The Problem of Evil

I’d like to begin by establishing that our definition of God is accurate, I quote the Nicene Creed, “the creed that summarises the orthodox faith of the Christian Church...”[1]:“ I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen...”So, we have a solid basis from which we can assert that, indeed, God should be interpreted as the creator of all. In any case, as it was adopted as part of the terms of the debate, we will stick to this definition from this point forward.The Problem The problem of evil is of such a remarkable burden to the Judeo-Christian faith, that an entire area of theology, known as theodicy, is given to remove it, entirely, from religion. It is from this problem that we will draw our argument today. Our case is as follows:1. God created all things.2. Evil is a member of the set of all things. C. God created evil. Premise one comes from our definition and, by the terms of the debate, must be accepted. Two is more or less straightforward, though semantic caviling might repudiate with the corporeality of “things”. This is a more or less harmless argument though, as we have already stated that he is the creator of all that is “seen and unseen” and, here, “things”, is simply a rhetorical expediant to refer to everything, corporeal or non-corporeal. Three follows necessarily. Thus, we’ve demonstrated that if evil exists, God necessarily created it. OmniscientIt’s important to here to point out, God was defined as an omniscient being, implying God is an intelligent being. So, it’s also reasonable to assume that the act of creation for God would have an noetic component. This is tantamount to saying that, by creating something, God has a perfect knowledge of that something, sub specie aeternitatis. CreationHere one must be careful to really understand, in order to preserve the identity of the Judeo-Christian God, what is meant by “creation”. If God is omniscient, he must already know that he was going to create all things. That is, as God actually brought all things into existence, they must have existed as a kind of divine knowledge. At the same time, since this knowledge is a divine knowledge, it still is categorically related to God and, ipso facto, we can say that he literally created them rather than just caused them. In other words, since it is a divine knowledge we won’t see it as some sort of separate knowledge or principle of everything, existing with God but, more or less, independent of him. That is to say, God brought all things into existence; the principle(s) of everything came from God. If it were the case that all things existed as an independent knowledge or principle(s), it would seem unfair to say God created all things, as he merely actualized these principles that are independent of him; God transformed all things. C. God Created Evil From this point, we can conduct a more narrow analysis of the conclusion of the aforementioned syllogism with the aim of validating our resolution. If God created all things, we must say all things are an expression of God. Should it not be the case that all things are expressions of God we will have conceded that all things have their own independent principle(s), for which God cannot account. If God really created all things, as we have already accepted, then God is the progenitor of the fundamental principle(s) of everything. Thus, if God is the progenitor of evil, he is also the creator of the fundamental principle of evil; the creator of evil, sub specie aeternitatis. Furthermore, that the creative act is tantamount to an expressive act is true primae facie; creation is a form of expression. Now then,1. All things are exressions of God2. Evil is a member of the set of all things.C. Evil is an expression of God.We must accept one, should we wish to preserve the identity the Judeo-Christian faith has for God. Two has already been explained and is, more or less, a primae facie truth. Three follows necessarily. I’ll restate this with slightly different wording to help elucidate our meaning:1. Each member in the set of all things is an expression of God.2. Evil is a member in the set of all things.C. Evil is an expression of God.God is evil From the foregoing conclusion, we can finally arrive at our resolution. If evil is an expression of God and expressions are merely contingent representations of an underlying nature or principle, then God is the underlying nature or principle of evil. Thus, God is evil. This is not to say that God is evil and nothing else. We shouldn’t interpret this statement as implying that the Judeo-Christian God is up to no good, always only looking for ways to cause trouble. You could use our very same argument to show that God is love, that God is goodness ect. ect. God is effectively the reconciliation of good and evil. God isn’t the morally grey inbetween but the particulate ultimate good and the particulate ultimate evil, in one. He isn’t one half of a dichotomy, but the final hypostasis of both members of it. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org...