| «Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
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| Then he is not omnipotent. |
| Is he able, but not willing?
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| Then he is malevolent.
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| Is he both able and willing?
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| Then whence cometh evil?
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| Is he neither able nor willing?
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| Then why call him God?»
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| «If God is omniscient, he must already know how he is
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| going to intervene to change the course of history
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| using his omnipotence.
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| But that means he can’t change his mind about his
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| intervention which means he is not omnipotent»
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| If He knew it all
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| If He knew everything there is to be known
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| Then that would mean that He would always know what to
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| do next to change the course of history
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| He could choose to suspend the laws of nature
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| He would always know the past and the future
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| But this would make his own knowledge untrue
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| For if He knew everything
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| He could not do anything different from what he knows
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| And even if he could hear our prayers
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| He could not encroach
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| There’s noone here who knows it all
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| There’s nothing there beyond the world we know
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| There’s noone here who knows it all
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| Is there something there beyond the world we know?
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| Christian morality has all the characters of a
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| reaction; |
| it is, in great part, a protest against
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| Paganism.
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| Its ideal is negative rather than positive; |
| passive
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| rather than action; |
| innocence rather than Nobleness;
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| Abstinence from Evil, rather than energetic Pursuit of
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| Good: in its precepts (as has been well said) «thou
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| shalt not» predominates unduly over «thou shalt.» |