EVIL & SUFFERING 1 - Intro Always start with definitions: Moral evil results from human actions

which are morally reproachable. The Holocaust is a classic example. Natural evil results from the malfunctioning

of the world, which produces entities such as disease and famine.

The Indian ocean tsunami is an example. Philosophically both are classed as evil as

they both cause suffering.

EVIL & SUFFERING 2 - Intro THE PROBLEM OF EVIL - 1 This is a question which asks: “How can an

all-living and all-powerful God allow his creation to suffer, without coming to its rescue and putting an end to its torment?”

It is probably the biggest problem for non believers and also one that drives many Christians away from church in times of crisis.

They state that such a God does not exist or is not worthy of worship.

EVIL & SUFFERING 3 - Intro PROBLEM OF EVIL – 2 It is only really a problem for Christians

who believe in the God of classical theism.

It does not affect deists or atheists or anyone who believes in a plurality of gods.

It leads to the following dilemma:

EVIL & SUFFERING 4 - Intro PROBLEM OF EVIL – 3 1/ Since God created the world, he has

total responsibility for everything in it. If he is All-Powerful, he can do

anything that is logically possible. So, he could have created a world free

from evil and suffering and free from the possibility of it going wrong.

EVIL & SUFFERING 5 - Intro PROBLEM OF EVIL – 4 If he had allowed evil to occur, he could

end the evil and suffering at any time. 2/ Since God is also all-knowing, he has

complete knowledge of everything in the universe, including suffering and evil.

He also knows how to stop evil/suffering. 3/ If God is all-loving, he would wish to

end all evil and suffering.

EVIL & SUFFERING 6 - Intro PROBLEM OF EVIL – 5 Any sense of love would wish to stop the

multiple horrors heaped upon the millions of innocent people over the years.

No all-loving God would allow his creation to suffer physical and mental torment for no reason.

Since God is all-powerful, he could carry out immediately his desire to step in and end all suffering.

EVIL & SUFFERING 7 - Intro PROBLEM OF EVIL – 6 Yet evil and suffering continue to exist. So, either 1/ God is not all-powerful Or, 2/ God is not all-knowing Or, 3/ God is not all-loving Or, GOD DOES NOT EXIST!

EVIL & SUFFERING 8 - Intro David Hume in his “Dialogues Concerning

Natural Religion” concluded that either: 1/ God is not omnipotent - or 2/ God is not omnibenevolent - or 3/ Evil does not exist But evil DOES exist so Hume concludes that

God must either be impotent or malicious. Either way, it entails the death of the God of

Classical theism. Mackie’s Inconsistent Triad is the quickest

way to explain the Problem of Evil.

EVIL & SUFFERING 9 - Omit Thomas Aquinas believed that any

proof against God’s goodness would construe proof that God does not exist.

Aquinas defended God by stating that: 1/ The concept of infinite goodness is

part of the definition of God. 2/ In talking about God’s goodness, we

are referring to the same thing as human goodness.

(DON’T USE AQUINAS IN A 35 MIN ESSAY)

EVIL & SUFFERING 10 - Intro BUT, there is no reason to suppose that evil

to us is the same as evil to God. He might tolerate what we call evil as a

temporary part of his plan. If this were the case then there can be no

contradiction between saying that God is all loving and all powerful, and has a reason for allowing what we call evil to exist.

For this reason various theodicies have been constructed to try to explain what this reason is.

A theodicy aims to justify the theistic God in the face of evil.

EVIL & SUFFERING 11 - Aug ST AUGUSTINE’S THEODICY - 1 He bases his arguments on the Bible,

especially the accounts of Creation and the Fall in Genesis Chapters 1 – 3).

His theodicy rests on two assumptions: 1/ Evil did not come from God, since God’s

creation was faultless and perfect. 2/ Evil having come from elsewhere, God is

justified in allowing it to stay

EVIL & SUFFERING 12 - Aug ST AUGUSTINE’S THEODICY – 2 1/ God is perfect – he made a flawless world. 2/ God cannot be blamed for creating evil,

since evil isn’t a substance but a deprivation. (eg blindness is absence of sight)

3/ Evil comes from disobedient angels and humans who chose, through their free-will, to turn away from God.

4/ The possibility of evil in a created world is necessary. Only the uncreated God himself can be perfect – created things are liable to change.

5/ Everyone is guilty because they were all seminally present in Adam (Inherited Sin).

EVIL & SUFFERING13 - Aug ST AUGUSTINE’S THEODICY – 3 6/ Therefore everyone deserves to be

punished. 7/ Natural evil is a fitting punishment and

came about because the human action destroyed the natural order.

8/ Therefore God is right not to intervene and put a stop to suffering.

9/ That God saves some through Christ shows that he is merciful as well as just, even though we do not deserve salvation.

EVIL & SUFFERING 14 - Ire

ST IRENAEUS’ THEODICY 1 Irenaeus and Augustine both trace evil

back to human free will. Irenaeus differs from Augustine in that

he admits that God did not make a perfect world and that evil has a valuable role to play for humans.

EVIL & SUFFERING 15 - Ire IRENAEUS’ THEODICY 2 - Main features - 1 1/ God’s aim when he created the world was

to make humans flawless – in his likeness. 2/ Genuine human perfection cannot be

ready-made, but must develop through free choice.

3/ Since God gave us free choice, he had to give us the potential to disobey him.

4/ There would be no such potential if there were never any possibility of evil. If God had policed his world continually, there would be no free will.

EVIL & SUFFERING 16 - Ire IRENAEUS’ THEODICY 3 - Main features – 2 5/ Therefore, the natural order had to be

designed with the possibility of causing harm, humans had to be imperfect, and God had to stand back from his creation.

6/ Humans used their freedom to disobey God, causing suffering.

7/ God cannot compromise our freedom by removing evil

8/ Eventually, however, evil & suffering will be overcome and everyone will develop into God’s likeness, living in glory in heaven. This justifies temporary evil.

EVIL & SUFFERING 17 - Add MODERN ADDITIONS TO IRENAEUS’

THEODICY Most modern philosophers have

developed their lines of thought from Irenaeus and not Augustine.

They focus on why God needed to allow humans to develop themselves, rather than doing it for them.

Peter Vardy uses the analogy of the king who falls in love with a peasant girl but won’t use his power to force her to marry him.

EVIL & SUFFERING 18 - Add JOHN HICK – 1 Hick explained that goodness that has

developed through free choice was better than the ready made goodness of robots.

If God wanted humans to be genuinely loving then he had to give them the opportunity to develop this quality themselves.

If we had been created so that we would automatically always love God and worship him, we would have been automatons and our love would have been valueless.

EVIL & SUFFERING 19 - Add JOHN HICK – 2 If human perfection must be created by

development, three things are required to enable this development to take place:

1/ Humans had to be created imperfect. 2/ Humans had to be distanced from

God (The Epistemic distance). 3/ The natural world could not be a

paradise.

EVIL & SUFFERING 20 - Add JOHN HICK – 3 Humans had to be created imperfect so as to be free

to go against God. A perfect being who was already in God’s likeness

would never disobey him. They had to be created at a distance from God (Hick

calls this the Epistemic Distance) so they could decide for themselves whether or not to follow his laws.

If God’s presence were too imminent, humans would be overwhelmed by knowledge of God’s expectations.

If this were so, humans would obey God, not out of free choice but because they would be afraid not to.

EVIL & SUFFERING 21 - Add JOHN HICK – 4 Worldly perfection would remove free will as it

would be impossible not to obey or follow God. In a paradise Earth, every human action

would result in happiness. Evil would be indistinguishable from good, since both would result in the same outcome.

Without evil, everyone would be able to follow God’s laws easily. Qualities such as courage, honour and love would be impossible and we could not develop into God’s likeness as these qualities are essential for development.

EVIL & SUFFERING 22 - Add JOHN HICK – 5 The Counterfactual hypothesis is a way of

examining a situation by seeing what might happen if the contrary to what in fact occurred, had happened.

In this case the CH establishes that God’s purpose would not be possible in a world completely free of suffering and evil.

This is the best of all possible worlds, even though it is not perfect. (See Leibniz)

It must contain natural laws that can produce some suffering.

EVIL & SUFFERING 23 - Add JOHN HICK – 6 Hick said this world was not for the

maximisation of pleasure or the minimisation of pain but it was well adapted for the purpose of ‘soul making’.

Hick showed Irenaeus’ theodicy can be developed to explain why at least some natural evil is essential, as well as moral evil.

EVIL & SUFFERING 24 - Add HEAVEN IS THE GOAL FOR ALL –

MODERN DEVELOPMENTS - 1 The challenges of the world do not

always result in genuine human development.

Often they result in horrific suffering. If life were to end at death, God’s

original purpose, the creation of beings in his likeness, would have been frustrated.

EVIL & SUFFERING 25 - Add HEAVEN IS THE GOAL FOR ALL –

MODERN DEVELOPMENTS – 2 Only a supremely good future in heaven

can justify the magnitude of the suffering.

Hick calls this the Eschatalogical justification – the eschaton is the Greek word for the end times.

EVIL & SUFFERING 26 - Add HEAVEN IS THE GOAL FOR ALL –

MODERN DEVELOPMENTS – 3 Many apparently ‘evil’ people are in fact

nothing more than ‘victims of the system’; people who perhaps have been brought up badly and who cannot be held totally responsible for their actions.

It is therefore essential for God’s justice that no one is overlooked.

EVIL & SUFFERING 27 - Add THE FREEWILL DEFENCE - 1 Both Augustine and Irenaeus base their

theodicies on the concept of free will. This Freewill Defence has been developed

into a theodicy in its own right. It says: the world is the logically necessary

environment for humans – the type of place that enables humans to be human – for the world provided true freedom in the form of real choices which produce real goodness or real harm.

Without such choices, we should not be free – and nor, therefore, should we be human.

EVIL & SUFFERING 28 - Add THE FREEWILL DEFENCE – 2 Richard Swinburne answered criticisms by

saying “The less God allows men to bring about large scale horrors, the less the freedom and responsibility he gives them. We are asking God to make a toy world, where things matter but not very much; where 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 .… He would be like an over-protective parent who will not let his child out of his sight for a moment.”

EVIL & SUFFERING 29 - Add THE FREEWILL DEFENCE – 3 Swinburne said that death, despite the

suffering it causes, is essential to the Freewill Defence.

Death means that life, and the chances that each life contains, are limited.

This is essential because only in a limited lifespan can we have genuine responsibility for our actions.

EVIL & SUFFERING 30 - Add THE FREEWILL DEFENSE 4 If we were immortal, with infinite chances, then

there would be no temptation. If there is always another chance then there is no risk – there would always be another chance to make amends.

But Swinburne disagrees with Irenaeus by saying that “a God who wishes that all men shall be saved is a being of dubious morality.”

He explains by saying “If you cannot damn yourself, no matter how hard you try, your salvation would be inevitable” making a toy world again!

EVIL & SUFFERING 31 - Pro PROCESS THEODICY (THEOLOGY) – 1 This is a worldview put forward by A.N.

Whitehead (1861-1947) which denies the omnipotence of the theistic God as a way of understanding the existence of evil.

It was developed as a theodicy by David Griffin in the 20th century, but strictly speaking it is a theology rather than a theodicy as it does not try to justify the theistic God.

Process theologians would rather compromise on God not being all powerful than on denying him being all loving.

EVIL & SUFFERING 32 - Pro PROCESS THEODICY (THEOLOGY) – 2 In this view, God is part of the world and is

bound by natural laws. God’s role in creation was limited to starting off

the evolutionary process. Since this process has led to humans exerting

their own influence on the world, God no longer has total control since humans are free to ignore him.

Humans have very little knowledge of God’s will, since he did not fashion them after his likeness.

EVIL & SUFFERING 33 - Pro PROCESS THEODICY (THEOLOGY) – 3 Whitehead called God “a fellow sufferer who

understands” As God is part of the world, he is affected by

it, yet unable to control it, he suffers when evil is committed.

But one could look at as the supreme sacrifice of God – for him to give us control, he relinquished power. It could be seen as more loving and even supremely powerful to make the ultimate sacrifice.

EVIL & SUFFERING 34 - Pro PROCESS THEODICY (THEOLOGY) – 4 Although God is not powerful enough to stop evil he

must still bear some responsibility for it, since it was God that started off the whole evolutionary process.

Empathy – Maybe God could have waved a ‘magic wand’ and stopped pain, but to totally love us he must have to suffer as we do.

To truly give us free-will, God had to give up the possibility of taking it back.

God gave us the best of all possible worlds to grow. Given a choice we would choose to live in this

universe rather than no universe, This justifies God’s creation.

EVIL & SUFFERING 35 - Mon MONISM - INTRO Monism is the belief that the universe is

a single, harmonious unity that is good. This argues that evil is not really a

reality. If everything is good than evil must be

an illusion in our minds. Monists argue that we would recognise

it as good if only we could see the whole picture.

EVIL & SUFFERING 36 - Mon MONISM – BARUCH SPINOZA 1632-1677 One of the challenges facing Monism is to explain

why we suffer the illusion of evil. Spinoza said it was because we make 2 mistakes

when assessing things: 1/ We assess things in terms of their usefulness so

we often overlook their real value. 2/ We assume there are norms to which humans &

animals conform. Thus we consider both a shrivelled tree and a sinful man as defective.

Spinoza argued that if we could consider the universe objectively then we could accept that each thing has a unique value.

EVIL & SUFFERING 37 - Mon MONISM – GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ (1646 – 1716) Leibniz argued that evil MUST be an illusion since

this world is the ‘best of all possible worlds’. This is because God, in his infinite wisdom &

goodness could never have chosen any other. In this way Leibniz moved from his definition of God

to a definition of the world, suspending his empirical judgement in the process.

Leibniz answered the question, why God should allow the illusion of suffering by saying the world could not have been made truly perfect, since only God can be perfect.

EVIL & SUFFERING 38 - Mon MONISM – MARY BAKER EDDY (1821 – 1910) She was from the Christian Science

Movement and upheld the Monist line. She argued that evil is all in the mind. “The only reality of sin, sickness &

death is the awful fact that unrealities seem real to human, erring belief.”

A boils simply manifests, through inflammation, swelling and a belief in the pain and this belief is called a boil.

EVIL & SUFFERING 39 – Intro B Emperor Constantine accepted Christianity in

313 CE in order to unite the Roman Empire. He changed Christianity in many ways. Eg he

militarised Christianity (It had always been pacifist) as he needed an army to defend his borders.

He gave the church more control and this is seen in Augustine’s strict theodicy (430 CE).

Irenaeus had no need of control as Christianity in 180 CE was a minority religion and this is reflected in Irenaeus’ more hopeful theodicy.

EVIL & SUFFERING 40 – Aug B CRITIQUE OF AUGUSTINE’S THEODICY – Positive This has had enormous influence & is still popular. Brian Davies supports Augustine’s claim that

evil cannot be called a substance. Davies says evil is the ‘gap’ between what

there is and what there ought to be. Should God have created more than he has

and if so – how much more? We can understand that free will can result in

evil and we have to balance the importance of free will with the possibility of suffering that necessarily follows.

EVIL & SUFFERING 41 – Aug B CRITIQUE OF AUGUSTINE’S THEODICY –Negative

Augustine’s theodicy has been severely criticised on three major counts for containing:

LOGICAL ERROR SCIENTIFIC ERROR MORAL ERROR.

EVIL & SUFFERING 42 – Aug B C.O.A’s.T – Negative 2 – Logical error F.D.E. Schleiermacher (1768 – 1834) argued it

was a logical contradiction to say a perfectly created world had gone wrong, since that would mean that evil has created itself out of nothing.

Whether or not evil is a deprivation, it is still a feature of the world, as is the suffering it produces.

As such, evil MUST be attributed to God. Either the world was not perfect to begin with

or God enabled it to go wrong.

EVIL & SUFFERING 43 – Aug B C.O.A’s.T – Negative 3 – Logical error It is hard to see how, in a perfect world

where there was no knowledge of good and evil, there could possibly be freedom to obey or disobey God, since good and evil would be unknown.

The fact that God’s creature chose to disobey him seems to suggest that there was already knowledge of evil, which could only have come from God.

EVIL & SUFFERING 44 – Aug B C.O.A’s.T – Negative 4 – Scientific error Augustine’s bases his theodicy on the Creation

and Fall stories which are seen by many as myth or parable and not literal accounts.

Augustine’s theodicy contradicts evolutionary theory, which asserts that the universe has continually been developing from an earlier stage of chaos.

Essential to evolution is the innate desire for survival which renders the Genesis account of blissful happiness in Eden still less easy to accept.

Yet, if God’s world contained flaws from the beginning then God must be responsible for evil.

EVIL & SUFFERING 45 – Aug B C.O.A’s.T – Negative 5 – Scientific error Augustine’s belief that we are all

seminally present in Adam has been rejected on biological grounds, which means we are not if fact guilty for Adam’s sin.

This means that God is NOT just in allowing us to suffer for someone else’s sin.

EVIL & SUFFERING 46 – Aug B C.O.A’s.T – Negative 6 – Moral error Augustine’s concept of hell has been criticised. Hell appears to be part of the design of the universe. This means that God must have already have

anticipated that the world would go wrong and have already accepted it.

If Hell is a place of complete separation from God and involves eternal (and therefore pointless) suffering, it marks the very opposite of the good world that God created.

If God’s plans have been turned upside down in this way, what might that suggest about God’s omnipotence?

C.O.A’s.T – Negative 7 – Moral error Although Augustine argued that God’s

selection of SOME people for heaven shows his mercy, others would argue that it displays irrational inconsistency, further questioning God’s goodness.

As a result of the negative criticisms outweighing the positive ones, one must seriously question whether Augustine’s theodicy does actually work!!!

EVIL & SUFFERING 47 Aug B

EVIL & SUFFERING 48 – Ire B IRENAEUS’ THEODICY 4 – Strength 1 Unlike Augustine, Irenaeus admitted that God is partly

responsible for evil & so removed the logical error. God’s responsibility extends to creating humans

imperfectly and making it their task to develop to perfection.

Irenaeus based this ideas on Genesis Genesis 1:26 – “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”

Irenaeus concluded that although God created man in his image and only later would he develop into God’s likeness.

Evil was necessary for man to complete the transformation into God’s likeness.

EVIL & SUFFERING 49 – Ire B IRENAEUS’ THEODICY 5 – Strength 2 But why not make humans perfect to begin with? Irenaeus believed God requires the willing

cooperation of human individuals. Willing cooperation requires genuine freedom;

we cannot willingly cooperate with something if we are forced into it.

Genuine freedom requires the possibility of choosing evil instead of good.

God’s plans, therefore require the possibility that our choices and actions might produce evil.

Can evil and suffering ever be valuable?

EVIL & SUFFERING 50 – Ire B IRENAEUS’ THEODICY 6 – Strength 3 Irenaeus believed humans did choose evil, but it

was beneficial as it enables us to understand what good is.

He argued that if we say that God should never allow evil to happen then we are saying that God should take away our humanity.

If God intervened each time an evil act is committed, there would not in fact be any freedom to commit evil.

Irenaeus believed that in heaven everyone will have completed the transformation into God’s likeness and sufferings here will be forgotten.

EVIL & SUFFERING 51 – Ire B CRITIQUE OF IRENAEUS’ THEODICY - 1 The concept of Heaven for all seems

unjust. This has attracted criticism because it does not

seem fair & so God’s justice is called into question. It contradicts religious texts, which promise

punishment for the unrighteous. It makes moral behaviour pointless – if everyone

is to be rewarded with heaven, what is the point of going out of our way to be good.

We are left with no incentive to make that development into God’s likeness which Irenaeus regarded as so important.

EVIL & SUFFERING 52 – Ire B CRITIQUE OF IRENAEUS’ THEODICY – 2 The quality & gravity of suffering is unacceptable We might accept the counterfactual

hypothesis that the process of soul-making could not take place in paradise.

BUT Maurice Wiles asks does our world need to contain the extent and severity of suffering found in events like the Holocaust or the Tsunami disaster in the Indian ocean?

Would it not have been sufficient for 4 million Jews to die instead of 6 million?

EVIL & SUFFERING 53 – Ire B CRITIQUE OF IRENAEUS’ THEODICY – 3 Suffering can never be an expression of God’s love

The atheist, D.Z. Phillips, argued that it would never be justifiable to hurt someone in order to help them.

When we consider the magnitude of suffering, this problem becomes more serious

BUT, Some suffering is necessary – think of the pain of a burn to your hand which tells you to move it before more serious damage occurs.

To have true free will, God had to have the whole range of evil, from the very bad to the very good, if not then there is no real choice.

EVIL & SUFFERING 54 – Ire B CRITIQUE OF IRENAEUS’ THEODICY – CONCLUSION Irenaeus’ theodicy cannot be accepted wholesale

without some difficulties. But it is not so easily dismissed as Augustine’s. Both theodicies emphasise the importance of free

will. Irenaeus’ theodicy seems more hopeful than that

of Augustine and has proved more popular. Though it appears that it is Augustine’s theodicy

that has been appropriated by the more dogmatic denominations – the Roman Catholics on one side and right-wing evangelical Protestants on the other.

EVIL & SUFFERING 55 – Add B CRITIQUE OF THE FREEWILL DEFENCE – 1 The FD attracts similar criticisms as do the other

theodicies, especially the concern that divine love cannot be expressed through so much suffering.

It also does not explain why people choose to turn away from God.

J.L. Mackie argues the fact that God did not make humanity with the possibility of always choosing the good. Makes God less than omnipotent.

If Mackie is true, then he kills all the other theodicies. For Mackie is arguing that God’s gift of freewill is in no way an excuse for the existence of evil. He says that God should simply have made free beings who would never in fact have chosen to sin.

EVIL & SUFFERING 56 – Add B CRITIQUE OF THE FREEWILL DEFENCE – 2 Mackie is in a minority and Hick attacks him

by arguing that if Mackie’s view were true then God would not have made us truly free and we would be still no better than robots.

BUT, if God knows in advance what we will do (Determinism) in any case, does this not suggest that he has preordained evil?

Yet, if God had no idea what his creation would do, does this not suggest that evil rather took God by surprise, thus questioning God’s omnipotence?

EVIL & SUFFERING 57 – Pro B PROCESS THEODICY - CRITIQUE 1 Strengths: 1/ It removes the stumbling block about why God

cannot stop suffering 2/ God’s suffering may encourage believers

since God can understand their pain. Could God truly suffer if he were in complete control? 3/ There is no certainty that God will eventually

triumph. This should encourage us to join God in the fight against evil and secure victory – It is not a theodicy that encourages inertia as that would mean disaster for us all.

EVIL & SUFFERING 58 – Pro B PROCESS THEODICY - CRITIQUE 2 Weaknesses: 1/ We cannot really call this a theodicy as it

makes no attempt to justify a theistic God. 2/ The uncertainty of the future might cause

despair in some believers. 3/If it is accepted that this theodicy can be

deemed successful because good outweighs evil. Then we must accept that this ‘cuts no ice’ with those of us that are actually suffering. Since there is no promise of heaven, there is no certainty that our suffering will be rewarded.

EVIL & SUFFERING 59 – Mon B MONISM – A CRITIQUE Monism is not widely supported It denies the reality of evil which goes against

evidence and religious belief. Even if evil is an illusion, it is real enough for those

who believe it is making them suffer. It does not explain why God allows people to suffer

(illusion or not) for their beliefs. It is dangerous because it trivialises the concept of

evil, making it seem unimportant. Why should we bother to be good if evil is only an

illusion? If much of what we believe is an illusion, how can we

be sure what to uphold and what to reject?

EVIL & SUFFERING 60 – Conc B CONCLUSION – 1 Some of these ideas adjust the nature

of God and the nature of evil. Others try to harmonise evil with the theistic God.

Each idea has strengths but also weaknesses.

For atheists these arguments will not convince.

For believers the arguments do not detract from belief.

EVIL & SUFFERING 61 – Conc B CONCLUSION – 2 Reference may be made to God’s goodness

to humanity. Some Christians will apply the ‘cop-out-clause’

– we cannot understand the ways of God and that he must have some purpose for the existence of evil.

But for Philosophers that is not good enough. They seek to make some sense of the suffering in the world and probably the theodicies of Irenaeus & his followers offer the most hopeful responses.

EVIL & SUFFERING 62 CONSTANTINE He is crucial to your analysis. He started the council

of Nicea in 325 CE and changed Christianity drastically by accepting it for the Roman Empire.

Christianity changed from being pacifistic to being militant as his armies still needed to fight.

Irenaeus (180 CE) came before Constantine when the Christian Church was a minority group and not in need of power and control.

Augustine (430 CE) came after Constantine when it was necessary to give the church greater authority so Christianity could become universal.