The Collapse of the All-Good God

[JR5]

This essay examines the theological dead-end created by the privatio boni model, in which evil is reduced to absence and God remains wholly good by definition. Jung’s system is presented as a radical alternative: a metaphysics in which opposites coinhabit the divine, the Shadow belongs to God as much as to man, and consciousness arises only through the crucifixion-tension of those poles. By reintegrating evil into the God-image through Abraxas, Jung resolves the logical contradictions and psychic distortions produced by the unstable, all-good God thesis.

https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/the-collapse-of-the-all-good-god

 

[Northumber]

This essay examines the theological dead-end created by the privatio boni model, in which evil is reduced to absence and God remains wholly good by definition. Jung’s system is presented as a radical alternative: a metaphysics in which opposites coinhabit the divine, the Shadow belongs to God as much as to man, and consciousness arises only through the crucifixion-tension of those poles. By reintegrating evil into the God-image through Abraxas, Jung resolves the logical contradictions and psychic distortions produced by the unstable, all-good God thesis.

https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/the-collapse-of-the-all-good-god

I haven't read it yet (I will), but my gut says: no, God is all good, and I'm fine with an impenetrable mystery existing with the question of evil.

I do like the attempt to reintegrate "the bad" somehow with "the good". This is the story of Noah and his sons ...trying to cover his nakedness. Also the image of Christ reintegrating Adam (saving his father who had fallen).

 

[Blade Runner]

The only place where evil matters is IF God exists in the first place, which is a proof in itself. Others don't see this.

CS Lewis also writes on how one quite literally has to go through things and struggle or you can't acquire any virtue or godliness, holiness, character, etc. That ONLY happens when you are tested and work things out in a world that has suffering, constraints, frailties, foibles, and strength/weakness. He'll say for example, "There's no such thing as faith if you are looking at God, face to face." Or, if you aren't prone to temptation or sin, there is no active right against it, and thus no development. This does bring up the question of how one progresses into greater love and understanding of God after one dies (theosis), and I think that is the correct teaching (otherwise we are just living to do the least we can to "get in"), but it's hard to guess at how that looks. It's pretty clear to me that there are hierarchies and levels of "heaven" or paradise, and that "equality" in that sense is always a lie, here and in the afterlife. That's why you see it cause so many problems, already, here.

 

[Northumber]

The only place where evil matters is IF God exists in the first place, which is a proof in itself. Others don't see this.

CS Lewis also writes on how one quite literally has to go through things and struggle or you can't acquire any virtue or godliness, holiness, character, etc. That ONLY happens when you are tested and work things out in a world that has suffering, constraints, frailties, foibles, and strength/weakness. He'll say for example, "There's no such thing as faith if you are looking at God, face to face." Or, if you aren't prone to temptation or sin, there is no active right against it, and thus no development. This does bring up the question of how one progresses into greater love and understanding of God after one dies (theosis), and I think that is the correct teaching (otherwise we are just living to do the least we can to "get in"), but it's hard to guess at how that looks. It's pretty clear to me that there are hierarchies and levels of "heaven" or paradise, and that "equality" in that sense is always a lie, here and in the afterlife. That's why you see it cause so many problems, already, here.

Agreed.

I think one can look toward nature for some clues (not all, because nature is in a fallen state too, but clues are there.)

It's in the structures you mentioned (ie. hierarchy). The cosmos has binaries in it (good/evil , order/chaos , etc) but they are arranged on an underlying structure that provides a scaffolding. And there is variation in those levels depending on your vantage. It's fractal, a hierarchy. You see it in a mountain, a tree, a circulatory system, it's everywhere. Our attention is hierarchical.

So... how exactly does evil (real evil) fit in? I still don't know because I think it's intrinsically bad. Maybe it's more like a parasite in the structure. Or a feedback loop. Or a tumor. It's still not the best analogy, I'll have to think about it.

 

[GodfatherPartTwo]

Very good. God being reduced to "the Good" is one of the hallmarks of Platonism, which still survives and masquerades as Christianity. People think God is somehow evil for sending sinners to Hell, so they reject the Bible and believe in an idol who has no divine wrath instead. The Platonists became Gnostics and that's what many of these "Christians" are.

Isaiah 45:7:
I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

The evil that God creates is not an objective substance of evil, but personal calamity. When bad things happen to bad people, that is God's doing. God is not evil, but He can be your evil.

That said, the solution for the Platonic-Christian syncretist idol is not Jung's even-more idolatrous god. The Scriptures themselves provide the truth and the right balance.

 

[Wutang]

What about when personal calamity falls upon someone like Job is supposed to be a virtuous and God-fearing man? Pretty much all of the theodicy I've encountered says that God does allow evil to happen since the world is now fallen but they'll make clear He isn't the cause of it. In the story of Job, he is tormented but God isn't the one that is actively tormenting him.

 

[GodfatherPartTwo]

What about when personal calamity falls upon someone like Job is supposed to be a virtuous and God-fearing man? Pretty much all of the theodicy I've encountered says that God does allow evil to happen since the world is now fallen but they'll make clear He isn't the cause of it. In the story of Job, he is tormented but God isn't the one that is actively tormenting him.

In Job, I don't think God's agency can be ruled out completely since Satan has to ask God if he can torment Job. Whatever evil happens to Job happens by God's permission, but it is not God enacting retributive vengeance (the Law) against Job as He does in the case of unrepentant sinners. The personal calamity that Job endures is of the other kind; it is for a sanctifying purpose, it's meant to show that God can make good out of a bad situation and that He does so in the lives of His saints.

The broad, evil in the fallen world line of thought still tends to ascribe calamity to nature rather than God. This is also known as karmic law. People, even Christians, tend to like this because it keeps God's hands clean in their mind. They just don't like the idea that "the wrath of God is being revealed against all ungodliness." The early Christians did not think this way. Not only is the Bible clear that God is vengeful against sin (He appears evil to the sinner), but other early sources like the Didache say, "The events that befall thee thou shalt accept as good, knowing that nothing happens without God."

If you press the Platonic All-Good God (more like Feel-Good God) too far, then you end up in a system where some kind of ultimate Dualism is necessary. This is exactly what happened in the various Gnostic schemes. The All-Good God sits in the background doing nothing while the Evil God (Demiurge) is working overtime, all so the Gnostics could account for evil.

Edit: I want to add that the Epicurean Paradox (Classical Theodicy) is geared towards the Platonic Monad and not towards the Biblical YHWH, which is why the paradox necessitates the Demiurge in the former and falls short as a critique in the latter.

 

[Wutang]

When I was speaking about personal calamity I wasn't thinking of cases when God enacts vengeance as punishment for some sort of transgression but for acts that we would consider evil such as someone getting robbed or murdered by a random passerby on the street. The victim had an evil committed against him. If God is the active agent for such a thing to happen, how can this be reconciled with God being good?

I suppose a way to get around this would be to argue that even when God is somehow causing disaster to happen to people like in the case of the sort of random acts of violence against people we see in the news, He is somehow punishing them for the purposes of justice but that would seem to even cause more problems for theodicy. What's would be the purpose of God not just merely allowing someone to die in a mass shooting but being the active cause of it?

As for the Demiurge, doesn't Satan play a similar role in that he is the actual cause of evil in the world? To go back to Job, he is the being that is directly attacking Job, not God.

 

[JR5]

When I was speaking about personal calamity I wasn't thinking of cases when God enacts vengeance as punishment for some sort of transgression but for acts that we would consider evil such as someone getting robbed or murdered by a random passerby on the street. The victim had an evil committed against him. If God is the active agent for such a thing to happen, how can this be reconciled with God being good?

I suppose a way to get around this would be to argue that even when God is somehow causing disaster to happen to people like in the case of the sort of random acts of violence against people we see in the news, He is somehow punishing them for the purposes of justice but that would seem to even cause more problems for theodicy. What's would be the purpose of God not just merely allowing someone to die in a mass shooting but being the active cause of it?

As for the Demiurge, doesn't Satan play a similar role in that he is the actual cause of evil in the world? To go back to Job, he is the being that is directly attacking Job, not God.

Hi Wutang, the problem with the Demiurge conception is that if God is above the Demiurge, he is still ultimately responsible for the actions of lower beings that he has created or allowed to be created. Alternatively, if God does not have power over the Demiurge, then one is proposing Manichean or Zoroastrian type-dualism. This is one of the key problems with traditional gnosticism, I think. It's the same problem in the story of Job - even though it is Satan causing havoc in Job's life, God ultimately approved of it/allowed Satan to do it.

 

[Blade Runner]

The evil that God creates is not an objective substance of evil, but personal calamity.

This is an important point but nuanced, which I'll get to shortly.

but it is not God enacting retributive vengeance (the Law) against Job as He does in the case of unrepentant sinners.

I generally don't think this has to be the case but it can be seen and read into what happens ultimately, especially when one realizes that there are frequently things that happen "in the world" that make a mockery of this idea of "justice." Humans talking about justice is typically nonsensical as a result. Which is also leading ...

but other early sources like the Didache say, "The events that befall thee thou shalt accept as good, knowing that nothing happens without God."

Here's where we have the answer, but the answer isn't satisfactory to us humans, and requires faith and trust. The time element of things. We tend to think, still in our fallen minds and hearts, that this life is all there is. If one trusts God and defines Him as good or truth or whatever virtue, clearly by definition one is defining something or someone that knows what he is doing. And of course, he does. But so many things seem arbitrary to us, because we see dimly, veiled as St. Paul said (1 Cor 13, 2 Cor 2, also 1 John) or "through a glass/mirror, darkly" as opposed to seeing Him as he is, or things as they are.

I often appeal to Christ's statement about the Tower falling on the men of Siloam (Luke 13) that implies fairly arbitrary things might happen in the world, and one must be ready or vigilant. He asked those around him, "Do you suppose they were greater sinners than the rest?" The point is that one must repent because he doesn't know his own time, even. At death or at the end of time, etc.

Epicurean Paradox (Classical Theodicy)

This was always lame to me precisely due to the time aspect of things. If this isn't the whole story, God stopping bad things from happening isn't even relevant as a question. Christianity thus has the answer to it, since God also experiences "bad" things from a human point of view, in fact, all of the worst.

 

[Wutang]

Alternatively, if God does not have power over the Demiurge, then one is proposing Manichean or Zoroastrian type-dualism. This is one of the key problems with traditional gnosticism, I think.

Isn't the traditional Christian understanding that God does have power over Demiurge/Satan and that He eventually will win the ultimate victory over him but for now He is allowing Satan to have at least some influence/power in creation?

 

[GodfatherPartTwo]

When I was speaking about personal calamity I wasn't thinking of cases when God enacts vengeance as punishment for some sort of transgression but for acts that we would consider evil such as someone getting robbed or murdered by a random passerby on the street. The victim had an evil committed against him. If God is the active agent for such a thing to happen, how can this be reconciled with God being good?

I don't see these as necessarily divorced from each other. In the Bible, God routinely uses evil people to carry out His purposes. In Isaiah 10 for example, He uses the Assyrians to punish Israel, knowing that He will then punish Assyria in return. This may seem arbitrary or capricious on God's part, but His ways are higher than our ways. Both parties are evil and God, the third party is good. Other examples would be the crucifixion of Jesus, the most evil thing that ever happened in human history and yet it was God's will. I find the Biblical solution to theodicy in Genesis 50: "You meant it for evil but God meant it for good."

As for the Demiurge, doesn't Satan play a similar role in that he is the actual cause of evil in the world? To go back to Job, he is the being that is directly attacking Job, not God.

The roles are essentially reversed in Gnosticism. The logic is that if there is evil in nature then the creator of nature himself also must be evil. The creator is evil in Gnosticism and the serpent in the garden is good since he wants to break humans out of the matrix. Even God's providence, His providing for you is malicious in Gnosticism since it reinforces the material prison that you are stuck in.

As for Job, I wouldn't understand Satan as tormenting Job despite God. He does so under God's permission. Even Job ascribes his state of affairs to God in Job 13: "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him."

 

[JR5]

Isn't the traditional Christian understanding that God does have power over Demiurge/Satan and that He eventually will win the ultimate victory over him but for now He is allowing Satan to have at least some influence/power in creation?

The traditional Christian position is as you describe: God remains sovereign over Satan, will ultimately defeat him, but permits a temporary arena of freedom in which evil can act. The difficulty (for me) is that this does not actually resolve the problem of evil, it relocates it. If God is omnipotent, omniscient, and the ultimate ground of being, then any space in which Satan operates freely is a space God intentionally authored and sustains. Allowing is not morally neutral when one has absolute foreknowledge and absolute power. The distinction between actively causing and knowingly permitting collapses at that level of sovereignty.

This is why appeals to free will, while emotionally satisfying for many, feel structurally insufficient under scrutiny. They explain how evil occurs, but not why a perfectly good God would structure reality such that innocent suffering is a necessary byproduct. At best, they defer the contradiction rather than resolve it. The Book of Job already exposes this tension - even though Satan is the immediate agent of Job’s suffering, God authorizes the experiment. Job’s protest is not against Satan, it is against the moral intelligibility of God himself. Jung took that protest seriously rather than smoothing it over. So my issue is not that Christianity lacks an answer, it’s that the answer only works if one is willing to accept a residual mystery where moral coherence breaks down. For many people that is livable, but for me it wasn’t. That pressure is precisely what forced me to re-examine the God-image itself, rather than endlessly refining justifications beneath it.