BOOK REVIEWS 61

In spite of its immersion in psychoanalytic and postmodernist jargon andmethodology, which may be off-putting for many readers, Jantzen’s bookis well worth the attention of every philosopher of religion, most of whomare males, for it presents a needed and important, if not totally convincing,critique and rethinking of the discipline and its privileged practitioners. Asfor myself, I am left with basically three questions/reservations concerningthe book and its postmodernist orientation: (1) Does it really escape binary oroppositional thinking? Is not the feminist alternative Jantzen presents simplythealter, the other, the opposite, of the masculine imaginary/symbolic? Is itnot simply a ‘feminine’ imaginary/symbolic, and one that reflects a mascu-line definition of the feminine at that?!! (2) In a work that specializes in‘problematizing’ naive concepts and assumptions of the discipline throughits methodology, does not the concept of woman, identified here with thematerial, body, desire, nature, etc., remain naively unproblematized in heraccount? (3) Does it really escape the masculine symbolic, especially inusing the language of ‘resistance’, ‘disruption’, and ‘subversion’ and othersuch terms of violence to characterize the method of deconstruction that isemployed? Has it erred in adopting a method that is itself an expression ofmasculine imperialism rooted in a Nietzschean will to power? Jantzen admitsthat “there is no pure place for a woman to stand, no unambiguous subject-position already available” and that this position is ‘to some extent masculine’(p. 211), but she might do well to reconsider that position and its methods inlight of the words of Audre Lorde quoted in the text: ‘The master’s tools willnever dismantle the master’s house’.

Sylvia WalshStetson University

David O’Connor, God and Inscrutable Evil: In Defense of Theism andAtheism. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997, xiii and 273 pages; Hb$63.00; Pb $23.95.

The most discussed version of the problem of evil is that which cites partic-ular cases of suffering – fawns dying in forest fires or the murder of children– as evidence contra theism. While this version receives discussion in DavidO’Connor’s important treatment of the problem of evilGod and InscrutableEvil, it is not the version he endorses. O’Connor’s version of choice appealsto the amount of evil (pain & suffering) found in the world; an amount whichis, he argues, excessive (p. 15). O’Connor’s argument might be paraphrasedas: there are three kinds of evil found in the world, suffering resulting from

62 BOOK REVIEWS

the choices of moral agents (ME), suffering resulting solely from naturalprocesses (NERNP), and suffering which involves natural processes but isnot due solely to natural processes (NE∼RNP). Moreover, a world withno NERNP, but with all the goods of the actual world, is creatable by anomnipotent being. So, the occurrence of any NERNP would be gratuitous.But an excessive amount of gratuitous evil is logically incompatible withthe existence of God. So, with the many cases of NERNP in the world,there is reason to think that God does not exist. This argument is whatO’Connor dubs the ‘Reformed Logical Problem of Evil’. It may be worthmentioning that, if O’Connor is right about there being possible worlds withhumans but no NERNP, any possible world which contains no NERNP butdoes contain humans may be a world requiring special creation. Since anyworld containing natural selection will also contain NERNP, a world withhumans that have not developed via evolutionary processes, would require,presumably, some kind of direct divine creation.

God and Inscrutable Evilis organized into two parts. The first part(Chapters 2–8) presents and defends, primarily, the Reformed LogicalProblem of Evil. O’Connor defends the Reformed Logical Problem againstthe greater good defense offered by Richard Swinburne (Ch. 5), the free-willdefense of Alvin Plantinga (Ch. 6), and George Schlesinger’s ‘no-best world’defense (Ch. 7), as well as other objections. The alleged failure of the besttheistic defenses is significant, O’Connor argues, because it provides furtherreason contra theism: since the best available defenses fail, we have reasonto think that there is no theistic defense or theodicy which will rescue theismfrom the bane of evil (pp. 177–180).

While one may not agree with all the points made by O’Connor, hisdiscussion in the first part is generally well-taken. One lacuna however isthe absence of any discussion of arguments that God need not create thebest that he can, argued first by Robert Adams (see his ‘Must God Createthe Best?’,Philosophical Review81 [1972]), and more recently by WilliamWainwright (see his ‘Jonathan Edwards, William Rowe, and the Necessityof Creation’ inFaith, Freedom and Responsibility[Lanham, MD: Rowman& littlefield, 1996]). This is a serious lacuna because the Reformed LogicalProblem presupposes what we might call ‘Leibniz’s second law’: God mustcreate the best possible world (or, if there is libertarian human freedom: Godmust create the best world that he can). If God need not create the best thathe can, then the Reformed Logical Problem fails.

Indeed, it may be that O’Connor’s Reformed Problem is reducible to adebate over Leibniz’s second law. To see this, consider: what must obtainif there is a God-justifying good for every evil? Four plausible necessaryconditions are: if God exists and an evil e is actual, then a good g justifies

BOOK REVIEWS 63

God in permitting e only if (1) g is actual, (2) g outweighs e, (3) g cannotexist unless e is permitted to exist by God, and (4) no better world can bebrought about if g and e are prevented by God. Are there goods which satisfy(1)–(4)? Instead of holding that there is a different justifying good for eachevil, theists can reasonably take the actual world as the justifying good forevery evil, and, since possible worlds are individuated by their constituentstates of affairs, (1)–(3) would be satisfied. The debate then is over (4): is thisworld the best that God could have done? O’Connor would argue that it is not:a world with no suffering caused solely by natural processes, but with all thegoods of the actual world, is creatable by God (pp. 84–91). Moreover, such aworld would be better than the actual world, and, since God must create thebest that he can, there is good reason to think that God does not exist. Thedebate, then, may well concern Leibniz’s second law.

Still, even if Leibniz’s second law is true, it is far from clear that a worldwith ME, NE∼RNP and NERNP thereby contains evil in excess of any worldwith ME & NE∼RNP only, as O’Connor seems to believe (p. 84). Supposethere is some amountn of evil necessary for divine purposes. Suppose furtherthat it is morally irrelevant whethern is achieved via ME, NE∼RNP, orNERNP, or some combination thereof. If these suppositions are plausible,then the claim that a world with ME only (ignoring NE∼NRP) is therebybetter than a world which contains NERNP in addition to ME is dubious,since it need not follow that a world with ME only carries a lower aggregateof evil than one with all three kinds of evil.

The second part (Chapters 9–11) looks at what O’Connor calls the‘Standard model’ (p. 229) and the ‘Skeptical theistic model’ (p. 185). TheStandard model holds that we can compare, via a thought-experiment, theactual world, with its kinds and amounts and distributions of evil, with aworld in which God does not exist. And, according to O’Connor, the evid-ential balance tilts toward atheism given the Standard model. On the otherhand, given the Skeptical theistic model, the evidential balance does not tilttoward atheism because, according to this model, we are in no position totake evil as evidence contra theism. Since O’Connor believes there is no wayto adjudicate between the Standard model and the Skeptical theistic model,we are left in a kind of détente between friendly theism and friendly atheism(pp. 227ff.). But it may be that the Standard model loads the dice against clas-sical theism. According to classical theism, God is a necessary being; thereis no possible world in which God does not exist. Yet, if it is really possibleto access, via a thought-experiment, a possible world in which God does notexist, then we have reason to think that classical theism is false. Acceptingthe Standard model already puts classical theism at a disadvantage. Perhapsit is significant that the version of theism that O’Connor focuses upon, what

64 BOOK REVIEWS

he calls ‘orthodox theism’, does not include the claim that God is a necessarybeing (pp. 77–79).

All in all, God and Inscrutable Evilis an important and original contribu-tion to the philosophical debate over the problem of evil. While it is philo-sophically sophisticated,GIE is also accessible to advanced undergraduatestudents. Highly recommended.

Jeff JordanUniversity of Delaware