Philosophically Speaking

One of the great things about being a mother is to watch and participate in every age and stage of your children's lives and development and to enjoy and stress over, to varying degrees, the challenges each one of them brings. I've loved every stage of my kids lives, the hugs and the new discoveries that they make, the milestones. My new milestone involves reading and discussing my son's philosophy essays (and his politics and Scottish history essays too), which is a completely brilliant experience. Recently he has been looking at 'The Problem of Evil' in relation to belief in God.

"Despite the wide ranging theories of what the defining characteristics of God would be, the majority, including the Judaeo-Christian faiths, can settle on these seven central features of God and the world he created…
1. God is perfectly good.
2. God is omniscient (knows everything).
3. God is omnipotent (all-powerful).
4. There is evil.
5. If God is perfectly good then he will prevent all evil that he knows about and can prevent.
6. If God is omniscient then he knows about all evil.
7. If God is omnipotent then he can prevent all evil that he knows about.

However, these seven characteristics go on to form a paradoxical contradiction, known as ‘The Problem of Evil’. If God is omniscient then he must know about all evil, therefore, because he is all good he would wish to eradicate all evil and he can achieve this due to his omnipotence. Thus the conclusion can be made that there is no evil, which is a direct contradiction to point 4"

Phew! We had a really interesting discussion around this because it relates to some stuff I'd been thinking about anyway (see previous post - Is God really sovereign? How does that fit with 'free will' does God set self-imposed limits). It is a really interesting topic and I would highly recommend reading his essay (although he hasn't had a mark back yet!?)

Actually the issue comes back to what we believe about transcendence, immanence and incarnation funnily enough, and the thing which reframes many of the arguments for me is that God did not simply sit back objectively and take no part in his creation and never experience the evil of the world. God came as a baby, put himself into the midst of his creation and suffered with those who suffered and wept with those who wept. God experienced evil personally.

"Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross."

This is the creator of all we see and don't see, this is the God who held the oceans in his hands, who sits above the circle of the earth, who created the stars - this God.

He wraps his essay up by saying

"Albert Einstein once famously said - “God is subtle but he is not malicious”, suggesting that God can be enigmatic and lack of human understanding may cause a perception that God can be distant or cruel in allowing evil, but it is no more than a misunderstanding of God’s logic."

In this Lent and Easter season we can see and experience again the God who didn't walk away.