3.5.3 God’s influence on suffering Flashcards
1
Q
How does the process theodicy describe God’s attitude to evil? What do scholars say about this?
A
- God cannot stop evil because he does not have the power to change the natural process; however, in a sense, he bears some responsibility for it because he started off the evolutionary process knowing that he would not be able to control it
- David Griffin claimed in his 1976 book God, Power & Evil: A Process Theodicy that “God is responsible for evil in the sense of having urged the creation forward to those states in which discordant feelings could be felt with greater intensity.”; in this way, God seeks to maximise the harmony in the universe
- God attempts to help people live in the best way, by what Hick called “persuasion and lure” but he cannot control them
- additionally, Hick observed that “the reality of evil in the world is the measure of the extent to which God’s will is, in fact, thwarted”
2
Q
How does the process theodicy attempt to justify God’s actions?
A
- God need not have created the world, he could have left the original chaos undisturbed instead of forming it into ordered universe
- God, therefore, carries a great responsibility for the good & the evil that have occurred
- however, in process theodicy, God’s actions are justified because, as Hick observes, “God’s goodness is vindicated in that the risk-taking venture in the evolution of the universe was calculated to produce…”
