This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Notes
For my collaborative attempt at a fuller development of this argument, and an account of its dialectical context in recent debate over AfE, see Bishop and Perszyk (2011).
Gleeson says that ‘the reality of God is the reality of the eternal perspective’ (129), the ‘unchanging’ ‘location’ where each life is significant and sacred, where Goodness and Love rule, not ‘this worldly’ powers. When we see reality properly from this eternal perspective we respond with awe, a dizzying sense of contingency, and gratitude. See pp 128-9.
See Gleeson’s discussion of ‘the reality of the existential’, pp 130-4. Gleeson begins by saying that ‘the key here is to recognise that there is no single, univocal sense in which things are real or assertions true. There are different kinds of reality’. In fact, I doubt that the view Gleeson outlines needs to be – or ought to be – committed to equivocating either on ‘real’ or ‘true’: it may better be seen as using ‘real’ univocally but analogically. Theism does not understand God as merely one kind of reality amongst others: God is that which is most truly real and all that is real ‘belongs to’, and is ‘unified in’, God’s reality.
Any anthropocentricity here may be corrected by adding that the same disclosure may be available in ways we cannot conceive to other conscious beings, potentially in many different parts of the vast Universe we now know we inhabit.
It is, incidentally, puzzling that Gleeson’s adds ‘or resentment’ in parentheses to his statement, quoted above, of the way our response to the Universe makes sense of the idea that it is God’s creation: one might, of course, respond to God’s creation with resentment, but theism will count that as a wrong response.
I am indebted to Thomas Harvey for impressing on me the importance of recognising the – to contemporary ears unfamiliar – breadth of the Aristotelian and Thomist notion of efficient causation.
Marilyn Adams (2006) has made an important contribution in bringing Christology to the centre of discussion of the problem of evil by Christian philosophers. The other Abrahamic traditions may have resources that play a similar role as Christology does for Christianity: the fascinating question of how these resources differ, and which are most effective for the required role – is one I am in no position to pursue.
Robert Solomon (2002) has articulated just such a stance as the heart of a secular spirituality.
See John 14:8-11.
I was struck by how visceral this reaction can be when I discovered why my great-nephew Jacob was, at the age of 7 or 8, uneasy about visiting his beloved great-grandmother. He did not like what was happening to the man pinned to a cross just inside her door and was disturbed by the implications of such a display.
1 John 4:18.
References
Adams, M. (2006). Christ and horrors: The coherence of Christology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bishop, J., & Perszyk, K. (2011). The normatively relativised logical argument from evil. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 70, 109–126. doi:10.1007/s11153-010-9282-1.
Gleeson, A. (2012). A frightening love: Recasting the problem of evil. Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan.
Leslie, J. (1979). Value and existence. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Leslie, J. (1989). Universes. London: Routledge.
Solomon, R. (2002). Spirituality for the skeptic: The thoughtful love of life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Bishop, J. The Argument from Evil and the God of ‘Frightening’ Love. SOPHIA 52, 45–49 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-012-0344-y
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-012-0344-y