Evil Without a Ground in God
Böhme placed a wrath beside love in the eternal nature. Schelling placed a ground in God distinct from God’s existence, and made the possibility of evil depend on it. Berdyaev placed an uncreated freedom before being and before God as Trinity, so that God would not answer for evil. The three wanted the same four things. Evil that is positive and not a mere lack. Freedom that is real. A God who is not evil’s author. No second god. Each paid with darkness in God or a rival to him. An eliminative chain of 137 resolutions, beginning from the observation that non-being requires being and never starting from this tradition, reaches all four without the payment. It has what the tradition lacked: a mechanism. A being with complete capacity wills to be the unlimited itself (R.51). AllBeing’s Will is all Will (R.44), so willing all Will is not willing (R.55, R.56). What the willing would add already is. It does not arrive. What it becomes is non-being (R.58). All-Being is undiminished, not by withstanding but because what does not arrive does not subtract (R.57). Non-being is (R.66), wills (R.67), and is only ever the “not” of what is (R.80, R.81): positive and privative at once. The darkness has a location, a cause, and a dependence. None of them is in God. The chain: Anything Willing Is, DOI 10.5281/zenodo.19538257. Interactive edition, one anchor per resolution: https://anythingwilling.is/
Authors
- James Alexander Burrows (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-6452-4842)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
- Published
- 2026-09-06
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22335071
- Primary Topic
- Theology and Philosophy of Evil
- Type
- preprint