Posted on 11/03/2003 12:05:39 PM PST by Heartlander
1. God – only His being can explain all of this. (Alamo-Girl)In my view, #2 only moves the goal post because if everything that can exist does in some multi-verse, there would nevertheless still be a beginning, thus the answer is still #1.
2. Plentitude – everything that can exist, does in some multi-verse (Rees)
3. Anthropic Principle – without the right kind of physics, you don’t get physicists (PatrickHenry)
As a #1 – I consider #3 to be giving up. Conversely, as a #3 you might consider #1 to be giving up. But perhaps we can both agree that #2 ought to be pursued?
I don't know that I could that easily be classified as a #3. There are many versions of the anthropic principle. I may be what's described in your post:
The simplest is the so-called brute fact argument. "A person can just say: 'That's the way the numbers are. If they were not that way, we would not be here to wonder about it,' " says Rees.And that doesn't rule out God. It just rules out the "Charlie Chaplin" type of constantly tinkering God.
I see no hope for #2. It's kinda wishy-washy. And it's rather untestable. But #1 and #3 are also untestable, now that I think about it. It may be that we'll have to have a knife-fight to resolve all of this.
(Poking my head in again for a moment.)
I'd be interested in just a very quick aside on hope as the opposite of evil, if you don't mind. I'm guessing that may be said, since good is authentic and original, thus not an opposite of anything; but that hope is the energy of good that may be found by those in evil circumstances, which brings good out of evil.
"...from Him and through Him and to Him are all things!"
Brother A, I'd say your explanation pretty much covers the issue! You point out that hope is active -- that it is energetic -- and so is evil, for that matter. In a certain sense, hope can keep evil at bay. (So to speak.)
Demoralization -- hopelessness -- in the face of desperate problems is ever a victory for evil. In such circumstances, hopelessness itself hands evil the victory; for hopelessness issues from loss of faith and trust (the Latin word for "faith," fides, carries both meanings) in the goodness of God. This is one of evil's chief aims.
The other chief aim is perpetually, incessantly to slander, accuse, and revile man before God Himself: Satan, the Father of Lies, is forever giving God "an earful" on the subject of the malfeasance and banality of man, thereby ceaselessly "bad-mouthing" the goodness of God's creation.
But we humans usually do not "see" that part of the picture -- unless one happens to have the "eyes" (i.e., spiritual vision) of a C. S. Lewis, of course....
Great to see you, Brother A! Thank you so much for writing. You've been missed....
Though Screwtape is a work of fiction, Lewis gives us a "true picture" of Evil, its motivations, "values," and methods. It is a simply chilling book.
Lewis said (probably elsewhere, but I'd have to track down the source) that Satan is not the opposite or foil of God. The reason is God is uncreated, eternal; but Satan is, like man, a creature of God -- an exalted archangel who rebelled, and took certain ranks of angels into rebellion with him (except for Abdiel, one of the angels in Lucifer's regular ranks, who remained faithful to the Lord). So Satan's opposite or foil can only be another exalted archangel (i.e., it must be another creature) -- the Archangel Michael, for instance.
God and Satan are not of equal ontological rank, and therefore cannot be said to be equal opponents or "opposite" in the manner that we say hope is the "opposite" of evil. As two equally active ontological principles, hope and evil can be said to be opposed to each other.
Indeed, this book by Lance Morrow is already verrry engaging and I've only begun to read it. Lucky for me, my husband walked in or else I'd still be reading it (LOL!)
The point you made about Satan being of a lesser rank is very important. Probably, some who do not understand this would falsely believe that God is vulnerable.
In Daniel, Jude and Revelation, we see that Michael is the archangel charged with the responsibility of dealing with Satan at God's appointed time.
Yes; I gather it was pretty hard going for him. I'll have to get the quote for you -- it's at home.
“I was often asked or advised to add to the original Letters, but…I felt not the least inclination to do it. Though I had never written anything more easily, I never wrote anything with less enjoyment. The ease came, no doubt, from the fact that the device of diabolical letters, once you have thought of it, exploits itself spontaneously…. It would run away with you for a thousand pages if you gave it its head. But though it was easy to twist one’s mind into the diabolical attitude, it was not fun, or not for long. The strain produced a sort of spiritual cramp. The work into which I had to project myself while I spoke through Screwtape was all dust, grit, thirst, and itch. Every trace of beauty, freshness, and geniality had to be excluded. It almost smothered me before I was done. It would have smothered my readers if I had prolonged it.”
Also I found in this Preface the "Lewis treatment" of the claim that God and Satan are direct opposites. For Lewis, this question really amounts to the formulation: “Do I really believe in the Devil.” His answer:
“….if by ‘the Devil’ you mean a power opposite to God and, like God, self-existent from all eternity, the answer is certainly No. There is no uncreated being except God. God has no opposite. No being could attain a ‘perfect badness’ opposite to the perfect goodness of God; for when you have taken away every kind of good thing (intelligence, will, memory, energy, and existence itself) there would be none of him left.
"The proper question is whether I believe in devils. I do. That is to say, I believe in angels, and I believe that some of these, by the abuse of their free will, have become enemies to God and, as a corollary, to us. These we may call devils. They do not differ in nature from good angels, but their nature is depraved. Devil is the opposite of angel only as Bad Man is the opposite of Good Man. Satan, the leader or dictator of devils, is the opposite, not of God, but of Michael.” [Bolds added for emphasis.]
I've always found C.S. Lewis' theology to be morally satisfying and sound, especially for beginners. It's very hard for me to believe in a loving God who would condemn us to hell before we really had a chance to figure out what we were doing. So the idea that hell is a place we can leave if we choose to let go of our sins is appealing to me.
This might sound strange; but it seems to me we make our own hell, or heaven, in this life, and we begin to live in it in this life. Letting go of sin is simply choosing to live in God's law of love: To love God with our whole heart and soul and mind; and our neighbor as ourself, for the love of God.
I, too, have always found C. S. Lewis' theology to be morally satisfying and sound, a model of sanity. He shows that the tuning of the mind and soul to God is a free choice:
"But though it was easy to twist one’s mind into the diabolical attitude, it was not fun, or not for long. The strain produced a sort of spiritual cramp. The work into which I had to project myself while I spoke through Screwtape was all dust, grit, thirst, and itch. Every trace of beauty, freshness, and geniality had to be excluded. It almost smothered me before I was done."
Hell as a state of mind and soul is "all dust, grit, thirst, and itch" because it is utterly, absolutely devoid of "beauty, freshness, and geniality." That is, it is devoid of all God's goodness, grace, and light; and so the soul truly suffers there, in this life and the next.
Or so it seems to me, FWIW. Thanks for writing, CobaltBlue.
Hm. Well that's poetic isn't it? --since God plus X (any person, place or thing) utterly trumps, defeats X minus God.
So grateful are we X's who accept that math personally, knowing how we exist so utterly defeated otherwise.
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