To be sure, motivating reasons come in several varieties relative to our conceptual grasp: There are (i) reasons of the sort we can readily understand when we are informed of them (e.g., the mother who permits her child to undergo painful heart surgery because it is the only humanly possible way to save its life). Adams tackles the question of how Christian theology can maintain the goodness of God in the face of horrendous evils, particularly those that seem to destroy an individual's ability to lead a meaningful life. Hello Select your address All Hello, Sign in. In my judgment, such an approach is hopeless. Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God S. Sutherland 1. And a major consideration in determining whether an individual’s life is/has been a great good to him/her on the whole, is invariably and appropriately how it has seemed to him/her. (2) Evil exists. For one way for God to be good to created persons is by relating them appropriately to relevant and great goods. Keith DeRose - manuscript. It is enough to show how God can be good enough to created persons despite their participation in horrors–by defeating them within the context of the individual’s life and by giving that individual a life that is a great good to him/her on the whole. We suffer and are defiled because we straddle a metaphysical gap ourselves. Since Mackie and his successors are out to show that the several parts of the essential theological doctrine are inconsistent with each other, Mackie, op.cit ., pp. Once again, more explicitly, most people would agree that a person p’s doing or suffering of them constitutes prima facie reason to doubt whether p’s life can be, given such participation, a great good to p on the whole. When confronted by horrendous evil, even the most pious believer may question not only life's worth but also God's power and goodness. , 314-15), so far as the compossibility problem is concerned, I intend no illicit shift from reason to emotion. September 29th 2000 When confronted by horrendous evil, even the most pious believer may question not only life's worth but also God's power and goodness. Revelations of Divine Love , chapter 14. Mackie emphasized that the problem is not that (1) and (2) are logically inconsistent by themselves, but that they together with quasi-logical rules formulating attribute-analyses — such as. Be the first to ask a question about Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God. Nevertheless, nature and experience endow people with different strengths; one bears easily what crushes another. Alternatively, the inner life of God may be, strictly speaking and in and of itself, beyond both joy and sorrow. In Separation and Reversal in Luke-Acts, forthcoming in Philosophy and the Christian Faith, ed. I pause here to sketch three. A distinguished philosopher and a practicing minister, Marilyn McCord Adams has written a highly original work on a fundamental dilemma of Christian thought--how to reconcile faith in God with the evils that afflict human beings. For example, philosophers have alleged that the desire to make a world with one of the following properties — the best of all possible worlds, Following Leibniz, Pike draws on this feature as part of what I have called his Epistemic Defense (Problems of Evil: More Advice to Christian Philosophers, pp. Skip to main content.sg. Duns Scotus on the Goodness of God. Society in Swansea, where Professor Stewart Sutherland was the I owe the second of these distinctions to a remark by Keith DeRose in our Fall 1987 seminar on the problem of evil at UCLA. Relative to one another, there is also disproportion, because the good that God is, and intimate relationship with Him, is incommensurate with created goods and evils alike. Keith DeRose - manuscript. Such reasonable doubt arises because it is so difficult humanly to conceive how such evils could be overcome. As a Christian philosopher, I want to focus in this paper on the problem for the truth of Christianity raised by what I shall call horrendous evils. First, she claims that the problem of evil is that we are human. When confronted by horrendous evil, even the most pious believer may question not only life's worth but also God's power and goodness. Marilyn Adams: Horrendous Evil and the Goodness of God Chapter 8: Resources to the Rescue (and a point from Chapter 9) Philosophy of Religion Professor Senor Spring 05 1. In effect, generic and global approaches are directed to the first problem: they defend Divine goodness along the first (global) dimension by suggesting logically possible strategies for the global defeat of evils. It does the atheologian no good to argue for the falsity of Christianity on the ground that the existence of an omnipotent, omnscient, pleasure-maximizer is incompossible with a world such as ours, because Christians never believed God was a pleasure-maximizer anyway. Taking this third approach, Christians would not need to commit themselves about what in any event we do not know: viz., whether we will (like the two year old) ever grow up enough to understand the reasons why God permits our participation in horrendous evils. (i) First, because God in Christ participated in horrendous evil through His passion and death, human experience of horrors can be a means of identifying with Christ, either through sympathetic identification (in which each person suffers his/her own pains, but their similarity enables each to know what it is like for the other) or through mystical identification (in which the created person is supposed literally to experience a share of Christ’s pain For example, Julian of Norwich tells us that she prayed for and received the latter ( Revelations of Divine Love , chapter 17). Support Get it today with Same Day Delivery, Order Pickup or Drive Up. A: God exists and is omnipotent, omniscient and perfectly good. When confronted by horrendous evil, even the most pious believer may question not only life's worth but also God's power and goodness. What is the problem of evil? In their paper, “Horrendous Evil and the Goodness of God,” McCord Adams and Stewart Sutherland note that given the inconsistencies of religion with regards to the existence of an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good God alongside evil needs a reevaluation of its internal premises. When confronted by horrendous evil, even the most pious believer may question not only life's worth but also God's power and goodness. Part IV: Minds, Bodies, and Persons. endif; ?> bloginfo( 'name' ); ?> if (!is_home()) : ?>. xi+220. But I think this account fails on two fronts. that solutions to the argument of evil are only possible within a particular religious framework ? Likewise, the good of beatific, face-to-face intimacy with God is simply incommensurate with any merely non-transcendent goods or ills a person might experience. Over the past thirty years, analytic philosophers of religion have defined the problem of evil in terms of the prima facie difficulty in consistently maintaining J.L. There are goods that can only be had or experienced by someone who has suffered a horrendous evil. To me, the most troublesome weakness in what I have said, lies in the area of conceptual under-development. Account & Lists Account Returns & Orders. ISBN 0 8014 3611 7. I develop this point at some length in Problems of Evil: More Advice to Christian Philosophers, pp. Essential Theology Books for a Seminary Education, New African American Histories and Biographies to Read Now. The two year old heart patient is convinced of its mother’s love, not by her cognitively inaccessible reasons, but by her intimate care and presence through its painful experience. Likewise, I suggest, to exhibit the logical compossibility of both dimensions of Divine goodness with horrendous suffering, it is not necessary to find logically possible reasons why God might permit them. In the spirit of Ivan Karamazov, I am convinced that the depth of horrific evil cannot be accurately estimated without recognizing it to be incommensurate with any package or merely non-transcendent goods and so unable to be balanced off, much less defeated thereby. ii. What happened to Tolstoy? Marilyn Adams, "Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God" Stewart Sutherland, "Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God" Multiple-Choice. The book is a philosophical treatment of the problem of evil, especially in Christianity. Contrary to what Sutherland suggests ( op.cit. The questions raised are certainly relevant: how do believers account for those horrendous evils that have seemingly little or no redeeming value. Ultimately, I’m not satisfied by an account of suffering/evil that says our problem is we’re human. In his model article "Hume on Evil" (Philosophical Review LXXII (1963), pp.180-97; reprinted in God and Evil, p.88.) B: Evil Exists If God is perfectly good, he should always eliminate evil if he could. Jon Hart Olson for many conversations in mystical theology. A distinguished philosopher and a practicing minister, Marilyn McCord Adams has written a highly original work on a fundamental dilemma of Christian thought?how to reconcile faith in God with the evils that afflict human beings. (ii) Julian of Norwich’s description of heavenly welcome suggests the possible defeat of horrendous evil through Divine gratitude. Refresh and try again. Potential Companions or primers to this reading: THE MORAL LANDSCAPE by Sam Harris, POWER OF MYTH and THE HERO WITH A THOUSA. For the most part, horrors are not recognized as experiences of God (any more than the city slicker recognizes his visual image of a brown patch as a vision of Beulah the cow in the distance). Others posit a transcendent good (e.g. Eleonore Stump, "The Mirror of Evil" Louise Antony, "For the Love of Reason" Part III: Knowledge and Reality. 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