GOD'S RESPONSIBILITIES
Sir-Your devout correspondent F. J. Hooper is sure that "God is not responsible for the King’s or our own illness," and reminds us that God "created man perfect." If the account in Genesis is true we must accept the statement "God saw everything that He had made, and, behold it was very good." How, then, are we to account for the "illnesses" of many kinds that afflict vegetables and animal life in the primitive state? Are volcanoes, hurricanés, waterspouts, and other violences of nature "very good?" Just a hundred years ago Francois Guizot, French statesman and historian, was Prime Minister in France. He also was a devout believer in God. In his History of Civilization in Europe he wrote: "European. civilization has entered, if we may so speak, into eternal truth, into the plan of Providence; it progresses according to the intentions
of God. This is the rational account of its superiority." Now if that be true, are we not driven inevitably to the conclusion that all that has happened in Europe since 1848 occurred because God ‘planned itincluding the first World War, Mussolini, Hitler, the Russian Revolution, and the second World War and the atom bomb? Those who insist on regarding our universe as the product of one mind in a sort of superhuman being cannot escape the uncomfortable conclusion of allocating responsibility to the Creator.
J. MALTON
MURRAY
(Oamaru). i
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 500, 21 January 1949, Page 5
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234GOD'S RESPONSIBILITIES New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 500, 21 January 1949, Page 5
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