Omnibenevolence
| Preach to the choir Religion |
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| Crux of the matter |
| Speak of the devil |
| An act of faith |
| —St. Thomas Aquinas |
Omnibenevolence refers to the doctrine of a perfect and morally good God. In short, God loves us and wants the best for us.
Being perfectly good must entail being good in all ways at all times and towards all other beings [2]
But somehow, for complicated reasons, God does not get round to stopping all of those earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters.[3] Most of the time, it is God who causes them harm, as seen in Numbers 16:32, 1 Samuel 14:15, Zechariah 14:5, 2 Samuel 22:8, Isaiah 29:6, Nahum 1:5, and Genesis 6:17. Furthermore, instead of preventing rape, he cares more about producing babies in the process.
In parts of the Bible, God is shown as a being who is anything but omnibenevolent, even using moral standards derived from the Bible. For example, the Book of Job in the Old Testament involves God tormenting Job, despite all Job's righteousness, just to win a bet with Satan.[4] The Book of Revelation also shows a lack of omnibenevolence, as it depicts most of the world being thrown by God into a lake of fire. In fact, God is still throwing everyone who he believes doesn't deserve eternal happiness into Hell. An omnibenevolent God wouldn't ever consider inflicting eternal punishment, or any punishment for that matter, on a being he created imperfect, or on any being at all. He is supposed to be very powerful, if not omnipotent.
The branch of theology devoted to solving the Problem of Evil is known as Theodicy and causes even more problems when paired with omniscience, Omnipotence, or omnipresence.[5] For example, if God cannot sin, can He really be called all powerful? If He has no choice but to do good, can He be said to have free will? Is it really a meaningful statement to say God is good if God is incapable of doing evil?