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C. A. Campbell and the Problem of Suffering

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

John Collins
John Collins
Affiliation:
Lecturer in Religious Studies, Milltown Institute, Dublin
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Extract

Although C. A. Campbell's account of the problem of suffering is articulated in the context of making out a case for rational Theism, it does not stand or fall with the case for rational Theism. It has independent merit as a sustained effort of reason to grapple with the problem of whether the goodness and omnipotence of God are consistent with the prima facie badness of so much of the suffering that exists in God's world. Campbell's views on suffering are to be found in On Selfhood and Godhood (SG), pp. 287–306, and in an earlier article ‘Reason and the Problem of Suffering’ (RPS), published in Philosophy, x 1935, pp. 154–67. In the first section of what follows, I give a summary of Campbell's line of argument. In the second I offer some critical comments on certain aspects of his treatment.1

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , September 1980, pp. 307 - 316
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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References

page 307 note 1 This article incorporates material from my M.Phil. thesisGoogle Scholar ‘A Discussion of the Problem of Evil with special reference to the Writings of Royce, Josiah and Campbell, C. A.’ University of London, 1974).Google Scholar

page 308 note 1 SG, p. 294.Google Scholar

page 309 note 1 SG, p. 298.Google Scholar

page 310 note 1 SG, p. 300.Google Scholar

page 311 note 1 SG, p. 304.Google Scholar

page 311 note 2 SG, p. 304.Google Scholar

page 312 note 1 RPS, pp. 154–5.Google Scholar

page 312 note 2 RPS, p. 167.Google Scholar

page 313 note 1 Philosophy of Religion (London: The English Universities Press Ltd, 1965), p. 311.Google Scholar

page 313 note 2 Speaking of animals, Campbell does not discuss animal pain and suffering, nor the role of such suffering in a world which is a vale of soul-making for human beings.

page 314 note 1 SG, p. 288.Google Scholar

page 314 note 2 RPS, p. 167.Google Scholar

page 315 note 1 RPS, p. 163.Google Scholar

page 315 note 2 RPS, p. 163.Google Scholar

page 315 note 3 Cf. Meynell, Hugo, God and the World (London: SPCK, 1971), p. 76Google Scholar: ‘One might almost say that, in his sufferings, asked a moral question, and got an aesthetic answer. He asked that some reason should be given why he had suffered, but was so overwhelmed with awe and the compulsion to worship by the theophany described at the end of the book (Job 37–40) that he no longer felt inclined to complain.’

page 315 note 4 The Other Dinension (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1972), p. 411.Google Scholar

page 316 note 1 ‘The Redemption’ (A lecture given at the Thomas More Institute, Montreal, September 25, 1958).Google Scholar

page 316 note 2 Cf. The Idea of the Holy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), p. 173Google Scholar, where Otto writes: ‘In Job the suffering of the righteous found its significance as the classic and crucial case of the revelation, more immediately actual and in more palpable proximity than any other, of the transcendent mysteriousness and “beyondness” of God. The Cross of Christ, that monogram of the eternal mystery, is its completion.’