Re: Leibniz's "Best of all possible worlds"
- From: bimms@xxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 08 Mar 2006 02:14:12 GMT
What the hell are you talking about? Who cares about God's perspective?
The whole problem of evil is obviously about the human perspective -
it's humans who do the suffering!
Except when God became Man, in the person of Jesus. As Simone Weil
said, without the incarnation, human suffering would be a scandal. But
since God has gone through suffering in the person of Jesus, human
suffering is not a scandal...... or at any rate, less of a scandal than
it would be in a God who remained aloof and distant from His creation.
The fact is, a lot of pointless and
cruel pain, often excruciating, occurs, and we are asking if this can
be harmonised with an all-loving God who has the power to decide what
does and does not happen. Bimms suggested that the suffering in this
life is balanced by eternal bliss in the future. Big problem - in
Christian doctrine, there are going to be many non-Christians failing
to achieve that balance and not experiencing eternal bliss.
Not in my opinion, nor in the opinion of the early Church fathers, who
were Universalist.
The only
way that Bimms's argument works is if reincarnation occurs (and I am
open to this idea, particularly as there is at least some evidence for
past lives) - that is, souls get repeated chances to progress and no
soul ends up on the scrapheap so to speak, or in that human construct,
Hell
Universalism is a much better solution than reincarnation. In fact, the
concept of reincarnation only mulitplies the suffering over thousands
of lives! It fits in very poorly with the more optimistic Christian
Universalist idea of a single life..... followed by a purification
period in hell if you happened to never have placed your trust in the
finished work of Jesus Christ. (Such a purification period would be
commensurate with the crimes you have committed).
Ever read "The Myth of Sisyphus" by Camus? Perhaps you have heard of
the myth, which states that Sisyphus has to keep rolling a heavy stone
up a hill, only to have that stone roll back down repeatedly.
Reincarnation is the most despairing doctrine ever. It would be like
the endless re-occurrence of Nietzsche...... you can't get much more
depressing than that!
.
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