(Please
note: These are rough notes for a lecture, mostly taken from the relevant
sections of Philosophy and Ethics and other publications and should not be reproduced or
otherwise used verbatim.)
In the
Judaeo-Christian tradition, God is regarded as the creator, the lawgiver and
the judge, fundamentally and absolutely good. Since the Judaeo-Christian
tradition is monotheistic, there is no separate force or authority to balance
against God, to limit his activity, or to detract from his responsibility for
what happens.
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If there were
an equal and opposite force of evil, or if matter itself existed separately
from God, then there would be an excuse for the evil that we find in the
world.
-
God would be
limited by the material he used for creation, or by opposing forces. But in
this tradition, God has no such limitations.
The ‘goodness’ of
God in the Judaeo-Christian tradition is the direct consequence of his position
as the absolute creator of everything, omnipotent and omniscient.
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In tackling
the problem of how a good God is compatible with the fact of evil in the
world, theologians have seen evil as sin, punishment for sin, or a growth
opportunity – in other words, it has been related directly to humankind.
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A sense of
God’s goodness can come from a direct religious experience (of something
that is ‘holy’), or as an interpretation of what happens (God providing for
one’s needs).
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It is
challenged by the existence of evil, by the failure of God to respond in
situations of need and by the ambiguous nature of our experience of life as
a whole (i.e. it does not appear to be a paradise ordered by a loving
creator).
The issue of what
sort of evidence should count for believing that there is a good God who
intervenes to benefit those who worship him is certainly not new, and it is
found beyond the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Let me give you one example, from
the writing of Cicero (106-43BCE) who expounded Epicurean philosophy in Latin,
in the book De Natura Deorum (of the nature of the Gods), Part III,
chapter 36, he says that Diogoras was asked while at Samothrace ‘You who think
that the gods disregard men’s affairs, do you not remark all the votive pictures
that prove how many persons have escaped the violence of the storm, and come
safe to port, by dint of vows to the gods?’ to which Diagoras was said to reply
‘It is because there are nowhere any pictures of those who have been shipwrecked
and drowned at sea.’
The same argument
can be made concerning Darwin and evolution – the reason why everyting appears
well adapted, is because, were it not well adapted, it would not be here to
appear at all. The world is as it is, given an infinite number of attempts, a
world that worked had to happen eventually. It doesn’t necessarily imply that is
was specially designed.
So the issue of
the ambiguity of the world is one that counts against the existence of God, as
well as against the inherent ‘goodness’ of God. If you attempt to show the
‘goodness’ of God from the evidence of nature, you will have an uphill battle,
because for every bit of evidence produced in favour of the proposition, there
will be another against. And that has been the case since the debates of the
early Greek philosophers, or even earlier in the books of the Jewish Scriptures,
e.g. the book of Job. (He is silenced by seeing a whale – the great leviathan.)
Or, indeed, Exodus 20, which we shall refer to in a moment – the goodness of God
is often a ‘given’ based on faith, not the result of adding up and evaluating
the evidence.
A biblical image
of God…
In Exodus 20,
God is said to have revealed the 10 Commandments to Moses, but the Children of
Israel have just been warned that if they approach him directly, he may break
out against them and kill them.
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The presence
of God is a mortal danger and threat.
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Moses tells
the people that God has come to test them, and that the fear of God will
keep them from sinning.
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God is
shrouded with mystery and power; the goodness of God is not a
cosy
idea.
Notice that God in
Exodus 20 is above the common meaning of good and evil. He gives Moses the
Commandments to give to the people – he is dangerous, and ‘above’ good and evil.
In Philosophy of
Religion we use human reason to examine beliefs to see if they are logical and
coherent, and to relate them to other ideas that we hold. In looking at the
goodness of God in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, we need to compare that
belief with other ideas about goodness. It is not an either/or between what
Plato/Aristotle said and the Bible. Rather, philosophy encourages people to
submit their beliefs to careful scrutiny, using the tools of logic and clarity
of thought.
Fundamental
problem: the Euthyphro Dilemma
In
Plato’s dialogue Euthyphro… Socrates asks ‘Is conduct right because the
gods command it, or do the gods command it because it is right?’
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If you take of
the first option, you simply accept that whatever God commands must be
considered ‘good’: you have no independent way of deciding right from wrong.
So what if God commands something that your reason tells you is wrong (e.g.
genocide)? You appear to be at the mercy of particular scriptures and their
interpretation.
-
If you take
the second of Socrates’ options, it implies that human reason provides us
with an independent standard by which we can judge what is good. But this
sets the authority of human reason over that of God. This is something that
religious people reject.
Another way of
putting the same issue…
Statements take
two forms – analytic or synthetic. If they are analytic, their meaning is given
in the definition of their terms; they give no new information. If synthetic,
they depend on and give us information. Is 'God is good' analytic or
synthetic? If analytic, then it simply tells us what we mean when we use the
term ‘God’; if synthetic, then – for it to make any sense – we have to have some
idea of what the word ‘good’ means, before we can apply it to God.
So what are the
secular alternatives?
Plato: the ‘Form
of the Good’. In Plato, particular things are mere shadows of the abstract and
universal realities in which they participate. We call particular things ‘good’
or ‘beautiful’ because we have an idea of an abstract perfection of goodness or
beauty. We have these ideas because, before our birth into this world, we were
in a realm in which we had direct contact with these universal ‘Forms’. We seem
to know what ‘good’ means by intuition, but in fact it is through remembering
our pre-life. The philosopher looks beyond the individual things and is able to
contemplate the Forms, highest of which is the Form of the Good.
Aristotle:
goodness as fulfillment. We all have a potential and our ‘good’ is living it
out to the full. (A good knife is one that cuts well.) Human reason, looking at
the nature of the world, can therefore understand the ‘good’ for each thing.
From a religious point of view, one might say that – if God is the creator of
the world – the goodness of God is shown in his creation.
The problem of
evil:
Aristotle’s
position leads those who hold theistic beliefs to ask whether it makes sense to
call God ‘good’ in a world that involves suffering. Hence the ‘Problem of Evil’
which forms a key part of your study of the Philosophy of Religion.
[[
The problem of
Evil and Suffering
The fact of evil
and suffering in the world creates a problem for those who believe in God. In
its simplest form, it may be set out like this:
-
God is
all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving and the creator of everything
-
Suffering
exists in the world
Therefore
But
Therefore
If ‘God is good’
is to mean anything, there needs to be some explanation of why there is
suffering and evil, an explanation compatible with a loving, omnipotent God.
There are two
traditional ways out of the dilemma.
-
One (from
Augustine) starts with the idea of God as judge, and sees evil as sin or
punishment for sin. It’s our fault, not God’s’; therefore God remains good,
even in a world that contains suffering.
[[Augustine came
to the problem from two different perspectives, one philosophical, the other
based on the Bible.
He argued that
evil was not a separate force over and above goodness. Rather, to call something
evil was simply a way of saying that it lacked goodness (evil as a ‘privation of
good’ is the usual way of expressing this). The world was full of finite,
limited things. Their limitations prevented them from the perfect expression of
their own natures. Therefore they ‘fall short’ of what they were designed to be,
and hence participate in evil.
His second
approach was to put the blame for evil on humankind, rather than on God.
Augustine pointed
to the ‘fall’ of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Evil, and to the idea that all
subsequent members of humanity are descended from them and therefore share in
their sin and fall (through what is termed ‘original sin’). Thus, moral evil
(evil done through human choice) could be blamed on humankind, rather than God.
But what of
natural suffering, unrelated to moral evil?
Augustine followed
the traditional story that some of the angels, led by Satan, rebelled against
God. They too ‘fell’ and took all the created order with them. Therefore
creation itself became a place of suffering.
According to
Augustine, God will finally come to judge people, and will administer justice in
accordance with how they have behaved, sending some to hell and others to
heaven. Meanwhile, natural suffering is either sin or a punishment for sin (in
the sense that is comes about in a world that is fallen, and therefore full of
suffering).
]]
[[Bishop Irenaeus
held that God had created humankind in his own image (according to the Bible)
but in order to develop more fully into the likeness of God, it was necessary
for humans to face and overcome the challenges presented by life. Hence,
suffering and evil are seen as opportunities to learn and to grow.
A more modern
development of this argument is known as the free-will defence. This argues
that, in order for humans to grow spiritually they need to have free will. But
freedom implies that it is possible to choose to do evil rather than good.
Hence, on balance, it is better to have a world in which evil is a real
possibility, than to have one in which there is no real freedom to do anything
other than choose the good.
For either
argument, it is accepted that God is aware of and permits evil, in order to
achieve a greater end – namely the development of free human beings who are able
to grow into his likeness.]]
Neither of these
is entirely satisfactory, because each involves a compromise. It could be argued
that a human being, behaving as God behaves, would not be called ‘good.’
Couple of more
modern approaches – Hick – the ‘Free Will Defense’ Better to have freedom at
the price of evil than have no freedom.
Swinburne’s
approach - which may be seen as a development of Irenaeus
Richard Swinburne
uses the fact that the world is such that humans can develop within it as an
illustration of what he sees as the nature of God:
‘Like a good
parent, a generous God has reason for not foisting on us a certain fixed measure
of knowledge and control, but rather of giving us a choice of whether to grow in
knowledge and control.’
‘It is because it
provides these opportunities for humans that God has a reason to create a world
governed by natural laws of the kind we find. Of course God has reason to make
many other things, and I would hesitate to say that one could be certain that he
would make such a world. But clearly it is the sort of thing that there is some
significant probability that he will make.’
He goes on to say
that the orderliness of the world, as a theatre for humans, is not the only
reason why God would have wished to create it that way. He points to the fact
that an orderly world is a beautiful world.
In other words,
Swinburne’s approach is to assume that God is a loving and caring parent, and
then points out how appropriate the present designed world is for achieving his
purpose.
He summarises his
argument thus:
‘The argument to
God from the world and its regularity is, I believe, a codification by
philosophers of a natural and rational reaction to an orderly world deeply
embedded in the human consciousness. Humans see the comprehensibility of the
world as evidence of a comprehending creator.’
[from Is there
a God? OUP, 1996]
In
effect, by arguing that is would be appropriate for God to create a world like
this, Swinburne is enhancing the probability that God exists. This builds
on his earlier work, where he argues that the design of the world does not
suggest that it is the product of mere chance, but that it must be a matter of
weighing the probabilities involved.
]]
[[The Problem of
Evil influences the ideas people have of God. So, for example, within the
Christian tradition, Jesus on the cross is seen as an expression of God’s
willingness to suffer alongside his people.
This leads some
theologians to point to a God who deliberately sets aside the attribute of
omnipotence, and prefers to share in human life, with all its limits and
suffering.
But can a
suffering God still be God? This has always been an important question for
Christian theology. How is it possible that an omnipotent God could take on
human form in the person of Jesus? How can God suffer? Why should he choose to
suffer?
One way out of
this problem is to think of God as being in a process of change, as evolving
towards the future, and engaged with the whole of the creation in that process.
Notice that this places God within the world of space and time, engages as an
agent in the process of change. Looking at the qualities of God, choices need to
be made, for a God who is engaged in the world cannot also be timeless or
eternal.
]
And so we are back
to questions about the nature of God – where we started…
Getting the
balance right in thinking about God
Three important
words describing the God of classical theism:
The idea that God
is omnipotent and omnipresent is related to the concept of him as a creator. It
implies that there is nothing external to him, and no separate creation in which
he is not involved, or over which he has no control.
The idea that God
is omnipotent and omniscient is related to the problem of evil and suffering. If
God can do anything and knows everything, why does he not act to prevent evil?
Thinking about the
transcendence of God, one might say:
1. He is timeless.
2. He creates from
nothing.
3. He cannot ‘do’
anything (because things only get done within space and time).
4. He cannot be a
moral agent (for the same reason).
5. He can know
everything past, present and future.
Thinking about the
immanence of God, one might say:
1. He is within
time.
2. He shapes and
sustains the physical world.
3. He can act
within the world.
4. He can be a
moral agent, shaping events.
5. He can know the
past and the present, but he cannot know the future (except if it is the
inevitable outcome of things that exist in the present).
But traditional
theism argues that God is both transcendent and immanent. Do you
see the problem with this?
The God who is
described in the Biblical narrative is an active, involved God. He is certainly
not the same as Aristotle’s ‘uncaused cause’; not a principle, or an ultimate
explanation, but a personal spiritual force to be encountered. That’s fine,
when God appears to be on your side – miracles, for example. More problematic
when things are going badly and God does not bring the prayed-for help.
The more
transcendent your idea of God is, the more remote he becomes from the everyday
world, and therefore the more difficult it is to ascribe goodness to him – after
all, you call people good on the basis of what they do. If God is beyond ‘doing’
anything, how can he be good?
The more immanent
your idea of God, the more realistic it becomes to call him ‘good’ – but only if
the actions that you see him performing are such that any reasonable person
would say that he person doing them should be called ‘good’. And here we end up
with the problem of evil again.
Key questions: How
do you relate what is ‘holy’ to what is ‘good’? How do you relate particular
good things, to an overall sense of the world’s goodness?
In other words,
which comes first – our intuitive sense of ‘goodness’, or belief in God. Do you
understand what holiness is because you encounter ‘the holy’ – or do you have a
natural sense of the ultimate, the holy, and recognise it when you see it.
It is in fact a
broader version of the Euthrypho dilemma.
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