Theodicy Incarnate: Divine Self-Justification

The most prominent obstacle to hope and faith in God is an experienced world evidently at odds with the goodness and thus the reality of God. This obstacle gets traction when combined with the assumption, found in many Biblical narratives, that God merits worship and trust from humans owing to impeccable divine goodness. This article examines whether, and if so how, God can avoid the charge that divine failure to eliminate or to reduce actual human suffering disqualifies God from being worthy of worship and trust. We thus ask whether God merits the benefit of the doubt regarding a charge of divine neglect for evil human suffering. This leads to the key issue of the adequacy of a vantage point from which divine goodness is assessed. If a particular human vantage point is so narrow as to be misleading regarding divine goodness, it can be inferior to other available vantage points. Clarification of this lesson opens the door to a widely neglected vantage point of a ‘showing-how theodicy’ in contrast with an ‘explaining-why theodicy.’ The former theodicy fits with many of the Biblical narratives, and it enables God to merit the benefit of the doubt regarding a charge of divine inadequacy toward human suffering.

Mary, did you consent?

The Christian and Islamic doctrine of the virgin birth claim God asexually impregnated the Virgin Mary with Jesus, Mary's impregnation was fully consensual (virgin consent), and God never acts immorally (divine goodness). First, I show that God's actions and Mary's background beliefs undermine her consent by virtue of coercive incentives, Mary's comparative powerlessness, and the generation of moral conflicts. Second, I show that God's non-disclosure of certain reasonably relevant facts undermines Mary's informed consent. Third, I show that a recent attempt by Jack Mulder to rescue virgin consent fails. As divine goodness and virgin consent are more central to orthodoxy, Christians and Muslims have powerful reason to reject virgin birth.