“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
 – Epicurus

The concepts of natural and moral evil

Natural evil is evil which results from the workings of the natural world, such as natural disasters and disease. God designed and created the natural world which seems to make God responsible for the evil and suffering that occurs as a result of nature. This is considered a problem for God’s existence because God could have designed a world without natural evil in it.

Moral evil is evil which is caused by human action, such as murder and torture. There are infamous examples throughout history of evil actions on a mass scale, such as the holocaust and wars. This is a problem for God’s existence because why doesn’t God intervene to prevent these things?

 

The logical problem of evil

This is the a priori argument that evil and the God of classical theism (as defined as omnibenevolent and omnipotent) cannot exist together.

Epicurus (ancient Greek philosopher, one of the first to formulate the problem of evil)

1. Is God willing but not able to prevent evil? Then he isn’t omnipotent
2. Is God is able to prevent evil but not willing? Then he isn’t omnibenevolent
3. If God is both able and willing, then why is there evil?
4. If God is neither able or willing then why call him God?

Mackie reformulated this argument into the ‘inconsistent triad’ which held that the God of classical theism (omnipotent and omnibenevolence) cannot exist if evil exists. Either Omnipotence, omnibenevolence or evil must not exist, since all three are inconsistent. Omnipotence entails the power to eliminate evil. Omnibenevolence entails the motivation to prevent evil. Something cannot possibly exist if there is a being with the power and motivation to eliminate it. Therefore if evil exists, an omnibenevolent and omnipotent God cannot exist. God could at most be omnibenevolent or omnipotent but not both. This is known as the Logical problem of evil which claims that it is logically impossible for both God (as defined with omnipotence & omnibenevolence) and evil to both exist.

P1. An omnipotent God has the power to eliminate evil.
P2. An omnibenevolent God has the motivation to eliminate evil.
P3. Nothing can exist if there is a being with the power and motivation to eliminate it.
C1. Evil, omnipotence and omnibenevolence thus form an inconsistent triad such that God (as classically defined) and evil cannot possibly co-exist.

This is an a priori argument because the conclusion follows from a logical analysis of the definitions of the concepts ‘omnibenevolence’, ‘omnipotence’ and ‘evil’, without reference to experience.

The argument is then sometimes developed into an a posteriori argument by referencing our experience of evil and drawing the conclusion not just that God and evil cannot co-exist, but that since evil does exist God does not exist:

P4. Evil exists because we experience evil in the world.
C2. Therefore God does not exist.

Whether in its a priori or a posteriori form, the logical problem of evil is deductive. If its premises are true, its conclusion must be true.

The logical problem makes a large claim, that evil and God cannot possibly co-exist. Defeating the logical problem requires conceiving of some logically possible scenario or reason God could have for allowing evil.

The Evidential problem of evil

This is the a posteriori argument that the evidence of evil in the world makes belief in God unjustified. There is a logical possibility that evil and a perfect God exist together, but the evidence is against that possibility actually being true.

The crucial thing to understand about the evidential problem is that it is an inductive argument. It regards evil as evidence against God’s existence. It doesn’t try to claim that evil logically proves God’s non-existence. It makes the lesser, though arguably easier to defend claim, that evil makes belief in God unjustified.

Hume puts forward an evidential problem of evil. Hume is an empiricist and approaches the problem of evil as such. He points out the a posteriori evidence of evil in the world:

1 – Animal suffering. Why shouldn’t nature be created such that animals feel less pain, or indeed no pain at all?
2 – Creatures have limited abilities to ensure their survival and happiness
3 – Why does nature have extremes which make survival and happiness more difficult? Natural evil
4 – Why doesn’t God intervene to prevent individual natural disasters?

A God could have made this world without such evil, making it evidence against a perfect God existing. Hume says it is ‘possible’ that a perfect God exists but allows evil for reasons consistent with omnibenevolence, ‘but they are unknown to us’. Hume is arguing that whatever speculations theologians like Augustine and Irenaeus might invent about God’s ‘reasons’ for allowing evil, we have no evidence that God has such reasons.

“I conclude that however consistent the world may be … with the idea of such a God, it can never provide us with an inference to his existence.”

“There can be no grounds for such an inference when there are so many misfortunes in the universe, and while these misfortunes could—as far as human understanding can be allowed to judge on such a subject—easily have been remedied. I am sceptic enough to allow that the bad appearances, notwithstanding all my reasonings, may be compatible with such ·divine· attributes as you suppose; but surely they can never prove these attributes.” – Hume.

Hume, as an empiricist, insists that we are only justified in believing what the evidence suggests. The evidence of an imperfect world, while logically compatible with a perfect God, makes belief in a perfect God unjustified. You can’t infer perfect goodness from evil. An empirical inference from evil to belief in a perfectly good God is not valid.

P1. We are only justified in believing what the evidence suggests (empiricism).
P2. We only have evidence of imperfection (a world with both good and evil).
C1. We are only justified in believing that imperfection exists.
C2. So, belief in a perfectly good being is not justified.

The only justifiable route to belief in anything, including God, is through experience. Yet, experience shows us an imperfect world full of evil. So, because of evil, belief in God is not justified.

The evidential problem claims less than the logical problem of evil. Defeating the evidential problem thus requires more. A defender of God must not merely think of some logically possible reason God could have for allowing evil, they must actually show that there is good evidence for thinking that not merely possible but actually true.

Augustine’s theodicy

Augustine’s theodicy was born from his contemplating the origin of sin. By observing himself and others, he thought humans had a natural predisposition to sin, which for him raised the question of where that came from, since it would seem contradict God’s omnibenevolence to suggest that God created it. He concluded that humanity must be to blame for it and looked to the Genesis story as an explanation.

The garden of Eden was a perfect place. Adam and Eve disobeyed God and as a punishment were banished to this earth often called a ‘fallen world’. This episode is referred to as ‘the Fall’. After their sin, God said Eve will now have pain in childbirth and Adam would have to ‘toil’ the land to make food.

Original Sin is the idea that the first sin of Adam and Eve disobeying God’s command resulted in a corruption in all humanity. Original sin is a corruption in human nature which makes people want to sin. All humans have inherited Original Sin from Adam and Eve according to Augustine as we were all ‘seminally present in the loins of Adam’. Augustine thought that the biological basis for procreation was “some sort of invisible and intangible power … located in the secrets of nature” yet then goes on to argue that all future generations of people are “in the loins of the father”. Augustine claims “We were all in [Adam] … we all were that one man who fell into sin” We existed in merely a “seminal nature from which we were to be begotten” but when that became “vitiated through sin” it became impossible for anyone to be born without original sin. This means that we are all born sinful beings who therefore deserve this punishment of living in a fallen world. God is not responsible for evil as it results from the free will of angels and humans. 

“All evil is either sin or a punishment for sin” – Augustine.

Augustine argued Evil does not actually exist. It is merely a privation of good, meaning it is the absence of Good. As humans fell away from God, we fell away from his goodness, resulting in what we mistakenly call ‘evil’. Evil has no ‘positive existence’, only a negative one. E.g. darkness does not actually exist, it’s merely the absence of light. Darkness is not a ‘thing’ but our minds trick us into thinking it is.

Plantinga’s ‘free will defence’

Plantinga’s response to the problem of evil is a development of Augustine’s theodicy. 

Plantinga develops a ‘free will defence’ of the co-existence of God and evil. His argument intended to respond to Mackie’s logical problem of evil, which argues that it is impossible for God (as classically defined) and evil to exist together. Plantinga argues that it is possible for God and evil to exist together because evil is the result of free will.

Moral evil results from human actions. Some object that free will cannot explain natural evil, but Plantinga explains that it is logically possible for natural evil to either result from:

1. The free will of demons and Satan.
2. The free will of Adam and Eve justifing God in allowing natural evil into the world as punishment.

This raises the question of why God gave us free will at all though. Wouldn’t it have been better for us to live in a perfectly good world yet not have free will? Plantinga answers that if God didn’t give us free will, our universe would have no value. Our lives would have been value-less. Therefore, no matter how much negative value you think giving us free will could result in, value itself would not be possible without it. So, Plantinga thinks we have to accept that our universe is better for having value despite the downsides.

P1. Evil is the result of the misuse of free will.
P2. God cannot remove evil without removing free will (that would be logically impossible).
P3. Life would be valueless without free will, so it is better to have free will despite the evil its misuse can lead to.
C1. It is therefore better for evil to exist than not to.
C2. An omnibenevolent and omnipotent God therefore would allow evil.

It is logically impossible for God to remove evil without removing the greater good of free will. A perfect God would therefore allow evil.

Augustine & Plantinga vs the logical problem on moral responsibility

A strength of Augustine’s theodicy against the logical problem of evil is that it does seem logically possible that God allows evil because it is either sin (moral evil) or punishment for sin (natural evil) or the work of satanic energies (natural evil).

Furthermore, Augustine does not make the mistake of arguing that we are morally responsible for Adam and Eve’s actions. His argument is that a factual consequence of Adam’s sin was that all future humanity became infected with original sin and thus deserve punishment. We deserve punishment for being sinful beings.

Weakness: It’s not our fault that we have original sin

Followers of Pelagius objected that Adam’s crime is not a personal crime of his descendants. So, it still seems unfair, unjust and thus incompatible with omnibenevolence to suggest that we deserve punishment for it. This argument is strongest when considering cases like children with cancer. It’s difficult to maintain that a child deserves cancer because it has original sin. Augustine would have to say it is God’s justice for that child to get cancer and that God is still omnibenevolent despite allowing it. That seems logically inconsistent. 

Whether the doctrine of original sin is supported by the evidence

A strength of Augustine’s doctrine of original sin is that it can be evidenced from observing human behaviour and society

G. K. Chesterton made this point, arguing that you could see evidence for original sin ‘in the street’. R. Niebuhr said original sin was the one ‘empirically verifiable’ Christian doctrine.

When Augustine was 16, he and his friends stole some pears. What Augustine found remarkable on reflection was that he did not steal them because he was hungry (in fact he threw them away). He concluded that he did it just for the pleasure of sinning.

Weakness: The scientific evidence is against Augustine

Geneticists claim that the evidence we have of genetic diversity means that it’s not possible for all of humanity to have descended from two people. This, plus the other evidence for evolution, suggests that we evolved and were not created. Augustine wrongly thought that reproduction worked by there being little people inside men (homunculus theory), so when Adam sinned all future humanity became infected by it. The story of Adam and Eve is unscientific. The notion that we inherited a corrupt nature and guilt from Adam seems to be unscientific nonsense.

Irenaeus’ Theodicy

Instead of viewing the Fall as negative, Irenaeus views it as a necessary stage in the development of humans towards perfection. Adam and Eve are like children who go astray because they lack sufficient wisdom to do what is right. Punishment is a way to help children mature.

On the basis of the quote from Genesis ‘God made humans in his image and likeness’, Irenaeus made a distinction between man being made in: the image of God verses the likeness of God. An image is when you look like something on the surface, whereas a likeness is when you actually are like something.

Creation has two steps for Irenaeus – firstly being made in God’s image where we have only a potential for good due to spiritual immaturity. Step two is where we achieve God’s likeness by choosing good over evil which enables us to grow spiritually and morally. The idea is that encountering and overcoming evil makes us become better more virtuous people.

A biblical example Irenaeus pointed to is Jonah and Whale: Jonah disobeyed God and then the natural evil of a storm and a big fish who ate him and spat him out days later helped Jonah learn his lesson and he then obeyed God. Evil thus serves the good purpose of motivating us to be good.

John Hick’s modern Irenaean Theodicy

Hick argued that human beings were not created perfect but develop in two stages:
Stage 1: Spiritually immature: through struggle to survive and evolve, humans can develop into spiritually mature beings.
The Fall is a result of immature humans who are only in the image of God.
Stage 2: Grow into a relationship with God

Hick argued for the Epistemic distance. This means that we cannot truly know of God’s existence. If God did make himself known to us, we would follow his commands out of obedience to his authority instead of following them because we had figured out that they were the right thing to do. Hick argued that it’s only if we have faith in God and still do good because we want to do good, rather than because we know for sure there’s a God who wants us to, that we can truly grow spiritually and morally. Peter Vardy illustrated this with the example of a peasant girl who a King falls in love with and forces her to marry him. The girl doesn’t really love the King and only does it due to obedience to authority out of fear. Similarly, if God appeared to us we would obey his authority rather than really loving what is good for its own sake, which is the morally superior move and therefore most conducive to soul making.

According to Hick everyone will be saved since a loving God would not send people to hell – universal salvation but post-mortem soul making is needed.

Soul-making vs the evidential problem on dysteleological evil

Strength of soul-making vs the evidential problem: There is evidence that encountering and overcoming evil develops a person’s character and virtue. This is behind the idea of character development in literature. It is also behind the idea that people become spoiled if they have too much luxury and not enough responsibility or difficulty to overcome. By going through harsh struggles, a person becomes stronger and gains compassion for others. This does seem to be a factual occurrence in life. For example, some people who get cancer gain a whole new lease on life and go about doing all the things they had always wanted to do.

“What does not kill me, makes me stronger” – Nietzsche.

Weakness: the distribution of evil we observe in the world is decidedly not aligned with the soul-making requirements of those who suffer from it.

Some evil is dysteleological (purposeless). It has no chance of leading to spiritual development. For example, a child who dies of cancer. They are too young to even understand what is happening, let alone learn anything from it. Most animal suffering is also dysteleological.

Some evil is soul breaking. It destroys a person’s character rather than building it up and developing it. Some people are crushed into a depression or post-traumatic stress disorder when they experience evil. This suggests that evil doesn’t have this positive purpose that Irenaeus & Hick try to claim.

The holocaust is as an example of evil which is dysteleological, soul-breaking and where the amount of evil outweighs our soul-making requirements. D Z Phillips questioned whether anyone in their “right mind” could say the holocaust was justified because a few survivors were strengthened by it.

Animal suffering is a form of dysteleological suffering. William Rowe gave the example of a fawn dying in a forest fire. We have evidence that such things happen, but no one would ever be able to gain sympathy or compassion from them.

Soul-making vs the logical problem on God creating us perfect

A strength of soul-making theodicy is its premise that creating us fully developed was logically impossible. A fully developed soul is one which has chosen good over evil. This requires having made a choice. Therefore, it’s logically impossible for God to create us fully developed. Most theologians agree omnipotence does not include the power to do the logically impossible. So, a perfect God would create us undeveloped and allow us the freedom to choose good over evil. Evil is needed because it serves this good purpose of soul-making. So, evil isn’t incompatible with God’s existence. Mackie’s logical problem seems defeated. 

Weakness: An omnibenevolent God would not have created us in the first place.

The problem of evil remains, having merely been pushed back to another question. Hick fails to explain why a morally good God would have created us at all.

David Benatar is an anti-natalist philosopher, meaning he argues that creating sentient beings who will suffer is wrong.

Creating beings that will suffer cannot be justified by pointing to benefits of that suffering. This is because if we never existed, then we wouldn’t need those benefits. A morally good God would not create beings whose development required evil and suffering. It would be better for those beings to have never existed.

Soul-making vs Dostoyevsky 

A strength of soul-making theodicy is that evil serving some good purpose seems the best way to make it compatible with omnibenevolence.

This was intentional for Hick, who entitled his book “Evil and the God of love”. Other theodicies are less persuasive because they try to either blame humanity for the actions of their ancestors or even take away God’s omnipotence.

Weakness: Dostoyevsky’s character Ivan.

“if everyone must suffer, in order to buy eternal harmony with their suffering, pray tell me what have children got to do with it?” – Dostoyevsky’s character Ivan. 

The key detail of Ivan’s argument is his connection between the suffering of innocent children and the gain of heaven for others.

People get into heaven because of, on the back of, the suffering of innocent children. Ivan says no good person or God would design this connection into heaven:

“imagine that you yourself are building the edifice of human destiny with the object of making people happy in the finale, of giving them peace and rest at last, but for that you must inevitably and unavoidably torture just one tiny creature, that same child who was beating her chest with her little fist, and raise your edifice on the foundation of her unrequited tears—would you agree to be the architect on such conditions?” – Dostoyevsky’s character Ivan.

 It’s not that the evil is dysteleological, nor that the process of soul-making is not worth it. It’s that the whole process of soul-making is actually not morally acceptable. If the suffering of a child was the cost of the of the soul-making of others, Ivan’s point is that this is indecent. It’s not moral. Building heaven on a foundation of children suffering is not what Hick’s supposed ‘God of love’ would accept. So, Hick fails to solve the logical problem of evil.

The problem of evil & the issue of free will

All popular responses to the problem of evil have a similar strength regarding the interaction between free will and God’s omnipotence.

Plantinga thought the entire response to the problem of evil could be solved by appealing to free will. He developed Augustine’s theodicy into a ‘free will defence’ of God’s possible co-existence with evil. Without free will, our lives would be pointless and valueless. It’s abuse can directly lead to moral evil and indirectly lead to natural evil in the form of punishment, the work of demons, and having to live in a fallen world due to Adam’s misuse of free will.

The power of theodicies then typically functions through attempting to link the existence of evil to free will. They can then argue that removing evil is not logically possible without impacting our free will in some way which would either leave us even worse off or is simply logically impossible for God to do. God’s omnipotence is typically thought by Christian theologians to involve the power to do any logically possible action. God cannot do logically impossible things.

For various theodicies then, it is not logically possible for God to eliminate evil without:

• Contradicting his divine justice, since we deserve evil as punishment for our freely chosen evil actions (Augustine).
• Removing our free will, since all evil results either directly (moral evil) or indirectly (natural evil) from the abuse of free will (Augustine & Plantinga).
• Removing opportunities for growth from evil through freely choosing good over evil (Irenaeus & Hick).

Weakness: the challenge that libertarian free will does not exist

Theodicies rely on the existence of ‘libertarian free will’, meaning the ability to do otherwise.

However, libertarian free will seems to require an undetermined event which is nonetheless somehow also under the control of an agent. This strikes many philosophers as incoherent.

A. J. Ayer argues that our choices are either determined or not. If not, they are random. If determined, they result from prior causes such as our character, which is itself determined by prior causes. In either case, we couldn’t have done otherwise.

Mackie develops this style of argument. Our actions are either the result of randomness, external causes, or our own character. It is those choices which originate from our character that we typically call moral. This must be the notion of freedom theodicies draw on.

However, we did not create our own character. They may be times a person made efforts to change their character. But those efforts were themselves determined by prior states of their character. Mackie concludes that the only coherent definition of free will is a compatibilist one, where “free choice” is when our actions are determined by our character.

This allows Mackie to then argue that if there were a perfect God, he would have made sure to have given us all a morally good character.

Applying this to theodicies, this means:

• Adam and Eve would have never disobeyed God. Augustine & Plantinga therefore lose their explanation of natural evil.
• All humans would behave morally now, so Augustine & Plantinga lose their explanation of moral evil.
• Hick also loses his explanation of why God couldn’t have created us fully or at least better-formed than he did.

This argument attacks the logical coherence of libertarian free will and thus defends the logical problem of evil.