Questioning the Power of God

          Apostle: noun; one who is commissioned and sent by a community to preach the gospel. The word Apostle is derived from the Greek word, apostolos, meaning, “one who is sent.” In the Bible, Jesus chose twelve disciples, referred to apostles after his ascension into heaven, to spread the gospel after his death and resurrection. In the modern sense, an apostle is one who is sent out to spread the gospel and create new communities of believers.  

            In The Apostle (1997), Sonny (Robert Duvall), a Pentecostal preacher from New Boston, Texas, was influenced from a young age to spread the beliefs and teachings of Jesus. His lively services were widely popular amongst the community, drawing in large crowds. However, the community’s perception of him is changed when he becomes frustrated with his wife’s affair and her attempts at turning “his” church against him. In an act of frustration, Sonny hits his wife’s lover across the face with a baseball bat, which places him in a coma, and later kills him. Sonny flees New Boston, and ends up in the small community of Bayou Boutte, Louisiana. Along the way, Sonny baptizes himself as “The Apostle” to God, and changes his name to E.F. In Louisiana, Sonny works as a mechanic while also preaching on the local radio station. With the help of the community’s retired minister, Blackwell, Sonny remodels an old rundown church and gains the support of the community. At the end of the film, Sonny’s wife finds out where he is living and calls the police. The last scene of the movie shows Sonny preaching to his fellow inmates as they are working on the side of a highway.

            One of the readings from this week, Evil and Omnipotence by J. L. Mackie, questions the existence and power of God. In Mackie’s essay, he raises the question: if God really is omnipotent and wholly good, then why does evil still exist? He states that because this question exists, no rational proof of God’s existence is possible. He later goes on to explain that in order to accept two parts of the equation (omnipotence, wholly good, lack of evil), we must reject one. Mackie presents three different solutions to this problem: we can deny God’s omnipotence, believe evil is an illusion, or we can define evil as the privation of good. Mackie also introduces what he calls fallacious solutions. Each of these “solutions” however, relates back to the original problem of having to reject one of the beliefs about God and the world in order to accept the other two. The first, “God cannot exist without evil” or “evil is necessary as a counterpart to good,” sets limits on God’s power, thus rejecting his omnipotence. The second, “Evil is necessary as a means to good,” suggests that good and evil are not counterparts, and again restricts God’s power. The third, “The universe is better with some evil in it than it could be if there were no evil,” suggests that good what one experiences in the absence of evil but that evil must exist in order to recognize good in its absence. Lastly, “evil is due to human freewill,” also questions God’s omnipotence.

            Ideas similar to Mackie’s are raised both by Sonny in the film, and by the film itself. How can Sonny, who spends his life dedicated to God and his teachings, be subject to the “evil” of his wife’s infidelities? Or, how could a man with so much dedication to God and doing what is good, have enough evil within him to kill a man? In one scene from the movie, Sonny is asking God similar questions as to why he has been faced with such evil. However, despite what he has been forced to deal with, Sonny continues to preach the existence and good of God. Using Sonny as an example, can we agree with Mackie that evil and omnipotence can’t fit together? Or, is the evil that Sonny experiences not actually inherent evil, but rather just the absence of good? And lastly, is the absence of good still in fact evil?