CPSY 6222 Theodicy

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CPSY 6222Theodicy

• Jay M. Uomoto, Ph.D.
• Seattle Pacific University

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Introductions

• Background
• Who are you?
• Class ground rules
• Group ground rules

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Theodicy

• Introductions
• Logistics/Syllabus/Review of Books
• Objectives
• Overview of philosophical and theological issues
• Underscore the interface of theodicy and life
• Relationship between theodicy and spirituality
• Importance of theodicy in counseling
• Course Assignments
• Group Assignments

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Theodicy

• When you think of this topic what terms come to
  mind and what stereotypes do you have of these
  terms?
• Evil
• Suffering
• Death
• Pain
• Other Nasty Terms

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Theodicy

• Theo God
• dike justice
• Problems
• Evil and suffering co-exist with a Benevolent God
• Omniscient, Omnipresent God and the allowance of
  evil in the world
• Evil is moral rebellion against God - contrary to
  the will of God
• Moral dilemma for which there are multiple
  responses with no unified or agreed upon solution
• Philosophical debates without an end or answer
  Akin to the Can God make a stone so big that He
  cannot lift it debate

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Theodicy - Premises

• We must be influenced by another god
• Contingent universe is flawed
• God has limited omnipotence or purposely limits
  the influence of His omnipotence remains a
  mystery to us

• There is only one God
• God created the world
• God is Omnipotent

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Theodicy - Premises

• God is personal
• God is perfectly good

• God suffers with us in the evils that are
  perpetrated against us
• Evil exists for an overriding concern or benefit
  evil is a means to a good end

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Evil and Suffering

• Evil as process act, condition, behavior
• Evil as entity
• Suffering as outcome, impact of the act or
  condition
• The terrorist attack was evil. It accorded a
  great deal of suffering
• Key What occurs next in the sequence?

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Evil and Suffering

• Anthropomorphize evil
• World Trade Center attacks

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Evil and Suffering

• An essential tension

Compassion
EVIL
Grace
SUFFERING
Altruism
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Evil

• William L.Rowe (2001). God and the Problem of
  Evil.
• Evil Undeserved Suffering
• Two Types of Undeserved Suffering
• A five-year-old girls being brutally beaten,
  raped, and strangled
• a fawns being horribly burned in a forest
  fire, lying for five days on the forest floor
  before death relieves its suffering.
• Moral Evil
• Natural Evil

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Teleology of Theodicy
Theodicy Argument (Philosophical Theology)
Evil and Suffering (Content and
Experiential Knowledge / Datum of Theodicy)
Spiritual Experience of Theodicy (Dark Night to
Shed Light)
Hope and Eschatology
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Historical Foundations

• Gottfried W. Leibniz - Introduced the term
  theodicy into philosophy
• Introduced as a part of natural theology -
  positive proofs for the existence and attributes
  of God
• Theodicies seek an understanding of the nature
  and attributes of God
• Theodicy as a science - exercise of reason to
  systematically arrange the content of our
  knowledge about God

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Historical Foundations

• Theodicy more than philosophical musings
• T. F. Torrence
• Student of Karl Barth
• Theological science
• Felt that once entering into the discussion about
  God, you have entered holy ground. It is no
  longer abstract
• Discussion of theodicy - less an intellectual
  task personal theological task

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Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz(1646 1716)

• German mathematician, diplomat, philosopher
• Coined the term theodicy in the 1690s, never
  defined it.

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Other Views

• Kenneth Cauthen, Professor of Theology,
  Colgate-Rochester/Crozer Theological Seminary
• Four Faces of Evil
• Injustice
• Demonic
• Tragic
• Ambiguous

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Current Views of Theodicy

• Theism
• the belief that the world was created by an
  omnipotent and perfectly good personal being
  (Davis - p.2)
• 5 facets of theistic belief
• There is one God (monotheism)
• God created the world (world is contingent)
• God is omnipotent
• God is personal (conscious being who desires a
  relationship)
• God is perfectly good

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Current Views on Theodicy

• The problem of evil occurs in the context of
  theistic beliefless so with a non-theistic
  belief
• Conversely, a punishing universe paradigm
  allows for evil and suffering to co-exist fairly
  easily
• Is God willing to prevent evil but is unable?
• Is God unwilling to prevent evil for some greater
  good?
• The problem of evil posses a challenge to the
  existence of God power evidence against (p.4)

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Theodicy of Protest

• John K. Roth
• Gods sovereignty disappointment with human
  wrong
• Quarrels or protests Gods use of His power
• Defiance crucial in struggles against despair
• Death of God movement as conclusion or succumbing
  to a powerless God concept - no protest

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Theodicy of Protest

• Camus ..man is not entirely to blame (in The
  Rebel)it was not he who started history
• Sophies Choice accuses God and rightly so (p.
  13)
• Protesting theodicy hears futile cries
• Despair highlights potential progress toward the
  Kingdom of God (p.15)

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Theodicy of Protest

• Human freedom still at the core
• History refutes more than confirms Gods
  providential care (p.17)
• A suffering God? What is going on? (Protest)
• Jobs protest is the context of trust v. mistrust
  (a tension)
• Being for AND against God
• Matt 2746 - Eloi, eloi

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Theodicy of Protest

• Protest invokes a deeper compassion, a
  splagnizomai (viscera).
• Human condition and that around us is far worse
  than is comprehensible.
• Yearning for the refusal to settle for despair
  that the first feeling generates (p.20)
• Psalms are chuck full of this yearning
• Disharmony intensifies concern for moral goodness
  (p.31)

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Irenaen Theodicy

• John Hick
• Whereas, Augustinian approach
• Falleness free will accounts for evil but
  preserves Gods omnipotence
• Majority report
• Irenaean approach
• Immature moral creatures in a person-making world
• Minority report

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Irenaen Theodicy

• St. Irenaeus (AD 120 - 202)
• Image as potentiality for knowledge of and
  relationship with ones Maker (p.41)
• Likeness - perfection in future, not past
  perfection (cf. Adam and Eve account)
• Distance (p.43)
• Continuity with the creaturely
• Eschatological emphasis - bound for Glory
• Perfected finite persons in the eschaton
• Freedom to acknowledge God

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Irenaean Theodicy

• Immature creatures express sins (p.45)
• Sinful nature in a sinful world
• Moral evils versus non-moral evils. Both result
  in pain and suffering
• Action/acting and engagement in negotiating evils
  and moral development part of the person-making
  process (cf. Kitty Experiment, p. 47)

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Irenaen Theodicy

• Morally wrong act - harms community
• Pain and suffering pose moral choices
• P.48
• We can freely respond to Gods non-coercive
  self-disclosures.(p.51)
• Evil presence and utility in soul-making
• Critique (Sontag) If God designed this training
  program, we need a new coach (p.56)
• Critique (Griffin) Are things getting better?
• Critique (Roth) Too good to be true (p.63)

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Free Will and Evil

• Stephen T. Davis
• God is wholly good
• LPE vs. EPE
• LPE with FWD - runs risk that people will choose
  evil
• Amount of evil is outweighed by the good - does
  not require an account for every evil that occurs
  within an omnipotent God world view.

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Free Will and Evil

• Key
• All the evil that exists in the world is due to
  the choices of free moral agents whom God
  created, and no other world which God could have
  created would have had a better balance of good
  over evil than the actual world will have.
  (p.72).

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Free Will and Evil

• Emotive Problem of Evil
• God is omnipotent God is Good Evil Exists
• Hard to believe!
• Albert Camus and Elie Wiesel would protest this
  position
• Still the best balance. Is a cancerless world
  and loss of freedom of moral agency as good of
  balance?
• Is freedom cost-effective?
• Why did God create the Hitlers of the world or
  allow the Hitlers of the world exist? Davis
  leaves to mysteryonly God knows.

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Clinical Implications?
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Barth and das Nichtige

• It is true that in creation there is not only a
  Yes but also a No not only a height but also an
  abyss not only clarity but also obscurity not
  only progress and continuation but also
  impediment and limitation not only growth but
  also decay not only opulence but also indigence
  not only beauty but also ashes not only
  beginning but also end not only value by also
  worthlessness
• Church Dogmatics, III/3

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Barth and das Nichtige

• das Nichtige - nothingness
• It is what God does not choose
• Not just non-being
• It constitutes an incomprehensible menace to
  creation - (Larrimore - The Problem of Evil)
• For there to be a das Nichtige, there must also
  be life and creation.
• Paradox is an inherent characteristic of God
• Gods grace and compassion upholds a contingent
  universe in which its inherent dynamic structure
  is that of paradox

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Personal Theodicy

• Personal theodicy is shaped by life experience
• Experience of trauma shapes world views
• Experience of trauma shapes ones opinions about
  the attributes of God
• Brushes with theodicy
• Conclusions made of these brushes
• Theodicy changes ones life

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Personal Theodicy

• Deductive versus Inductive analysis of personal
  theodicy
• Personal spirituality shapes personal theodicy
  The Dark Night of the Soul
• Requires an appreciation for the many faces of
  evil
• Requires an intimate knowledge of suffering
• Theodicy as a Lived Question (Todd Billings)
• Theodicy or The Odyssey

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Community Theology and Theodicy

• Karl Barth Church Dogmatics (III,2)
• Christ as a starting point God-man
• Christology precedes anthropology
• Being human as covenant-partner through Christ
• Fellow-humanity as ontic manifestation of our
  covenant-partnership with God
• Christ is in community
• Start with Christology before talking Theodicy

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Community Theology and Theodicy

• Deddo (1994) Scottish J of Theology, 47, 183-222.
• Escatological rejoiner
• Being human involves a constant striving for
  complete and personal communion with God
• Movement against entropy by existing as
  fellow-humanity
• Evil is movement toward entropy, distances us
  from the escaton.

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Community Theology and Theodicy

• Dietrich Bonhoeffer Creation and Fall
• Genesis creation account
• Male and female he created them
• it is in this dependence on the other that his
  creatureliness consists.
• Community as reality evil produces disordered
  community suffering is the by-product of
  disordered community

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Community Theology and Theodicy

• Emil Brunner Man in Revolt A Christian
  Anthropology
• Significance of the imago Dei
• Selfhood can only be understood in the context of
  community
• Christ in community
• Dynamic of reconciliation and healing
• Standing with and for the other
• Evil stands without and against the other

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Community Theology and Theodicy

• Ray S. Anderson On Being Human
• Creatureliness continuity across phyla
• Disordered creatureliness can limit human
  potential, but does not in itself determine it.
• Community is an ontic reality
• Distortion/destruction of community
  in-humanity.

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Community Theology and Theodicy

• Christ-in-Community is the ordered state of
  humanity there is hope and a future orientation
  to all events
• Christ-in-Community reminds us of the God-man,
  who suffered with the cry of Eloi, Eloiwhy hast
  thou forsaken me
• Axiom I Theodicy will always involve the
  community, or broken community.
• Axion II Theodicy is always interpersonal