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Many theodicies insist upon the “necessity” of evil on the grounds that God utilizes evil to arrange or create some greater good.
Such assumptions tend to culminate in the declaration that even the evilest of evil deeds all inevitably contribute to our individual and universal salvation. That declaration is grounded in the assumption of God’s omni-powers and Divine Providence. One obvious problem with this line of thinking is the utter denigration of human freedom and agency. If evil is necessary for a greater good that God will unfailingly bring about, then what right or duty do humans have to prevent evil from manifesting? Also, since the greater good apparently requires evil, it would be impertinent for humans to stop evil from manifesting because doing so could hinder or arrest the manifestation of some consequent greater good. After all, any action, no matter how well-intentioned, might interfere with God’s providential plans. People could never know if their choices to oppose evil were ever truly “good.” Worse, individuals could end up like Sophocles’ Oedipus and run headlong into the evil they are attempting to escape. Why? Because an Omni-God entails that Providence is a “fixed” state in all senses of the word. God’s supernatural powers have already predetermined everything, leaving no meaningful room for human freedom. What about free will? Okay, what about it? How free is your choice if Providence has already determined the direction and consequences of your choice? Not very free at all, which helps explain why some Christian denominations do away with the concept of human freedom altogether and adhere to assumptions like predestination (which reaches far more sincere and coherent conclusions about man’s freedom within the framework of Omni-God and Providence). Taken a step further, such lines of thinking also tend to fire up the old rationalization furnaces to the point that any evil act becomes a prerequisite for some subsequent greater good that God will eventually bring about. If God allows evil to happen, it must, eventually, serve some purpose toward the greater good. Taken to the extreme, this line of thinking can harmonize any absurdly evil state of affairs with God’s omnibenevolence and other omni-qualities and declare it to be Providence, despite the glaring incompatibilities such harmonizations produce. What other options exist? How about this? Human freedom could be authentically free, entailing that God may not be as omni as most Christians presume. Moreover, Providence may be more of an open-ended, co-creative work-in-progress that positively requires the input of authentic human freedom to move in the direction God desires, with the caveat that God’s involvement in the project is no guarantee of success. Pump and dump schemes are a prevalent type of fraud involving the artificial inflation (pump) of the price of a stock or other asset via false, misleading, or exaggerated statements regarding the supposed worth of said stock or asset. The fraudster hopes the manipulated demand will rapidly inflate the price so that he can profit by unceremoniously selling the security or asset at a high price (dump).
Pump and dump. If pressed, that’s how I would describe the first Trump term, and I have the feeling Trump’s second go at the helm will offer more of the same, only with much more intensity. Trump’s first presidential stint promised wonderful and noble things and ended with Operation Warp Speed and the January 6th “insurrection.” People got pumped, then dumped. Before swearing the oath this second time, Trump, fittingly enough, released an official Trump meme crypto token, which rocketed to over 60 dollars yesterday during the inauguration. The Orange Man’s little gimmick—which has apparently earned him a 25 billion-plus windfall—now sits at around 37 dollars. Trump also issued another meme coin in honor of his Slovakian wife. The Melania meme token was over 12 dollars yesterday; today, it sits at about four bucks. All the same, perhaps skepticism is premature. For all I know, Trump’s meme coins could be worth several thousand in a few months. If people are willing to “invest” in things like Fartcoin, anything is possible, even a Pontifex meme coin courtesy of the Vatican. The current blending and blurring of politics and crypto-trading could not be a more apt example of our contemporary virtue-less virtual virtuality, especially against the backdrop of ludicrously pumped-up AI. Both politics and crypto are based on deluding the value-inverted masses about value, hence values. Both feed on generating manias. Oh, yes, those states of abnormally elevated arousal and energy levels we all love so much, replete with rapidly changing emotions and moods, all highly dependent on and influenced by endless torrents of external stimuli. The System thrives on mania. It loves spawning hallucinations and delusions of all sorts, pumping people up for whatever program it wishes to push through. The last big pump occurred during the birdemic mania of 2019–2022. The dump of that manipulated fear, hatred, and despair campaign was apparently so subtle and sudden that few even noticed. Regardless, the uber-successful campaign succeeded in pumping the majority of the population full of mysterious gene therapy drugs, the consequences of which are still unfolding long after the dump. I sense the present pump campaign will be of a vastly different quality. I suspect something along the lines of Dante’s second circle of hell, at least at first. Ravenous appetites and exuberant optimism will be pumped up, and these will, unfailingly, sway reason (and spirit) at every turn. The System will "pump" as it has never pumped before. There will be action everywhere, and everyone will want to get in on it. The winds will blow hard. Most will find this exhilarating initially, at least until the winds intensify into a violent storm ready to sweep away everything. People will be dumped. They will scatter, disorientated. When the winds finally subside, most people will have lost nearly everything and drift through ravaged, unrecognizable landscapes. Overly dramatic? Yeah, probably. After all, the real drama happens during the pump, not the dump. Technically, the dump qualifies as an anti-climax, in much the same way hell does. Evil opposes good but does not “feed” on it.
On the contrary, in the presence of authentic good, evil starves. It is metaphysically impossible for good to provide sustenance for evil. If evil did feed on good, then God would be little more than a 24-hour all-you-can-eat buffet. If evil did feed on good, then there would be no positive motivation to be good. If evil did feed on good, then evil could never be overcome or defeated, not in this world nor the next. If evil did feed on good, then Heaven could not exist, and Jesus’s promise would be a lie. Evil does not and cannot feed on good. Evil feeds on evil; hence, evil’s dogged pursuit of generating more evil upon which to feed. Past definitions and conceptualizations of evil no longer serve.
Evil regarded as simply the absence of good; as non-being; nothing. Evil as some divine, mysterious necessity God utilizes to create a greater good. The metaphysical impossibility of pure evil. The notion that things cannot be corrupted entirely. Everything in existence is good. Evil feeds on good. Good always defeats evil. And so forth. As true as these definitions may have been in the past, they no longer serve. They no longer serve because they are the expressed thoughts of earlier modes of human consciousness that understood God, the universe, and everything differently. Is it entirely inconceivable to consider that a Christian’s overriding task today involves moving beyond these earlier modes of understanding? “Evidence” of such past definitions and conceptualizations falling short was on full display public display from 2019 to 2022. Was the terrible, overpromoted plague that supposedly threatened to exterminate global humanity nothing more than an enormous absence of good? Does it qualify as the manifestation of non-being and nothing? Were the measures taken during that time examples of good filling the void of non-being and nothingness? Did God utilize those years to draw forth or create a greater good? Were the people who unleashed, supported, managed, and implemented the global totalitarian measures not entirely corrupted? Was everything that happened then essentially good? In ways we can never hope to understand? Did not good triumph in the end after the whole thing subsided and life went back to “normal?” And what of the church closures? Just an absence of good? A necessary evil that brought forth greater good? Just a case of evil “feeding on good?” Answering these questions involves reflecting on these past events and discerning how people, Christians especially, perceived and responded to the evils of 2019–2022. Any sincere reflection and discernment will inevitably reveal that past definitions of conceptualizations of evil no longer serve. They no longer serve because past definitions of evil, freedom, and God no longer serve. Once again . . . Is it entirely inconceivable to consider that a Christian’s main task today involves moving beyond these earlier modes of understanding? An important post by Dr. Charlton on the problem of Omni-god and free agency prompted an insightful comment exchange between Bruce and blogger Derek Ramsey:
Derek: In the Bible Satan seems to act as if were possible for God to be defeated. This isn't to say it was probable, but his rebellion in heaven makes no sense if it were categorically impossible for him to have success. Satan's behavior implies that Omni-God isn't a metaphysical reality. The idea that God could have lost, however improbable that outcome might have been, is what allows me to conceive of freedom as a meaningful concept. Bruce: My understanding is that there was - and is - a sense in which God (the Father) can lose in this world; which is why Jesus Christ was/is so vital, in his "second creation" of Heaven. What I mean is first that death cannot be eradicated from this mortal world of our experience. God can keep creating mortal life, but it will keep dying. And there is a continual battle of God against evil. God can continue creating mortals, but the devil's party continues to accumulate "personnel", and can increase subversion. This is not a matter of freedom as such, but a matter of the fact that beings just-are-free because not wholly of-God, because co-eternal in their existence and separate . What God can do for beings, can be undone by their choice. The possibility for God to win eternally is also the consequence of freedom - it happens only because beings choose to follow Jesus Christ (to resurrected life in Heaven - which is free from evil, by the consent of resurrecting beings. Unlike most Christians, I am also inclined to believe that God can lose in this world, which is why I keep harping on about the reality of authentic, uncreated freedom. I will expand on this vital theme in future posts. A few years ago, nearly everyone was manipulated into fear. Now, at least a portion of the West is being manipulated into optimism, which informs me that very few people learned anything from the campaign of manipulated fear.
Some of the most egregious examples of recent and ongoing optimism manipulation:
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Remember, it’s still the System, and as far as I can tell, the System is not in any sort of “creating” mood. I admire Böhme, Schelling, and Berdyaev because they understood the inherent contradictions in traditional Christian theology concerning freedom and evil. If nothing can be prior to our outside of God, then, as stated in Acts 17:28, in God, we live and move and have our being. The same applies to everything in existence, and it only follows that it should apply to freedom and evil.
The problem is that it can’t, at least not if God is perfect, eternal, ultimate, timeless, and omni-everything, all of which traditional Christianity insists upon. Thus, freedom is defined as an innate attribute of actual creatures, as an extension of God’s freedom in which all actual creatures participate, or an uncreated eternal idea in the mind of God imbued in all creatures that can then utilize the eternal idea to align themselves with God’s law via free will choices. Whatever the explanation, the ultimate source of freedom is God, which contradicts what freedom is. If all freedom is contingent upon God— and traditional Christianity insists that it must be because God is ultimately the source of everything—then it is not free in any authentic sense, conceptually, existentially, or otherwise. Factoring in God’s omni attributes like omnipotence and omniscience only deepens the contradictions implicit in traditional/classical theological explanations and qualifications. And what about evil? If nothing can be prior to or outside of God, then it only follows that evil is also a part of God. Privatio boni/absence of good delineations that declare everything in Creation to be good and write off evil as nothing, non-being, or non-existence do nothing to address the very real presence of evil in Creation, to say nothing of the many contradictions such elucidations reveal when juxtaposed against God’s ultimacy and omni attributes. Böhme, Schelling, and Berdyaev recognized traditional/classical theological explications on freedom and evil as contradictory and incoherent, regardless of how such explications were qualified or asserted. Böhme, Schelling, and Berdyaev had the honesty and discernment needed to recognize that if nothing can be prior to or outside of God, then freedom and evil must also be from God. Full stop. There was no way around it. Understanding the gravity of the problem, Böhme, Schelling, and Berdyaev all offered coherent explanations of how freedom can still be authentic and how God cannot be responsible for evil even though nothing can be prior to or outside God. Böhme placed the potential for evil with God in the form of the Ungrund—the groundless ground, neither good nor evil--within and from which God the Father creates. The Son purifies the potential within the Ungrund into pure act, thus elevating the Trinity above all potential for evil. The same applied to the rest of Creation until the Fall, after which the Light of the Son retracted from Creation, and the potential for evil seeped through. Consequently, it is only through the Son that this potential for evil can be negated. Influenced by Böhme, Schelling reconceptualized the Ungrund as the Ground. Like Böhme’s Ungrund, Schelling’s Ground is also within God, but, paradoxically, contains a part that is His living essence and a part that is not God. Schelling describes God and His Ground as co-eternal. “God has in himself an inner ground of his that in this respect precedes him in existence, but, precisely, in this way, God is again the Prius [what is before] of the ground and in so far as the ground, even as such, could not exist if God did not exist actually.” God’s Ground is an essential concept in Schelling’s Freedom Essay as it pertains to the biblical Fall. Creatures are separated from God and exist in the mere Ground as independent beings. This independence is crucial for Schelling who posited that creatures do not dwell in God’s immanence, the perfection of pure, unblemished divinity. Instead, creatures are engaged in the process of becoming in the mere Ground of God. Like Böhme’s Ungrund, Schelling’s Ground in God contains the potential for darkness because in some sense it is both connected and separated from God. The dark ground yearns for revelation and anticipates the moment of being reunited with the eternal father. This separation from God is vital to upholding the necessity behind all beings/creatures’ freedom and individuality. Schelling argued that the only real way for freedom to emerge in the cosmos is through the primordial decision each creature makes—the choice for good or for evil—made possible via the Ground in which every creature exists. According to Schelling, this independence and power within the Ground allows creatures to form their own ontological centers. As is the case with Böhme, the end goal of all creatures is realignment with God; hence, the necessity of the light, that is Christ, in overcoming the darkness of selfishness and alienation. Berdyaev took Böhme’s Ungrund a step further in the name of freedom and absolving God of evil by placing it entirely outside God. The Ungrund—the abyss of pure freedom—precedes being, even God, but it is not prior to God as time does not exist until God emerges from the Ungrund and begins creating. Since God creates from the Ungrund, a part of that pure freedom is inherent within all creatures, and over this freedom, God has little or no control; hence, the presence of evil in the cosmos. As I reflect upon these explanations for freedom, I can’t help but think that a simpler and more coherent possibility exists. Böhme, Schelling, and Berdyaev all began from the assumption that nothing can be prior to or outside of God and then developed imaginative and coherent explanations of how and why freedom can be authentic within such an assumption. These explanations then branch into more convincing elucidations on how God is not responsible for the presence of evil in the cosmos. However, for me, these explanations are still far too abstract and fall short. The crux of the problem, for me, at least, is the assumption that nothing is prior to God. Nothing is prior does not negate the possibility that beings co-exist with God eternally. Neither before nor after—but at the same time, stretching back into eternity. If we allow for such a possibility, we can then define freedom as something implicit, fundamental, and essential to beings. Thus, freedom is in being, and being is freedom. Neither can be separated from the other. They did not begin, nor will they end. At most, they change depending on their mode of being. In this sense, I do not think the beings in Creation are prior to God, but I certainly think that they were outside of God and that even now, within Creation, a mode of being, a part of them remains outside of God. Berdyaev’s dictum that God has control over all being but not freedom is, at best, a partial truth. It is probably closer to the truth to say that God has control over beings in Creation—the mode into which he forms beings—but not their freedom. A drawing Carus completed the same year he died.  Carl Gustav Carus (1789 - 1869) - Ruine einer gotischen Kirche im Wald - 1869 |
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