Ebook The Fundamental Ideas of Christianity

Can we conceive of God as absolutely perfect, and yet as the author of that which limits His power, wisdom, and goodness? The inadequacy of most of the theories to solve this apparent contradiction is traceable to the imperfect notions of the relation of God to the world which I have examined in former lectures; and the only adequate solution is that which is based on the Christian doctrine of that relation, or on_ the idea of God as revealing or manifesting Himself in nature and in the spirit and life of man.

In the first place, what has been called the negative or privative theory of evil is the natural or necessary outgrowth of a Pantheistic view of God's relation to the world. According to this theory the introduction of a contradictory element into the nature of God, or the necessity of making God the author of evil, is met by a virtual evaporation of the existence of evil; in other words, by maintaining that what we call moral evil or sin, when closely examined, has no positive, essential reality; or, according to a modified form of the same theory, that it is involved in, or is only another name for, that imperfection which necessarily pertains to all finite being.