Quote:
Originally Posted by awareness
My question is, why is this thread called Theodicy of the Spirit? Isn't that implying that the Spirit allows evil to exist in the world?
So why Theodicy? Did you mean Theology?
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Well I was just playing with words. I like to; remember getting excited about words like “processed” and “consummated” and “crystallized”? Well, I still do, and this time I picked “theodicy”. My understanding was that Liebniz, like Irenaeus and Origen before, was not trying to justify the existence of evil, but rather to justify the ways of a powerful and benevolent God in the face of evil. So I wanted to justify the ways of the spirit.
But it was really a play on words, because I feel that any justification of God by us is going to be somewhat subjective. Just as our definitions of “Spirit” and “spiritual” are perhaps arbitrary, because we are neither Spirit nor truly spiritual. So any definition is going to be what we agree on today and not what actually is.
If you asked me, I'd say, “Spirit is how God communicates with the world”. Spirit is God moving, and speaking, and shining forth. But if you asked me in 8 months “What is Spirit” I might give you a completely different answer. My justification of the ways of the Spirit is playing in the sandbox, pushing sand around with my Tonka tractor and pretending that I am trafficking in reality. But I do it because it amuses me.