God, Evil, and the Human Good
/Introduction
A theodicy is an explanation of how God and evil can co-exist in the world. In order to build a theodicy, we will first see why there is such a thing as “the problem of evil.” Then we will see how Plantinga’s response to this problem provides useful guideposts in constructing a theodicy. With these guideposts in place, I will argue that one reason for supposedly gratuitous evils is that they are required to realize the human good.
The Logical Problem of Evil
One powerful way to show that a worldview is false is to show that it contains internal contradictions. If, for example, we could show that Buddhism teaches that there are no such things as unified, human selves, but we can show that a real and unified human self is everywhere presupposed by Buddhist teaching, this counts as an internal contradiction. Buddhists are committed to two beliefs that cannot be reconciled together. This is the kind of challenge that the problem of evil poses to Christian theism.
Let us call the person pressing the objection to the Christian the “atheologian.” Now, the first the step the atheologian needs to take to show a contradiction within Christianity is say what two beliefs are supposed to contradict one another. The two beliefs in question are the orthodox view of God and the existence of evil. The next step is to spell out how exactly these beliefs contradict each other. The orthodox view of God is that he is maximally great. That is, he possesses all great-making properties to the greatest degree possible. Among these great making properties are omnipotence and omnibenevolence. By omnipotence, we mean that God has the power to do anything that is possible to be done. Being omnipotent does not mean that God can do what is logically impossible, like make a married bachelor.[1] By omnibenevolence, we mean that God’s nature is fundamentally characterized by love and goodness. As the Apostle John wrote, “God is love.”[2] Richard Swinburne says that God is “morally perfectly good… he always does the morally best action (when there is one), and no morally bad action.”[3] To say that God is omnibenevolent entails some important things about God. Atheist J. L. Mackie writes that “good is opposed to evil in such a way that a good thing always eliminates evil as far as it can.”[4] God, being maximally good, will be necessarily committed to following this principle. However, God is also omnipotent. This means that God, being willing and able, should eliminate all cases of evil. But our everyday experience makes it plain to us that evil exists. Therefore, the Christian is faced with a problem. The dilemma is well expressed by David Hume. Concerning God, Hume writes, “Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?”[5] So the atheologian thinks he has shown that Christianity has an internal contradiction. God and evil cannot coexist, yet Christian teaching says they do. Therefore, Christians must be wrong about their view of God.
Certainly, if we Christians were to tweak our view of God, we could easily make this problem of evil go away. We can get rid of either omnipotence or omnibenevolence and escape the atheologian’s argument. If God is not omnibenevolent, then he will not always remove evil every chance he gets. But this solution fails. First, it contradicts clear biblical teaching. Second, a God who is not omnibenevolent is not worthy of worship. So, perhaps, we can get rid of omnipotence. This has been a more popular option among theologians. For example, Rabbi Harold Kushner says, “I would rather worship a God who is completely good but not totally powerful than a God who is completely powerful but not completely good.”[6] Some Christians could also be accused of making a similar move. The Open Theist movement takes a view of God as less powerful. Specifically, they say God (in at least some cases) could not know neither in advance nor for certain whether some particular evil would occur. Evil is out of his control in a way it is not on other views of God’s foreknowledge.[7] This solution fails, too. If God lacks omnipotence, then God is not maximally great. If not maximally great, then he could not properly be called “God.” So the Christian must find a way to preserve both God’s omnibenevolence and his omnipotence in the face of the existence of evil. Fortunately, Alvin Plantinga has provided a way out.
Plantinga’s Free Will Defense
Plantinga’s defense begins with this central insight: If an agent is free in the libertarian sense, then not even God could determine what she would do.[8] That is, it is logically impossible for God to determine what an agent does and for the agent’s actions to be self-determined.[9] This is not a threat to God’s omnipotence because, as mentioned earlier, being omnipotent just means being able to do whatever is logically possible. Given that this is the case, perhaps the reason that God and evil exist together has to do with human freedom. At least some humans chose to use their freedom for evil instead of good. Add to this thought about free will the idea that humans having free agency is an intrinsically valuable state of affairs. It is better for humans to be free and not automatons. In fact, human freedom has the kind of value that God would consider worth the risk of realizing even if it means some humans might do evil. Thus, this is at least possibly the source of evil in the world. This insight, by itself, does not get the Christian completely out of trouble with the atheologian’s argument. For one, the atheologian might argue that God could have created both free will and a world without evil. But this might not be possible. Perhaps, as Plantinga suggests, all humans (including all non-actual humans) suffer from trans-world depravity.[10] If a being is trans-world depraved, it means there is no possible world in which he does not commit at least one act of evil. Thus, possibly, there is no possible world in which free creatures exist and there is no evil. If this is even possibly right, then the Christian has escaped the logical problem of evil.
Guideposts for a Theodicy
One important aspect of Plantinga’s argument here is that it is a defense, not a theodicy. All he aims to do is show how, possibly, God and evil might co-exist.[11] Plantinga is not arguing that his view is true, only that it is possibly true. If what he said about free will and the kind of restrictions it places on the worlds God could actualize is even possibly true, this means that the Christian is not uttering a contradiction when she affirms that both God and evil exist. But what we are after here is not merely a defense, but a theodicy. We want a true explanation of why God allows evil. Despite the difference in my aim and Plantinga’s, his argument is still useful for a couple of reasons. First, he has turned back the atheologian’s first attempt at refuting the Christian position. The atheologian must now revise his argument and try again. Second, it is likely that something like Plantinga’s account is true. Or, at the very least, certain features of his account are likely true. In spelling out my theodicy, I intend to deal with both these points, but let us first look at the true (and not merely possibly true) features of Plantinga’s free will defense. These will provide the guideposts of my own theodicy.
The first true principle is this:
P1: God can justifiably allow some evil if it realizes some worthwhile good that would not otherwise be possible.
But should we think that P1 is true? To get at that, we first have to be specific about what P1 is committing us to. One idea that believing P1 commits us to is that there at least some goods that cannot be realized without allowing some evil. This is not a new idea. Virtues like courage, compassion, and empathy all require evil in order to be realized. How can one be courageous unless he has some menace to conquer? Or how can we be compassionate unless there is some wrong in need of righting? Another plausible idea is that the presence of good free moral agents requires at least the possibility of evil. It may be that, given a world with more than a handful of people and with genuine opportunity to do evil, all worlds like this would have at least some evil in them. Still further, as Plantinga argues, there is the tremendous good of the Atonement of Jesus which requires human evil as a precondition.[12] I take all of these as sufficient for establishing that some goods require evil to be realized.
Another idea P1 commits us to is that God will allow evil if the good it realizes is worthwhile. In Plantinga’s free will defense, he assumes P1 when he says, “A world containing creatures who are significantly free (and freely perform more good than evil actions) is more valuable, all else being equal, than a world containing no free creatures at all.”[13] To this principle, someone might say that this makes God into a consequentialist of the worst kind. Anything God does is acceptable so long as it gets the right kind of results. Kirk MacGregor writes, “If God permits evils to bring about greater goods, then God operates according to the principle that the ends justify the means, despite that he explicitly denounces this principle as unethical in scripture and punishes humans who act in precisely the same way he presumably does.”[14] One way to respond to this objection is to point out that God’s status as creator gives him a wider range of morally good actions to choose from than his creatures. For example, it would be wrong for a mere human to decide another’s eternal fate. However, a human’s Creator would be within his rights to make such a weighty judgment. Similarly, there is nothing inconsistent in saying that God could act as a consequentialist while simultaneously commanding his creatures to be deontologists or virtue ethicists. The apparent contradiction regarding what counts as right action could be reconciled by an appeal to a deeper story about the nature of the good.[15] But another way to respond to MacGregor is to suggest that he has too narrow a view of the greater good.
MacGregor seems to think that a principle like P1 can only be understood in terms of cold, utilitarian calculation. The variables in the equation do not matter so long as in the end, the good outweighs the bad.[16] But there is another way to understand the “greater good.” For example, we could say that God follows a principle like this: It is always good to create worlds with free creatures. [17] Now, it may be, as Plantinga suggests, also true that no world with free creatures will be devoid of evil. But the deontologist is not primarily concerned with the consequences of an action, but with whether the act is good to do regardless of the consequences. In this case, God is like the man who tells the truth about who is living in his attic when the Nazis knock on the door. Protecting those under his care is important, but the “greater good” is fulfilling one’s duty by telling the truth, despite the consequences. God creates a world of free creatures even though he knows they will commit evil acts because the greater good is to create a world with free creatures. The upshot is that the truth of P1 is compatible with a wide array of ethical accounts. The compatibility derives from the fact that even the supposedly consequence-neutral, normative ethical theorist, like the deontologist, is committed to pursuing the greater good of fulfilling one’s duty instead of settling for the lesser good of happy consequence. The bottom line is that P1 is a likely true principle.
The second true principle is this:
P2: God cannot do the logically impossible.
Not much needs to be said in defense of P2. It is a widely accepted theological principle, even if there are a few Ockhamists who disagree. What is worth pointing out, though, is that there are real limitations on how God relates to evil. He cannot magically make evil go away and preserve the goods that necessitate it.
With these guideposts in mind, let us return to the atheologian’s argument. The logical problem has been turned aside, so the atheologian must regroup and try another tack. William Rowe presents just such an argument. His argument has two premises:
R1: There exist instances of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.
R2: An omniscient, wholly good being would prevent the occurrence of any intense suffering it could, unless it could not do so without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.[18]
From this it follows that “there does not exist an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being.”[19]This argument is logically valid. And R2 is a true principle. Therefore, the Christian must reject R1. However, Rowe has some evidence to present in favor of R1. First is the case of Bambi. The second is the case of Sue. The Bambi case is a hypothetical scenario in which a fawn (Bambi) is slowly burned alive in a forest fire.[20] Even though this is only an imagined scene, we know that cases as bad as or worse than Bambi’s must occur frequently. In the case of Sue, Rowe narrates the true story of a little girl (Sue) who was brutally raped and killed by her mother’s boyfriend.[21] Both cases are meant to show examples evil that are completely senseless, especially cruel, and that God could have easily prevented without “thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.”
Having now laid out the guideposts for a theodicy and the evidential version of the problem of evil, I can now give an argument that shows why God must allow some evils in order for the human good to be possible.
How can Christians give a theodicy in light of Rowe’s argument and the specific cases he presents? The first step is to get clear on what we mean by “evil.” What is meant by the term “evil”? One way to answer is by ostension. We point to Sue and Bambi cases and say, “Here is an example of evil.” But that does not do enough. We need to know what about the Sue and Bambi cases make them evil. Rowe will say that suffering is an intrinsic evil. The Bambi and Sue cases are evil because they involve gratuitous amounts of suffering.[1] But that just pushes the problem back a step. Why is suffering evil? What does it mean to say that suffering is evil? Perhaps Rowe could say that it is just self-evident that suffering is evil; we do not need to provide any explanation because we can just see it is the case. But this response confuses epistemology with ontology. What we want to know is not whether we are justified in taking suffering to be evil, but what makes suffering evil. Here, the naturalist faces a problem. As Mackie says, “Moral properties constitute so odd a cluster of properties and relations that they are most unlikely to have arisen in the course of events without an all-powerful god to create them.”[2] The point here is that there is no worldview neutral way to talk about moral properties. Since evil is a moral property, it can only be meaningfully referred to from within a given worldview. Because the problem of evil is an objection aimed at Christian theism, the term evil must refer to something Christians will recognize as such.
So, then, what is the Christian view of evil? One well accepted definition comes from Augustine. Augustine says, “For evil has no positive nature; but the loss of good has received the name ‘evil.’”[3] In this case, evil is a privation of goodness. On the Christian view, then, evil is not a substance on par with goodness. Christianity is not dualistic in this way. Evil is parasitic on the good. But parasitic in what way? Here Augustine is again helpful. Hick points out that Augustine thought of all God’s creation as good; Augustine “lays the foundation for a Christian naturalism that rejoices in this world… seeks to share it in gratitude to God for His bountiful goodness.”[4] Included in God’s creation is a God given telos. God makes the world and everything in it for a reason so that there is a way the world should function.[5] Augustine thinks that man’s telos is “to enjoy God as the end of all, while he enjoys himself and his friend in God and for God.”[6] Evil occurs
in every case where a man loves for their own sake things which are desirable only as means to an end, and seeks for the sake of something else things which ought to be loved for themselves. For thus, as far as he can, he disturbs in himself the natural order which the eternal law requires us to observe.[7]
It is evil when man acts in a disordered way, when he acts contrary to God’s intention.[8] This principle can be broadened so that evil, generally speaking, can be understood as disorder and malfunction.
With this view of evil in mind, let us now consider the nature of the human good and how it might help shape a theodicy. Scripture teaches us that the good for humans has to do with how God made us. For example, when Jesus was asked whether it was lawful to get a divorce, he appealed to how God made humans to justify his answer.[9] The first chapter of Genesis also shines some light on this topic. In 1:26, we are told that humans are made, male and female, in God’s image and that we are supposed to take dominion over all the earth. The biblical anthropology is very rich and drawing out all that it has to say would take a very long time. But all that needs to be accepted here is that mankind has a telos and that telos includes three dimensions. First, being rightly related to God as his image bearers. Second, being rightly related to other humans in community, and third being rightly related to the earth as its rulers.[10] That this is the biblical view is not a controversial point.
Now I will introduce the principle that is at the heart of my theodicy. Here it is:
T1: For an agent to achieve its telos, it must do so with internal integrity.
What I mean by “internal integrity” must be specified. Achieving one’s telos is not a matter of simply getting certain inputs to generate the desired outputs. In other words, being a good human person is about more than just behaving the right way or doing the right thing. It is about being a certain kind of person. This involves a transformation of the individual from one state to another. This transformation takes place through an individual’s development of character, accomplished by habituation and the practice of the virtues. Part of the human good is that humans achieve it as humans. To see why this is so, we can run a thought experiment. Suppose that very technologically advanced aliens abducted a human named Dale. They implant into Dale’s brain a microchip that will override Dale’s normally disordered desires and give him good desires. The result will be that Dale will now live as an ideal human should. But it seems there is something deficient about Dale’s story. The good for Dale is not merely that he act like a good person, but that he would actually become a good person on his own volition. It would be better if Dale would live as good person, not because he was made to, but because he wanted to and thus, through a slow and difficult process, began forming his character to become a good person. The end matters, but so do the means to the end. C. S. Lewis makes a similar point in the Problem of Pain. Lewis points out that in the game of chess
...you can make certain arbitrary concessions to your opponent, which stand to the ordinary rules of the game as miracles stand to the laws of nature. You can deprive yourself of a castle, or allow the other man sometimes to take back a move made inadvertently. But if you conceded everything that at any moment happened to suit him - if all his moves were revocable and if all your pieces disappeared whenever their position on the board was not to his liking - then you could not have a game at all.
There is an analogy between the integrity of a chess game and the integrity of the human pursuit of their good. Humans must "play the game" on their own if winning is going to mean anything. Humans as humans must achieve their good; there is no other possible way it could be. This is what I mean by “internal integrity.” For an agent to achieve its telos, it cannot be overridden by forces outside itself; it must pursue its telos by its own volition.
Another idea implicit in the notion of internal integrity is the reality of libertarian free will. This means our choices are, at bottom, self-determined and not determined by God. God is restricted by what libertarian agents would choose to do.[11] But what reason is there to think that we actually have this power? While this is not the place to develop a full argument, I will give at least one piece of evidence. Libertarian freedom is the commonsense view. We navigate our everyday lives under the assumption that we determine what we will do. Of course, our determinative powers are limited. For instance, I cannot will that I teleport to Mars and have it happen. But within the range of my natural powers (like the power to move my arm or not), I can will to do or not do certain things. It is only when we operate according to this presupposition that things like deliberation or weighing our options make sense. We deliberate because we think we will make an important choice, not that someone else has already made the choice for us. So we should accept that we really have libertarian freedom or pay the very high cost of saying our commonsense experience is completely mistaken.
Something very important follows from T1 and biblical view of the human good that will allow us to say something about Sue’s case. Given that the human good includes relations with other humans, it follows that God must, as a general policy, not intervene in human interactions. If he were to intervene too often, he would compromise humanity’s internal integrity and short circuit our ability to achieve our telos. And, given the reality of libertarian freedom, sometimes humans may do things God does not want them to do. All things considered, it is better for humans for God to allow us autonomy and the possibility of achieving our good, even if this means that we inflict terrible evils on one another.
In addition to this, there is a sense in which any case of human evil is the fault of all humans collectively. We have a God-given responsibility to one another that goes unmet when we allow each other to fall into sin. I do not mean to say that you or I as individuals are directly responsible somehow for the abuse of Sue. What I mean is that humanity in general is responsible. If I work for Acme Dog Food Company as a customer service representative and my company ships rancid dog food that poisons thousands of dogs, there’s a sense in which I am responsible for that even though I did not directly cause it. The degree of culpability is not the same as Jim's, the Quality Assurance Manager, but I am a part of the community that poisoned the dogs and that makes me responsible at some level. We can also see this idea at work in the context of citizens and nations. When a country commits an injustice, there is a sense in which each citizen is responsible even if they did not directly contribute to the injustice. A citizen may not be the one doing the bayonetting, but they participate in a society that makes it possible. Further, any given citizen could have done more to prevent it. The extent to which he did not do what he could to prevent it, he has failed. Here another thought. Aristotle taught us that being a truly virtuous person is impossible to do on our own. We must live in the right kind of society - a society aimed at realizing the human good. Here Lewis is again helpful. In Mere Christianity, Lewis suggests that the metaphor of a fleet of ships on a voyage toward a particular destination captures the essence of the moral life: "The voyage will be a success only, in the first place, if the ships do not collide and get in one another’s way; and, secondly, if each ship is seaworthy and has her engines in good order." Later, Lewis adds a third part: the fleet must have a specific destination if the voyage is to be successful. Lewis concludes,
Morality, then, seems to be concerned with three things. Firstly, with fair play and harmony between individuals. Secondly, with what might be called tidying up or harmonising the things inside each individual. Thirdly, with the general purpose of human life as a whole: what man was made for: what course the whole fleet ought to be on: what tune the conductor of the band wants it to play.
In our secular society, it often seems as the only real moral value is the first thing, staying out each other's way. So, on first glance, it may seem silly to think that we are somehow and to some degree responsible for Sue's abuse. Now, it ought to be made clear that I do not intend to say all of us are guilty of the same thing as Sue's abuser. That is obviously false. But, we humans are guilty of something with respect to Sue. To return to Lewis's metaphor: We have allowed other ships on the voyage to fall into severe disrepair and we have allowed other ships to wander off course. We can use the ideas of Aristotle to express the same concern. Aristotle thought part of being truly human is cultivating a society of excellence, a society where everyone practices the virtues. Cultivating this kind of society is the function of every human person, and it is a function that no one fulfills as fully as they ought. We fail both by not maximizing the virtue in ourselves and by not properly attending to the formation of virtue in others. In the sense that we all fail in this way is the sense in which we are all responsible for the creation of abusers - it is in this sense all of us humans have failed Sue. This does not lessen the seriousness of the abuser’s error, but it does show that we are all in this together and that we all have a responsibility to cultivate excellence in one another.
This is especially true in cases like Sue’s. If we consider the man who killed Sue, we will likely see a person who has a warped and distorted character (his ship is out of order and off course). Likely, this state of affairs is not solely the man’s fault. We know that abusers were often abused themselves; perhaps that is the case here. This chain of abuse could expand exponentially as we consider all the people who, in one way or another, contributed to the formation of Sue’s murderer into the kind of person who would rape and kill a little girl. Additionally, all of us humans fail to care for each other as we ought and so we create, together, the environment where acts like Sue’s murder can happen. Sue’s case is indicator not only of her killer’s depravity, but the depravity of humanity in general. To be clear, Sue's abuser still had the freedom to do otherwise and so he is still culpable for Sue's abuse. But, there is a sense in which humans in general are responsible for bringing about a world in which abusers exist.
Here is a possible objection. Even in the best case scenarios, some people will still choose to do evil. Even if humanity had fulfilled its duty and given Sue's abuser the right kind of care and made every effort to keep him on course, he could still choose to be an abuser. Now, why exactly might this be a problem for my account? The objector might say, "It is a problem because you have been saying that humans in general are responsible for the abuse of Sue. If our actions do not determine her abuser's actions, then we cannot be responsible. That is the problem." In response, I want to first highlight and recall a distinction I made earlier. We can offer to repair a person's ship and tell him where to go, but making the repairs and plotting the course are, in the end, up to him. This is true . We can only be responsible for cultivating an environment and offering direction, we cannot be responsible for what people do with those things. In the case of Sue's abuse, we are, at best, responsible for creating a context that made the abuse possible and not for the abuse itself. But this does not defeat my account because humans are still, albeit indirectly, responsible for Sue's abuse. That is, humanity is responsible for creating the environment in which abuse can take place.
That said, I want to give another caveat. Even though the idea of the human good and internal integrity might help us make sense of why God allows even terrible evils as a general rule, we should exercise epistemic humility here. I do not mean to suggest that this is the reason God allowed Sue’s case. Alston is right; in most cases we cannot know what the actual reason is for God allowing an evil to occur. But we can make some “theodical suggestions.”[12]
But how can T1 and the biblical notion of the human good help us make sense of a case like Bambi’s? Here we must remember that the human good includes care of the earth. Perhaps God’s intention for human care of the earth is that we were so meticulous that we would prevent cases like Bambi’s from ever occurring. At first, this might seem absurd, but that may be only because we humans have strayed so far from God’s intention for us. In a world in which every human properly exercised his or her responsibility to care for God’s creation, I suspect there would be vastly fewer Bambi-like cases. And, once humans actually achieved dominion on the earth, perhaps no Bambi-like cases would ever occur. So part of the answer for why there are Bambi-like cases may be that humans have failed in their responsibility as care-givers of the earth. Another part of the answer comes directly from Scripture. Paul says that nature itself is “subject to frustration”[13] because “humanity’s fall into sin marred the ‘goodness’ of God’s creation.”[14] Human sin, then is the cause of natural evil. And, given that the welfare of the earth is so closely connected with the human telos, God cannot, as a general rule, intervene in nature without compromising the internal integrity of humanity. Humans, if we ever hope to be what God intends, must willingly take on their responsibility as caretakers of the earth.
If what I have said is correct, then God has good reason to allow Bambi and Sue cases. This undermines Rowe’s R1 and thus his argument no longer goes through. But before moving to the conclusion, let me consider two objections.
First, the atheologian might say, “All this talk of the human good and human responsibility is very noble, but couldn't have God lessened the suffering of both Bambi and Sue and not compromise the internal integrity of humanity?” This objection presses on an ambiguity in my argument, specifically on the idea that God could not intervene as a “general rule.” If the rule is generally applied, then there is no reason God could not intervene in any particular case. But from this it also follows that God could intervene in Sue or Bambi’s case and not compromise human integrity. No particular case is essential to human integrity. However, if God intervenes too much, then human integrity will be compromised. So at least some evils must still be allowed. We can reason that those evils that occur must be allowed or else human integrity would be compromised.[15] So if God prevented Sue’s case or a Bambi-like case from occurring, there would be some evil equally bad or worse he would have to allow somewhere else. Therefore, this objection does not defeat the argument.
Second, the atheologian might object because, he says, I have described a morally hopeless situation. Humans, as they are now, will never develop to the point where we would prevent Sue and Bambi cases. A long list of gross human failures even from the past thirty days could be easily produced. If T1 is right, then the hope of ever realizing a just world is absurd. We are like a terminally ill cancer patient who suffers tremendous pain and who has no chance of recovery. Given the hopelessness of the situation, the only good we can reasonably hope for is that doctor would give us some drug to deaden the pain. So God should realize that since humans are in such a sad state, human integrity is not worth the suffering because it will never be realized. What is the point of allowing cases like Sue’s if it will never amount to anything? But, on this point the atheologian is mistaken. We Christians have yet more to say. Our plight is not hopeless because God himself has become one of us. God has done something dramatic and heroic on the part of creatures like Bambi, even more so for humans like Sue. In the person of Jesus, God has given humanity a way to be truly human and a way to end human and animal suffering. Through Jesus, God has acted to overcome human sin in a way that does not compromise the internal integrity of humanity because Jesus is fully human. And since Jesus is incarnate and fully human, he makes a way for humans to overcome the problem of sin as humans. Apart from him, humans are unable to achieve our God given telos. But with him, we can become what God intends. In every way, Jesus has redeemed humanity from our sin.
Conclusion
In this essay, we have seen a promising way for Christians to respond to the problem of evil. We saw that God can allow some evil if it realizes a worthwhile good and that he is limited by what is logically possible. Further, we saw that allowing humans autonomy to achieve their good is worthwhile and this entails that God cannot, as a general rule, intervene in areas of human responsibility. Finally, we saw that God, in Jesus, has acted in a way to solve the problem of evil while simultaneously preserving human integrity.
Notes
[1] Rowe. 3.
[2] J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism : Arguments for and against the Existence of God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982). 115.
[3] Augustine, The City of God, XI, CHAP. 9. http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120111.htm
[4] John Hick, Evil and the God of Love, 2d ed. (London: Macmillan, 1977). 45.
[5]See Etienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of Saint Augustine (New York: Octagon Books, 1983). 132.
[6] Augustine, Contra Faustum, Book 22, chapter 78.
[7] Augustine, Contra Faustum, Book 22, chapter 78.
[8] A similar point is made by N.T. Wright in N. T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2006). Kindle location 343. He says that evil is the OT is understood as “idolatry” or “dehumanization.” This is consistent with the idea that evil is disorder or malfunction.
[9] See Matt 19-1-6.
[10] These three relations are inspired by a similar list mentioned in John Randall Sachs, The Christian Vision of Humanity : Basic Christian Anthropology, Zacchaeus Studies Theology (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991). 17.
[11] Sometimes, defenders of libertarian freedom are accused of improperly limiting God. But this accusation is wrong for two reasons. First, God is still fully omnipotent on the libertarian view. God can do whatever is logically possible for him to do. Second, to say that God chose to create agents with libertarian freedom does not mean that God has fewer options open to him at all. The opposite is true. The defender of libertarian freedom thinks that God could have determined everything; that is his prerogative. However, the defender also thinks God has the power to create finite, self-determining creatures. God has more options and not less on this view. It is the compatibilist that is, arguably, artificially limiting God’s power.
[12] William Alston, "The Inductive Argument from Evil," in The Evidential Argument from Evil, ed. Daniel Howard-Snyder(Bloomington, ID.: Indiana University Press, 1996).103.
[13] Romans 8:22
[14] Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI.: Eerdmans, 1996). 515.
[15] This response is inspired by a similar discussion in David Baggett and Walls Jerry L., Good God : The Theistic Foundations of Morality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). 144. Here they discuss an analogy from Peter van Inwagen aimed at showing that if God intervenes too much, he will defeat the law like regularity in a world.
[1] Thomas Aquinas said something similar: “everything that does not imply a contradiction in terms, is numbered amongst those possible things, in respect of which God is called omnipotent: whereas whatever implies contradiction does not come within the scope of divine omnipotence, because it cannot have the aspect of possibility.” ST I Q 25 A 3. Available here: http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1025.htm
[2] 1 John 4:8.
[3] Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism, Rev. ed., Clarendon Library of Logic and Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). 184.
[4] J. L. Mackie, “Evil and Omnipotence,” in The Problem of Evil, ed. Marilyn McCord Adams and Robert Merrihew Adams (Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). 26.
[5] http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4583/4583-h/4583-h.htm#chap10
[6] Sarah Price Brown, “Q & a with Rabbi Harold S. Kushner,” Jewish Journal 2006.
[7] It is important to add here that many, if not most, Open Theists would not see their position as weakening of God’s omnipotence. God still has the power to do whatever is possible. But, on their view, it is not possible to know the truth of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom in advance. Thus, God still is able to do whatever is logically possible to do. Further, Open Theism is often not a response to the problem of evil, but to problems created by human libertarian freedom and certain perceived problems with God’s knowing some agent’s action in advance and that agent being genuinely free with respect to that action. There is a good discussion of these issues in Jerry L. Walls’ Hell: The Logic of Damnation, Library of Religious Philosophy (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992). 33-56.
[8] Alvin Plantinga, “God, Evil, and the Metaphysics of Freedom,” in Oxford Readings in Philosophy, ed. Marilyn McCord Adams and Robert Merrihew Adams (Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). 85.
[9] This is similar to the definition of libertarian free will offered by Bruce R. Reichenbach, Evil and a Good God (New York: Fordham University Press, 1982). 57. Reichenbach takes his definition from Anthony Flew.
[10] Plantinga. 101.
[11] If this were all Christians could say about the existence of God, that possibly he exists, Christian apologetics would be in a sad state. However, Plantinga’s free will defense provides a way out of the logical problem of evil so that Christians can now present a positive and cumulative case for the truth of Christianity.
[12] Alvin Plantinga, “Supralapsarianism, or ‘O Felix Culpa’,” in Christian Faith and the Problem of Evil, ed. Peter van Inwagen and Dean Zimmerman (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004).
[13] Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977). Kindle location 337.
[14] Kirk R. MacGregor, “The Existence and Irrelevance of Gratuitous Evil,” Philosophia Christi 14, no. 1 (2012). 169.
[15] My own view would be that God is not really committed to a particular normative ethical theory. I think something like natural law theory is true. Whatever God does is good because God always acts in the appropriate way given the nature of the object he acts upon and his relation to that object.
[16] MacGregor, “The Existence and Irrelevance of Gratuitous Evil.” See especially his discussion on pages 170-171.
[17] MacGregor takes a similar view in the end. He wants to defend the idea that there are gratuitous evils (he wants to show that Rowe’s second premise is false), but that these pose no threat to the rationality of the theist’s position. The basic thought is that, following Augustine, evil is a privation. Because everything God creates is less than God, “it is logically impossible for God to create a world without evil,” says MacGregor. In this case, evils, even especially heinous ones, are not part of some very tight plan according to which, if a person refrained from a gratuitously evil act, some very great good would be lost. So some acts of evil happen just because an agent willed it to happen and no other reason. In some ways, I am inclined to agree with MacGregor on this point. However, I think it is a mistake to call these evils “gratuitous.” God does have some greater goods in view when he allows them. At least one would be the greater good of respecting human freedom. MacGregor may be right when he says that certain evil acts are not essential to God’s plan, but they might still be essential to the integrity of human autonomy. This does not need to be spelled out in terms of consequentialism. Perhaps God follows the maxim: It is good to respect human freedom without considering the consequences. In that case, the greater good is following the maxim instead of intervening.
[18] William Rowe, “The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism” in The Evidential Argument from Evil, ed. Daniel Howard-Snyder (Bloomington, ID.: Indiana University Press, 1996). 2.
[19] Ibid. 2.
[20] Ibid. 4.
[21] Rowe, William L. 1988. “Evil and Theodicy,” Philosophical Topics 16: 119-32.
