Program / Course 15: The Problem of Evil and Suffering / Lesson 1.1
What you will learn
- State the ancient puzzle about God, power, goodness and evil in a few clear sentences.
- Explain why the puzzle is attributed to Epicurus and why scholars are cautious about that attribution.
- Describe how the Psalms and the prophets voice the same complaint from inside faith.
- Summarize how Augustine understood evil and why his view shaped later Christian thought.
The big idea
The problem of evil is very old. A famous ancient version asks whether God is unwilling to stop evil, unable to stop it, or both unwilling and unable, and each answer seems to damage belief in a good and all-powerful God. The Bible does not hide from this pain. The Psalms and the prophets ask it aloud, and they ask it as believers. Augustine, writing in the fourth and fifth centuries, gave an influential Christian reply: God made all things good, and evil is a corruption of good things, not a rival thing God made.
Key terms
- Problem of evil
- The challenge that the existence of evil and suffering seems hard to square with belief in a God who is all-powerful and perfectly good.
- Theism
- Belief in one personal God who made the world and acts in it.
- Omnipotence
- Being all-powerful. Christians usually mean that God can do anything that is possible to do and consistent with his own nature.
- Omnibenevolence
- Being perfectly good and loving. Many writers simply say that God is wholly good.
- Lament
- A prayer of complaint and grief addressed to God, found in many Psalms and in the book of Lamentations.
- Privation
- The lack of a good that something should have. In Augustine’s view, evil is a privation and not a substance.
- Theodicy
- From Greek words for God and justice. An attempt to explain why a good God permits evil. The word was coined in the early eighteenth century by Leibniz.
Background
Every culture has asked why the innocent suffer. In the Christian West the question is usually called the problem of evil. It matters because Christians say two things together: that God is all-powerful and that God is wholly good. Evil and suffering are real. The question is whether all three claims can be held at once, and if so, how.
Notice that there are two different questions under one name. One is a question for the mind: is it logically or probably true that such a God exists, given the evil that is seen? The other is a question for the heart: how can a person go on trusting God when a child has died? This course treats both. In this lesson the focus is on how old the problem is and on the first answers it received.
Three voices belong at the start. The first is a pagan philosopher’s puzzle. The second is the voice of Hebrew Scripture, which complains to God directly. The third is Augustine, who tried to give the church a careful answer. None of them closes the subject, but each of them shows a part of it.
Step-by-step explanation
Step 1: The puzzle attributed to Epicurus
Epicurus was a Greek philosopher who lived from 341 to 270 BC. He taught that the gods take no interest in human affairs. The best known form of the puzzle is quoted by the Christian writer Lactantius (about 250 to 325), who used it in his work On the Anger of God. In outline it runs: either God wants to remove evil and cannot, or he can and does not want to, or he neither wants to nor can, or he both wants to and can. If he wants to and cannot, he is weak. If he can and does not want to, he is ill-willed. If he neither wants to nor can, he is both weak and ill-willed. If he both wants to and can, why is there evil?
Many scholars doubt that these are Epicurus’s own words. Lactantius is the earliest source, and some think the argument comes from later Greek skeptics. Others think it fairly reflects Epicurean thought. The safest way to say it is that the argument is traditionally attributed to Epicurus. David Hume gave a famous version in the eighteenth century in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, and that is one reason the argument is still called Epicurean.
Step 2: Reading the puzzle carefully
The puzzle is strong because each of its options seems to remove something Christians say about God. But it also contains assumptions that a Christian will ask about. It assumes that a good being would want to prevent every evil. It assumes that an all-powerful being could prevent every evil without losing some other good. And it assumes that God’s reasons would be visible to humans.
A critic replies that these assumptions are reasonable, and that the burden is on the believer to show otherwise. A believer replies that they are exactly the points that need argument. Most of the rest of this course is a careful look at those points. For now, learn to state the puzzle in its three parts: God is all-powerful, God is wholly good, and evil exists.
Step 3: The voice of Scripture
The Bible does not wait for philosophers to raise the question. The Psalmist asks, “How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? for ever? how long wilt thou hide thy face from me?” (Psalm 13:1). The prophet Habakkuk says, “O LORD, how long shall I cry, and thou wilt not hear!” and later asks why God looks on those who deal treacherously (Habakkuk 1:2 and 1:13). Jeremiah asks why the way of the wicked prospers (Jeremiah 12:1). Job, the subject of Module 5, refuses to accept that his sufferings are deserved.
These texts matter for two reasons. They show that raising the question is not a sign of unbelief. They also show that the biblical writers did not think the question was settled by a neat formula. Yet they keep praying. The lament is a way of staying in relationship with God while saying that something is terribly wrong.
Step 4: Augustine’s answer
Augustine (354 to 430), bishop of Hippo in North Africa, had faced the problem personally. In his Confessions he describes how, as a young man, he was drawn to the Manichees, a movement that held that evil was a second, eternal power opposed to the good God. He later rejected this. He came to believe that everything God made is good, and that evil is not a thing God created.
Augustine argued that evil is a privation: a lack or damage in something that is good. Blindness is not a thing in itself, but the absence of sight in an eye that should see. Rot is the decay of something that was whole. So when a person chooses a lesser good over a greater one, the evil lies in the disordered choice and not in a created object. He also held that evil enters the world through the free choices of angels and humans, and that God allowed this freedom because he can bring good even out of evil. Later lessons examine both ideas and their difficulties.
Step 5: What these voices share and where they differ
Epicurus uses the puzzle to argue that the Christian God cannot be as described. The Psalmists use the same sense of wrong to cry out to a God they still trust. Augustine uses careful argument to show that God is not the author of evil. These are different tasks. One challenges, one laments and one explains.
A good student of this subject keeps the three tasks separate. A challenge deserves an argument in reply. A lament deserves a listener. An explanation deserves testing for gaps. Confusing them is the root of many painful conversations about suffering.
- Which of the three claims (God is all-powerful, God is wholly good, evil exists) does the Epicurean puzzle put under the most strain?
- Why might a believer find it significant that the Bible contains prayers of complaint?
- What does it mean to say that evil is a privation and not a thing?
- What hidden assumptions does the ancient puzzle make about what a good God would do?
- In which situations do you think an argument is the wrong response to someone who suffers?
- What would you want to know before judging whether the puzzle succeeds?
Examples
The puzzle in a hospital
A woman’s husband dies of cancer after a long illness. At the funeral a relative says that God took him for a reason. The widow replies that either God could have prevented it or he could not, and neither answer comforts her. She has stated the Epicurean puzzle without knowing its name. (A constructed example.)
Habakkuk’s complaint
The prophet Habakkuk watches violence and injustice around him and asks God why he does not act. God does not give a full explanation. He tells the prophet to wait, and the book ends with a statement of trust (Habakkuk 3:17-18). The text keeps complaint and trust side by side.
Augustine and the Manichees
As a young man Augustine thought that if evil exists, something evil must have made it. The Manichean answer was a second power. His later view was that the problem is badly posed, because evil is not a made thing but a damage to made things.
Different perspectives
Catholic
The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that no quick answer to the question of evil exists, and that the whole of Christian faith is the answer. It teaches that God is in no way the cause of evil, and that he permits it because he can draw good from it. It builds on Augustine and on Thomas Aquinas.
Orthodox
Orthodox writers stress that death and corruption are enemies and not part of God’s good plan. They tend to speak less of explaining evil than of Christ defeating it. They agree with Augustine’s central point that God made all things good, though they do not usually follow his later teaching on original sin.
Protestant
Protestants generally stand close to Augustine. The Reformers, especially Luther and Calvin, wrote heavily on his work. Many hold that God is sovereign over all things yet is not the author of sin, and they admit that the full answer is hidden in God’s wisdom.
Philosophical critics
Atheist and agnostic philosophers hold that the puzzle is serious and that traditional replies are not sufficient. Many grant that logical contradiction is hard to prove, and shift to the claim that the amount and kind of evil make God improbable. That is the subject of the third lesson of this module.
Why it matters
The problem of evil is where belief meets pain, and every honest person meets it eventually. Seeing that it is ancient, that Scripture itself voices it, and that Christians have thought hard about it for centuries makes it possible to study it without panic and without cheap answers.
Common misunderstandings
Misunderstanding: Epicurus certainly wrote the argument quoted by Lactantius.
Correction: The earliest record is Lactantius, writing centuries later, and many scholars doubt it reproduces Epicurus’s own words. It is safest to say that the argument is attributed to him.
Misunderstanding: Doubt about God’s goodness in suffering shows a lack of faith.
Correction: The Psalms and the prophets voice exactly this doubt. Scripture treats honest complaint as part of faith, not its opposite, though it also warns against bitter rejection of God.
Misunderstanding: Augustine said evil is only an illusion.
Correction: Augustine never denied that evil is real and that it hurts. He said that evil is a real corruption of good things and not a separate substance made by God.
Knowledge check
What are the three claims at the center of the ancient puzzle?
They are that God is all-powerful, that God is wholly good, and that evil exists. The puzzle says that if God were both able and willing to stop evil, there would be none, so either God lacks power, lacks goodness, or does not exist as described. The task of a response is to show how all three can be held together.
Why should one be careful in saying that Epicurus stated the argument?
The oldest record of the argument is in Lactantius, who wrote about five hundred years after Epicurus. Scholars disagree about whether Lactantius reports Epicurus accurately or a later skeptic. For that reason it is more accurate to say that the argument is traditionally attributed to Epicurus.
How do the Psalms treat the question of evil?
They ask it directly and in prayer. Psalm 13 asks how long God will forget the speaker. Such prayers show that complaint is permitted within faith, and that the biblical writers wanted God to hear their pain. They usually do not give theoretical explanations. They keep addressing God while sorrow remains.
What did Augustine mean by calling evil a privation?
He meant that evil is not a substance God made but a lack or damage in a good thing, as blindness is the lack of sight. This lets him say that everything God made is good while evil is still real and harmful. Critics ask whether the idea explains suffering or only redescribes it.
Think it through
- Have you ever heard someone answer a grieving person with an argument? What would have helped more?
- Which of the three tasks, to challenge, to lament or to explain, is closest to what you are doing as you study this course?
- What do you hope this course will give you, and what are you afraid it might take away?
Independent assignment
State the puzzle three ways
In your own notebook, write about 400 words. First, state the ancient puzzle in your own words in four or five sentences. Second, copy out Psalm 13 from the King James Version and note where it complains and where it trusts. Third, write one paragraph on which of the puzzle’s hidden assumptions you find least secure and why. If you find the puzzle persuasive, say what would need to be true for it to fail. Keep the notebook private.
Further study
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Problem of Evil Read the introduction and the opening sections to see how philosophers set out the problem today.
- Augustine of Hippo, Confessions Read the passages on his struggle with the Manichees and with the origin of evil.
- C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain Read the opening chapter for a popular statement of the problem from a Christian author.
- Psalm 13:1 A lament that begins with ‘How long’ and ends in trust.
- Habakkuk 1:2 The prophet’s complaint that God does not seem to act against violence.