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Theodicy.
Introduction
If
God is all-good, all-powerful and all-knowing, how can
there be evil?
Theodicy
isn't a word a lot of people are familiar with. Theodicy — which rhymes with,
but has no relation to, Homer's classic The Odyssey {http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/odyssey.html}
— means "an argument in defense of God's benevolence despite the
existence of evil." Theodicy is a word that encompasses all the answers to
the question: If there is only one all-good, all-powerful, and all-knowing God, how can there
be evil?
But, before we can begin a discussion of God's
goodness in the face of evil, we need to take a closer look at three concepts:
·
monotheism
·
why people don't want
to associate "the bad" with God
·
the definition of evil
1. Monotheism
In polytheism, dysfunctional relationships between deities
explain why bad things befall good people. For example, if your farm got
flooded, it might be explained that the God of rain was upset at the God of the
harvest for some reason outside of your control and you were just an innocent
casualty of their feud.
This isn’t so with monotheism — the notion that there
is only one God. If that God is the one God of the whole world then all calamities
must originate with that deity — there’s no one else to blame.
N.B. The early sections of the Bible are rooted in polytheism — 1)
the Bible makes multiple references to the existence of other Gods.
[http://books.google.com/books?id=BDq7AUgIYacC] 2) The one God of the Bible
might originally have been conceived of as more than one God and were later
unified. This would explain why God has different names, why each name has
different attributes, why the names are in the plural, and why, for example,
Genesis records two stories of the creation of humanity — each favoring a
different name of God.
2. But God can’t be bad!
British psychoanalyst Melanie Klein {http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanie_Klein}
used the term "splitting" to describe a phenomenon that can happen
when humans experience a heightened state of anxiety. Klein observed that while
we may be aware that in good there is bad and in bad there is good — we
nonetheless try to manage our discomfort by splitting our feelings, assigning
the good ones to ourselves while projecting the bad ones onto other objects and
people. This emotional ”splitting” also explains why we commonly view God as “all
good” while eschewing anything that may be perceived as negative.
3. Evil
What is evil? Well, as it turns out, evil is relative.
Things are only evil based
on comparison to other things. Evil is not an absolute — just as there is
no absolute hot, absolute comfortable, or absolute sweet. (Still, it is fun to
put the adjective "absolute" in front of the word evil to describe
something you really, really, really don't like — but it makes about as
much sense as saying that your car is absolute fast.)
The greatest evil has to be viewed in relation to what is considered the greatest
good. So, if you consider the preservation of all life
to be good, then you will probably define the extinction of any life as evil.
Evil is often defined as the
absence of good. This is known as the privative theory of evil and is attributed
to Augustine of Hippo {http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo}. Privative means the indication of the absence
or negation of. But there is a problem with the
privative theory of evil (as with most any privative theory): a lack of
something does not necessarily mean that the opposite exists. An individual
without the strength of a lion is not necessarily a weakling. Not being or
having good does not mean being or having evil.
For our purposes, we will use the word evil as a placeholder for those things of greatest repugnance.
God and Evil.
Back to the question:
If
God is all-good, all-powerful and all-knowing, how can
there be evil?
Before we get into to the answers, I want you to be aware of
two things: 1) We won’t finish this topic with much
more clarity than we currently have here, at the start. 2) Most of the answers will
seem terribly unsatisfying. (Sorry about that; as you might have surmised, this
is a bit of an impossible question to answer.)
The classical answers to the problem of theodicy are:
·
God made evil.
·
There is no God.
·
This is just beyond our understanding; faith, my child.
·
God is limited.
·
Something's gone awry.
Let’s explore each
answer, and then I will present my own answer to the question.
God
Made Evil.
Why? Why would God make evil? Is God a sadist? (Well, based
on the early parts of the Bible it would appear so, but since we’re working with the assumption that God is all-good, this
cannot be the answer.)
Classically, the answer that God made evil is explained as
follows: God made evil so that God can test humanity's freedom of will. Of
course, this presents a bit of a problem because freedom of will ignores God's
omnipotence and omniscience. After all, how can God be all-powerful and control
everything if we have freedom of will? Moreover, how can God be
all-knowing if we have the ability to choose our own future?
Regardless, the notion that God — assumed to be all-good, all-powerful, and all-knowing — made evil
isn't a satisfactory answer.
There
Is No God.
“If there is evil, then an all-good, all-powerful, and all-knowing
God cannot exist.” The existence of evil is the lazy atheist's argument.
Although this line of reasoning might explain why there is
evil in the world, it does not fit the definition of theodicy: "an
argument in defense of God's benevolence despite the existence of evil." Therefore,
we have to move on.
(I know, really unsatisfying.)
This
Is Just Beyond
Our Understanding; aka Faith, My Child.
A lot of folks give
up on organized religion after having a question dismissed at some point by a
religious authority figure with, "This is simply beyond your comprehension."
We want to know but we are told that we can’t know. And
we are told to just trust God and believe.
This answer also implies that the things we
experience as bad aren’t really bad from God’s point of view. Being informed that
we don’t know enough to recognize evil is disconcerting at best.
There is also a non-deistic, metaphysical
version of this answer. It tells us that human perception is the only thing that
makes something evil. In Hamlet, Act
2, Scene 2, William Shakespeare gives voice to this seemingly Zen line of
thinking: "There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it
so." In other words, only an all-good, all-powerful, and all knowing God
can see the world as it truly is — it is beyond human thought and
understanding.
Although somewhat disturbing and mainly
unsatisfying, this line of reasoning is in fact the best argument in defense of
God's benevolence, omnipotence, and omniscience despite the existence of evil.
Yikes!
God is
limited.
The kabbalists {http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah} — a Gnostic-like Jewish group with roots
in 13th century Spain — posit
that God constricted some of God's omnipotence to allow for freedom of will.
They reason that God isn't everywhere, evil exists, and that God needs
humanity's help to repair the world.
This
answer is a wonderful call to social action and encourages humanity to take
part in repairing the world, but this philosophy blatantly ignores the premise
of God's omnipotence, so it doesn’t fit as an answer
to theodicy. (Again, sorry.)
Something’s gone awry
If you've ever been on a theme park ride, then you are familiar
with the premise of “something has gone awry.” Most versions of this defense of
God's goodness cast the devil as a fallen angel operating evil and badness
outside of God's control.
This
answer fails with regard to the notion of God that God is in control of
everything. So it doesn’t work for our purposes.
Rabbi
Brian’s Thoughts
I don’t have a waterproof philosophical argument in defense
of God's goodness despite the existence of evil.
What I do know is that nothing is solely good and nothing is
purely evil. An ancient rabbinic commentary on the Bible says, "There is
no absolute good without some evil in its midst." {http://books.google.com/books?id=82TvQE7i3pIC&pg=PA174&lpg=PA174} This is true. There is no good without
bad and no bad without good.
Nonetheless, I want: I want to be comforted when I’m scared. I know it’s juvenile, but I still want God to be
an idealized parent — all good, all powerful, and nurturing me.
My life, like yours, can be scary — I will never be
able to control enough of my world to feel completely safe and I will never
know when a tragedy is going to befall me.
In conclusion
Is there an answer to the question of theodicy? Why do bad
things happen? I think it has to do with our being attached to a specific
outcome of reality and the future.
The simple truth is, things that
fall outside of our sense of control and how we think the world should be will
always be what we deem to be "evil."
