HOLY SPIRIT

1
THE PROBLEM OF PAIN
The Scream, E. Munch, http//www.ibiblio.org/wm/pa
int/auth/munch/
2
THEODICIES-John K. RothGod is Great,God is
Good . . . Perhaps
3
THEODICIES Roth

• A Theodicy of Protest, Encountering Evil, 2-20
• I protest against philosophies and theologies
  that do not take the historical particularity of
  evil seriously enough, even when they claim that
  evils are horrendous. EE, 3
• The Holocaust, genocide, and democide smash and
  destroy particular persons in ways that scar the
  world forever. EE, 3

4
THEODICIES Roth

• In my present thinking, I consider theodicy of
  protest and antitheodicy as nearly synonymous.
  EE, 4
• That confrontation is rooted not so much in
  rejection of God but rather in recognition that
  such defiance is crucial in struggles against
  despair. Jewish insight, ancient and
  contemporary, calls for men and women-
  particularly Christians- to consider a theodicy
  of protest, which is a form of antitheodicy. EE,
  4

5
THEODICIES Roth

• My theodicy of protest begins by probing that
  assumption i.e., that God cares about history
  and it does so by agreeing with Hegel history is
  the slaughter-bench at which the happiness of
  peoples, the wisdom of states, and the virtue of
  individuals have been sacrificed. EE, 6-7

6
THEODICIES Roth

• One way to summarize those questions is to ask
  if creation is good, and yet history is largely a
  slaughter-bench, how cost effective are Gods
  decisions? Theodicy must deal with
  God-as-economist, and the question posed above
  deals with Gods waste. EE, 7

7
THEODICIES Roth

• Roth argues that God has acted either out of
  necessity or freedom.
• No matter what horn of the dilemma is seized,
  any ways in which God could rationally justify
  Gods economy as purely cost effective in
  pursuing goodness that we can appreciate . . .
  well, those ways are beyond imagining. This
  result testifies that such a wasteful God cannot
  be totally benevolent. History itself is Gods
  indictment. EE, 7

8
THEODICIES Roth

• Do the ends justify the means?
• Already the cost-effectiveness of Gods creative
  acts has been challenged. In that challenge a
  critique of the gift of human freedom was
  implied. To make the critique explicit, the
  nature of human freedom must be focused. In a
  word, our freedom is both too much and too
  little. It is far more an occasion for waste than
  a defense of Gods total goodness can reconcile.
  EE, 9

9
THEODICIES Roth

• Freedom (human) is often used to explain evil and
  pain. However
• We have more power and freedom than is good for
  us. Perhaps in some past Eden all the factors of
  freedom were in healthy equilibrium. In present
  history, however, that dream is a myth at best.
  EE, 9

10
THEODICIES Roth

• Does God do the best God can?
• Christians claim that God raised Jesus from the
  dead. If God did so, then God plausibly had the
  might to thwart the Holocaust long before it
  ended. . . . But that fact, in turn, leaves us to
  ask Why should anybody bother with a God like
  this one, who seems so infrequently to do the
  best that is within Gods power. EE, 11

11
THEODICIES Roth

• We are left with Despair.
• Things are not going very well. A protesting
  theodicy does not say that Gods love controls
  the universe, nor does it hold that claims which
  find this world to be the best one possible make
  good sense. Thus, this antitheodicy must reckon
  with despair. EE, 11,12
• Put another way no matter what happens, God is
  going to be much less than perfectly justified.
  EE, 12

12
THEODICIES Roth

• Roth complains about Gods non-intervention in
  the world.
• If God is sovereign, bound only by Gods will,
  then apparently God chooses to be the creator and
  master of this universe. Although God could
  intervene dramatically at any point in present
  history, God elects to let freedom work out its
  own course as it lives in individuals and
  communities. Thus, Gods plan for history is
  virtually no plan at all. EE, 13

13
THEODICIES Roth

• For Roth, God is without excuse.
• Still, the fact remains the net result of Gods
  choices is that the world is more wild and
  wasteful than any good reason that we can imagine
  would require it to be. Thus to be for such a God
  requires some sense of being against God as
  well. EE, 12

14
CRITIQUE OFJohn T. Roth
15
THE PROBLEM OF PAIN
The Scream, E. Munch, http//www.ibiblio.org/wm/pa
int/auth/munch/