Transcript HOLY SPIRIT - Erskine College

THE PROBLEM OF PAIN
The Scream, E. Munch, http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/munch/
THEODICIESDavid Ray Griffin
“I get by with a little
help from my friends”
-God (or, the Beatles)
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THEODICIES: Griffin
• “A Process Theodicy,” Encountering Evil,
108-125
• Griffin contrasts traditional theism, and
creation out of nothing, with process
theism and creation out of chaos. EE, 108
• “The difference between these two views
is crucial for the question whether the
world’s evil is compatible with the idea that
it is the product of a perfectly good
creator.” EE, 109
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THEODICIES: Griffin
• The doctrine of creatio ex nihilo is not the
best explanation for creation. EE, 109
– It is not taught in Genesis 1:-23 according to
Levenson and May. EE, 109
– The doctrine is not found in either the Hebrew
Bible or intertestamental Judaism. EE, 110
– Creatio ex nihilo developed in response to
Neo-Platonism. EE, 111
– “Creatio ex nihilo was not accepted by Jewish
thinkers until the Middle Ages.” EE, 111
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THEODICIES: Griffin
• For Griffin, the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo
leaves theologians with an unavoidable
problem.
• “The history of theodicy would bear out his
warning that, if God is said to have created
the world out of absolute nothingness, the
origin of evil cannot be explained, at least
without implying that God’s goodness is
less than perfect.” EE, 114
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THEODICIES: Griffin
• Traditional All-Determining Theism, Griffin
says, cannot avoid the conclusion that God
does not exist. EE, 115
• “According to this first version, as its name
indicates, literally every event and feature
of the world-whether in the physical world
or the human mind- is fully determined by
God.” EE, 115
• The only way to avoid the conclusion that
God does not exist is to deny that
“‘genuine evil exists.’” EE, 116
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THEODICIES: Griffin
• Traditional Free-Will Theism “holds that although
God essentially has all the power, God has,
through a self-limitation on this power,
voluntarily given freedom to at least some of the
creatures . . . , freedom with which they can act
contrary to the will of God.” EE, 117
• “This idea of a voluntary self-limitation on divine
omnipotence is necessary because free-will
theists (rightly) reject the ‘compatibilism’ of alldetermining theism, according to which
creaturely freedom is somehow compatible with
divine determinism.” EE, 117
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THEODICIES: Griffin
• Three problems with Traditional Free-Will Theism
– “It provides no answer to the question of what is
usually called ‘natural evil,’ meaning the forms of evil
that are not due to human volition . . . .” EE, 117
– “A second problem is that . . . God could intervene to
prevent any specific instance of evil.” EE, 117
And of course the question is, if he can intervene, why
doesn’t he?
– “A third problem for traditional free-will theism is
based on its position that even the freedom of human
beings is an entirely gratuitous gift of God, not
necessitated by anything in the nature of things . . . .”
EE, 118
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THEODICIES: Griffin
• Griffin offers, instead, a version of
“process theism.” EE, 119
• “This type of theism shares much in
common with traditional theism, affirming
the existence of a personal creator who is
perfect in both power and goodness, but it
is nontraditional in affirming a
contemporary version of the biblical and
Platonic notion of creation out of chaos
and thereby a different understanding of
divine power.” EE, 119
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THEODICIES: Griffin
• “One can at least equally well assume,
however, that what exists necessarily is
God-with-a-realm-of-finite-existents. . . .
Or, in Charles Hartshorne’s language, God
is by nature the soul of the world. The
necessary existence of God, therefore,
implies the necessary existence of a worldnot of our world, of course, and not even a
world in the sense of an ordered cosmos,
but simply a realm of finite existents, which
can exist either in an ordered or a chaotic
state.” EE, 122
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THEODICIES: Griffin
• Griffin argues that human freedom “cannot
be simply withdrawn or overridden by God.
This view of shared power implies, in turn,
that divine power is persuasive, not
controlling. God, by hypothesis, influences
every finite event, but God cannot wholly
determine how any event will use its own
creativity and thereby its twofold power to
exert both self-determination and causal
influence.” EE, 122
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THEODICIES: Griffin
• “We should not suppose that there is some level
of the world that fully reflects the divine will- as
if, for example, God for some mysterious reason
wanted there to be cancer, AIDS, and genetically
deformed babies.” EE, 123
• “Unlike traditional free-will theists, therefore, we
need not ask why God did not create beings who
could enjoy all the positive values of which we
are capable but were not so subject to suffering.
Such beings are, by hypothesis, metaphysically
impossible.” EE, 124
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CRITIQUE OF
David Ray Griffin
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THE PROBLEM OF PAIN
The Scream, E. Munch, http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/munch/