An Analysis of Peter van Inwagen’s The Magnitude, Duration, and Distri

An Analysis of Peter van Inwagens The Magnitude, Duration, and dissemination of Evil a Theodicy In his essay, The Magnitude, Duration, and Distribution of Evil a Theodicy, Peter van Inwagen alleges a set of reasons that God may have for allowing evil to exist on earth. Inwagen proposes the following story passim which there is an implicit assumption that God is all-good (perfectly benevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient) and deserving of all our love. God created pieces in his own likeness and fit for His love. In order to modify humans to return this love, He had to give them the ability to freely choose. That is, Inwagen holds that the ability to love implies free will. By giving humans free will, God was victorious a risk. As Inwagen argues, not even an omnipotent creation provoke ensure that a creature who has a free choice between x and y choose x rather than y (197)1. (X in Inwagens story is to turn its love to God and y is to turn its love onward from God, towards i tself or other things.) So it happened that humans did in fact rebel and turn away from God. The first instance of this turning away is referred to as the Fall. The decrepitude of the Fall was inherited by all humans to follow and is the source of evil in the world. But God did not leave humans without hope. He has a plan whose working will one day eventuate in the Atonement (at-one-ment) of His human creatures with Himself, or at least some of His human creatures (198). This plan somehow involves humans realizing the wretchedness of a world without God and turning to God for help. The telling of this story provokes many questions. Why didnt God, being all-good and benevolent, immediately restore His fallen creatures to their original union with... ... passage to suggest the essential role natural evils play in this story People who do not believe in God do not, of course, see our living to ourselves as a result of a prehistoric separation from God. But they can be aware and i t is a part of Gods plan of Atonement that they should be aware that something is pretty wrong and that this wrongness is a offspring of the intrinsic inability of human beings to devise a manner of life that is anything but hideous (203). Nowhere does experience prove this inability of human beings to go the hideousness of the world more than in the case of natural disasters. They have existed as long as the human race, and though it may be possible for a person to delude him or herself into believing he or she is living a good life in a seemingly good world, no one can deny the horrible dangers that natural disasters present.