The Sovereignty of Humanity and Social Responsibility for Evil Prevention

Janusz Salamon

doi:10.3390/rel12060418

Abstract

In this paper, I suggest that James Sterba’s recent restatement of the logical problem of evil overlooks a plausible theistic interpretation of the divine–human relation, which allows for a theodicy impervious to his atheological argument, which boils down to God’s failure to meet Sterba’s “Evil Prevention Requirements”. I argue that such requirements need not apply to God in a world under full human sovereignty, which presupposes that God never intervenes to change the natural course of events to prevent evils, as God has a decisive “greater good justification” for not intervening, namely respecting human sovereignty. This non-interventionist view of divine providence can be made tenable by the great good and dignity of the God-granted human God-like self-creativity implied by human sovereignty (a concept inspired by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola). The Mirandolian theodicy can both accommodate and complement Dostoyevsky’s Russian Orthodox view of “beneficial suffering”, predicated against the background of the conception of “collective selfhood”, overlooked by Sterba despite “featuring” on the cover of his book, no doubt due to his libertarian–individualistic assumptions about human agency and human flourishing, which a proponent of a theistic theodicy may do well to resist.

Highlights

In this paper, I suggest that James Sterba’s recent restatement of the logical problem of evil overlooks a plausible theistic interpretation of the divine–human relation, which allows for a theodicy impervious to his atheological argument, which boils down to God’s failure to meet
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I will incorporate into my reply to Sterba, in particular, these ideas about the possibilities for the defeat of evil found in Dostoyevsky, which presuppose an anti-individualistic religious anthropology and, remain in stark contrast to Sterba’s own account of selfhood, which is robustly libertarian

Summary

James Sterba’s Dostoyevsky Riddle

“What theodicy (understood here as intellectual resources to make sense of apparently senseless evils, in the apparent absence of divine intervention to prevent them) allowed Dostoyevsky to overcome the problem of evil which haunted him throughout his life?” When his first child, Sonya, died of pneumonia three months after her birth, Dostoyevsky’s wife has recorded that he “wept and sobbed like a woman in despair” It is my conviction that Sterba’s cumulative atheological argument from evil is essentially valid, and if one grants Sterba his assumptions, one will be forced to accept that his new logical argument is sound For this reason, I wish to deconstruct his argument by challenging two of his assumptions (or two sets of assumptions), namely, one pertaining to the nature of human agency and human flourishing, the other pertaining to the nature of the human–divine relation. There are volumes of work by mainstream contemporary Eastern Orthodox thinkers, such as Vladimir Lossky or John Zizoulas, who defend a radically communitarian vision of inter-personal, as well as divine–human, relations akin to that found in Dostoyevsky, and define them as central to the entire religious tradition, grounded in the Byzantine patristic sources

Selfhood Integrated into Other Selves and Vicarious Suffering

Kenosis as a Condition of Bearing Fruit in the Lives of Others

The Mirandolian Theodicy and Social Responsibility for Evil Prevention