masters@ballistic.com wrote:
>Opinion: "Good" and "bad" are subjective ideas. If one assumes "divine
>cruelty," then one also assumes that pain is "bad." However, pain can also
>be viewed as "good." Pain is a physical indicator of problems within the
>system. Pain prompts all animals, including humans, to attend to a problem.
>If attended to correctly and in a timely manner, the animal's life or limb
>is saved. Witness the conundrum of those suffering from spinal cord or head
>injuries which render them "numb" to pain. They have lost the gift of pain
>and can no longer tell when they need to attend to a problem. This is just
>one example of how pain can be viewed as good. There are other examples, of
>course, but the point is made. Pain is not a theological problem. The
>theological problem arrives when one assigns negativity to pain.
Indeed, your point is well taken. I think Lewis and Joad were not
concerned with pain itself as much as some of the causes of pain.
I might add that from a scientific perspective, which is limited to dealing
with the world as it is, even the causes are not a problem. In my opinion,
there is not problem of pain, nor a problem of evil, from a purely
scientific perspective.
Lewis and Joad are dealing with a theological problem that arises only when
one imagines a world in which at least some of the causes of pain with
which we are all too familiar were, or will be, absent. Gen. 3 portrays
the Garden of Eden as such a "world". As mentioned in one of my previous
e-mails, some process theologians like John Haught consider the Garden as a
symbol of what a finished creation could be like in the future, not what
creation was actually ever like in the past. Lewis and Joad seem to be
more traditional and seem to believe in an historical Fall. Thus, some
types of pain (or rather some of the *causes* of pain) are problematic for
them.
Chuck Austerberry
cfauster@creighton.edu
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