Problem Of Evil |

May 2nd, 2012

Dealing With the Hiddenness of God

Where is God? Jesus is in heaven. Well, where’s that? We know it’s a physical dimension so it’s just a reality removed from our spatiotemporal world. The doctrine of omnipresence states that God is causally present everywhere. This is merely stating the obvious. What’s the evidence from Scripture concerning God’s presence?

“If the statements it [the Bible] contains concerning matters of history and science can be proven by extra biblical records, by ancient documents recovered through archeological digs, or by the established facts of modern science to be contrary to the truth, then there is grave doubt as to its trustworthiness in matters of religion.” – Gleason Archer

Consider 1 Thess. 5.19-21. How do you test Scripture? Well, test it for internal consistency, like contradictions and dissimilarities. To test Scripture using Scripture to verify that what it is true is fallacious and circular reasoning.

Posted in Pain and Suffering, Philosophy | No Comments »

Tags: divine hiddenness, gleason archer, God is hidden, hiddenness of God, Pain and Suffering, Problem of Evil, religious experience, Scripture, why is God hidden

May 1st, 2012

Molinism and the Grounding Objection

The grounding objection asks the question: By what means or grounds does God know what he knows (particularly middle knowledge)?

Suppose I have an argument similar to the grounding argument from the grounding objection claiming that contingent truths are not self-explanatory but must simply exist, from all eternity, as an ungrounded, metaphysical surd. How would I, as a Molinist, respond?

This objection is merely the result of misunderstanding the means by which God knows what he does. God’s knowledge is wholly intuitive and relies on no existent entity and is completely compatible with divine aseity. According to Luis de Molina,

God does not get his knowledge from things, but knows all things in himself and from himself; therefore, the existence of things, whether in time or eternity, contributes nothing to God’s knowing with certainty what is going to be or not to be… For prior to any existence on the part of the objects, God has within himself the means whereby he knows all things fully and perfectly; and this is why the existence of created things contributes no perfection to the cognition he has of them and does not cause any change in that cognition… [And] God does not need the existence of those things in his eternity in order to know them with certainty.[1]
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Posted in Molinism | 3 Comments »

April 27th, 2012

A Disgrace Worthwhile

For whatever reason God chose to make man as he is—limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death—he had the honesty and courage to take his own miedicine. Whatever game he is playing with his creation, he has kept his own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that he has not exacted from himself. He has himself gone thorugh the whole of human experience, from the trivial irrtations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. When he was a man, he played the man. He was born in poverty and died in dsiagrce and thought it well worthwhile.

From Dorothy Sayers, Christian Letters to a Post-Christian World (Eerdmans, 1969), 14.

Posted in Pain and Suffering, Problem of Evil | No Comments »

Tags: christology, incarnation, Jesus Christ, Pain and Suffering, Problem of Evil

April 25th, 2012

Molinism in Modern Philosophical Discussion

The task of a Molinist perspective of middle knowledge is to remove the perceived dilemma between human freedom and divine foreknowledge. There are a minority of philosophers and theologians who hold to this Molinist doctrine. On a promising note, middle knowledge is in modern philosophical debate and works advocated by some of the most prominent philosophers such as Thomas Flint, William Lane Craig, Ken Keathley, Kirk MacGregor, and perhaps one of America’s greatest philosophers, Alvin Plantinga. These leading Molinists serve in prominent societies such as the Evangelical Philosophical Society, the Evangelical Theological Society, the American Philosophical Association, and the American Academy of Religion, who serve as witnesses to middle knowledge amongst leading Calvinists, Openness Theologians, atheists, and philosophers of other schools of thought. Middle knowledge, when implemented into modern discussion, serves as a defense to the many forms of the problems of evil (most notably the soteriological problem of evil), a plausible solution with explanatory scope and power for issues such as predestination, the doctrine of biblical inspiration and inerrancy, and is compatible with every other orthodox doctrine.

Posted in Philosophy, Theology | No Comments »

April 13th, 2012

Why Didn’t God Just Create Heaven First?

This is a legitimate question. The claim that God could have created us in the state of heaven avoiding all this evil and suffering in the world is a nuanced version of the problem of evil. If we are going to heaven and our telos, our purpose and end, is to worship God and enjoy him forever in heaven then why didn’t God skip this earthly step? Surely, one may think that there’s a possible world in which we all exist in heaven. It’s my contention that the instantiation of heaven alone is not a possible world.

Aside from other theodicies and defenses such as soul-making, perhaps the most relevant to this question, I think it’s critical to understand that heaven isn’t some lone possible state of affairs by itself. Heaven is, necessarily, a contingent state of affairs. It’s a consequent, if and only if, there are prior antecedent conditions or states of affairs. Heaven is a result of our choices during this life. In other words, this earthly life is a necessary condition for heaven to be brought about (aside from the salvific will of the Father and saving power of Christ, I’m merely stating that this life must precede heaven.

This also leads to a very important question: How does God guarantee that there will be no evil among the saved in heaven? This is a very tough question and here are a few possible answers to consider.

Posted in Apologetics, Free Will, Problem of Evil | 1 Comment »

Tags: determinism, ethics, evil in heaven, free will, free will and love, free will in heaven, Heaven, no free will in heaven, Problem of Evil, problem of heaven, sinless heaven

April 3rd, 2012

VT Debate–Response to the Atheist Objection that God is a Moral Monster

There were two main objections, which my atheist opponents defended during the VT debate on the existence of God. One of the objections was from the problem of gratuitous evil, particularly natural evil, which I have already responded to here. The other objection raised during the debate was presented first after my opening statements. The argument was that because me and my debate partner were Christian theists the Christian God cannot exist because of the supposed atrocities in the Bible and other doctrines such as hell.

The argument began with the problem of predisposition. In other words, why you must approach your faith of choice with objectivity and skepticism and not confirmation bias. However, in response, in order to identify and affirm the discovery of a truth one must not exhaust all possibilities. Additionally, it works both ways. If the criterion is applied fairly how can one deny the proposition, in this case, God exists, without examining all possibilities? This criterion is untenable. Also, to suggest that one is a Christian because of environment or spatiotemporal location is to commit the genetic fallacy.

Posted in Apologetics, Atheism, Bible, Biblical Studies, Philosophy | 2 Comments »

March 30th, 2012

The Artistry of Evil

It seems, by all evidences, that man is the only creature that can make evil artistic. Not only can we be merely evil but we add artistry to it. Consider this section from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.

“By the way, a Bulgarian I met lately in Moscow,” Ivan went on, seeming not to hear his brother’s words (Alyosha), “told me about the crimes committed by Turks and Circassians in all parts of Bulgaria through fear of a general rising of the Slavs. They burn villages, murder, outrage women and children, they nail their prisoners by the ears to fences, leave them so till morning, and in the morning they hang them–all sorts of things you can’t imagine. People talk sometimes of bestial cruelty, but that’s a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel.
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Posted in Philosophy, Problem of Evil | 1 Comment »

Tags: alyosha, artistic evil, Brothers Karamazov, divine telos, Dostoevsky, Evil, Fyodor Dostoevsky, ivan, Problem of Evil, turks

March 26th, 2012

VT Debate–The Problem of Gratuitous Evil

One of the objections made by one of the atheists in the VT debate on the existence of God was William Rowe’s form of the problem of gratuitous evil:[1]

There exist instances of intense suffering that an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse. (Factual premise)
An omniscient, wholly good being would prevent the occurrence of any intense suffering that being could, unless that being could not do so without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse. (Theological premise).
Therefore, There does not exist an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being.

Or, simply put:

There are unnecessary evils.
God would prevent evils without losing some greater good.
Therefore, God does not exist.
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Posted in Apologetics, Atheism, Existence of God, Logic, Pain and Suffering, Philosophy | 1 Comment »

February 21st, 2012

If I Were an Atheist…

When it comes to philosophy there are three things I ponder deeply about every day. I’m not exaggerating when I say these things. I think about God every hour I’m awake. He plagues my thought and attention. I often think about my relation to him, how he is who he is, his providence, his action in the world, etc. It is so foreign to me when Christians say that they don’t think about God from day-to-day. The second idea that occupies my thought is death. I don’t think I’m morbid about this; I think I’m just being honest with myself. I wonder what it’s like to die, that moment in between life and death. Is it painful? Is it joyful and painless? What is it like to see the Lord for the first time? The third thought I think about isn’t as often as the formers but is nonetheless occurent. It’s the question: “What would it take for me to be an atheist?”

I certainly believe Christianity is falsifiable, that is, to be proven false. I think there is biblical warrant for this. Consider 1 Corinthians 15.17 when Paul says that if Christ had not risen from the dead then our faith is in vain. To show Christianity is false one must demonstrate that the resurrection of Jesus did not happen. I was speaking with my professor over lunch a month or so back and we struck up a conversation on what it would take for us to be atheists. Proving the resurrection false doesn’t disprove God, it just disproves Christianity.

Posted in Atheism, Existentialism, Philosophy | 17 Comments »

Tags: atheism, Camus, Christian Existentialism, Christianity, existentialism, falsifiability, Nietzsche, Problem of Evil, resurrection of Jesus

February 16th, 2012

Can You Lose Your Salvation? A Molinist’s Perspective

^FOCUS:Can a born-again believer lose his or her salvation while simultaneously affirming God’s sovereignty and human free will while being consistent with Scripture?[1]

An Examination of the Perseverance of the Saints Doctrine

Apostolic warnings against apostasy pose a difficulty for the classic doctrine of perseverance of the saints because either the warnings seem superfluous or else it seems possible for the believer to fall away after all. The attempt to construe the warnings as the means by which God effects perseverance fails to distinguish the classical doctrine from a Molinist doctrine, according to which believers can fall away but if fact will not due to God’s extrinsically efficacious grace. A Molinist perspective is coherent and, unlike the classical doctrine does not render superfluous the apostolic admonitions.[2]

The traditional doctrine of perseverance states that not only will the saints maintain grace and salvation, but literally cannot fall from grace. (It is very important to approach these and understand these texts in light of appropriate exegesis.) However, this seems to ignore numerous Scriptures, which warn the danger of apostasy of those who deliberately fall from grace:

Rom. 11:17-24; I Cor. 9:27; Gal. 5:4; Col. 1:23; I Thess. 3:5; I Tim. 1:19-20; II Tim. 2:17-18; Jas. 5:19-20; II Pet. 2:20-22; I Jn. 5:16

Perhaps the most prominent:

Therefore leaving the elementary teachings about the Christ, let us press on the maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, ²of instruction about washings and laying on of hands, and the resurrection of the death and eternal judgment. ³And this we will do, if God permits. ⁴For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, ⁵and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, ⁶and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God and put Him to open shame. ⁷For ground that drinks the rain which often falls on it and brings for the vegetation useful to those for whose sake it is also tilled, receives a blessing from God; ⁸but if it yields thorns and thistles, it is worthless and close to being cursed and it ends up being burned. Heb. 6:1-8 (NASB)

Posted in Molinism, Theology | 1 Comment »

Tags: advantages of molinism, Amyrauldianism, anthropomorphism, Arminianism, atonement, biblical studies, Boyd, Calvinism, can you lose your salvation, change of mind, determinism, divine change of mind, divine providence, divine sovereignty, does God change his mind, Evil, Exodus, four views on divine providence, general atonement, Greg Boyd, Gregory Boyd, hermeneutics, Hitler, Jesus Christ, John Calvin, limited atonement, lost salvation, Luis de Molina, Middle Knowledge, Molinism, molinism explained, Molinist, multi-layered middle knowledge hermeneutic, Open theism, open theology, openness, openness theology, Pain and Suffering, Pelagianism, perseverance of the saints, predestination, preservation of the saints, Problem of Evil, problems with molinism, providence, ree will, semi-Pelagianism, singular redemption, Theology, universal atonement, universalism, unlimited atonement, views on divine providence

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Posts tagged ‘Problem of Evil’