How to Explain the Existence of Evil

Apologetics: Evil, Suffering and Hell 1. What are some of the facts of history and experience that give rise to the problem this course calls the problem of evil? The facts of history and experience that give rise to the problem of evil are primarily war, pain, death—i.e., suffering.

This is what Lewis describes as the problem of pain: Why would a good God create a world wherein people suffer and are doomed to die? Why does it seem, moreover, that innocent people suffer? These are the questions that Lewis asks, noting in particularly that “all civilisations pass away and, even while they remain, inflict peculiar sufferings of their own probably sufficient to outweigh what alleviations they may have brought to the normal pains of man.”[footnoteRef:2] [2: C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (Samizdat University Press, 2016), 2.] 2.

To what extent would you defend the following claim: the time for one to reflect rationally on God and evil is when things are going relatively well for one, not relatively poorly for one. I would not defend that claim as it is not the way most people actually operate. People tend to reflect on the problem of good and evil, on God and the devil, after they have personally experienced the reality of this conflict—most often in their own heart.

People who have been tempted, or who have fallen, or who have experienced persecution—they are the ones who are most likely to have the incentive to give reflection to this mystery. That is why I would not expect to find one whose life is pleasant and satisfactory to reflect on the more challenging aspects of faith and religion. However, that does not mean one shouldn’t reflect on them if one’s life is relatively calm, simple and easy going.

One should have a spiritual life and an interior life wherein one can even offer up one’s own tiny, little struggles and make tiny, little sacrifices to assist others struggling more mightily within the great mystical body.[footnoteRef:3] [3: Marilyn McCord Adams and Robert Merrihew Adams, The Problem of Evil (Oxford UP, 1990), 36.] 3. Respond critically (either in agreement or disagreement, but justify your answers) to this question: Sin, which is the basis for all forms of evil, is itself non-rational and therefore cannot be given a rational explanation.

How can one give a rational defense (or theodicy, e.g.) when sin and evil are irrational? Augustine defined sin rather rationally when he called it misplaced love or misplaced affection. Instead of putting all one’s love in God and expressing it towards God, people with their fallen sinful nature will tend to place their love in creatures or in pleasures. They develop bad, sinful habits because they place their love in something that does not lead them to God.

Sin and evil can be rationally understood or explained even if they may seem like irrational acts in the greater picture. Rationally speaking, one should love God with one’s whole heart, mind and soul—yet people so often do not do so because they give themselves over to their passions, which are irrational. Yet, we understand that lure of the irrational and can think on it in rational terms. 4. Describe the difference between the problem of evil and an argument from evil.

The problem of evil is the problem of reconciling the existence of evil with the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient and all-good God. An argument from evil is an argument in which one reasons that because evil exists, God must be lacking in at least one or possibly all three of those qualities.[footnoteRef:4] [4: John S. Feinberg, The Many Faces of Evil (Crossway Books, 2004), 215.] 5. Give 2 reasons from Scripture, not given in the lecture, in support of the fact that God hates evil.

In Proverbs 8:13 is this quote: "The fear of the LORD is to hate evil; Pride and arrogance and the evil way And the perverted mouth, I hate.” And in Psalm 26:5, we find: “I hate the assembly of evildoers, And I will not sit with the wicked.” In both verses, one sees that God is speaking through the words of Sacred Scripture showing that evil has no place in Him and He wants and seeks no place in evil.

In fact, the two cannot be in the same place, as evil is an absence of the good. God is not perverse and thus cannot love evil, as Proverbs shows. And God cannot camp with those who love evil, because they will hate and kill Him—as they did when they crucified Christ. 6. Briefly discuss why defining “evil” is a difficult exercise, and comment on the definition of evil suggested in lecture.

As Wright points out, evil is a word that gets thrown around a lot and used in a simplistic manner.[footnoteRef:5] Politicians used it cavalierly after 9/11 and they still do to this day. Evil, however, is not something people should take lightly and it is not a word that people should use for political purposes. Evil is real and it should be acknowledged, but what it means also has to be acknowledged—otherwise we risk defining it in a way that is unrealistic.

Evil could be defined as the absence of good—but it may also be defined as hatred of the good that God has created and that God is. These are definitions that would keep one from flinging about the word too casually because they oblige one to stop and think about the good and what it means to love the good. [5: N. T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God (InterVarsity Press, 2006), 14.] 7. Discuss the common way of dividing up the types of evils between natural and moral evil.

Does this distinction seem to be a helpful one to you? Dividing evil between natural and moral is a helpful distinction, as it helps to show where one is morally responsible and where one is not. For instance, the destructive force of a hurricane is a natural evil. Murder is a moral evil. Yet, at the same time, one has to wonder about why natural evil exists, if one is going to question the existence of evil.

However, the false note that original sin put into the fabric of the world explains natural evil. 8. Define the philosophical concept of “possible world.” The possible world is the world that might have been had mankind never fallen through original sin. It is perhaps the state that the world could return to to some extent were men universally to return to God and lead moral lives.

However, the possible world exists mainly as an idea in philosophy to distinguish between the real world that we experience as a result of original sin and the possible world that had been planned for us by God and that we would have experienced in paradise had we obeyed and.