ManM

"Famines and droughts and floods are common plagues of cities and nations which check the excess of evil. Therefore, just as the physician is a benefactor even if he should cause pain or suffering to the body (for he strives with the disease, and not with the sufferer), so in the same manner God is good Who administers salvation to everyone through the means of particular chastisements. But you, not only do you not speak evilly of the physician who cuts some members, cauterizes others, and excises others again completely from the body, but you even give him money and address him as savior because he confines the disease to a small area before the infirmity can claim the whole body. However, when you see a city crushing its inhabitants in an earthquake, or a ship going down at sea with all hands, you do not shrink from wagging a blasphemous tongue against the true Physician and Savior." St. Basil the Great

Any thoughts about this view of natural evils?

ex-preacher

The physician inflicts pain only as a necessary component of bringing about good. Who invented the disease that he is trying to cure? How does the death of millions through disease and disaster help them?

Jamie_L

Physicians are mortal and limited to mortal tools. If a physician could cure an ailment without inflicting any harm to the individual or to any healthy cells/tissues in that person's body, the physician would. If the physician had it in his power to eliminate the ailment without causing harm, but chose to cause harm in the process, we would rightly condemn the physician, even if he indeed succeeded in eliminating the ailment.

If God is omnipotent and omniscient, then he should be able to eliminate evils in the world without causing any harm to anyone else. If the evil is so widespread that we are to assume all of the people killed in some disaster needed to be killed, then this begs the question - why did God let things get so out of control in the first place? It would also lead to the conclusion that even good, pious people must be assumed to be part of and party to evil in the world, making them deserving of death by fire, flood, or whatever.

Suppose a physician gives someone a horrible disease, and then cures them. Do we call him a hero?

Jamie

Shadowy Man

In today's political climate, probably yes.

ManM

I think the "what if" approach to natural evil is a dead end simply because we cannot know what might have been. Anyway, the assumption that God is good restricts the domain of belief. God could not be the cause of the disease He is fighting, and God must not have the power to cure the disease without causing pain. If the sickness is the negation of God then it is not caused by Him. Light does not cause the absence of light. I'm more interested in the ramifications of the second conclusion: God must not have the power to cure the disease without causing pain. What force could constrain God in such a way?

Jamie_L

Exactly my point, ManM. The notion of natural evil in the OP contradicts the notion that God is omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent. God cannot be all three if the notions in the OP are true.

Jamie