Is God a Good God Research Paper

Tags: original sin god sin love pain life augustine freedom justice faith romans religion

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Personal Theodicy

Theodicy is the vindication or justification of divine goodness in spite of the evidence of a world where evil exists. When one has faith in the divine goodness of God, the question of why God allows evil things to happen is one that is not troublesome; it is one when one has no faith or has doubts that the question becomes pertinent. Thus, it is helpful to explain how and why a good God would allow evil to exist and evil things to befall innocent people so that others might come to believe or might come to believe more strongly. The main reason for the existence of evil is that God gave to men (and to the angels) freedom of will. Men and angels were given the choice, in other words, of whether they would serve Him or their own desires. The fallen angels (led by Lucifer now known as Satan) chose to serve themselves—and thus they become antagonists to God and all His creation. The first created man and woman (Adam and Eve) also chose to deny God his legitimate claim to the hearts, minds and wills by breaking His commandment to not eat the forbidden fruit. In that moment, they sinned and brought the knowledge of good and evil to mankind,[footnoteRef:2] passing the effects of sin onto their children as Paul writes to the Romans: “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Romans 5:12). Evil was thus introduced into earthly paradise by way of man’s disobedience and God’s just punishment of man’s sin. Today, man must combat not only his own weak will and desire to serve self over God, but also he must combat the temptations of Satan, who seeks to destroy man’s relationship with God. This is the root of evil—and God permits it because He wants man to have a free will to choose Him. Love is not love that does not have choice in the matter.[footnoteRef:3] This paper will show why all evil is permitted as an effect of Original Sin and is allowed by a good God because in the end man’s mind and heart are meant to be reminded that God alone is their home, refuge and eternity should they but choose to reach out to Him. [2: J. Patout Burns, "Augustine on the Origin and Progress of Evil." The Journal of Religious Ethics (1988), 10.] [3: Fulton Sheen, Life of Christ (NY: Image Books, 2008), 74.]

C. S. Lewis puts it best when he says that to ask whether the world was made by a loving God or by an indifferent God is to ask the wrong question and to ignore the drama of the entire Old and New Testament, which explains the matter fully: Christianity, Lewis states, “is a catastrophic historical event following on the long spiritual preparation of humanity.

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”[footnoteRef:4] It is catastrophic because it so upended the world that the world has seen fit ever since to mark its days by the birth of Christ. Christ came to directly deal with the problem of pain and sin, and the evidence of this is all throughout Scripture. Christ heals the blind and sick and raises loved ones from the dead. He offers Himself on the cross to the Father that the sins…

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…intelligent beings the choice to love or reject Him. He respects their choice and allows them to live with the consequences of their choice. Rather than simply annihilate His creation, He allows their evil and tolerates it. Their evil does not come from Him but from themselves. He suffers it: He Himself suffered it by being crucified on the cross. God is not indifferent: He sees, knows and understands. He still wants men to choose Him out of love for Him because He loves them. That is the reason God allows so much evil to exist: He knows that even out of all that evil some good can come—some souls will realize that evil is not their end but rather that God wants them to be with Him. The evil is not there because God hates men and the world but rather because He gave free will and those who rejected God had to be punished that they might realize the gravity of their sin and know the goodness of God. Sin, death, evil, pain, natural evils—these are all the effects of sin, and Christ came to help men overcome sin. The solutions and ways forward, in other words are there—all man must do is stop and realize that what he needs is to cease imagining that God does not care. God does care and that is what the Christian mysteries reveal. To understand how and why God can allow so much evil to exist, one must understand the Christian religion. Christ is at the heart of the answer—as Lewis points out again and again. Without a sense of Christ, one cannot ever obtain a satisfactory answer to the problem or question of….....

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Bibliography

Berthold, Fred. \"Free Will and Theodicy in Augustine: An Exposition and Critique.\"  Religious Studies 17, no. 4 (1981): 525-535.

Burns, J. Patout. \"Augustine on the Origin and Progress of Evil.\" The Journal of Religious Ethics (1988): 9-27.

Feinberg, John S. The Many Faces of Evil. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2004.

Lewis, C. S. The Problem of Pain. Quebec: Samizdat University Press, 2016.

Sheen, Fulton. Life of Christ. NY: Image Books, 2008.

Wright, N. T. Evil and the Justice of God. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006.

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