No,I don’t think it is poossible. I also don’t think it is possible to fully conceive of a God that is as great as the actual one. I do think all of our perception is highly imperfect. And sure, corrupt.
I totally agree with you that when mystery is used to evade questions, it is justhand-waving that serves to stop inquiry, and that is generally bad. I don’t think I’m abusing mystery in that way…at least, I try hard not to.
Believe is an unfortunate word in English. First, let me answer what I think you might be asking: What do I think about the afterlife? I think the problem is so hard, and our evidence and perception so limited, that any position should be held extremely cautiously. I think we all have only the foggiest of notions about this, and to assert anything with great certainty is the height of silliness. Still, I think we can talk about a host of interesting second-order questions with a lot more confidence. For example, regarding the afterlife, what is logical and coherent to claim, what is morally defensible and reprehensible, what is worthy of faith and not, what are the observable effects of beliefs, and much more besides. But what do I believe? Meaning: In what do I put my trust? What am I consciously committed to? To whom do I entrust the core of my being? What or who do I think merits my loving obedience? Who has my loving commitment? My answer to these is Jesus, who allowed himself to be killed for the forgiveness of all sins, and who cried out, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Do I believe in ECT/annihilationism/universalism? In the fuller sense that I am discussing here, no. I categorically do not believe in any of them. What do I think of them? I think they are all rather silly. This might seem like I am dodging your question, and just trying to avoid being labeled a universalist, perhaps because I’m unwilling to admit it. But I do ask you to trust me when I say that is not what is going on. I find the entire framework of the discussion to be genuinely lacking, and so I abstain from calling myself any of them.
I would read it in light of God, as I believe God is revealed in Jesus. I would see the revelation as only partial…indeed,dangerously partial, without that. I’d be open to readings of the text like this: “This broken command is foreshadowing Jesus, who taught us to die to ourselves so that we could live lives of love.” I think a high view of Scripture requires a thoughtful, contextualized, cautious, critical, reading. Sometimes, people seem to think a “high view” requires a kind of cretinous literalism; I think it requires just the opposite.
On Augustine, the free will theodicy is probably the first theodicy ever formulated. It seems that Augustine was the first person to formulate it. Does this sit uneasily beside his doctrine of original sin,and especially the later Calvinist readings of it? Yes! I think it does. I don’t know my Augustine well at all, but at the level of simple reflection, I don’t find this terribly surprising. I think that when free will is pressed into service as a primary theodicy, it tends to corrupt our understanding of freedom. It doesn’t surprise me that someone would hold both to Augustine’s use of freedom as a theodicy, and to Augustine’s proto-Calvinism regarding concupiscence and free will. You apparently don’t hold to both of these, and in that I think you have a reading that seems more compatible at first glance. But now I want to read more about Augustine’s life; I think there must be an interesting tale to tell about his Manicheism, his free will theodicy and his doctrine of original sin, and I imagine some scholar out there has told it in an enticing way. So thanks for driving my curiosity
Alvin Plantiga’s Free-Will defense, presented in his book on the problem of evil, is a worthwhile study, and not difficult to follow. Of course, of course, there are critics of his argument, but I’ve not read one to date that is conclusive.
The book is “God, Freedom, and Evil” and I’m sure it’s been talked about here at some point.
There is indeed and interesting tale to tell about Manicheism. One of the basic Manicheistic beliefs is that there is an eternal struggle between good and evil. This fits well with Augustine’s view of eternal conscious punishment of the wicked. He seemed to have thought that once one dies, his character is fixed forever and will always support the good, but if he is not with God loving Him forever, he’s against God, hating Him forever, and will always support evil.
Paidion, I think the tale really gets fun when you try to integrate his free will theodicy into it as well. And he converted from Manicheism, so I don’t think you get to just attribute his post-Manichean beliefs to that. Since he isn’t here to defend himself, you could always accuse him of suffering a Manichean hangover . But I do think free will, the notion of a weaker God and dualism fit together quite snugly.
cais-soas.com/CAIS/Religions … tology.htm
In Manichaeism the physical world is created by the Evil one as a trap for the light of spirit. At the end of time Jesus will come to separate the majority of humanity who are sunk n carnality from the spiritual elect. He will first separate the righteous elect from sinners, probably the fallen elect; then he will separate the followers of the Manichean church from the children of the world. The righteous must, like the sheep in the Gospel, stand on his right side; the condemned, like the goats, will be banished to his left. The redeemed elect will enter into the joy of the gods (i.e., into the New Paradise), and the condemned will be thrust into hell. All other men will live on this earth under the rule of Christ, in a golden age. Gods, angels, and redeemed men will be together there; evil will have vanished from the world, and men will, if they wish, leave their bodies and travel to heaven. A large quantity of holy light will be freed from this world .
After that the world will end;. Christ will abandon the world, flesh will waste away, and the earth will stand empty.
Then the spheres will plunge down to the earth, and the “great fire” will destroy the ruins of the world, finally deprived of its function. In the world conflagration the last redeemable parts of the light will be freed. As a Final Statue light will ascend to the New Paradise. The fire will, however, punish demons and sinners, and the gods and the righteous will witness their torment without being able to help them.
The special significance of this doctrine, however, rests on the conviction that the victory of light is ultimately an imperfect one, for a certain part of it, trapped in souls, imprisoned in the world, cannot be released because it has been irredeemably corrupted by wickedness. It will be enclosed in the Bôlos prison with the powers of darkness and so condemned to eternal damnation. The fate of these souls is also called the “second death,” an image borrowed from the Revelation of John). In itself the idea of the unredeemability of the damned is nothing unusual. In the Manichean view, however, it takes on unique weight because the light in the cosmos is the suffering part of the substance of God Himself. This Manichean rejection of universal redemption at the end of time had the scandalous implication that God Himself is and will remain imperfect; Augustine threw this implication in the teeth of the Manicheans (Contra Secundinum 20; cf. Böhlig, p. 27; Adam, p. 92: par. 7 of the great Latin abjuration formula).
Second -
Do take a look at the brief article/precis Illaria Ramelli kindly did for Alex on Augustine’s early and later eschatology here at
I think that libertarian free will supports a STRONGER God than the absence of it. With the absence of free will, God would simply be manipulating all events. This also implies that He is responsible for all the atrocities carried out by fallen humanity. But by creating human beings with free will, and being still able to influence them so that each free-will agent will sooner or later CHOOSE to submit to His authority—now that describes the POWERFUL God that we have!
I’m not great at metaphysics - but I’m with you on this one Piaidon. It seems to me that Augustine embraced strong determinism - that incorporated exacerbated ECT - because he was reacting against the Manichean hotch-potch in which God has some power to determine and elect, but his power is weak power and, in part, his will is defeated.
Plantinga does illuminate the difference between the philosophical and the pastoral approach to the ‘problem of evil.’ Here is a short excerpt from the little book I referenced above - which is good reading before we go off half-cocked about the pros and cons of free will. It might in fact make a good thread. Anyway, here is the quotation; you can ignore the first two sentences which are meaningless without the previous argument: start with the words “…so the existence…”
I always keep out of these discussions as much as possible - I’m a historian rather than a metaphysician (I know my limits ). However, it is evil the pastoral issue that I see as more central to my concerns than evil and metaphysics (although I’m not knocking metaphysics - I’m just not prepared to get too pushy about something that sends my poor old head a -spinning )
Yes, deadedith. I was totally cribbing from him on that, and I think it is really important. At the same time, I think a theodicy or defense does have a pastoral function. Specifically, in helping people who struggle with the philosophical questions. I also think it relates deeply to our core theological convictions, and if pastoral activity isn’t rooted in core theological convictions I think something important is lacking.
Also, if you want to start a thread on Plantinga and free will, I’d be happy to participate. I’ve been working through some of his stuff, and that might be just what I need to make me eat the rest of my spinach I think that after a long slow walk through compatibalism and incompatibalism and Plantinga’s definitions of possible worlds, it might be easier to appreciate the simple elegance of an “overcoming” defense, and the possibility of an “overcoming” theodicy.
To round out this wonderfully dilatory discussion, here is Plantinga quoting Augustine on free will. Note that he rather wisely avoids going through Augustine’s doctrine of original sin. And note, as well, that Augustine sure doesn’t sound like a Calvinist double determinist, at least here:
Sobornost, thanks for that. It was just the kind of quote I was looking for. Also, I appreciated the comment you put on it, in your original post. To paraphrase: Augustine rejected parts of Manicheism, but imported other parts of it into his understanding of orthodoxy. That seems convincing to me. Whenever we negate something, we often affirm most of it while negating some part of it. That’s what opposites are about…they are the same in almost every way but differ wildly in one particular way. I think your example provides a tantalizing way of suggesting that Augustine was still suffering from a Manichean hangover.
Speaking just in contemporay terms, I often hear Christians echo Augustine by saying something like: “1) Freedom is good, and so God had to give us the freedom to sin. 2) But it wouldn’t really be freedom, and God wouldn’t be just and holy, if people couldn’t suffer the consequences of their free choice. 3) That’s why he has to let people who reject Jesus be tortured for ever and ever and ever.” Then they can throw Adam in there, if they want to, but they don’t really have to. Never mind that the gap from 2) to 3) is so massive that you could drive a multiverse through it. In the first instance, I probably started to dislike the freedom theodicy because it is so commonly used in this way…and when people say this sort of thing, they really are offering a pretty good paraphrase of Augustine. (But wait, is Augustine an Arminian or a Calvinist or…does it matter?). So it really is quite satisfying to be able to suggest that more than a little Manicheism is lurking here.
Well, I’m always interested in a ‘simply’ elegant theodicy, though the number and nature of the philosophical hurdles to be…hurdled, makes me skeptical that anything ‘simple’ will get the job done.
I will say that Peter Van Inwagen’s short but succinct theodicy is elegant, but somehow unfulfilling. ( "God, knowledge & mystery : essays in philosophical theology "). I need to go back and re-read it; there’s been a lot of water under the philosophical bridge since the last time I did.
Again - I apologize for the unfortunate delay in responding. The computer is still on the fritz.
Dan, some questions. I’m wondering your response to some things I asked earlier:
I’m not sure I see how ECT “no longer afflicts God’s people.” Are these people simply not bothered by the fact that human beings, some of whom they may love, are suffering extreme agony, or do they align themselves with the view that such punishments are “deserved” and therefore “enjoy” witnessing such punishment/justice, following the medieval doctrine?
For annihilators: in what way is this obliteration a “good” or “triumph” over evil, more precisely?
I do not see any room for play in these two ideas. I see no reason why God would make people he would either eternally damn or annihilate. I do not think such an action is morally permissible for a perfectly good being. In what way do you justify such an act?
Perhaps I should rephrase: what do you think worthy of believing about the afterlife? The proof value - or the ability we have to prove certain beliefs - is to me irreconcilable with religious faith. The two things - proof and faith - are mutually exclusive. I am of the opinion that we ought to use logic to see what is intrinsically impossible (if we’re able to do so) or contradictory, and then allow the mind to imagine/hope for the best. The whole thrust of faith to me could be termed “eternal optimism.” I suppose one could call me a theological pragmatist. Again, I think belief and knowledge are incompatible with one another. One cannot “believe” his spouse is being unfaithful and also “know” by means of direct sense experience that in fact, she was sleeping with a co-worker.
While I admire the sentiment tremendously, I do not think this gets us anywhere. This is because who Jesus is - the nature of his person - determines how morally attractive the notion of following him is. If takes part in consciously tormenting people for eternity, I don’t think he would be worthy of worshipping. So you see, statements like the above don’t DO anything to advance the discussion. The meaningful points are still perfectly up in the air.
Supposing with all your study and prayer, you still supposed the text to say something you deemed morally reprehensible. What, then, would you think?
Free will does help to show why God must permit as much pain in the universe as he does. I do not believe it is to “respect” the freedom of his creatures however, as if he didn’t want to step on their toes, so he allows them to do such horrible things. I think it’s because it is only via such painful experiences that his creatures will freely become what he wants them to. These are very different things. In the first sense, freedom in itself is the higher good. In the second, being like God - that is, being GOOD - is the higher good. This admittedly requires freedom, but it exists as a value insofar as actions are made towards becoming Godlike and infinitely happy. Freedom is a necessary condition for such creaturely existence, though not the end at which that creaturely existence was made to arrive at.
The problem of pain can indeed become complex, but the main answer to it, when put in universal terms, can I believe be quite simple.
God either knew pain would enter his universe, or suspected it might (differences between open and closed theism here are moot.)
God knew that such pain, even if it occurred, could be used in such a way to make a perfected universe.
God therefore allowed the pain.
It can get more complex if one wants to goes into premise 2 - i.e. in what ways can said pain X serve to perfect the universe. But given the possibility of its truth in principle, no amount of examples could serve to discredit the claim. I have tried to list what some of these possible goods were: salvation from sin, freedom to overcome pain, displaying a type of love otherwise impossible to display. And I also think that pain would be an inevitable consequence of certain beings who are epistemically distant from God if God wanted to make them such that they had to choose “over and against themselves.” In other words, if God wanted rational creatures who were self sacrificial beings, pain, at least in the point of temptation (e.g. Eden) would be a necessary prerequisite to this choice. (I believe Thom Talbott talks about the possibility of finite creatures needing to experience otherness in the form of pain/separation in order to be rational. I do not follow him this far. I can imagine Cherubim who enjoy God’s presence and who are separate from God but have never felt pain. I’m not sure they would be creatures who ever made an act of self surrender, however.)
It becomes most helpful, I believe, to step back and say up front that maybe God wanted to create all sorts of different beings. He is not wrong or morally unjustified because he did not make all free beings like Cherubim. It is, as well, very difficult to compare the value of such very different beings, and hence may not make sense to say a universe with only creature type X would have been a “better” one.
For them, there is a tradition of suggesting that the righteous would enjoy it, and so this is a higher good. I want to be very clear here: I think the logic is perfectly sound, but I think the statement itself is morally false. In fact, I think it is one of the most morally false statements that can possibly be made. But no one has written a metaethical treatise that has been universally accepted as a standard for determining moral truth and falsehood. In fact, the discussion on moral facts tends to focus on the question of whether or not moral truths even exist. So I affirm the logical character of the ECT argument, in line with the discussion about the logic of theodicies. But I would tend to agree with you that the moral claims that need to be made to defend ECT are ones that I consider reprehensible, evil, and false. I just can’t prove that, and the truth value of the statements is a distinct (and trickier question) than the logical value of the statements. Aristotle is a person. All people are cats. Aristotle is a cat. I think the ECT argument works out just like that…except I think it is hard to conclusively demonstrate the equivalent of “all people are cats.” It looks obviously wrong to me, but confronted with someone who insists, with great certainty, that “all people are cats,” I am happy to point out that their logic, at least, is sound. Confronted with a society in which the main position, for an eon, has been that “all people are cats,” I become even more circumspect and careful. Even though I disagree strongly with their cat theory.
Much of what I said above applies here too. The logic is sound, and I think it is even more intuitively accessible. Getting rid of the bad guys is awesome! It is simple enough for a kid to understand. At first glance, it is at least a plausible higher good. But even if it weren’t, the logic would still be sound. For the logic to work, all someone has to do is assert “(1) X is a higher good (2) X entails the existence of evil.” If someone is truly convinced of (1), how do you prove them wrong? Note: proving someone wrong is very different than disagreeing with them strongly. I disagree with the annihilationists and ECT, but I don’t think I can prove them wrong. Nor do I really want to…I think that such arguments are coercive, and I think God has constructed us in such a way that we can’t move into God’s love through the coercion of logic or the accuracy of our models.
Good question, and thanks for letting me quibble with the language. This is quite close to what I’d say, except I’d be careful about eliding between “proof” and “knowledge.” Let’s take “proof” to mean conclusive, absolute, decisive, irrefutable knowledge. And let’s take knowledge to just mean knowing in the less-definitive sense of the word…the normal English usage. I know my way home. That doesn’t mean that I can definitively prove, through a precise and irrefutable mathematical model that also corresponds perfectly to reality, how I will get home every day of my life. It refers to a much looser kind of knowledge. In this sense, I think proof is incompatible with faith. But knowledge, meaning uncertain but reasonably reliable knowledge, is compatible with faith. In fact, saying “I know my way home” in the normal sense of the word is kind of like saying, “I have faith in my ability to regularly find my way home.” In this sense, they are deeply compatible. It is tricky, because “knowledge” has a wide semantic field in English, and so does faith; parts of the semantic field are incompatible with faith, and parts of the semantic field overlap with parts of the semantic field of “faith.” I think this is why it is so hard to use these words in a conversation, and why generosity is important. Almost anything anyone says on this can rightly be construed as true or false, depending on the part of the semantic fields we are focused on. In conversation, I will sometimes simply affirm the meaning that I think seems correct, instead of presuming that they are wrong.
What do I think is most worthy of faith? A God who is love, who is all-powerful, who knows all, and who will, in the end, reconcile all things to God.
But wait, isn’t that universalism? I don’t know. Lots of people will agree with what I just said. Plenty of Calvinists, Catholics and evangelicals will agree with all of that. But they won’t call themselves universalists. Rather than try to argue them into calling themselves that, I’m happy to stick to the statement above. And actually, I think there are good reasons to balk at the transition from the statement above to its characterization as an “ism.” I laid out a bunch of them above.
I agree that if I believed Jesus were involved in tormenting people endlessly, that I would consider him completely unworthy of worship. My conviction on this is extremely strong, and I’ll gladly share it with anyone. However, I’m also aware that my conviction doesn’t mean I am right, and I don’t think I am able to prove my conviction to people decisively. Still, I think I can appeal to their conscience, and I think that most peoples’ consciences are not so deeply deformed that they actually believe the most evil thought that I can conceive (EndlessCT) is good.
In part, I think that you and I have a philosophical disagreement about the nature of warrant in moral discourse. But this relates directly to a practical disagreement. What is the best way to get people who claim to believe in EndlessCT to reject a position that I view as evil? I think a respectful appeal to conscience is more likely to work than a claim to have a logically decisive argument. But I want to cover the philosophy as well, because this isn’t mere crass pragmatism. I’m not saying, “Ignore the truth, because it doesn’t work.” I’m saying: I think that the approach I consider ineffective is also philosophically unwarranted, and so on pragmatic and principled grounds, I reject it.
So we could talk about texts generally, but let’s talk about the Bible specifically. I think it does contain advice relevant to its own interpretation, but only a bit. Some of the important advice in there is Paul’s advice on freedom of conscience, and I think it is highly relevant here. I will not assent to anything that violates my conscience. That is how Paul instructs us. And yet, I also don’t think that my conscience is unerring. It is simply the best moral perception I have. In this sense, it is like my moral eyes. I also won’t assent to something that looks blatantly untrue to me. But I know, as well, that my eyes can play tricks on me. In reading the Bible, and any text, I think it is important to hold these two thoughts in tension. I must have the courage of my convictions, even if I am wrong.
So I probably do deem the text to say something that is objectively morally reprehensible, even though my conscience fails to convict me. I think that is probably the case for everyone. And so I pray for grace and mercy, for me, and for everyone
To go at it from another angle: I think that careful reading involves an effort to reconcile our understanding of Scripture and our conscience. I have found this process to be reliably helpful and illuminating in my own life, and in the lives of many of my closest friends. In this process, we enter into a genuine relationship with Scripture that I think can fairly be described as a “dialogue.” I think that is at the core of what a high view of Scripture is all about. Some people (including people who claim to have a high view) mean something entirely different…usually, they seem to mean that having a high view of scripture simply means affirming whatever their interpretation of it happens to be. But I think their view is much lower than mine
By the way Dan here is a summary of Augustine’s shifting position on freedom and determinism that seems to do it full justice -
Augustine’s later reliance on the concepts of grace and original sin turn him into a determinist of the theological variety. Theological determinists hold that everything we do is caused by antecedent conditions, ultimately traceable to God. Although the later Augustine is clearly a theological determinist, it is more accurate to attribute to him the “soft” version of determinism known as compatibilism. Compatibilism is the view that, although all human actions are caused by antecedent conditions, it is still appropriate to call some of them “free.”
(2) Compatibilists want to distinguish actions that are internally caused from actions that are externally caused. Consider, once again, the case of our patient suddenly kicking her leg. Suppose that what caused her to do this was that her physician tapped her reflex. This would mean that the action was externally caused, and hence should not be considered free. Suppose, on the other hand, that what caused her to kick her leg was a desire for attention. According to the compatibilist, this would still be an antecedent condition that made it impossible for her to refrain from kicking her leg. So, she was not free in the libertarian sense. Nevertheless, the compatibilist would call the action “free” in so far as it was internally caused. Someone else did not cause the patient to kick her leg; she did it of her own accord.
(3) Compatibilists make this distinction because they want to hold human beings morally responsible only for their “free” (i.e. internally caused) actions. If something outside of the patient caused her to kick her leg, then she cannot take the blame for it; if something inside her caused this, then she must take responsibility for it, even though she could not do otherwise.
(4) Augustine is most charitably interpreted as a compatibilist. He, like most compatibilists, retains the language of free will because he knows that it is impossible to explain the human condition without it. Nevertheless, he commandeers this language to his own deterministic purposes. He wants to maintain that human beings cannot take credit for being good. The reason is that all good actions are caused by God’s grace, an external cause. At the same time, he wants to maintain that human beings must take credit for being bad. The reason is that all bad actions are caused by our own wills. Since the will is an internal cause, we are responsible, even though we cannot do otherwise.
(5) In his latest works, Augustine devotes himself to disparaging the alleged human dignity of free will and criticizing anyone who takes pride in it. He writes that human beings are “enslaved to sin,” and that the best thing that can happen to us is to receive grace and thereby become “enslaved to God” instead.
(6) Augustine’s theodicy therefore makes a dubious contribution to the history of philosophy. On the one hand, it provides us with a personal yet intellectual confrontation with the problem of evil. On the other hand, it introduces the concept of free will, only to generate another set of concepts, grace and original sin, which cancel out any meaningful application of the concept of free will. In this way, Augustine reflects and reinforces the profound ambivalence toward human freedom that is endemic to Western thought.
P.S> ‘Dan Heck’ is almost an anagram of ‘Hans Denck’ the proto -universalist
There are a number of essays by William Ellery Channing that, read together as a theodicy, are in my opinion unsurpassed.
Here is a link to one of them. His ‘Collected Works’ is perhaps the most-read book in my library.
Despite how much I hate evil and suffering (after I lived overseas, I REALLY started hating it because instead of an isolated few, I saw vasts fields of people starving, living in dumps, and abused), I’m not sure I would want it completely eliminated on this earth, either, because part of what it means to be human is to have the ability to both create and feel pain. What bothers me more - at least at the time - is that it seems as if we were thrown in a human body. My question is first and foremost why the heck did we come to a physical realm, get in a physical body, and be tied down to the body? No, I don’t think the body is evil; I just think it’s limiting. Ultimately sickness wouldn’t be a threat if we didn’t have a body, right? Physical abuse wouldn’t be possible.
I dunno. I’m an existentialists. I was thrown into space and time.
I’ll try to answer.
. But I do think free will, the notion of a weaker God and dualism fit together quite snugly.
). However, it is evil the pastoral issue that I see as more central to my concerns than evil and metaphysics (although I’m not knocking metaphysics - I’m just not prepared to get too pushy about something that sends my poor old head a -spinning 