1. PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
The PROBLEM OF EVIL
PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
IF THERE IS A GOD, WHY DO PEOPLE SUFFER?

2. inTRODUCTION
Evil is one of the strongest objections to the existence of God.
Is there any kind of answer to human suffering, other than the reality that God neglects to stop it, or at least doesn't’t care about humans?
What we need, as human beings, is an answer that speaks to our suffering, not a theoretical answer.
Moral evil: evil done as a result of human choices.
Natural evil: an evil that arises in nature with reference to human agency.

3. The problem of evil defined
If God is omnipotent, he is able to end evil.
If God is benevolent, he would want to end evil.
But evil exists.
Therefore, God is not all-powerful, or not all-loving, or both.
In ancient times, the inconsistent triad was posed by Epicurus. David Hume has returned to this idea.
Inconsistent Triad
Evil exists
God is omnipotent (all powerful)
God is benevolent (all loving)
Inconsistent triad: God is all powerful so he could prevent evil. God is all loving so he would want to prevent evil, yet evil exists. How can all three claims be true?

4. The Logical Problem of Evil
The inconsistent triad is not an objection to any kind of God.
If you believe in a God that created the universe but shows no further interest, this objection wouldn’t work.
Aristotle’s self-regarding God is indifferent to human suffering.
It is really only a problem with Abrahamic faiths, particularly Christianity, because God is bound up with his creation.
Inconsistent triad: God is all powerful so he could prevent evil. God is all loving so he would want to prevent evil, yet evil exists. How can all three claims be true.

5. Responses to the Problem 1
One defense line is that evil is not real.
The Church of Christ Scientist, founded by Mary Baker Eddy ( ) argues that evil is an illusion.
NOT considered to be Christian by the World Council of Churches.
If I experience a pain that is a figment of my imagination, it is still a pain. The cause of it might be unreal, but the pain is real.
The Bible presents evil as brutally real (OT: full of war, famine, massacres, murder, etc. NT: suffering of Jesus which is central to the faith)
If the suffering of Jesus were an illusion, his death cant possibly offer redemption.

6. Responses to the Problem 2
Other responses are trivial, the most common of these is the idea that we need the evil to see the good.
It is morally inadequate, and speaks nothing to the victim.
An ideal observer might look down and appreciate the picture, noting the contrasts, but this isn’t how evil is experienced by those that suffer.
To say that Jews needed to suffer and die during WW2 so good could grow out of their suffering is grossly cruel, particularly because they don’t get to experience the good.
DZ Phillips ( ) said this response actually adds to the evil in the world.

7. Is it possible to defend God in the face of evil?
Responses to the Problem 3
Some theologians argue that what Jesus shows is:
That God does not remove suffering
But he will never desert humanity in their suffering.
Hans Kung argued that God suffering and dying on the cross was so he could look a suffering humanity in the face.
This might be an important religious truth about how God relates to suffering world.
But ultimately it does not answer the question: why does God allow it in the first place?
Is it possible to defend God in the face of evil?

8. The Theodicy of Augustine- Sorry!
Augustine converted to Christianity in 387AD and adopted the view that the universe was made good.
“God saw everything he had made, and indeed, it was very good.”- Genesis 1:31
He believed that world was good, but not in the same way as the goodness of God. It was good in it’s own way. Some things can be better than others because they have more capabilities.
Therefore Augustine determined that evil must be the going wrong of something itself made good.
Theodicy: an attempt to justify the goodness of God given the fact of evil.
Heresy: an opinion, viewpoint or practice at variance with established teaching, particularly of the Church or religion.
Gnosticism: a prominent heretical movement of the 2nd century Christian church, partly of pre-christian origins.

9. By the trinity, which is supremely and equally and unchangeably good, all things were created. These things are not equally, supremely and unchangeably good, but they remain good, even taken separately. Taken together, they are very good, because they make up the universe in all its wonderful order and beauty.
In the universe, even that which we call evil, when it is regulated and put in its own place, only enhances our admiration of the good: for we enjoy and value the good more when we compare it with the evil. For almighty God, who, as even the heathens admit, has supreme powers over all things, being Himself supremely good, would never permit the existence of anything evil among what he has made, unless through his omnipotence and goodness that he could create good even from evil.
For what is that which we call evil but the absence of good? In the bodies of animals, diseases and wounds means nothing except the absence of health. When a cure is achieved, that does not mean that the evils - namely, the diseases and wounds - go away from the body and live elsewhere. They completely cease to exist; for the wound or disease is not a substance, but a defect in the fleshy substance. The flesh itself is a substance, and therefore something good, of which those evils – that is, privations of that good we call health – are accidents. In exactly the same way, what are called vices in the soul are nothing by privations of natural good.
Augustine: enchiridion 10-12

10. The Theodicy of Augustine- Original perfection
Augustine therefore suggested that evil is the deprivation in something good.
He is NOT denying the reality of evil.
Father Herbert McCabe: nothing in the wrong place is just as real as something in the wrong place.
For example: Hitler was good insofar that he was a human being. The evil came when he became less than what a good human being could become.
Augustine’s argument is that even a sinful human being- because they are human- is better than a mere puppet.
Theodicy: an attempt to justify the goodness of God given the fact of evil.
Heresy: an opinion, viewpoint or practice at variance with established teaching, particularly of the Church or religion.
Gnosticism: a prominent heretical movement of the 2nd century Christian church, partly of pre-christian origins.

11. The Theodicy of Augustine- The Fall
Augustine focuses on to events to explain the evil in the world:
The fall of the angels
The fall of man.
Some angels led by Lucifer, chose to reject God. They introduced the evil of denying God and fell into hell.
Later, Adam and Eve chose to reject God’s command and as a result were banished from the Garden of Eden and suffered.
Soul-Deciding Theodicy: any theodicy, such as Augustine, which sees evil as a test of goodness and faithfulness to God.

12. The Theodicy of Augustine- The Fall
Augustine believes the punishment continues through history for all generations. Therefore evil is either the result of sin or the punishment for sin.
We are all punished because all humankind was present in the loins of Adam. Natural evil is a result of original sin because it caused disorder in the universe.
God does not stop loving us despite our wickedness, but offers redemption through Jesus.
Soul-Deciding Theodicy: any theodicy, such as Augustine, which sees evil as a test of goodness and faithfulness to God.

13. The Theodicy of Augustine- Free Will
The concept of will was really important for Augustine.
This is the idea that human beings can choose what they do, and that they can know the wrong thing and still choose to do it.
Love of others, and love of God, is not sincere unless it is freely given.
Augustine believes that a world with the evil that follows from free will is better than a world without either.
He also defends God’s goodness: the responsibility for evil is not the consequence of any choice by God.
Soul-Deciding Theodicy: any theodicy, such as Augustine, which sees evil as a test of goodness and faithfulness to God.

14. But God, even in the bounty of his goodness, did not shrink from creating even that creature whom he foreknew would not merely sin, but would persist in willing to sin. For a runaway horse is better than a stone that stays in the right place only because it has no movement or perception of its own; and in the same way, a creature than sins by free will is more excellent than one that does not sin only because it has no free will.
-St Augustine: on Free Choice of the Will Trans. Thomas Williams (1993), p.81

15. The Theodicy of Augustine- Free Will
J.L. Mackie questioned this idea. He said that God could make creatures of free will, but with good character so he knew they would make the right choices.
This objection to this is that although people would feel free, they wouldn’t actually be free, particularly not in choosing a relationship with God, which is the one that really matters.
Omnipotence: literally “all-powerful”. In relation to God, this is understood as being able to perform any possible action.

16. Objections to Augustine 1
Augustine depends on a very literal interpretation of reading of Scripture.
He also assumes the theory of homonculi (the ancient belief that men contained, in his sexual organs, large numbers of little people). Since this is not correct, we were not present at Eden.
Therefore, it is inconceivable that a loving God would punish every human being for someone else’s actions.
Modern theologians often use the story of the Fall as an inclination that all human beings get thing wrong.

17. Objections to Augustine 2
If creation were really made perfectly, then it wouldn’t have been able to go wrong in the first place.
If hell was created as a place to send the wicked, this suggest that God built in to the universe not only imperfection, but a place that has nothing good about it.

18. Objections to Augustine 3
Does it make sense to describe a stone as good?
It is the mind that values things, but the stone has no mind and therefore, exists.
To compare a stone to a horse is to compare things are not a like. A good horse is one that functions well. A stone just exists, so what is he actually comparing?
Even in Genesis, it says that God found his creation to be good. The goodness is in the mind of God, it is not intrinsic to the thing.

19. Objections to Augustine 4
Augustine is inconsistent in his free will defense.
In Book 1 he argues that the responsibility for an action lies with the person who did it.
In Book 3, he talks about the wretched condition of human beings, suggesting we cannot overcome this because we are ignorant. How, then, can we make informed choices and be held responsible for them?
Furthermore, is it right to punish people for ignorance? Without knowledge or consent, you cannot be justly punished for wrong doing.

20. Objections to Augustine 4
Neither condition, whether knowledge or consent, works in relation to Adam’s sin.
If he sinned because he is ignorant, how is it his fault?
If we are not responsible for our ignorance, then any punishment would be cruel.
Augustine’s view on predestination further weakens the argument. Although he is stating that God already knows who goes to heaven and hell, rather than chooses, it certainly weakens the argument. Does God really punish people for eternity based on ignorance, or an incapability of escaping their wretched condition?

21. Coming up…. Soul making theodicies: Irenaeus reaching divine likeness
John Hicks version of Irenaean theodicy
Richard swinburne and didactic evil
D.Z. Philips

22. St Irenaeus Born early second century Almost certainly of Greek origin
From a Christian family
Most of his adult life was spent as a bishop and priest
In recent years, there’s been a revival of interest in Irenaean theodicy
the emphasis on these theologies is on soul-making: the idea that there is evil in the world to provide opportunities for people to develop in goodness and character.

23. St Irenaeus
Genesis 1:26
“let us make man in our image, according to our likeness.”
We are made in God’s image, but need to grow into God’s likeness.
Irenaeus does not treat Adam and Eve’s disobedience as a catastrophe. He treats it as moral immaturity, similar to when a child ignores a simple instruction.
He does not have a sense of Original Sin, as found in later writers, like Augustine.
Soul-Deciding Theodicy: any theodicy, such as that of Augustine, which sees evil as a test of goodness and faithfulness to God.
Soul-Making Theodicy: any theodicy that believes evil in the world serves a purpose.

24. St Irenaeus
God sends evil to help us. We learn through experience. Jonah is a brilliant example of learning repentance.
Without evils like death and suffering, we would not learn the need for goodness or repentance.
If everything required no effort, there would be no virtues. We only realise the value of things that have come difficultly to us, things of value don’t come to us easily.
We need to allow God to make his world as he chooses, and that requires us developing patience and understanding.
Soul-Deciding Theodicy: any theodicy, such as that of Augustine, which sees evil as a test of goodness and faithfulness to God.
Soul-Making Theodicy: any theodicy that believes evil in the world serves a purpose.

25. Against Heresies: IV. Xxxix. 2
You do not make God: God makes you. As God’s workmanship, you should wait for the hand of your Maker who makes everything in his time. For yourself, your creation is being carried out. Offer to God your heart in a soft and mouldable state, preserving the form in which the Creator first made you. Keep yourself moist so you do not become too hard for his fingers to work. By keeping this structure, you will rise to perfection, for your moist clay is hidden by God’s workmanship. His hand fashioned your being. He will cover you on the inside and outside with the purest silver and gold. He will adorn you so well that ‘the King himself will take pleasure in your beauty.’ But, if you let yourself be hardened, then you reject the work of his skill. Your ingratitude, ignoring his goodness in creating you human, will mean you have lost his work on you, and with this, you will lose your life.
Against Heresies: IV. Xxxix. 2

26. St Irenaeus
What Ireneaus puts into balance is the free will of humanity together with the working of God. These two things are essential to salvation.
He completely avoids and rejects Pelagianism that we can ever be worthy of salvation based on our own efforts.
He suggests a continuation of soul-making into the next life (developed by Hick) but there is no doubt that those that reject God will be damned. Hell is for those who don’t cooperate with God’s plan.
Pelagianism: a heresy from the fifth century, named after Pelagius. The heresy denies Original Sin and believes that we attain heaven by our own unaided efforts- we do not depend on God.

28. John Hick on Irenaean Theodicy
John Hick developed the idea of soul making in Evil and the God of Love, and spells out the implications.
Central to Hick’s theory is the place of genuine freedom. If we are to be genuinely free to make real choices, there must also be real consequences.
He said the God created an epistemic distance: a gap in knowledge between us and God, to allow us to reach our own rational conclusions.
He asks what the world would be like if it was not like ours, with its pain and concludes that it would leave little room for true human life.
What would be the point of such a life? More importantly we would not be able to be transformed into God’s likeness.

29. John Hick on Irenaean Theodicy- Instrumental Good
Underlying his theory is the belief that something’s goodness may depend very much on it’s purpose.
A world with no possibility of pain would be a good world, but it would not be a good world for making us better people, or soul-making.
Ultimately, the world as it is, is instrumentally good- when something is good for something. E.g. a carving knife is good for carving. So the world obtains it’s goodness from how suited to purpose it is.
This view therefore avoids Augustine’s claims that the goodness of something is intrinsic.
However, it is still not easy to argue that all evil serves or could serve a good purpose.
Dysteleological evil: something that serves no purpose. Hick does acknowledge this, despite his own theodicy.

30. John Hick on Irenaean Theodicy- universal salvation
Hick disagreed with Irenaeus on the issue of salvation.
For Hick, hell was part of the problem of evil. If evil exists to produce good, hell serves no purpose- it is simply pain and punishment.
Hick takes the view that hell is essentially purgatorial- a place of temporary suffering and death leads to further opportunities for soul-making.
One strength of this view is that it fits the idea of God as all-loving and merciful.
However, if everyone is eventually going to choose God for eternity, what was the point of free will in the first place?
Dysteleological evil continues to be a problem as Hick provides no explanation for this, aside from hope.
Dysteleological evil: something that serves no purpose. Hick does acknowledge this, despite his own theodicy.

31. rICHARD sWINBURNE
Richard Swinburne offers one of the most controversial modern theodicies.
Its basic premise is that natural evil is a precondition of moral evil. He argued that natural evil is logically necessary for people to know how to create and prevent evil.
He states that we need this knowledge if we are to have a genuine choice between good and evil.
There are 7 stages to his argument.

32. rICHARD sWINBURNE and didactic evil
People gain knowledge by instruction from present events about what will happen in the future.
If people are knowingly to bring about or prevent certain events, they must understand that consequences follow from their actions.
People only know that certain actions have bad consequences if they have previous knowledge of those consequences.
We can only know about these bad consequences if others have suffered them before.
For any evil act, there must have been a first instance. The first murderer did not know the consequences of his actions from seeing someone else murdered.
Therefore the first murderer must have seen or heard of this action killing people, to gain knowledge of the consequence.
There have been many natural evils for us to know the range of possible evils, and many instances of these to give us sufficient instructive knowledge.

33. rICHARD sWINBURNE and didactic evil
By God allowing a wide range of natural evils, he is providing opportunities for people to exercise responsibilities. Only by allowing great horrors is he able to give us the gift of true freedom.
Many would argue that atrocities like Auschwitz or Hiroshima are just too big to justify God.
“What in effect the objection is asking is that a God should make a toy-world, a world where things matter, but not very much; where we can choose and our choices can make a small difference, but the real choices remain God’s. For he simply would not allow us the choice of doing real harm, or through our negligence allowing real harm to occur. He would be like the over-protective parent who will not let his child out of sight for a moment.”
Swinburne: The existence of God, (1978), pp

34. Objection 1: God of Love? Objection 2: Justice?
Where is the God of love and justice?
God is seen as a teacher of truths, providing unlimited lessons in the possibility of evil.
Could we defend a part who let his child play on the railway line in order to learn that is is dangerous?
We would probably argue that this is negligent, yet Swinburne uses this as a defense of God.
Objection 2: Justice?
If the purpose of evil is to teach us lessons, where is the justice is people still have not learned and still cause great evils?

35. Objection 3: what about the victim?
Does this theodicy provide an answer which has to be given to the victim?
As noted already, suffering is not an intellectual puzzle that needs to be solved, but is sometihng that has to be experienced.
In Swinburne’s world view, the victim has suffered the evil so that others can learn their responsibilities, and he maintains that the worst evil of all would be for evil to have no use.
This seems cold and offers nothing comforting to an Auschwitz prisoner- is she supposed to feel comforted that she is “of use”?

36. Objection 4: human brain
He seems to underestimate the capability of the human brain to extrapolate from experience. I do not need to see a person’s skill crushed by a rock to know how to end a human life. I could see that breaking an egg damages it, therefore hazard a guess that a human’s skill might work in a similar fashion.

37. Objection 4: death
Swinburne argues that God shows mercy to people by giving them death when suffering becomes too great. That does not lesson the suffering before unconsciousness intervened, nor does death follow every type of acute suffering. Grief or other types of mental anguish can last a lifetime.