The God of Evil: An Argument from the Existence of the Devil by Frederick Sontag (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 347 The God of Evil: An Argument from the Existence of the Devil. By FREDERICK SoNTAG. New York: Harper and Row, 1970. Pp. 183. $5.95. The problem of evil and its implications for the existence of God remains an open question in theology. Attempted solutions take one of two directions: either they claim that God in his omnipotence freely chose this world among all possible worlds and that this is not the best possible world; or they see God from the viewpoint of process philosophy, as a God somehow perfectible, somehow acting and being acted upon by an evolving world, unable to make things better than they are at the present moment. Frederick Sontag in The God of Evil adopts the first and more traditional viewpoint. However, his principal concern is to show how God and evil are compatible, portraying God in existentialist fashion as one who decides among various possibilities against the horizon of NonBeing . Therefore, Non-Being or Evil are somehow within the range of God. For Sontag, if God and evil are reconcilable, the atheistic position is disarmed. Sontag begins his work by pointing out that the concept of God must account for the existence of factors that argue against him. He wishes to describe a God that can exist in spite of destructive forces. (The term "Devil " is applied to the coalescence of the forces of destruction.) In fact, God must have intentionally designed atheism and the grounds for it. (p. ~) Previous attempts to prove the existence of God have failed. For example, the five arguments of St. Thomas are oversimplified and do not give sufficient attention to the disorder in the world. Kierkegaard's God seems to stand or fall on the strength of Kierkegaard's personal faith; and Tillich's God being more mystical than metaphysical is unable to address himself to the evils of the world. Anti-metaphysical, romantic, and existentialist positions on God seem to lose validity as the times and circumstances change. Sontag's thesis focuses on the observation that to question the existence of a being implies the possibility of its non-being. Man questions the existence of God and therefore there is nothingness in God, otherwise one would not raise the question. Just as human reality emerges as a particular being in the midst of Non-Being, so God's reality can only be understood by passing through nothingness. Man experiences anguish regarding God since God's being remains always in question. However, for Sontag to question God's existence really means that God does not create out of necessity but out of free decision. God's existence is always in question in the sense that the issue over what he will create and under what conditions he will do so is forever an open question. (p. 79) If God created out of necessity man would have an immediate mental link with God. Sontag declares: "The reasons behind his [God's] action are a 848 BOOK REVIEWS question to God and therefore his existence in this sense is constantly in question, since nothing in his nature leads him precisely or unavoidably to exactly this form of creation rather than that." (p. 80) It is through God that nothingness comes into the world in the sense that he must question himself by holding up all the possibles before himself for consideration. In doing so he puts himself " beyond Being" and next to nothingness. Since God has a choice among alternatives, this is not the best possible world. God could have freely chosen :t better world but decided on this one. He could have caused or speeded up the relief of human suffering and did not choose to do so. (p. 18) "He must then, be a God who does not faint at the sight of blood or lie awake because sufferers scream." (p. 22) Man's only choice is to make the best of the situation. Here, we see that Sontag by choosing the traditional viewpoint regarding God and the problem of evil comes up against its fundamental weakness: if God could have created a better world, why did he not do so. However, it is in...