Terry Eagleton's Divine Devilry

Even when I am disagreeing with him, or struggling with his ideas,Terry Eagleton rarely fails to make me laugh.

He has done it most recently in a review in The London Review of Books. The book is "Accident: A Philosophical and Literary History" by Ross Hamilton , and in introducing the topic, Eagleton remarks that

Since [God's] freedom means that... there is no necessity about him, other than the necessity to be true to his divine nature, it follows that he did not need to create the world at all. He did it just for the hell of it.

He goes on

There was nothing in it for him. He could simply have remained indolently, luxuriously himself for all eternity. He might also have saved himself an unbelievable amount of trouble.

And

In this sense, the universe is an accident. This does not mean that God created it by mistake or in a fit of absent-mindedness. It means simply that like falling house prices or the invasion of Iraq, there is no necessity to it.

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