Good vs Evil: Nontheism and Dualism

Some expressions of Christianity are what is termed dualist: they are concerned with the adversarial nature of a divine Lord of good, in the form of God (and the Trinity), and a diabolical lord of evil, in the form of the devil, Satan, Lucifer, or the adversary, to give it a few of the more common names it is known by. All, or almost all are dualist in at least a purely moral sense – there is good and evil, even if there is not a personification of evil in opposition to a personification of good.

Quaker non-theists take a range of positions on the nature of that which our theistic Friends generally (and some non-theists) call ‘God’. Generally speaking, those who consider themselves non-theists (or who might be analytically classified as such) do not accept the idea of God as an entity with personality or personhood, but we recognise something in ourselves which we identify to some extent with what others call ‘God’.

Likewise, theistic Christian Quakers (neither Christianity nor theism inevitably follows from the other in practice, among Quakers) have a range of views about the devil, though among liberal Friends the identification of it as an adversarial persona with true power in opposition to God is relatively unusual. Yet we all recognise the concept of evil, that there are acts that are evil, that we all have the potential for evil within us – just as we all have the potential for good, and that we all have ‘that of God’ within us. We, Quakers, tend to be dualists to that extent, even if the degree of Christian dualism found in some other churches is (in my experience) extremely rare.

Quakers and ‘Paksworld’

Continuing the theme of my previous post, about the fictional setting of Valdemar in the context of Quakerism, I’m going to look at another fictional setting and see what parallels there might be. Today, you get to read my thoughts on Quakers and the setting of the ‘Paksenarrion’ books. This was introduced to the world through the three-volume fantasy novel The Deed of Paksenarrion (the volumes being Sheepfarmer’s Daughter, Divided Allegiance, and Oath of Gold), a Tolkienesque fantasy epic with a female protagonist, Paksenarrion (shortened to ‘Paks’), an asexual soldier (and yes, the asexuality is plot relevant, which is pretty good going for the late eighties), who goes on to bigger and better things (while still being a fighter) and saves, well, not the world exactly (at least not directly – that comes with other people in the sequels) but at least the way of life of people of her own culture. That’s a familiar line for those who would take people to war in the modern world, but she is not fighting against people of another culture, but for good against evil.