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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
We are often told that there is something called ‘the problem of evil’. What is this supposed to be? And how should we respond to it?
It is usually understood as a problem for classical theism (sometimes just called theism), supporters of which are commonly called theists. According to classical theism, God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and allgood. In the world around us, however, we discover a great deal of pain and suffering. We also find a great deal of moral evil—morally culpable actions (or refusals to act) which diminish both those who are morally bad and those around them. The problem of evil is commonly seen as the problem of how the existence of God can be reconciled with the pain, suffering, and moral evil which we know to be facts of life. And it has often been said that they cannot be. Thus it has been urged that the problem of evil constitutes grounds for disbelief in God.
The argument here has taken two forms. First, it has been said that evil is evidence against there being a God—that evil shows the existence of God to be unlikely. Second, it has been held that evil is proof that there could not be a God. The idea here is that theists are caught in a contradiction. They cannot say both that there is evil and that God exists. Since they can hardly deny that there is evil, it follows that God does not exist.
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4 The Existence of God, pp.210 ff. For development of this position by Swinbume see also ‘Knowledge from Experience, and the Problem of Evil’ in Abraham, William J. and Holtzer, Steven W. (ed.), The Rationality of Religious Belief (Oxford, 1987)Google Scholar.
5 Evil and the God of Love (2nd edn., London, 1977), pp.372Google Scholar ff.
6 See The City of God, Book II.
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8 God, Freedom and Evil (London, 1975), p.58Google Scholar. In speaking of non‐human agency as he does, Plantinga is not asking us to believe that there are non‐human agents responsible for evil. He is asking us to note a possible explanation for certain kinds of evil. As Plantinga puts it, he is concerned to offer a ‘defence’ rather than a ‘theodicy’. See God, Freedom and Evil, p.28.
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10 Job 9:22–23; Luke 13:2–3; John 9:3.
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13 A similar line is pressed by Kenneth Surin in Theology and the Problem of Evil (Oxford, 1986), pp.80 ffGoogle Scholar.
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27 Cf. Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism, chap.11.
28 Cf. Eichrodt, Walter, Theology of the old Testament, Vol.1 (London, 1961), p.240Google Scholar.
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