The Goodness of God and the Problem of Evil

Hume's speaker Philo asks, "Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil?"

Christian teachers put the question to themselves. Boethius, in The Consolation of Philosophy, quotes a saying he gives to one of Philosophy's own disciples: "If God exists, whence comes evil? Yet whence comes good, if He exists not?"

Aquinas made it the first objection to the existence of God in the Summa: "If, therefore, God existed, there would be no evil discoverable; but there is evil in the world. Therefore God does not exist."

Each side carries the burden of its own claim. The objector must show the inconsistency or the improbability he asserts, and the Christian must show from the texts of the first section that Scripture holds both.

Some answers are theodicies, which offer God's reason for permitting evil, and some are defences, which hold only that God and evil are consistent and offer no reason for any case. Each answer here is held to four tests: whether it fits the texts, whether it explains moral evil, whether it explains natural evil, and whether it explains a particular case.

In The City of God, book 11, chapter 22, Augustine wrote that "no nature at all is evil, and this is a name for nothing but the want of good". In his Enchiridion, written about 421, he asked, "For what is that which we call evil but the absence of good?"

Aquinas held the same in the Summa: "by the name of evil is signified the absence of good".

The rival view gives evil a source of its own, and Marcion held it in his reading of Isaiah 45:7, set out below as Tertullian reports it.

What would weaken it is an evil shown to exist by itself, as a nature and not as a lack in some creature.

Augustine gave the reason in the same chapter of the Enchiridion. God "would never permit the existence of anything evil among His works, if He were not so omnipotent and good that He can bring good even out of evil".

Aquinas gave this as his reply to the objection from evil: "This is part of the infinite goodness of God, that He should allow evil to exist, and out of it produce good."

Lactantius answered the argument he reported by appeal to wisdom, holding that "there is more of goodness and pleasure in wisdom than of annoyance in evils".

The objection is Rowe's: some suffering seems to serve no purpose at all.

What would weaken it is a text of Scripture that sets some evil outside God's purpose.

Alvin Plantinga answered the logical form in God, Freedom, and Evil (1974). His defence holds that persons with morally significant freedom are a great good, and that God could not remove much of the world's evil without removing that freedom. Mackie later conceded the point in The Miracle of Theism (1982), as the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy reports. In his words, "the problem of evil does not, after all, show that the central doctrines of theism are logically inconsistent with one another".

The objection, as that encyclopedia states it, is that the defence "may be able to explain why God allows moral evil to occur" while "it cannot explain why he allows natural evil".

What would weaken it is a showing that God could make free creatures who are certain never to choose wrong.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz held in his Theodicy (1710), part 1, section 8, that "if there were not the best (optimum) among all possible worlds, God would not have produced any". On his answer the world God made, with its evil, is the best that could be made.

Tooley's encyclopedia entry reports the objection from George Schlesinger (1964 and 1977) and Peter Forrest (1981). It holds that above every world God could make there stands a better one, so that God has no highest choice to make.

What would weaken it is any one evil shown to be removable with no loss to the good of the whole world.

John Hick held in Evil and the God of Love (1966) that God made the world as a place where free persons grow toward Him through challenge and suffering. Paul writes in the same direction that light and momentary affliction "is producing for us an eternal weight of glory that is far beyond comparison" (2 Corinthians 4:17).

Tooley's entry argues that it gives no account of the pain of animals. It also argues that "there seems to be no reason at all why a world must contain horrendous suffering if it is to provide a good environment for the development of character".

What would weaken it is suffering shown to form no one.

Stephen J. Wykstra answered the evidential form in "The Humean Obstacle to Evidential Arguments from Suffering" (International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 1984). His answer holds that human beings are not placed to see whether a given evil has a reason, so the fact that no reason appears to us is weak evidence that none exists.

Tooley's entry argues that this appeal to the limits of human knowledge leaves untouched the forms of the argument that compare explanations. On his reading it answers the evidential form only at the cost of a general doubt about reasoning from what is seen to what is unseen.

What would weaken it is a reason to think that God's purposes, if He had them, would be visible to us.

Origen wrote in Against Celsus that God "calls into existence "corporeal" or "external" evils, while purifying and training those who would not be disciplined by the word and sound doctrine". Jerome, in his Commentary on Isaiah, read the verse's pair as "peace and evil, that is, calm and war" and tied its darkness to Israel's captivity. Aquinas drew the line for every such text in the Summa: "God is the author of the evil which is penalty, but not of the evil which is fault".

Its limit is set by two texts: Joseph's brothers and the men who crucified Jesus did acts of fault, and Scripture sets those acts within God's purpose (Genesis 50:20; Acts 4:28). The reading leaves open how God rules acts He does not author.

Marcion read the verse as a confession that the Creator is the author of moral evil. Tertullian reports that Marcion fastened on the Creator's words "I am he that creates evil". Marcion then "applied to the Creator the figure of the corrupt tree bringing forth evil fruit, that is, moral evil, and then presumed that there ought to be another god".

The objection is the chapter's own claim that the LORD is the only God: "I am the LORD, and there is no other; there is no God but Me" (Isaiah 45:5). The verse therefore leaves no room for a second and better god beside the Creator.