“The Problem of Evil” Debate: and the winner is ...

Sadly, the debate in the discussion of the preceding post has descended to personal attacks, perceived personal attacks, and recriminations. My goal is to maintain a higher level of mutual personal respect on this site, especially when the conversation is between believers and skeptics. Perhaps the fault is mine for offering the quadrilemma of Epicurus for discussion. The issue easily becomes an emotional one, it seems.

I appreciate many of the arguments offered by the theists who commented. Many of them have merit. But at the risk of alienating my believing friends (something I seem to be doing a lot lately!), I must declare myself on the side of the skeptics here. If I had to choose a winner, it would be Psiloiordinary, and the skeptics who joined him. Of course, I disagree with where their arguments lead them. I am solidly in the theist camp. But the tone of some of my fellow theists on this topic, their dismissiveness of the problem, their lack of humility distress me. The problem of evil is, in my view, a significant challenge to theism, one that has lacked a satisfactory answer. Christians often object to theodicy itself (that is, the felt need to defend God), as a pointless, even presumptuous endeavor. “Who do we think we are to sit in judgment of God and his actions?” they ask. I’ve never accepted such an approach. It presumes that, though the Creator made us rational and moral beings, he expects that we will not use these faculties in our response to him. No, for me the problem of evil is a very real problem, one that cannot be dealt with easily. We owe it to a world of skeptics to offer our best answers with a high level of humility.

Many who have thought long and hard on this problem have come to similar conclusions. Because the problem of evil is a real problem to me, and to my faith, I have read a number of books on the subject, including The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis, Unspeakable by Os Guinness, The Doors of the Sea by David Bentley Hart (which should be required reading by all who would engage in this debate!), and Is God to Blame by Gregory Boyd (which comes the closest to my own views). (I've also read the challenges of Richard Dawkins, and other atheists on the subject.) For the most part, the Christian authors above display a healthy tentativeness in their approach, and a humility in their tone befitting the issue at hand. There are no easy answers.


Having said that, I now propose to boldly lay out my own views on the problem of evil. I addressed these views briefly a year ago in a series of posts on this site. I will now resubmit them with more detail and elaboration. I will do this in a new series of posts. I will not defend or debate my thoughts as I present them. If readers have questions for clarification, I will be happy to respond. I will deal with reader objections only after I have finished the series. Fair enough?

I will begin shortly at an unlikely starting point: Jesus’ radical teachings in the Sermon on the Mount. Stay tuned ....

POST #8: Theodicy, Standard Christian Arguments

When confronted with the horrible evil of sin and sin’s consequences, rather than launching into an angry diatribe on the injustices of God, or conversely, launching into a defense of the justice of God, we are told that Aaron simply “held his peace” (Leviticus 10:3). For many Jews and Christians, the only appropriate response to the horrors of evil in a universe created and governed by a good, loving, and just God is not to respond at all. They say we must take our place at Aaron’s side, and hold our peace. Many thus object to the very notion of “theodicy”, that branch of theology which seeks to justify God in the face of evil: “as if,” they might object, “God needed us to write his defense brief!” While this approach (or non-approach) to the problem of evil may satisfy some, it fails to move the millions of atheists for whom the very existence of evil is the lynchpin of their unbelief. Nevertheless, if you have found solace and satisfaction in simply accepting evil without giving further consideration to its meaning, then you need read no further. But if like me, you have grappled with the problem of evil, if you believe that the rational minds with which we are endowed naturally seek answers to the riddles of existence, if you are searching for answers that are sensible and satisfying, then I invite you to consider with me the possible meanings of evil in the cosmos.

In this post, we will briefly examine four typical theodicies which have been offered by believers, and we will test them against a set of defined criteria. We will ask, “do they work? have they the compelling force to satisfy the mind of the skeptic? do they give peace to the believer willing to ask the hardest of questions?

Evil is generally divided into two categories. 1. MORAL EVIL consisting of sin, and all the direct consequences of sin. Moral evil is caused by free moral agents. And, 2. NATURAL EVIL consisting of bad things that happen seemingly outside the causation of man: hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, famines, diseases, genetic disorders, etc. Natural evils, it could be argued, all find their origination in entropy, and are thus the result of the very way in which the Creator fashioned the cosmos. Some might find in these categories some cross-over. Certain diseases, for example, may be caused by or exacerbated by the choices of free moral agents. But it is not our intention to draw a sharp line of distinction. Rather, we wish to identify these two kinds of evil as separate categories for the following purpose: a theodicy that “works” must account for both kinds of evil. This is the first criterion for testing theodicies.

For a theodicy to accomplish its own goal, it must uphold the character of God. A theodicy which leaves us troubling about the honor and consistency of God is no theodicy at all. The Greek philosopher Epicurus laid down the gauntlet some 300 years before Christ when he asked, “Is [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?” A working theodicy must result in an omnipotent, compassionate God with his honor and integrity firmly intact in the face of a cosmos brimming with evil. This is the second criterion for testing theodicies. Examine with me the standard Christian theodicies in light of these criteria, and judge for yourself.

1) “Evil is created for God’s glory.” For many who subscribe to Reformed Theology (or Calvinism), it is enough to say that all evil exists for the glory of God. God created evil (Isaiah 45:7), they say, for his own ultimate glory. He created a cosmos in which evil was not only possible, but assured, right down to the finest detail. This view suggests that the Holocaust itself originated in the mind of the Creator, and was his intended plan written into the blueprint of the cosmos. Though it is beyond our understanding (I can certainly agree with that!), evil somehow maximizes the glory of God. Certainly not all those in the Reformed camp subscribe to this form of rigid determinism. But many do. This theodicy makes God out to be the author of all sin and natural evil. It further suggests that when God created Satan, he specifically engineered him to rebel just as he did. His fall was written into his design specifications. While this may provide a rational, satisfying answer to some followers of Calvin, I find that it fails to satisfy our second criterion. Epicurus would not be placated. No atheist will be compelled to abandon his skepticism by this argument. And few believers will find the God of this argument consistent with the God they have come to love and trust.

2) “Evil does not exist.” Others will insist that evil, in fact, does not exist as an entity, or as a reality apart from goodness. The argument goes like this: just as darkness is merely the absence of light (we cannot “fill a room with darkness”), and is instantly dispelled by the introduction of light, so evil is merely the absence of goodness. Augustine first introduced this concept. He said that all being is good. Evil is the lack of being, the lack of goodness. From this argument, Augustine moved on to #3 below, stating that evil as we know it originated in the rebellion of mankind, and the rejection of the goodness which God intended to permeate the cosmos. The problem with the idea of evil’s non-existence is that it simply fails to live up to our experience. Particularly in the face of the 20th century horrors, most people find it completely irrational to argue that evil has no independent existence. There is an energy and driving force, a “life” we might say, of evil that goes beyond the mere absence of goodness. This argument fails the tests of reason and experience. But it also fails to account for natural evil, for reasons we will apply to #3, below.

3) “Evil is caused by Man.” Augustine declared, “All evil is either sin or the punishment for sin.” This view suggests that all moral evil is the direct result of the Fall, and the sin that it perpetuates; and that all natural evil is the indirect result of the Fall, a consequence of the curses of Genesis 3:14-19. While this argument might have worked in Augustine’s day, we now understand that it cannot account for all natural evil. The earth is filled with mountains of evidence that the pre-Adamic world included natural disasters of every description: diseases, death, meteorites and thousands of species extinctions. If chronology has any bearing upon causation, we simply can no longer lay the responsibility for evil at the feet of fallen man.

Thus, each of these first three lines of reasoning fail to meet our criteria for a working theodicy. But it is the fourth theodicy argument to which most Christians today subscribe. For many thoughtful believers, it is the only option that holds out the hope of resolving evil’s riddle. Does it pass the test?

4) “Evil is necessary for Free Will to have meaning.” (This theodicy has numerous variations, including the more thoughtful “free-process theology” version espoused by John Polkinghorne and others, for which I feel some affinity. Some may wish to present a cogent and convincing case for the more sophisticated versions of this theodicy, and I welcome them to do so in the comments for this post. For the sake of brevity, I will state this argument in its simplest terms.) The typical line of reasoning goes something like this. In order to have a world in which free moral agents would have a clear choice, and thus be truly free, they must be given a viable alternative to God and goodness; hence, evil. A presupposition is that God considered it desirable to create moral agents who would freely choose him. And while he may bring some influence to bear upon his creatures, he does not use coercion. I have read and heard this line of theodicy reasoning all my life. I must say that it has always left me cold! It describes a God so desirous of creatures who choose him that if the cost is unimaginable innocent human suffering, well, so be it. This sort of ends-justify-the-means rationale leaves us with a monstrous God willing to sacrifice Jewish babies on the altars of Nazi bonfires—they are just the collateral damage—for the gratification of his desire that people have a genuine choice.

Has there ever been a single atheist or agnostic “won over” by any of these standard Christian theodicy arguments? Has a single skeptic ever abandoned his problem-of-evil objection to theism after being confronted with one of these lines of reasoning? I’ve never heard of one. Neither have I read any Christian apologist who is satisfied with his own theodicy argument. Whether its C.S. Lewis, Os Guinness, or John Polkinghorne, each writer closes his argument by confessing his own lack of satisfaction. In his own way, each one declares that we do not have an adequate answer to this riddle. Could it be that we have been looking at evil through the wrong lens? In my next post, I want to suggest an approach to evil’s riddle that does meet the criteria, for me at least, and perhaps, for you as well.

POST #7 Theodicy, Evil's Riddle

With this post, we launch into a discussion of the “Problem of Evil”. This post is part one of a three part discussion ...

From a distance we all have enough,
and no one is in need.
And there are no guns, no bombs, and no disease,
no hungry mouths to feed....
God is watching us. God is watching us.
God is watching us from a distance.

Bette Middler popularized these Julie Gold lyrics in her 1990 hit single, “From a Distance”. In the shadow of the First Gulf War, our nation sang along as the recording climbed the charts to #1. It expresses the highest hopes of many postmodern minds. God, if he exists at all, must be the God of the deist: distant, uninvolved, perhaps even uncaring. Why is God watching us only “from a distance”? Because if he were truly here, he would surely do more to correct the many evils of the world.

Deism is that belief which conceptualizes God as something of a watchmaker. He designs and creates the watch, sets it to ticking, and then never picks it up again. Deism was born in the wake of an earlier war, the devastating 30 year war in Europe. It gained traction from the scientific advancements of the 17th and 18th century. But deism is primarily an effort on man’s part to harmonize the notion of a God with the realities of the evil and suffering we see on earth.

From the standpoint of the skeptic, there is no greater barrier to belief than the problem of evil. It is the issue most often cited by the atheist and the agnostic. It has been called the “rock of atheism” (Hans Kung). All my adult life, I have struggled with this problem, and the standard Christian responses. The problem can be summarized by the following broken syllogism:

1) If God is personal, good, loving and compassionate; and
2) if God is all-powerful, in control of the cosmos; then
3) how and why does atrocious evil, including man on man violence and what is sometimes called “natural evil” (earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, meteorites, etc) resulting in so much human suffering and death, continue to exist.

The problem of evil is by far the most rational and forceful argument in the arsenal of thinking unbelievers against an all-powerful, benevolent God. It is also the most difficult riddle for thoughtful people of faith.

The greatest mind of the last century, Albert Einstein, struggled with belief in a God. His own theory of General Relativity predicted that our universe had a beginning, and thus, a First Cause. But this conclusion he found distasteful, and he tried to overcome it with new theories. But when Edwin Hubble’s telescope established the origin of the universe from a single point, Einstein finally yielded to the necessity of a Creator. His own discoveries led him to abandon his earlier agnosticism, and he become a professed believer in God. But he settled upon the god of the deist, as he could never bring himself to believe in the Christian God or the God of his own Jewish upbringing. Einstein rejected the notion of a personal God. The reason? he could find no way around the problem of evil.

The many horrors of the 20th Century served to deepen this troubling conundrum. The Jewish theologian Eugene Borowitz commented on the Holocaust:

“Any God who could permit the Holocaust, who could remain silent during it, who could ‘hide His face’ while it dragged on, was not worth believing in. There might well be a limit to how much we could understand Him, but Auschwitz demanded an unreasonable suspension of understanding. In the face of such great evil, God, the good and the powerful, was too inexplicable, so men said, ‘God is dead.’”

The horrors of the Holocaust are all too well known. For their evening entertainment, Nazi soldiers trucked small Jewish children to their bonfires, dumping them into the fire. As the terrified screaming children attempted to flee the flames, Nazis armed with pitchforks stood guard, barring their way. The drumbeat of evil touching the lives of our most vulnerable continues to roll: every day, on some street in Thailand, or perhaps another country, some small child is whisked away from his or her parents, and sold into sex-slavery, destined now to die of some horrible disease at a young age. And God looks on.

There is a profound exchange in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamozov in which Ivan relates a very sad story to his brother Alyosha, an Orthodox priest. It is the story of a young boy’s unfortunate scrape with a cruel general in the Russian Army. The boy had thrown a stone which hit the paw of the general’s favorite hunting dog. This enraged the general, and he put the boy in a cold cell for the night. The following morning, while the boy’s mother looked on, the boy was stripped naked, and ordered to run. The general then turned his hunting dogs loose, and the boy was torn to pieces. Ivan asks his brother this searing question:

“Tell me yourself, I challenge you. Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature ... and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell me the truth.”

Os Guiness identifies the problem of evil as “life’s greatest challenge,” which is the subtitle of his book Unspeakable published in 2005. Written in a post 9/11 age, Unspeakable offers a chilling discussion of the manifestations of evil which reached a horrifying crescendo during the last century. The answers he suggests for this riddle come from one of the greatest contemporary evangelical thinkers, but I found them to be personally unsatisfying.

Evil’s existence has given rise to a branch of theology and apologetics called theodicy, man’s effort to explain why horrendous evil survives in a universe created and governed by a benevolent Almighty. The word theodicy literally implies an effort to “justify God”. From C.S. Lewis (The Problem of Pain) to Os Guiness (Unspeakable) Christians have sought to make sense of this horrible riddle. There are typical lines of reasoning suggested in Christian theodicy. I have heard and read these proposed solutions from many sources. In my next post, I will discuss the typical Christian response to the problem of evil, including the response that objects to the notion that we should even ask these hard questions. I will let the reader judge if these responses are rational and satisfying. In a subsequent post, I will reexamine the problem of evil in light of the earlier posts on entropy, and suggest a new understanding of the place of evil in this cosmos.