Kindle Notes & Highlights
Gallup polls of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s indicate that 98% of Americans believed in God during these decades.
A Gallup poll taken in the 2020s indicated that the percentage of American believers dropped to 81%.5 Young and educated Americans
people wonder, “why doesn’t this almighty One prevent pointless pain, unnecessary suffering, and untold horrors?”
God who can control others, who can do absolutely anything, or who has all power can prevent evil singlehandedly. This
“The horrors of slavery, genocides, concentration camps, and other atrocities of modern warfare have made it not only intellectually difficult but also morally reprehensible to believe in the omnipotent God of much traditional theology.”13
“If God created all that exists,” many wonder, “why doesn’t He stop natural evils?” It’s a good question.
A friend
‘Nazi Holocaust.’”
Hans Jonas answers that challenge: “after Auschwitz, we can assert with greater force than ever that an omnipotent deity would have to be not good or . . . totally unintelligible.”16
When God is thought to exert all power, worshippers function as puppets, and God pulls the strings. When God is thought to control occasionally, worshippers must trust Omnipotence will guarantee what’s really important. The implication, however, is that any evil we experience wasn’t important enough for God to prevent.
controlling God ordains the authority of presidents, lords, prime ministers, CEOs, managers, and anyone else in power, whether they were elected or installed by fiat or with violence. After all, an all-powerful Being can on a whim install, prevent, permit, or overthrow anyone.
“What else is the permission of Him who has the power of preventing and in whose hand the whole matter is placed but his will?”33
Then, typically, out comes the mystery card: “God’s ways are not our ways.”
What if God exists but is not omnipotent? What if God can’t stop evil singlehandedly? What if God does not cause or even allow suffering, because God does not have all power?
What if God is not “in control” and, in fact, can’t control anyone or anything?
six dimensions,
God can’t prevent evil singlehandedly.
The free-will defense offers insights. But it fails as a full-fledged solution to the problem of evil.
“Thus he is able not only to permit human actions to occur, but also to prevent them from occurring if he so chooses.”42 This implies, however,
love prevents preventable evil, the God who chooses not to prevent evil isn’t loving.
“Apparently it never occurred to the early Christians to question their belief in God or even God’s goodness because they were unjustly suffering for their beliefs,” says Hauerwas. “Rather, their faith gave them direction in the face of persecution and general misfortune.” For them, “suffering was not a metaphysical problem needing a solution but a practical challenge requiring a response.”65
If an omnipotent God allows injustice, why march against it?
“Nothing happens contrary to [God’s] will, even that which is contrary to his will.”68
While God can’t prevent evil singlehandedly, creatures can’t prevent it without help. For love to win, a loving Creator needs creation’s loving responses, and creatures need their Creator’s empowering love.70 That’s how love works.
God’s incorporeality.
Am-i-po-tence.
Amipotence interprets the Johannine phrase “God is love” (1 Jn. 4:8,16) to mean we should
begin with love when trying to understand who God is and what God does.
Amipotence is not impotence.
God relates, experiences, and loves likes creatures, and in these ways, God’s doing is analogous to ours.
