God: Savior, Butcher, Or Oblivious Artist? The Theodicy Of Alfred North Whitehead

This paper is a critical examination of Alfred North Whitehead's attempt to solve the traditional problem of evil. Whitehead's conception of evil is crucial to his process cosmology because it is integral to his process cosmology because it is integral to his notion of creation in which evil is understood in relationship to the larger dynamic of God’s creative activity. While Whitehead’s process theodicy is interesting, he fails to successfully escape between the horns of the traditional dilemma. Whitehead is often criticized for treating evil as merely apparent. While some process philosophers, notably Maurice Barineau, have defended Whitehead from this charge, it can be shown that this is an implication of Whitehead’s approach. Moreover, Whitehead’s theodicy fails to address radical moral evil in its concrete dimension in respect to real human suffering. As a result, Whitehead’s theodicy is not relevant to Christian theology. My paper is divided into two parts. I will first briefly discuss the traditional problem of evil and some of the traditional problem of evil and some of the traditional solutions proposed to resolve it. The reminder of the paper will demonstrate why Whitehead’s theodicy addresses the traditional problem of evil only at the expense of theological irrelevancy.

1.6 School of Law, Lincoln University

Another dilemma also had to be dealt with; Lloyd Gaines was determined to attend law school, not just anywhere but at the University of Missouri. Shortly after the Supreme Court decision, Lloyd Gaines left his civil service job in Michigan and returned home to St. Louis, arriving on New Year’s Eve, 1938. In the meantime, to pay his bills, he took a job as a filling station attendant. On January 9, 1939, Gaines spoke to the St. Louis chapter of the NAACP. He told them he stood “ready, willing, and able to enroll at MU.” Gaines later quit his gas station job. He explained to his family that the station owner substituted inferior gas and that he could not, in good conscience, continue to work there. In the meantime, the state Supreme Court sent the Gaines case back to Boone County to determine whether the new law school at Lincoln would comply with the US Supreme Court’s requirement of “substantial equality.”