The best known Christian response to the problem of evil is the belief that some angels, then mankind, "fell" and that human beings die only because they fell! This belief entails that unFallen extraterrestrials would be immortal. CS Lewis has mortal Martians but immortal Venerians. In James Blish's A Case Of Conscience, sinless but Godless aliens generate a theological problem for a Jesuit scientist.
Most hard sf assumes that:
"'...every oxygen-breathing species ever encountered is in no state of grace, but prone to sin, error, and death.'"
-Poul Anderson, The Game Of Empire IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 189-453 AT CHAPTER ONE, p. 209.
The best known theological explanation (see above) is that we have been tempted and misled by a fallen angel, represented as the Solipsist in Anderson's Operation Chaos. However, within Christianity, there is an alternative response to the problem of evil:
"'...the Devil is the dark, messy side of creation. (Jung got it slightly wrong when he said the Devil was the shadow of God.) Eventually God will reach the point in his creation where he'll bring the dark, messy side under control, but meanwhile we're staggering around in all the mess and being mangled by the demons...'"
-Susan Howatch, The High Flyer (London, 2000), PART FIVE, TWO, IV, p. 558.
- but these "demons" are:
"'...psychic entities, forces which flow directly from the malign archetypes which lurk in the collective unconscious of the human race...'"
-Howatch, op. cit., p. 557.
See also Iranaean theodicy.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Well, Satan is not called only the Solipsist in the OPERATION books, but also the Adversary, the enemy of God and all who serve Him.
And if that was how Susan Howatch thought, I don't agree with her or all others who deny the actuality of the angels. That view simply doesn't make sense to me. If you believe God is real, then it logically follows He could create the angels: non corporeal immortal beings having reason, intellect, free will, etc.
We do get hints in the Old Testament about the beings we call angels. One of the clearest being Isaiah's vision of God in Isaiah 6, and the angelic seraphim attending Him. And the theology of angels was well developed by the time of Christ. And, as a matter of defined doctrine, the Fourth Lateran Council declared that angels are real and actual beings. Not mere forces or archetypes lurking in our subconscious.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
It follows that God could create angels but not that he did.
Catholicism defines doctrines in Councils but these are not accepted by all Christians. I knew a Jesuit who denied angels and therefor also fallen angels but I do not know what he would have said to the 4th Latern.
Paul.
I looked up that 4th Lateran. It had some bad stuff about Jews.
Kaor, Paul!
I agree God did not HAVE to create the angels, but I believe he CHOSE to do so. And it still puzzles me why some who say they too believe in God should be so dogmatic in denying the angels are real beings.
Catholics are required, as a matter of faith, to assent to belief in all defined doctrines of the Church. So I would have to argue with that Jesuit you knew and try to convince him he was was wrong to deny angels are real.
You mean Canons 68 and 69 of the Fourth Lateran Council.* I agree not all the acts of that council, such as these canons, were wise or good. I thought another canon, forbidding Jews to leave their homes during Holy Week, was actually meant to protect them from attacks by enraged Christians eager to "avenge" Our Lord.
Ad astra! Sean
*"Canon" is the word used for the laws of the Catholic Church, which is currently codified in the 1983 CODE OF CANON LAW, promulgated by Pope John Paul II. Canons are the laws regulating the life of the Church and the rights, duties, and responsibilities of the faithful, both lay and clerical.
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