Dr Greg Bahnsen - Philosophy of Christianity: The Problem of Evil Part 2 (Part 20)

We ended our last discussion with the problem of evil and certain solutions that have been posed for the problem of evil, all of which are criticized fairly well in your text and two of the articles in your text. I'd like to very quickly review those solutions to the problem of evil. And I'd like for you to supply to me the basic reasons why these solutions are found inadequate by Mackey and McCloskey. Somebody might suggest that evil is a necessary counterpart to good, that if there's going to be any good in the world, there must necessarily be the counterpart evil. Now, what criticisms might be laid against this explanation? God cannot be good. Oh, why is that? Well, if God can't experience goodness from apart from evil, then he can't enjoy himself. Okay, so it seems that we've got a difficulty in calling God good if evil is a necessary counterpart to good. Another criticism. Evil is necessary. How is it something that we desire to eliminate? If evil is necessary to the good, then it would seem that it's evil to eliminate evil, because to eliminate evil is to eliminate the possibility of the good. Okay, another criticism. It can be asked in what sense evil is necessary to good? And the only credible senses that are offered usually turn out to be epistemological in character. That is to say, there must be evil in order to recognize good. That is, to recognize good under the category of goodness. But after all, it isn't all that important that we recognize something as good. It's simply important that everything be good. And the fact that there is no contrast to good may mean that there's not a word in our vocabulary for the good, because there's no contrast to be drawn, no distinction to be made. But that doesn't mean the good couldn't exist without evil. That is, there's a confusion between a metaphysical principle and an epistemological principle here. Good may very well exist without evil, even though we may not have the word good or may not be able to recognize the good without the contrast of evil. What if somebody says that good is that evil? Excuse me? That evil is a means to the good, or that it maximizes the good, the good. We have theodicies that attempt this justification for God allowing evil in the world. That evil is a means to the good or maximizes the good. Okay, we shouldn't try to eliminate evil. Then it seems like we have that criticism reoccurring. If evil is a means to the good, then if you eliminate evil, you're going to eliminate the good that it's the means to. What else indulging sin. What's that? Sin so grace can abound? I think that would be another expression of this criticism. Is that to say that we should go ahead and have a lot of sin so that the good, the grace of God might abound. What about the criticism? What about the explanation that evil is a punishment for man's waywardness or a warning against his waywardness? Okay. As a warning, it's not always effective. As a matter of fact, evil often turns people against God rather than turning them to God. What's wrong with the idea that the evil we experience in the world today is God's punishment for man's waywardness? God would be malicious and capricious and. Okay, let's start with the second. How would God be capricious? Punish whomever and whatever he wished? A little bit louder. He could punish whomever and whenever he wished. Okay. I think to flesh out that criticism, what you want to say is it doesn't appear that when these natural calamities come, the most wicked people get the most terrible results. There doesn't seem to be any discrimination which, if it's punishment you would expect. You don't want to punish the innocent or punish the innocent as though they were as guilty as others or something like that. Consequently, this has not been real convincing to many people. In what way is God malicious? If we see evil as a punishment for waywardness, people that seem to live good lives may receive tremendous suffering quite apart from their parents, in contrast to other people who may be very obviously evil and yet they have a nice life. That is still part of the arbitrariness of God. The maliciousness would be seen in the fact that God seems to punish beyond any reasonable proportion for the evil done. Not comparatively. But you just take a little child that's born deformed and is suffering every minute of its existence. Even if you believe this is what the atheist would say. Even if you believe in the imputation of Adam's sin, one must ask why this little infant must suffer so greatly for having done nothing himself or herself. And so it would seem that God's punishments are malicious as well as arbitrary. Okay. Evil is part and parcel of the laws of nature. To have a good world is to have a regular world, a world run by regular principles, the laws of nature. But if you're going to have the laws of nature, then you've got to take the concomitant result that, you know, law of gravity allows for people to fall off cliffs. So evil seems to be part and parcel of what is required for a good world to be run for the operation of a good world. What's wrong with this theodicy that might explain the physical evil but doesn't account for moral evil? Okay, how is it that men come to be such a exquisite torturers of innocent people? The laws of nature don't seem to require that. Okay, you begin to see then the inadequacy of many popular theodicies. We talked about a few the other day. Evil is an illusion. And the difficulty with that we talked about fudging on the, if you will, the attributes of God, his omnipotence or his omniscience, or is benevolence and what difficulties arise there. And we see some of the popular theodicies about evil being unnecessary, counterpart a means to the maximization of the good, punishment for evil, warning for evil. Part of the laws of nature and the one theodicy that we have left that I want to pay some attention to today is what's called the free will defense. The free will defense, and this is very adequately defended by Alvin Plantica. I've been meaning to say for a few weeks. I was asked outside of class a few weeks ago which of the people we are reading would be considered an evangelical. And I thought you'd be interested to know that of all the people you're reading in the book, Plantica probably comes as close to your own theological convictions as anybody else you'll find here. Flanagan teaches at Calvin College and although he does not hold to traditional Calvinist theology, is certainly an evangelical in his outlook. And consequently your reading of him might incline you to be a little more sympathetic because of where he's coming from, what he's trying to accomplish. Ironically, I'm going to turn out arguing against Planticus today, but that has nothing to do with my respect for him as a philosopher or my concern for him as a Christian brother. I just happen to think that his approach here leaves something to be desired. Now, Planica defends the free will theodicy. What is the free will theodicy? You can find it in Planica's article, very nicely stated on. Let me see, it's page 187, about three quarters of the way down the page. He says the free will defense is usually stated in something like the following. A world containing creatures who freely perform both good and evil actions and do more good than evil is more valuable than a world containing quasi automata who always do what is right because they are unable to do otherwise. Now God can create free creatures but he cannot causally or otherwise determine them to do only what is right. For if he does so, then they do not do what is right. Freely to create creatures capable of moral good, therefore he must create creatures capable of moral evil. But he cannot create the possibility of moral evil and at the same time prohibit its actuality. And as it turned out, some of the free creatures God created exercise their freedom to do what is wrong. That's the free will defense. That is, God is not responsible for the evil in the world. Man is responsible for the evil in the world. Now, before we look at this in any detail, somebody's going to immediately say that only accounts for the moral evil in the world. The evil that comes because of the decisions of men, the immorality of men. How does that account for the physical evil in the world for earthquakes, tornadoes, diseases, so forth and so on? Now, how does Plantica answer that at the end of the article? No, he doesn't see earthquakes and tornadoes due to the free decisions of men. But he does think that the Christian theist has an answer for these sorts of things without attributing them to God. That's right. Planetus says to make the claim that we cannot account for physical evil on the free will defense is to overlook important part of traditional theistic belief. It is part of much traditional belief to attribute a good deal of the evil we find to Satan or to Satan and his cohorts. Okay, so let's say that some supernatural evil being Satan, is causing all these physical evils. And Satan makes the decision to do these things because he is immoral in the same way that men are immoral when they mistreat, treat each other. And consequently we see that the moves available to the free will defender in the case of moral evil are equally available to him in the case of physical evils. How is it the children come to be tortured by their parents, immoral choices by the parents? How is it we come to have earthquakes? Because Satan causes earthquakes and he's made an immoral choice to do so. And so the free will defense, he says, covers all kinds of evil. As long as you bring in the satanic hypothesis or the hypothesis of Satan, he says at the very end of his article. Now it must be conceded that views involving devils and other non human spirits do not at present enjoy either the extensive popularity or the high esteem of, say, the theory of relativity. It says, this may not be popular, but to rebut the charge of contradiction, the theist need not hold that the hypothesis in question is probable or Even true, he need hold only that it is not inconsistent with the proposition that God exists. Now, I don't know how adequate you think that's going to be when you're dealing with an unbeliever, but Planic is making a logical point. He says the atheist says the existence of evil and the existence of God are logically incompatible. Meininga says it may not be popular to believe in devils, but if you believe in devils, it certainly shows that there's no logical incompatibility with the existence of God and the existence of evil. The two are logically compatible. And that's all he wants to say. Now, of course, for somebody to accept this theodicy is going to require an apologetic for the overall worldview that calls for angels and devils to be part of the metaphysical, if you will, furniture of the universe. But you understand the logical point being made, the free will defense can be shifted to devils and Satan, and therefore physical evils can be covered as well as moral evils. At just this point, I may want to ask, as theologian, does the Bible say that all earthquakes, tornadoes and so forth are the work of the devil? So Pinegus is talking about philosophical possibility that maybe the devil does all these evil, wicked things. But you know, there are passages in the Bible, some very strong ones, that say that everything that happens in the natural realm comes from the hand of God, that he indeed sets his sovereign throne above the flood, that God sends floods. One does not get the impression that in the days of Noah, when all the human race was wiped out short of eight people, that Satan was to blame for the floodwaters. The Bible explicitly says that God sent the flood. The Bible says that God sends all these natural calamities. Indeed he works evil according to Isaiah the prophet. And so, having made the point that planting is right as to the logical compatibility of physical evil and the existence of God because of the presence of Satan and his cohorts, there is still the question of whether this theodicy is adequate for a Christian world life view that's tied to the Bible. A biblical outlook doesn't say that Satan is the one who's responsible for all these things. Okay, let's go back to the free will defense now as it deals with the moral evil of men. Planet seems to be saying two things. One, free will has such a value that it outweighs the resultant evils that come from it. The free will has a higher value than its resultant evils. Secondly, he is saying that God cannot causally or otherwise determine men to do only what is right that God cannot. You see, there cannot be any predetermination by God of free acts that are always good. So he wants to rule out free determination and free acts that are always good. Because, you see, the critic of the free will defense says that it's certainly possible that a man might freely do this much good. Okay, let's say he does 10 terps of good and he does 5 terps of evil. That's a possible person, right? You could imagine a person doing 10 units of good and five units of evil. Well, can't you also imagine a person doing 13 terps of good and two terps of evil? That's a possible person, isn't it? Well, you could imagine somebody doing 14 terps of good and one terp of evil, right? I mean, is there any logical problem so far? Well, even if we go just that far, the critic would say, why is it, since this is logically possible, and this is logically possible, that we have this kind of world rather than this kind of world? Obviously, there could be a lot less evil in the world and men could still be free. It's possible. Now, if you want to push even further, the critic says it's possible that men might freely do 15 terps of good and no terps of evil. It's logically possible that men might freely always do the good. Okay, Now, Plantaga argues against this position. He argues against the position that men can freely can be determined to freely always do the good, that it can be predetermined that they will do free acts that are always good. And although there's some technical paraphernalia in the article that may have tripped you up, I'd like to go through and just read a few statements to get at the heart of what Planica is arguing at every turn of his discussion. First of all, page 187, I've already read this, but I'll say it again. Planicus says God cannot causally or otherwise determine them to do only what is right, for if he does so, then they do not do what is right freely. If God determines them to do only what is right, they don't do the right freely. So determination and free will are incompatible. He says in the same paragraph, as it turned out, free creatures decided to do what is evil. That turn of the phrase is rather interesting to a Calvinist. As it turned out, you know, God just kind of stood back and waited to see now what's going to happen here? As it turned out. Okay, let's turn to page 1. Hundred and ninety one. Just a little bit below, well, about three quarters down the page, you'll see 5B. Okay, right above it. But 5A one might think is equivalent to 5B. God creates free men and brings it about that they always freely do what is right. Okay, this is the claim that God brings it about that men do something freely. Planica says that this proposition, of course, is not consistent. For if God brings it about that the men he creates always do what is right, then they do not do what is right freely. Have you heard that claim before? That's the original claim, and that's going to be the heart of the article. If God brings it about, it's not done freely. And so he suggests 5c is another interpretation of 5a, namely that God creates free men and these free men always do what is right. Do you see the difference between those two propositions? Until you do, you probably will not catch on to what Planet is saying. In 5b God brings it about that from acts are done in 5C, God creates free men and they bring it about that they always do what is right. Okay, so there's quite a difference. In 5B, God brings about the free acts of men. In 5C, God brings about free men who then do their own acts which are always right. Okay. 192. Page 192, just above Midway. Whether the free men created by God would always do what is right would presumably be up to them. And as if God creates men free, then whether they do what is right presumably is up to them. It cannot be predetermined by God. Page 194. In the very middle, God cannot cause Smith to refrain from performing a while allowing him to be free with respect to A. And therefore whether or not Smith does A will be entirely up to Smith. It will be a matter of free choice for him. 194. In the very middle, God cannot cause Smith to refrain from performing A while allowing him to be free with respect to A. Okay, then page 195, just a little bit above the middle, he says it is possible then, that God cannot instantiate any possible person containing the property always freely does what is right. Planet has argued that it's possible that God is unable to instantiate such a person, one who always does freely what is right. He says it's all. Of course, having said that it's possible that God is not able to do that, rather than it's necessary that he not be able to do that, he has to admit it's possible God could do it Also, it is also possible, of course, that he can instantiate some such possible persons. But that he can, if indeed he can, is a contingent truth, I think, from my own study, is a fatal admission on Plantageus part. He seems to be arguing that anybody who holds the opposite position must say that necessarily God can create people who freely do what is right always. And at this point he is admitting that God it's possible that he can't do so, but it's possible that he can. And therefore it can't be a necessary truth that God has this ability. It can only be a contingent truth that God has this ability. So it turns out that this position here is a contingent matter. Contingently, God might have the ability to bring it about, that men always do the right, and they do it freely. And so Planica's position, I'm going to start criticizing now. Planica's position, at best, is directed at those who think that God necessarily has that ability, that it's a necessary truth, that if God is all good and all powerful and all knowing that any men he creates will freely do what is good always. And I don't happen to think that's a necessary truth. I think that's a contingent truth dependent upon the type of God you're talking about and the choices God makes. Therefore, Planaga's argument is directed against someone other than myself, because I would make those alterations. Secondly, Planaga is arguing that predetermination and free will are incompatible. But we spent a good deal of time in class talking about that, didn't we? And it's not my conclusion anyway. I trust it's not your conclusion that free determination and free will are incompatible. Okay, if he says that free determination and free will are not compatible, then I have a logical difficulty, as well as a theological difficulty with the position he's taking. Logically, I don't see why they are incompatible. If somebody says all the conditions of a man freely doing something are these A, B, C, and D. The only way predetermination is incompatible with free will is if in the conditions of free will, predetermination is excluded. If divine predetermination is excluded in one of these conditions of free will, then of course they're logically incompatible. But it is certainly possible to have a conception of free will that's says man is free as long as no created factor, no factor within, if you will, the created realm, forces him or coerces him to do what he does. Okay, so there's a perfectly legitimate sense of Free will that allows for God nevertheless, in his own mysterious ways, to determine what men will freely do. The only question is, does God have that ability? God? Now, does God have the ability, can God predetermine what I will freely do? Can God have me do anything according to his plan without coercing me? Well, where would you find out the answer to that question? Presumably in the Bible, if you're an evangelical Christian. And in the Bible, God certainly does predetermine the free acts of men. He predetermined the the wicked act of the crucifixion of his own son. And so philosophically, it doesn't seem to me that one can argue that free will has to be incompatible with predetermination. Unless, of course, you beg the question and say that free will, if you enumerate the factors necessary to free will, one of them is the exclusion of predetermination by God. But it seems to me in our ordinary use of the word free will, we need only exclude all of those factors in the created realm that would be coercive. For instance, a man forcing the gun into my hand, or biological determinism or something of that nature. We can say that God determines the free acts of men non coercively. And I believe that we can preserve the ordinary sense of free will. Moreover, we can. Now, theologically, we can preserve what the Bible says that God does determine the free acts of men. If you hold te planist position, then there's some philosophical problems to be dealt with. But even more importantly, if you hold te planus position, you have theological problems to deal with. And that's what the Bible teaches. God predestines whatever takes place. Since the Bible teaches that and nevertheless holds men accountable for it, the presumption is that God can predetermine the free acts of men, the responsible acts of men. Okay, so that's my second line of criticism. The first is planting at one point admits that as a contingent truth, God might create men, free men who always do what is good. Okay, it's not necessarily false that God should do that. Secondly, there's this philosophical and theological problem of holding the predetermination is incompatible with men freely doing what is always good. And now thirdly, and this is strictly a theological difficulty, most if not all evangelical Christians believe that in the consummation state of affairs, men will freely do what is good and they will always freely do what is good. Now, I'm not going to talk about how it comes about that they freely do always what is good. I won't get into determination here. I happen to think that's the key to it, but I won't impose that upon you. But even if you happen to be an Arminian in your metaphysical outlook, you will grant, I trust, that in the New Jerusalem nobody's going to lose their salvation. In the New Jerusalem, there's not going to be any threat of somebody rebelling against God. They're doing an evil deed and therefore having to be cast out from the presence of God somehow for all eternity. Those men who end up in the New Jerusalem are going to always do what is right, always do what is right. Now, let's add to this the fact that most evangelicals hold that we are not going to become automata in the New Jerusalem, that in the consummation state of affairs we're not going to be less human than we are now, that we're going to enjoy greater freedom then than we do now. So it does seem that there is at least one circumstance. We'll call it circumstance one, the ultimate circumstance, the New Jerusalem. Under C1, men will always and yet freely do good. It would appear, then, that an evangelical Christian has to admit that that's a possible state of affairs brought about by God, that men will always and freely do what is good, and at least in the New Jerusalem, that the possibility of sin will have been done away with without depriving us of free will. We will freely and always do what is good. Now, the question then is if that C1, if that circumstance is logically possible, given evangelical theology, the critic of Christianity can legitimately ask, why didn't God create that situation from the outset? And I'm not sure how Planica can deal with that. I mean, he may have a very odd doctrine of the consummation state of affairs. I say he may. I've not talked to him about it, and I'm not sure what he would say about it, but I am interested to know whether he thinks this is logically incompatible. Also, that we ever should have a consummation state of affairs, or our salvation is so sure that we're always and freely going to do all it is good. Now, if he doesn't grant that, then I have difficulty with the evangelical stature of his theology. I've already indicated I have difficulty with the biblical foundations for saying free determination and free will are incompatible. But I have real difficulty theologically. If he holds for all eternity, our salvation might be jeopardized because we have to freely do what we do. So if you grant that this can happen and it's going to happen. Then the unbeliever can say, why didn't God make things that way from the outset? Why didn't God create circumstance one, what we're calling the New Jerusalem from the very outset? Why did he create men able to fall? Tell me if this is correct or incorrect. Would Plantica be willing to say that it is logically impossible even for God to bring about a situation where all men freely choose to do what is the right thing? Would he use that phrase logically impossible? And if he would, is that a limitation on God's omnipotence? He doesn't think it's a limitation on God's omnipotence. Because to say that God brings it about, that men freely do what they do is a contradiction. And nobody believes that God's power means he can do contradictory things. If God brings it about, then it can't be freely done. That's why I read all those quotes in the article. That's the heart of Planagus position here. And it's something that I just happen not to agree with. Metaphysically, I don't see that God's predetermination need deprivement of free will as we ordinarily understand the Word. But he would say God is unable to bring it about, that men freely do the good, because that's a contradictory statement, that God brings it about, that men freely do it, and therefore it's no limitation on God, that he can't make round squares or do contradictory things. We're going to get to that. So the free will defense does seem to me to have some value in that. We do say that God, I'm, if you will, conceding the value of the free will defense. Now, not just summarizing something that said before, this is a new thought. A Christian does believe there's value to free will and that God honors the integrity of men so that if they decide to plant corn, they get corn and not strawberries. Okay? God felt that free will had some value. God gave Adam free will. Adam chose to plant corn. God doesn't violate the free will of man in the sense that he brings up strawberries anyway. Consequently, if evil things come, disease, torture, injustice, poverty, if evil things come from the bad decision of Adam, then those evil things, because God respects the free will of man, must come. Corn will grow. What a man sows, he reaps. Adam sowed wickedness, he wept. That's going to come out right. He's going to reap and did reap wickedness so there's value to free will. However, the fact that we believe that men can always freely do what is good and that situation is coming about makes us go behind the free will defense to an even stronger theodicy. All I'm saying here is that Planticus theodicy is only one point along the way of presenting a theodicy. That the free will defense needs something to be added to it. It's insufficient in itself. The final criticism to be made is from the unbeliever standpoint of the free will defense is that the argument is that free will, the value of free will, is higher than the resultant evils. That a world that has so much evil but men freely doing the evil is a more valuable world than a world in which there is no evil but no free will. Okay, you have to choose two situations. Okay, here's a world that has all this evil over here, but it also has free will. Here's a world that has no evil but no free will either. Which of these is the better world? And the assumption of the free will defender is that this is the better world, that that is more valuable than a world that has all good but no freedom. For many years I held to this conviction myself, and I'm not sure that I don't hold to that conviction now, but I certainly have a lot of questions about it. I don't think that's so obvious as I used to think. I can certainly understand an unbeliever looking at that and saying, well, that's just an awfully heavy price to pay. Pay for the torture of my child. Okay, the cancer that is, you know, killing my family. I think I'd just as soon have been somebody that didn't have freedom. But enjoy, if you will, freedom from cancer, or perhaps because cancer is a natural evil. I'd just as soon not have the injustice in my society than to have injustice and freedom, the freedom to be unjust is, if you will, too costly. Now, I'm not sure how the Christian should answer that. I'm not sure that the Bible ever speaks of free will as a value that is so high as to outweigh all the evils that can come from it. Maybe it does. I'm not saying it doesn't. I'm just saying that I now have doubts about that because I can understand how an unbeliever would say, well, all things taken into account, I'd give up the freedom if we could just get rid of all these other woes. So this is not obvious, and yet that's the beginning premise in planning this argument. And therefore there is still something that has to be said. There needs to be some argument for this, but no argument is given. Did you just say that? If unbeliever would say he'd rather give up? I think some unbelievers would. I've talked to some who would. There are some who would say the price is just too great. I would not want to construct a world that involved free will if it meant the devastation of whole societies and the torture of little children and that sort of thing. I'm not saying all unbelievers would say that. I'm saying that's certainly an open, that's an option for an unbeliever to say I'd rather have a world that was all good and didn't include freedom than a world that has so much evil than at the cost of freedom, I'd give up the freedom. They might say that. And the fact that they might say that means that planning has got to at least offer an argument for, if you will, the superior value of free will. Well, where are we now in our discussions of theodicy, the problem of evil? Well, we've seen the inadequacy of most all the solutions that have been proposed to us in the text. What I've said about the free will defense is that it only goes so far and it doesn't go far enough. And consequently every solution proposed to us in the text is going to be insufficient, at least on my accounting of it. Well then how do I answer the free will? I mean, excuse me, the problem of evil. How do I respond to that? Well, let's remember first of all the nature of the problem. It is said that there's a logical incompatibility, a logical incompatibility in the existence of evil and the existence of an all good, all knowing, benevolent God. Now in Nelson Pike's article, as I indicated briefly last time, there is, I think, an important observation that the person who holds to this view of logical incompatibility is committed to what he calls Proposition 6 in his article that an omnipotent and omniscient being would have no morally sufficient reason for allowing instances of suffering. Okay, I'm just going to call this being God where you understand that it's God in the Christian conception that God would have no morally sufficient reason. Pike goes on to examine the claim that God could have no morally sufficient reason. And he uses as his illustration the idea that if you understand the whole picture, you see that evil is somehow necessary Evil is somehow necessary to the best of all possible worlds. That while considered in itself this configuration. Remember, he talks about the blocks that are all put together, they're different shapes. And he says the best configuration of the boxes, the square. But to get a square, you have to use the L shaped block. But looked at by themselves one by one and evaluated, the L shaped block, of all the rest turns out to be the least valuable. Okay, so here is this evil, that is this terrible thing. But you've got to use evil in order to make the best configuration, namely the square configuration out of the blocks. That's only an analogy. He's saying it's conceivable then that that which in itself is evil might contribute to the overall good. It might be part of the best possible configuration in the world. And therefore you can't say that God could have no morally sufficient reason for evil. So you're denying both premises then. Anybody who owes to logical incompatibility must hold that God would have no morally sufficient reason. Since I believe God could have a morally sufficient reason for allowing evil or for determining evil, even therefore I don't believe there's any logical incompatibility. Let's go back to what you were saying the other day. Since only God is omniscient, there is no way that a man can prove that there are absolutely no morals. That's right. How could somebody show this universal negative statement that there could be no morally sufficient reason? To say that God is good is to say, of course, that any evil that he determines or allows, he must have a morally sufficient reason for it. Just like in the case of a good parent, good parent causes the child to suffer only for the child's good. There's a morally sufficient reason for the parent giving medicine to the child, or spanking the child, disciplining the child, or what have you. And so we say that a parent can be good even though a parent inflicts suffering and pain. God can be good even though he inflicts suffering and pain if he has a morally sufficient reason. So anybody who thinks there's a logical incompatibility in the Christian conception of God and the existence of evil must therefore hold there is no morally sufficient reason for what God has done. But now how could any finite man know that there is no morally sufficient reason? Penelom tries to answer that question. Okay, if you look at the very end of Penelom's article, he summarizes nicely what he has done. Penelom says, I have tried to show that in a Given form of theism, the concept of a morally sufficient reason may be sufficiently restricted to render it impossible for an omnipotent and omniscient being to have a morally sufficient. To have morally sufficient reasons for some evils. He says, given a certain conception of theism, now, essential to a certain conception or a particular conception of theism, is the moral code of that theistic system. Pentalam says, if I say God is good, I'm saying that God is like a good man. That what I am getting at when I call a man good is what I am getting at when I call God good. Now, what am I getting at when I say that a man is good and therefore that God is good? I am saying that the following attributes, okay, that in a good man you're going to find the following attributes. Now, if a good man inflicts suffering or evil on somebody, then we would say he has a morally sufficient reason for doing it. If within these attributes of goodness, we can find a specific defense of what he has done. So the parent gives medicine to the child. The child doesn't enjoy the medicine, but it's his health. We consider that, if you will, a defense of the infliction of suffering on the child. And so in the Christian conception of goodness, which is to say the Christian world life view, what we mean by goodness delimits what morally sufficient reasons there are. Let's say that there are only four. There may be many more. But for illustration, let's say that the Christian ethics says the following are morally sufficient reasons. Now, having said that, then Pike's position is not nearly so awesome. Pike would say, how can anybody show that there is no morally sufficient reason? Penelope says, you can show it in terms of the Christian conception of goodness. The Christian conception of goodness has limits. You know, a good man can't do just anything. He must be good. In terms of these attributes here, in terms of these morally sufficient reasons for inflicting suffering, if that's what we mean by goodness, this is the goodness list, if you will. Then all we have to do is look at the instances of evil and suffering in the world and say, does God have, if you will, an excuse for what he has done in light of these attributes here, in light of these morally sufficient reasons delimited by Christian ethics, okay, so he seems to be turning the screws back the other way. Now in Pike's argument, Pike says, nobody could know for sure that God doesn't have a morally sufficient reason. Penelope says, well, in terms of the Christian conception of goodness, there is A limit as to what are the morally sufficient reasons. And now your professor would like to turn the screw back the other way in favor of Pike. Because while that appears prima facie to be taking away the force of Pike's position, you must remember that on Christian conception of ethics, God's goodness is beyond challenge. And that when we say a man is good, we mean he is godlike. We don't mean that God is good in the way that we say that men are good. That is, pike has reversed the order things. We take the attributes of God and understand them via the law of God and apply them to men to decide whether they are good. We don't take what is a good man and then apply his attributes to decide what a good God is. That is, Christian ethics begins with the goodness of God as a presupposition and says that God, anything that is good must be godlike. And consequently it is still possible that God is a morally sufficient reason that he hasn't revealed to us. And he could still be good because we don't limit his goodness by what we see in good men. We determine that men are good when they reflect the known goodness of God. And so the order of reasoning has been reversed in Pentalam. And it's just because he has a different conception of Christian ethics that he can make his criticism appear plausible. So let's get back now to the answer to the problem of evil. I can wind this up in about a couple of minutes now. I'm agreeing with pike, by the way. This is kind of parenthetical. At the end of Pike's article, he points out that Hume's criticism really amounts to a criticism of those who hold to natural theology, somebody who wants to use the teleological argument as a scientific hypothesis is going to find that the problem of evil prevents him from concluding that God is as the Bible describes him, that there is evidence against the goodness of God found in the evil that we experience in the world. And so that if your conception of God is limited by your scientific reasoning, your natural theological reasoning, that not only is the teleological argument questionable, but the Christian conception of God becomes questionable. But in the same breath, pike is pointing out that if you hold to the existence of God a priori, that is that that is your presupposition either by faith faith or by some kind of a priori rational argument. If you hold to the existence of God as being beyond question, the problem of evil cannot be a problem for your system. And that is because if you hold that God exists and there's no question about God existing. If there's evil, then there must be some morally sufficient reason for it. So the problem of evil, that's a very valuable information, insight, and it's something, if you will, I've been trying to drive at through our entire course, that you must presuppose the existence of God. We don't argue for the existence of God on the basis of something that we consider more certain, more firm, more sure that you begin with the existence of God either by faith or a priori, however you want to describe it, and that from that position, the problem of evil is no difficult. Okay, let's conclude this. The first point is no man can say that God has. It is impossible that God has a morally sufficient reason for what he does. In fact, it is a premise of Christian theology that God does all things well. And consequently we believe that God does have a morally sufficient reason. If we can't supply that morally sufficient reason, that only proves that God hasn't told us everything there is to know. Secondly, the premise that is essential to the atheist argument is that evil exists. There isn't any problem of evil if there isn't any evil, is there? And on atheistic grounds. I don't believe that you can make good on this premise. That is, from a presuppositional standpoint, you always want to question your opponent and make him make good on his presuppositions. So he says evil exists, and you say, well, how is that? What do you mean by evil? I can't go through the argument here. The point is that the unbeliever cannot give you assumptions or the preconditions of absolute evil, which is to say absolute good. Everything is relative in terms of the unbeliever system of ethics. And if everything is relative, then he can't say absolutely this is an evil act, or that is an evil experience. You can always say that's evil. Given this conception, that's evil, if you will, provided you don't happen to like torturing children. But if your worldview happens to call for torturing children as the way to get a lot of fun out of life, well, then it's not evil for that worldview. The unbeliever cannot make good because of the relativistic foundation of his philosophy, cannot make good on the claim that evil exists. Consequently, the problem of evil cannot be a problem for Christian theism, because there can't be evil without Christian theism. And you can't make good on the claim that there's evil apart from Christian theism. And so thirdly, it turns out, since there's no logical incompatibility in the idea that God has a morally sufficient, there's no logical incompatibility between the Christian conception of God and evil since God could have a morally sufficient reason. And since evil cannot be said to exist, you can't make good on that claim. Apart from the Christian world and life view, it turns out that this whole issue is a matter of faith. A matter of faith. If you have faith in the Christian conception of God, there's no logical incompatibility because God, okay, somebody says God hasn't told you what the reason is for the evil in the world. We say that's okay, but we have faith in him. And if you don't have faith in God, you can't say that evil exists at all. And so, if you will, on the faith view, on the presuppositions of the unbeliever, there is no problem of evil. And on the presupposition of the believer, there is no problem of evil. And so since that covers all the possibilities, whether you're a believer or not a believer, there's no problem of evil.