It seems just as unlikely that anyone has lost faith in God because of the logical problem of evil as it is unlikely that anyone has found faith in God because of the ontological argument. The logical problem of evil is an attempt to show that the existence of God is logically impossible, and the ontological argument is the attempt to show that the existence of God is logically necessary. Few people change their belief in the existence or nonexistence of God based entirely on logical argument. Yet many atheists say the reason they can’t believe in God is because of the existence of evil. When pressed to show why the existence of evil is supposed to be incompatible with faith in God, many atheists will repeat the logical problem they learned as undergraduates: the existence of an all-powerful, all-knowing, perfectly good God is logically incompatible with the existence of evil. But when the theist rebuts the logical problem with a standard Plantinga-style free will defense, the atheist remains unconvinced. More sophisticated atheists might respond with an evidential argument, but most will not. These ‘common-sense atheists’ simply remain convinced that there is some important problem of evil even if they can’t formulate it precisely. Likewise, theists remain convinced that there is some adequate response to the logical problem of evil even if they haven’t read Plantinga and can do little more than wave their hands

So why aren’t theism and atheism subject to logical proof? What if, just as theism can be grounded in religious experience, atheism can be grounded in an experience? What if the problem of evil is not just a logical problem about God’s goodness but more fundamentally a problem about the sense of God’s presence? This would explain why atheists experience suffering as meaningless and theists experience God’s presence in the midst of suffering itself. What if the problem is discerning whether there is a personal loving basis of reality or whether the appropriate response to reality involves feelings of aloneness and alienation?

Perhaps the following line of thought can be illuminating. The status of God is one of the fundamental components of a worldview, and if we think of worldviews along the lines of Kuhnian paradigms, then we can see why no particular argument can decisively verify or falsify a worldview. At best, difficult counterarguments become puzzles to be worked out in the ‘research program’ of one’s worldview. Changing one’s belief in something as fundamental as God’s existence or nonexistence would be tantamount to a paradigm shift, but paradigm shifts don’t happen because of arguments

It is important to notice that there is an answer to Job’s complaint available to God. God could simply tell Job about the wager with Satan in Job 1. It seems significant that God doesn’t avail himself of this obvious explanation for Job’s suffering. God knows that Job’s problem isn’t his suffering itself. Job’s problem is his loss of meaning. Thus God knows that no theodicy apart from a vision of Divine beauty would be satisfactory

For Shaftesbury, conversion to theism is an aesthetic matter. We must learn to see the world as a cosmos ordered for the good – i.e., as beautiful. Becoming a theist is also an emotional matter. The result of seeing the world as beautiful is a certain emotional response, an ‘affection’ or ‘love’ for world’s beauty

For Dillard, the problem of pain is an ‘old, old mystery, as old as man, but forever fresh, and completely unanswerable’. An answer isn’t really what we want or need anyway: ‘What I have been after all along is not an explanation but a picture. This is the way the world is’ (p. 384). As Wittgenstein points out, our ‘picture’ of the world can hold us ‘captive’ if we can’t ‘get outside of it’ and see the world in a different way (Philosophical Investigations §115). ‘When we’re confused by a philosophical problem, we’re like flies bumping up against the invisible walls of a glass bottle. What we need is not an explanation of the bottle, but a reorientation that can show us ‘the way out of the fly-bottle’

In summary, to have faith in God, on Shaftesbury’s view is to have enthusiasm for creation and to love its Creator. To lose faith in God, then, would be to lose enthusiasm for creation – and to fall out of love with its Creator – due to a failure of vision, the loss of one’s ability to see the world as ordered by a loving Providence. For Shaftesbury, this can take the form of pure atheism (there is no God and hence no good ordering) or what he calls ‘demonism’ (there is an ordering god-like principle but it is not good). In any case, the effect is the same: we fall out of love with the Creator. We conclude with the Greek Sophocles and the Preacher of Ecclesiastes that it is better never to have been born. With Job, we curse the day of our birth. But since this is an aesthetic and emotional issue what we need is not a philosophical and theological explanation of evil and suffering; rather we need a Shaftesburian aesthetic experience capable of reorienting our vision and reigniting our love for God. We need a mystical vision that silences any question of theodicy without answering it

For Shaftesbury, then, the problem of theodicy was evidently an existential one, a bridge every thinking person must cross. At the same time, he thought that most of the issues at hand could not be solved

Many schools of Hindu, Buddhist and Sufi philosophy teach the principle of non-aversion which is the concept that one only experiences negativity and suffering as much as one tries to avoid it

הנסים, לדעתו [של הרמב״ם], אינם מתנגדים לחוקי הטבע, והנבואה היתה לו לחזון פסיכולוגי.

Every lack in the next world in relation to one individual is a boon in relation to someone else. For were it not for night, the value of day would be unknown. Were it not for illness, the healthy would not enjoy health. Were it not for hell, the blessed in paradise would not know the extent of their blessedness. In the same way, the lives of animals serve as ransom for human souls; and the power to kill them which is given to humans is no injustice

Indeed, giving precedence to the perfect over the imperfect is justice itself. So too is heaping favors on the inhabitants of paradise by increasing the punishment of the inhabitants of hell. The ransom of the faithful by means of the unfaithful is justice itself

Bodily pain and distress hardly register in the broader, cosmic scheme of things, and they, after all, are given an inferior status in Avicenna’s soteriology and eschatology. Just as bodily pleasures, which humans share with other animals (or, with donkeys, as Avicenna has it!), are base in comparison to intellectual happiness, so too are the severest bodily pains insignificant in comparison to the misery that the soul may experience

For if a problem centres on a choice between two nominal definitions, it seems rather counter-intuitive to opt for a stipulative definition proposed by an elite group of philosophers over a sound and prevalent lexical definition, especially when the problem is often faced by non-philosophers

Optimism is unfashionable today. The very word has come to denote a maudlin and distorted view of reality. Optimism, as a legitimate philosophic position, is often decried and dismissed as hopelessly myopic. Critics censure it as too abstract or as too rationalistic; it is seen as callous to lived human experience. Many no doubt would agree with William James, who noted, in regard to Leibniz and his theodicy, ". . . truly there is something a little ghastly in the satisfaction with which a pure but unreal system will fill a rationalist mind"

[left]With righteous indignation, Sam Harris
condemns
the “boundless narcissism” of those who survive a disaster only to “believe themselves spared by a loving God, while this same God drowned infants in their cribs” (p. 54[/left]
‏ועיין כאן.

[left]In a world where evils strike indiscriminately, where villains prosper while children die of cystic fibrosis, anyone who credits an omnipotent God for their earthly fortune, as if God had selectively intervened on their behalf while leaving others to languish, is implying that God plays favorites in a decidedly pernicious way. The god of these faithful is no God worth worshipping but just another variant of the god of superstition

But is it even possible to believe in a God worth worshipping in a world where billions survive on less than two dollars a day?

This is just another way to pose the theological problem of evil. The problem is hardly new. Hume was paraphrasing the Ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus when he stated the problem as follows: “Is he 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?” (p. 84

It’s a question no theist should ignore: Whence then is evil?

But it’s also a question that should be juxtaposed against a related one. We live in a world in which all of us are implicated in what Marilyn McCord Adams (1990, 2006) has called “horrors”: crushing evils that seem to strip the lives of those caught up in them of any positive meaning. In such a world, is it possible to view life as worth living without believing in a transcendent good that redeems the world?

It may be possible for those of us lucky enough not to have experienced horror or witnessed it firsthand and callous enough that we can ignore its pervasiveness and our own complicity. But what about the rest of us?

What we have here are two interwoven problems. The theological problem of evil is, of course, no problem for atheists; it’s simply an argument against God’s existence. They call it the “argument from evil.” The problem is faced by theists who want to reconcile their belief in God with the world’s evils

But one reason why theists want to defend their faith is because of the second problem, sometimes called the existential problem of evil. This problem isn’t about how to reconcile God’s existence with the world’s evils but how to find positive meaning in life despite them. And for many, the only viable solution comes from the promise of a transcendent good that fulfills our ethico-religious hope – in other words, from God[/left]

[left]The argument from evil is a challenge to the existence of God traditionally conceived as omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good. But I have defined God less precisely – as a transcendent being who fulfills our ethico-religious hope.

To fulfill that hope, God would have to be good, and He would have to be greater than any evil (in the sense that, given God’s existence, evils would cease to have ultimate significance). But this isn’t the same as being all-powerful. So why can’t we just sidestep the problem of evil altogether by admitting that God isn’t omnipotent?

Unfortunately, the problem won’t evaporate so easily. Even if we accept that God is not all-powerful, we may still ask: Why does evil look so significant if it isn’t? If reality is fundamentally on the side of goodness, why don’t we all have a clear sense of God’s redemptive work, an awareness that evils are fleeting while the good eternal?[/left]

[left/]For what it’s worth, my own view is that, insofar as everything in the world depends absolutely on the creative and sustaining work of the creator, the world’s integrity as a separate reality, something in its own right apart from God, may depend on a radical abdication on God’s part. The act of creation may be inseparable from an act of radical divine self-restriction. Self-imposed limits on what God can legitimately do in relation to the world may constitute the very condition for the world’s existence as a reality separate from God. And this may be especially true for the independent existence of free beings. If so, then when moral horrors are perpetrated, God may be constrained so radically that all He can do is look on and weep[/left]

[left]God’s goodness may not demand that He prevent all evils; but it may well demand that He redeem them all, so that evil will never be the final word in any human life – an insight which leads Hick as well as others (such as Marilyn Adams 2002 and 2006, and Thomas Talbott 2001) to insist that a doctrine of universal salvation is essential to any successful theodicy[/left]

[left]It may well be that many of the atheists who pose the argument from evil are envisioning the evils of the world as they look from an atheist perspective. In other words, they are begging the question: they are assuming that God does not exist, attaching to the evils of the world the significance they would have, given that assumption, and then demanding a reason why God would permit evils which have such overwhelming significance. But if a redeeming God exists, they do not have such overwhelming significance after all[/left]

[left]To say that God defeats horrors is to say that God responds by making them an integral part of something valuable – which, I should note, is nothing like claiming that horrors were never really bad at all. It is one thing to say that God is so resourceful He can turn a monumental evil – say the Holocaust – into an element of a greater whole that gives positive meaning to the experiences of its victims. It is something else to say that the Holocaust is part of the “best of all possible worlds,” and that the Nazis were therefore agents of the good. The latter is appalling. The former – which says that God can take the worst that we can throw at Him and find a way to turn it to the good – is not[/left]

[left]But often enough these adequate solutions are only almost adopted. The thinkers who restrict God's power, but keep the term 'omnipotence', may reasonably be suspected of thinking, in other contexts, that his power is really unlimited. Those who say that evil is an illusion may also be thinking, inconsistently, that this illusion is itself an evil. Those who say that "evil" is merely privation of good may also be thinking, inconsistently, that privation of good is an evil. (The fallacy here is akin to some forms of the "naturalistic fallacy" in ethics, where some think, for example, that "good" is just what contributes to evolutionary progress, and that evolutionary progress is itself good.)[/left]

[left]First, it sets a limit to what God can do, saying that God cannot create good without simultaneously creating evil, and this means either that God is not omnipotent or that there are some limits to what an omnipotent thing can do. It may be replied that these limits are always presupposed, that omnipotence has never meant the power to do what is logically impossible, and on the present view the existence of good without evil would be a logical impossibility. This interpretation of omnipotence may, indeed, be accepted as a modification of our original account which does not reject anything that is essential to theism, and I shall in general assume it in the subsequent discussion. It is, perhaps, the most common theistic view, but I think that some theists at least have maintained that God can do what is logically impossible. Many theists, at any rate, have held that logic itself is created or laid down by God, that logic is the way in which God arbitrarily chooses to think. (This is, of course, parallel to the ethical view that morally right actions are those which God arbitrarily chooses to command, and the two views encounter similar difficulties.) And this account of logic is clearly inconsistent with the view that God is bound by logical necessities -- unless it is possible for an omnipotent being to bind himself, an issue which we shall consider later, when we come to the Paradox of Omnipotence. This solution of the problem of evil cannot, therefore, be consistently adopted along with the view that logic is itself created by God.[/left]

[left]I suggest that the nature and content of the world are relevant to the problem of evil, and this, independently of whether this is the best possible world. This becomes evident by considering what may indeed be the case, that this world is one in which there is more evil than good. In such a world, the evil would lack a justification, whether or not the world was the best possible world. A wholly good, omnipotent God would refrain from creating a world in which evil predominated even were this the best possible world he could create. I suggest therefore that the underlying suggestion that evil is justified if this is the best of all possible worlds is mistaken[/left]

[left]A consequential question following on from this concerns whether, if an all-perfect God must create the better (or best if there is one) world, he can be said to be free and omnipotent. Leibniz's God, it would seem, would have no real choice between the creation of alternative worlds if he can opt only for the one world (or for one from the many equally best possible worlds if there be such, which Leibniz would seem to deny). This again is a special instance of the more general problem of omnipotence and perfection, of power and goodness.

The more basic challenge to Leibniz's account takes the form of denying that the concept of the best of all possible worlds is a coherent one. Thomists such as Journet argue that the concept is incoherent, meaningless, without application. Journet writes:
The notion of the best of all possible worlds is by definition unrealizable - like that of the fastest possible speed - for 'whatever thing he has made, God could make a better one', and so on indefinitely. To demand that God, to be above reproach, must make the best of all possible worlds is to demand him to make what is not feasible, and to give existence to something absurd

The basis of this objection is the aspect of infinity in the range of worlds it is possible for God to create. Once one specifies the features of the best world, a better world can be conceived of as possible[/left]

[left]The trouble has come from the idea that the Absolute is a moral person. If you start from that basis, then the relation of evil to the Absolute presents at once an irreducible dilemma. The problem then becomes insoluble, but not because it is obscure or in any way mysterious. To any one who has the sense and courage to see things as they are, and is resolved not to mystify others or himself, there is really no question to discuss. The dilemma is plainly insoluble because it is based on a clear self-contradiction[/left]

[left]the fundamental concern about evil, for Hume, was that it drove people towards the notion of a particular providence, which encouraged superstition, fanaticism and the violent passions: love, hatred, grief, joy, pride and humility. By a particular providence, Hume refers to a situation in which a deity, responding to intercessions or otherwise, intervenes in the course of this life and the next to provide for and judge his human creatures. Hume finds no evidence for this because of the imperfect state of distributive justice, the lack of justification of a future life, the existence of disasters in the world and the sheer impossibility of inferring from the mixed fortunes of the world to a beneficent divinity[/left]

[left]If Hume is successful in his aim of showing that God is amoral then he is successful both in dissolving the problem of evil and in nullifying the notion of a particular providence. But by the same token, he violates the notion of divine simplicity[/left]

[left]If you can make out the present point, and prove mankind to be unhappy or corrupted, there is an end at once of all religion. For to what purpose establish the natural attributes of the Deity, while the moral are still doubtful or uncertain?[/left]

[left]It is very safe for us to affirm, that whatever we know the deity to have actually done, is best; but it is very dangerous to affirm, that he must always do what to us seems best[/left]

[left]Convulsions in nature, disorders, prodigies, miracles, though the most opposite to the plan of a wise superintendent, impress mankind with the strongest sentiments of religion: the cause of events seeming then the most unknown and unaccountable. Madness, fury, rage, and an inflamed imagination, though they sink men nearest to the level of beasts, are for a like reason, often supposed to be the only dispositions, in which they can have any immediate communication with the Deity[/left]

[left]Assuming that "good" and "powerful" are used in theology as they are used in ordinary discourse, we have to say that Hume was right. The charge has never been answered and never will be. The simultaneous attribution of all-power and all-goodness to the Creator of the whole world is logically incompatible with the existence of evil and pain in the world, for which reason the conception of a finite God, who is not all-powerful . . . has become popular in some quarters[/left]

[left]All such opinions spring from the notion commonly entertained, that all things in nature act as men themselves act, namely, with an end in view. It is accepted as certain, that God himself directs all things to a definite goal (for it is said that God made all things for man, and man that he might worship him). I will, therefore, consider this opinion, asking first, why it obtains general credence, and why all men are naturally so prone to adopt it? secondly, I will point out its falsity; and, lastly, I will show how it has given rise to prejudices about good and bad, right and wrong, praise and blame, order and confusion, beauty and ugliness, and the like. However, this is not the place to deduce these misconceptions from the nature of the human mind: it will be sufficient here, if I assume as a starting point, what ought to be universally admitted, namely, that all men are born ignorant of the causes of things, that all have the desire to seek for what is useful to them, and that they are conscious of such desire. Herefrom it follows, first, that men think themselves free inasmuch as they are conscious of their volitions and desires, and never even dream, in their ignorance, of the causes which have disposed them so to wish and desire. Secondly, that men do all things for an end, namely, for that which is useful to them, and which they seek. Thus it comes to pass that they only look for a knowledge of the final causes of events, and when these are learned, they are content, as having no cause for further doubt. If they cannot learn such causes from external sources, they are compelled to turn to considering themselves, and reflecting what end would have induced them personally to bring about the given event, and thus they necessarily judge other natures by their own. Further, as they find in themselves and outside themselves many means which assist them not a little in the search for what is useful, for instance, eyes for seeing, teeth for chewing, herbs and animals for yielding food, the sun for giving light, the sea for breeding fish, etc., they come to look on the whole of nature as a means for obtaining such conveniences. Now as they are aware, that they found these conveniences and did not make them, they think they have cause for believing, that some other being has made them for their use. As they look upon things as means, they cannot believe them to be self-created; but, judging from the means which they are accustomed to prepare for themselves, they are bound to believe in some ruler or rulers of the universe endowed with human freedom, who have arranged and adapted everything for human use. They are bound to estimate the nature of such rulers (having no information on the subject) in accordance with their own nature, and therefore they assert that the gods ordained everything for the use of man, in order to bind man to themselves and obtain from him the highest honor. Hence also it follows, that everyone thought out for himself, according to his abilities, a different way of worshipping God, so that God might love him more than his fellows, and direct the whole course of nature for the satisfaction of his blind cupidity and insatiable avarice. Thus the prejudice developed into superstition, and took deep root in the human mind; and for this reason everyone strove most zealously to understand and explain the final causes of things; but in their endeavor to show that nature does nothing in vain, i.e. nothing which is useless to man, they only seem to have demonstrated that nature, the gods, and men are all mad together. Consider, I pray you, the result: among the many helps of nature they were bound to find some hindrances, such as storms, earthquakes, diseases, etc.: so they declared that such things happen, because the gods are angry at some wrong done to them by men, or at some fault committed in their worship. Experience day by day protested and showed by infinite examples, that good and evil fortunes fall to the lot of pious and impious alike; still they would not abandon their inveterate prejudice, for it was more easy for them to class such contradictions among other unknown things of whose use they were ignorant, and thus to retain their actual and innate condition of ignorance, than to destroy the whole fabric of their reasoning and start afresh. They therefore laid down as an axiom, that God's judgments far transcend human understanding. Such a doctrine might well have sufficed to conceal the truth from the human race for all eternity, if mathematics had not furnished another standard of verity in considering solely the essence and properties of figures without regard to their final causes. There are other reasons (which I need not mention here) besides mathematics, which might have caused men's minds to be directed to these general prejudices, and have led them to the knowledge of the truth.

I have now sufficiently explained my first point. There is no need to show at length, that nature has no particular goal in view, and that final causes are mere human figments.[/left]

Nevertheless, a number of further observations regarding the relationship of divine omnipotence to the problem of evil bear mention.

While most of the medieval Jewish philosophers stressed divine omnipotence
as a crucial feature of a self-sufficient perfect God, the notion of
divine omnipotence seems either unknown or irrelevant to biblical and to
rabbinic theology. Certainly, biblical and rabbinic sources discussed the
"power" of God, but omnipotence, as it was understood by many of the jewish philosophers, does not seem to have been a characteristic of jewish
thought until the Middle Ages, when it was probably introduced through
Islamic philosophical influence.

The understanding of the divine nature reflected throughout Scripture,
particularly in the classical prophetic writings, and amplified in rabbinic
literature, particularly in texts where God is called Shekhinah (divine Presence), emphasizes divine pathos and not divine omnipotence. In this view, God is a participant in human suffering and a victim of moral evil.

From the assumption that God is not omnipotent, that God is affected by
evil human deeds, flows the claim that God's power in the world is contingent
upon the nature and the quality of human acts. Thus, "anthropodicy"
replaces theodicy as the issue at hand. Rather than trying to justify God's
deeds and evil human deeds that God might prevent, the problem becomes
the justification of human deeds vis-a-vis other people and vis-a-vis God.

A number of rabbinic and kabbalistic texts are oblivious to the problem
of how to reconcile divine omnipotence with the existence of evil. Instead,
they assume that God, not being omnipotent, relies upon human efforts to
increase what power he does have. Human deeds can serve either to
enhance or to reduce divine power in the world. Evil in the world becomes
a reality for human beings to ameliorate by means of sacred deeds, rather
than a concept to be made consistent with the doctrine of divine omnipotence. Those midrashic and kabbalistic sources that describe the divine reliance upon human beings took seriously the statement in Psalms 68:35
"Give strength to God." For example, a midrash reads: "Hence Moses's
plea: 'And now, I pray thee, let the strength of the Lord be enhanced' [Num.
14: 17].... When men do not do His will, then, if one dare say such a thing,
'The Rock that begot thee, thou dost weaken' [Deut. 32: 18].... Whenever
Israel do the Holy One's will, they enhance the power of the Almighty"
(Midrash Pesikta De Rab Kahana, 25: 1, ed. B. Mandelbaum, 1962, 380; tr.
Braude and Kapstein, 1975, 386-87). In the words of the Zohar (Vilna ed.,
2, 65b), "The Holy One, as it were, said: When Israel is worthy below My
power prevails in the universe; but when Israel is found to be unworthy she
weakens My power above."

One must finally conclude that the many attempts at a theodicy betray
the impossibility of formulating a conceptually acceptable solution to the
problem of evil, a solution that would also prove acceptable to the afflicted
and suffering

[left]The resolution of the prima facie tension between God’s justice and apparent disorder in the distribution of flourishing is to be found in the generality of God’s ways – or, more particularly, in the universal and lawlike order that God has established in nature. When we see a virtuous person suffer, it is not because God has directly chosen to inflict punishment on this individual, with an ad hoc intention; his suffering is not the result of what Philo calls “immediate providence” (kata pronoian). Rather, his suffering is a result of the general manner in which nature works. God’s providential ways are not directed toward the well-being of particular individuals but to the overall well-being of the system and the general welfare of creatures. Thus, it may sometimes happen that an operation of nature that is, on the whole, for the best (and was chosen by God for that reason) has consequences that, from the perspective of one individual or another, are not optimal. God looks to the goodness of the whole, not its particular constituents, some of whom may (unjustly, it seems) get swept along by the course of events.

In pestilential diseases, it is necessary that some of those who are not guilty should be involved in the destruction . . . It is inevitable that those who are exposed to a pestilential atmosphere must become diseased just as all persons who are exposed to a storm on board a ship must all be exposed to equal danger.

God does not intend for the virtuous individual to suffer; his suffering is, in this sense, “accidental,” one of “the results and consquences of the operations of nature.” Indeed, it is the person himself who is to blame for his suffering, because it is his responsibility to take care within the course of nature and be on guard against any disasters that may be coming his way. Later Jewish thinkers will demonstrate how the pursuit of virtue does, in fact, afford one some relief and protections from the vicissitudes of nature.[/left]

[left]One possible, even natural way of conceiving the divine modus operandi in providence for Maimonides needs to be ruled out from the start. There are passages in which Maimonides speaks as if God, seeing the virtues and vices of particular human beings, actively and intentionally chooses to reward and punish them as individuals – perhaps in just the way that the multitude think of providence, with God sending a thunder bolt against one person while snatching another person from the jaws of death (e.g., in the lions’ den). Thus, just as Maimonides insists that the people are on board the ship because of the “divine will in accordance with the deserts of those people as determined in His judgments,” so he elsewhere notes how the fate met by many people is “due not to neglect and the withdrawal of providence, but was a punishment for those men because they deserved what befell them.” It is clear that this anthropomorphic way of acting, with God intervening to save or punish a person as if through a miracle, is inconsistent with what Maimonides considers the proper conception of God; such language may be only an element of Maimonides’ exoteric (vs. esoteric) writing, geared for the philosophically unsophisticated reader.

Rather, God’s role in providence is, so to speak, much more passive. God has put a system in place that is there for individual human beings to take advantage of or not, as they choose. It is the virtuous – understood as those who pursue intellectual virtue, and not merely moral virtue – who choose to do so, whereas all others are left without its protection.

Maimonides distinguishes between general providence, which is constituted by the species’ characteristics oriented to its preservation and is (barring unusual circumstances) provided equally to all member of the species, and individual providence, which is particularized to individuals and distributed only according to merits. Both varieties of providence are understood in highly naturalistic and Aristotelian terms. The latter, however, comes into play only in the realm of human agency.

. . .

‏Despite Maimonides’ claim that the suffering of many is “due not to neglect and the withdrawal of providence, but was a punishment for those men because they deserved what befell them,” it seems clear that it is precisely through approach and withdrawal – that is, the human being’s willful approaching to and withdrawing from the overflow – that providence operates. As long as one is actively enjoying the epistemic connection to the divine overflow, one is ipso facto protected; providence is watching over such a person. On the other hand, when one is not attending to God (either because one has never made the effort or because, having achieved the connection, one has temporarily become distracted, perhaps by the pleasures of the senses), one is abandoned to chance and left to one’s own devices. The person who is not experiencing the overflow is not enjoying its benefits. He is at the mercy of nature’s elements and his well-being is subject to whatever may or may not come his way. Providence is no longer watching over him – not because God is actively punishing him, but because through his own actions he has taken himself outside of the care that providence (the overflow) offers.

. . .

There is some ambiguity as to just what is the nature of the protection that, according to Maimonides, divine providence provides. Commentators, from Maimonides’ time onward, have found a tension between two ways of reading his account. On one reading, what the knowledge brought to the human intellect by the divine overflow gives to the righteous person is a way actually to escape the evils around him. The overflow carries information about nature, among other things, just the kind of understanding that allows an individual to successfully navigate his way around the obstacles to his well-being that the world presents. Thus, a person who has perfected his intellect in the proper way will know not to get on the doomed ship (e.g., because he knows a storm is coming). At one point Maimonides says of the intellectually perfected person that “no evil at all will befall him.” If he should find himself in the midst of a pitched battle, then “even if one thousand were killed to your left and ten thousand to your right, no evil at all would befall you.”

On another reading, however, the person who attends to God, while not literally avoiding the evils that naturally come his way – especially the physical evils of the first kind and the moral evils of the second kind, which tend to be due to circumstances well beyond one’s control – will be less troubled by them. His mind is fixated on the true and lasting good, and he becomes immune to the lure of mutable goods and inured to the travails of his body. He has achieved a lasting state of spiritual well-being and happiness, one that is not subject to the vagaries of chance. Maimonides says that this is the condition of Job at the end of the story. In his first speech, as Maimonides reads it, Job adopts the Aristotelian view: God is not watching over individuals and is causing suffering for no good reason at all, “because of his contempt for the human species and abandonment of it.” After God has spoken, however, Job achieves a state of understanding: “He knew God with a certain knowledge, he admitted that true happiness, which is the knowledge of the deity, is guaranteed to all who know Him and that a human being cannot be troubled in it by any of all the misfortunes in question.” It is not that the good person experiences no loss or harm in his life; after all, Job lost practically everything. Rather, consumed with his bond with God and possessing true happiness, he cares less about those losses. He may see evils in his lifetime, but they will not constitute an “affliction” for him. The lesson Maimonides sees here is a Stoic one.

On either reading, providence does not consist in the active and willful intervention of God in human affairs; it is not that God chooses in particular to reward the person who has united himself to the overflow. Rather, somewhat naturalistically, the knowledge acquired by the virtuous person through the overflow affords him an advantage in the world. “The overflow of the divine intellect . . . guides the actions of righteous men, and perfects the knowledge of excellent men with regard to what they know.”

. . .

When the bond with the overflow is broken, the virtuous person is no better off than the wicked person. They are both on their own, abandoned to the world, come what may.

Yet an impediment may prevent from some time [the overflow] reaching the excellent and good man in question, or again it was not obtained at all by such and such imperfect and wicked man, and therefore the chance occurrences that befell them happened.

Full responsibility for the disconnection from the divine overlow lies with the individual, not God: “It is clear that we are the cause of this ‘hiding of the face,’ and we are the agents who produce this separation.”

Similarly, the prosperity of the wicked person is not a true flourishing, because this person is not enjoying the highest good, intellectual perfection. Moreover, the prosperity that has come his way is totally undeserved and does not represent a reward from God for anything he has done. Rather, being unprotected and at the mercy of nature, it so happens that chance has brought some apparently fine things his way. His possession and enjoyment of them is equally subject to fortune and certain to be short-lived.[/left]

[left]See, I ask you, how the matter has turned out in the end! Among so many conveniences in nature they had to find many inconveniences: storms, earthquakes, diseases, etc. These, they maintain, happen because the Gods (whom they judge to be of the same nature as themselves) are angry on account of wrongs done to them by men, or on account of sins committed in their worship. And though their daily experience contradicted this, and though infinitely many examples showed that conveniences and inconveniences happen indiscriminately to the pious and the impious alike, they did not on that account give up their longstanding prejudice. It was easier for them to put this among the other unknown things, whose use they were ignorant of, and so remain in the state of ignorance in which they had been born, than to destroy that whole construction, and think up a new one. So they maintained it as certain that the judgments of the Gods far surpass man’s grasp.[/left]

מי אני האט געשריבן:ולגבי ענין הנמנעות אף ממנו זאגט דער עקידה אין פ׳ חוקת (שער פ), לגבי חטא מי מריבה, אז דאס באשאפן א מענטש אלס מענטש און דאס אז ער זאל נישט זינדיגן, עכ״פ מסוג החטא בבחינת עצמו [אַן אביעקטיווער חטא הגם עס איז נישט קיין סאביעקטיווע חטא מכוונת האדם (וואס ביי די סאביעקטיווע חלק החטא איז דא בחירה), וע״ש בפי׳ מקור חיים], איז מן הנמנע אף ממנו ית׳ כביכול ע״ש (ובפי׳ מקור חיים שם). און דאס אז עס זענען געווען ד׳ שמתו רק בעטיו של נחש מיינט מען דעם צווייטן סוג סאביעקטיווע חטא מצד האדם. און קומט דאך אויס אז אפילו מ׳זאל זאגן אז אלעס איז בתור עונש על איזה חטא איז דאך דאס אליין ווייטער מן הנמנע אז עס זאל נישט צוקומען דערצו אף ממנו ית׳ כביכול (און עונש איז דאך מער אטאמאטיש כנ״ל אזוי ווי פייער וואס בריהט). עס איז משמע מדבריו אז עס וואלט געווען נמנע פון אדה״ר נישט צו זינדיגן פונקט אזוי ווי זיינע קינדער ע״ש.

והטענה השנית שלא יתכן שיענש האדם על אשר לא יעשה מה שאי אפשר לו עשייתו, ולפי שאי אפשר לאדם שיעשה הטוב תמיד להיותו חומרי, רוצה לומר שאי אפשר לו שישכיל ויתבונן תמיד לפעולות השי״ת, הנה לא יתכן שיענש על זה.

What Ibn Tibbon is saying is that, according to Maimonides, Elihu’s speech conceals an esoteric doctrine that the righteous man is saved from his suffering only by general providence, as defined by Aristotle, not by a personal God. Elihu’s angel in Maimonides’ exposition is therefore nothing other than the forces of nature that fall under the rubric of general providence. Moreover, as Ibn Tibbon would have it, Maimonides reads Elihu’s remarks about prayer and repentance as references designed only to appease those who hold the traditional view that salvation comes from the response of a personal God. Maimonides, in fact, does not see any efficacy in either.

Ibn Tibbon’s understanding of Maimonides comes as no surprise. The same conclusions are drawn in Ibn Tibbon’s earlier letter to Maimonides regarding providence. There he also interprets Maimonides as upholding an esoteric Aristotelian position on providence and sees Maimonides’ reading of Job as evidence for this conclusion.

ואפשר שנאמר כי אליהוא יראה כי בכאן ב׳ סיבות להגעת הרע לרשעים האחד מצד העדר ההשגחה האלהית מהם אשר סבתם סורה ממנו ובלתי השכילם דרכיו ויבאו מפני זה להם הרעות המוגבלות מצד המערכת להם, והשנית ההשגחה האלהית אשר על הטובים כי יתכן שישגיח השכל הפועל על האיש הטוב שיסיר ממנו כל דבר יזיקהו ויכלה ממנו מפני זה אלו הרשעים ויכוון אל ההטבה לטובים בעצמות וזהו דעת תורתינו בלא ספק ר״ל שהרעות יבואו לרשעים לאחת משתי אלו הסיבות ולזה באו הרעות על המצרים בעבור ישראל.

וזולת זה מה שנזכר בתורה שינהג זה המנהג ונזכר בתורה ג״כ הצד השני מהבאת העונש על הרשע ר״ל סור ההשגחה האלהית ממנו והיותו משולח ונעזב לרעות הנכונות לבא עליו אמר והסתרתי פני מהם והיה לאכול ואמר לי נקם ושלם לעת תמוט רגלם והש״י כאשר ישקיט האדם בשמרו אותו בהשגחתו עליו אמר מי הוא זה אשר ירשיעהו ויענישהו הנה אין כח ברע המוגבל מצד המערכת שיזיק לאדם בהיות השגחת השם בו והיא תהיה בו בהתאחדותו בשכל הפועל כפי היכולת או אם יסתיר השם פניו ויהיה האדם משולח ונעזב למקרים מי יראה אותו וישגיח בו להצילו מהרע הנכון לבא עליו וזה הרע יקרה מצד הסתר פנים עד שיחול יחד על גוי ועל אדם המולך עליהם.

אמנם כי כשנחפש בכללות בסדור אשר סדר הש״י בזה המציאות מצאנו בו מהצדה והיושר וההטבה והחנינה מה שלא ישוער רצוני לומר כשחקרנו בשלמות הנמצא ביצירה מין ומין מהנמצאות עד שלא היה אפשר המצאם באופן יותר שלם רוצה לומר שאי אפשר שיהיה להם מהשלמות בעצמם יותר מהנמצא להם ואי אפשר ג״כ שישלימו קצתם קצת יותר מזה ממה שנמצא להם מהשלמתם קצתם קצת והעדרם קצתם בקצת.

ואם כבר יקרה מזה רע מה במקרה וזה הרע ג״כ ישתדל השם להסרתו לפי היכולת ולזה ברא האדם בעלי שכל. וזה כי השכל ימשול על זה הסידור המסודר מהמערכת וממנו תהיה הבחירה אל הטוב כאשר היה שלם והנה הבחירה אשר תהיה ממנו תנצח הבחירה אשר תהיה מצד המערכת אם ירצה האדם להמשך אחר שכלו. ועוד כי מי שישלים השכל עד שיהיה לו דבקות מה עם השכל הפועל כבר ישגיח בשמירתו מאלו הרעות השכל הפועל אם בשיודיעוהו אלו הרעות טרם בואם כדי שישמר מהם אם בצד אחר.

ובזה האופן ישיב הש״י לאדם צדקתו, כי אע״פ שהרע נכון לבא לצדיק מצד המערכת אשר אי אפשר מזולתו, והשי״ת שם בו כלי [השכל] אל שינצל מהרע ההוא [שע״י השכל כשהיא בשלימות הוא מתאחד עם השכל הפועל אשר עי״ז הוא מושגח ומשומר] וישיב לו צדקתו.

ובוא הרעות לנו כאשר נסור מהם וכבר ביארה התורה שבסוף הענין יהיה העונש בהסתר פנים ר״ל סור ההשגחה האלהית אבל לא יגיע אלינו רע אז אם לא הרע הנכון לבא מצד המערכת אמר (דברים לא יז) והסתרתי פני מהם.

וזהו עונש המגיע להם על רשעם בעצמות ר״ל העדר מהם הצלחת הנפש ואולם העונש האחר [לרשעים] והוא המסרם למקרים הרעים נכונים לבא עליהם הוא במקרה.

כי לא יתכן בפועל השלם שיעשה רע, ולולי זה הסידור אשר התחייב ממנו רע מה במקרה, לא היה מגיע העונש לאנשי הגאוה והרשע בעניינים הגופיים, אשר בו תועלת נפלא ליסר האנשים ולהצילם מרעת הרשעים, רצה לומר שלא יזיקום, וכבר יחס זה העונש לאנשי הרשע והגאוה לבד, כי כבר התבאר במה שקדם, שאין הצדיקים ניזוקים ברעות ההם, כאשר ירדפו בצדק כפי הראוי.

והוצרכה התורה לצוות שלא יומתו אבות על בנים לפי שכבר זכרה כי השם יתעלה פוקד עון אבות על בנים ואולי יחשבו הדיינין לעשות דבר ראוי אם ילכו בדרכי השם יתעלה וכל שכן שבארה התורה בעיר הנידחת שימותו בה בנים על אבות, ולזה הזהירה התורה מזה בזה המקום.