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Theodicy: Two Moral Extremes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

John King-Farlow  and
Niall Shanks
John King-Farlow
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Niall Shanks
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, United States of America
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Extract

Shake the leaky buckets of human meditation on theodicy. Out fall problems of moral perception, of linguistic and logical subtlety, of imagination in metaphysical work and biblical interpretation, of so much more. … They are disparately connected things which can suggest a Tower of Babel at least as much as any Tree of Good and Evil. But then such a picture is what one might fairly expect from a central mystery of theology, from something one can make (in this life, at least) only limited progress towards understanding.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , May 1988 , pp. 153 - 176
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1988

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References

page 153 note 1 The main works made use of in this essay are:

Geach, Peter Thomas. Providence and Evil. Cambridge: CUP, 1977.Google Scholar

Geach, Peter Thomas. God and the Soul. London: Routledge, 1969.Google Scholar

Hick, John. Death and Eternal Life. London: Collins, 1976.Google Scholar

King-Farlow, John and Christensen, William Niels. Faith and the Life of Reason. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1972.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Lewis, H. D.The Self and Immortality. London: Macmillan, 1973.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Pike, Nelson (ed.). God and Evil. Prentice Hall; Englewood Cliffs, 1964.Google Scholar

page 172 note 2 Cf. John Stuart Mill, An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy: ‘ I f … I am informed that the world is ruled by a being whose attributes are infinite, but what they are we cannot learn, nor what are the principles of his government, except that “the highest human morality which we are capable of conceiving” does not sanction them; convince me of it and I will bear my fate as I may. But when I am told that I must believe this, and at the same time call this being by the names which express and affirm the highest morality, I say in plain terms that I will n o t … if such a being can sentence me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go. …We are never told that God's omnipotence must not be supposed to mean an infinite degree of power we know in man and nature … the Divine Power is always interpreted in a completely human signification, but the Divine Goodness and Justice must be understood to be such only in an unintelligible sense. Is it unfair to surmise that this is because those who speak in the name of God have need of the human conception of his power, since an idea which can overawe and enforce obedience must address itself to real feelings; but are content that his goodness should be conceived only as something inconceivable, because they are so often required to teach doctrines respecting him which conflict inconceivably with all goodness that we can conceive?’ (Chapter VII; paragraphs 20 and 21).

page 173 note 3 See Our Faith and the Life of Reason, Chapter II, for extended discussion of two basic clusters of predicates applied to the biblical God. Geach's original quotation of 1969 is noted here.