The “Problem of Evil” as traditionally presented:
Question: Can an all-powerful and all-good God create an all-good world?
An all-good God would try to create an all-good world.
An all-powerful God would be able to make an all-good world.
The world is all-good.
Orthodox monotheism, as commonly understood, argues that all three statements are true. Like others on AF, I find traditional appeals to free-will and the ‘best of all possible worlds’ defenses less than compelling. The inability of orthodoxy to adequately defend against the problem of evil follows from its misunderstanding of the nature of God.
In this thread I will present a preliminary attempt to acknowledge the apparent evil present in the world within a theistic framework. I believe this framework more closely reflects God as presented in the bible without the speculations of the Scholastics. I will do so from the perspective of a Panenthestic, neo-Platonic interpretation of Emanuel Swedenborg’s theology, widely considered a heretical position by the larger Christian community. I have capitalized terms associated with absolutes, ultimates and universals to distinguish them from approximates or appearances of the same.
Unlike Pantheism, which means ‘the natural world is God’, Panentheism means ‘the natural world is within god’. Panentheism considers God to be all of reality, or the All. The All includes a natural aspect, but also includes other aspects inferred from the natural. In Panentheism (or at least the kind I advocate) creation simply means the process of substance taking a particular form. This conforms to Swedenborg’s assertion that God created the natural world ‘out of Himself’, as opposed to ‘out of nothing’. (Out of nothing, nothing comes.)
God is defined as the Supreme Being, or the All, understood as the unity of Ideal Form (ultimate Truth) and Primal Matter (universal good).
Reality is that which is considered self-evident and primary. Objective reality exists independent of human perception. Anything capable of apprehension by the senses of anyone falls with objective reality. Subjective reality is anything apprehensible only by the experience of a specific sentient being. Every real thing has two aspects: formal and substantial. Formal is synonymous with the conceptual, abstract and ‘spiritual’. Substantial is synonymous with physical and material. While form and substance can be thought of as distinct aspects of reality, one cannot exist independent of the other. Every substance has a form and every form has a substance.
The Good is identified with Primal Matter and its essence is Love. The Good subsists in-itself and, as Love, strives for completeness and coherence. Evil is a local lack of these qualities, i.e. imperfection and corruption. The Good is the highest of all goods from which all lesser goods are derived. The goals of goods are called goodwill. The actions of goods are called good deeds. The results of goods are called virtues.
The True is identified with Ideal Form and its essence is Wisdom. The True is the manifestation of the Good’s completeness and coherence. Things that appear true can be found within and conform to the Ideal Form. What we identify as true are those things that, in our estimation and judgment, accurately embody forms taken from the True.
Where orthodoxy sees Omniscience, I see subjective experience active at all scales of reality. As an advocate of pan-psychism, I consider proto-consciousness (‘knowing’ at the smallest scale) as a universal aspect of reality. Self-awareness becomes apparent when substance reaches the level of complexity needed to bind proto-conscious monads into higher forms that more closely approximate the Ideal Form. The soul of a sentient being is the unity of that beings highest formal attributes with the smallest necessary substantial basis. Since the All is the largest scale manifesting the highest degree of complexity, the totality has within it all consciousness. God with respect to His understanding is the ‘knowing that is within all’.
Where orthodoxy sees Omnipotence, I see the universal self-organizing power (potency) within the Good to subsist and support the subsistence of lesser goods. The All strives to create wholes that reflect its own coherence and completeness. Because the All is complete and coherent, no lack can be found within it. Thus evil cannot be ascribed to the All. Since only the All can be a perfect unity, i.e. the One, all creations within the all can only partially embody the Good of the All. Thus all creations, as partial goods, express some lack of good. These lacks are called evils. Because evils are the absence of the good that would make something a perfect unity, evils are really nothing at all, just fantasies without substance or form.
Thus evil is not a universal state that we can ascribe to the All, but rather we find evils within local conditions. This is what the statement by Heraclitus that “For God everything is good, but for mortals there is good and evil” means to me.
Question: Can an all-powerful and all-good God create an all-good world?
An all-good God would try to create an all-good world.
An all-powerful God would be able to make an all-good world.
The world is all-good.
Orthodox monotheism, as commonly understood, argues that all three statements are true. Like others on AF, I find traditional appeals to free-will and the ‘best of all possible worlds’ defenses less than compelling. The inability of orthodoxy to adequately defend against the problem of evil follows from its misunderstanding of the nature of God.
In this thread I will present a preliminary attempt to acknowledge the apparent evil present in the world within a theistic framework. I believe this framework more closely reflects God as presented in the bible without the speculations of the Scholastics. I will do so from the perspective of a Panenthestic, neo-Platonic interpretation of Emanuel Swedenborg’s theology, widely considered a heretical position by the larger Christian community. I have capitalized terms associated with absolutes, ultimates and universals to distinguish them from approximates or appearances of the same.
Unlike Pantheism, which means ‘the natural world is God’, Panentheism means ‘the natural world is within god’. Panentheism considers God to be all of reality, or the All. The All includes a natural aspect, but also includes other aspects inferred from the natural. In Panentheism (or at least the kind I advocate) creation simply means the process of substance taking a particular form. This conforms to Swedenborg’s assertion that God created the natural world ‘out of Himself’, as opposed to ‘out of nothing’. (Out of nothing, nothing comes.)
God is defined as the Supreme Being, or the All, understood as the unity of Ideal Form (ultimate Truth) and Primal Matter (universal good).
Reality is that which is considered self-evident and primary. Objective reality exists independent of human perception. Anything capable of apprehension by the senses of anyone falls with objective reality. Subjective reality is anything apprehensible only by the experience of a specific sentient being. Every real thing has two aspects: formal and substantial. Formal is synonymous with the conceptual, abstract and ‘spiritual’. Substantial is synonymous with physical and material. While form and substance can be thought of as distinct aspects of reality, one cannot exist independent of the other. Every substance has a form and every form has a substance.
The Good is identified with Primal Matter and its essence is Love. The Good subsists in-itself and, as Love, strives for completeness and coherence. Evil is a local lack of these qualities, i.e. imperfection and corruption. The Good is the highest of all goods from which all lesser goods are derived. The goals of goods are called goodwill. The actions of goods are called good deeds. The results of goods are called virtues.
The True is identified with Ideal Form and its essence is Wisdom. The True is the manifestation of the Good’s completeness and coherence. Things that appear true can be found within and conform to the Ideal Form. What we identify as true are those things that, in our estimation and judgment, accurately embody forms taken from the True.
Where orthodoxy sees Omniscience, I see subjective experience active at all scales of reality. As an advocate of pan-psychism, I consider proto-consciousness (‘knowing’ at the smallest scale) as a universal aspect of reality. Self-awareness becomes apparent when substance reaches the level of complexity needed to bind proto-conscious monads into higher forms that more closely approximate the Ideal Form. The soul of a sentient being is the unity of that beings highest formal attributes with the smallest necessary substantial basis. Since the All is the largest scale manifesting the highest degree of complexity, the totality has within it all consciousness. God with respect to His understanding is the ‘knowing that is within all’.
Where orthodoxy sees Omnipotence, I see the universal self-organizing power (potency) within the Good to subsist and support the subsistence of lesser goods. The All strives to create wholes that reflect its own coherence and completeness. Because the All is complete and coherent, no lack can be found within it. Thus evil cannot be ascribed to the All. Since only the All can be a perfect unity, i.e. the One, all creations within the all can only partially embody the Good of the All. Thus all creations, as partial goods, express some lack of good. These lacks are called evils. Because evils are the absence of the good that would make something a perfect unity, evils are really nothing at all, just fantasies without substance or form.
Thus evil is not a universal state that we can ascribe to the All, but rather we find evils within local conditions. This is what the statement by Heraclitus that “For God everything is good, but for mortals there is good and evil” means to me.
