Whiteheadian Thought as a Basis for a Philosophy of Religion
by Forrest Wood, Jr.

Chapter 7: The Problem of Evil from a Whiteheadian Perspective

The problem of evil has struck in man’s craw from Job to J.B. David Hume in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion quotes Epicurus’ version of the problem of evil: "Is he (God) willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able but not willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil?"² This problem can be broken down into its various parts: (1) the nature of evil, (2) the nature of the universe, and (3) the nature of God (a) his omnipotence (b) his goodness.

What happens if we view this traditional problem from a Whiteheadian perspective? Can we come to a better understanding of the problem than we have gained from previous discussions? A better way to view the problem depends upon there being a better way to view evil, the universe, and God. The above discussion of the Whiteheadian view of the nature of the universe and of the nature of God provides that new perspective. Now we need to see how this new perspective aids us in understanding the problem of evil.

It is important this analysis of evil does not trivialize or eliminate it from reality. Rather our purpose is to seek an understanding of a real and serious part of our experience. In doing so we are following Whitehead’s belief that philosophy is the "elucidation of immediate experience." (Process and Reality, Corrected Edition, ed. Griffin & Sherburne, New York: The Free Press, 1978, 4)

Nelson Pike in his book of readings, God and Evil, properly places as the first article, a selection from Dostoevski’s The Brothers Karamazov, which depicts the horror and reality of evil. Ivan presents a case of abused children. Then he says, ". . . all I know is that there is suffering and that there are none guilty; that cause follows effect, simply and directly; that everything flows and finds its level — but that’s only Euclidean nonsense, I know that, and I can’t consent to live by it! What comfort is (it) to me that there are none guilty and that cause follows effect simply and directly, and that I know it — I must have justice, or I will destroy myself."³

Ivan presents real evil which we must not explain away. But Ivan’s response to the evil is inadequate. While the demand for justice is one which we all feel, the fact of our experience is that justice does not prevail. His demand for justice sounds like the whimpering of an adolescent, who, if not given his wish, threatens to rebel against his father.

A more mature reaction than Ivan’s is expressed by Wayne W. Dyer in his book, Your Erroneous Zones. His comment deals primarily with "natural evil," but he provides a better starting place to consider the problem of evil. He says. "Justice does not exist. It never has, and it never will. The world is simply not put together that way. Robins eat worms. That’s not fair to the worms. Spiders eat flies. That’s not fair to the flies. Cougars kill coyotes. Coyotes kill badgers. Badgers kill mice. Mice kill bugs. Bugs. . . You have only to look at nature to realize there is no justice in the world. Tornadoes, floods, tidal waves, droughts are all fair. It is a mythological concept, this justice business. The world and the people in it go on being unfair every day. You can choose to be happy or unhappy, but it has nothing to do with the lack of justice you see around you."⁴ While this view has some problems, at least it is a no-nonsense position — a good starting point.

If the world is not put together so that justice exists, how is it put together so that evil exists? I think that the clue to our understanding the problem of evil lies in a proper cosmology. And I believe Whitehead’s cosmology will help us understand the experience of evil.

Briefly reiterated, Whitehead’s view is that the basic unit of reality is an actual entity which may be conceived as ". . .a subject presiding over its own immediacy of becoming. . . ." (Process and Reality, Corrected Edition, ed. Griffin & Sherburne, New York: The Free Press, 1978, 45) "The actual entity terminates its becoming in one complex feeling involving a completely determinate bond with every item in the universe, the bond being either a positive or negative prehension." (Process and Reality, Corrected Edition, ed. Griffin & Sherburne, New York: The Free Press, 1978, 44) How does this cosmological view affect the traditional problem of evil?

Whitehead understands evil from the viewpoint of an aesthetician. He says in Religion in the Making, "The metaphysical doctrine, here expounded, finds the foundations of the world in the aesthetic experience. . . .All order is therefore aesthetic order, and the moral order is merely certain aspects of aesthetic order." (Religion in the Making, Cleveland: Meridian Books, 1960, 101) So, according to Whitehead, morality is an aspect of the more basic aesthetic order. He also places logical order under aesthetic order in his comment, "Logicians are not called in to advise artists." (Modes of Thought, New York: The Free Press, 1968 83) (Of course the converse is also true: artists are not called in to advise logicians.) Whitehead’s dominant category here is order. The aesthetic, the ethical, and the logical are conceived as forms of order. And he subsumes the latter two under the aesthetic. Thus, when he talks about the nature of evil, he is talking about the loss of a specific kind of order (moral order), a subset of aesthetic order.

If morality is a form of order, is evil then to be conceived as chaos? His answer is, "No." He rejects pure chaos. "The immanence of God gives reason for the belief that pure chaos is intrinsically impossible." (Process and Reality, Corrected Edition, ed. Griffin & Sherburne, New York: The Free Press, 1978, 111) In an open universe where creative events can take place, some chaos is required. "Thus chaos is not to be identified with evil; for harmony requires the due coordination of chaos, vagueness, narrowness, and width." (Process and Reality, Corrected Edition, ed. Griffin & Sherburne, New York: The Free Press, 1978, 112)

What then is evil? How is it to be understood? The terms, degradation, destruction, internal inconsistency, suffering, loss, and obstruction are used by Whitehead in characterizing evil. He comments in Religion in the Making, "The fact of evil, interwoven with the texture of the world, shows that in the nature of things there remains effectiveness for degradation. . . .the loss of the greater reality." (Religion in the Making, Cleveland: Meridian Books, 1960, 17) In Adventures of Ideas he says, "Qualifications have to be introduced, though they leave unshaken the fundamental position that ‘destruction as a dominant fact in the experience’ is the correct definition of evil." (Adventures of Ideas, New York: The Free Press, 1967, 259)

Why does evil occur? Whitehead’s answer is, "The categories governing the determination of things are the reasons why there should be evil; and are also the reasons why, in the advance of the world, particular evil facts are finally transcended." (Process and Reality, Corrected Edition, ed. Griffin & Sherburne, New York: The Free Press, 1978, 223) He explains how these categories govern the process of the concrescence of the actual occasion. The perfection of the subjective aim of an actual occasion is "the absence from it of component feelings which mutually inhibit each other. . . ." (Adventures of Ideas, New York: The Free Press, 1967, 256) One form of inhibition, complete inhibition, is finiteness and does not derogate from perfection. The other form of inhibition "involves the true active presence of both component feelings. In this case there is a third feeling of mutual destructiveness. . . .This is the feeling of evil in the most general sense, namely physical pain or mental evil, such as sorrow, horror, dislike." (Adventures of Ideas, New York: The Free Press, 1967, 256) Note that this third feeling is a positive force that is destructive. Julius Bixler says, "It is not enough to say that evil is negative or privative. Evil is a brute motive force on its own account. It is positive and destructive, where good is positive and creative."⁵ This correctly expresses Whitehead’s position. He says, "Evil is positive and destructive; what is good is positive and creative." (Religion in the Making, Cleveland: Meridian Books, 1960, 93)

So, in the Whiteheadian cosmology, evil is the feeling of destructiveness in experience which has its roots in the very nature of things. The incompatibility of prehensions (the feelings) of the actual occasion gives rise to the feeling of destructiveness. This feeling of destructiveness is a definite concrete reality in the world and is a part of the very nature of things.

The idea that the world was created good and then that evil intruded as an alien element creates "the problem of evil." The problem cannot be solved from this point of view because to explain the presence of evil, one must use the same metaphysical principles that one uses to explain the good. Whitehead made the same point in reference to God when he asserted that God cannot be made a exception to metaphysical principles — so neither can evil. And in Whiteheadian thought, it is not. There evil is the feeling of destructiveness in the actual occasion.

Another part of the problem of evil is expressed by Nickles in J.B.: "If God is God He is not good." Well, is God, God? Philosophers have asked, Is God omnipotent? Whitehead attacks the belief in the "unqualified omnipotence" of God because it would make God responsible "for every detail of every happening." (Adventures of Ideas, New York: The Free Press, 1967, 169) He also rejects the conception of God as "the one supreme reality, omnipotently disposing a wholly derivative world." (Adventures of Ideas, New York: The Free Press, 1967, 166) William Christian notes that ". . .the real target of this criticism is the view that God is omnificent, that all effective agency in the universe is to be ascribed to God."⁶ It is precisely this aspect of the omnipotence of God that is crucial to the problem of evil. Hence we must deal with the nature of God and God’s relation to the universe together in relation to the problem of evil.

Professor Hartshorne has reinterpreted the omnipotence of God from a Whiteheadian perspective in such a way as to shed light on the problem of evil. He argues that God ". . .is not ‘omnipotent’ in the Thomistic sense, as the power effectively to choose that any possible world, no matter which, shall be actual"⁷ The reason that God does not have this power is that each actual occasion is a creative entity which, within limits, determines itself. Hence there is a vast multiplicity of entities which make concrete particular events. Hartshorne says, ". . .omnipotence paralyzes thinking. We are what we are, not simply because divine power has decided or done this or that, but because countless non-divine creatures (including our own past selves) have decided what they have decided."⁸ The title of one of Hartshorne’s books clearly expresses his view, Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes.⁹

Nickles also states the other side of the dilemma of the problem of evil, "If God is good, he is not God." So we are faced with the question, "Is God good?" The question sounds absurd because we would quickly respond, "Of course He is!"

One is startled then to read in Christian’s book: ". . .on Whitehead’s theory God is certainly not morally good, judged by those standards of behavior that are necessary for the peace and prosperity of human community. The question is whether these standards properly apply to his nature, and whether it is reasonable to judge God by them."¹¹ Christian later argues that these moral standards are not applicable; hence he concludes that God is not morally good. More fully stated, he concludes that God is neither morally good nor evil.

But first, let us see how Christian understands God’s involvement with evil. He argues that God is involved both in the production and the preservation of evil experiences. God envisages all pure possibilities with appetition for their realization. "It seems therefore that his appetition includes those forms of definiteness which in the course of history characterize evil experiences and decisions and deeds."¹² So God shares in the production of these experiences.

Also God prehends and values all the feelings of actual occasions including the morally evil ones. So Christian writes, "It seems therefore that God has a share in the preservation as well as the production of evil experiences and decisions."¹³

On the basis of these arguments Christian says that God is not morally good. But then Christian gets out of this position by arguing that evil is the exclusion of some of the initial datum of an actual occasion. And God does not exclude any datum. Hence God is not faced with human moral decisions of what to exclude.

But this solution does not solve the difficulty, because it is not proper to characterize human immoral actions as human finiteness. Christian quoted Whitehead, "The nature of evil is that the characters of things are mutually obstructive." (Process and Reality, Corrected Edition, ed. Griffin & Sherburne, New York: The Free Press, 1978, 340)¹⁴ But things are mutually obstructive because man is finite and incapable of incorporating all the data of the past with maximum intensity. God can do this but man cannot. Whitehead refers to this inability of actual occasions as "evil." But Christian misunderstands when he takes this to be moral evil. This confusion arises because Whitehead uses the term, "evil," to refer both to aesthetic evil and moral evil without distinguishing between them.

Whitehead’s interpreters must determine which type of evil he is referring to in each passage being interpreted. On the same page with the above statement, Whitehead also refers to the ultimate tragic element in the temporal world as evil. He says, "The ultimate evil in the temporal world is. . . .that the past fades, that time is ‘perpetual perishing."’ (Process and Reality, Corrected Edition, ed. Griffin & Sherburne, New York: The Free Press, 1978, 340) This ultimate evil is not moral failure but the aesthetic loss of immediacy. The feeling of this loss is great, and the desire for immortality stems from this sense of loss. So when the loss is called an aesthetic loss or an aesthetic evil, one does not discount the significance of the event.

But man’s immorality does not result from the fact that he must make some choices and not others (a condition of his finiteness). Nor does it result from the fact that his present is a process of vivid prehension and that the present once completed does not endure but perpetually perishes subjectively. Man is also not immoral because he chooses the lesser over the greater. Being dull, monotonous, and drab is certainly aesthetic failure, but it is not moral failure.

The point is that Christian’s proposition that morality does not apply to God does not follow from his argument. So back to the original question: Is God good?

Whitehead’s view that reality is composed of many creative entities, each of which involves in differing degrees the freedom to prehend in its (partial) self-creation, illuminates the problem of evil. The universe is filled with a multiplicity of agents making decisions. Responsibility is therefore a universal characteristic of all entities (though again in differing degrees). Hence part of Whitehead’s solution to the problem of evil is to attribute many evils to the inevitable conflicts between many agents of action.

Hartshorne’s discussion of the problem of evil follows this line of thought. "The root of evil, suffering, misfortune, wickedness, is the same as the root of all good, joy, happiness, and that is freedom, decision making."¹⁵ But the solution to the problem of evil cannot simply lie in human freedom because there is so much suffering not caused by humans. The only solution to the problem of evil "worth writing home about" is one in which human freedom is not only affirmed but is also "a special, intensified, magnified form of a general principle pervasive of reality, down to the very atoms and still farther."¹⁶ The result of such a principle is inevitable conflict and frustration as multiple agents decide things every moment.

This general principle of the freedom of all actualies needs to be augmented by principles ascribing all actuality to God. Hartshorne says, "The problem is how a genuine division of power, hence of responsibility for good and evil. . . .can be reconciled with the ascription of all the wealth of actuality to God. To do this we must have general metaphysical principles whereby actualities can be contained in other actualities yet retain their own self-decisions."¹⁷

Hartshorne argues that Whiteheadian principles provide a comprehensive metaphysical system that does that. This is an achievement of historic proportions. No philosopher prior to Whitehead provided a metaphysical system that could both affirm the freedom of the entities in the world and also attribute all the wealth of actuality to God. Without such a metaphysical system the problem of evil is unsolvable.

Hartshorne recognizes the theological implications of this metaphysical system. The most important implication is the necessity to re-interpret the omnipotence of God. Classical theology has ascribed the power to determine all things to God. The difficulty with this position is that consistency demanded that you must also say that God determined evil — a position classical theology denied. So we must reinterpret the classical understanding of the omnipotence of God. God can not be the only source of decision-making. While none surpasses God, the conception of the perfection of God’s power should not be interpreted to mean that God has all power and that all other entities are powerless. Rather while God’s power is unsurpassable by any other, others do have power to be casual agents.

If one rejects classical omnipotence, then God is not 0mm-responsible for the evils in the world. Then John Hick’s solution is incorrect: "We have. . . .found it to be an inescapable conclusion that the ultimate responsibility for the existence of sinful creatures and of the evils which they cause and suffer, rests upon God himself."¹⁸ Hick has characterized this as an Irenaean type of theodicy which "accepts God’s ultimate omni-responsibility and seeks to show for what good and justifying reason He has created a universe in which evil was inevitable."¹⁹

Hick lacks a metaphysic that recognizes the partial self-creativity of all creatures and hence responsibility. But his attempt does suggest an important avenue.

I believe that we can illuminate the problem of evil not only by recognizing that there are other creative agents of action (a reinterpretation of the omnipotence of God) but also by recognizing that destructiveness is an essential part of creativity (a reinterpretation of the goodness of God). In as much as creativity is a part of the nature of God as any other entity — since God is the supreme example of creativity — we need to re-interpret the goodness of God.

Whitehead’s consideration of evil is much broader than an apologist’s defense of God. Indeed Whitehead says that the function of God as the source of the initial aim of each actual entity ". . .is analogous to the remorseless working of things in Greek and in Buddhist thought. The initial aim is the best for that impasse. But if the best be bad, then the ruthlessness of god can be personified as Ate, the goddess of mischief. The chaff is burnt. What is inexorable in God, is valuation as an aim towards ‘order’;. . . ."(Process and Reality, Corrected Edition, ed. Griffin & Sherburne, New York: The Free Press, 1978, 244)

By referring to the "ruthlessness of god," "the god of mischief," and "if the best be bad," Whitehead is not attributing moral evil to God. But God, as the source of the initial aim of each entity, provides the best aim possible for an aesthetic synthesis of its past and its present possibilities. Actual entities in the world are far from perfect, and their present and immediate future prospects may leave much to be desired hence "the best for that impasse" may not be great; indeed, it may be chaff and it may get burnt. The ruthlessness here is not moral, but aesthetic. The best portrayal of a poorly developed character may result in poor reviews for the actor even though the problem is not with the actor. In life as in poker one must play the hand that one is dealt.

One can whimper that life is not fair. However, that is how things are: life is not fair; theology that expects God to make life fair is unrealistic. Any attribution of the moral category of fairness to the universe is simply misplaced.

The fundamental category for understanding the universe is aesthetic valuation toward order; the richness of creativity will sometimes produce aberrations as well as serendipitous outcomes. Chance and surprise, life and death, feeling and sympathy, interest and originality, harmony and discord, and progress and order are more basic categories in understanding the nature of the universe than a similar list of moral categories. Of course, moral categories are real forms of order in the universe, and as part of valuation, moral valuation has a basis in the fundamental nature of things. But aesthetic valuation is a more basic to the nature of the universe than moral valuation.

We must neither interpret the goodness of God to mean that life will be fair nor that the innocent will not suffer nor that calamitous events will not occur. These things happen, and they happen because of the conflicts involved in a multitude of decisions being made by a multitude of decision makers (human and non-human). They also occur because God’s initial aim is not fundamentally a moral aim but an aesthetic aim.

Whitehead notes that living societies require food which they obtain by destroying other societies. The society which survives may be either a lower or higher organism than which it feasts upon. Regardless of the case, the same observation follows: ". . .life is robbery. It is at this point that with life morals become acute. The robber requires justification." (Process and Reality, Corrected Edition, ed. Griffin & Sherburne, New York: The Free Press, 1978, 105) Vegetarians have sensed this violence and destruction and have responded by refusing to eat meat. But their protest, while notable, only allows them to escape the destruction of some of the higher organisms. It does not allow them to escape the destruction of all organisms. It remains the case that their lives (as is true of all life) depend upon robbery. Sensitive people seek justification for this destruction and robbery. Visions of paradise include the lamb lying down with the lion. But life is not that way. And that is not nature’s failure. Life depends upon the destruction of other life. Destruction lies in the nature of process. Birth and death are not intrusions; they are essential parts of process.

The clash of different prehensions of the actual occasions cause destructiveness and discordant feelings. Destructiveness, then, is in the very nature of things. Hence the goodness of God includes destructiveness. Destructiveness is neither a threat to God nor to the universe. Even people must have destructiveness in order to prevent the monotony of sameness and the withering of inspiration. It is immature to think that elimination of destruction is a desirable goal. The creative process requires it.

Zoroastrianism corrupted Hebrew thought by arguing that evil comes from another God. Thus we learned that evil is "the other" and concluded that it must be rejected and destroyed. How many wars have been fought to eradicate evil! We must learn not to make evil "the other" and forsake trying to destroy it.

Moral advancement depends upon rejecting the notion that evil is "the other." The comic strip character, Pogo, stated the theological truth: "We have met the enemy and he is us!" But even Pogo dared not state the consequential heresy. If the enemy is us and if we reflect the metaphysical principles of the universe (and we must), and if the metaphysical principles apply to God (and Whitehead has said that they do), then ergo, destructiveness is a part of God.

This is not to say that God is morally evil but that in providing aims based on the given, God’s involvement with the world produces neither an aesthetically perfect world nor a morally perfect world. And even if the past is preserved in God’s consequent nature, nonetheless, the present world in both its good aspects, which we would like to keep, and its bad aspects, which we would like to eliminate, disappear into the past. Actualization means perishing.²⁰ "Completion is the perishing of immediacy: ‘It never really is.’ (Process and Reality, Corrected Edition, ed. Griffin & Sherburne, New York: The Free Press, 1978, 85) The creative process entails the destruction of the past/present in the creation of the future. And the partial self-creation of creatures depends upon their decision and not God’s. Hence the future is open with regard to the moral decisions of those creatures capable of such judgements.

Destruction cannot disappear from any conceivable world in which creativity is fundamental. A world without destruction would be a static world without change, without decision making, without life. Plato’s world of forms can only be an abstraction. Heaven without freedom is self-refuting. And heaven without destruction would be a place without free creatures making choices.

We must not reject destructiveness (because it is part of our nature and we must be ourselves before God — so Soren Kierkegaard). Rather we must accept destruction (because we must accept ourselves) and we must use our destructiveness (as God does) as a force in the creative advancement of the world.

Whitehead’s discussion of society in the Adventures of Ideas makes it plain that there is a value to discordant feelings. He says, "Progress is founded upon the experience of discordant feeling." (Adventures of Ideas, New York: The Free Press, 1967, 257) These discordant feelings, in themselves destructive and evil, make a contribution by producing "the positive feeling of a quick shift of aim from the tameness of outworn perfection to some other ideal with its freshness still upon it." (Adventures of Ideas, New York: The Free Press, 1967, 257) To paraphrase another of Whitehead’s statements, one concludes it is more important that something be interesting than that it be good.

Whitehead’s solution to dealing with (aesthetic) evil (disharmony) is the introduction of a third system of prehensions which heightens Beauty and heightens Evil into a greater harmony. (Adventures of Ideas, New York: The Free Press, 1967, 259-264) So Whitehead understands that at least aesthetic evil is not to be eliminated. Hartshorne agrees, ". . .to rule is to keep anarchy in its proper subordinate place, not to get rid of it."²¹

To return to the original question, "Is God good?" The answer is, "Yes, God is morally good but his goodness does not entail being without destructiveness." An inadequate metaphysic is the basis of the view that God’s goodness entails the absence of destructiveness.

The metaphysics upon which Whitehead builds his view of God requires both goodness and destructiveness, and demands a creative, adventurous God. Fredrick Sontag, viewing the issue from a purely theological perspective, agrees, "This tendency to destruction must be a very strong side of God’s nature too."²² He adds, "The flaws which lead to man’s downfall must find their source in God’s nature or else go unexplained."²³ "A God who is merely pleasant is ruled out, and so is one who intends simply good things."²⁴ "A God capable of handling contingency is more fascinating, but also at times more horrifying."²⁵

An objection might be raised that the God being discussed is not the God of religious worship. The reply would be that God, as the ultimate source of both good and destructiveness, is a Hebraic idea expressed in several books of the Old Testament.

Is a trumpet blown in a city,

and the people are not afraid?

Does evil befall a city, unless the Lord has done it? Amos 3:6 RSV

I form the light and create darkness:

I make peace and create evil:

I the Lord do all these things. Isa. 45:7 KJV

Shall we receive good at the hand of God,

and shall we not receive evil? Job 2:10 RSV

The evil spirit from God came upon Saul. I Sam. 18:10

So a God who is ultimately the source of good and destructiveness is not only metaphysically possible but has been a part of a great religious heritage.

NOTES:

1. Archibald MacLeish. J.B., Houghton Mifflin Company, (Boston. 1961), p. 11.

2. David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion Hafner Publishing Co., (New York, 1948), p.66.

3. Nelson Pike, ed., God and Evil, Prentice-Hall, (Inglewood Cliffs, New Jersey. 1964), p. 14.

4. Wayne W. Dyer, Your Erroneous Zones, Avon Publishers (New York, 1976), p. 173.

5. Julius S. Bixler, "Whitehead’s Philosophy of Religion," in The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, ed. by Paul A. Schilpp, Open Court, (La Salle, II, 1941), p. 497.

6. William A. Christian, An Interpretation of Whitehead’s Metaphysics, Yale University Press. (New Haven. 1959), p. 388.

7. Charles Hartshorne, Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method, Open Court, (La Salle. Il., 1970), p. 242.

8. Hartshorne, Creative Synthesis. . ., p. 239.

9. Charles Hartshorne, Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes, State University of New York, (Albany, 1984).

10. Avery Corman, Oh, God!, Simon & Schuster, (New York, 1971), pp. 10-11.

11. Christian, p. 401.

12. Christian, p. 401.

13. Christian, p. 401.

14. Christian, p. 401.

15. Hartshorne, Omnipotence. . . p. 18.

16. Hartshorne, Omnipotence. . . p. 13.

17. Charles Hartshorne, "Whitehead’s Idea of God" in Whitehead’s Philosophy, University of Nebraska Press, (Lincoln, 1972), p. 72.

18. John Hick, Evil and the God of Love, Harper & Row, (New York. 1966), p. 234.

19. Hick, p. 262.

20. Hartshorne disagrees with Whitehead on this point. Hartshorne believes that the word, "perishing," misleadingly indicates a loss that does not occur. Cf. Hartshorne, Creative Synthesis, p.118.

21. Charles Hartshorne, "A New Look at the Problem of Evil." in Current Philosophical Issues: Essays In Honor of Curt John Ducasse, ed. by Frederick C. Dommeyer, Charles C. Thomas Publisher, (Springfield. II., 1966), p. 210.

22. Frederick Sontag, The God of Evil, Harper & Row, (New York. 1970). p. 36.

23. Sontag, p. 130.

24. Sontag, p. 135.

25. Sontag, p. 136.