There are More Things In Heaven and Earth . . .

Not long ago I received the following email out of the blue: “My name is ___ and I am a Christian from Pennsylvania. I am getting ready to pursue a career in the study of philosophy of religion at ____ after I graduate high school. I don’t know if you are a believer but if you are I want to ask to you about a few objections that I heard against Christianity that I can’t seem to find an answer for. But if you don’t have time I can understand. But I would really appreciate a direct answer to the questions if you have time I don’t want to be a burden. I wanted to see if you were comfortable with answering my questions before I sent them so if you want to please reply.”

I’m not sure how this young man got my name—I presume he may have sent this email to a number of persons in philosophy departments across the country—but in my response I invited him to send his questions on. Within ten minutes he sent a lengthy, rambling email with a number of very specific questions. Here are some of the highlights, condensed but unedited:

“The first objection to the Christian faith that I never heard refuted was the argument for Natural evil against God. . . . Natural evil is evil that arises independently of human action. . . . The free will defense does not apply to natural evil. How can one answer this objection why these things exist?”

“Why pray if God knows the future? It really doesn’t make sense to me. God already knows what is going to happen so why ask him to do something that he is already planning on doing? . . . It seems like when you are praying you are trying to inform God on something he already knows about. And what about when a tragedy happens. Such as the Connecticut school shooting. I heard somebody say that God got kicked out of schools that is why it happened. I think that is absurd why would God do that to little children? Then I heard that someone said that little girl that survived was a miracle from God. What about the other 27 children that were murdered did God not want them to survive? It seems like one can only commit to either that God is complete free of men’s actions and he has no control over what men do to each other. OR God has complete control and makes evil things happen around the world. Which one is it?”

“Why did God create people who he knows will go to hell? I believe again the only way to answer this is to resort to open theism. Otherwise this is a devastating attack on the benevolence and justice of God. The only response that I heard and I think is very weak is we don’t understand the way God works. I think that is true about some things but not this and it’s just a cop out.”

Here is my response to this young man:

Your excellent questions are all related to classic theodicy issues (the problem of evil, both moral and natural; free will and divine foreknowledge). These issues all arise from a very specific starting conception of God (omniscience, omnibenevolence, omnipotence, etc.). After more than two decades of working in philosophy, I’ll cut to the chase. With those starting assumptions concerning what God must be, you will fail to find a satisfactory rational/logical solution of either the problem of evil or the free will/ foreknowledge issue. My suggestion is that you challenge your assumptions. Since any conception of God is a human construct, we have no business being so rigidly attached to any single vision that we refuse to consider other possible visions and frameworks.

What if, for instance, God does not know absolutely every detail of the future? What if through the gift of free will God has made human beings co-creators of the unfinished business of the world? What if Joan Chittister is right when she suggests that

“Having made the world, having given it everything it needs to continue, having brought it to the point of abundance and possibility and dynamism, God left it for us to finish. God left it to us to be the mercy and the justice, the charity and the care, the righteousness and the commitment, all that it will take for people to bring the goodness of God to outweigh the rest.”

What if the love of God is better understood through divine participation in our suffering instead of the elimination of suffering? The central images of the Christian faith, after all, include a fragile, helpless child and a tortured, dying human being executed as a criminal. Above all, don’t presume that you, or anyone else, knows with certainty what God must be like. As Montaigne writes, “there is no more notable folly in the world than to reduce these things to the measure of our capacity and competence.”

So don’t be afraid of “open theism” or any other tweaking of classical attributes of God that might help you see the issues you raise differently. I had a close friend many years ago ask me how I can possibly be both a Christian and a philosopher. I didn’t have a good answer then, but my answer now would be that the two complement each other beautifully, so long as my Christianity welcomes careful and legitimate questions about absolutely everything and my philosophy recognizes that, as Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, “there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy.”

Consider carefully the relationship between rational arguments concerning any particular conception of God and your own faith. Although faith is not independent of reason, faith’s vibrancy and health does not depend on rational argumentation. Will your faith be shaken if you fail to find a satisfactory logical solution to the problem of evil? Not knowing you, the best I can say is that time will tell. A living faith is rooted in something far more profound and primal than reason—it is the result of a real and vibrant encounter with divine reality. One of my favorite expressions of this comes from Marilynne Robinson’s novel Gilead. Rev. Ames, a Congregational minister at the end of his life, puts it this way:

“They want me to defend religion, and they want me to give them ‘proofs.’ I just won’t do it. It only confirms them in their skepticism. Because nothing true can be said about God from a posture of defense. . . . In the matter of belief, I have always found that defenses have the same irrelevance about them as the criticisms they are meant to answer. I think the attempt to defend belief can unsettle it, in fact, because there is always an inadequacy in argument about ultimate things. . . . So my advice is this—don’t look for proofs. Don’t bother with them at all. They are never sufficient to the question, and they’re always a little impertinent, I think, because they claim for God a place within our conceptual grasp . . . It was Coleridge who said Christianity is a life, not a doctrine, words to that effect. I’m not saying never doubt or question. The Lord gave you a mind so that you would make honest use of it. I’m saying you must be sure that the doubts and questions are your own, not, so to speak, the mustache and walking stick that happen to be the fashion of any particular moment.”

The “mustache and walking stick” of philosophy of religion has for some time been focused on subjecting faith to sterile, logic-chopping analysis. Don’t let philosophy turn your obviously real faith into an argument or proof. As the Apostle Paul reminds us, “the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”

Blessings on you in your future philosophical and faith endeavors!