Free Republic

Rather embarrassing request. Maybe 7 years ago, I came across an interesting essay on "the existence of God or the Devil." DISCLAIMER: NO IT WAS NOT C.S. LEWIS OR CHESTERTON OR WILLIAM LANE CRAIG. THANK YOU! It was maybe 6 or 8 pages long, and was fairly learned and erudite, but written in a Screwtape-style fashion ; it was a way of "backing up into" the existence of God, starting with the existence of Evil ; and from there, not arguing against God, but FOR the existence of the Devil (from thence, of course, God Follows, since the Devil rebelled...

What do we mean by professing that G-d is good and man was created in His image? When G-d allows and even causes unbearable pain to befall man, afflicting him with sickness, cruel death, earthquakes and the most horrible wars, there seems little room for these claims. If G-d, by our moral standards, cannot be justified for many of His actions, as we have suggested previously, how are we to revere Him?

It is has become commonplace to regard Ivan Karamazov’s "Legend of the Grand Inquisitor" as a prescient parable glorifying human freedom and defending it against the kind of totalitarian threats it would face in the twentieth century. Fyodor Dostoevsky’s angry atheist delivers an uncanny prophecy of the omnicompetent, freedom–denying state that would arise in his own native Russia. But concerning the liberty that is the only cure for state–sponsored oppression, Ivan is terribly wrong. The Christ of the Grand Inquisitor advocates an idea of freedom that Dostoevsky considered an abomination. It is linked to Ivan’s critique of God for allowing...