Christian Apologetics, IV
The Problem of Evil & Suffering
Rob Koons
robkoons@yahoo.com
robkoons.net “Unpublished”
Schedule
• Sept. 26: Scientific evidence for God
• Oct. 3: Philosophical proofs of God; absolute
truth & possibility of knowledge
• Oct. 10: Historical evidences for the truth of
the Gospel; other religions
• Oct. 17: Why does God allow unnecessary
suffering and evil?
• Oct. 24: Roman Catholicism, plus Jennifer
Fulwiler, ConversionDiary.com
Outline for Tonight
1. Some Distinctions: logical vs. existential
problems, defense vs. theodicy
2. Two Logical Problems: Deductive and
Inductive
3. The Free Will Defense
4. Some Bad Theodicies
5. Good Theodicies: Faith & Reason
6. Finding Meaning and Value in Suffering
1. Logical vs. Existential Problems
• Logically: is it rational to
believe in a loving and allpowerful God, given the
moral evil and horrible
suffering in the world?
• Existentially: how can I
trust God when He allows
me to suffer? How can I
find meaning or value in
my suffering?
The Definition of “Evil”
Philosophers use
the word “evil” in
this context to mean
anything bad: sin,
death, suffering,
pain, ignorance,
poverty, folly, etc.
Defense vs. Theodicy
• A defense of Christian theism is an attempt to
show that it is rational to believe in God, even in
the absence of a known explanation of why God
allows the evil He does.
• A theodicy is an attempt to provide the
explanation (either fully or in part) of why God
allows the evil He does. (“Theodicy” comes from
the Greek for “justifying God”.)
• A defense may take the form of offering a
possible theodicy (one that might be true, for all
we know).
2. Two Logical Problems
• The Deductive Argument from Evil: it is
logically inconsistent to believe that there
exists both an all-loving and all-powerful God
and real evil.
• The Inductive Argument from Evil: the
existence of evil (especially, in its actual
quantity and quality) make it very unlikely that
a good and almighty God exists. Atheism fits
the evidence better.
The Lucretian Deductive
Argument
1. Evil exists.
2. An all-loving God would want (above all
else) to eliminate all evil.
3. An almighty God would be able to
eliminate all evil.
4. If God wanted (above all else) to
eliminate all evil and was able to do so,
there would be no evil.
Therefore, there is no all-loving and
almighty God.
A Modern Version (J. L.
Mackie)
1. Evil exists.
2. The best possible world would be
free of all evil.
3. A good God would want to
actualize the best possible world.
4. An almighty God would be able to
actualize the best possible world.
Therefore, there is no good and
almighty God.
The Most Critical Problem
• Premise 2 is just not plausible: why think that
the best world is free of all evil?
• Some goods are impossible without coexisting evils. For example, one can’t exercise
compassion unless suffering exists, heroism
unless danger exists, mercy unless sin exists.
• God would not eliminate an evil if eliminating
it also eliminates an even greater good.
Other Problems with the Argument
1. I won’t challenge premise 1: evil is real.
2. Is there such a thing as “the best possible
world”? Maybe any world could be improved
upon.
3. Does God really care about how good the
world is as a whole? He loves people, not
worlds.
4. Can an almighty God actualize any
possibility? The Free Will Defense says No.
3. Alvin Plantinga’s Free Will Defense
• There is a possible world (call it W*) in which
Adam and Eve and all other creatures freely
avoid all sin.
• Let’s grant (at least for the sake of argument)
that W* would have been better than the
actual world.
• Could God have used His power to actualize
W*? Maybe not. (Remember, this is only a
“defense”.)
Conditionals of Freedom
• Plantinga revived a theory of freedom developed
by the Spanish Jesuit philosopher Luis De Molina
(1535-1600), called “Molinism”. It remains a
permissible opinion for Catholics.
(C1) If Adam were in a Genesis 3:6 situation, he would
freely choose to eat the fruit.
• C1 is contingently true, and something known by
God, but its truth was under the control of Adam,
not God. Given (C1), world W* was not a world
God could actualize (without Adam’s cooperation).
Transworld Depravity?
• But, even if God knew that Adam would sin in a
Genesis 3:6 situation, couldn’t God have created
a sin-free world by putting Adam in different
situations involving free choices, or by creating
other possible humans in Adam’s place?
• Maybe not. It might be the case (contingently)
that Adam suffers from “transworld depravity”,
and so might every possible free creature.
Universal Transworld Depravity
• Adam suffers from TD if, in every possible
world containing one or more free choices for
Adam to make, Adam would have freely made
the wrong choice at least once.
• For all we know, Adam and all possible free
creatures might suffer from TD.
• If so, God would have known that He could
not actualize a sin-free world.
A Defense, not a Theodicy
• Plantinga offers this argument as a defense
against the Deductive Argument from evil, not as
a theodicy.
• Plantinga’s Universal Transworld Depravity
hypothesis, if possibly true, demonstrates that
there is no logical inconsistency in believing in a
good and all-powerful God and the existence of
evil.
• See Plantinga’s God, Freedom and Evil, or
Warranted Christian Belief, chapter 14.
A Thomistic Account of
Free Will
• Dominican theologians, following St.
Thomas Aquinas, hold that God can
ensure, in any single case, that a human
being freely refrain from sinning.
• However, given that human beings are
real creatures with a rational and fallible
nature (and not merely puppets or
robots), it would be deeply incongruous
if they never sinned.
• God wishes, in each case, that the
creature choose rightly, but He cannot
will that they always do so – if He is to
respect their created natures.
Free Will and Foreknowledge?
• How can we have genuinely free will, if God
already knows, long in advance, what we will
choose?
• The Christian Roman philosopher Boethius
(475-525 AD) solved this problem: God is
beyond or ‘outside of’ time. He doesn’t foreknow what we will do: He timelessly sees us
doing it as we do it. He sees all of time all at
‘once’, in a single act of knowledge.
But why Suffering?
If the Free Will defense works, we can
explain why sin exists. But why
suffering and death?
1. Suffering is a natural consequence
of sin, both commission and
omission. If free choice is to be
morally significant, it must have
consequences.
2. Sin requires death, and death
necessarily involves suffering.
So, why Death?
• Given the reality of sin,
physical death was a
relative blessing (a
necessary evil).
• Without death, there would
be no limit to the evils of
tyranny, both grand and
petty:
– Death puts a term limit to the
power of any tyrant.
– Death provides an escape for the
victim, and a limit to the harm
and suffering that can be
inflicted.
From the Deductive to the lnductive
• In the last 40 years, professional philosophers
have generally accepted Plantinga’s free will
defense as a definitive answer to the
deductive argument.
• Attention has turned to the inductive
argument.
The Inductive Argument
1. Evil exists, in large quantities and severe
quality.
2. If a good and almighty God existed, then it
would be very unlikely that so much and so
severe evil would exist.
3. If there were no God at all, it would be quite
likely that so much evil would exist.
 So, the probability of God’s existence, relative
to the evidence of evil, is low.
Partial vs. Total Evidence
• As Plantinga has pointed out, it is quite possible
for something to be very improbable, relative to
one kind of evidence, and yet certain, relative to
our total evidence.
• For example, given the data about the frequency
of last names in the world, it is very unlikely that I
would have a mother-in-law named “Moulthrop”
and a friend named “Bonevac”. The odds against
this are about 7 billion to 1. Yet, I know it to be
true, with probability nearly 100%.
Total Evidence for God
• In the same way, given our total evidence about
God, including our knowledge through faith of
God’s love (revealed in Christ), we know with
certainty that God is good and all-powerful, even
if that were unlikely given just the evidence
concerning evil and suffering.
• However, I would argue that the existence of evil
and suffering are not especially unlikely, given
God’s goodness. Let’s turn now to theodicies.
4. Bad Theodicies
• Karma and reincarnation: present
suffering is punishment for sins in
past lives.
• Evil (sin, pain, death) are unreal.
• Apparent evils are only blessings
in disguise. Camus’s The Plague,
quietism.
• God is not perfectly good: He’s a
mixture of good & evil, or beyond
moral categories.
• A finite “god”, who tries but fails
to prevent evils.
5. Good Theodicies: Faith & Reason
• We can approach the problem of theodicy
from the perspective of faith (taking into
account the revelation of God in Christ, the
Scriptures and the Church) and from that of
natural reason (philosophy).
• Both have something to contribute.
Lessons of Faith
• The Fall (Genesis 1-3). Sin, pain and death were
not parts of God’s original plan.
• The New Jerusalem (Revelation 21). Sin, pain and
death will not be part of God’s new creation. Not
Plan A or Plan Z.
“Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He
will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and
God Himself will be among them, 4 and He will wipe
away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer
be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or
crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.”
Pain, Illness and Death are Truly Bad
• Jesus wept before the grave of his friend
Lazarus. (John 11:35)
• Most of Jesus’ miracles were acts of healing.
He never failed to heal those who asked
Him in faith. This reveals God’s
unconstrained or absolute attitude toward
suffering: He is always compassionate,
always desiring to relieve pain.
• The Church is charged with a mission of
healing (Mathew 10:8, CCC 1507-1513).
The Book of Job
• Job does not suffer the loss of
his family and his health
because of his sin: he was
singled out (by Satan) because
of his righteousness.
• Job’s trials are not God’s idea,
but God does permit them.
• Job is held up as a model of
faith (Ezekiel 14, James 5),
despite the fact that he
complains bitterly and
questions God’s justice. We
should be honest with God
about our doubts.
Jesus: John 9, Luke 13
 As He passed by, He saw a man blind from birth. 2 And
His disciples asked Him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man
or his parents, that he would be born blind?” 3 Jesus
answered, “It was neither that this man sinned, nor his
parents; but it was so that the works of God might be
displayed in him.”
 “Do you suppose that those eighteen on whom the
tower in Siloam fell and killed them were
worse culprits than all the men who live in
Jerusalem? 5 I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you
will all likewise perish.”
Contributions of Philosophy
• Privation theory
of evil – from the
Neo-Platonists,
adopted by
Augustine,
Aquinas.
Privation Theory of Evil
• Every evil (sin, illness, ignorance, death) is
simply the absence of the corresponding good
(righteousness, health, knowledge, life).
• God didn’t create evil: everything God creates
and sustains in being is good.
• Evil is the result of creatures falling away (on
their own accord) from God’s intended
fullness of life.
Why didn’t God create a better World?
• Maybe He did! Who knows how many worlds
and kinds of creatures there are?
• We know He created many unfallen creatures
of much higher wisdom than ours: seraphim,
cherubim.
• The question is: why shouldn’t God also
create, in addition, creatures like us, who are
weaker and fallible? Isn’t it better that we
exist, rather than not exist at all?
What are God’s Ethics?
• Clearly, God is not a ‘negative utilitarian’: His goal
is not to minimize the total quantity of pain.
• Nor is He an average-utility maximizer. He could
have maximized the average happiness of the
world by creating absolutely nothing, since the
Three Persons of the Trinity are perfectly happy
(beyond the possible happiness of any creature).
• God’s nature is Love (Agape). He gives what is
good (including Himself) to other persons.
An Agapeistic Problem of Evil
1. God loves all human beings perfectly.
2. Whom God loves, He desires to give every good.
3. An omnipotent God could give every good to
every human person.
4. If God desires something and is able to do it,
then He does do it.
5. Evil is the absence of some good.
So, no human being can experience any evil.
What went Wrong?
• It is premise 4 that is faulty:
4. If God desires something and is able to do it, then He does
do it.
• This is true only if God has no conflicting desires or
moral (“deontic”) constraints.
• A deontic constraint is an ethical prohibition that
forbids doing something, even if its consequences
would be very desirable. For example, there are
deontic constraints that forbid breaking a promise or
telling a lie, even when doing so would produce the
greatest happiness for those affected.
Why Deontic Constraints?
• Since God is absolute goodness, He cannot be
bound by any deontic constraints except for
those that follow from His essence (like
truthfulness) or those He has voluntarily taken on
(in the form of something like vows or promises).
• But, if God truly loves us, why would He take on
any vows or promises that would prevent Him
from giving us any good?
• He wouldn’t: unless the constraint is a condition
of our very existence.
God and the Creation of a Real World
• In order to create a real world, including
creatures will real natures and meaningful
choices, God must undertake some deontic
constraints that prevent Him from making every
choice made by every creature conform to God’s
own preferences.
• God must adopt a limited interference policy.
• Such a policy need not forbid all miracles, but it
must make them the exception rather than the
rule. (See C. S. Lewis’s The Problem of Pain.)
Ivan Karamazov’s Argument
Ivan Karamazov’s Argument
1. If God exists, He loves little children.
2. If God loves little children, He would have the
paramount desire (above all other considerations) to
prevent them from suffering horribly.
3. God is able to prevent any child from suffering
horribly.
4. If God is able to satisfy one of His paramount desires,
He does so.
5. Yet, little children do suffer horribly.
 So, God doesn’t exist.
Love Presupposes Existence
• If God loves someone, that love presupposes
the person’s actual existence. You cannot truly
love someone who never has existed and
never will exist.
• Our existence presupposes the causal
structure of the world at our conception,
including God’s deontic self-constraints (and
including the sins of previous generations). (So
argues my teacher Robert M. Adams.)
God’s Self-Restraint does not
Impugn His Love
• Consequently, God’s self-restraint (in fidelity to
His adopted deontic constraints) cannot count
against His love toward us, whose very existence
entails the existence of those very constraints.
• One last worry: a loving parent would violate any
moral constraint to prevent a child’s horrible
suffering. Perhaps, but we cannot sensibly ask
this of God. God’s fidelity to His own vows must
be absolute, if He is to be God.
How can a good God
send anyone to hell?
• Those who are in hell are there at their
own insistence, not God’s.
– “Hell is God’s great compliment to the
reality of human freedom and the dignity
of human choice.” G. K. Chesterton
– “The doors of hell are locked from the
inside.”
C. S. Lewis (The Problem of Pain)
• We don’t know how many will end up
in hell. We may hope that no one will.
Does God arbitrarily and pointlessly
punish the damned?
• The evil of hell is primarily separation from
God, which is the very thing that the damned
insist upon. Milton’s Satan: “I would rather
rule in hell than serve in heaven.”
• To the extent that God does punish the
damned, St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that the
punishment is a loving discipline from God to
prevent the person from falling deeper into
spiritual darkness.
The Atheist’s Problem of Evil
• The atheist also has an intellectual problem
generated by the existence of evil.
• From an atheistic or naturalistic point of view,
human suffering, illness and death are a fully
natural and normal part of the world.
• Moreover, what we call “evil” would be a natural
and normal part of human motivation, generated
(by natural selection) in the same way as what we
call “good”. Stephen Pinker: rape is “natural”.
The Existential Problem of Evil
• How can we trust God in the midst of suffering?
• We must remember that God cares and that He
wants to relieve our suffering. In fact, He certainly
will: in the next life, if not in this one.
• The use of prayers, sacraments, and sacramentals
all expand God’s opportunities to act (God can’t
answer a prayer if we don’t pray). But there can
be no guarantee that any prayer will be answered
within any fixed time frame.
Why Doesn’t God Answer all Prayers
Immediately?
• This wouldn’t have been a reasonable
constraint for God to adopt.
• It’s vitally important that we learn to trust
God, walking by faith and not by sight.
• If we could see prayers always answered
immediately, there would be no room for
faith, and without faith it would be impossible
to please God (to grow in our love for God).
The Need for a Cognitive Distance
• In order for us to have a free and mutually loving
relationship with God, God has to maintain a cognitive
distance – enough evidence to make faith reasonable,
but not so much to make it impossible.
• Even in the garden of Eden, God appeared in human
form, intermittently. No beatific vision.
• “You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and
live!” (Exodus 33:20) We need to sanctified before we
can enjoy the vision of God. This is why we need the
probationary period of walking by faith (even
purgatory) before we’ll be able to see God in His
essence.
What Good can We find in Suffering?
• Romans 8:28 And we know that God
causes all things to work together for good to
those who love God, to those who are called
according to His purpose.
• Note: He causes things to work together for
good, not necessarily for the best. Suffering
remains bad – so we should always try to
relieve it, but when we can’t, God can always
bring from it a countervailing good.
Four Goods
1. We can learn to trust in God’s power, despite
our weakness. (Paul’s “thorn in the flesh,” 2
Corinthians 12:7-9)
2. We glorify God by our patient faith, and we
partake of that glory in eternity:
For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an
eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison. (2
Corinthians 4:17)
Unity with Christ
3. We are united with Christ in His passion.
Suffering can “unite us with his redemptive passion”;
it becomes “a participation in the saving work of
Jesus.” CCC 1505, 1521
4. In that unity with Christ’s passions, we can
make reparations for our sins and for the sins of
others:
–Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in
my flesh I do my share on behalf of His body, which
is the church, in filling up what is lacking in Christ’s
afflictions. (Colossians 1:24)