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Explaining Evil: Four Views

W. Paul Franks (ed.), Explaining Evil: Four Views , Bloomsbury, 2019, 180pp., $27.95 (pbk), ISBN 9781501331121.

Reviewed by Matthew K. Douglass, Ouachita Baptist University

When confronted with the reality of widespread and terrible suffering, we naturally seek an explanation for why such things happen. In their attempts to make sense of suffering, philosophers have settled on a handful of ways to discuss the problem, dividing it up into smaller, more manageable pieces. It is common, for instance, to distinguish suffering caused by human cruelty from suffering that follows from indifferent laws of nature. Some philosophers address specific instances of suffering that are so horrific or seemingly pointless that they defy explanation, while others focus on why there is so much suffering in the world and why it is unfairly distributed. However, the problem of evil is parsed, it is typically stated as a problem for theism. If God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and morally perfect, he must have the inclination and ability to eliminate evil. Why, then, does evil exist?

As valuable as such discussions are, framing the issue as a problem for theism can hide the fact that evil is a problem for everyone, theist and atheist alike. As W. Paul Franks notes in the introductory chapter, "the task of explaining evil is not something that falls to theists alone . . . Non-theists are just as prone to seek out explanations" (2). And because the problem of evil is often stated as an argument against theism, discussions can focus too narrowly on whether this theodicy or that objection to theism is successful. However, Franks continues, "while this is a worthwhile activity, taken alone it doesn't actually give us what we were initially looking for -- an explanation for evil" (2).

The central purpose of the book, therefore, is to keep the bigger question in mind and to find a satisfactory explanation for evil. Toward that end, the book presents four competing explanations for evil. Each chapter begins with a leading essay that presents and defends an account for why evil exists, followed by responses from the other three contributors, and finishing with a reply from the original author. The first two chapters deal with theistic accounts from Richard Brian Davis and Paul Helm, while the final two chapters present the views of atheists Michael Ruse and Erik J. Wielenberg.

It is worth commenting on the scope of the book before I summarize each chapter. In order to explain evil, it is first necessary to at least roughly define what evil is. All four authors, it turns out, conceive of evil in moral terms, and thus "natural evils" like earthquakes, disease, and famine are mostly left out of the discussion. In the introduction, Franks says that separating the problem of moral evil from nature-based suffering helps us see that a solution to one problem may not have anything to do with the other. Moreover, he claims, separating the problems encourages non-theists, who may not think that nature-based suffering poses any philosophical problem, to nevertheless engage with the problem of evil (6). To be sure, there are benefits to focusing on moral evils alone. However, an overwhelming amount of suffering results from the indifferent forces of nature, and even if it poses no special problem for an atheist, it is an acute problem for theists. Thus, even if nature-based suffering does not properly count as evil , it still would have been good for the theists (at least) to discuss the problem more. Having said that, let me turn to the substance of each chapter.

In Chapter 1, Davis explains evil from the perspective of "agent-causal theism." According to this view, evil exists because humans were endowed by God with the power of self-motion, "of initiating volitions to act . . . in light of the reasons [they] have for acting" (14). After briefly giving reasons to think that humans have agent-causal powers, Davis devotes most of his essay to the claim that only agent-causal theism can successfully explain the reality of evil. As Davis describes it, evil essentially involves immoral thoughts, actions, and decisions freely chosen by a conscious moral agent. But free will, he argues, is an illusion if every choice has been predetermined by a series of prior external causes. Consequently, deterministic worldviews -- in particular Darwinian Naturalism and Calvinistic Theism -- will be unable to account for the sort of freedom that makes evil possible. Moreover, he argues, Darwinian Naturalism cannot explain the existence of conscious beings, since there is no way for purely physical causes to produce consciousness. Ultimately, Davis concludes, evil is possible only if theism is true. Thus, ironically, the reality of evil is proof of God's existence.

In Chapter 2, Helm defends Theistic Compatibilism; however, he is careful to note, his compatibilism is not essential to his explanation of evil. Instead, Helm focuses on two distinct questions. First, what is God's purpose for ordaining/permitting evil? Second, granted that God ordains evil, how does it occur? Helm answers the first question by considering God's purpose in creating the world. According to Helm, God creates in order to express his glory, power, goodness, and perfection. Following Alvin Plantinga's felix culpa theodicy, Helm suggests that a world in which God becomes incarnate, atones for sin, and defeats evil is incommensurably better than a world without evil. To explain how evil comes about, Helm interprets "the Fall" story in Genesis as an historical account. On this reading, humanity was originally given a good, but mutable character. Unfortunately -- for reasons that we can never fully understand -- the original humans rebelled against God and now all humanity is bound to sin. Evil, therefore, is the product of this sinful nature, though importantly, God will eventually restore and glorify the original creation. Helm's approach in this chapter follows the scholastic tradition of "faith seeking understanding." For him, philosophy is useful in this search for understanding, but ultimately it is limited; since we are inquiring into the inscrutable will of God, questions will inevitably arise that human reason cannot answer. Similarly, while Helm values the natural sciences, he argues that when science conflicts with faith, faith should take priority: "The important thing is that science is provisional, revelation is not" (61).

Next, the book switches to two atheistic accounts of evil. In Chapter 3, Ruse defends his opening claim that "I believe in the existence of evil" (83), while at the same time rejecting objective morality. An evil action, on his view, is one that goes against the general moral sentiments ingrained in us through evolution. In complex organisms, especially those who live in large social groups, genetically-determined patterns of behavior arise in order to promote the long-term survival of a species. In humans, the sense of right and wrong arose as both a shortcut mechanism for making complex decisions in a social context, as well as a motivator to cooperate despite the inclination to cheat and steal whenever possible. Importantly, on Ruse's account morality depends on human nature and is thus universal, not relative among people or cultures. Thus, evil exists because it is a violation of the natural. "I think Himmler was evil," he writes, "because he consciously of choice went against what it is to be a human being" (101). At the same time, however, morality is contingent since humanity could have evolved differently and some other rules of behavior might have been necessary for long-term survival. Ultimately, then, Ruse affirms the existence and substance of morality, and, in turn, the reality of evil; he simply denies that morality is objective or based on anything non-physical, like Platonic Forms or the divine will.

In the final chapter, Wielenberg explains evil from the perspective of "robust normative realism." On this view, being evil is a non-natural property that cannot be reduced to a natural property (like being painful ) or a supernatural property (like being forbidden by God ). In addition, Wielenberg affirms the existence of basic ethical facts -- substantive, metaphysically necessary moral truths that are true without explanation or external justification. These facts form the basis of morality and are not based on anything else. One such ethical fact is that it is evil to cause pain just for fun. But what, precisely, is the relationship between the property being an instance of causing pain for fun and the property being evil? According to Wielenberg, there is a robust causal relationship between the two; the first simply and directly causes the next, without any intermediate law of nature. So, on his view, evil exists in our world because certain non-moral properties, like pain and cruelty, exist. As for the prevalence of evil, Wielenberg turns to the specific evil of dehumanization, in which the perpetrator denies the human personhood of his victim. After describing some examples and common features of dehumanization, Wielenberg concludes that "evolutionary forces have shaped our minds so that dehumanization comes easily to us, though the specific nature of dehumanization varies across cultures" (137).

Overall, the book is a welcome addition to the literature on the problem of evil. It approaches the problem in a way that is refreshingly different from the norm. The position-and-response format allows the reader to grasp the key elements of each view, briefly stated and in conversation with each other. Because the position, objections, and replies are collected together, by the end of each chapter it is clear what the lead position is, as well as its strengths and weaknesses.

Unfortunately, to allow for such back-and-forth within a short volume, each essay is condensed and several key assertions are left unsupported. Similarly, the brevity of the volume restricts the interaction among the authors. Each leading essay is subjected to three sets of objections, some of which are significant and would require a full essay to address adequately. This is not to say that the arguments are weak or half-baked; the authors frequently refer to previous works where their views are discussed in more depth, and a helpful list of recommended reading is included as an appendix. And for the most part, the authors do a good job of sketching plausible responses to the various objections, though in some instances, serious objections are dispatched with just a few sentences.

Despite these limitations, the book is engaging and accessible for interested readers. The essays are short and clear, giving enough detail to explain each position without overwhelming the reader. In addition, the book touches on a wide variety of philosophical topics -- the nature of free will, normative ethics and metaethics, possible worlds, epistemology, and philosophy of language. For undergraduate classes, the book would be a good introduction to some of these topics and a useful way to show how they are interrelated.

Why Does Evil Exist in the World?

In her Verdict column on December 18 , Professor Sherry Colb raised the important question of why, if God is omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent, as the monotheistic religions believe, evil continues to exist in the world. In this column, I respond to her thoughts on the issue using a theological framework called theodicy and offer a corollary question about the existence of communal evil.

This is perhaps one of the most perplexing questions in history, and a topic about which much been written and speculated. Beginning in the book of Genesis from the ancient scripture, we see a first stab at explaining the root of evil. As the story goes, from humanity’s disobedience to God sprang forth evil. Evil thus becomes a punishment inflicted on humanity for its severed relationship with God. The Psalms repeatedly ask the question of how is it that evil befalls those whom God loves. In the Christian tradition, Jesus, as foretold by Isaiah and the prophets, restores that relationship damaged in the garden of Eden, but alas, evil still exists. The question of evil has certainly plagued theists, atheists, and those in between, since the origin of moral consciousness. As Professor Colb points out, for those who do believe in a perfectly good, omnipotent, and omniscient God as the origin of creation, it is particularly difficult to reconcile. For others, the dissonance between an intangible deity and palpable evil is irreconcilable and leads to abandonment of the one deemed less reasonable.

Evil Is the Absence of Good

Theodicy is a theological construct that seeks to answer how and why evil exists if God is truly loving, omnipotent, and omniscient. The privation theory of theodicy holds that evil is an absence of good. Thus, God did not create evil, but God allows for the absence of good so as to give God’s creatures rational free will—choice based in reason. Human reason, under this view, is not solely an intellectual enterprise but is a reflective process that also draws on the spiritual and emotional aspects of the human person and manifests as conscience. Somewhat paradoxically, God allows humanity to have the full range of freedom to rationally act within its nature – essentially allowing humanity to choose either good or the absence of good, evil. Evil, or the privation of good, exists so that humanity may choose. The notion of rational action as it applies to free will is essential. As the traditional understanding of God goes, by rationally choosing good, humanity brings itself into more perfect union with the all-good God, and by choosing evil, which is a rejection of good, humanity alienates itself from the source of good. Accordingly, an inability to choose evil would make choosing good meaningless. Imbued with free will, and living in a world in which good and evil exist, humanity thus uses conscience to make moral decisions.

It is also important to acknowledge the myopic experience of humanity. An act that one might consider as a great evil is relative to one’s own limited contact with the created world in which one inhabits. It may well be, in the boundless knowledge and power of God, that far greater evils than humanity can imagine are possible. Part of God’s benevolence, speculatively, is that God balances free will with some level of restraint. Just as humanity is capable of great acts of heroism, love, and generosity, so too is humanity capable of evil. Just as humans can be frustrated by the limits of the good they can do, so too is it possible that greater exercises of evil are limited by God’s love.

(A related dilemma, which theodicy seeks to understand, is that of free will and an all-knowing God. If God knows all, including the future, then God already knows what choices humans will make. Given that, how much freedom does humanity have if the outcome is already known to God? That discussion, however, is beyond the scope of this column.)

Evil Is Necessary to the Exercise of Free Will

Humans experience desires, drives, and impulses, which can affect decision making, but free will itself operates independently of these urges. Free will is the agency of humans to make decisions based on conscience—which is the assimilation of intellect, emotion, and spirituality. In discussing whether to shoot up a grocery store or buy bananas, Professor Colb describes appeal as a confounding factor of decision making, comparing it to deciding whether to drink fruit or aloe juice. While this might be a serious reflection of observed phenomena, classical moral theology would argue that it misses the essential nature of human free will. As the account goes, moral actions are rational choices between good and evil. As such, in response to the question how God can escape responsibility for God’s creatures’ choices, God is not responsible for humanity’s choices. Rather, humans as rational beings are responsible. God is responsible only for humanity’s reason and the freedom to make rational choices. Thus, when humans commit evil acts, it is because of their humanity.

Important to the consideration of the exercise of free will and the formation of the conscience of the individual is their relationship to the community. Individual freedom would argue that on any basis, rational or otherwise, or without a basis at all, one could act. However, that perspective disregards the relationship to the community. While an individual is personally responsible for his or her rational choices, formation of that reason, the conscience, is influenced by both God and the community. Additionally, profoundly evil acts affect the community, not just the individual. Thus, while humanity possesses free will, the development and exercise occur within the context of relationship and community.

Cooperation With Evil Poses a More Insidious Harm

Taking together Professor Colb’s observations that some individuals seem to be driven, be compelled, or have a taste for evil actions, and the classic theological understanding of free will as grounded in reason, how does one make sense of some profoundly evil acts such as genocide, the mass murder of school children, sexual abuse, and animal cruelty? One way of understanding these profoundly evil acts is that some acquired pathology interferes with the individual’s understanding of the choices. One still possesses free will, but one’s ability to differentiate good from evil is diseased. At the risk of falling into a simplistic mechanism, or validating the “deeply disturbed” rationale given by politicians for why someone murders students in their school, this understanding views evil as resulting from a defect in the individual’s ability to valuate good and evil. This pathology results in a lack of empathy and a defective conscience. It is not purely psychological, spiritual, or physical, but affects all three aspects of the human. The pathology is also not de novo , it is acquired, through a combination of experiences and encounters. It likely has a neurochemical component, acquired through the adaptability of the neural network. The pathology that allows one to choose evil is a lack of good, just as a person with a disease suffers from a lack of health.

This pathology theory of profound evil, as distinct from rugged individualism, is particularly communal and has implications for cooperation with evil. Take for instance the Cambodian Genocide led by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. While the acts advocated and committed by Pol Pot are clear examples of profound evil, arguably stemming from some deep pathology within him, cooperation with that evil, either by doing what he commanded, or perhaps more poignantly, by not stopping him, is similarly an act of evil. In many ways cooperation with evil, by doing or not doing, is equally if not more troubling than the evil being committed. Similarly, imagine a group of students knowing that a friend sexually violating another student in the adjacent room, but doing nothing to stop him. Enabling or passively allowing a profound evil to occur while having the ability to stop the act constitutes formal cooperation with the evil. While the perpetrator of a profoundly evil act can potentially be understood as having a diseased conscience, pathologically void of empathy and the ability to discern good and bad, it is more difficult to apply the same theory to cooperation with evil.

As members of a community, humans have a moral responsibility for both judging their own acts as good or evil, and also the potentially evil acts being committed around them. Importantly, humanity must actively engage so as to not cooperate with evil either actively or passively. Rational, moral humans must be compelled to ask whether if by not trying to stop families being separated and children imprisoned they are cooperating with the evil. Similarly, it must be asked in what way humanity cooperates with animal cruelty by actively supporting the institutions which perpetuate the evil. One has only to look at the august institutions which are currently grappling with the moral lapse of their early leaders by actively engaging in human trafficking and slavery. Statistically, as judged by history, choosing to shoot up a theater, school, or supermarket—though intensely tragic and profoundly evil—is far less likely but much more insidious than choosing to cooperate in or ignore evils that we witness.

Posted in: Philosophy and Ethics

Tags: evil , theology

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The Physician’s Conundrum: <span class="subtitle">Assigning Moral Responsibility for Medical Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning</span>

1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology

Philosophy, One Thousand Words at a Time

The Problem of Evil

Author: Thomas Metcalf Category: Philosophy of Religion Word Count: 1000

Many people believe in God and understand God to be an omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), and morally perfect being. [1]

But the world contains quite a lot of evil or badness: intense suffering, premature death, and moral wickedness.

This inspires some questions: Why would God permit such evil? Is there a good reason why? Or does it occur in part because there is no God to prevent it?

Asking these questions involves engaging with the Problem of Evil . [2]

The concern is whether evil provides a reason to disbelieve in God. There are four things one might say about evil, ranging from that it proves that God does not exist to that it provides no evidence at all against God’s existence.

1. The Incompatibility Problem of Evil

The ‘Incompatibility’ or ‘Logical’ versions of the Problem of Evil claim that evil’s existence is logically incompatible with God’s existence: believing in God and evil is like believing in a five-sided square, a contradiction. [3]

Most philosophers today reject this argument. [4] They think that God could have some sufficient reason to permit some evil: e.g., personal growth requires confronting challenges that inherently involve some evil or bad things. These defenses [5] seem to show that it is not contradictory to believe in God and the existence of evil.

2. The Evidential Problem of Evil

Other philosophers argue that the mere existence of evil does not prove that God does not exist, but that the facts about evil provide good evidence against God’s existence. [6]

There are probably billions of evils such that we do not know why God, if there is a God, would permit them. Many argue that if even one of these instances is gratuitous —i.e., God could have prevented it without thereby sacrificing an equal or greater good and without thereby permitting an equal or worse evil—then God does not exist. [7]

Theists have reason to find an explanation or set of explanations that could plausibly justify all evils. This involves trying to find plausible theodicies or explanations of why God would permit that evil or why that evil is not as evidentially weighty as it might seem. Here’s a summary of two of the best theodicies.

2.1. Free Will

Many theists hold that humans’ having significant free will is a very great good, one that is worth the evil that sometimes arises from it. [8]

This being a plausible explanation of evil depends on justifying these claims:

(a) we have libertarian free will [9] (a belief that is mostly rejected by philosophers [10] );

(b) (e.g.) Stalin’s free will was more valuable than the lives of the millions he killed (against, presumably, their freely-willed choices to remain alive);

(d) even apparently natural disasters and disease, including those that harm nonhuman animals [12] , are all the result (e.g.) of free-willed evil-spirits’ choices. [13]

2.2. “Soul-Making”

Perhaps encountering evil and freely responding to it develops various virtues, such as compassion, generosity, and courage. [14]

For this to explain evil, the theist may need to argue that:

(a) God could not have developed those virtues in us any other equally valuable but less harmful ways (e.g,. by creating humans who are more morally sensitive in the first place and reducing evil accordingly);

(b) all evil can reasonably be expected to contribute to soul-making; and

(c) the compassion Smith develops when she sees Jones suffering justifies God using Jones (or allowing Jones to be used) as a means to the end of producing that compassion. [15]

Given these and other theodicies, we must ask how much evidence evil provides, and weigh that against any evidence for God’s existence. This will obviously be very complicated.

3. Outweighing Evidence?

Theists might argue that there is so much evidence for God’s existence that we are justified in being confident that God has a purpose for all evil. [16]

We cannot consider those arguments here, but we should recall how many billions of instances of severe, inscrutable evils there are in the world. Therefore, for this defense to work, perhaps there must be very strong evidence for God’s existence. Also, a substantial majority of philosophers reject theism, [17] and so seem to believe that there is little good evidence for God’s existence. Therefore, this strategy may depend on appealing to a set of generally-rejected arguments to try to explain evil.

4. Evil Is No Evidence?

Some defenses amount to the response that evil is no evidence against God’s existence at all.

Some argue that we should not expect to understand why God would permit evil, and so we should not be confident in our ability to assess whether some evil is gratuitous. [18] If there is a God, God might have a purpose for all the evil in the world, a purpose that we do not or cannot understand, and so we should not trust our doubt that some evil in the world is justified. [19]

Typically, this inspires the question of whether a similar argument can be made about other beliefs we have, thereby threatening to produce a deep, general skepticism about science, morality, and even arguments for God’s existence. [20] If God works in mysterious ways, how do I assess the likelihood that God has some inscrutable reason for tricking me into (wrongly) thinking that other minds exist, that the past exists, that an external world exists, and that I ought to save a child drowning in a shallow pond? This is perhaps the primary focus of the debate about the Problem of Evil in recent years.

Finally, some philosophers argue that God’s existence is actually compatible with gratuitous evil after all, [21] although most philosophers disagree. [22]

5. Conclusion

If each particular evil is even a little bit of evidence against God’s existence, the billions and billions of them in history might really pile up. For many people, the problem of evil is not merely an abstract puzzle, for it challenges their most profound beliefs about what God is like and whether God even exists.

[1] Anselm 1965 [1077-78]: ch. 2.

[2] The Problem of Evil involves engaging arguments from the existence of evil, or types of evils, to the conclusion that God does not exist. So the Problem of Evil is also called The Argument from Evil.

[3] Mackie 1955. “Evidential” versions of the argument, discussed in the next section, typically focus on the totality of evil and can be seen as “Incompatibility” arguments also: the claim is that God’s existence entails that there are no gratuitous or pointless evils—evils God could have prevented it without thereby sacrificing an equal or greater good and without thereby permitting an equal or worse evil—but that there are such gratuitous or pointless evils, which is a logical contradiction.

[4] Rowe 1979: 335.

[5] A “defense” is an attempt to explain why God and evil are not incompatible. Defenses are closely related to theodicies (two of which are presented below) which attempt to explain why God permits evil. Defenses and theodicies are different: defenses hold that there is some possible explanation, even if we’re not sure what it is, while theodicies attempt to supply that actual explanation.

[6] Rowe 1979; Draper 1989; Tooley 2014: § 3.2.1.

[7] Howard-Snyder and Howard-Snyder 1999.

[8] Plantinga 1977: 29-59.

[9] For an explanation of what libertarian free will is, see Jonah Nagashima’s Free Will and Free Choice . Libertarians about free will (a view of which has no relation to the political position of the same name) believe that free choices are choices that are not causally determined by the past and the laws of nature (or anything else), and so they believe that determinism is false, yet that such choices are not ultimately random because we are the ultimate source of our choices.

The other broad definition of free will is that of compatibilist free will. On this theory of free will, we can be determined to do what we do, yet our actions can still be done from free will if, e.g., we are doing what we want to do and acting on our own desires. This view of free will seems to allow that God could cause us to not act in horribly evil ways, and that we freely choose to never engage in these evils, and so the free will defense is not available to compatibilists.

[10] Bourget and Chalmers 2014.

[11] So, e.g., Stalin might freely make the choice to kill someone, but whether the effect of that choice—that is, whether someone is actually killed—seems to be another matter. So, a question is whether, if there is a God, God could allow us to freely make decisions (which is assumed to be a great good), but prevent the very bad effects that result from some of them, and God be justified preventing those very bad effects.

[12] Rowe 1979: 337.

[13] Plantinga 1977: 58.

[14] Hick 2007: 253-61.

[15] cf. Kant 1987 [1785]: 4:429; Trakakis 2008.

[16] cf. Rowe 1979: 338.

[17] Bourget and Chalmers 2014.

[18] Howard-Snyder and Howard-Snyder 1999: 115.

[19] Wykstra 1998.

[20] Draper 1998: 188; Russell 1998: 196-98. The general response to the Problem of Evil that we are not likely to know whether any evil is gratuitous or pointless is known as “Skeptical Theism,” since skeptics deny that we have a type of knowledge. A concern about skeptical theism is whether the motivations for it lead to or justify other types of skepticism.

[21] van Inwagen 2000; Kraay 2010. van Inwagen’s argument is complex and depends on the (controversial) claim that it can be permissible to allow some unjustified evils, e.g., that it could be permissible to allow someone to remain imprisoned for at least slightly longer than any just imprisonment because sometimes arbitrary lines must be drawn. From there, he appeals to something like a “little by little” argument (based on concerns about vagueness: see Darren Hibb’s Vagueness ). that if a little unjustified evil can be permissibly allowed, then a tiny bit more can be permissibly allowed, so then a little more can be allowed, leading to the conclusion that any unjustified evils can be allowed.

[22] Howard-Snyder and Howard-Snyder 1999; Trakakis 2003.

Anselm. (1965 [1077-78]). St. Anselm’s Proslogion . Tr. M. J. Charlesworth. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

Bourget, David and David J. Chalmers. (2014). “What Do Philosophers Believe?” Philosophical Studies , forthcoming.

Draper, Paul. (1989). “Pain and Pleasure: An Evidential Problem for Theists.” Noûs 23: 331-50.

———. (1998). “The Skeptical Theist.” In Daniel Howard-Snyder (ed.), The Evidential Argument from Evil . Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 175-92.

Hick, John. (2007). Evil and the God of Love . New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Howard-Snyder, Daniel and Frances Howard-Snyder. (1999). “Is Theism Compatible with Gratuitous Evil?” American Philosophical Quarterly 36 (2): 115-30.

Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals . In Kant, Immanuel. Practical Philosophy . Ed. Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge UP, 1999.

Kraay, Klaas J. “Theism, Possible Worlds, and the Multiverse.” Philosophical Studies 147 (2010), pp. 255-68.

Mackie, J. L. (1955). “Evil and Omnipotence.” Mind 64 (254): 200-12.

Plantinga, Alvin. (1977). God, Freedom, and Evil . Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans.

Rowe, William. (1979). “The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism.” American Philosophical Quarterly 16(4): 335-41.

Russell, Bruce. (1998). “Defenseless.” In Daniel Howard-Snyder (ed.), The Evidential Argument from Evil . Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press: 193-205.

Tooley, Michael. (2014). “The Problem of Evil.” In Edward N. Zalta (ed .), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2014 edition), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/evil/>.

Trakakis, Nick. (2008). “Theodicy: The Solution to the Problem of Evil, or Part of the Problem?” Sophia 47: 161-91.

———. (2003). “God, Gratuitous Evil, and van Inwagen’s Attempt to Reconcile the Two.” Ars Disputandi 3 (1): 1-10.

van Inwagen, Peter. (2000). “The Argument from Particular Horrendous Evils.” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 74: 65–80.

Wykstra, Stephen John. (1998). “Rowe’s Noseeum Argument from Evil.” In Daniel Howard-Snyder (ed.), The Evidential Argument from Evil . Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press: 126-50.

Related Essays

Attributes of God by Bailie Peterson

The Problem of No Best World by Kirk Lougheed

Divine Hiddenness by David Bayless

Hell and Universalism by A.G. Holdier

Because God Says So: On Divine Command Theory by Spencer Case

Possibility and Necessity: An Introduction to Modality by Andre Leo Rusavuk

Nietzsche and the Death of God by Justin Remhof

Design Arguments for the Existence of God by Thomas Metcalf

Free Will and Free Choice by Jonah Nagashima

Bayesianism by Thomas Metcalf

Vagueness by Darren Hibb

Revision History

This essay, posted 8/16/2020, is a revised version of an essay originally posted 4/7/2014.

About the Author

Tom Metcalf is an associate professor at Spring Hill College in Mobile, AL. He received his PhD in philosophy from the University of Colorado, Boulder. He specializes in ethics, metaethics, epistemology, and the philosophy of religion. Tom has two cats whose names are Hesperus and Phosphorus. http://shc.academia.edu/ThomasMetcalf

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Does evil exist and, if so, are some people just plain evil?

Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Sydney

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You would have to be naïve to believe that evil exists, right? If you were asked to come up with examples of evil villains, you might think of the Emperor from Star Wars, Lord Voldemort from Harry Potter, or even Dr Evil from the Austen Powers films. Evil characters belong in horror movies, fantasy fiction and perhaps also in religious texts, but surely not in the real world.

This kind of scepticism about evil also crops up in serious disagreements over morality. When US President George W. Bush denounced the September 11 terrorists as evildoers, many people rolled their eyes and dismissed his claim as simple-minded and out-of-date. The philosopher Phillip Cole , the psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen and the historian Inga Clendinnen have suggested that we ought to drop the concept of evil.

These thinkers are not sceptical about morality as a whole. They are not suggesting “it is all relative”, or that morality is some kind of sham or illusion. Their scepticism is focused on the category of evil in particular. Are they right to say that there is no such thing as evil?

What do we mean by evil?

In answering this question we must survey the claims people make about evil, and ask what these people take evil to be. While it is true that the word “evil” can be used to refer to a malevolent supernatural force, many of us use “evil” without intending it to have any supernatural connotations.

We might say the sadistic torture carried out by members of the US military at Abu Ghraib was not merely wrong but evil, and that serial killers such as Dennis Rader and Ted Bundy are not merely morally flawed or corrupt, but are evil. Hannah Arendt famously declared that the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann revealed the banality of evil. While there is some disagreement about what Arendt meant by this, no-one thinks she was suggesting that Eichmann was possessed by a banal demon.

In judging that something is evil, we are making a distinctive kind of moral judgement, rather than committing ourselves to a contentious supernaturalistic worldview. Believing in the reality of evil is like believing in the reality of greed.

When we say that greed exists, we don’t think there must be some free-floating force called greed that can enter someone’s body and control his or her actions. If there are any greedy actions or greedy persons, then greed is real. Similarly, if there are any evil actions or evil persons, then evil is real.

You might grant this point, but remain sceptical nonetheless. You could claim that when people judge that something is evil, they make moral assumptions that are not only mistaken but dangerous.

While there is clear evidence that some actions and some persons are greedy, there is no evidence that anything or anyone is evil, or so the argument goes. But what exactly do we assume when we judge that sadistic torture is evil, or that Ted Bundy is evil?

Many contemporary philosophers agree that if an action is evil it must be morally extreme. It is morally wrong to shoplift, or to tell a lie to avoid jury duty, but to call those actions evil would be hyperbolic. Moreover, philosophers agree that if an action is evil the person who performed that action should not have done so, and is responsible and blameworthy for having done so.

There are interesting disputes to be had over whether violent psychopaths are morally responsible for their actions, or whether they are mentally ill and hence not blameworthy for what they do. If psychopaths aren’t responsible for their actions, then they are not evildoers. But, even if we agreed that psychopathy counts as an excuse, this would not give us grounds to deny the existence of evil actions.

Plenty of extreme wrongs, including atrocities committed during war, are performed by comparatively ordinary people rather than by psychopaths. Since there are many examples of inexcusable extreme wrongs, we ought to conclude there are many evil actions. In this sense, evil is real.

Encountering evil in person

The question of whether anyone counts as an evil person is more difficult to answer. Consider an analogy: not everyone who performs an honest action counts as an honest person.

If someone is an honest person, honesty is part of his or her character. He or she can be relied upon to be honest when it counts. Someone who tells the truth on some occasions might nonetheless be a characteristically dishonest person.

Similarly, not everyone who performs an evil action counts as an evil person. In judging that Hitler was not only an evildoer but an evil person, we assume that evil was part of his character. That’s is not to say we assume he was innately evil, nor that he had no choice but to do evil. Rather, it is to say he came to be strongly disposed to choose to perform evil actions.

In calling Hitler an evil person, we suggest that he could not be fixed, or made into a good person. Once someone has become an evil person, he or she is a moral write-off. That’s why some philosophers are sceptical of the idea that any actual person is evil. If everyone can be redeemed and made good, then no-one is evil.

I think it’s overly optimistic to think that we could have fixed Hitler, or Ted Bundy, or Dennis Rader, so I conclude that evil persons, as well as evil actions, are real.

Luke Russell’s book Evil: A Philosophical Investigation is published by Oxford University Press in June. He is speaking at the Sydney Writers’ Festival on the topic of evil on Saturday, May 24.

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The Problem of Evil

Other essays.

“The problem of evil” is one of the most discussed objections to the existence of God and is a top reason many unbelievers give for their unbelief. These objectors argue that since there are so many cases of significant pain and suffering in the world that God could easily prevent, the fact that all this evil was not prevented means it is very unlikely (if not impossible) that God exists.

“The problem of evil” appeals to the phenomenon of evil (significant cases of pain and suffering) as evidence against the existence of God. For many, this evidence appears decisive, because if God existed, he would be powerful enough to prevent such evil, and good enough to want to prevent such evil. Since there is evil, no such powerful and good being exists. For the past two millennia Christians have typically urged two points in reply: theodicy and inscrutability. First, God may very well have a good reason for allowing the evil he does allow – a reason compatible with his holy and good character – and the way of theodicy goes on to list a number of these reasons. Second, the fact that unbelievers may not be able to discern or correctly guess at God’s justifying reason for allowing evil is no good reason to think he doesn’t have a reason. Given the infinity of God’s omniscience, the complexity of his providence, the depth of the goods he aims at, and our own substantial cognitive limitations, we shouldn’t expect to guess God’s reasons.

What Is the Problem of Evil?

The so-called “problem of evil” is an argument against the existence of God that reasons along these lines:

A perfectly powerful being can prevent any evil.
A perfectly good being will prevent evil as far as he can.
God is perfectly powerful and good.
So, if a perfectly powerful and good God exists, there will be no evil.
There is evil.
Therefore, God doesn’t exist.

“Evil,” here is understood as any significant case of pain and suffering in the world, whether “moral” (evil willfully caused by human beings such as murder, adultery, theft, rape, etc.) or “natural” evil (harm caused by impersonal forces of nature such as earthquakes, tornadoes, plague, etc.).

Responding to the Problem of Evil

Nonstarters.

A Christian must be truthful and face the question honestly. It will not do to deny that evil exists (#5 above), for evil is the very presumption of the gospel. Nor can we deny that God could prevent evil (#1 above) or that he is perfect in power and goodness (#3). However, we can (and should) question the second premise above – that a perfectly good God must prevent all evil – for it doesn’t necessarily follow from God’s perfect goodness that he will prevent every evil he can prevent. Perhaps God has a good reason for permitting evil rather than preventing it; if so, then his permission of evil is justified and doesn’t militate against his goodness.

The Ways of Theodicy and Inscrutability

Our response the problem of evil, then, may take either of two approaches. We may argue that the second premise above is false and seek to demonstrate that it is false by showing God’s reasons for permitting evil – the way of “theodicy.” Or we could argue that the second premise is unproven because unbelievers can’t rule out God’s having a good reason for permitting evil – the way of “inscrutability.”

The way of theodicy (from the Greek theos , “God,” and dikaios , “just”; hence, a justification of the ways of God in his dealings with men) seeks to demonstrate God’s reasons for permitting evil. The idea is that by allowing evil God attains greater good than possible apart from evil. The way of theodicy shows that premise (2) is false, arguing that God wouldn’t prevent every evil he could prevent.

The way of inscrutability argues, more modestly, that no one knows that premise (2) is true because no one can know enough to conclude that God doesn’t have good reason for permitting evil. We just cannot grasp God’s knowledge, the complexity of his plans, or the deep nature of the good he aims at in providence. And there is no proof that God does not have good reasons for allowing evil, but because he is good we can only assume that he does. Here we don’t have to come up with ‘theodicies’ to defend God against the problem of evil. Rather, the way of inscrutability shows that it is entirely to be expected that creatures like us can’t come up with God’s reasons, given who God is and who we are.

The Way of Theodicy

Two popular theodicies that have no biblical basis ..

Some theodicies that have been offered lack solid biblical grounding. The free will theodicy , for example, argues that moral evil is due to human abuse of free will. The value of free will is a great good: the possibility of morally good choice and of human beings imaging God by way of these choices. But free will has the unfortunate consequence of allowing for the possibility of moral evil. In response to this we might ask, if free will of this sort is so valuable then why doesn’t God have it, and why won’t we have it in heaven?

The natural law theodicy argues that natural evil is due to the laws of nature. The value of laws of nature is a great good: a stable environment needed for making rational choices of any sort. But laws of nature have the unfortunate consequence of allowing for the possibility of natural disasters (e.g., earthquakes, hurricanes, etc.). In response to this we might ask, if a stable environment requires the possibility of natural evil by requiring laws of nature then why isn’t there any natural evil in the pre-fall Garden of Eden or in the new heavens and the new earth?

Four popular theodicies have some biblical basis

By contrast, at least four theodicies have been offered that have some biblical basis. The punishment theodicy argues that suffering is a result of God’s just punishment of evildoers (Gen 3:14-19; Rom 1:24-32, 5:12, 6:23, 8:20-21; Isa 29:5-6; Ezek 38:19; Rev 6:12; 11:13; 16:18). In punishment God aims at the good of displaying his judgment against sin. The soul-building theodicy argues that suffering leads us from self-centeredness to other-centeredness (Heb 12:5-11; Rom 5:3-5; 2Cor 4:17; Jas 1:2-4; 1Pet 1:6-7; cf. Prov 10:13, 13:24; 22:15; 23:13-24, 29:15). In painful providences God aims at the good of displaying his goodness in shaping our character for good. The pain as God’s megaphone theodicy argues that pain is God’s way of getting the attention of unbelievers in a noncoercive way so that they might forget the vanities of earth, consider spiritual things instead, and perhaps even repent of sin (Luke 13:1-5). In pain God aims at the good of displaying his mercy that through such warnings we might be delivered from the wrath to come. The higher-order goods theodicy says that some goods can’t exist apart from the evils to which they are a response. There is no courage without danger, no sympathy without suffering, no forgiveness without sin, no atonement without suffering, no compassion without need, no patience without adversity. God must often allow lots of evils to make these goods a part of his world, given how these goods are defined (Eph 1:3-10; 1Pet 1:18-20).

These theodicies fall under the umbrella of the “greater good theodicy.”

A “greater good theodicy” (GGT) argues that the pain and suﬀering in God’s world play a necessary role in bringing about greater goods that could not be brought about otherwise. The question that remains, then, is just this: does the Bible really teach that God aims at great goods by way of various evils?

Constructing the “Greater Good Theodicy”: a Three-Fold Argument for Three Biblical Themes

Our argument here is that Scripture combines the ways of theodicy and inscrutability . The biblical accounts of Job, Joseph, and Jesus reveal the goodness of God in the midst of evil, weaving together these three themes:

God aims at great goods (either for mankind, or for himself, or both).
God often intends these great goods to come about by way of various evils .
God leaves created persons in the dark (in the dark about which goods are indeed his reasons for the evils, or about how the goods depend on the evils).

Thus, the Bible seems to strongly suggest that the GGT (God’s aiming at great goods by way of various evils) is in fact his modus operandi in providence, his “way of working.” But this GGT is tempered by a good dose of divine inscrutability.

The Case of Job

In the case of Job God aims at a great good: his own vindication – in particular, the vindication of his worthiness to be served for who he is rather than for the earthly goods he supplies (Job 1:11; 2:5). God intends the great good of the vindication of his own name to come to pass by way of various evils . These are a combination of moral evil and natural evil (Job 1:15, 16, 17, 19, 21-22; 2:7, 10; 42:11). God also leaves Job in the dark about what God is doing , for Job has no access to the story’s prologue in chapter 1. And when God speaks to him “out of the whirlwind” he never reveals to Job why he suffered. Instead, Job’s ignorance of the whole spectrum of created reality is exposed (Job 38:4-39:30; 40:6-41:34), and Job confesses his ignorance of both creation and providence (Job 40:3-5; 42:1-6).

The Case of Joseph

In the case of Joseph we find the same. God aims at great goods: saving the broader Mediterranean world from a famine, preserving his people amid such danger, and (ultimately) bringing a Redeemer into the world descended from such Israelites (Matt 1:1-17; Luke 3:23-38). God intends the great good of the preservation of his people from famine to come to pass by way of various evils (Gen 45:5, 7; Psa 105:16-17), including Joseph’s betrayal, being sold into slavery, and suffering unjust accusation and imprisonment (Gen 37, 39). Joseph sees these evils as the means of God’s sovereign providence (Gen 50:20). But God leaves Joseph’s brothers, the Midianite traders, Potiphar’s wife, and the cupbearer in the dark . None of these people knew the role their blameworthy actions would play in preserving God’s people in a time of danger. They had no clue which goods depended on which evils, or that the evils would even work toward any goods at all.

The Case of Jesus

And in the case of Jesus we see the same again. God aims at great goods: the redemption of his people by the atonement of Christ and the glorification of God in the display of his justice, love, grace, mercy, wisdom, and power. God intends the great good of atonement to come to pass by way of various evils : Jewish plots (Matt 26:3-4, 14-15), Satan’s promptings (John 13:21-30), Judas’s betrayal (Matt 26:47-56; 27:3-10; Luke 22:22), Roman injustice (Matt 26:57-68), Pilate’s cowardice (Matt 27:15–26), and the soldiers’ brutality (Matt 27:27-44). But God leaves various created agents (human and demonic) in the dark , for it is clear that the Jewish leaders, Satan, Judas, Pilate, and the soldiers are all ignorant of the role they play in fulfilling the divinely prophesied redemptive purpose by the cross of Christ (Acts 2:23, 3:18, 4:25-29; John 13:18, 17:12, 19:23-24).

Licensing and Limiting the GGT

In each narrative, the first two themes highlight the way of theodicy (God aiming at great goods by way of evils), while the third theme highlights the way of inscrutability (left to ourselves, we cannot discern what God’s reasons are for any case of evil). By way of the first two themes Scripture repeatedly encourages the view that God has a justifying reason for permitting the evils of the world. That is what’s right with the way of theodicy. But Scripture, by way of the third theme, repeatedly discourages the view that we can ever know what that reason is in any particular case of evil. That is what’s right with the way of inscrutability. In contemporary philosophy, these are usually presented as two different ways to solve the problem of evil (theodicy and inscrutability). However, the Bible seems to combine these two ways when it speaks of God’s relation to the evils in the world. That is, it licenses the greater good theodicy as an overall perspective on evil, but wisely limits that perspective in a way that is instructive for both Christians and non-Christians.

Licensing the GGT: God’s Sovereignty over All Evil

God’s sovereignty over natural evil.

It is one thing to acknowledge God’s sovereign and purposeful providence over the moral and natural evils mentioned in the Job, Joseph, and Jesus narratives. It is quite another to claim that God is sovereign over all moral and natural evils. But this is what the Bible repeatedly teaches. This takes us a considerable way towards licensing the GGT as a general approach to the problem of evil. The Bible presents multitudes of examples of God intentionally bringing about natural evils – famine, drought, rampaging wild animals, disease, birth defects such as blindness and deafness, and even death itself – rather than being someone who merely permits nature to ‘do its thing’ on its own. Here are some samples:

Famine (Deut 32:23-24; 2Kgs 8:1; Psa 105:16; Isa 3:1; Ezek 4:16, 5:16-17, 14:13, 14:21; Hos 2:9; Amos 4:6, 9; Hag 2:17)
Drought (Deut 28:22; 1Kgs 8:35; Isa 3:1; Hos 2:3; Amos 4:6-8; Hag 1:11)
Rampaging wild animals (Lev 26:22; Num 21:6; Deut 32:23-24; 2Kgs 17:25; Jer 8:17; Ezek 5:17, 14:15, 14:21, 33:27)
Disease (Lev 26:16, 25; Num 14:12; Deut 28:21-22, 28:27; 2Kgs 15:5; 2Chron 21:14, 26:19-20)
Birth defects such as blindness and deafness (Exod 4:11; John 9:1-3)
Death itself (Deut 32:39; 1Sam 2:6-7)
Ten Egyptian plagues (Exod 7:14-24, 8:1-15, 8:16-19, 8:20-32, 9:1-7, 9:8-12, 9:13-35, 10:1-20, 10:21-29, 11:4-10, 12:12-13, 12:27-30)
‘Impersonal’ forces and objects (Psa 65:9-11, 77:18, 83:13-15, 97:4, 104:4, 104:10-24, 107:25, 29, 135:6-7, 147:8, 147:16-18, 148:7-8, Jonah 1:4, Nah 1:3-4, Zech 7:14, Matt 5:45, Acts 14:17)

God’s Sovereignty over Moral Evil

In addition, and perhaps surprisingly, the Bible presents God as having such meticulous control over the course of human history that a wide range of moral evils – murder, adultery, disobedience to parents, rejecting wise counsel, even human hatred – can be regarded as “of the Lord.” Without erasing or suppressing the intentionality of creatures – and this includes their deliberations, their reasoning, their choosing between alternatives they consider and reflect upon – God’s own intentionality stands above and behind the responsible choices of his creatures. Again, some samples:

Eli’s sons’ disobedience (1Sam 2:23-25)
Samson’s desire for a foreign wife (Jdg 14:1-4)
Absalom, Rehoboam, and Amaziah rejecting wise counsel (2Sam 17:14; 1Kgs 12:15; 2Chron 25:20)
Assassination (2Chron 22:7, 9, 32:21-22)
Adultery (2Sam 12:11-12, 16:22)
Human hatred (Psa 105:23-25; Exod 4:21; Deut 2:30, 32; Josh 11:20; 1Kgs 11:23, 25; 2Chron 21:16-17)

God’s Sovereignty over All Evil

So the Job, Joseph, and Jesus passages are not anomalies, but part and parcel of a more general view the Bible takes on the subject, with respect to both natural and moral evil. Indeed, in addition to this large swath of ‘particular’ texts about individual cases of evil, there are quite a few “universal” texts which seem to trace all calamities, all human decision-making, all events whatsoever, back to the will of God.

God’s sovereignty over all calamity (Ecc 7:13-14; Isa 45:7; Lam 3:37-38; Amos 3:6)
God’s sovereignty over all human decision-making (Prov 16:9, 19:21, 20:24, 21:1; Jer 10:23)
God’s sovereignty over all events whatsoever (Psa 115:3; Prov 16:33; Isa 46:9-10; Rom 8:28, 11:36; Eph 1:11)

Limiting the GGT: The Inscrutability of God’s Purposes

Establishing the burden of proof.

Of course, each specific theodicy mentioned earlier has significant limitations. For instance, the Bible frequently discourages the idea that the punishment theodicy can explain all evils in the world (Job 1:1, 1:8, 2:3, 42:7-8; John 9:1-3; Acts 28:1-6). More generally, Christians can never know enough about a person’s situation, or about God’s purposes, to rule in a specific theodicy as being God’s reason for permitting evil in a particular case. In fact, it would be entirely presumptuous to do so. But if he who affirms must prove, then the question in the problem of evil is not whether Christians know enough to “rule in” the applicability of a theodicy on any particular occasion, but whether critics know enough to “rule out” the applicability of any theodicy. But how could a critic reasonably claim to know that there is no reason that would justify God in permitting suffering? How could he know that premise (2) of the original argument is true? For why think that God’s reasons for permitting particular cases of evil are the kinds of things that we would discern by our cognitive capacities, if such reasons were there?

Analogies for our Cognitive Limitations

It is widely recognized that we have cognitive limitations with respect to discerning goods and connections, at least in territories where we lack the relevant expertise, experience, or vantage point. Some examples:

It doesn’t seem to me that there is a perfectly spherical rock on the dark side of the moon right now, but that’s no reason to conclude that such a rock isn’t there.
It didn’t seem to any medievals that the theories of special relativity or quantum mechanics were true, but that was no reason to think they weren’t true.
It didn’t seem to humans in earlier eras that fundamental human rights of one sort or another were in fact fundamental human rights, but that was no reason to think there weren’t any such rights.
It wouldn’t seem to a non-Greek-speaker that spoken Greek sentences have any meaning, but that is no reason to think they don’t have a meaning.
It wouldn’t seem to the musically uninitiated that Beethoven projected the ‘sonata form’ onto the symphony as a whole, giving the entire musical work a fundamental unity it would not otherwise have had. But it wouldn’t follow from their ignorance that Beethoven didn’t have such a purpose, much less that he was unsuccessful in executing it.
It might not seem to my one-month-old son that I have a good reason for him to receive a painful series of shots at the doctor’s office. But it wouldn’t follow from his ignorance that there isn’t a good reason.

God is omniscient, which means he not only knows everything that we are likely to guess at, but every truth whatsoever. This means that God knows things that we cannot even fathom. As the above analogies suggest, this is easily demonstrated for a huge range of cases. If the complexities of an infinite God’s divine plan for the unfolding of the universe does involve God’s recognizing either deep goods, or necessary connections between various evils and the realization of those goods, or both of these things, would our inability to discern these goods or connections give us a reason for thinking they aren’t there? What would be the basis of such confidence? But without such confidence, we have little reason to accept premise (2) of the problem of evil. So we have little reason to accept its conclusion.

Biblical Argument for Divine Inscrutability

The theme of divine inscrutability is not only exceedingly defensible common sense. It also looms large in the Bible, having both pastoral and apologetic implications. It closes the mouths of Christians who would insensitively offer “God’s reasons” to those who suffer (when they don’t know such reasons). And it closes the mouths of critics who would irrationally preclude divine reasons for the suffering. Imagine we were on the scene in the cases of Job (as his friend), Joseph (as his brother), and Jesus (as his tormentor). Would we have been able to guess at God’s purpose for the suffering? Would we not instead have been wholly unaware of any such purpose? Does not a large part of the literary power of the Bible’s narrative, and the spiritual encouragement it offers, rest upon this interplay between the ignorance of the human actors and the wisdom of divine providence?

One of the most extended reflections in the New Testament on the problem of evil – in this case, the evil of Jewish apostasy – is Romans 9-11. Paul’s concluding doxology blends together these twin themes of divine sovereignty over evil and divine inscrutability in the midst of evil:

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! ‘For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?’ ‘Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?’ For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen (Rom 11:33–36).

To the extent that God has not spoken about a particular event in history, his judgments are unsearchable, and his paths are beyond tracing out. But that does not mean there is not a greater good which justifies God’s purposing of that event.

The Problem of Evil

Categories: Augustine Evil Problem of Evil

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A Level Philosophy & Religious Studies

The Problem of Evil

The concepts of natural and moral evil

Natural evil is evil which results from the workings of the natural world, such as natural disasters and disease. God designed and created the natural world which seems to make God responsible for the evil and suffering that occurs as a result of nature. This is considered a problem for God’s existence because God could have designed a world without natural evil in it.

Moral evil is evil which is caused by human action, such as murder and torture. There are infamous examples throughout history of evil actions on a mass scale, such as the holocaust and wars. This is a problem for God’s existence because why doesn’t God intervene to prevent these things?

The logical problem of evil

This is the a priori argument that evil and the God of classical theism (as defined as omnibenevolent and omnipotent) cannot exist together.

Epicurus (ancient Greek philosopher, one of the first to formulate the problem of evil)

Is God willing but not able to prevent evil? Then he isn’t omnipotent
Is God is able to prevent evil but not willing? Then he isn’t omnibenevolent
If God is both able and willing, then why is there evil?
If God is neither able or willing then why call him God?

Mackie reformulated this argument into the ‘inconsistent triad’ which held that the God of classical theism (omnipotent and omnibenevolence) cannot exist if evil exists. Either Omnipotence, omnibenevolence or evil must not exist, since all three are inconsistent. Omnipotence entails the power to eliminate evil. Omnibenevolence entails the motivation to prevent evil. Something cannot possibly exist if there is a being with the power and motivation to eliminate it. Therefore if evil exists, an omnibenevolent and omnipotent God cannot exist. God could at most be omnibenevolent or omnipotent but not both. This is known as the Logical problem of evil which claims that it is logically impossible for both God (as defined with omnipotence & omnibenevolence) and evil to both exist.

P1. An omnipotent God has the power to eliminate evil. P2. An omnibenevolent God has the motivation to eliminate evil. P3. Nothing can exist if there is a being with the power and motivation to eliminate it. C1. Evil, omnipotence and omnibenevolence thus form an inconsistent triad such that God (as classically defined) and evil cannot possibly co-exist.

This is an a priori argument because the conclusion follows from a logical analysis of the definitions of the concepts ‘omnibenevolence’, ‘omnipotence’ and ‘evil’, without reference to experience.

The argument is then sometimes developed into an a posteriori argument by referencing our experience of evil and drawing the conclusion not just that God and evil cannot co-exist, but that since evil does exist God does not exist:

P4. Evil exists because we experience evil in the world. C2. Therefore God does not exist.

Whether in its a priori or a posteriori form, the logical problem of evil is deductive. If its premises are true, its conclusion must be true.

The logical problem makes a large claim, that evil and God cannot possibly co-exist. Defeating the logical problem requires conceiving of some logically possible scenario or reason God could have for allowing evil.

The Evidential problem of evil

This is the a posteriori argument that the evidence of evil in the world makes belief in God unjustified. There is a logical possibility that evil and a perfect God exist together, but the evidence is against that possibility actually being true.

The crucial thing to understand about the evidential problem is that it is an inductive argument. It regards evil as evidence against God’s existence. It doesn’t try to claim that evil logically proves God’s non-existence. It makes the lesser, though arguably easier to defend claim, that evil makes belief in God unjustified.

Hume puts forward an evidential problem of evil. Hume is an empiricist and approaches the problem of evil as such. He points out the a posteriori evidence of evil in the world:

1 – Animal suffering. Why shouldn’t nature be created such that animals feel less pain, or indeed no pain at all? 2 – Creatures have limited abilities to ensure their survival and happiness 3 – Why does nature have extremes which make survival and happiness more difficult? Natural evil 4 – Why doesn’t God intervene to prevent individual natural disasters?

A God could have made this world without such evil, making it evidence against a perfect God existing. Hume says it is ‘possible’ that a perfect God exists but allows evil for reasons consistent with omnibenevolence, ‘but they are unknown to us’. Hume is arguing that whatever speculations theologians like Augustine and Irenaeus might invent about God’s ‘reasons’ for allowing evil, we have no evidence that God has such reasons.

“I conclude that however consistent the world may be … with the idea of such a God, it can never provide us with an inference to his existence.”

“There can be no grounds for such an inference when there are so many misfortunes in the universe, and while these misfortunes could—as far as human understanding can be allowed to judge on such a subject—easily have been remedied. I am sceptic enough to allow that the bad appearances, notwithstanding all my reasonings, may be compatible with such ·divine· attributes as you suppose; but surely they can never prove these attributes.” – Hume.

Hume, as an empiricist, insists that we are only justified in believing what the evidence suggests. The evidence of an imperfect world, while logically compatible with a perfect God, makes belief in a perfect God unjustified. You can’t infer perfect goodness from evil. An empirical inference from evil to belief in a perfectly good God is not valid.

P1. We are only justified in believing what the evidence suggests (empiricism). P2. We only have evidence of imperfection (a world with both good and evil). C1. We are only justified in believing that imperfection exists. C2. So, belief in a perfectly good being is not justified.

The only justifiable route to belief in anything, including God, is through experience. Yet, experience shows us an imperfect world full of evil. So, because of evil, belief in God is not justified.

The evidential problem claims less than the logical problem of evil. Defeating the evidential problem thus requires more. A defender of God must not merely think of some logically possible reason God could have for allowing evil, they must actually show that there is good evidence for thinking that not merely possible but actually true.

Augustine’s theodicy

Augustine’s theodicy was born from his contemplating the origin of sin. By observing himself and others, he thought humans had a natural predisposition to sin, which for him raised the question of where that came from, since it would seem contradict God’s omnibenevolence to suggest that God created it. He concluded that humanity must be to blame for it and looked to the Genesis story as an explanation.

The garden of Eden was a perfect place. Adam and Eve disobeyed God and as a punishment were banished to this earth often called a ‘fallen world’. This episode is referred to as ‘the Fall’. After their sin, God said Eve will now have pain in childbirth and Adam would have to ‘toil’ the land to make food.

Original Sin is the idea that the first sin of Adam and Eve disobeying God’s command resulted in a corruption in all humanity. Original sin is a corruption in human nature which makes people want to sin. All humans have inherited Original Sin from Adam and Eve according to Augustine as we were all ‘seminally present in the loins of Adam’. Augustine thought that the biological basis for procreation was “some sort of invisible and intangible power … located in the secrets of nature” yet then goes on to argue that all future generations of people are “in the loins of the father”. Augustine claims “We were all in [Adam] … we all were that one man who fell into sin” We existed in merely a “seminal nature from which we were to be begotten” but when that became “vitiated through sin” it became impossible for anyone to be born without original sin. This means that we are all born sinful beings who therefore deserve this punishment of living in a fallen world. God is not responsible for evil as it results from the free will of angels and humans.

“All evil is either sin or a punishment for sin” – Augustine.

Augustine argued Evil does not actually exist. It is merely a privation of good, meaning it is the absence of Good. As humans fell away from God, we fell away from his goodness, resulting in what we mistakenly call ‘evil’. Evil has no ‘positive existence’, only a negative one. E.g. darkness does not actually exist, it’s merely the absence of light. Darkness is not a ‘thing’ but our minds trick us into thinking it is.

Plantinga’s ‘free will defence’

Plantinga’s response to the problem of evil is a development of Augustine’s theodicy.

Plantinga develops a ‘free will defence’ of the co-existence of God and evil. His argument intended to respond to Mackie’s logical problem of evil, which argues that it is impossible for God (as classically defined) and evil to exist together. Plantinga argues that it is possible for God and evil to exist together because evil is the result of free will.

Moral evil results from human actions. Some object that free will cannot explain natural evil, but Plantinga explains that it is logically possible for natural evil to either result from:

The free will of demons and Satan.
The free will of Adam and Eve justifing God in allowing natural evil into the world as punishment.

This raises the question of why God gave us free will at all though. Wouldn’t it have been better for us to live in a perfectly good world yet not have free will? Plantinga answers that if God didn’t give us free will, our universe would have no value. Our lives would have been value-less. Therefore, no matter how much negative value you think giving us free will could result in, value itself would not be possible without it. So, Plantinga thinks we have to accept that our universe is better for having value despite the downsides.

P1. Evil is the result of the misuse of free will. P2. God cannot remove evil without removing free will (that would be logically impossible). P3. Life would be valueless without free will, so it is better to have free will despite the evil its misuse can lead to. C1. It is therefore better for evil to exist than not to. C2. An omnibenevolent and omnipotent God therefore would allow evil.

It is logically impossible for God to remove evil without removing the greater good of free will. A perfect God would therefore allow evil.

Augustine & Plantinga vs the logical problem on moral responsibility

A strength of Augustine’s theodicy against the logical problem of evil is that it does seem logically possible that God allows evil because it is either sin (moral evil) or punishment for sin (natural evil) or the work of satanic energies (natural evil).

Furthermore, Augustine does not make the mistake of arguing that we are morally responsible for Adam and Eve’s actions. His argument is that a factual consequence of Adam’s sin was that all future humanity became infected with original sin and thus deserve punishment. We deserve punishment for being sinful beings.

Weakness: It’s not our fault that we have original sin

Followers of Pelagius objected that Adam’s crime is not a personal crime of his descendants. So, it still seems unfair, unjust and thus incompatible with omnibenevolence to suggest that we deserve punishment for it. This argument is strongest when considering cases like children with cancer. It’s difficult to maintain that a child deserves cancer because it has original sin. Augustine would have to say it is God’s justice for that child to get cancer and that God is still omnibenevolent despite allowing it. That seems logically inconsistent.

Evaluation defending Augustine

It might seem unfair, but Augustine puts it down to the “secret yet just judgement of God”, indicating that it is inscrutable – impossible for us to understand – but we should have faith it is just. Augustine points to Psalm 25:10: ‘All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth,’ and concludes: neither can his grace be unjust, nor his justice cruel”.

Furthermore, children suffering from natural evil could just be the work of demons.

Evaluation criticizing Augustine

The case of innocent children suffering natural evil destroys Augustine’s argument. He could maintain that adults deserve natural evil as punishment for original sin even though it’s not their fault they were born in sin. Augustine still thinks that giving in to original sin counts as a choice. However, he could not argue this about small children who are too young to choose to sin. There is no logically coherent way to claim that small children deserve to suffer. So, Augustine’s theodicy is not logically coherent and thus fails to solve the logical problem of evil.

Whether the doctrine of original sin is supported by the evidence

A strength of Augustine’s doctrine of original sin is that it can be evidenced from observing human behaviour and society

G. K. Chesterton made this point, arguing that you could see evidence for original sin ‘in the street’. R. Niebuhr said original sin was the one ‘empirically verifiable’ Christian doctrine.

When Augustine was 16, he and his friends stole some pears. What Augustine found remarkable on reflection was that he did not steal them because he was hungry (in fact he threw them away). He concluded that he did it just for the pleasure of sinning.

Weakness: The scientific evidence is against Augustine

Geneticists claim that the evidence we have of genetic diversity means that it’s not possible for all of humanity to have descended from two people. This, plus the other evidence for evolution, suggests that we evolved and were not created. Augustine wrongly thought that reproduction worked by there being little people inside men (homunculus theory), so when Adam sinned all future humanity became infected by it. The story of Adam and Eve is unscientific. The notion that we inherited a corrupt nature and guilt from Adam seems to be unscientific nonsense.

Evaluation defending Augsutine

Augustine could still be right that human nature is corrupted by original sin, even if he’s wrong about the Fall being the exact means by which that came to be.

Augustine said that if you doubt original sin exists, ask yourself how you would behave if your city was involved in a catastrophic war. Would you go out on the street and try to help others, or would you hunker down with your family and try to defend what you have? This is the inclination towards self-love and away from love of your neighbor that characterizes original sin.

There is scientific evidence which supports human corruption and corruptibility such as the Stanford prison experiment.

It is also common knowledge that power is corrupting to people. When people gain the opportunity to sin and get away with it, they are more likely to do so.

Pelagius: Augustine’s observations reflect his society, not human nature.

The long habit of doing wrong which has infected us from childhood and corrupted us little by little over may years and ever after holds us in bondage and slavery to itself, so that it seems somehow to have acquired the force of nature” . – Pelagius

Although it might appear that we have strong forces within us that incline us toward evil, Pelagius argues that could simply be because of the way we are raised and it only appears to be our nature because of how thoroughly corrupted we are by our upbringing, which Pelagius refers to as being “educated in evil”.

We could add contemporary historical and sociological evidence to Pelagius’ point. Humans have progressed since Augustine’s time. Martin Luther King said, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice”. Steven Pinker attributes to the power of human reason that violence has decreased, even considering the 20 th century. The average human life seems more secure than at any prior point in history. If Augustine were correct that original sin caused an irresistible temptation to sin, then human behavior could not have improved, yet it has.

So, original sin does not exist and can’t be used to justify or explain evil.

Irenaeus’ Theodicy

Instead of viewing the Fall as negative, Irenaeus views it as a necessary stage in the development of humans towards perfection. Adam and Eve are like children who go astray because they lack sufficient wisdom to do what is right. Punishment is a way to help children mature.

On the basis of the quote from Genesis ‘God made humans in his image and likeness’, Irenaeus made a distinction between man being made in: the image of God verses the likeness of God. An image is when you look like something on the surface, whereas a likeness is when you actually are like something.

Creation has two steps for Irenaeus – firstly being made in God’s image where we have only a potential for good due to spiritual immaturity. Step two is where we achieve God’s likeness by choosing good over evil which enables us to grow spiritually and morally. The idea is that encountering and overcoming evil makes us become better more virtuous people.

A biblical example Irenaeus pointed to is Jonah and Whale: Jonah disobeyed God and then the natural evil of a storm and a big fish who ate him and spat him out days later helped Jonah learn his lesson and he then obeyed God. Evil thus serves the good purpose of motivating us to be good.

John Hick’s modern Irenaean Theodicy

Hick argued that human beings were not created perfect but develop in two stages: Stage 1: Spiritually immature: through struggle to survive and evolve, humans can develop into spiritually mature beings. The Fall is a result of immature humans who are only in the image of God. Stage 2: Grow into a relationship with God

Hick argued for the Epistemic distance. This means that we cannot truly know of God’s existence. If God did make himself known to us, we would follow his commands out of obedience to his authority instead of following them because we had figured out that they were the right thing to do. Hick argued that it’s only if we have faith in God and still do good because we want to do good, rather than because we know for sure there’s a God who wants us to, that we can truly grow spiritually and morally. Peter Vardy illustrated this with the example of a peasant girl who a King falls in love with and forces her to marry him. The girl doesn’t really love the King and only does it due to obedience to authority out of fear. Similarly, if God appeared to us we would obey his authority rather than really loving what is good for its own sake, which is the morally superior move and therefore most conducive to soul making.

According to Hick everyone will be saved since a loving God would not send people to hell – universal salvation but post-mortem soul making is needed.

Soul-making vs the evidential problem on dysteleological evil

Strength of soul-making vs the evidential problem: There is evidence that encountering and overcoming evil develops a person’s character and virtue. This is behind the idea of character development in literature. It is also behind the idea that people become spoiled if they have too much luxury and not enough responsibility or difficulty to overcome. By going through harsh struggles, a person becomes stronger and gains compassion for others. This does seem to be a factual occurrence in life. For example, some people who get cancer gain a whole new lease on life and go about doing all the things they had always wanted to do.

“What does not kill me, makes me stronger” – Nietzsche.

Weakness: the distribution of evil we observe in the world is decidedly not aligned with the soul-making requirements of those who suffer from it.

Some evil is dysteleological (purposeless). It has no chance of leading to spiritual development. For example, a child who dies of cancer. They are too young to even understand what is happening, let alone learn anything from it. Most animal suffering is also dysteleological.

Some evil is soul breaking . It destroys a person’s character rather than building it up and developing it. Some people are crushed into a depression or post-traumatic stress disorder when they experience evil. This suggests that evil doesn’t have this positive purpose that Irenaeus & Hick try to claim.

The holocaust is as an example of evil which is dysteleological, soul-breaking and where the amount of evil outweighs our soul-making requirements. D Z Phillips questioned whether anyone in their “right mind” could say the holocaust was justified because a few survivors were strengthened by it.

Animal suffering is a form of dysteleological suffering. William Rowe gave the example of a fawn dying in a forest fire. We have evidence that such things happen, but no one would ever be able to gain sympathy or compassion from them.

Evaluation defending Hick

Phillips and the dysteleological evil point in general commits a straw man fallacy.

Hick’s argument isn’t that the holocaust is justified by soul-making. It is that an imperfect world and free will which could perpetrate the holocaust is required for soul-making.

“my suggestion is not that each particular evil, least of all [the holocaust], produces its own specific ‘soul making’ benefit” – Hick.

Imagine if all natural and moral evil we observed was perfectly calibrated to the soul-making requirements of those who suffered from it. This would require a perfect natural world and God’s intervention every time someone misused their free will. We would then clearly know that there was a God controlling the process. This would break the epistemic distance. Then, we would only behave morally out of self-interest and be unable to develop virtue.

Hick’s defense is successful because the universe is indeed morally ambiguous.

Hick’s logic is valid. The virtuous character required for salvation can only be developed through free & good response to a world containing evil. The epistemic distance further requires that this evil appear random. So, Dysteleological, soul-breaking & immense evil are exactly what we should expect to find if soul-making theodicy was correct.

Evaluation critiquing Hick

Hick’s logic may is valid, so he may solve the logical problem of evil.

However, by definition, there can be no evidence for the epistemic distance. It’s merely a logical possibility and so can never be used against the evidential problem.

Hick’s defense is that the logic of his theory means we shouldn’t expect to find evidence of his theory. That may be true, but the issue follows that we have no evidential basis on which to justify belief in God. The evidential problem remains.

Soul-making vs the logical problem on God creating us perfect

A strength of soul-making theodicy is its premise that creating us fully developed was logically impossible. A fully developed soul is one which has chosen good over evil. This requires having made a choice. Therefore, it’s logically impossible for God to create us fully developed. Most theologians agree omnipotence does not include the power to do the logically impossible. So, a perfect God would create us undeveloped and allow us the freedom to choose good over evil. Evil is needed because it serves this good purpose of soul-making. So, evil isn’t incompatible with God’s existence. Mackie’s logical problem seems defeated.

Weakness: An omnibenevolent God would not have created us in the first place.

The problem of evil remains, having merely been pushed back to another question. Hick fails to explain why a morally good God would have created us at all.

David Benatar is an anti-natalist philosopher, meaning he argues that creating sentient beings who will suffer is wrong.

Creating beings that will suffer cannot be justified by pointing to benefits of that suffering. This is because if we never existed, then we wouldn’t need those benefits. A morally good God would not create beings whose development required evil and suffering. It would be better for those beings to have never existed.

Final judgement defending Hick

However, this criticism doesn’t apply well to Hick’s theology. Hick survives these questions about God’s decision to create us because he takes care to combine his theory with the proposal that no one ever goes to hell and that we have potentially unlimited attempts to become virtuous in an afterlife.

So, humans eventually receive an eternal good which clearly makes going through the process of suffering worth it. A perfect God thus would create humans in a world mixed with good and evil because it serves that ultimately good purpose.

Final judgement critiquing Hick

Benatar’s logic does undermine Hick’s argument. It is only once we exist that suffering becomes justified as for our development. If we never existed, we wouldn’t need to go through this painful process at all. It would be better for us had we never existed because it would be good that we didn’t suffer and we couldn’t miss the salvation.

So, the suffering attendant on soul-making is ultimately unnecessary and an omnibenevolent God could never be motivated to bring us or it into being. So, the logical problem of evil remains.

Soul-making vs Dostoyevsky

A strength of soul-making theodicy is that evil serving some good purpose seems the best way to make it compatible with omnibenevolence.

This was intentional for Hick, who entitled his book “Evil and the God of love”. Other theodicies are less persuasive because they try to either blame humanity for the actions of their ancestors or even take away God’s omnipotence.

Weakness: Dostoyevsky’s character Ivan.

“ if everyone must suffer, in order to buy eternal harmony with their suffering, pray tell me what have children got to do with it?” – Dostoyevsky’s character Ivan.

The key detail of Ivan’s argument is his connection between the suffering of innocent children and the gain of heaven for others.

People get into heaven because of, on the back of, the suffering of innocent children. Ivan says no good person or God would design this connection into heaven:

“imagine that you yourself are building the edifice of human destiny with the object of making people happy in the finale, of giving them peace and rest at last, but for that you must inevitably and unavoidably torture just one tiny creature, that same child who was beating her chest with her little fist, and raise your edifice on the foundation of her unrequited tears—would you agree to be the architect on such conditions?” – Dostoyevsky’s character Ivan.

It’s not that the evil is dysteleological, nor that the process of soul-making is not worth it. It’s that the whole process of soul-making is actually not morally acceptable. If the suffering of a child was the cost of the of the soul-making of others, Ivan’s point is that this is indecent. It’s not moral. Building heaven on a foundation of children suffering is not what Hick’s supposed ‘God of love’ would accept. So, Hick fails to solve the logical problem of evil.

In Dostoyevsky’s book, the response given to Ivan which perhaps reflects his own response, is that earthly suffering will “pass away in eternity”.

William Lane Craig makes a similar argument regarding child suffering, that they will go straight to heaven.

Heaven is infinite. It is worth suffering from evil to get there.

This critique from Ivan is successful because it gets around Hick’s standard defenses of himself. Hick doesn’t say that every case of evil has a soul-making benefit, but that the possibility of soul-making requires a world in which evil, even purposeless evil, is possible. Ivan’s point is that this is not a morally acceptable system and that his own moral virtue compels him to reject it.

Ivan’s discomfort is logical. It doesn’t seem right to accept heaven for himself if the price is the suffering of innocent children.

The problem of evil & the issue of free will

All popular responses to the problem of evil have a similar strength regarding the interaction between free will and God’s omnipotence.

Plantinga thought the entire response to the problem of evil could be solved by appealing to free will. He developed Augustine’s theodicy into a ‘free will defence’ of God’s possible co-existence with evil. Without free will, our lives would be pointless and valueless. It’s abuse can directly lead to moral evil and indirectly lead to natural evil in the form of punishment, the work of demons, and having to live in a fallen world due to Adam’s misuse of free will.

The power of theodicies then typically functions through attempting to link the existence of evil to free will. They can then argue that removing evil is not logically possible without impacting our free will in some way which would either leave us even worse off or is simply logically impossible for God to do. God’s omnipotence is typically thought by Christian theologians to involve the power to do any logically possible action. God cannot do logically impossible things.

For various theodicies then, it is not logically possible for God to eliminate evil without:

Contradicting his divine justice, since we deserve evil as punishment for our freely chosen evil actions (Augustine).
Removing our free will, since all evil results either directly (moral evil) or indirectly (natural evil) from the abuse of free will (Augustine & Plantinga).
Removing opportunities for growth from evil through freely choosing good over evil (Irenaeus & Hick).

Weakness: the challenge that libertarian free will does not exist

Theodicies rely on the existence of ‘libertarian free will’, meaning the ability to do otherwise.

However, libertarian free will seems to require an undetermined event which is nonetheless somehow also under the control of an agent. This strikes many philosophers as incoherent.

A. J. Ayer argues that our choices are either determined or not. If not, they are random. If determined, they result from prior causes such as our character, which is itself determined by prior causes. In either case, we couldn’t have done otherwise.

Mackie develops this style of argument. Our actions are either the result of randomness, external causes, or our own character. It is those choices which originate from our character that we typically call moral. This must be the notion of freedom theodicies draw on.

However, we did not create our own character. They may be times a person made efforts to change their character. But those efforts were themselves determined by prior states of their character. Mackie concludes that the only coherent definition of free will is a compatibilist one, where “free choice” is when our actions are determined by our character.

This allows Mackie to then argue that if there were a perfect God, he would have made sure to have given us all a morally good character.

Applying this to theodicies, this means:

Adam and Eve would have never disobeyed God. Augustine & Plantinga therefore lose their explanation of natural evil.
All humans would behave morally now, so Augustine & Plantinga lose their explanation of moral evil.
Hick also loses his explanation of why God couldn’t have created us fully or at least better-formed than he did.

This argument attacks the logical coherence of libertarian free will and thus defends the logical problem of evil.

Evaluation defending theodicy

Plantinga responded with his first morally sufficient reason: that it is actually not logically possible for God to create a world where free agents always make good choices. The possibility of a world of free creatures only choosing good depends on their free choices, which God cannot control without taking away their free will. Thus although a world where free creatures only choose good is technically possible, that doesn’t mean God can bring it about since its existence depends on particular free choices being made (i.e. good ones) which God cannot cause without taking away free will.

This response from Plantinga presupposes libertarian free will. However, there are many arguments for it.

For example, Kant argued that human beings are ultimately non-physical souls which exist outside of the realm of cause and effect, so we can have free will despite the physical world being predetermined. It is logically possible that we have souls, so the logical problem of evil is defeated.

Evaluation critiquing theodicy

Plantinga tries to respond that God couldn’t have created us in a way where we would only do good actions, since then we wouldn’t have made a choice.

However, this response fails to consider Mackie’s argument for compatibilism. The notion of libertarian free will which Plantinga presupposes is logically incoherent.

Human free choice simply involves doing what it is in our character to do, but we did not choose our character. We could not have, since we did not exist before it.

Even if our character comes from our soul in some way, we did not create it. Whatever we are, we did not make ourselves.

So, God could have given us all a good character. This would have prevented Adam and Eve from causing the fall. It would make soul-making unnecessary because we would be born with already good characters.

Free will cannot be appealed to when defending God’s existence in the face of evil.

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Evil in the World, Essay Example

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Many unexplained phenomenon suggest that the world was created be an intelligent being with an overall purpose in mind. The way that the human body was designed is one of the many examples of just how purposeful the designer was. The human body was designed in such a unique way that it could not have been possibly been created by mere chance. For example, the male and female bodies were designed to purposefully reproduce. The male sperm was designed with a swimming mechanism that allows it to travel up the female’s fallopian tubes to fertilize the egg. This connection forms a life. The female body then nurtures and houses this living creature for nine months-the perfect amount of time needed to ensure the baby is fully developed. There have been many attempts to exclude the belief of an omniscient creator by trying to prove that human beings evolved over time by the process of natural selection. Scientists have argued that over time only the most intelligent creatures will survive due to the law of survival of the fittest. Nevertheless, the most prevalent argument is why such a powerful God would allow evil to exist in the world. Namely, there are two types of evils in the world-natural and moral. Natural evils are those events that are out of human control, while moral evils are those that are directly correlated with human behavior. Evil exists in the world because of the free will of man.

Yet, there are still many arguments about the existence of God. The Epicurus theory suggests that the purpose of life is to obtain peace and tranquility without enduring pain and suffering. According to this theory, if God is willing to prevent evil, but unable to do so, he must only be omnipotent. However, if he is able to prevent evil, but unwilling to he is only malevolent. The main argument is if God is so great, why he allows evil to happen in the world. God does not allow evil to exist, but he does allow human beings to exist and live of their own free will. Each person has the ability to either choose evil or good. One must remember that evil is not a living, breathing entity, but a manifestation through the actions of people. People who argue that there is no God or that he is not all powerful often use the death penalty as an example of the evil within the world. The death penalty is a very inhumane way to punish people for hideous crimes. Ironically, these crimes are usually some form of murder. So, as a society, we have learned to punish people in the same way that they caused pain. Non-Christians remind us that God said that vengeance belongs to him. Even with the death penalty looming over the heads of would be criminals, evil still exists. So essentially, the death penalty has been proven as an ineffective way to govern a modern society. With the death penalty not serving its purpose, it must be just another form of evil. Another example that is used is when innocent babies die each day from starvation, neglect, and abuse. This example is very hard for most people to understand. Why would God allow horrible things to happen to babies? So many times I am brought to tears by seeing commercials for feed the children or adopt a child overseas. I too have questioned why such a loving God would allow this to happen. Many times I have prayed that God would just end all suffering and dying in the world. The Epicurus theory is faulty because it does not address the option of free will and which type of evil should be prevented.

Why wouldn’t a just and good God eliminate the evil in the world? We must be reminded that so many people live their lives without getting in trouble with the law or society. Just as many people live their lives without confessing any type of religion or spiritual connection. In other words, many people live lives that are morally correct and absent of natural evil, but are they good according to God. So, why do these people choose not to commit evil? Or, who do we blame for natural evils? Nevertheless, there are many people who have professed to be devout Christians and still lead lives grounded in evil. For example, many members of hate groups profess with their mouths to be followers of Jesus Christ, but are causing a great deal of the evil in the world. In recent years there have been mass shootings that took place inside of churches and schools. Suicide missions that caused the lives of hundreds of innocent people have been in the forefront of news media lately. God being all powerful means that he has the ability to make a person choose right or wrong. He could eliminate all the evil within the world. Wouldn’t it be great if no death, suffering, or evil existed in the world? Certainly, but if God made those choices for us, he would not be a free and willing God who allows us to make our own decisions. Each person has his/her own morality map that determines what he/she will or will not do. Often these choices are implanted into the person through their upbringing. Parents teach their children what is right and wrong, according to their beliefs. In some cases these teachings are in line with what society believes, but other times these teachings may not be in line with social norms. Consequently, these people are labeled as deviants.

God equipped each human being with a conscience to help them decide what is right or wrong. Many say that the conscience is guided by instincts. Those instincts are governed by the desire for pleasure. So, essentially humans are like animals just doing whatever is pleasing to them. It is obvious that this is not true because humans make decisions each day that benefits others. If this were true, every person in the world would be wreaking havoc and committing evil acts. The mind was designed by God in such a unique way that it allows each person to make decisions about what he or she does. Nevertheless, if one does not have a relationship with God, he/she is more likely to make decisions that may produce evil. Although God does not force anyone to make specific decisions, he speaks to them concerning which is the right choice. God serves the role of a parent to human kind. He teaches us through his word what is right and wrong, but allows us to make decisions on our own. Much as a parent does. Parents teach their children and many times they punish them for doing wrong. However, as the child gets older, the parent gives them more freedom and the ability to make mistakes and learn from them. God treats humans much the same way. When we do wrong, he has the power to punish us. Doing what is morally right can also be rewarded. The best example of this is in the book of Job. God shows that evil has no reason and that suffering does not necessarily equate to wrong doing. Job was a perfect man, yet he suffered the evils of the world. Nevertheless, he endured and continued to serve God and he was restored to a better self than he started off with. However, no parent has the ability to be ever present with a child to make decisions for him/her. That parent must step back and allow the child to make choices, mistakes, and hopefully learn from them.

Evil does exist in the world, but God neither creates it nor allows it to happen. This concept explains theodicy. God does exist and he is all powerful and omnipotent. The choices that people make each day cause the evil in the world. He does not stop it or eliminate it because he said that he was a God of choices and forgiveness. Knowing what evil is and experiencing it only makes the person stronger. When a person has overcome evil, he/she is able to glorify God for overcoming. If we had no reference to evil or if everything in the world was perfect, there would be no need for God or heaven. According to the teachings of Christianity, the world will forever be plagued by suffering and sin, but Christians must set themselves apart from the world by separating themselves from the world. By doing this, they show Jesus within themselves. The world would be a better place if people focused more on how to make the world better, rather than focusing on why Jesus allows it to happen. Again, we must remember that evil is only manifested through human actions. Evil is not a living breathing person. Because God is a God of his word, he will not force any person to accept him or his teachings. Neither will he force any person to choose good over evil, yet he equips each person with the ability to know the difference. God is a spirit that lives within us and guides our decision making, if we allow it.

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If God Exists, Why Is There Evil?

By Norman Geisler • May 8, 2007 • Topics: Suffering

Tragedies such as the Aurora Colorado theater shooting or the Virginia Tech massacre refocus the issue of evil in a vivid way. If there is a loving God, then why does He permit heinous crimes like this? Why doesn’t He intervene? The Christian cannot accept the claims of some that God “is not perfect and there are some things God does not control.”

My wife, Barb, and I suffered the tragic loss of our daughter Rhoda a few years ago. We know that such pain never really goes away. Yet, one thing is certain: The existence of evil does not eliminate God. Rather, it cries out for Him. In his book “Mere Christianity,” former atheist C.S. Lewis noted, “My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.”

This is where the argument of evil as evidence against God’s existence boomerangs into an argument for His existence. If there is an ultimate moral standard or law of justice, then there must be an ultimate moral Law Giver. Without His moral law we would not even know what evil really is. And without His spiritual comfort we would not be able to endure evil—at least not with any realistic hope and comfort. As the Apostle Paul said, we sorrow but not as those who have no hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13). And without His great power and love we would have no hope of ever getting a better world. Only a God who can bring good out of evil can solve this world’s problems.

Amid evil like the killings at Virginia Tech, we can cry out to God for comfort. Had it not been for all the Scripture I had committed to memory, such as Psalm 23; Isaiah 26:3, 40:31; John 14:1-6; Philippians 4:4-6; 2 Corinthians 4:17 and others, I don’t know what I would have done when our daughter died. I’ll never forget the trip from Asheville, N.C., to Charlotte after hearing of her untimely death. It was the longest two-hour trip I have ever taken. It felt like I was in a submarine, peering out through an ocean of tears. Nonetheless, I was able to cry out to God like Job: “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21, KJV).

Heaven Will Not Be Like This We can be sure that the world to come is not going to be like this one. This one is full of disaster, destruction and death. The next one will have none of these. John said it best: “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away. … And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away” (Revelation 21:1, 4, KJV).

Paradise Lost We know that God is not the author of evil . After the final day of creation, God declared, “It is very good” (Cf. Genesis 1:31). Adam and Eve were put into a sinless paradise, but they rebelled against God in a deliberate and unprovoked act of disobedience and were expelled from Paradise. They died spiritually at the moment of their disobedience (Ephesians 2:1), and eventually they died physically. “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world and death through sin, and thus sin spread to all men, because all sinned” (Romans 5:12, NKJV). Solomon said, “Truly, this only have I found: That God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes” (Ecclesiastes 7:29, NKJV).

But if God made the world perfect, and the Paradise lost will become the Paradise regained, how did this one get so messed up? Why didn’t God make the first world and its people more perfect and skip this messed-up version in between?

The Purpose of Evil The answer is two-fold. For one thing, God could have made a world with no evil in it. However, it would have been one of robots and puppets—creatures who could not love Him or anyone else. Love is possible only for free moral creatures; forced love is a contradiction. So, in order for the world to be morally good, it must be morally free. And free creatures are capable of free choices that bring disease, disaster and death. This is the world in which we live.

In “The Problem of Pain,” C.S. Lewis explains a second point about suffering. “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” The painful truth is that God is more interested in our holiness than in our happiness. He is more interested in our character than in our comfort.

More than a half-century of Christian experience has led me to the conviction that few enduring lessons in life come through pleasure. All of mine have come through pain. Yet, I have joyfully learned that the poet was right when he said, “God is good when He gives supremely good, nor less when He denies. Even crosses from His gracious hands are blessings in disguise.” For the lessons of life reveal that “tribulation worketh patience” (Romans 5:4, KJV), and “Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory” (2 Corinthians 4:17, KJV).

God Will Make Everything Right Further, God is going to fix it up, but He hasn’t done it yet.

Here is the age-old dilemma: If God is all-good, as the Bible says, then He would want to get rid of evil. If He is all-powerful, then He could do it. But even a casual look at the evening news, to say nothing of the Virginia Tech tragedy, informs us that He has not defeated evil. Hence, the argument goes, there cannot be an all-good and all-powerful God.

While this logic sounds tight and painful, it is not faultless. Because God has not yet defeated all evil does not mean that He never will defeat it. Indeed, both good logic and the Bible declare that He will yet do away with evil. How so?

First, if God is all-powerful then He can do it, and if He is all-loving, then He wants to do it. And whatever He can and wants to do, He will do (Psalm 135:6). His very nature as an omnipotent and omnibenevolent being demands that evil will be vanquished.

Second, God already has done something about evil. He sent His only Son into the world to die for the world and to defeat evil. Evil was defeated officially at Christ’s first coming through His death and resurrection (Colossians 2:14, Hebrews 2:14, Ephesians 4:7-12). His victory over sin and the grave ensured Satan’s eventual defeat. The same Bible that accurately predicted Christ’s first coming through nearly 100 fulfilled prophecies promises that Christ will come again and will completely defeat evil. Meanwhile, What Do We Do?

Jesus answered this in one word— repent . In Luke 13, Jesus hears the story of the Galileans “whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices.” He asks if this happened to them because they were worse sinners than those who had not suffered such a tragic death. His answer was instructive: “I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3, NKJV). In short, in a free and fallen world, tragedies happen to people who are no more sinners than those to whom such events do not happen.

We are all sinners and we all need to repent and “believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved” (Cf. Acts 16:31). Life is brief. You can never be sure how long it will last. We all should be prepared to meet our God at any moment.

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Leibniz on the Problem of Evil

There is no question that the problem of evil vexed Leibniz as much as any of the problems that he engaged in the course of his philosophical career. This is manifest in the fact that the first and the last book-length works that he authored, the Philosopher's Confession (written at age 26 in 1672) and the Theodicy (written in 1709, seven years before his death) were both devoted to this problem, as well as in the fact that in the intervening years Leibniz wrote numerous short pieces on related issues––many of which may be found in Gr and will soon be available in English translations currently being undertaken by R. C. Sleigh, Jr.–– and one full-length work, the Dissertation on Predestination and Grace (DPG), which was only published in 2011. The fact that the Theodicy was the only book-length treatise that Leibniz published during his lifetime provides further evidence of the significance that he attributed to the topic. It is therefore appropriate that it has now become an interpretive commonplace that Leibniz's concern with the problem of evil was central to his overarching philosophical concerns throughout his philosophical career. [See Rutherford (1995) and Antognazza (2009).] Leibniz's approach to the problem of evil became known to many readers through Voltaire's lampoon in Candide : the link that Voltaire seems to forge between Leibniz and the extravagant optimism of Dr. Pangloss continues––for better or worse––to shape the popular understanding of Leibniz's approach to the problem of evil. In this entry we examine the two main species of the problem of evil that Leibniz addresses. The first, “the underachiever problem,” is raised by a critic who would argue that the existence of evil in our world indicates that God cannot be as knowledgeable, powerful, or good as traditional monotheists have claimed. The second, “the holiness problem,” is raised by the critic who would argue that God's intimate causal entanglements with the world make God the cause of evil. God is thereby implicated in evil to the detriment of his holiness.

1. Various Versions of the Problem of Evil in Leibniz

2. the underachiever problem, 3. the holiness problem, other internet resources, related entries.

Before examining Leibniz's views on the problem of evil, it is necessary to do some stage-setting in order to locate just what sort of problem Leibniz thought evil presented. Consideration of any present-day introductory textbook of philosophy reveals that the problem of evil in contemporary philosophy is standardly regarded as an argument for atheism. The atheist contends that God and evil are incompatible, and given that evil clearly exists, God cannot exist. Some philosophers, conceding that the claimed incompatibility in the foregoing argument is too strong, contend, nevertheless, that even if the existence of God and the existence of evil should prove to be compatible, the existence (or duration, or amount, or pervasiveness) of evil provides us at the very least with compelling circumstantial evidence that God does not exist.

Framed in this way, the “atheistic problem of evil” invites certain sorts of responses. In particular, it invites the theist to explain how a being that is omniscient, omnibenevolent, and omnipotent can allow evil to exist. Present-day responses to the problem of evil therefore focus largely on presenting “theodicies,” that is, reasons why a perfect being does or might permit evil of the sort (or duration, or amount, or distribution) that we find in our world to exist.

When we consider, however, the works of medieval philosophers who address the problem of evil, the “atheistic problem” is not to be found. Since these figures believed that the arguments of natural theology demonstrated the existence of God, the problem that evil presented for them was different from that engaged by present-day philosophers. In present-day terminology, medieval philosophers did not engage the “evidential” problem of evil: rather, they engaged the “aporetic” problem of evil, in order to try to resolve the apparent logical incompatibility between God's attributes and the existence of evil. [On the distinction between these problems, see Adams and Adams (1990), pp. 1–3.] The problem, therefore, was taken to be that of explaining the compatibility of the existence of evil with divine moral purity or holiness. These philosophers believed that God is the author of everything that exists, and given that evil is one of the things that exists, it might seem that God is therefore the author of evil. And if an agent is an “author of evil,” he is therefore implicated in the evil and cannot be morally pure or holy. Thus, God cannot be morally pure nor holy. Let's call this version of the problem of evil the “holiness problem.” Before moving on, it should be noted that in light of the fact that Leibniz and his predecessors shared a commitment to God's existence, one might think that their approach to the problem of evil begs the question against the atheistic critic who charges that the existence of evil provides evidence that God does not exist. But this issue simply did not arise for Leibniz and his predecessors, given their antecedent belief in God's existence, and therefore it is inappropriate to charge these philosophers with begging the question.

Traditional theists held––and present-day theists still do hold––that God is the “author” or cause of everything in the cosmos in at least three different respects, so discussions of the holiness problem often branch off in three correspondingly different directions. First, God is regarded as the creative cause of everything in the cosmos. Everything that exists contingently is brought into existence by means of the creative activity of God. Second, it is held that God is the conserving cause of everything that exists. So God not only creates every created being, but every created being that continues to exist does so in virtue of God's continuously maintaining it in existence. Third, every action caused by a created being requires direct divine activity as concurrent cause . So every whack of a hammer, every strike of my fingertip on the keyboard, every tug of a magnet on a piece of iron, requires not only that the created being act, but also that the creator act concurrently with the created being in order to bring about the particular effect of the cause in question. [For a classic exposition of these various modes of divine causal involvement see St. Thomas Aquinas, Disputationes de Potentia Dei , Q.3, a.7, resp.]

Given that on this traditional account, God is intimately intertwined with the workings of the cosmos, the holiness problem seemed all the more intractable. In light of the intimate connections between God and the created world, the problem is not just that God created a world that happens to include evil, but that God seems to be causally (and thus morally) implicated in, for example, every particular act of murder, every earthquake, and every death caused by plague. Consequently, responses to the holiness problem sought to explain not only how God could remain holy despite having created a world such as ours, but also how he could remain holy despite conserving the world in existence and causally cooperating with all the events that occur in it.

In light of the fact that Leibniz lived in between these two eras, eras in which evil was taken to present different problems for the monotheistic philosopher, we are immediately led to wonder what sort of problem he sought to address. Leibniz expends a great deal of effort attempting to solve the holiness problem, but he also takes up something akin to the atheistic problem. It would be anachronistic, however, to claim that Leibniz was engaged with the atheistic problem, for in his time the existence of evil was taken to be an argument for an unorthodox form of theism rather than an argument for atheism. Thus, for example, a group of thinkers collectively known as the “Socinians” held, among other things, that the existence of evil was not incompatible with God's existence , but that it was incompatible with the existence of an omniscient God. The Socinians therefore held that God must not be omniscient, and that he must at the very least lack knowledge of future contingent events. [For Leibniz's view on the Socinians see Theodicy 364 (H343; G VI 318) et passim . More details on Socinianism can be found in Jolley, c.2, and Maclachlan.]

We might then characterize the problem raised by atheists in our own century and by the Socinians, to cite just one example from the seventeenth century, more broadly as the “underachiever problem.” According to the underachiever problem, if the sort of being that traditional monotheism identifies as God were to exist, the existence of this world would represent a vast underachievement on his part: therefore there is no such being. Atheists take this conclusion to prove that there is no God; the Socinians take it to show that God is not the sort of being that the traditional theist supposes him to be.

Although Leibniz is concerned about the underachiever problem, it is the Socinian, and not the atheistic, version of the problem that he engages. The winds of atheism had not reached the gale force proportions that they would in succeeding centuries. Consequently, this stronger conclusion was not yet taken as a serious, or at least the main, threat presented by the existence of evil.

It is important to distinguish between these versions of the problem of evil since we cannot understand Leibniz's treatment of evil in a given text until we know what problem it is that he means to be addressing in that text. Having set the stage in this way, we can now consider Leibniz's solutions to the problem of evil: we first consider the underachiever problem, and then turn to the holiness problem.

The core of Leibniz's solution to the underachiever problem is straightforward. Leibniz argues that God does not underachieve in creating this world because this world is the best of all possible worlds. Many thinkers have supposed that commitment to the claim that this world is the best of all possible worlds follows straightforwardly from monotheism. Because God is omnipotent and omniscient, nothing can prevent him from creating the best world, and his omnibenevolence obliges him to create the best world. So the created world is the best world.

Leibniz's reasoning to this conclusion does not, however, follow this straightforward path: among other things, this reasoning is not cogent as it stands. A number of seventeenth-century figures recognized that God would not be obliged to create the best world if there were no such thing as the best world. There would be no best world if the series of possible worlds formed a continuum of increasingly good worlds ad infinitum . And if there is no best world, God cannot be faulted for failing to create the best one since to do so would be as impossible as, say, naming the highest number. There is no such number of course, and likewise no such world. So while God may be obliged to create a world that has at least some measure of goodness, he cannot be obliged, on this view, to create the best. And therefore it might be the case that God simply chose arbitrarily to create one of infinitely many morally acceptable worlds. [This line of argument was common among certain Jesuit scholastics of the period. For discussions of this issue, see, for example, Ruiz de Montoya, Commentaria ac Disputationes in primam partem Sancti Thomae. De voluntate Dei et propiis actibus eius , Lyon 1630, disp. 9 and 10, and Diego Granado, Comentarii in primam partem Summae Theologicae S. Thomae , Pont-a-Mousson, 1624, pp.420–433.]

Leibniz was aware of this argument denying God's obligation to create the best, but he was firmly committed to rejecting it, in virtue of a central principle of his philosophical system, the Principle of Sufficient Reason. According to the Principle of Sufficient Reason, for any state of affairs, there must be a sufficient reason that explains why that state of affairs and not some other state of affairs obtains. When it comes to our world, then, there must be some reason that explains why it, and not some other world, obtains. But there can be no such reason if it is the case that the goodness of worlds increases ad infinitum . Leibniz therefore concluded that there can be no infinite continuum of worlds.

One might be tempted to resist Leibniz's argument by saying that even according to the view on which there is an “infinite continuum of good worlds,” there is something that can serve as the sufficient reason for existence of this world, namely, God's decree that this world be actual . But such a response, Leibniz observes, would merely push the problem back, because the Principle of Sufficient Reason applies to free choices just as it applies to any other event or state of affairs. Thus, we would have to provide a sufficient reason for God's choice of this world instead of some other world on the continuum of morally acceptable worlds. And it seems that such a sufficient reason cannot be given on the infinite continuum of good worlds view. Note that the sufficient reason cannot be derived from some feature or fact about the world that is actually chosen, for this would raise the obvious question: Why did this feature in particular serve as the sufficient reason for God's choice? The only possible answers, it appears, would be: (a) Because God arbitrarily selected that feature as the one he would favor in deciding which world to create; or (b) Because that feature made that world better than all its competitors. But notice that neither of these answers is acceptable. The first is inconsistent with the Principle of Sufficient Reason. The second is incompatible with the hypothesis at issue, that there is no “best world.”

One might think that declaring this world to be the best possible world does not constitute a valid response to the underachiever problem. Indeed, such a response might be taken to provide the basis for a new underachiever argument along the following lines:

If God were all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good, then this world would be the best possible world.
But surely this world is not the best possible world.
Thus, God is not all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good.

Leibniz believes, however, that there was overwhelming evidence that the conclusion of this argument was false. He therefore must take one of the two premises in this argument to be false. Given that he himself is committed to the first premise, he must reject the second premise. And this is precisely what he does.

What reason, Leibniz asks, does the critic have for thinking that (2) is true? When Leibniz addresses this issue, he usually has the critic say something along the following lines:

Surely this world is not the best possible world since we can easily conceive of possible worlds that are better. Take some token instance of suffering: the tragic bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building. Surely a world without that event would be better than the actual world. And there is no reason why God couldn't have created the world without that event. Thus, this is not the best possible world. [See Theodicy 118–119 (H 188–191; G VI 168–172).]

Leibniz's response to this sort of criticism comes in two stages. First, Leibniz says that while we can think of certain token features of the world that in and of themselves might be better than they are, we do not know whether it is possible to create a better world lacking those features, because we can never be certain of the nature of the connections between the token events in question and other events in the world. If we could improve or eliminate the token event in question without otherwise changing the world, we might well have a better world. Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing whether such a change to the token event would leave the world otherwise unchanged, or might instead make things, on balance, worse. [See Theodicy 211–214 (H 260–2; G VI 244–7) and Gr, p.64f., for examples of this sort of response.]

Second, examples such as these are deceptive because they presume that God utilizes standards of world goodness that he may not in fact use. For example, it may presume that a world is good only if each part taken in isolation is good (a standard, we have seen, that Leibniz rejects), or it might presume that a world is good only if human beings enjoy happiness in it.

Leibniz argues in numerous texts that it is parochial to think that human happiness is the standard whereby the goodness of worlds is to be judged. A more reasonable standard, according to Leibniz, would be the happiness of all sentient beings. But once we admit this, it may turn out that the amount of unhappiness in the created realm is quite small, given that for all we know, the sentient beings on Earth might constitute a very small percentage of the sentient beings created by God. Here Leibniz includes not only preternatural beings such as angels, but also the possibility of extraterrestrial rational beings [ Theodicy 19 (H 134–5; G VI 113–4)].

There is disagreement among Leibniz scholars about the basis for judging the goodness of worlds. Various scholars have defended one or more of the following:

The best world is the one that maximizes the happiness (i.e., virtue) of rational beings.
The best world is the one that maximizes the “quantity of essence.”
The best world is the one that yields the greatest variety of phenomena governed by the simplest set of laws.

There is scholarly dispute about whether Leibniz believed that the maximization of the happiness or virtue of rational beings is one of the standards by which God judges the goodness of the world. [For supporters of this claim see Rutherford, c.3; Blumenfeld, Brown; for detractors see Russell, p. 199, Gale.] It is unlikely that Leibniz believed that (1) alone was the true standard of goodness of the world in light of following comment on an argument advanced by Bayle:

the author is still presupposing that false maxim … stating that the happiness of rational creatures is the sole aim of God. [ Theodicy 120 (H 192; G VI 172)]

In part, the dispute over this standard hangs on whether or not (1) is compatible with the more metaphysical standards embodied in (2) and (3), since it is these more metaphysical standards that Leibniz seems to endorse most consistently. In some cases, Leibniz writes as if the standard of happiness is fully compatible with the more metaphysical criteria. For example, within a single work, the Discourse on Metaphysics , Leibniz entitled Section 5 “What the rules of the perfection of divine conduct consist in, and that the simplicity of the ways is in balance with the richness of effects,” and he entitled Section 36: “God is the monarch of the most perfect republic, composed of all minds, and the happiness of this city of God is his principal purpose.” So Leibniz seems to advance both standards (1) and (3) in the same work [For another example, see R p. 105 (K X pp.9–10)]. In other places however, he writes as if they compete with one another [See Theodicy 124 (H 197–8; G VI 178–9).]

Whatever position one comes to hold on this matter, Leibniz often points to the more metaphysical standards as the ones God utilizes in assessing the goodness of worlds. But there is further controversy over exactly which metaphysical standard, (2) or (3), Leibniz endorses. In general, Leibniz holds that God creates the world in order to share his goodness with created things in the most perfect manner possible [Gr 355–6]. In light of the fact that created beings, in virtue of their limitations, can mirror the divine goodness only in limited respects, God creates a variety of things, each of which has an essence that reflects a different facet of divine perfection in its own unique way. Since this is God's purpose in creating the world, it would be reasonable to think that maximizing the mirroring of divine goodness in creation is the goal that God seeks to achieve. And this in fact is one of the standards Leibniz seems to endorse. We might call this the “maximization of essence” standard. Leibniz seems convinced that the actual world meets this standard and that creatures are to be found that mirror the divine perfections in all the sorts of ways that creatures can do this. Thus, there are creatures with bodies and creatures without, creatures with freedom and intelligence and creatures without, creatures with sentience and creatures without, etc. [See, for example, MP pp. 75–6 and 138 (G VII 303–4 and 310).]

In some texts, however, Leibniz frames the standard of goodness in what some have taken to be a third distinct way. In these places he argues that the goodness of a world is measured by the ratio between the variety of phenomena that a world contains and the simplicity of the laws that govern that world. Here Leibniz emphasizes the fact that the perfection of a world that maximizes the variety of phenomena it contains is enhanced by the simplicity of its laws since this displays the intelligence of the creator who created it.

Some scholars have argued that one or the other of these two more metaphysical standards represents Leibniz's settled view on the true standard of goodness [Gale, for example]. Other scholars have argued that, in the end, the two standards are not exclusive of each other. [See Rutherford, cc.2–3 and Rescher, c.1 for two very different ways of harmonizing (2) and (3).]

Regardless of which of these interpretations is correct, if these are the standards by which God judges the world's goodness, it becomes much more difficult to defend the claim that this is not the best possible world. We can use standard (3) to illustrate. In order, for example, for God to eliminate the Oklahoma City bombing from the world, what would be required in order for him to do so? There are presumably a number of ways in which this might be done. The most obvious would involve miraculous intervention somewhere in the chain of events leading up to the explosion. God might miraculously prevent the explosives from detonating, or he might eliminate the truck and its contents from the world. But this sort of miraculous intervention would require that the laws governing the world become more complex. Consequently, Leibniz, and others who share this view of what the goodness of a world consists in, such as Malebranche, think that miraculous intervention is generally repugnant and would require vastly outweighing goods to result from a miraculous intervention in order for such an intervention to be permissible. [See Theodicy 129 (H 192–3; G VI 182).]

In any event, Leibniz holds that we are simply unable to know how changing certain events would change the world's capacity to meet the standards of goodness described in (2) and (3). Thus, according to Leibniz, we are not justified in claiming that this world is not as good, all things considered, as some other possible world. According to Leibniz, then, the underachiever problem cannot get off the ground unless the critic is able to defend the claim that this world is not the best possible world. It should be noted that Leibniz's approach to the underachiever problem thus seems be immune to the line of criticism pressed by Voltaire in Candide , namely, that it is obvious that this world is not the best possible world because there are so many manifest evils in it. Leibniz does not believe that each individual event is the best possible event, and he does not think that it is possible for finite minds to demonstrate that every individual event must be a part of the best possible world: rather, he believes that the world as a whole is the best possible world. (That said, it should be noted that there is considerable scholarly controversy as to whether Voltaire's target in Candide is indeed Leibniz: it has been claimed, for example, that the “optimism” lampooned in Candide is closer to that of Pope (see Rutherford (1995); on the general reception of Leibniz in France, see Barber (1955)].) In any event, on Leibniz's view, our inability to know how changing certain events in the world would affect other events and our inability to know how such changes would affect the overall goodness of the world make it impossible to defend the claim that the manifest evils in the world constitute evidence that this is not the best possible world.

Far less scholarly attention has been devoted to Leibniz's treatment of the holiness problem, if only because this conception of the problem has only recently been recognized by Leibniz scholars. As noted above, the main problem here is that God's character seems to be stained by evil because God causally contributes to the existence of everything in the world, and evil is one of those things. [For two recent treatments see Sleigh (1996) and Murray (2005)]

The standard solution adopted by medieval thinkers was to deny an assumption of the preceding argument, namely, that evil is “something.” Evil was claimed not to have any positive reality, but to be a mere “privation” or “lack” of being. On such a view, evil has no more reality than the hole in the center of a donut. Making a donut does not require putting together two components, the cake and the hole: the cake is all that there is to the donut, and the hole is just the “privation of cake.” It therefore would be silly to say that making the donut requires causing both the cake and the hole to exist. Causing the cake to exist causes the hole as a “by-product” of causing a particular kind of cake to exist. Thus, we need not assume any additional cause for the hole beyond that assumed for the causing of the cake.

The upshot of our pastry analogy is this: given that evil, like the hole, is merely a privation, it requires no cause (or as the medievals, and Leibniz, liked to say, it needs no “cause per se ”). God does not “causally contribute to the existence of evil” because evil per se is not a thing and therefore requires no cause in order to exist. And since God does not cause the existence of evil, God cannot be causally implicated in evil. Thus, the holiness problem evaporates.

Early in his philosophical career, Leibniz, like other seventeenth-century philosophers, scoffed at this solution to the holiness problem. In a short piece entitled “The Author of Sin,” Leibniz explains why he thinks the privation response to the holiness problem fails. Leibniz argues that God is the author of all that is real and positive in the world, and that God is therefore also the “author” of all of privations in the world. “It is a manifest illusion to hold that God is not the author of sin because there is no such thing as an author of a privation, even though he can be called the author of everything which is real and positive in the sinful act” [A.6.3.150].

Leibniz explains why he takes this response to be a “manifest illusion,” through the consideration of an example. Suppose that a painter creates two paintings that are identical in every respect, except that the one is a scaled down version of the other. It would be absurd, Leibniz remarks,

… to say that the painter is the author of all that is real in the two paintings, without however being the author of what is lacking or the disproportion between the larger and the smaller painting… . In effect, what is lacking is nothing more than a simple result of an infallible consequence of that which is positive, without any need for a distinct author [of that which is lacking]. [A.6.3.151]

So even if it is true that evil is a privation, this does not have as a consequence that God is not the author of sin. Given that what is positively willed by God is a sufficient condition for the existence of the evil state of affairs, in virtue of willing what is positive in some state of affairs, God is also the author of what is privative in that state of affairs. [A similar early critique is found at A.6.3.544].

Leibniz therefore sought to develop a different strategy in order to clear God of the charge of being the author of sin. In the Philosopher's Confession , his most significant treatise on evil aside from the Theodicy , Leibniz claims that although God wills everything in the world, his will with respect to goods is decretory , whereas his will with respect to evils is merely permissive . And Leibniz argues that God's permissive willing of evils is morally permissible if and only if such permission of evil is necessary in order for one to meet one's moral obligations..

It should be noted that Leibniz does not think that the permission of evil is morally justified on the grounds that such permission brings about a greater good that may not otherwise be achieved . Such an explanation, according to Leibniz, would make it the case that God would violate in the Biblical injunction “not to do evil that good may come” [ Causa Dei 36 (S 121; G VI 444)]. Leibniz therefore claims that the evil that God permits is a necessary consequence of God's fulfilling his duty (namely, to create the best world). Leibniz characterizes (morally permissible) permission as follows:

P permits E iff: P fails to will that E P fails to will that not- E P brings it about that the state of affairs S obtains by willing that S obtains If S obtains then E obtains P knows that (4) P believes that it is P 's duty to will S and that the good of performing one's duty outweighs the evil entailed by E 's obtaining [This account is distilled from A.6.3.129–131]

This, Leibniz believes, resolves any holiness problem that might arise in so far as God is considered as the creator of the universe. However, after writing the Philosopher's Confession , Leibniz became increasingly concerned that a tension might arise in his account when it was applied to the holiness problem in the context of concurrence . Recall that traditional theists held that God was not only creator and conserver of all created things, but that God also was the concurrent cause of all actions of created things.

There were heated debates in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries concerning the nature of divine concurrence. The dispute centered on the respect in which God concurred with the free acts of creatures. This was an especially pressing problem for the obvious reason that positing too close a connection between God and created beings in cases where moral evils are committed runs the risk of implicating God in the evil, thus raising the holiness problem all over again. This debate often focused on a certain type of proposition and on what made this type of proposition true. The propositions in question are called “conditional future contingents”, propositions of the form:

If agent S were in circumstances C and time t , S would freely chose to f .

Propositions of this form were particularly important in discussions of philosophical theology in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries because it was believed that it was necessary that God know propositions of this type in order to exercise providential control over the free actions of created beings. In order to exercise providential control over free actions in the created world, God must know precisely how each such being will choose to act in each circumstance in which it will find itself. If God, for example, did not know what Eve would choose to do when confronted by the serpent, or what I would choose to do when confronted with a tuna sandwich, God could not know in advance the order of events in the universe he deigns to create.

But how does God know whether or not a token proposition of this type is true? In general, disputants in this period held that there are only two possible answers to this question. God knows that a token proposition of this type is true either because he wills that that proposition be true, or he knows that proposition to be true because something independent of his will makes it true, and God, in virtue of his omniscience, therefore knows it to be true. Following recent scholarship, we will call the first view the “postvolitional view” (since the truth of the proposition is determined only after God wills it) and the latter view the “prevolitional” view (since the truth of the proposition is independent of what God wills). In his early writings on the topic, Leibniz seemed inclined to postvolitionalism. So take the token proposition:

If Peter were accused of consorting with Christ during Christ's trial, Peter would deny Christ.

The early Leibniz holds that this type of proposition is true because God decrees that it would be true: that is, God decrees that Peter would deny Christ under these circumstances [see C 26–7 and Gr 312–3]. Furthermore, those who held this view generally held that it was in virtue of divine concurrence that God makes the proposition true in the actual world. So, in virtue of causally influencing Peter at the moment of his decision, God brings it about that Peter denies Christ in these circumstances.

This view obviously faces a number of difficulties. For our purposes, the most pressing one is that it seems to undercut Leibniz's solution to the holiness problem based on permission. For if the above proposition is true because God wills that it be true, then it would seem that God wills that Peter sin, and if he wills that Peter sin, he cannot merely permit it, in light of condition (1) of the definition of permission given above. Consequently, it appears that Leibniz must abandon his initial answer to the question of “what makes conditional future contingents true” and adopt the alternative answer.

The alternative answer also raises problems. What does it mean to say that the truth of the proposition is determined independently of God's will? Defenders of this view usually hold that the human will cannot be determined. When an agent chooses freely, nothing can “determine” or “cause” the choice, for otherwise the ehoice would not be free. Thus, for those who defended this view, the answer to the question of “what makes conditional future contingents true” ought to be “nothing.” For if something made future contingents true, then that thing would determine the choice, and the choice would not be free.

Given his commitment to the Principle of Sufficient Reason, however, Leibniz could not endorse such a view. Does Leibniz, then, have an answer to this question that will rescue him from the holiness problem? There is scholarly disagreement about this issue. Some have held that Leibniz is obliged to hold the postvolitional view despite the difficulties that it raises for him. [See Davidson (1996), Sleigh (1994).] Others have held that Leibniz tried to forge a third alternative in order to avoid this seemingly intractable dilemma. [See Murray (2005); for an alternative to Murray (2005), see Cover and Hawthorne (2000)]. I will close by considering the latter suggestion.

According to Leibniz, free choice in humans is brought about through the activity of the human intellect and the human will working in concert with each other. The intellect deliberates about alternatives and selects the one that it perceives to be the best, all things considered. The intellect then represents this alternative to the will as the best course of action. The will, which Leibniz takes to be an “appetite for the good,”, then chooses the alternative represented to it as containing the most goodness [ Theodicy , 311 (H 314; G VI 300–1].

On this view, it appears that there are two ways in which I might exercise “control” over my acts of will. First, I might be able to control what appears to me to be the best course of action, all things considered. That is, I might control the process of deliberation. Second, I might be able to control which alternative is presented to the will as containing the greatest good. Leibniz seems to accept both of these possibilities. In certain passages, he argues that by engaging in some sort of moral therapy, I can control which things appear to me to be good, and thus control the outcome of my deliberations. In other passages, he seems to say that while the will does “infallibly” choose that which the intellect deems to be the best, the will nevertheless retains the power to resist the intellect because the intellect does not “cause” the will to choose as it does. [Concerning the first strategy, see, for example, Reflections on Hobbes , 5 (H 396–7; G VI 391–1). For more on this aspect of Leibniz's view of freedom see Seidler (1985). Concerning the second strategy see, for example Theodicy 282 (H 298–300; G VI 284–5).]

Both suggestions face difficulties. Consider the first. How might I go about engaging in “moral therapy”? First, I would have to choose to do something to begin to bring about a change in how I see things. But of course I can make a choice to do this only if I first deliberate about it and see that making this change is the best thing for me to do. But did I have control over this process of “coming to see that a change is the best thing for me to do”? It seems that I may have control here only if I have control over the actions that led me to see things this way in the first place. But do I have control over those actions? If the answer is yes, it is only because I had control over my prior deliberations, and it looks as if this will lead us back in the chain of explanation to certain very early formative stages of my moral and intellectual life, stages over which it is hard to believe I had any control. It therefore seems that this line of reasoning will be difficult to sustain.

Let us consider the second alternative then, according to which I have control because the will is never “causally determined” to choose that which the intellect deems to be best in those circumstances. Leibniz holds that the will is not causally determined in the act of choice but merely “morally necessitated.” There is scholarly disagreement about the interpretation of this phrase. Some think it just means “causally necessitated.” But if this is right, it appears that God, who establishes the laws of nature, determines how creatures act, and this leads us back to the suggestion that Leibniz was a postvolitionalist in these matters. As we noted above, this is a troubling position for Leibniz to adopt since it seems to undermine his response to the holiness problem. [For various positions on the nature of “moral necessity,” see Adams, pp. 21–2, Sleigh (2000), Murray (1995), pp. 95–102, and (1996), esp. Section IV].

Others have held that moral necessity is a philosophical novelty, invented to explain the unique relationship between intellect and will. On this view, the will infallibly follows the determination of the intellect, without thereby being causally determined. Leibniz sometimes hints at this reading, as in the following example derived from Pierre Nicole:

It is considered impossible that a wise and serious magistrate, who has not taken leave of his senses, should publicly commit some outrageous action, as it would be, for instance, to run about the streets naked in order to make people laugh [ Theodicy 282 (H299; G VI 284)]

Here, the wise magistrate is not causally determined to refrain from streaking to make people laugh. Instead, he just considers streaking to be so unseemly that “he can't bring himself to do it.” Something about his psychological constitution prevents him from seeing this as something that he might actually do, even though there is surely some sense in which he nevertheless could do it .

If we allow Leibniz to locate control over actions in a will that is only morally necessitated by the intellect, is there a way for him to avoid the postvolitional/prevolitional dilemma discussed earlier? The answer is not obvious. One would have to say that the will's infallibly choosing in accordance with the deliverances of the intellect is a fact whose truth is independent of God's will , while also saying that the deliverances of the intellect provide a sufficient reason for the will's choice. If this can be done, Leibniz may have a way of avoiding the difficulty posed by conditional future contingents.

However we might think these questions should be resolved, Leibniz himself appears to have thought that the prevolitional route was the one to take. He does not think that God makes it the case how human beings would act if they were created; rather, Leibniz believes God "discovers" in the ideas of the possibles how human beings would act if they were created [on this topic see Sleigh (1994).] [Leibniz speaks of these truths about how human beings will act as “limitations” that prevent God from making them, and the world that contains them, more perfect. In the end, it is these limitations, Leibniz argues, that prevent there from being a better world than the actual one. [On the notion of “limitations” see AG 60–2, 11, Theodicy 20 (H 86–7; G VI 114–5), Causa Dei 69–71 (S 128–30; 457–8).] If this interpretation is correct, then we might think that the permission strategy will work as a solution to the holiness problem both when it comes to defending God as creator and as concurrent cause of all effects in the cosmos.

Interestingly, however, Leibniz comes to favor, in later life, the scholastic “privation” view that he rejected in his earliest writings on the problem of evil. [See, for example, Theodicy 20, 30, 153 (respectively, H 86–7, 91–2, 219–20; G VI 114–5, 119–20, 201.] Leibniz's conception of privation in general, and the relation between his earlier and later views on the topic, has recently received a sustained and searching examination in Newlands (forthcoming), to which readers interested in the topic are directed.

The issues that arise in thinking about Leibniz's views on the problem of evil have only in the past couple of decades begun to receive the sustained scholarly attention that they deserve in virtue of their manifest significance for Leibniz. In the last few years in particular––probably not coincidentally, the three-hundredth anniversary of the publication of the Theodicy was celebrated in 2010––considerable interpretive attention has been devoted to the details of Leibniz's treatment of the problem of evil and related topics. [Rateau (2008) is the first book-length treatment of Leibniz's work on the problem of evil; the essays in Rateau (2011) and Newlands and Jorgensen (forthcoming) are devoted to particular topics related to Leibniz's treatment of the problem of evil.] Given the fact that Leibniz's treatment of the problem of evil draws on medieval sources and also was taken as a target by later writers such as Voltaire and Kant, renewed interest in Leibniz's treatment of the problem of evil, combined with the resurgence of interest in contextual history of philosophy, have inspired recent work on the general historical significance of Leibniz's work on the problem of evil that seeks to illuminate later approaches to the problem of evil as well as the nature of the problem of evil itself. [See, inter alia , Larrimore (2004), Neiman (2002), and the essays in Rateau (2009).] In light of the fact that new translations of Leibniz's central texts devoted to the problem of evil have either only relatively recently been published (CP) or are in process––a new edition and English translation of the Theodicy , by Sean Greenberg and R. C. Sleigh, Jr., is well underway and under contract with Oxford University Press–and given that other new texts, like DPW, that bear on this nest of issues may well be discovered, there is reason to expect that this topic will continue to be an active area of Leibniz scholarship, and therefore that any conclusions about Leibniz's views on the problem of evil must, for now, remain tentative and subject to revision.

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Human Nature: Good vs Evil Essay

The world of today is a very delicate place where good and evil are constantly present creating choices and differentiating between individuals. The notion that there are no bad or evil people is true because in reality no one desires or plans to be evil there are only those who are lost in the search for good. Every person living on the planet is faced with a personal choice of how to attend to the matters at hand. The circumstances and the environment dictate a choice of an individual. Everybody is born inherently a good person but the imperfect and uneven surroundings create a difference between those with the ability to take on the hardships and stay true to themselves and those without a chance to support their good intentions.

The real issue at hand is that no one is able to control the time and place they grow up in. When a person is born they are influenced by their family, friends, and society.

An individual goes through stages of development in education, work, and life that shape the attitude and behavior.

If a person is born in a caring and loving family, which has the knowledge to educate the child, support him/her in their beginnings and provide a perspective that is based on kindness and respect then the individual will most likely become a kind and respectful person. The raising of a child is a very delicate matter and for a long time, it has been speculated what exactly makes a person the way they are. Psychologists have had a continuous argument if it is nature or nurture that makes up a human being and the common belief has emerged that both take part in the formation of an individual.

The fact that the world has not become fully evil proves the point that there are more good people than bad. This is a natural balance that is not controlled by humans but by the nature of existence of any life. For a very long time, there has been a Good Samaritan act that shows how a caring and kind person is not able to ignorantly pass by someone who needs help. Kindness is sometimes based on previous experiences where a particular person was helped and they have remembered that time and feel the need to return the favor. Unfortunately, there are often conditions in the world where a person has to grow up in a very limited and harsh environment. If from the very birth a person has to struggle and fight for their own survival they are almost forced to commit bad deeds. Very often an individual simply has no opportunity to let their good side and kindness emerge. Overall this is a very sensitive matter that is hard to support by any empirical evidence, which makes the true mechanism of creation of a person’s character almost untraceable.

Throughout history, there have been instances where people were faced with a crucial decision of what path to choose, either the path of evil, which sometimes delivers success faster and easier, or the path of goodness, which can be equally as fulfilling but very often requires a degree of patience, belief and strength. An argument of whether to choose kindness or the opposite is really nonexistent because there are numerous examples in history that demonstrate how good deeds are rewarded and return tenfold. Human civilization is considered to be a young and developing species that have much to learn yet but the idea that a positive and loving attitude brings more goodness and evil only creates evil is true and is widely supported by the knowing population.

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Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Human Nature: Good vs Evil." May 14, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/good-vs-evil/.

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The Universal Theme of Good Vs. Evil in Literature

This essay about the theme of good versus evil in literature explores its enduring presence from ancient myths to modern novels. It delves into how this motif serves as a moral backdrop and a commentary on the human condition, examining its portrayal in works like “Paradise Lost,” “To Kill a Mockingbird,” and the “Harry Potter” series. These diverse examples illustrate how literature addresses fundamental questions of morality, justice, and human nature, encouraging readers to reflect on their own ethical choices. The theme’s universal appeal lies in its ability to engage readers with essential ethical inquiries and its portrayal of the human capacity for both darkness and light.

How it works

The theme of good versus evil is one of the most enduring and universal motifs in literature, transcending cultural and temporal boundaries to appear in narratives from ancient myths to modern novels. This theme serves not only as a moral backdrop for narrative conflict but also as a profound commentary on the human condition and the moral dilemmas we face.

In literature, the conflict between good and evil can be portrayed in stark black and white or with complex shades of gray that challenge the reader’s perceptions and beliefs.

This theme’s universality likely stems from its deep roots in human nature and societal norms, reflecting the continual struggle within individuals and societies to define, understand, and act upon their moral convictions.

One classic example of this theme is found in the epic struggle depicted in John Milton’s “Paradise Lost.” Here, the grand battle between Satan and God over the fate of humanity’s souls explores profound questions of obedience, freedom, and the nature of sin. Milton’s Satan is not just a simple embodiment of evil; he is a complex character driven by rebellion and a quest for freedom, challenging the binary definition of good versus evil and introducing a nuanced perspective on rebellion and conformity.

Moving forward in time, the theme is also central in Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” where the fight against racial injustice in the American South is depicted through the eyes of Scout, a young girl. In this novel, the battle lines between good and evil are drawn not between mythical forces but within the community, influenced by racism, ignorance, and fear. Atticus Finch, the moral hero of the novel, stands as a beacon of goodness, advocating for justice and integrity in the face of widespread societal evil.

In contemporary literature, J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” series showcases the theme of good versus evil through the protagonist’s ongoing battle against the dark wizard Voldemort. This series highlights the importance of choice and intention in defining good and evil. Characters like Severus Snape and Draco Malfoy illustrate that individuals can embody both good and evil aspects, and their ultimate alignment is determined by their choices and actions rather than a predetermined nature.

These literary works, though varied in setting and style, all utilize the good versus evil theme to ask essential questions about morality, justice, and human nature. They explore how individuals and communities define what is “good” and “evil” based on their values and experiences, and how these definitions influence their actions. Moreover, this theme often carries a hopeful message about the human capacity for goodness and the possibility of redemption and change.

Furthermore, the appeal of this theme lies in its ability to engage readers with fundamental ethical questions and encourage them to reflect on their moral choices. Whether through epic battles between cosmic forces, the social injustices of a segregated society, or the internal conflicts of young wizards, the struggle between good and evil remains a powerful lens through which to examine the world.

In conclusion, the universal theme of good versus evil in literature not only provides a framework for narrative conflict but also serves as a mirror reflecting our deepest fears and highest aspirations. It compels us to confront the complexity of our nature and the moral choices we face, making it one of the most potent and enduring themes in literature.

Remember, this essay is a starting point for inspiration and further research. For more personalized assistance and to ensure your essay meets all academic standards, consider reaching out to professionals at [EduBirdie](https://edubirdie.com/?utm_source=chatgpt&utm_medium=answer&utm_campaign=essayhelper).

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The problem of evil simultaneously perplexes the world's greatest minds and yet remains palpably close to the hearts of the most common people. If God is good, then why is there evil? The following essay describes the problem of evil in relation to God, examines Christian responses to the problem, and concludes the existence of God and the ...
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The Universal Theme of Good Vs. Evil in Literature
This essay about the theme of good versus evil in literature explores its enduring presence from ancient myths to modern novels. It delves into how this motif serves as a moral backdrop and a commentary on the human condition, examining its portrayal in works like "Paradise Lost," "To Kill a Mockingbird," and the "Harry Potter" series.

Explaining Evil: Four Views

Why Does Evil Exist in the World?

Evil Is the Absence of Good

Evil Is Necessary to the Exercise of Free Will

Cooperation With Evil Poses a More Insidious Harm

The Problem of Evil

1. The Incompatibility Problem of Evil

2. The Evidential Problem of Evil

2.1. Free Will

2.2. “Soul-Making”

3. Outweighing Evidence?

4. Evil Is No Evidence?

5. Conclusion

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The Problem of Evil

What Is the Problem of Evil?

Responding to the Problem of Evil

The Ways of Theodicy and Inscrutability

The Way of Theodicy

Four popular theodicies have some biblical basis

These theodicies fall under the umbrella of the “greater good theodicy.”

Constructing the “Greater Good Theodicy”: a Three-Fold Argument for Three Biblical Themes

The Case of Job

The Case of Joseph

The Case of Jesus

Licensing and Limiting the GGT

Licensing the GGT: God’s Sovereignty over All Evil

God’s Sovereignty over Moral Evil

God’s Sovereignty over All Evil

Limiting the GGT: The Inscrutability of God’s Purposes

Analogies for our Cognitive Limitations

Biblical Argument for Divine Inscrutability

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The Problem of Evil

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Leibniz on the Problem of Evil

1. Various Versions of the Problem of Evil in Leibniz