Defense Laboratory / Why does evil exist?
1. The objection
“If God is all-powerful, he can stop evil. If he is all-good, he wants to. Yet children die of cancer, whole peoples are slaughtered, and natural disasters kill the innocent. Either God cannot stop it, or he will not, or he does not exist. Every explanation I have heard, free will, a greater good, a mysterious plan, sounds like an excuse made up after the fact. A good human parent who had the power to prevent such things and did not would be a monster.
2. Investigation
Assumptions
- That a God who is all-powerful and all-good must prevent every evil, with no morally sufficient reason ever to allow any.
- That we are in a position to know that there could be no good reason for the evils we see.
- That the amount and kind of evil in the world is the kind of thing a good God would not allow, and that we can judge this from our limited view.
- That evil is a thing that God made, rather than a failure, privation or abuse of what he made.
- That the objection can be stated without assuming that evil is really evil, which seems to require a standard of goodness.
Evidence and historical claims
- What does Genesis 1:31 say about creation, and what does Genesis 3 say about how things went wrong?
- What does the book of Job say about suffering, about the explanations of Job’s friends, and about God’s answer in chapters 38 to 41?
- What did Augustine argue about evil as the privation of good, and how did he connect evil with the misuse of free will?
- What did Irenaeus and, much later, John Hick say about the world as a place where moral and spiritual growth is possible, and what do critics say?
- How do Eastern and Western Christians differ in how they speak of death, the Fall, and the origin of suffering?
- How do Jewish writers, including those who wrote after the Holocaust, treat the problem of evil, and what do they say about protest and complaint before God?
Philosophical and theological claims
- Is it logically contradictory to say that God is all-good and all-powerful and that evil exists, or is the problem one of probability and evidence?
- Can a free creature who is able to choose good be made so that he can never choose evil?
- Does the amount, distribution and severity of suffering, especially the suffering of animals and children, count against a good God more than the bare existence of evil does?
Logical structure
- Premise 1: If God is all-powerful and all-good, he would prevent all evil.
- Premise 2: Evil exists.
- Conclusion: Therefore God does not exist.
- Test each premise. Ask whether Premise 1 can be established, or whether a good being might have morally sufficient reasons for allowing some evil, and ask what sort of reasons they might be.
3. Christian responses
Response A: Evil is a privation, and free will explains moral evil (Augustinian, Catholic and many Western views)
Augustine held that God made everything good and that evil is not a substance but a lack or corruption of good, as blindness is a lack of sight. Moral evil arises when free creatures, angels and human beings, turn away from the good. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (paragraphs 309 to 314) says that God permits evil and brings good from it, and that the full answer is found only in the whole of the Christian message.
Alvin Plantinga’s free will defense, developed in the twentieth century, argues that it is possible that God could not have created free creatures who always choose right, so that the existence of evil is not logically inconsistent with a good and powerful God. Natural evil is variously explained by the Fall and its effects, by the laws that make a stable world possible, or by a combination of these.
Response B: Evil is an enemy that Christ defeats, not a problem to be solved (Orthodox emphasis)
Orthodox theology generally does not offer a theodicy, an explanation of why God permits evil. It emphasizes that God did not create death or sin, that death is an enemy (1 Corinthians 15:26), and that Christ’s death and resurrection break the power of death. Suffering is met not by an argument but by the presence of God in the cross and the promise of the resurrection.
Orthodox writers also speak of creation as made for growth into communion with God, with human freedom a part of that, and they treat the mystery of why evil is permitted as one that human reason cannot fully penetrate.
Response C: God is sovereign and wise, and his purposes include permitted evil (Reformed and other Protestant views)
Reformed Protestants hold that God is sovereign over all things, including the evil that occurs, and that he ordains it for purposes that serve his glory and the good of his people, without being the author of sin or taking pleasure in it. Romans 8:28 and the story of Joseph (Genesis 50:20) are often cited. Other Protestants, including Arminian and open theist writers, put more weight on creaturely freedom and on God’s willingness to take risks.
Protestants of many kinds point to the book of Job, which gives no explanation for Job’s suffering but affirms God’s presence and wisdom, as a model for how to hold these questions.
Response D: Complaint and protest are faithful responses (Jewish thought)
Jewish tradition has long made room for argument with God, in the Psalms, in Job, and in the stories of Abraham pleading for Sodom (Genesis 18). After the Holocaust, many Jewish thinkers declined to offer easy answers and some rejected the idea that suffering could be justified, while others held to covenant faith and practice despite it.
The tradition does not treat the problem of evil as a puzzle to be solved by an argument. It treats it as a wound that calls for justice, compassion and a continuing demand that God keep his promises.
Response E: The amount of evil counts against a good God (the evidential argument, secular and scholarly)
Many philosophers who accept that the logical argument fails still hold that the evidential argument succeeds. They point to evils that seem pointless, such as an animal suffering slowly in a forest fire or the deaths of young children, and argue that the probability of a good God allowing them is low.
Philosophers of this view add that free will does not explain natural evil, and that the strongest Christian answers, such as the Fall, rely on claims that conflict with what science says about the history of life and the age of death in the world.
4. The strongest counterargument
The strongest reply to Responses A through D is that none of them explains why the particular amount and kind of suffering we see is needed. The free will defense says that evil is possible, not that it must be as bad as it is. Appeals to mystery can be used to protect any position from any evidence, and the story of Job, critics note, has God vindicate Job while rebuking the friends who tried to justify his suffering, which suggests that the confident explanations are the problem. Orthodox and Jewish refusals to offer a theodicy are admirable pastorally, but they leave the intellectual question unanswered.
The strongest reply to Response E is that the evidential argument depends on a judgment that these evils are pointless, which no human being is in a position to make, since our knowledge of consequences is small. Defenders of the Christian view add that the argument assumes that evil is real, which requires an objective standard of good, and that the secular view has trouble supplying it. They point out that the Christian answer is not only an explanation but a claim that God has entered suffering himself and promised to end it. Whether that promise is credible is the question on which the whole matter turns.
5. Your independent defense
- Write the objection in one sentence in your own words.
- Separate three questions: why moral evil exists, why natural evil exists, and why the amount of suffering is so great. Write a sentence for each, noting which you find hardest.
- Read Job 1 to 2 and Job 38 to 42 in the King James Version, in whatever pace you need. Write a short paragraph on what the book answers and what it declines to answer.
- Choose Augustine’s free will account, Irenaeus’ soul-making account, or the Orthodox emphasis on the defeat of death. Write it in a paragraph its adherents would accept as fair, then write the strongest objection to it.
- Read a statement of the evidential argument from evil by someone who holds it. Summarize it in a paragraph its author would accept as fair.
- Choose your own position and write 300 to 500 words defending it. State what you believe about why evil is permitted, what you think cannot be explained, and what you believe God has done about it.
- Write the strongest objection to your own position. Make it as strong as you can, then answer it.
- Write one sentence on what would change your mind.
- Keep this in your own notebook or document. Do not send it anywhere.