those things are damaged, unless everything else in my life is going really well (which it never is), everything becomes incredibly numb and frustrating.
I hear you Jonny. It is the dissonance between what we believe, what we’ve heard, and what is observable, that is hard to balance.
I think it comes back to education, of a certain sort - the type CS Lewis approves of in the Abolition of Man. That area between our coldly rational mind and our gut that he calls the ‘chest’ - the abode of trained sentiments, trained to see the ‘good’ and love it - at least the ‘good’ as seen by the elders and the wise of one’s culture, such as Roman boys being trained to feel a love for country far beyond what could be arrived at by logical reasoning or gut instinct.
Maybe it is that area that I for one am lacking. Unbalanced. I am going to work on that. The best way I know is to read the best imaginative literature, and since LOTR was kinda ruined for me by the Peter Jackson movies (I like the movies, but I used to read LOTR once a year to straighten my head), I have just today started in on the Silmarillion again. It is a deeper and richer work than LOTR anyway imo. The heroes/heroines of the stories are people with chests - the are oriented to goodness, to bravery, to honor, to love and creativity. And there is an enchanting power to the narrative that shows the glory of the mind and the gut, in their reasonable place.
I may do a short essay on the activity/passivity of Eru, as it is directly apropos of this thread, and it might be a useful excercise for me at least.
My sentiments exactly.
The day before yesterday we were at the Tower of London looking at huge and growing sea of poppies being put in. One for every fallen soldier on the Allied side of the ww1. it’s not enough is it? What about the other side? it was a stupid war that then laid the seeds for the next one. Then there are the bainial assertions one hears perhaps at Church like The Lord found me a parking spot yesterday! Yet I can recount for myself where it seems that God did provide. Like when I woke up in grade 10 pain after a major back op in 1985. Because of my distress my wife contacted friends to pray. I had been hanging out for the morphine and if it didn’t come on time it was fingers scratching on the glass time. Then the pain went away. Totally gone. Recovery and convalescence not even a panadol. Until I went back to work when the discomfort returned a little so that I would not do anything silly to hinder on going recovery. Such stories abound of course. I think it was M Scott Peck who credited that it was his observation that grace seemed to well outweigh expected calamity which caused him to first turn to God. That is, bad things happen but not as bad as one might logically expect. I’m not really sure this answers anything much except that I do believe. Maybe it’s like Cindy and others have written in an attempt at explanation. I dunno! Then there are the small irritations of life. My mother was a great one for quotations and of hers was that a boil on the neck hurts a hell of a lot more than a famine in China. Sorry about that to any Chinese who read this. Just replace China with USA or someplace and the meaning becomes clear. Griff Rhys Jones the British comedian talks about the “bum fluff of life” in respect of these things. He was sitting and enjoying the view atop one of the Pennine hills at the time just to put his comment in perspective. Nature red in tooth and claw - All things bright and beautiful…Chris
Well said Chris.
My point on ‘education’ above sounded off-track.
What I meant was, if we limit our trust by our doubt - if doubt is the predominant factor, and determines the quality and extent of our trust - if in other words our rationalistic approach to what is trustworthy is the ground of our being - then the bone of doubt will stick in one’s throat.
But - though I’ve been wrestling with that bone for a week or so now, intensely - the fact is that I do have a justifiable, but inexplicable, trust and hope in God through Jesus Christ. And that trust limits the doubt, not the other way around.
So the ‘education’ in Jesus is not just a matter of the book-learnin’ - it takes place in the inner man/woman - recognizing the good in life, the good in family, the love of companionship and openness to our brothers and sisters, and the great Hope we have set before us. And many other things.
Our faith and love has MANY roots.
The bumps in the road really get our attention, but they don’t last long.
Another way to put it: Faith, in search of understanding.
As luck (?) would have it, MavPhil posted this today, apropos to this thread. Please comment if you want to. The rest of this post is all MavPhil:
“Not enough evidence, God, not enough evidence!” (Bertrand Russell)
It may well be that our predicament is such as to disallow conclusive or even sufficient evidence of the truth about it. If Plato’s Cave Allegory is apt, if it lays bare the truth of the human predicament, then it must be that the evidence that the cave is a cave and that there is an outer world, whether it be the evidence of someone’s testimony or the evidence of one’s own rare and fleeting experiences, is scant and flimsy and easily doubted and denied. What I merely glimpse on rare occasions I can easily doubt. One can also doubt what any church teaches for the simple reason that there are many churches and they contradict each other on many points of doctrine and practice. And the same goes for what I believe on the testimony of others.
We don’t know that the human condition is a cave-like predicament along Platonic lines, but if it is then we have an explanation of the paucity of sufficient evidence of its being what it is. (By sufficient evidence for a proposition p I mean evidence that renders p more likely than its negation.)
It is vitally important to us whether God or some form of Transcendence exists, and whether a higher life is possible for us beyond the miserably short and indigent predicament in which we presently find ourselves. But it may be that the truth in this matter cannot be known here below, but only believed on evidence that does not make it more likely than not. It may be that our predicament is such as to make impossible sufficient evidence of the truth about it.
Do I violate an ethics of belief if I believe on insufficient evidence? But don’t I also have a duty to myself to pursue what is best for myself? And seek my ultimate happiness? Why should the legitimate concern to not be wrong trump the concern to find what is salvifically right? Is it not foolish to allow fear of error to block my path to needed truth?
Lately I’ve heard bandied about the idea that to have faith is to pretend to know what one does not know. Now that takes the cake for dumbassery. One can of course pretend to know things one does not know, and pretend to know more about a subject than one does know. The pretence might be part of a strategy of deception in the case of a swindler or it might be a kind of acting as in the case of an actor playing a mathematician.
But in faith one does not pretend to know; one honestly faces the fact that one does not know and ventures beyond what one knows so as to gain access to a needed truth that by its very nature cannot satisfy the strictures that we moderns and post-moderns tend to build into ‘know.’
Hi Dave
That’s an interesting passage and one which I might find very useful but I hit a blockage. It’s over the term ‘needed truth’
I’ll try to explain and maybe you can help:
In this sentence (above) I can fully understand and agree with the application of the word ‘truth’.
But in two following sentences the term ‘needed truth’ is used and this (for me) contains some ambiguity.
‘Needed truth’ could mean ‘a truth which also happens to be something I need’
Or it could mean ‘something I want/need to be true, even if it isn’t (in reality) true at all’
If the author meant the former, then I cannot see that we have necessarily ‘gained access’ to a truth, but just as likely (or more likely) ‘gained access’ to a lie.
However, if the author meant the latter, then he is concluding:
…and this conclusion is tantamount to ‘pretending’ (or at least deliberate self-delusion).
I hope there’s a flaw in my logic, but if not then I’ll have to settle with ‘choosing to trust’ or, as one scripture puts it concerning Abraham “hoped on when all hope had gone”.
Thanks John! I really did not think anyone would take the time to read it, let alone comment on it.
I think the key sentence for me is this one:
“But in faith one does not pretend to know; one honestly faces the fact that one does not know and ventures beyond what one knows so as to gain access to a needed truth that by its very nature cannot satisfy the strictures that we moderns and post-moderns tend to build into ‘know.’”
I think he’s referring to a needed existential truth, or a spiritual truth.
He’s of course pointing to the fact that moderns define ‘know’ in a reductionist sense - kind of like the logical positivists did. In effect they were saying that to know is to know scientifically or logically.
The most needed answers for human society and humans individually are not of that sort, usually. The truth we need is not ‘known’ scientifically; it is a matter of spiritual perception, or insight, or inner light, or revelation - and those knowings cannot fit into the modern, strictly empirico-logical framework.
Please let me know if this does/does not make any sense.
Thanks again.
Just to let you know, Dave 
I did read it too, and I though it was great.
We today demand “scientific” proof – that is, proof we can measure and do math problems about and see with our eyes or with our instruments, etc., but spiritual truth is not like that. I’ve been reading lately about near death experiences – hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people, nearly all with very similar stories – even young children and others who claim never to have heard of the possibility of such an experience. This includes significant numbers of resuscitated patients who were questioned about any experiences they may have had by research personnel and medical staff. But it’s still all subjective, and it’s just the word of these patients (never mind the degree of correlation. It’s NOT considered scientific evidence.) This is fine if you’re searching for neutrinos, but really, to insist that there can be NO MORE to life than what WE can measure is incredibly arrogant.
Not all things can be proved, including human consciousness – including that the world we see around us is not just a holographic projection (and yes, that is a viable theory in the scientific community – as is the speculation that we may all be nothing but characters in someone’s reality simulation game, and that THEY are also characters in some other higher level one’s reality simulation . . . .) Hey, it could be true. Scientists think they can prove things? No one can prove anything. Anything at all. We are absolutely as safe having faith in God as having faith in anything at all. Yet it’s the fashion today to show preference to “truth” as measured by instruments or maths. It’s no better than truth as measured by spiritual experiences.
Love, Cindy