According to the poem, a great leader is one who thinks rationally, keeps his country at peace, takes care of his people, believes in God, has Divine kingship, and has good morals. This great leader is exemplified by none other than our epic protagonist and namesake of the poem: Beowulf himself. Beowulf is granted kingship of Geatland as a reward for defeating Grendel and his mother in two separate battles. Grendel was an evil demon who was terrorizing
This raises problems for Boethius' argument, however he addresses this and creates a counter assertment. As argued above free will is needed for just rewards/punishments, some people say this because it would be unfair to punish people who could not choose to do otherwise. Others such as Augustine believe that free will is necessary because without free will there should be no evil in the world as there is no choice to create evil where as evil does exist, without free will this must have been created by God, contradicting God's omnibenevolence. Irenaeus' view is simelar to Augustine however he adds that human beings could not be perfect, God is all that is perfect so we were given an imperfect world and free will, so that we would be a reflection of God but not perfect. Hick's approach to the necessity of free will grows from the idea that God wants humans to genuinly love him and show faith, without free will we could not make a decision as to whether or not we had faith, belief or even love for God, we would merely be robots designed to love him.
He met a teacher, Virgil, and he begs for Virgil’s help. Virgil says that he can lead Dante out of the forest, however; he needs to encounter more dangerous events in the journey through the heaven. Virgil responses to him, ‘ I am not Aeneas, I am not Paul, neither I nor any man would think me worthy; and so, if I should undertake the journey, I fear it might turn out an act…my words express.’（The Divine Comedy; Inferno; The Canto 2; lines32-36）At this point there are still doubts about the future that worries Dante. He feels unconfident and he fears the events he will encounter. Dante presents a doubt to Virgil, when Sylvius’s father was alive, he had been to heaven, this is because he was chosen to be the father of glorious Rome and of her empire, and both the city and her lands.
This immediately sets up a conflict between as Faustus desires to achieve power which hasn’t been given to him by God but through an ultimately religious form of attainment. This conflict is then heightened by his realisation that Lucifer and Mephistophilis were once angels but have since been cast down from heaven. Faustus is therefore attempting to reach an illegitimate level of power but uses religion as a catalyst for this. The conflict in the creation his power is something that stays with Faustus for the rest of his life, even refusing to repent for his sins when he is provided with an opportunity to prevent his destined eternity in hell. This self-destructive streak portrayed by
He does not listen to Teiresias’ warning. Teiresias tells Creon to make right of his abuse of power by granting proper burial rights and freeing Antigone from her impending death. Teiresias warns Creon that his corruption, stubbornness, and disregard for citizen’s rights is an abuse of his power. Because Teiresias is always right, Creon eventually decides to listen to him. This conflict proves the quote true because Creon disrespects the gods because of his new power.
The sixth circle is where the heretics dwell in fiery tombs. The violent are punished in the seventh circle and it is also the time when Virgil truly, and in detail, explains the layout of Hell. All human sins are divided into three big categories; those who lack self-control, violence, and fraud. And, so far the things Dante encountered fell into the first category and the seventh held the violent sinners. The final two circles contain the sinners of ordinary fraud and treacherous fraud.
All types of evil have the potential to cause contradiction between reality and the established conception of a personal God. In the following I will examine the problem of evil and attempt to establish why the presence of evil is the most potent argument against theism. The classical notion of a monotheistic God ascribes certain divine qualities to Him and I will proceed with the assumption that he possesses these qualities. God is conceived as an ultimate perfectly good being, with the unique characteristics of omnipotence and omniscience. God is the knower of all things past and present and has the divine power to do anything.
The most important conclusion Shakespeare has drawn about the nature of humanity in King Lear is the fact that evil is not something the gods have cursed you with at birth but it is something that you choose for yourselfACt . The contrast he uses shows us that Edmoud had everything he needed to be good, he had the look and he had the attitude , but ultimately he chose to wrong path, he was blinded by power and his need to be treated as an equal. Later in that scene [165] after his brother is wounded Edgar affirms his belief that the gods play no hand in the evilness of the world through his dialogue “The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices make instruments to plague us” he states that the gods are fair and only punish us with our own wrong doings, even Edmoud agrees with him. Edmonds good side does make an appearance, towards the end of act 5 scene 3, “ Despite of mine own nature. Quickly send – be brief in it – to th’castle; for my wit is on the life of Lear and Cordelia” , in this remorseful dialogue Edmond`
“God must be Evil” The question “is God evil?” is asked very often with both sides of the question offering different answers to this question with no definitive answer coming about but in both cases people coming out with very convincing arguments for both sides of the story. Some people argue that God is indeed evil because he is omniscient and because of his omniscience he knows that from the moment he decided to create us maybe even before then he knew which of us would reject him thus securing a place in hell for them or would sin again securing them a place in hell and yet does nothing about this. This is a major contradiction to his supposedly being omnibenevolent and some people even go so far as to use examples of murder and rape which are horrific events which they then use to say “how can a loving God allow such a thing to happen?” They then go further into it saying how as God is omnipresent and can see everything that has happened, will happen and is happening he must take some sort of sick pleasure in watching these events occur and so is evil. Or at the very least by allowing such a horrific event to happen without some form of justice or stopping them then he has to be evil as only an evil person would let evil acts go unpunished. Sam Harris uses this idea in one of his quotes saying that “Either God can do nothing to stop catastrophes or he doesn’t care to or he doesn’t exist.
Initially a humble King of Thebes, Oedipus becomes agitated in realizing his futile attempts to avoid his tragic fate. Oedipus eagerness for discovering the truth about his origin despite the negative outcomes embodies the noble, yet tragic flaw of any good king. The Shepherd’s avoidance of the Oedipus’s questioning exhibits the Shepherd’s strong rationality during this scene. He hesitates in revealing the truth to prudently protect himself and Oedipus from repercussions of reality. The Shepherd insists that the revelation of the truth will result in destruction, “I will be destroyed even more if I do talk” (line 1184).