Hazard

by J.G. Bennett

I asked you to try for yourself the experiment of seeing whether you are able to conceive of any virtue, any desirable quality or admirable quality, that could manifest without hazard. The time has come to ask ourselves whether it is possible to conceive of love without hazard, of charity without risk. I think you will see that this is the key to the whole of the theological dilemma. To say that God is love and that he loves the world would be quite meaningless if the world were no more than a passive instrument in God's hands, bound entirely by the Divine Will in every action, in every event, large and small, because, obviously, there cannot be a distinction between large and small events before the omnipotence of a universal god. If we accept what seems to me absolutely unavoidable, that it is impossible to conceive of love without hazard, then one must also accept that God Himself must be subject to hazard, that the creation itself is not only hazardous in its own operations but also in that it was brought into existence at all.