Does God Play Dice and Other Games of Chance?

If God cannot be conceptualized, why conceptualize him as immutable? According to the analogy of being, any similarity we posit between creation and God must involve an even greater dissimilarity. I say, if traditionalists want to insist that God is an analogous to an unchanging object, then he must be even more disanalogous. 

Of course, many if not most Christian theologies don't even accept the analogy of being to begin with, on the grounds that it diminishes the role of divine revelation, while inflating man into thinking he can limit God to his puny metaphysical categories. After all, if you think man is totally depraved, that goes for the intellect as much as the will. 

Revelation is given to us precisely because our minds are such a wreck. Bestwecando is submit to it and tell our stupid brains to STFU. But in so doing, out with the bathwater of pride go the babies of metaphysics and natural theology. Folks like Luther and Calvin will say good riddance, while folks like me will have to STFU and give up blogging. 

The influential Protestant theologian Karl Barth went so far as to say that the analogy of being was an invention of the Antichrist. Rather, revelation is totally sufficient unto itself: for our part we are limited to all faith and no reason. 

But where in revelation does it make the totalitarian claim that revelation is totally sufficient unto itself and that we shouldn't even try to make intellectual sense of it? After all, nowhere is the Trinity mentioned in scripture. That was only worked out in detail over centuries of contemplation and intellection. Nor is the Trinity the only ambiguity or implicit principle that needed to be deciphered and explicated. 

Also, once intellect is severed from revelation, this clears the field for a hostile takeover of the mind by the infra- and antihuman forces of secularism, scientism, materialism, and other diabolical ideologies. Thus, the Antichrist is eliminated at one end, only to return through the back door. 

Besides, if Christ is the Logos -- the very principle and Light of intellection -- and we participate in him, then doesn't this imply a certain "cleansing" thereof? In other words, the point is not to stop thinking but to begin thinking rightly and brightly.    

Moreover, Christ wasn't altogether clear or complete in his teachings, and he even said so: I still have many things to say to you, but don't worry, because the Spirit will to guide you into all truth. 

Also, if we take scripture entirely literally and without the use of analogy, how could it be intelligible? Jesus is a door. A vine. A shepherd. Heaven is a mustard seed. A wedding banquet. A treasure hidden in a field. An expensive pearl. Isn't Jesus himself speaking analogously? 

So, we've been toying with the idea that God takes a risk, both with creation in general and with the Incarnation in particular. By which we mean "risk," i.e., analogously. But one of the risks, it seems, was the possibility of evil and suffering. God is not responsible for them, only for the risky isness of creation. 

Analogously, supposing I will a child into existence, I assume the risk that he may turn out to be a sociopath or even a progressive. Likewise, supposing God is responsible for water, this does not imply that he wills drowning. Rather, that's one of the risks entailed in the existence of water.

Now, the biggest risk of all must be the creation of creatures with free will -- with the freedom to reject or even oppose the will of their creator. But what's a parent to do? When your kid disobeys, what are you supposed to do, kill him?

God has a plan. Or, to speak analogously, a "plan." While it resembles the sorts of plans we make, the dissimilarities must dwarf the similarities, even to an infinite degree. 

Which is why I cringe when, in response to a horrible tragedy, some believer blithely says It's all a part of God's plan, or Don't worry, God is in control. Easy for them to say, but would you say this to a person whose house is on fire? Or grab a hose?

Likewise, no offense, but if the plan you enacted brought you the Holocaust, of what use was the plan?

Any theodicy that has the effect of legitimizing evil -- of making the Holocaust acceptable -- must for that reason come into serious question (Hasker).

So, start over. Not with a new God, but certainly a new theodicy. For example, one involving the risk that

the same capacity that allows us to enjoy literature, mathematics, science, philosophy, and all other human pursuits -- gives us the capacity to formulate and carry out genocidal plans (ibid.).

Still, is it worth the risk? 

One might, in light of this, conclude that bestowing free will on the creature was simply too great a risk and should not have been done. What one cannot responsibly conclude is that free will ought to have been given as a power to do good but not evil (ibid.).  

Because such a will is by definition not free. 

Now, is God himself free? Signs point to Yes, but if God is unchanging necessary being -- which is to say, all necessity and no contingency -- isn't this the opposite of freedom? They say he is free to create, but if this is so, how can this be squared with his absolute necessity? 

Some folks square it by saying everything herebelow is likewise pure necessity. That plan again, from which there can be no deviation. If this is the case, then we don't have a "problem of evil," rather, a problematic God. Yes, his plan entails countless evils, but don't worry, the end justifies the means. But if this sort of moral reasoning is forbidden to man, why is it acceptable for God?

Let's start over. Let's say changelessness isn't a perfection, rather a privation -- a privation of, among other things, creativity and openness. Now, God is also perfect, but here we are in this imperfect creation. What if,

in deciding to create, God brings about the existence of a realm of imperfection, whereas without creation there is only the perfection of the divine life itself (ibid,).

This comes close to Schuon's view on the subject -- that, in a way, the Creator can't help creating, because it is in his nature to create. It doesn't mean this or that creation was necessary, only that creativity itself is. The (imperfect) creation isn't the (perfect) Creator, and here we are.

Manifestation is not the Principle, the effect is not the cause; that which is “other than God” could not possess the perfections of God, hence in the final analysis and within the general imperfection of the created, there results that privative and subversive phenomenon which we call evil. 

This is to say that the cosmogonic ray, by plunging as it were into “nothingness,” ends by manifesting “the possibility of the impossible”; the “absurd” cannot but be produced somewhere in the economy of the divine Possibility, otherwise the Infinite would not be the Infinite. 

But strictly speaking, evil or the devil cannot oppose the Divinity, who has no opposite; it opposes man who is the mirror of God and the movement towards the divine. 

Now there's a thought: this is not a one storey cosmos, in that there are subversive powers, hostile principalities, and naughty intelligent beings at war in dimensions above us -- there's a battle going on, resulting in a lot of collateral damage herebelow.

Are we done here? Nah, just getting started. As usual.