Tuesday 8 October 2013

Why God Permits Evil - David Bentley Hart

I came across this rather interesting quotation from a Eastern Orthodox theologian while reading a reader's guide of the Summa Theologica by Stephen J. Loughlin. It is taken from David Bentley Hart's work, 'The Doors of the Sea: Where was God in the Tsunami?'

Behold my contribution to ecumenism.

''The entire case is premised upon an inane anthropomorphism - abstracted from any living system of belief - that reduces God to a finite ethical agent, a limited psychological personality, whose purposes are measurable upon the same scale as ours, and whose ultimate ends for his creatures do not transcend the cosmos as we perceive it. This is not to say that it is an argument without considerable emotional and even moral force; but of logical force there is none. Unless one can see the beginning and end of all things, unless one possesses a divine, eternal vantage upon all of time, unless one knows the precise nature of the relation between divine and created freedom, unless one can fathom infinite wisdom, one can draw no conclusions from finite experience regarding the coincidence in God of omnipotence and perfect goodness. One may still hate God for worldly suffering, if one chooses, or deny him, but one cannot in this way ''disprove'' him.'' 

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