Is God Our Benefactor? An Argument from Suffering (original) (raw)
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Passibilism – understood here as the idea that God suffers in Godself – is sometimes motivated by the idea that a fellow-sufferer provides consolation and so is religiously helpful. Yet people's intuitions about whether a divine fellow-sufferer is indeed religiously helpful are radically different: for some, 'only a suffering God can help', while for others it is precisely by not suffering that God offers consolation. I will explore people's differing intuitions, before arguing that consolation is not a good argument for passibilism. Rather, consolation may contribute to the rationality of belief in a passible God, if it is indeed religiously helpful. And whether it is religiously helpful will depend on factors including what other figures within the religious tradition are able to provide consolation through fellow-suffering. As examples of non-divine fellow-sufferer consolers, I will explore saints in late medieval Western Europe, and bodhisattvas in Japanese Buddhism today. In so doing, I will suggest an account of why passiblism arose out of Protestant Christianity, and attempt to do philosophy of religion in a way that takes context seriously and probes beyond formal arguments into people's practical and psychological motivations for believing what they believe. Finally, I will consider some of the implications of my argument for some other aspects of debates about divine passibility.
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This paper will examine the problem of suffering as it arises from both moral and natural evil through a Christian philosophical and theological perspective. Suffering throughout our planet is pervasive. We all experience it in one form or another. In western culture, we are bombarded, through the media with the terrible tragedies that occur in our home country and abroad. Inevitably we ask ourselves, the following question, as Professor Ramon Martinez, probes into his book, Sin and Evil, " Why does God permit suffering? " In order to address the question of suffering and its relation to the God of Christianity, we must understand what suffering is and how it affects humanity.
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In this paper, we present an anti-atheological argument from suffering, challenging the contention that suffering weighs evidentially against the existence of God. We begin by examining Paul Draper's comparative analysis of theism and atheism as explanations for suffering. Draper contends that atheism, with its hypothesis of indifference (HI), provides a better account of suffering than theism. We initially counter that atheism and theism are (at worst) on par in this regard. For while theism apparently struggles to explain the distribution of suffering, atheism apparently fails to explain the existence of suffering at all. However, we then go further, arguing that, once one considers recent discussions of psycho-physical harmony, suffering aligns with evolutionarily adaptive behaviors in ways that atheism cannot adequately explain. Such harmony, in other words, is expected under theism, but not at all under Draper’s atheism. If that’s right, then it turns out theism provides a better explanation for the occurrence and distribution of suffering, if only because theism has some story it can tell, whereas atheism has none. Thus, we conclude that the problem of suffering does not decisively favor atheism over theism and may, in fact, weigh significantly in favor of God’s existence once all relevant facts are brought into account.
Journal of Psychology and Theology, 2010
Should alleviating suffering always be the primary goal in treatment? This paper proposes that suffering can best be understood in the context of the flourishing life, from the intersecting vantage points of positive psychology, philosophy of theology. We further argue that in this context, we can articulate a role for suffering. Suffering can be understood as a marker of disordered living, a means of cultivating characteristics that are essential to the flourishing life, or an opportunity for worldview orientation. In sum, the role of suffering is not to endure it for its own sake, but for the sake of cultivating the flourishing life. Finally, we will consider some implications of this conceptualization for the practice of therapy.
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The present research tested a mediation model specifying that divine struggle (e.g., anger at God, feeling punished or abandoned by God) mediates the associations of beliefs about suffering with psychological distress and mental health. We tested this model using structural equation modeling in 2 large samples, an undergraduate sample (N 3,083) and a web-based sample of U.S. adults (N 1,047). In both samples, beliefs that suffering is part of God's benevolent plan, as well as beliefs that a nonbenevolent God causes suffering, were associated with more divine struggle and in turn with lower levels of well-being and higher distress. Beliefs attributing a benevolent role to God in suffering were directly linked to higher well-being, along with beliefs about God's limited knowledge of the future and ability to prevent suffering. These results attest to the nuanced nature of the associations between religious belief systems, adversity, and life outcomes.
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Contemporary religious epistemology often neglects offering a substantial defense of a particular conception of God, relying instead on appeals to tradition and the great theologians. I aim to correct this deficiency by offering a defensible concept of God grounded in the predicament faced by all human inquirers. My account of this human predicament will focus on three key features that are salient to religious inquiry: death, moral failure, and suffering and severity. I will then argue that we ought to define our concept of God in terms of what it would take to rescue humanity from its predicament, thus allowing our conception of God to capture what matters most to us.