Lehi, Opposition & Strife

Posted on April 30, 2008
Filed Under Philosophy, Religion | 1 Comment

LehiI was listening to Dennis Potter’s SMPT presentation today. It was called “Opposing Lehi’s Theodicy” and basically dealt with what Dennis calls the Opposition Theodicy based upon 2 Nephi. Now Dennis is careful to note that he doesn’t think this theodicy is actually what Lehi is asserting. Rather he brings it up as it is something he sees brought up a lot in Utah Valley University by his students to explain the problem of evil. Yet it is not something he encountered while at Notre Dame.

This theodicy is based upon conceptual views of opposition. That is various kinds of opposites. The first is objective opposites like black and white. The second is relative opposites like tall and short. The final is epistemic opposites. That is to be able to know good we have to know not-good which is evil. There are then slight variations on each them. Dennis ably shows that all these views are logically incapable of solving the problem of evil and often end up very incoherent. I’ll not go through those details as I suspect most of us can see the problems immediately.

At the end of his talk Dennis also brings up the idea of propositions that are both true and false as espoused by philosophers like Graham Priest. This was a little less satisfactory but very interesting. Of course Dennis can hardly be faulted for not dealing with dialetheism in depth in only five minutes. I’m still not sure how dialetheism could possible provide a way of dealing with evil and opposition though. But it’s something I’ll have to think about more. Most dialetheism I don’t find interesting except for the parts that deal with various kinds of infinite sets and their properties.

But back to Lehi. If Lehi’s argument isn’t opposition in terms of conceptual opposites what is he saying?

I think that the more interesting approach is to consider opposition in terms of phenomenal opposition. That is strife, the feeling of being opposed, force, or the like. This notion goes back in philosophy at least to Heraclitus. To Heraclitus strife between opposites was universal and perhaps the nature of existence itself. Of course we have at best only a few fragments of Heraclitus’ writings so figuring out what he really meant is unclear. The notion continues through various other philosophers though. For C. S. Peirce secondness is the phenomenological category of opposition. Heidegger famously considers strife as well. (He also comments on it relative to Heraclitus) There are others as well.

Without going too in depth on strife just yet let’s consider how Lehi reads in terms of opposition as strife.

For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my first-born in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility. Wherefore, it must needs have been created for a thing of naught; wherefore there would have been no purpose in the end of its creation. Wherefore, this thing must needs destroy the wisdom of God and his eternal purposes, and also the power, and the mercy, and the justice of God. And if ye shall say there is no law, ye shall also say there is no sin. If ye shall say there is no sin, ye shall also say there is no righteousness. And if there be no righteousness there be no happiness. And if there be no righteousness nor happiness there be no punishment nor misery. And if these things are not there is no God. And if there is no God we are not, neither the earth; for there could have been no creation of things, neither to act nor to be acted upon; wherefore, all things must have vanished away. And now, my sons, I speak unto you these things for your profit and learning; for there is a God, and he hath created all things, both the heavens and the earth, and all things that in them are, both things to act and things to be acted upon.

If we read this as strife between two things as being necessary to bring “one to pass” then this makes a lot of sense. If good and evil are existential facts then opposition is necessary to conquer evil.

Likewise if one adopts a monism of some sort for there to be existence as we know it rather than pure stasis there must be change. But change can be seen as implying strife. The one moment against the next. The one entity against the other. If there is purpose or growth then opposition is just an innate aspect of existence itself.

In this case law relates to sin through strife. Law attempts to overcome sin. Sin exists to overcome righteousness. And so forth. So the argument Lehi makes is not about evil as such but rather striving against evil and the nature of that strife. It’s about power and the transitions of power.

Related posts:

  1. Neurobiology of Evil
  2. Anselm’s Ontological Argument and the Problem of Evil
  3. Pruss on Inductive Evil
  4. The Problem of Evil and Wanting to Not Get What You Want
  5. Arguments from Evil
  6. Evolution and the Problem of Evil

Comments

One Response to “Lehi, Opposition & Strife”

Just a note I had a post years ago at the old blog related to the above. It was on agency. It was part of a larger discussion of certain LDS metaphors of agency that was supposed to have become a paper for SMPT before I got so busy making chocolate and had to postpone it. I’d collected the blogs posts together as The Shape of Agency but obviously it needs a lot of work to move from blog musings to paper.

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