The Problem of the Damned, Part 3

The Problem of the Damned goes like this; why did God create a world that will have people who will experience eternal damnation when He theoretically could’ve created a world in which there were no people who rejected Him and had free will, per His omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence?

My first answer was based on the idea of absolute contingency; no person exists in any other world except the world they are found in. For God to not create a world is for God to not create those beings in any other world, because they could only exist in that particular world.

My second answer is this; evil is a good because as it produces an evolving world. If there were no evil, there would be nothing for me to overcome, and so there would be nothing to strengthen my moral good, my moral resolve, my love for God, my unity with God, etc.

God is infinite, and everything created is finite. Nothing could be created infinite. Everything created then, no matter how “arbitrarily large” it was created is yet an infinite distance from God. This distance can only be bridged through growth. The growth will never produce an infinite, but this fact of growing produces the unity necessary for beings to resonate with the Absolute; to resonate with Life is to grow, to grow is to resonate with Life.

On the other hand, damnation is not an infinite loss, as one loses only what finite-life they have. They are bankrupt of growth, but they cannot “fall” farther away an infinite distance. Damnation places beings outside of any chance of harmony with the Absolute, and so places them outside the ability of this divine-like growth. Thus, they fall away from Absolute Being to non-being; however, the difference between non-being and a finite being is always only finite.

So, damnation is a finite loss while salvation is an infinite gain. The salvation of the saved weighs out the damnation of the damned in every instance.

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The Problem of the Damned, Part 2

The first solution I have to the “Problem of the Damned” is that the reason God created this particular universe is because of our absolute contingency. What I mean by this is that the person known as me, who I am in essence doesn’t and couldn’t possibly exist in any other universe. There could be other persons like me, who seem like me in every regard, but they would not be me. I do not exist in any other possible world except the actual world.

I am not saying that we are made unique by our particular experiences, those are only accidental. I am speaking of our essence, that quite literally, unless God instantiated this particular possible world, I would not exist. If God had created any other possible world but not this one, there would be no I, no you, no anyone who we know in this world. We cannot exist in any possible world except the one that we find ourselves in.

So, my absolute contingency is valid enough reason to create this particular world despite there being damned people, because if God had created only those worlds in which there were no damned people, you and I would not exist to experience the beatific vision.

An unintended consequence is that this would make it seem that God would, or maybe even should, create all possible worlds in which there is at least one person who loves Him. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad consequence, and in fact I would already argue for such a type of multiverse on the basis of God’s infinite and unending love. So, this is in fact coherent and fits together as a whole with the character of God as He is known.

The only problem with this solution is that the idea of absolute contingency is a postulate. I wonder if I could say it is a conclusion based on the premises of a just, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God and the prospect of damned people, but I don’t think I can commit myself to its certainty, though at least its probability. Also, this isn’t my only solution, so it doesn’t need to be true for there to be a valid theodicy to the problem of the damned.

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