The choice being a choice between what is good and what is evil, the choice between God and Satan. Because God is loving, just, and caring, He allows a place for evil on earth to test his creation’s obedience and allegiance to Him. But, for Milton to hypothesis that Satan is a hero for being the fallen angel, is a mere overshoot and over-glorification of something that is evil, sinful and demonic. Satan is not the hero of anything, but in a way is a necessary component of the plan that God had for his creation, mankind. For without the temptations of Satan, there would be no need for Christ to come to earth as a man and sacrifice himself on a cross to save us from the fiery pits of Hell.
Or we must say that God is not omnipotent, and although he is wholly good and would prevent evil if he could, he is powerless to stop it.” (Fitzgerald 340). This is a significant problem to the revealed religions because they believe in a wholly good and omnipotent God. Why then, would this God allow evil? In this paper, I will provide, explain, and evaluate St. Augustine of Hippo’s solution to this question. Augustine feels that evil stems from choice and free will.
Classical Theism is the traditional understanding of God as worshipped by Christians, Jews and Muslims. This definition is initially criticised, for being culture-bound, as other religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism don’t believe in one God so can’t be applied to their respective religions. Therefore the problem of evil is only a problem for followers of a theistic religion. God is described as an infinite, self-existent, incorporeal (without body), eternal, immutable (doesn’t change), impassable (incapable of suffering), simple (one entity), perfect (God is seen as a morally perfect being i.e. wholly good), omniscient (all knowing) and omnipotent (all powerful) being.
Evil isn’t a separate entity apart from us; it’s within us all through dishonesty, unfairness, etc. In other words, not all evil is sin, but all sin is evil. God is good and evil is rampant; both of these are true. Theodicy questions how both statements are true; there couldn’t be a just God and evil in the same world. My logic is that since we know what good and evil is, that proves the existence of God.
In monotheistic faith God is defined with a triad of attributes as being all good, all powerful and all knowing. This triad is what is empirically derived from God being the prime mover. The fact of evil, or theodicy, possess that there exists evil in this world and that this triad cannot exist through that evil conflicts with all three existing at once. The presence of evil means that God lacks one of these attributes because if he had them all, he would not allow evil to exist. If God and evil are to coexist then God must be: all knowing, all powerful, but good enough to want to stop it, lacking the knowledge to know how to stop it, or lacking the power to be able to stop it.
Both moral and natural evil exist in the world. If God is all loving and all powerful, why does he allow moral evils, such as humans committing evil act... ... middle of paper ... ...of evil in which we are and aren’t held accountable for. It is God who is accountable for our actions for he is the one who granted us with the power. With that being said, I argue that there is an inconsistency between the three tenets that intelligence and rational Christians affirm. Based on my belief, we cannot label God as all-powerful and loving considering that he has allowed the existence of evil not only to be welcomed into society but also to let it continue.
Evodius holds the position: “The existence of a good, all knowing (omniscient), and all-powerful (omnipotent) God is contradicted by our experience of evil in the world. It makes sense to conclude that God does not exist.” (Bwanali). As a response, Augustine asserts that the evil that we experience is just a lack of goodn... ... middle of paper ... ... good and is not the reason for evil are the ones that will live happy, faithful lives. All in all, the problem of evil has been debated for thousands of years. Some believe that evil is caused by Satan and not humanity, such as the Manichaeanists and Bogomilists, and some believe that humans are the cause of evil, rather than God, such as Augustine, Peter Kreefe, and myself.
God is the source of evil. He created natural evil, and gave humans the ability to do moral evil by giving them a free will. However, had he not given people free will, then their actions would not be good or evil; nor could God reward or punish man for his actions since they had no choice in what to do. Therefore, by giving humans choice and free will, God allowed humanity to decide whether to reward themselves with temporary physical goods, and suffer in the long run from unhappiness, or forsake bodily pleasures for eternal happiness. Works Cited St.Augustine, Thomas Williams.
The arguments stated above prove that God is not all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good. If he is, then the world will be a perfect place without the existence of evil. But we all know accidents, disasters, murders, sufferings and many other evil things do happen, we can conclude that there is no perfect world and God is not all-knowing, all-powerful and all-good. From all of the examples that I mentioned above, it is evident that evil do exists side-by-side God, this means that God is not able to rule evil. Thus, God is only all-good.
Lewis. Lewis explains it like this: God created humans to love; to love Him and one another. However, in order for love to be true and meaningful it must stem from freewill. According to a theist, forced love is a contradiction and logically impossible. Because God is omnipotent, he can do all that is logically possible.