Allah causes death?

[Gottle_of_Geer]

hlgomez:

Here is a translation I got from “Muhammad, the illiterate prophet” thread. I’d like to begin another thread based on the above translation by beginning the question with “Is it God who causes death?”

Catholic theology explains that God is not the source or cause of death, nor is he happy with a death of a person.

The catechism further explains in # 605:

…Jesus recalled that God’s love excludes no one: “So it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.” He affirms that he came “to give his life as a ransom for many”; this last term is not restrictive, but contrasts the whole of humanity with the unique person of the redeemer who hands himself over to save us.

Pio

That assertion is not difficult to understand.​

What it derives from, is the realisation that God is in some sense the sole cause of all things, and that nothing is outside His Providence: not life, not death.

It is a thoroughly Semitic idea. In the Mesopotamian context, we find it expressed in “mythological” form: the supreme god Anu is said to be the father of the plague-goddess Lamashtu, “she who is without a twin”, as well as of other more benign divinities, such as the wise and kindly Ea.

In the OT, we find it expressed thus: ““Shall there be evil in the city, and I have not done it ?”, says the Lord”. The account in 2 Samuel of a census taken by King David is ascribed to God; for which David is punished - and in 1 Chronicles, to satan. The difference reflects a desire to distance God from any idea that He is the cause of evil. Even though, or because, that which is contrary to His will is a fact of experience.

As Islam is Semitic, it is not surprising to find the same idea - of the unique causality of God - in the Koran.

The idea of God as sole cause protects His uniqueness - at the risk of allowing (not necessitating) the inference that He is not wholly good. The two ideas seem to belong to different stages of religion; and it is very important to bear in mind that Semitic thinking is dynamic and vividly personal - not abstract and conceptual, like the sort of thinking we find among the Greeks (& especially among their Latin Scholastic successors).

To state the dilemma, is easier than to resolve it - which is why the Cross is so important. For at the Cross, evil in its fullness meets God’s Righteousness in its fullness. The result is the abandonment of Christ, the Wholly Righteous One, Who for our sakes becomes, in the blasphemous (and wholly appropriate) language of St. Paul, “a curse for us”. The dilemma is trans-rational: reason does not have the means to resolve it. ##