You will excuse the brief delay.
If we admit that evil is an essential part of our being and the
key to the interpretation of our life, we load ourselves down
with a difficulty that has always proved burdensome in
philosophies of religion. Theism, whenever it has erected itself
into a systematic philosophy of the universe, has shown a
reluctance to let God be anything less than All-in-All. In other
words, philosophic theism has always shown a tendency to become
pantheistic and monistic, and to consider the world as one unit
of absolute fact; and this has been at variance with popular or
practical theism, which latter has ever been more or less frankly
pluralistic, not to say polytheistic, and shown itself perfectly
well satisfied with a universe composed of many original
principles, provided we be only allowed to believe that the
divine principle remains supreme, and that the others are
subordinate. In this latter case God is not necessarily
responsible for the existence of evil; he would only be
responsible if it were not finally overcome. But on the monistic
or pantheistic view, evil, like everything else, must have its
foundation in God; and the difficulty is to see how this can
possibly be the case if God be absolutely good.
Pages:
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244