Providence in the Eastern Church Fathers | Problem of Evil | Part 4 of 6
The Nathan Jacobs Podcast
Hello again, subscribers! Thursday is again upon us, which means we have a new episode of The Nathan Jacobs Podcast.
In this fourth installment on the Problem of Evil, I explore the complex relationship between divine providence and human freedom. What does it mean that God delegates sub-sovereigns over creation? And how does divine foreknowledge interact with human self-determination? This episode lays crucial groundwork for understanding the synergistic nature of providence before diving into our final episode, where I explore the meta-narrative of the Eastern Church fathers as it applies to the task of theodicy.
If you haven’t already, tune into the first installment on the problem of evil where I explored the basic elements of the problem of evil and the staples of the traditional Christian response. Specifically, I looked at free will, divine permission, and whether a sinless world would be either possible or preferable to our own.
In the second installment, I look at the notion that our world is an orchestral expression of divine goodness. But this insight reveals the uncomfortable fact that not all goods can co-exist and many goods are entangled with evils. So, though we may casually suggest that God can do anything, the choices of providence are far more complex than the average person admits.
In the third installment, I lay the groundwork for an Eastern patristic theodicy, revisiting well-trodden territory on the metaphysics of evil, free will, divine providence, and the permissive will of God, fleshing out these topics with unique insights from the Eastern church fathers.
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