The coexistence of evil and an omnipotent benevolent God is a thorny question that still vexes theologians. John Hagee is certainly right to wonder how God could have let the Holocaust happen. But . . . well, I'm kind of speechless. Go read for yourself. How long before McCain has to publicly repudiate him?
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Done!
http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/03/07/mccain-repudiates-televangelist-hagees-catholic-views-following-endorsement/
And more here... http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&hs=NVu&q=mccain+hagee+repudiate&btnG=Search
All that, and he's not nearly as close to him as Obama is to Wright
There's some kind of weird relationship between Evangelicals and Zionism.
Having said that, Hagee's logic is similar to that of the Soldier in Team Fortress 2: "If God had wanted you to live, He wouldn't have created me!"
You know, if you accept the premise that there's an omnipotent God out there who monitors world events and intervenes on a regular basis -- apparently even determining the outcome of college football games -- then Hagee's analysis makes a certain weird sense. I mean, why would an omnipotent and presumably well-meaning deity allow something like The Holocaust to happen? We feel bad about Rwanda, and we are neither omnipotent nor omniscient. Heck some people say we should have bombed the railroads leading to the death camps. Should we expect less from God?
If you think that God is basically a nice guy, then you have come up with some reason why he allowed this to happen. Hagee's explanation makes about as much sense as any, once you accept his premises about the existence of an omnipotent deity.
Is there a better answer than Hagee's? Or is it just not allowed to propose an answer? What about proposing the answer that there is no God, that the Jews therefore obviously aren't the chosen people, and that the whole idea is silly? Would that be more or less offensive?
Oh good grief. Arguing that Hitler existed for the purpose of chastizing the faithful extends canonical theological tradition going right back to the Pope warning that the Muslims were at the gates of Vienna in the 15th century pretty much because of the sins of Europe. Find me a Protestant preacher who doesn't argue that God sends us evil to teach us a lesson, just try.
Is that hugely different from Wright making the secular argument that whitey is out to kill all the blacks with AIDS, or that the folks in the towers kinda deserved it? Why yes it is. Very much so. Unless you're more fond of rhetorical than logical similarities.
It’s kind of cute actually, watching the Obamaniacs desperately trying to create an artificial symmetry between McCain and Hagee in order to excuse the twenty-year relationship between Obama and Wright.
Well, "all these bad things are happening to you because you aren't doing what you should" goes back, in Jewish history, to Samuel, and has a rather distinguished set of proponents. It's hardly anti-Jewish to use the same analysis for Hitler as for Nebuchadnezzar, or the Romans.
And if Hagee was actually McCain's pastor, I would care.
But he isn't, so I don't.
I don't get it. If one really believes in the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, God, then doesn't it follow logically that *everything* that happens is God's Will?
How do mainstream theologians get around that paradox?
For the readers less familiar with Christian theology, just let me point out that in Calvinist doctrine, God's will has two different meanings.
God's moral will is expressed in right and wrong; we are to obey and follow this will, and Jesus atones for our failings under this will. God's moral will is opposed to Hitler's actions. Humans can go against God's moral will.
God's sovereign will controls what happens in the Universe. Nothing can happen against God's sovereign will, and so Hitler, etc, etc, is doing God's sovereign will, in a sense.
This isn't to defend Hagee at all; Calvinism is absurd IMHO and his comments, as a logical conclusion of the doctrine, just highlight this. But let's not start saying that Hagee thinks that Hitler was a good man, or was doing the moral will of God, until he actually says that. He was "merely" stating that Hitler was doing the sovereign will of God, as prophesied by Jeremiah.
"The coexistence of evil and an omnipotent benevolent God is a thorny question that still vexes theologians."
Does it really? Most intelligent, religious types I know just say it's part of His unknowable plan.
Two of the most interesting answers to this question came back in the 17th Century -- in Leibniz's Theodicy and Spinoza's Ethics. Leibniz, who was a devout Christian, argued that this was the best of all possible worlds, and it would have been worse if the man upstairs weren't so benevolent, e.g., you still would have had a Holocaust, but maybe a Holocaust and no Mozart; in this world, at least we got Mozart too. The "best of all possible worlds" concept (mocked in "Candide", for those of you who have seen it) of course weakens the word "omnipotence" a bit.
Spinoza, an excommunicated Jew, had a simpler explanation: He is neutral. His laws are nature's laws, i.e., the laws of physics. Good and bad were human concepts. If a tree fell on an innocent child it wasn't because the child had sinned but because lighting had struck the tree, or a strong wind knocked it over, etc.
As for me personally, john w, I believe that omnipotence is defined too strongly (or that God isn't omnipotent; take your pick). People have free will and are able to do bad stuff, despite what God wants for the world. And on the whole, the existence of Free Will in the world provides benefits which outweigh all the pain and suffering that we humans inflict on each other.
This isn't to justify evil choices; we have the responsibility to use our free will to choose good.
I've heard from very nice Orthodox Jews (more than once) that God sends anti-Semites to remind non-practicing Jews of their Jewish identity.
Bizarre, given that McCain deliberately sought Hagee's endorsement. More Bizarre: having gotten that endorsement, McCain doesn't repudiate this 'Christian'.
Of course, the reason is obvious.
"It’s kind of cute actually, watching the Obamaniacs desperately trying to create an artificial symmetry between McCain and Hagee in order to excuse the twenty-year relationship between Obama and Wright."
It's kind of cute, actually, that as long as McCain doesn't attend weekly the churches of the racist, bigoted pastors whose endorsement he seeks, there is no problem whatsoever.
But of course if Hamas endorses Obama, but Obama repudiates Hamas, well, that is a problem.
IOKIYAR.
Is there a better answer than Hagee's?
Yes. God gave humans freedom and, true to his gift, he lets them use that gift, even to do appalling things.
Nope, because contrary to your assertion, it doesn’t follow that if there is an all-knowing and all-powerful God, that everything that happens in the Universe is His will.
Nope, because contrary to your assertion, it doesn’t necessarily follow that if there is an all-knowing and all-powerful God, that everything that happens in the Universe is His will.
Particularly since McCain hasn’t in fact sought the endorsement of any “racist bigoted pastors.”
Go back and read the very first post of this thread.
Yup. I did. When they were first posted. You must have a different definition of 'repudiate'. You must also not _really_ believe that the person I was quoting (nice snip, that) was being a complete hypocrite.
You missed this one, Megan.
I won't need to repeat what others have said, other than: Hagee's theology here happens to match some Jewish theology and this should not be considered an endorsement of Hitler.
Not that I like McCain or Hagee either one.
Perhaps he should consult some Catholic theologians who have been wrestling with this problem, for, say, 2000 years.
Or Jewish theologians who have been doing so for, say, 4000 years.
Prods are silly and vain to think that their new religions are the first ones to consider these problems.
And, McCain can repudiate this guy when O'Bama repudiates Wright (and his grandmother).
Is that hugely different from Wright making the secular argument that whitey is out to kill all the blacks with AIDS, or that the folks in the towers kinda deserved it? Why yes it is.
Carl, you are rapidly becoming one of my least favorite posters here. The chief difference is that Rev. Wright did not say either of the two things you attribute to him. He said it was possible that HIV had originated in CIA bioweapons programs -- a ridiculous position, but not an accusation that "whitey" (as opposed to the CIA) was "out to kill all the blacks" (the thesis, again ludicrous, is that the virus the CIA was developing somehow escaped). And he said that 9/11 represented "chickens coming home to roost": that the US had funded, trained and armed precisely the religious fanatic militants in Afghanistan who wound up coming back to bomb our own troops and cities. This point -- "Blowback" -- is accurate. Wright never said that the people in the towers "deserved it", and it is reprehensible on your part to twist someone's words in that fashion.
In contrast, Rev. Hagee did in fact say that God sent Hitler as a "hunter" to chase the Jews back to Israel, and that the Holocaust was thus God's will. This kind of argument is in fact much older than you imply; the Bible itself is full of it. And all of these kinds of arguments are completely fucking insane, prerational, bloodthirsty madness. Yeah, God put mothers on the platforms at Auschwitz and forced them to choose which of their two children would live and which would be asphyxiated in agony by Zyklon-B, because it was necessary for the establishment of Israel to bring on Armageddon. Yeah, God wanted women to have their uteruses filled with cement in Dr. Mengele's mad experimental laboratory, to die in slow agony, for the purpose of some weird fanatical geostrategic aim. Yeah, that's the kind of God I think the American people want to worship. Sure.
I also have heard Jews make a similar argument. However:
1) It's the kind of argument that should be made, if ever, by Jewish people. Telling *other* people that you think God was hunting them down in order to send them back to Israel is kind of rude. But it's downright hideous when you say it to people who were hunted down by quite a lot of flesh and blood people who senselessly slaughtered millions of them.
2) The way he said it, complete with apocalyptic quotes, is pretty horrifying, especially since
3) Since the whole Jesus/Paul thing, all professed Christians are supposed to be the people of God in whom he takes special interest--if those prophetic passages actually referred to a post-Christ world, there's as good reason to assume he would be referring to Christians.
Duh..., this guy believes Mary was a virgin and that Jesus came back to life from the dead and then floated to heaven. What do you expect him to believe besides that? Only sensible stuff?
Of course he's a nutjob but he is a consistent nutjob. Why is anyone surprised by anything he believes or says? He's already committed to believing absurd stuff from the get go.
Don't many religious people (of which I'm not one) believe that all bad things (earthquakes, Nazis, whatever) are created by god as tests/punishment/etc, since he is omnipotent and omnipresent?
Sure, it's a pretty repulsive thing to believe in a God that created/allowed Nazism, but I don't think it's a new standpoint. We should be slamming him (and millions of others) for saying that the same thing for the last few centuries, not just now.
How long before McCain has to publicly repudiate him?
26 hours and 11 minutes, by my count.
As for me personally, john w, I believe that omnipotence is defined too strongly (or that God isn't omnipotent; take your pick). People have free will and are able to do bad stuff, despite what God wants for the world. And on the whole, the existence of Free Will in the world provides benefits which outweigh all the pain and suffering that we humans inflict on each other.
What benefits would those be? Why didn't God make us such that we always choose good, like he does? Or such that we choose evil less often?